Yuletide Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) (9 page)

*   *   *

My friend was sitting on his throne at the end of his final Christmas shift for the year.  The day was winding down and the line of children waiting to sit on his lap was gone, because everyone understood you had to give Santa at least a little time to get in his sleigh and start delivering toys or nobody was going to have a proper holiday.

The store itself was still very busy, because last minute shopping has been a thing as long as there have been stores that stayed open through Christmas Eve.  But the corner on the top floor where Santa sat was dim and empty, and he looked a little sad sitting up there alone.

He perked up when he saw me, though.  It was nice how happy it made him, but I think I would have preferred it if he was angry.

“Stanley!  My goodness, where have you been?”  He climbed off his chair gave me a hug.  “I couldn’t imagine what had happened!”

“Sorry,” I said.  “I have a lot to explain.”

“You do!  I’m sure it’s quite a story!”

“It is, Santa.”  I turned him around and pointed him back to his chair.  “It’s a heck of a story, but I only know part of it.  You’re going to have to fill me in on the rest.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.  But you promised
me
a good story, so before I tell you mine I want you to tell me yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“You never told me about your son.”

I saw that same dark cloud pass over his face as before, memorable for the fact that one doesn’t see that sort of expression on someone like him.

“But that’s not a
happy
story.  Christmas should only be about happy stories.  March!  March is a good time for a sad story.  I’ll tell you then.”

“I’d like to hear it now, if that’s okay.  Let me decide if it’s happy or not.”

He sighed.  “All right.  What do you know about us?”

“About imps?  Not as much as I could, and I can never tell when one of you is prevaricating, so it’s hard to ask.”

“Excellent choice of words, yes!  Prevarication is in our nature, isn’t it?  Well, here is something true about my kind.  As it happens, we are not exceptionally good at reproduction, which is a blessing, really, given our lifespans.  I daresay we’d overrun the planet otherwise.  But no, there is a very
specific
time in our lives in which we—the men, I mean—are able to… I’m sorry, I am
very
uncomfortable talking about this particular thing in this particular chair.”

“It’s all right, I get the basics.  So it was your time, and you met a girl.”

“I met a girl!  Precisely!  She was a beautiful young thing, and she loved me, and I loved her, and it was all nearly perfect, except for one thing.  She was human and I am not.  In most regards, that’s not an issue.  We could still…”

“You could still get a visit from the stork.”

“Yes! But then, tragedy struck!”

He was poised to launch into the rest of the story, but stopped himself and remained quiet for much longer than was customary for him.  He looked like a man wrestling with a dilemma.

“What kind of tragedy,” I asked, to jump-start the tale.

He shook his head.  “I’m sorry, Stanley, there are at least a dozen different versions of this story I could tell you.  All are quite stirring, and three or four are
guaranteed
to make you weep openly.  But I am old and tired, and I don’t have the energy any more.  I’ve been looking for the boy since the day at the track, did you know?  I can’t find him anywhere.  He’s disappeared, much as I thought
you
had.  Now here you are asking me the
strangest
question.  But… here’s the truth, my friend, without any gift-wrapping.  Her name was Laura, and she was lovely, and she found out what I was and couldn’t cope with it, and so she left me.  My chance to have a son and pass on my legacy left with her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for your sympathy.” 

“Was it the age thing?”

“You could say that, yes.  She had issues both with my current age at the time and with the notion that she would grow old at an advanced rate by comparison.  Of all the people in the world I imagine you are the only one with a full understanding of that sort of problem.”

“You’re probably right.  That happened here, didn’t it?  In New York?”

“I never said so, but yes.  Why do you ask?”

“Because I think this Laura of yours actually did have a son.  She dropped him off in an orphanage not far from here, in 1934.”

“How could you
possibly
know that?”

While we were talking, Davey—who had been hiding behind a display and listening—had wandered down the velvet rope path to the front of the line. 

I gave the kid some credit.  With only my vague promise of answers and a guarantee he wasn’t in any kind of trouble, he could have easily taken this opportunity to sneak off.  Instead, he stuck around and listened.  He passed himself off as a street tough, but he wanted answers more badly than he let on. 

Standing at the “Wait Here” sign at the end of the line, he looked a lot more like a scared ten year old than a stunted young adult.  And the truth is, he was somewhere in-between. Davey was perfectly normal; he just wasn’t a human.

“Is it true?” Davey asked.  “Your story, about Laura.  Is it true?”

Santa looked at Davey, then at me, then back at Davey. 

“It can’t be!” he said, to me.

“I’m pretty sure it can.”

To Davey, he said, “Why, I… yes!  Yes it’s true.  All of it!  The year is right, and… oh my goodness…”

“So my dad is Santa Claus?”  Davey looked at me when he said this.

“It sounds a little crazy when you put it that way.”

“Yeah, a little,” he said with a shrug.

Santa was crying, meanwhile.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes, yes… I’m just happy… Davey, come here.  Give Santa a hug.”

“Yeah?  I dunno.”

“Oh for goodness sake, kid,” I said.

“All right, all right.  Geez.”

He walked over and let Santa pick him up and give him a proper hug, and while he would never admit it, the boy looked like he needed that hug just as much as his father did.

“Merry Christmas, Santa,” I said.  “Looks like we found your happy ending.”

*   *   *

Santa had a penthouse.  This was something he’d told me already, but I didn’t quite believe it because as much as it made perfect sense somehow for him to live at a location that offered a downward view of the city, it was difficult to take anything he said at face value.

But a penthouse it was, and the view was really lovely, especially once snow covered the top of the city. 

He also had expensive enough liquor to make one wonder why he spent so much time in dive bars.  But imps need places with people to tell stories to, so it wasn’t all that difficult to fathom.

I was on his balcony, looking down on the city and drinking some of his expensive brandy, and feeling unreasonably good.  I couldn’t stop smiling for some reason, and wondered if this was how everyone else experienced Christmas.

“I told you snow, makes all the difference,” Santa said, on joining me.  He had the entire bottle in his hand and wasn’t bothering with a glass.

“It does indeed, especially from this angle.  How’s the kid?”

To say Davey was uncertain about how to cope with all of the information he’d had thrown at him was an understatement.  He had always known he was different, but not
that
different.  Not
something other than a human being
different.

“He’s confused.  I half expect he won’t be here when I wake up in the morning, but I’m not concerned.  If he sneaks off, I’ll just have to go out and find him.”

“The apartment is a good selling point.”

“I know, did you see his eyes light up when he saw it?  That was precious.”

“He’s probably just pricing your art.”

He laughed.  “Puberty comes late for imps.  Having an extended childhood makes story collecting much easier, I’ve found.  He’ll blossom soon, and grow into an adult quite quickly.  This time next year, I expect.  I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him for what he was.  Shameful.”

“Well, he needed a bath.”

“Cheers, to the best Christmas present Santa’s ever gotten.”

I touched my glass to his bottle and we drank.

“And then there’s you, my friend,” he said, after a long swig.

“What about me?  You haven’t decided I’m an imp too, have you?  I’m not.”

“No, no.  I mean you still owe
me
a story!  I will be eternally grateful for what you’ve done this evening, but don’t think you’re getting out of an explanation.”

“Why I left the track, you mean?”

“I didn’t know what to think!  You had me
very
worried!  Why did you do it?”

“I chickened out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but someone had to break the news that the kid was stringing you along the whole time, but I didn’t want to be that person.  Not right before your favorite day of the year.”

He remained utterly puzzled.  “Stringing me along in what way?”

“You know: the story about Beautiful Pete and the jockeys laying down.  He made that all up to get you to place the bet and change the odds.  He had a side bet that the odds would move.  You must have realized some of this by now.”

“Did he
really
?  How tremendous. You know, I should have seen that much sooner too, that gift for storytelling.  Assuming he’s here in the morning I must ask him how he came up with such a remarkable tale.  Do you think he made it up on the spot?”

I was confused.  “So you still believed the story?  But what did you think when the horse lost?  By then you had to have known something was wrong, didn’t you?”

“Ah you see, this is where we’re getting tripped up.  I couldn’t understand where you’d run off to or why little Davey failed to appear afterwards, but if the horse had
lost
, it would have made much more sense.  I had no reason to think such things, though, because
Bacchus Doubtful
won that race.”

“You’re kidding.”

“On my honor as Santa Claus, I swear it’s true.   You can look it up if you don’t believe me.”

I didn’t really know what else to say then, so I just started laughing. 

“Another toast,” he said, also laughing.  “Hold up your glass, Stanley.”

“All right.  What are we toasting?”

“We are toasting the first Christmas miracle an immortal man has ever seen!  May there be many more happy Christmases and many more miracles in your future.”

I held up my glass.  “I can certainly drink to that!”

Other works by Gene Doucette

Immortal

“I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history, but I don’t know by how much. I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally just say it to pick up girls.”
--Adam the Immortal
Surviving sixty thousand years takes cunning and more than a little luck. But in the twenty-first century, Adam confronts new dangers—someone has found out what he is, a demon is after him, and he has run out of places to hide. Worst of all, he has had entirely too much to drink.
Immortal is a first person confessional penned by a man who is immortal, but not invincible. In an artful blending of sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, and humor, IMMORTAL introduces us to a world with vampires, demons and other “magical” creatures, yet a world without actual magic.
At the center of the book is Adam.
“I have been in quite a few tight situations in my long life. One of the first things I learned was if there is going to be a mob panic, don’t be standing between the mob and wherever it is they all want to go. The second thing I learned was, don’t try to run through fire.”
--Adam the Immortal
Adam is a sixty thousand year old man. (Approximately.) He doesn’t age or get sick, but is otherwise entirely capable of being killed. His survival has hinged on an innate ability to adapt, his wits, and a fairly large dollop of luck. He makes for an excellent guide through history . . . when he’s sober.
Immortal is a contemporary fantasy for non-fantasy readers and fantasy enthusiasts alike.

Buy
Immortal

*   *   *

Hellenic Immortal

“Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record. Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important. But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.”
--Adam the Immortal
An oracle has predicted the sojourner’s end, which is a problem for Adam insofar as he has never encountered an oracular prediction that didn’t come true . . . and he is the sojourner. To survive, he’s going to have to figure out what a beautiful ex-government analyst, an eco-terrorist, a rogue FBI agent, and the world’s oldest religious cult all want with him, and fast.
And all he wanted when he came to Vegas was to forget about a girl. And maybe have a drink or two.
“I am probably not the best source when it comes to who invented what. For a long time I thought I invented the wheel.”
--Adam the Immortal
The second book in the Immortal series, Hellenic Immortal follows the continuing adventures of Adam, a sixty-thousand-year-old man with a wry sense of humor, a flair for storytelling, and a knack for staying alive. Hellenic Immortal is a clever blend of history, mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, mystery and romance. A little something, in other words, for every reader.

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Hellenic Immortal

*   *   *

Immortal at the Edge of the World

“What I was currently doing with my time and money . . . didn’t really deserve anyone else’s attention. If I was feeling romantic about it, I’d call it a quest, but all I was really doing was trying to answer a question I’d been ignoring for a thousand years.”
In his very long life, Adam had encountered only one person who appeared to share his longevity: the mysterious red-haired woman. She appeared throughout history, usually from a distance, nearly always vanishing before he could speak to her.
In his last encounter, she actually did vanish—into thin air, right in front of him. The question was how did she do it? To answer, Adam will have to complete a quest he gave up on a thousand years earlier, for an object that may no longer exist.
If he can find it, he might be able to do what the red-haired woman did, and if he can do that, maybe he can find her again and ask her who she is . . . and why she seems to hate him.
“You are being watched. Move your loved ones to safety . . . trust nobody.”
But Adam isn’t the only one who wants the red-haired woman. There are other forces at work, and after a warning from one of the few men he trusts, Adam realizes how much danger everyone is in. To save his friends and finish his quest he may be forced to bankrupt himself, call in every favor he can, and ultimately trade the one thing he’d never been able to give up before: his life.
From the author of Immortal and Hellenic Immortal comes Immortal at the Edge of the World, the breathtaking conclusion to the best-selling trilogy. Will Adam survive?
 

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Immortal at the Edge of the World

*   *   *

Fixer

What would you do if you could see into the future?
As a child, he dreamed of being a superhero. Most people never get to realize their childhood dreams, but Corrigan Bain has come close. He is a fixer. His job is to prevent accidents—to see the future and “fix” things before people get hurt. But the ability to see into the future, however limited, isn’t always so simple. Sometimes not everyone can be saved.
“Don’t let them know you can see them.”
Graduate students from a local university are dying, and former lover and FBI agent Maggie Trent is the only person who believes their deaths aren’t as accidental as they appear. But the truth can only be found in something from Corrigan Bain’s past, and he’s not interested in sharing that past, not even with Maggie.
To stop the deaths, Corrigan will have to face up to some old horrors, confront the possibility that he may be going mad, and find a way to stop a killer no one can see.
Corrigan Bain is going insane
. . . or is he?
Because there’s something in the future that doesn’t want to be seen. It isn’t human. It’s got a taste for mayhem. And it is very, very angry.

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Fixer

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Surviving Hector (a short story)

“You can call me Hector. Nobody else does, and I only thought of it three seconds ago, so you will not find anything about me by knowing this. It’s better than
you with the gun,
however
.”
Before leaving work for the weekend, Anita’s boss gave her a file for safekeeping. Now the killer sitting in her bedroom wants the file, and is willing to kill Anita and her wounded, unconscious husband if he doesn’t get it. But if she hands it over, he might kill them anyway.
Alone, unarmed and dressed for bed, can Anita save her husband and herself? Can she survive Hector?

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Surviving Hector