Jesse tried to clear his throat, worked to breathe. Coughed and spat up more blood. The pain all but blinded him, forced him to nearly double over.
Krampus sat down next to him, lay the spear across his lap, and pulled the sack over. He reached in and a moment later held one of the ancient flasks. He tore off the wax.
“Odin’s mead I hope?” Jesse forced a smile.
“Yes, mead. Now drink.” He lifted it to Jesse’s lips. “It will not save you. But it will make the dying easier.”
Jesse drank, several deep gulps—the mead warm and soothing. His vision became fuzzy, dreamlike, his breathing easier, and the pain receded. His eyelids grew heavy, he leaned his head back against the cart, looked at all the dead men. Too bad, he thought. Too bad Dillard hadn’t been here. He forced his head up, clutched Krampus’s arm. “Dillard . . . he still has them!”
“Dillard?”
“He’s got my wife . . . my little girl. He’s a murderer.” Jesse tried to hold the thought, he needed to make Krampus understand, but things were becoming murky, his thoughts befuddled. “He’ll hurt them . . . I know it. We gotta do something, gotta stop him. Krampus . . . I’m begging you . . . go kill that bastard.”
Krampus admired the spear. “Perhaps one day,” he said distractedly. “But this day there is another villain that needs to be dealt with.”
KRAMPUS RAN HIS finger along the blade, watched the red Christmas lights flicker off its edge, thought of the high sorcery that went into the crafting of such a weapon. “Still as sharp as the day it was forged.” He held it out for Jesse to see. Jesse’s eyes were closed, his chin down. Krampus tapped him lightly on the shoulder with the spear.
Jesse’s eyes fluttered open. “What?”
“The blade, see. It still holds its edge.”
Jesse squinted at the blade. “That’s . . . fucking wonderful.” His words were slow, slurred.
“Soon, it shall put an end to this Santa Claus charade forever.”
“Why . . . why the hell you wanna go and kill Santa Claus for . . . anyhow?” Jesse muttered, his words barely comprehensible. “He’s fucking Santa Claus. Hands out presents to children . . . bunch of nice shit like that.” He coughed. “Fuck. Give me another swig of that stuff.”
“He is not Santa Claus,” Krampus said, lifting the flask to Jesse’s lips. “Santa Claus is a lie. He is Baldr. I told you that. Do you not remember?”
“Yeah, Baldr. Okay.”
“You do not understand. You know nothing of him, nothing of his treachery.” Krampus felt his blood rising. “His treachery to me, to all of Asgard. How he brought ruin to all.” Krampus fell silent, listening to Jesse’s labored breathing. “Are you not curious?”
“What?”
“Of Baldr’s treachery?”
“No . . . not so much.”
“Well, you should know. Everyone should know.” Krampus took a deep drink from the flask, wiped his mouth on the back of his arm. “His villainy, his real villainy . . . it began when he came back, after his rebirth, just after Ragnarok swept through Odin’s realm, somewhere around eleven hundred years after the Christ child was born. Are you listening?”
Jesse shook his head.
“That was when Asgard fell beneath war and flame, when all the old gods perished. But no thundering apocalypse consumed the earth as foretold. No, mankind had their new gods by then and barely noticed the passing of the old. And us earthbound spirits found ourselves abandoned and alone in a world that had turned unfriendly to our kind. Over the next several hundred years, men were taught to fear us, to drive us or those who still worshipped us away. Our shrines were burned and desecrated. Without tributes and offerings most gave up, faded, were forgotten, and to be forgotten is death . . . the only true death for my kind.
“My shrines were abandoned as well. By the early 1300s, a new tradition by the name of Christmas had wormed its way across the land and as more and more turned to celebrating this miserable holiday, Yule and Winter Solstice were becoming lost. I could see that soon I, too, would be lost.” Krampus took in a deep breath. “And I almost gave up. But as I walked amongst the winter nights, seeing the splendor of Yuletide perverted by the new religion, my blood began to burn. I was Krampus, the great and terrible Yule Lord, and I vowed that I would no longer suffer such insult, that I would remind them that I was still here, that I would make them believe. And thus began my rebirth. I humbled myself by traveling from house to house. Loki had left to me his sack and I brought it along, offering rewards to those who remembered, who honored me properly. But for those who did not . . . well, for those I was terrible.” Krampus grinned. “I would thrash them with birch rods and for those that would commit evil upon my fold, those I would put in Loki’s sack and beat them until they could not walk.
“And the name Krampus began to mean something again. And if Baldr had not come along, who knows . . . maybe it would be my face on all those cola ads, my balloon floating along on the Yule Day Parade, my Belsnickels ringing bells on the street, demanding tribute, or sitting in department stores and making promises to little boys and girls that will never be kept. Maybe, maybe, but only if I had not taken pity on that soulless creature.”
He glanced at Jesse. Jesse’s chin was back down on his chest. “Jesse?”
Jesse didn’t respond.
Krampus reached over and wiggled one of the nails protruding from Jesse’s leg.
“Ow, fuck!” Jesse cried. “Watch it. Goddamn, what’s wrong with you?”
“You still live.”
“Yeah . . . I still live. Lucky me.”
Krampus nodded. “Good . . . now, where was I? Ah yes, Baldr’s rebirth. It had been prophesied that Baldr would be reborn onto the earth realm after Ragnarok, an earth cleansed of darkness by an all-consuming fire, Baldr reborn a god of light and peace, a just god, to watch over the world of men. But of course there came no cleansing flame and the Baldr I found stumbling in my forests did not even know his own name. Draped in filthy rags, he looked lost, starved. And being that there were so few of us left from the old lineage, I felt a kinship, a responsibility. So I brought him into my domain, dressed him, fed him, plied him with drink. Yet never did I see him smile, not then. But there were times when I would catch him staring at me, his face dark, as though blaming me for all his woes. I should have taken heed to this, but the truth of it was I harbored guilt, guilt for what my mother and grandfather had done to him. I suffered under the delusion that my charity might in some way absolve my lineage of these crimes.
“I offered him brotherhood, gave him a place at my side. Together we took the task of spreading Yuletide. But he seemed ever in a state of brooding, and made only a halfhearted effort at best. One night, as I ravished a house honoring Saint Nicholas, I saw Baldr pocket a small book bearing the saint’s mark upon its cover. I should have taken it from him, thrown it into the fire, but my pity made me weak. It was not too long thereafter that he began to don the red and white, to mimic Saint Nicholas in dress. Still I held my tongue, hoped it was but a passing fancy. Then I found the cross. It sat brazenly upon the mantelpiece in his room, the sight hitting me as a slap to the face—the very symbol of my torment in my house! This was more than I could bear. I stormed into his room and threw the cursed item into the fireplace. I tore open his coffer, intent on finding and destroying this book. I did not find that book, but I did find a treasure trove of artifacts and scrolls filled with the dead saint’s teachings. I tore them apart, threw the shards at his feet, and demanded explanation. Asked him how he could embrace such evil. He showed no emotion, his face like stone as always. He told me then that the old ways were dead. That I was too blind to see that the ancients’ time upon earth had passed. He snatched the smothering cross from out of the fireplace, held it before me as though it were a great talisman. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here is the world we now live in. And unless you learn to serve it you will soon be a relic.’