Home for Horny Monsters - Book Six

Believers

After the first thirty minutes of wandering through the enormous piles of undelivered gifts, Kisa was forced to take a break and fight back the panic attack that threatened to consume her. The darkness was absolute beyond the small range of her crystalline light, and it was during this moment of respite that she spotted a pallet stacked with bicycles nearby.

She thought it was pretty fucked up that a bunch of kids somehow never got their bikes, but she found one roughly her size and dragged it clear. The tag fell free of the handlebars, and she bent down to pick it up and read the name.

"Sorry, Thomas. Looks like a sweet ride." The bike was blue with a gold lightning bolt on the frame. She dug through the pile and found a helmet. When she pressed it onto her head, she hissed in frustration as she fought both her hair and her ears to get it on properly. By the time it was on, her ears had been folded against her scalp, muting the outside world.

Kisa made it nearly six feet on the bike before crashing. She didn't know if she had never learned how to ride as a child or if it had simply been too long, but she climbed back to her feet and tried again.

Between her natural grace and dexterity, she was soon pedaling forward in the darkness with the crystal tucked between her knuckles providing enough light to see. She hoped that she was still headed in the right direction. It had occurred to her more than once that being shuffled around may have pointed her somewhere else in the warehouse and she was moving away from the entrance.

The good news was that Christmas was finite. At some point, she would reach a wall. When that happened, she would pedal her bike alongside until that damn elevator appeared. The building couldn't be infinitely large on the inside...right?

Once she reached the cave wall, it was essentially a coin flip for which direction to go. She chose left and was finally able to pedal with some speed, no longer dodging piles of gifts. When she reached the dais, hot tears of joy ran down her cheeks as she tucked the bike out of sight around a corner.

Kisa was tired, but refused to find somewhere to nap until she was out of the warehouse. The darkness felt like it would crush her at any moment, and she had no idea how long her crystal would continue glowing.

The trip up the elevator was uneventful. When the doors slid open, she let out a sigh of relief to see the lit caverns empty. She moved along the tunnels and found herself back in Grýla's lair. A very large cauldron had been set over a fire and a pair of elves were cleaning up a horrendous mess on the floor that looked suspiciously like it used to be another elf.

"Fuck this place," Kisa muttered, moving back to the main tunnel. When she reached the pits where the elves had been stored, she crouched down upon seeing Leppalúði standing above one of the pits, a figure held between his hands.

"I cannot cook this!" he yelled at a smaller version of himself.

"Krampus say children frozen!" The Yule lad gave Leppalúði's shin a kick. "Stupid Christmas magic, only Santa can fix! After Krampus take pole, children become food!"

"What the hell?" Kisa moved to the edge of the pit and looked down to see that one of the elven prisons had been repurposed. Instead of elves, it held children, all of them wrapped in blankets and sleeping on the floor. Her heart raced seeing all of the children collected into a macabre sleepover in the giant's den.

Leppalúði let out a roar, and Kisa looked over to see that he had tried to bite the child in half and cracked one of his teeth. He spat the tooth fragment onto the ground and hurled the child at his son.

"Put it back in the pen," he snarled, rubbing at his mouth. "Your mother won't be happy."

The Yule lad squeaked in terror and ran off with his bundle. Leppalúði scratched his jaw and turned toward his lair, his large nostrils flaring. He walked within a few feet of Kisa, then stopped and sniffed the air.