A/N – Here we go! Another chapter for you viewing pleasure. Thanks again for being such awesome readers, team.
X
Chapter 11
Hiccup woke up to a knock on his door. At first the foreign sound stirred a panic, but the reality of the past few days settled in quick. He sat up in his new bed, wider than his other back on the Edge, or Berk. The crystals in the ceiling dimmed at night and glowered brighter during the day, or what he thought was night and day. The world of a vampire came the other way around. Right now it would be dusk. The rest of the world would be falling asleep.
"Good morning," Astrid said as she walked inside. She wore pants this time. She carried two cups, one in each hand. She walked it over to him and sat on the edge of his bed, then handed one to him.
Blood. Still warm.
"Thank you," he said. He held the blood in both hands, preparing himself to drink it, and closed his eyes as he tipped the cup to his lips. Like before, he drank every drop, and licked the corners of his mouth.
Astrid drank slower. Hiccup set his empty cup on the bedside table before she had finished half of hers.
"When can I return to the Edge?" Hiccup asked.
"Not yet," Astrid said. She took a drink. "You're still too young to be around humans."
"Why not? They won't attack us."
Astrid pulled the cup from her lips mid-drink, leaving a splash of blood against her lip. "That's not the point. You know that feeling you have right now where you can feel the blood rushing through your own veins? Can you feel it in mine?"
Astrid held out her arm. He eyed the veins in her wrist. He could. He felt her pulse, banging like a gong.
"Human hearts beat much faster. You won't be able to control yourself. It's all you will be able to hear, to think about," Astrid said. The blood glistened on her lip. "You don't want to put them through that."
Hiccup leaned forward and grabbed Astrid by the back of her head. She began to protest; he licked the blood off of her lip. She gasped, a soft, blood-scented sound that pulled on his yearning. He closed his mouth over hers, plunged his tongue into her mouth, searching for the blood that she'd drank. Her mouth tasted of it, she smelled of it, and he needed it.
He met Astrid's tongue, a warm snake against his. She pressed her tongue into his, pushing it back into his mouth, but didn't end the fight there. They fought back and forth, between his lips and hers, grasping at each other, pausing only for breath. Her fingers ran along his jaw, pulling him closer, holding onto his chin. His hands ran along her back, underneath her tunic, and along the smooth, cool skin of her back.
He slid his hand around to her front, and fastened his fingers around her breast.
"Hiccup," Astrid gasped, breaking apart from him. Her hand raced to his and he let go, removing his hands from underneath her shirt.
"I-I'm sorry," Hiccup said, starting at his own hands, which at that moment felt unlike his own. He'd never been so forward. "I-I don't know what came over me. That's not…like me."
"That's what I mean," Astrid said, her voice smaller than it had been before. "You're not in complete control of yourself. The thirst, it does strange things."
"What did you go through?" Hiccup asked, eager to change the subject. He closed his hand. He could still feel the soft flesh of her breast; he'd touched it. His first kiss and he'd gone straight to second base.
Astrid reached for the half-drank cup she'd set on the bedside table. She took a long drink, finishing it off, and returned it to the table. "You're lucky you have people to help you. I didn't."
"What happened?"
She looked at him. "I guess it won't hurt to tell you now. You're family."
He shrugged.
"I ran away after…I was bitten. I didn't know what was happening. I spent the first night in a barn, screaming until I lost my voice. I couldn't control myself. I didn't know how to or why. I was terrified." She spoke softly, eyes on the ground by her feet. "It was a week later that Eret found me. He'd been looking for me."
"Why?"
Astrid blinked, "Oh, he just…"
"Are you alright?"
Astrid inhaled and looked down at her hands. "He was the one that turned me."
Hiccup nodded. "Better or worse than mine?"
Astrid picked at one of her nails. "It depends on how you look at it."
"That tone says 'worse.'"
"I was betrothed," she said, looking up at him. "My future husband and I had never met but I'd been sold as a bride before I could speak."
"That's awful," Hiccup said. It wasn't unheard of. Some tribes still participated, including Berk, occasionally. "Wait, was it Eret?"
"No," Astrid said with a quick laugh. "It might have made things easier. I met him only once, a week before the wedding. I told you before, I was thirteen when I turned. I was also thirteen when I was supposed to marry."
"That's young," Hiccup said.
She shrugged. "That's the way it was. At the time, my to-be husband was eighteen, only five years older. He was working for his father, a seaman, and he was manning his own crew. Eret was on that crew. He hadn't been a vampire very long, a few years. I cut myself and he lost control. Someone saw him bite me, and that was it for him. I remember people running through town chasing him, but not much else. By then I knew what he was and what he had done to me. I ran."
Hiccup reached for her arm. She jumped at his touch, but didn't push him away. She closed her hand over his.
She said, "I know what it's like to have everything you know ripped away, all the people I knew, the people I loved, my parents, friends, they're not dead but they might as well be. I'm dead to them."
"Have you gone back? Maybe they've missed you," he said.
Astrid bit her lip. "I have."
"Again, that tone does not indicate good things," he said. He gripped her arm.
"They knew what I'd become, called me a monster, among other things," Astrid said, eyes on the floor. "My own mother told me to leave. I'd disgraced the family, she said, and she would rather me have died. My father refused to talk to me."
"That's horrible," Hiccup said, inching closer to her. "My dad won't be happy about this whole thing, but I can't see him disowning me over it."
"I didn't think mine would either," she said, voice thin. "I knew that they would accept me as I was, regardless, because I was their daughter. I thought they would love be anyway."
Her voice had gone thinner with each word. She sucked in a sob and blinked.
"I-I sorry, I shouldn't bother you with this," she said, starting to get up.
Hiccup reacted faster than he could have before, and pulled her back onto the bed and into an embrace. Startled, she hugged him back.
"I'm sorry," he said to her shoulder.
"It's fine, Hiccup, there's nothing we can do about it now," she said. She leaned back. "But that's why we live here. When the world rejects us we can call each other family."
He held onto her arm. "Family."
She nodded. "I won't stop you from going home. I'll go with you. No matter what happens, you're still family to us. Remember that, Hiccup."
"I will," he said with a nod. "Although, I'm not sure how my dad would feel about me bringing my vampire sister home with me."
"Don't call me your sister," she said with a scrunched up face.
"You said we're family."
"Yes, but you kissed me. Thinking of you as a brother gives me the creeps."
"Right," he said, feeling that same feeling. "Just family. Kissing cousins."
Astrid laughed, a full-bodied laugh that filled him with warmth. He wanted to hear more of it, and somehow knew that he would.
Astrid stood up and held out her hand to him. "How about a tour of the castle?"
"That sounds great, Milady," he said, taking her hand.
X
The vampires' castle was larger than he originally imagined. Vast corridors branched out in numerous directions. Astrid had not been joking when she referred to it as a maze. Hiccup had never seen anything like the architecture. The curved edges and high ceilings felt as strange as anything else had recently, like another world, like he should not be able to speak the language of the people that inhabited the castle.
They had a room for everything they needed. The Blood Dragon in the basement kept them fed and they had no need for a kitchen of any sort, but they did require a place to store the blood and keep it fresh. The room they designated for that had several floors. They called it simply the Blood Room. Pools of blood were kept inside of a thick, gel-like substance. Several dragon-kept fireplaces kept the temperature in the room up and the blood liquid. The room had a bitter sweet odor, not unlike the blood it held. The downside was the heat; the room felt like an oven.
Hiccup stared into one of the untouched pools of blood. Astrid's touch startled him. She pushed a cup of blood, still warm, into his hand.
"It eases the craving," she said, ushering him toward the door.
They had a library full of old books. Hiccup ran his hand down a row of them. some of them were very old.
"This is amazing," he said. "Fishlegs would love this."
"Hiccup," she said, her face serious. "You can't tell them about this place."
"What? Why not?" He turned to her. "He won't do any harm."
"It's not that I think he would," she said. "But it's in the code. Our laws. We cannot tell a human about this place. One pair of loose lips would bring a horde of vampire hunters to our front door. No, Hiccup, this is our sanctuary. Promise me that you won't tell them a thing about it."
He stood for a moment inside of her pleading gaze. "That's why you wouldn't tell me where it was."
She nodded. "Because someone might say something in casual conversation, without intent, and the wrong person overhears or gets word of it. What if you told Fishlegs and then he let it slip to a trader and then hunters hear about it and go straight to the Edge to get the information out of him? They'd torture him for it."
"Okay," Hiccup said. "I get it. I won't tell anyone about this place, I promise."
"It's your sanctuary, too, Hiccup."
"I know," he said, nodding.
She took him by the hand and led him through the map room, a room which he nearly drooled at. Maps of islands, detailed to the trees, hung on walls and stashed in barrels.
"Is this the new blood?" asked a hoarse male voice.
Hiccup jumped, he hadn't seen anyone in the room. An older man, perhaps sixty, stood at a large wooden table. Several smaller maps lay around; some were pinned on standing boards. He held a quill in his hand. A bottle of ink sat beside him.
"Yes," Astrid said. She motioned between Hiccup and the older man. "This is Hiccup. Hiccup, this is Larkin."
"Did you make all of these?" Hiccup asked, pointing to the maps of places he'd never been. Some of them looked familiar and it took him a moment to realize from where: the Dragon Eye.
"Most of them," Larkin said with a nod of his head. "Some of the older ones, no."
"Wow," Hiccup said. "You must travel a lot."
"I have," Larkin said. He straightened up to admire the maps with a dreamy pride. "I wanted to see the world before I died. I'm six hundred years in and there is still more out there I haven't seen."
"Wow," Hiccup said again. "This are amazing."
Larkin chuckled. "Well, you've got plenty of time now to see the places for yourself."
Hiccup stopped by a map of an island that looked remarkably like Berk. "I could see a lot of the world in six hundred years."
"To the south, far south, there are jungles so thick that blades cannot penetrate them. There is a wingless dragon that lives in the river there, the largest snake I've ever seen, long as two ships, as wide as a full grown yak. Terrifying thing. I forget what the locals called it."
"How far south have you been?" Hiccup asked.
"I spent fifty years on the ocean, venturing farther and farther south. The world gets hotter a little at a time, until it feels as though you might burst into flames, and then it grows colder again, and then the world ends in ice."
"Ice?" Hiccup asked.
Larkin nodded. "I thought the edge of the world might be somewhere under the ice, like we are here, but I didn't want to find out. I saw none of my relatives there, only white bears and ice dragons."
"Have you seen any Night Furies?" Hiccup asked. He looked eagerly between Astrid and Larkin. Astrid admitted she had seen other Night Furies when they first met, but he'd not asked her anymore about it. Other things had pushed that fact from his mind.
"I have," Larkin said. "But it's been a good while. I saw a flock a good way from here, I'd say a hundred years ago, maybe more. They're not native to these waters. They came from the east, I think, but I could be wrong. I'm better with maps than history."
"Thank you, Larkin," Astrid said, grabbing Hiccup's arm.
"Any time," he said with a curt not of his head. "Don't be a stranger, Hiccup. We're family, now."
Outside of the map room, Hiccup leaned into Astrid. "Why is everyone telling me that we're family?"
"Because we are," she said. Before he could ask, she added, "And every single person in here knows what you're going through. We've all gone through it. They want you to know that you are welcome here, that you have a family here."
X
Windshear and Meatlug touched down first, followed by Barf and Belch and Hookfang. The riders landed as close to the Great Hall as they could, and dismounted and ran inside. Stoick sat down at a table, head in his hands. Gobber stood beside him looking unlike his usual jovial self. Spitelout stood behind him with his arms crossed.
Trader Johann sat across from the three Vikings, hands folded in front of him, thumbs twiddling.
"There you are," Stoick boomed, throwing his hands out toward the others.
"What's happened?" Heather asked first. Since Hiccup's vanishing, she had taken up the leadership role. Fishlegs stood beside her.
"Come, all of you, sit," Stoick said. They did as they were told, and surrounded Johann on all sides.
"Alright, Trader Johann, tell us what happened," Gobber said calmly.
"I was in the western markets setting up a stall for the annual trading market," Trader Johann said with a sweep of his hands. "Not only can one trade for new and exotic things one may not otherwise have access to, but one can also hear a barrel's weight in gossip and news from all over.
"I have a friend who deals with a rather salty sort, the Dragon Hunters. It turns out that his son is one of them, loves it too, although I've never liked that boy. A bit off in the head," Johann laughed, and when no one else did, he cleared his throat and continued. "We were eating dinner one night and he told us all the story of how his son was witness to a strange event. He had gone to the hunter's stronghold, the location of which he did not include, where Viggo had invited the all of the hunters."
"Come on," Snotlout whined.
Stoick shushed him. "Go on, Johann."
"Like I was saying, Viggo held an event at his stronghold. Now this part of the tale is supposed to be secret, this friend of mine said, because the hunters themselves were told to keep it to themselves, but Viggo had captured a vampire and planned to set it loose on a boy."
"What?" Heather said at once. She stood, scooting her wooden stool with such haste it clanked to the floor.
Fishlegs squealed. "She didn't kill him, Viggo caught them!"
"That doesn't mean he's not in trouble," Stoick said, halting the conversation. "What happened next?"
"He did as he said he would, according to the story told by the father of the hunter who witnessed," Johann said. "A vampire, frenzied from starvation, was set loose on a prisoner. But then, the arena was attacked by an army of the beasts!"
"Dragons?"
"No," Trader Johann shook his head. "Vampires. They raged into the arena, took the prisoner and the vampire with them and left."
"He's gone?" Heather asked.
Trader Johann shrugged.
"Did she bite him?" Heather asked.
"I don't recall that detail from his story," Trader Johann said. "He only said that the vampire was set loose on the prisoner."
"If she did," Fishlegs said in a squeal. "Then he's…"
"Nonsense," Stoick roared, bringing a silence to the Great Hall. "I'll have no talk of that, not of my son, not of anyone. Understood?"
The riders nodded.
"What do we do now?" Fishlegs asked. "If Hiccup isn't with the hunters anymore…"
"Where would the vampires have taken him?" Heather asked herself more than anymore.
"Home?" Tuffnut said with a shrug.
"Okay, that just leaves the question of where that is," Heather sighed.
"North," Fishlegs said. "That's what Astrid said."
"Astrid?" Stoick asked.
"She's the vampire that Hiccup flew home," Heather said.
Stoick and Gobber exchanged a glance, saying more than words could, and giving Heather a horrible feeling behind her knees.
