“Should have thought of that before, sonny. Stealing from defenseless little sick kids puts you on Santa’s ultra-naughty list.”

“I’m sorry.” It came out a faint whine. Totally wimpy.

“Well, good. I’m glad to hear it. And I’ll take that into consideration next Christmas. But you complicated things by trying to kill Santa. That’s very naughty. Santa doesn’t like to be shot. It makes him cranky. Very cranky.”

“Oh, no…”

Something rough and long slithered past The Nail’s cheek, and true panic set in. Rope! Oh, fuck no. Santa was going to string him up!

But then he felt the rope snake under his arms instead of around his neck. That was a relief. Of sorts. It still hurt like all hell when the rope tightened around his shattered ribs. He was lifted and seated on the truck’s rickety bumper, then tied there.

“Wha—?”

“Quiet, sonny,” Santa said in a low voice that had lost all its heartiness. “Don’t say another word.”

The Nail looked up. Everything—Santa, the alley, the whole fucking world—was mostly a blur… except for Santa’s eyes. He’d always thought Santa had blue eyes, but these were brown, and The Nail shriveled up inside when he saw the rage bubbling behind them.

Santa wasn’t just pissed. Santa was bugfuck nuts.

The Nail closed his eyes while Santa taped something to his head. By the time it squeezed through to his battered brain that he shouldn’t let Santa—even this homicidal psycho Santa—tie him to the front of a truck, it was too late. He tried to wriggle free but the rope that lashed him to the grille crisscrossed his body around the shoulders and between the legs. His legs and his arms were free, but all the knots were somewhere behind him.

With a cold sick certainty, The Nail realized he wasn’t going nowhere. Not under his own steam, anyway.

He stiffened as he heard the old engine rumble and shudder to life against his back. He began to blubber as the truck lurched into motion.

Santa was going to run him into the wall!

But no. The truck bounced out of the alley onto the street. After that it was a nightmare ride through the Lower East Side with people staring, pointing, some even laughing, then crosstown on Fourteenth with the truck swerving from lane to lane, running lights, screeching to a halt, inches—inches!—from rear bumpers and fenders, then roaring into motion again.

All that was bad enough, man, but when the westbound lanes weren’t moving fast enough, the truck swerved into the oncoming traffic and played chicken with a banged-up yellow cab. The Nail knew fuck sure ol’ Santa wasn’t going to back down, and for the few screaming, terror-filled heartbeats that it looked like the cab wasn’t going to either, The Nail lost it. Literally. Warm liquid spilled down his left leg.

But the cab lunged out of the way at the last second and the truck got back on the right side of the street and began accelerating.