Rudolph! (14 page)

XI

W
hen I stepped into the portal, I felt a cold hand touch my back.
It started as a gentle caress, and as it worked its way up, its touch grew warmer and warmer, until fingers of fire were squeezing the back of my neck. I pushed my way through the portal, gasping as sweat ran down my back, and then I popped through to the other side.

And I stared.

"Hey," someone said behind me, and I blinked. I hadn't moved more than a meter, and Rudolph was awkwardly filling the space between me and the glittering portal. "Could you take a few more steps forward?" he asked.

I blinked and swallowed. "Yeah, sure. Sorry," I said, making room, and when he limped away from the portal, it started to shimmer and twinkle. I raised my pistol in alarm, but nothing else was coming through. The dancing lights lessened, and after a few moments, there was nothing left on the sandstone wall but a wet smear.

"I guess we're done back there," Rudolph noted. He looked past me. "Oh, wow," he said.

We stood on a small shelf that jutted out from immense cliffs. A polished trail wound down from our position, leading to a landscape that was utterly out of place in hell. It was the quintessential hidden paradise. El Dorado. Shangri-La. The Savage Land. The version of Xanadu where the roller-skating muses live. A sparkling river traced a line across verdant fields as if its course had been drawn by an indolent giant. Off to my left, a forest of blazing orange and red leaves resembled a swath of delicate fire that burned all the way to distant foothills below hazy mountains. A quaint little village—its houses arranged in neat rows—was arranged along the shore of a placid lake as blue as the sky. A white clock tower anchored the town.

"What is this place?" Rudolph asked, a shudder running through his frame.

I inhaled deeply, filling myself with all the great aromas of fall: cinnamon, warm berry compote, apple pie, freshly cut hay, the perfume of young ladies. I could smell Mrs. C's peanut brittle too. "I'm not sure," I said. "I think we made it."

"Ah," he said. "Persephone and the pomegranate."

I nodded. "We can't eat anything. That's the trap."

"I'm not worried about you and me," Rudolph said. He nodded toward the distant town square, rapping a hoof on the ground to get my attention. "Vixen, especially. You can't take him to the food court at the mall. All those free samples?" He shook his head.

I climbed up on Rudolph's back, and he started to trot down the path. He picked up speed quickly, which did wonders for my nerves.

We were still in hell, after all.

A white sign at the outskirts identified the town as Maple Valley, and while there weren't any logos saying as much on the board, it looked like the construction of the quaint town had been underwritten by J. Crew, Williams-Sonoma, and Restoration Hardware. Kids, prancing down the street in synchronized delight, were poster children for the fall lines at The Gap and Eddie Bauer. Signs—
Slow, Children at Play
;
Barn Dance This Thursday
;
Bake Sale in the Square!—
were hand-painted and festooned with streamers and lace trim, of course. The bake sale sign didn't mention a date, which I took to mean that the bake sale was always happening. There wasn't a stray leaf in sight. It was as if the fall colors had come, but none of the leaves were in a rush to leap to their deaths.

The whole town was perpetually poised on the edge of the equinox—that half hour between summer and fall, when everything was just
perfect
. The bubbling laughter of the children flowed around us as Rudolph trotted toward the main square, and somewhere in the distance, a radio looped love songs from that time in history when no one was worrying much about megalomaniacs convincing entire countries to take up arms against their neighbors.

The main square was filled with rows of booths, almost like a miniature version of the town itself, and I caught sight of the some of other reindeer as Rudolph and I wandered around. Dasher was off to my left, letting himself be chased by a small boy in blue pants with a water gun. Blitzen was mesmerized by a taffy-pulling machine, and three young ladies wreathed in taffeta looked like they were trying to convince Donner to participate in a dunk tank.

Ring appeared, scampering in circles around Rudolph. "Isn't this great?" he gushed. "You've got to come see it! It's Mrs C's peanut brittle. I found it. I did!" He made another loop and darted off toward a cluster of booths that appeared to be the bake sale's ground zero.

Rudolph let out an agonized whimper, and my stomach answered with an eager growl of its own. If I hadn't been sitting on Rudolph, I would fallen to my knees and crawled towards the sweet-smelling stalls. There were rows of apple pies, ice cream cones stacked taller than the tip of Rudolph's tallest antler, a sizzling vat of oil that was producing deep-fried deliciousness on a stick, bacon on bacon sandwiches, and there at the back of this first row of booths was a Nordic-looking woman ladling sparklingly chill lemonade out of a block of glacial ice.

This was just the rank of booths I could see. Even more splendid food and drink lay beyond. My stomach knew it. It didn't need silly sensory data from my eyes and nose. It knew.

I really wanted to believe it. I wanted there to be a joyous little valley in the middle of hell where the bake sale went on for eternity. But I knew it wasn't true. I knew it couldn't exist. I knew we had made it ourselves. I had asked Ring to imagine Mrs. C's peanut brittle, and everything else had come from that desire.

This was the fourth circle. After lust and despair and sloth came greed. This was the temptation that would undo us.

A little boy ran up to Rudolph and me, a stick of cotton candy in his hand. "Hello, magic horse," he said to Rudolph, holding up his stick. "Would you like to share with me?" The sweet perfume coming off the whirled cone of spun sugar reminded me of the sugar icing spray the NPC used on stockings. The little boy's face was flushed with excitement, and his eyes gleamed with unhinged joy at the sight of such a marvelous
horse
in his town.

Rudolph shook his head politely. The boy kept shoving the stick of cotton candy in his face, and Rudolph backed away a step. "Make him go away, Bernie," he begged, his body trembling. "Make him stop."

I wasn't quite sure what the big deal was. It smelled delicious—summer sunshine spun into wispy sugar strands by magical silk spiders. Were we being rude? Not even a tiny bite? My tongue ached. The little boy looked at me—a Rockwell-perfect image of Midwestern civility and early-century innocence.

I managed to wrench my gaze away from the plume of cotton candy and watched with mounting horror as the man at the taffy booth detached a long strand of freshly pulled taffy. He held it out to Blitzen, who was staring at it like he had been blinded by the sun. His mouth gaped open, and his tongue lolled like he was trying to make room for the entire strand of sticky taffy.

Persephone had only eaten four pomegranate seeds. Four little seeds, and she was condemned to spend a third of the year in hell. What would a bite of taffy get you? Or a mouthful of cotton candy? Or a slice of Mrs. C's heavenly peanut brittle?

I turned back to the little boy with the apple cheeks and the stick of cotton candy. His smile broadened as he saw me straighten on Rudolph's back. I reached under my arm for one of the pistols and drew it out of its holster. When I shot him in the chest, he exploded in a blinding blast of ice crystals.

Someone screamed nearby, and a shudder ran through Rudolph as he shook off the cotton candy glamour. A woman ran toward us, nearly stumbling and falling on an icy patch left behind by the boy. "You killed him," she screamed. "You killed my little Billy."

I shot her too, for good measure.

Everyone started screaming, a cacophony of sound like a flock of angry birds in a threshing machine. The sound swelled and swelled until it became an unending shriek—a hundred fingers clawing at blackboards. Gritting my teeth, I dropped the now-empty pistol and put my hands over my ears.

A pinhole opened in the center of the square, and the entire town started to smear as it was sucked away. The booths vanished, the apple pies and ice cream cones and bacon sandwiches sliding away in a long liquid pull. The white clock tower bent in the middle and then zipped away like it had been sucked through a straw. The tree-lined avenues lost their integrity one line at a time, turning into a stiff backdrop before bleeding into a rushing wash of color.

The sky went black, and the ground became a beaten deck of rusted metal. Statues—melted and twisted as if caressed by someone with lava fingers—rose up around us. Tiny winged creatures with long toenails capered across the shoulders of these statues, and their shrill voices were the dying scream of the now-vanished town. Beyond the monuments, there was nothing but a vast space filled with flying rocks. Somewhere far below this suspended plate, I could imagine a furnace like the belly of a dying star, and hot air rising from that furnace was what kept the plate floating and what spun the rocks. Collisions were rough, shattering events where chips as large as elephants were knocked free and spun away in crazy orbits.

The reindeer were all there, stunned by the rapid transformation. I tried to check each reindeer's mouth. Had any of them taken a sample of what hell had offered? Vixen wasn't chewing anything; Cupid's mouth hung open.
What about . . . ?

In the center of our haphazard circle, a sparkling rain of fire fell. It twisted and slowly assumed the form of a tall man. His eyes were a blazing blue, and his smile was a dazzling display of expensive orthodontistry. He wore a silk smoking jacket with velvet lapels, a red shirt with black buttons, and pair of crisply pressed pants. On his feet were Italian slip-ons. Ferragamo's, if I had to guess. Probably the python moccasins that had been all the rage last Christmas. A cigar burned casually in his left hand.

He did a slow turn, looked at each one of us as he pulled heavily on the cigar, the tip glowing like a malignant Cyclopean eye. When he came back around to Rudolph and me, he pulled the cigar from his ruddy lips and tapped it once. A thick block of ash fell free. It struck the metal plate, and a spark snapped at the contact.

One of the reindeer screamed. I tried to see which one it was, but the sound was cut off nearly as soon as it had begun. There was a flash of light as flesh and blood and organs vaporized in an instant. In the horrible emptiness that followed the scream, we all heard the sound of the loose bones as they rattled against the plate.

It had been Prancer. Silly goofy Prancer who knew all the songs. Who had even warned me that he'd do anything for a piece of peanut brittle . . . 

XII

"W
elcome," Satan said, puffing on his cigar again. "I hope my
entrance wasn't too ostentatious. I attended a seminar once where the speaker really stressed the importance of making a good first impression. It can totally set the tone for the whole relationship." He flashed his perfect smile at me as smoke plumed from his nostrils in even jets.

And that was when it hit me: that crushing weight of true despair. We had come so far, fighting our way through hell on this crusade to rescue Santa's soul. We had pitted our might and our brains against the unholy realms and had nearly made it. But it had all be for nothing.
Hubris
, I thought bitterly. What had we really won? Here, in the center of hell, Satan's power was absolute. With a mere flick of his cigar, he could reduce us all to ash. We had been led here by our own gullibility. While our persistence kept us from being swallowed by the desert in the second circle, it gave us false hope. It was a ghost light that lured us on, leading us into a hell of our own creation. The oubliette of eternal despair, as Blitzen had called it.

The rest of the team looked as depressed as I was, and our expressions made Satan laugh. "Oh, such abject misery. You all look like orphans out of a Dickens novel. So very, very sad." He clucked his tongue lightly as he tilted his head and looked at me. "And for what?" he said.

He flicked the end of his cigar again, and we all flinched, but there was no ash to dislodge. "Nothing," Satan said, a touch of mocking disappointment in his voice. "There is nothing here for you."

Rudolph hadn't moved. He was standing square, perpendicularly lined up with the Devil's face. It was a classic martial arts stance, altered slightly for reindeer physiology. He didn't seem concerned about the hulking demons crowding us. "We came for Santa," he said quietly. "We're taking him home."

Satan laughed. "Santa? What makes you think I have him?"

"He's not in heaven."

"He's not here." Satan spread his hands. "You're welcome to look." And when Rudolph didn't move his head, Satan looked Rudolph in the eye. "You don't believe me," Satan said.

"Why should I?"

Satan made a face. "Please, that is so tired. I lie no more than a fifth-grader with Pokémon cards in his pocket and a copy of
Playboy
stashed under his mattress." He pointed at me. "I don't need to lie, my dear Rudolph. Your friends do that quite well on their own."

"Bernie," Rudolph growled.

I thought frantically, and all I could come up with was the glittering snowfall in Mrs. C's office. "Oh," I said, realizing what it was. Rather,
who
it was. "He never left," I whispered. "The gates of heaven were closed. That's what he said. He couldn't get in. He's still there. He's haunting the North Pole."

"And you're here," Satan said, spreading his hands. "Oh, the irony is making me all tingly. Down th—"

"Then who killed him?" Rudolph interrupted. "Who killed Santa Claus?"

"Bird flu, perhaps?" Satan offered. "Maybe Ebola is making a comeback. I hear that bats are carrying it now." He shuddered, a motion of his upper body that became a quaking movement on his shoulders. "Oh," he sighed. "I'm so awful at keeping secrets."

His well-manicured hand dipped into the pocket of his smoking jacket. "Maybe"—he smirked as he pulled out a thin vial—"maybe it was this." He shook the tube and held it up.

The agitated liquid changed color, changing from a rich hunter green to a cherry red.

"I thought there would be more of it," Satan said, peering at the tube. "But I guess it doesn't last long when it has been drawn off. Some sort of biochemical reaction to the atmosphere down here, I guess"—he shook the vial again—"but you'd have to ask a real scientist. I'm just—"

"A liar," Rudolph said.

Satan rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Look closely," he said, holding the vial out for us to inspect. Tiny bubbles floated in the red solution, and I would have sworn they looked like tiny Christmas ornaments.

"It's Christmas," I breathed. "He's stolen Christmas."

"Not
all
of it," Satan clarified. "Just what was keeping the old man upright."

"His spirit," Rudolph said.

Satan raised his shoulders. "I suppose you could call it that." He shook the vial again, making the bubbles move. "But I'm inclined to be more generous than that. I mean, we could dash off to a lab somewhere and get this analyzed, but I don't think it'll last that long. So let's just call this the very spirit of the season, shall we?"

"You son of a bitch," I spat. "That's why Santa died, and that's why Mrs C is dying too. You've stolen their . . . their . . ." I sputtered to a stop. Their hope. Their spirit. The
Spirit
.

"It's an unfortunate side effect, I'm afraid," Satan said, a thoughtful expression marking his face. "I'm afraid you can't take it without ruining the host." He shrugged. "But, I've never been one to lose much sleep over things like this. Guilt? Nah. Not for me. Too much baggage."

He flipped the vial in the air, catching it easily. "Look on the bright side, boys. Do you know how long it's been since I've made Santa's List? It's going to be a lovely Christmas for me this year."

He smiled and raised his head as a fiery rain started to fall on the statues surrounding us. The statues started to twitch and wiggle, animating in jerky motion like leftover frames from
Fantasia
.

"You've gone and shown real pluck and effort," he said, "but really? You've lost. You're here, and you're going to stay here for the rest of eternity. I'd love to stay and chat more, but I do want to enjoy my present to myself before it evaporates. Maybe I can round up a few Princes of Hell later, and we can play Go Fish or something."

Rudolph shook his head. "We're not done yet," he growled. He was unfazed by the statues coming to life around us.

Satan cocked his head and looked at Rudolph, a bemused expression on his face. "Excuse me?" he said.

"Bernie," Rudolph said. "Open the pack. Get the present."

"The
what
?" Satan and I both said.

"Get it," Rudolph said.

Bewildered, I pulled open the pack and rummaged around inside. The only thing left was the red and blue thermos. "This?" I asked, lifting it out of the pack.

"That's my thermos," Blitzen said in a surprised tone of voice.

"Not anymore," Rudolph said.

"Are you regifting me?" Satan asked, a dangerous note entering his voice. "Are you giving me someone else's gift?"

Rudolph shook his head. "I'm not very good with wrapping paper and tape," he explained. "And it fit nicely inside the thermos."

"
What
fit?" Satan growled.

"A tactical nuclear device," Rudolph said, and I dropped the thermos as if it had burned my hand.

It clattered to the deck, and several of the leering demons flinched as it rolled across the plate. Satan looked down as it pitched up against his python-leather clad foot. "A thermos," he noted. "You expect me to believe that you've got a nuclear device inside this thermos."

"A
tactical
nuclear device," Rudolph repeated. "Small yield, but highly radioactive." He turned his head slightly. "Bernie. In one of the pouches on your belt, there's a detonator. The code is ‘4-4-6.'

My hand strayed unconsciously to my belt, feeling for the zipper on one of the pouches. I moved my fingers and felt inside, touching a rectangular shape. I pulled it out carefully, and turned it over. It looked like a solar calculator, but when I hit the ON button, the display actually lit up.

The Devil snorted, and a tiny line of smoke drifted from his left nostril. "You're actually threatening me with a nuclear device?"

"It probably won't kill you," Rudolph said. "And, in my state, I might even survive. But everyone else is dead. Turned into water vapor and blasted into component atomic particles. That includes your little vial of Christmas Spirit."

Satan's eyes flickered towards the tube in his hand.

"If the children don't get Christmas," Rudolph said, "you don't get Christmas."

I pushed the 4 on the keypad, and that same number showed up on the display. Just like you'd expect with a calculator. Or a calculator that had been modified to send a short burst of radio signals when someone pushed the ENTER button.

My eyes strayed towards the back of Rudolph's head. I had to know if he was bluffing. I knew his tell. The reindeer had told me. He glowed when he bluffed.

My throat closed, and I struggled to breathe.

Rudolph wasn't glowing.

"It's a simple deal," Rudolph said. "You give us the vial and safe passage out, and we don't detonate the device."

"What if I said
yes
, but lied?" Satan puffed on his cigar, affecting an air of utter indifference.

Rudolph laughed, and I flinched. It was the same laugh I had heard in the infirmary at Santa's House. Everything was simple to Rudolph. Black or white. On or Off. Go or Stop. Success or Failure. He didn't believe in anything else. And his laugh was the sound of perfectly distilled madness—the purity of knowing something that no one else could ever imagine.

Satan stared at Rudolph, his gaze equally unyielding. "Go ahead," he said. "Set it off. I don't think you have what it takes to destroy everything you've ever loved."

"Bernie." Rudolph's voice was a clear chime. My finger trembled, but I managed to press the 4 again.

Some of the demons in the assembled rank shifted nervously, but I noticed the reindeer were all standing tall.

"You don't think that nuclear death isn't something visited upon those trapped here?" Satan waved an arm towards the crashing rocks. "You should visit the ninth circle. Nuclear winter would be a summer's day there. Your threats are empty, reindeer."

"Are they?" Rudolph asked.

Satan licked his lips, his tongue black and forked. "You're bluffing. There's nothing in that thermos that you couldn't buy in a can at the supermarket."

Blitzen moved beside Rudolph. "He doesn't know how to bluff," he said. "I should know. We play poker together. Every Friday night." I could feel a slight tremor from Blitzen.

Cupid marched up to Rudolph's other side. "After saving Christmas, Santa let me see," he sang "Satan begging for pity." He leaned toward Rudolph and nudged my hanging leg. "Do it, Bernie. Don't let them say we didn't try."

I pushed the third button. The display read ‘446.' My hand drifted towards the ENTER key.

Satan's eyebrows came together, and his face darkened. "This is my domain," he hissed, growing a few centimeters as he spoke. "How dare you threaten me in my own realm." He held the tube tightly in his hand, and his knuckles went white. "Who do you think you are?" he demanded, stepping forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with Rudolph. "James Bond? Robin Hood and his band of Merry fucking Men?"

No one said a word for a long moment, an expanding second that seemed to stretch to the end of Time and back. Rudolph and Satan stared at one another. And, at the end of that second, Satan blinked.

"I'm Rudolph," the reindeer said. "And we're Santa's team."

And then he head-butted Satan.