Krampus listened for any sounds of life — or unlife, or death — in the mansion. He couldn’t hear jackshit, except the sound of his own breathing…and the skittering of mice through the walls and across the floors of the mansion.

Krampus had walked through the halls of his cousin Lucy’s house for hours. The hallways seemed to all be the same, filled with portraits of famous demons, from Abaddon to Zagan. The alphabet of demons repeated over and over like a zoetrope, no matter what turns he took, no matter what upside-down-stairs he walked, no matter what walls he slid upon.

Finally, Krampus saw something familiar.

But, it was just some of the Christmas ribbon he’d tied onto his Christmas ribbon ball over the years. He was still holding onto the string, letting more and more of it out of his pocket and off of the ribbon ball as he walked through the maze of a mansion.

“Are you frikkin’ serious?” muttered Krampus, breaking the silence for the first time since he’d entered the mansion. “All I did was get tied up in a knot!”

“Well — not quite,” said a familiar booming female voice. “But…I can help you with that.”

Krampus felt his ribbon go slack. He pulled. It had snapped somewhere…or, it’d been cut.

“Lucy?” called Krampus. “Where are you?”

“Why, don’t you see, dear cousin?” asked Lucy. “I’m everywhere.”

“Don’t play these games of cat-and-mouse!” ordered Krampus.

“Don’t you mean…a game of goat-and-mouse?” asked Lucy. “Cats aren’t the only ones who love their balls of strings…”

Suddenly, the ribbon got tight — tight around Krampus’ body! The ribbon started wrapping Krampus up like a spider wrapping up a fly in a gossamer web, except, this ribbon wasn’t gossamer. It was surprisingly strong. It had to be, to ensure that nosy Naughty children didn’t spoil their Christmas surprises!

Krampus struggled against the ribbon. Every time he moved, the ribbon seemed to get tighter! He tried flexing his horns, letting them out of his head, trying to cut the ribbon with them, but his horns weren’t sharp enough to cut the ribbon. He realized that the ribbon wasn’t moving on its own.

It was being tied around him by thousands of mice.

“Lucy!” roared Krampus.

“I told you, cousin — I’m right here, in this little game of goat-and-mouse,” said Lucy’s voice, and Krampus realized that it was coming from the mice that were all around him!

The Nutcracker had a Rat King.

Apparently, in Hell, things were topsy-turvy, so The Nutcracker: Hell Edition had a Rat Queen who put the ‘Fur’ in ‘Lucy Fur.’

Krampus struggled against the bonds of the ribbon again, and the ribbon tightened. A strand ribbon went over his face. He realized that soon, he’d be entirely cocooned in ribbon, a pretty package for one of Hell’s many ravenous spiders. He’d make a fine Christmas pudding for one of those beasts!

Krampus shifted into one of his more natural forms — that of a goat.

The goat wasn’t large, but that was because Krampus preferred the form of a medium sized goat. The horns of the goat were sharp – razor sharp – and its hair was like Krampus’, black and curly. The goat had emerald green eyes that glowed from within with an eldritch fire. Its hooves were as black as its fur. It blended into the shadows, but that didn’t matter, because the colored ribbons, loosely wrapped around the goat, betrayed its form to its opponents.

The ribbon had been wrapped around Krampus’ human form, rather than his goat form, so Krampus was able to slip right out of the ribbon, with the help of his razor-sharp goat horns.

Krampus let out a bleat and reared up on his hind legs. He came down with his hard, cloven hooves, like a bat out of Hell, except he was a goat in Hell, and he had some nuts to crack.

Krampus brought down his hooves over and over, on the tails of the mice, and the mice he stomped on didn’t get smooshed. Their tails slipped out from under him. The mice were ethereal and solid at the same time. While Krampus couldn’t catch them, they could brush up against Krampus, nip at his legs, and trip him up.

Of course they could — after all, it was Hell, where nothing made sense, and anything was possible, especially when it came to a strong demon like Krampus’ cousin, Lucy Fur — a.k.a. Lucifer.

Krampus still had no idea why his cousin was doing all this. She had many forms. The form of a thousand mice seemed a bit plagiarized from Legion, but, perhaps Lucy was one of Legion’s ‘many.’

Just as Lucy was more than a demon, so too was Krampus more than a shifter.

He was also a demon.

That meant he broke the law — the laws of physics, the laws of The North Pole, and of course, magical laws…like the laws of shifting.

He wasn’t just a weregoat.

When the occasion called…he could be a bear-goat.

Krampus let out a mighty bleat that turned to a roar as his body grew bigger, tufts of black fur growing out of his body into the skin of a bear, as his hooves turned to the paws of a bear, as his head turned into that of a bear — except for, of course, the horns on his head.

Krampus’ bear was like no bear that had ever existed and like no bear that would ever exist. It had the size and proportions of a grizzly, with fur blacker than that of a black bear, with eyes greener than emeralds and horns like knives. It had gnashing teeth, complete with incisors straight out of ‘Vampire Santa’s Zombie Revenge.’

This bear wasn’t like the ones from Clan Marron. He’d learned from them – both their strengths and their weaknesses. Krampus had broken the laws of shifting, but he broke many laws. After all, he was a demon. That kinda gave him a license to engage in mad science – shifter edition.

The horns on Krampus’ head were useful for more than just making fun of the reindeer and using as a way to hold up mistletoe balls.

The horns were badass razor-sharp slicing machines.

Krampus sliced his horns back and forth over the ground, along with his razor-sharp claws on his paws.

“Lucy!” roared Krampus, still able to talk in his shifter form — another example of Krampus breaking shifter law. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“Find me,” challenged Lucy.

Krampus had figured out the mice were an illusion — a convincing one, but still, an illusion. That meant somebody had to be controlling the illusion, and, knowing his cousin, that meant she was probably one of the mice. One of the mice was his cousin. The others must’ve been fake. The ones his paws slipped through were not his cousin, so he just had to catch one mouse — the only mouse he could catch — and he’d have the Mouse Queen in his paws.

Krampus sliced at all the mice with his horns and paws, not waiting to see if he caught any, relying on feel, rather than sight. He used his eyes to find his next targets, moving quickly from mouse to mouse, but he didn’t look to see if they were illusory mice or real. He just slapped at all the mice until finally, he felt fur beneath his paw.

Krampus grabbed the mouse in his paw.

“Where’s my mate?” Krampus roared in the face of the mouse.

“In Hell, where you should be!” challenged the mouse.

The mouse wriggled free and hit the floor. It didn’t run away. The illusory mice ran up to it, and they all arranged themselves into a quivering mass, of writhing fur and knotted tails. At first, Krampus could only see that the mice seemed to be having an orgy…but then, he realized that The Mouse Queen had just become a ‘rat king.’

Krampus knew of rat kings — the masses of rats, or other rodents, that could become entangled together, stuck together by some sticky substance. Those, while creepy, weren’t a threat, because they were just rodents.

This rat king was the consciousness of a demon, divided among thousands of mice, and the thousands more rushing to it. The giant mouse-shaped rat king reared up on its hind legs, as Krampus had done before, and roared at Krampus. Krampus could smell stinky cheese and felt a hellfire heat on the roar, which felt more like a burp.

The burp proved to be Lucy’s undoing, as it gave Krampus a particularly Naughty idea.

Krampus didn’t have the power to turn into a million goats, or a billion bears — or a billionaire bear.

But he did have power like Lucy’s, a force that the two of them had delighted in during their youth, just as they’d found Lucy’s burps hilarious.

Krampus resorted to using the last weapon in his arsenal — his arse.

That meant his butt.

All goats could headbutt.

It took a bear-goat to butt-butt, to rear its butt right up against the face of an opponent…and let out a fart that smelled like blasphemy and brimstone.

The rat reeled, but Krampus kept going, tooting like a brass section in a Christmas Day parade. He had to — it was Avery’s life at stake. He farted like he’d never farted before, to the point he was gagging on his own vile stench, but he kept on going.

“Okay, okay — I give up!” admitted the ‘rat king.’ The rat king disappeared, leaving behind a single mouse, a mouse that transformed back into a human-like form, with deep black curly hair and emerald green eyes much like Krampus’.

There was no mistaking the shifter for anyone but Lucy.

“Lucy? What the fuck is this?” asked Krampus, shifting into his more human form. “I didn’t want to believe that you, of all people, would kidnap my mate. Where is she?”

“She’s fine,” said Lucy, snapping her fingers as she cracked her neck. “Damn it, Krampus — I guess you do still have it in you. Here I was, thinking your time on Earth had made you soft. All it did was make you stinkier!”

Suddenly, the room changed. The illusion was broken as his cousin Lucy, who was in her Christmas finery, shook off the pain of the fight. The room was familiar — a living room he’d been in before, with a familiar chair, with a familiar woman sitting in that chair, in a shade of red that could only be described as devilish.

“Avery!” shouted Krampus, running up to the woman sitting in the plush green velvet chair. “Are you okay?”