True North: Yule Lads by TA Moore

Author:TA Moore [Moore, TA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rogue Firebird Press
Published: 2023-12-14T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

He was going to puke,

The sense of impending vomit clawed down through the layers of cold and hooked into Dylan’s consciousness. He didn’t want to wake up, but the fear of aspirating on his own sick was a tried and true one.

He was cold. Bone deep, shivering he could feel in his liver, cold.

And wherever he was, it was dark and smelled of grease.

Dylan tried to sit up but couldn’t. He was folded up and shoved into somewhere cramped. Whatever he tried to move bumped up against a warm, hard surface. Claustrophobia made his chest tighten and panic thrum against his eyes. A scream squeezed his lungs in tight, choking bands. As he struggled, his fingers dug into something slick and slimy under him.

Under?

Yes, he oriented himself through the rocking nausea that dogged him, that was down. So he had to…

Dylan braced his hands and feet against whatever sludge was all around him. He pushed himself in the general direction of ‘up.’ His shoulders jammed painfully on something. Dylan tasted sour bile in the back of his throat, and then he managed to squirm free and crawled out.

Cold and—Dylan sniffed his arms—greasy in the dark.

Dylan sat up, his body racked with violent shivers, and looked around. Ice and dark trees surrounded him. He could see what looked like a road in the distance, the snow illuminated by car headlights.

He swallowed, his mouth sticky, and turned to look at the pot he’d been in.

That made his brain creak with reluctance to go on. It was definitely the same pot from the farm, the sickly, salted smell of it the same, but now it was big enough for a man to crawl out of.

Dylan ran his hand through his matted hair. His fingers brushed something hard tangled in it, and he picked out a chunk of bone. He shuddered—not from the cold this time—and tossed it away into the dark.

“Sure,” he muttered to himself, mostly to hear something other than the wind and creak of trees. “Santa and six-foot-five elves I can accept. Waking up in a giant pot is where I draw the line?”

His breath fogged visibly in the air as he rubbed his forehead and tried to work out…

Dylan hesitated as he tried to decide what to focus on. How he got here, or where to go now.

The ‘how’ he couldn’t even wrap his mind around. His best guess was that Somerset had decided to cut the argument short somehow, but he could not get from that to waking up in a pot.

It had involved a kiss. He remembered that. It had left him feeling sweet and breathless and… cold.

That was more of a distraction than a help in working anything out, though. He tamped down the chill fizz that filled the memory of Somerset’s lips on his.

So ‘where now?’ it was. Dylan poked the pot with his foot. It rolled over and leaked lumpy grease from its innards. Whatever… it was definitely going to be easier on him if he didn’t use the word ‘magic,’ he realized… had gotten him this far, it was spent now.

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