Protection
Romania 1325 A.D.
Hiccup did not move. He did not blink. He did not shudder at the cold or swallow the saliva gathering beneath his tongue.
He hardly breathed.
Air trickled into his lungs at a slow and unsatisfying measure, so shallow it hurt, but he dared not deepen it. Instead he waited—waited as she circled him, her steps measured and mocking, baiting him to run, to move.
Running was pointless. She was faster than him. Stronger. She could kill him in an instant—would kill him—and at the slightest provocation. He had to think.
Gods, how he wanted to think. Thinking was what he did. It was his strength, his talent, his brawn. Outsmarting and conniving and escaping. A thousand tantalizing visions and plans circled his mind in shambles, but he could not seem to grasp enough to form any usable inspiration.
Then she leaned in.
Strigoi, the locals called them—these dark predators of the night. He was warned against them; warned against the area. Warned of their allure and their cruelty. But the money was too good and his curiosity too potent and for Odin's sake he wanted his bow back. So here he was.
Hiccup could see the sheet of dark hair resting over her shoulders, shoulders pale and smooth and inhumanly heady. He could smell the stale, cold dirt of graves. Fear paralyzed him like he had never experienced before, an unnatural fear she perfumed him in. Hiccup found himself unable to fight against her distraction, her proximity—an allure so intoxicating that he could not shift even if he had intended it. What little air he stored in his lungs had left him in a slow pull, as if she sucked the breath right from his lips using those beautiful and sinister powers.
Her curved mouth fell to the hollow of his neck and Hiccup felt petrified—literally petrified—with legs that would not bend and a will that would not awaken.
The first cold touch of a fang grazed his neck and he thought: This is it. It's over. What was left of his humanity would be taken...
But no puncture occurred. His heart continued to beat and his lungs continued to hold. For a moment Hiccup thought time had stopped.
A dark shriek tore from the revenant creature's lips to pierce his ear and she flew away from him as though burned.
The spell had broken, not only by the sheer volume of her inhuman cry but also by distance. Hiccup stumbled back, an invisible support suddenly lost to him. The screams continued as he caught his footing, and these were screams not of pain or of sorrow, but tantrum.
No other word would fit.
Horror and bemusement settled over Hiccup as he watched the strigoi half-transform. Her skin grayed, her face fleshed in and out of cavity—like she couldn't decide if she wanted to be dead or not. Her back curled and her spine popped and grew like a beast's before smoothing down beneath her dress again. Her eyes turned black, sclera and all, and her jaw unhinged and stretched to accommodate gargantuan fangs. She pulled on her hair and stomped her feet and screamed and screamed and screamed.
"Alani!"
The deep bark of a voice nearly threw the earlier terror back into Hiccup. A severe looking man stepped from the shadows but Hiccup knew better than to think him a simple human. He was too pale, his eyes too hollow, his presence too offsetting. As he moved forward in unreal fluidity, Hiccup could make out the red ring circling each pupil.
He felt like a deer in the presence of wolves.
Alani whirled on the newcomer, her hair flying behind her like a terrible cape.
"He's marked, Nikolai!" she snarled.
Nikolai's fine eyebrows lifted in his shock. "Pardon?"
"Mermaids!" Alani continued to cry and Hiccup turned back to her. She was ugly now; her appearance returned to human but her expression damaged any physical beauty. "Those devious, selfish—"
"You will calm yourself."
Hiccup gasped when breath hit his collar; air chilled by death raked through the fine hairs of his neck. He spun to find the new strigoi far too close to his personal space. The intent to escape had barely touched his mind when an iron grip had taken hold of his arm, keeping him in place. Hiccup never detected movement from the other man.
The strigoi—Nikolai—regarded something on the back of Hiccup's neck with a slightly troubled expression.
"Interesting," Nikolai said softly in his velveteen voice. "I have to wonder what it is a human male could have done to garner the protection of mermaids."
"I—" Hiccup's mind raced for an answer but, like his own body compared to these supernatural beings, it was too slow. He could feel the weight of an Aspen-wood stake beneath his clothes, shoved upon him by the locals. It pressed against his belly, trapped within his belt. He longed to reach for it.
"You did not know?" Nikolai remarked. His featured had not moved from his initial, mild shock. "You belong to them—one of their many treasures—so no other creature in this world could possibly claim ownership over you." He frowned as he spoke, appearing wholly disappointed. Though nowhere near as disappointed as Alani, whose face remained contorted in ugly anger.
Nikolai sighed as one would when told their favorite pastry was out of stock.
"Well, we cannot change him."
"But I wanted—"
"We cannot change him," Nikolai repeated just as softly but somehow powerful enough to stop her speech. "We will have to dispose of him."
Hiccup was powerless. He could not so much as cry out in his defense. Every action he thought to take would be countered by a more logical part of his mind. His sluggish wits churned no bait. If only he could say something, reach for his dagger—
No. 'Not the knife,' the locals had said. 'You cannot kill the dead with something also dead.'
He needed wood—something that was once alive. It was the stake he wanted but the stake he could not grab. Not whilst he had that hypnotic power over him, caged within his own body.
A chorus of screams sounded in the distance, beyond the tall, double doors and thick gothic walls. These were not the screams of tantrums.
Both strigoi fell silent to raise their head and listen as hounds would in a hunt. Hiccup strained his own senses, curious and concerned, though relieved for the distraction.
The screams, Hiccup quickly realized, were not human. They were much like Alani's had been in their beastly tones, but these were grislier. Even with human ears he could sense more terror than rage.
A smile slowly built upon his face.
"No..." he whispered, his breath found again. His fingers twitched; the cold paralysis melted off of him with the weight of dropping chains.
"Poslednei Glas ...?" Hiccup heard Nikolai murmur behind him. And then again, louder. "Poslednei Glas!"
Hiccup held up a finger. He could move again, he was thinking faster, and the strigoi were too enraptured by the sounds of their dying coven to pay any heed to his recovery.
"There is one other who's claimed ownership over me," he admitted aloud.
The doors flew off in blue explosion. Wood and fire and stone flooded into the hall just before a Night Fury glided in on bat-like wings.
Alani reacted first. Her hair bristled and a hiss gathered in her throat but before she could do anything more Toothless fired a plasma bolt at her. The strigoi caught fire far too easily; her body succumbed to the flame as it should have done in her first death.
Something had broken with her screams—the last of the power her kind had over Hiccup. Whether in their distraction or Toothless' nearness, full control returned to his limbs.
In a single, fluid movement Hiccup flicked the Aspen stake from his belt, spun, and drove it through Nikolai's heart. Nikolai was in the midst of a transformation for the strike and the shock of his appearance left Hiccup breathless.
The strigoi was half a foot taller, his nose enlarged and upturned, his teeth too big for his jaw, and his ears lengthened with curled tips. The breast of the creature had swelled and darkened, breaking from his shirt with cracking skin to make for a greater target. Hiccup could feel the bone and flesh give way beneath the wood. Thick, dead blood oozed around the broken skin like mud. The wound smoked and hissed before Nikolai's screech of agony drowned it out. The point where Hiccup stabbed began to cave inward and shuddered into ash. Fires flew up from within the cadaver, reaching out from the mouth, the eyes, the heart and, wherever else the skin gave way.
Hiccup wrenched the stake out and staggered from the leaping flames as the strigoi died. Toothless trotted to his side and began to nose his wrists and chest in seek of damage.
::Are you okay?::
Hiccups heart slowed from its rapid drum. In its place crept numbness-right up his spine and tensing into his shoulders as he acknowledged the near-death experience for what it was. Fires eating what was left of the corpses turned green and fizzled with a queer song. The smell of cooking, dead flesh rose into the air and turned his stomach. The smoke tickled his throat.
Hiccup gently pushed Toothless' snout away.
"I'm fine," he said gruffly. He'd have nightmares for weeks but his body remained intact this time around. "What took you so long?"
The time he spent among the undead seemed a lifetime—though it was more likely an illusion created by the entrapment.
Toothless' tail came up to smack Hiccup on the side of the head.
::What took me so long?:: Toothless roared in outrage. ::Show a little self control next time!::
Hiccup rubbed his head and blushed because it had been his mental weakness to the powers of strigoi that got them in this situation in the first place.
"I...that wasn't—there won't be a next time!"
::You're damn right there won't be!::
Hiccup gave a breathy laugh, which he quickly regretted as he started toward the smoke-filled halls from whence Toothless came.
"Are we going out the way we came in?" he coughed. He stepped around splinters and rubble and the burning piles of strigoi. The atmosphere started to sicken him, both the smell and the sights. He craved sunlight and the living.
::We must if you want your bow.::
Hiccup snapped his head around to face Toothless. "Where is she?"
The strigoi had taken Framherja in their last encounter. Hiccup wasn't sure what they wanted with her or why, he was only certain that he had to get her back lest he fight with wooden stakes for the rest of his days. They had hoped to find her in the nearest coven but it seemed their search was meant to continue.
::The Councilor:: Toothless answered solemnly.
The Councilor. The regional ruler of the strogoi. A legend compared to Alani or Nikolai.
Hiccup glanced down at the stake in his hands: the grains of its tip were darkened by congealed blood but otherwise the weapon looked unharmed from piercing a strogoi. He was more shocked to see his hand whitened by the grip he had over the haft and willed it to loosen. Pain creaked within the joints.
"Alright," he said grimly. "I guess we have some more strogy-whatsits to kill."
::Try to keep your wits about you this time::
Hiccup threw the stake so that it bounced off Toothless' head with a harmless thud. The dragon curled a lip.
::Go pick that up::
Hiccup moved to do so, knowing he had no one to blame for the mess they were in but himself. It always came down to human weakness in the end—for every misadventure that came to mind—but it was a weakness he was learning to feel less ashamed of.
"Hey..." Hiccup began. The way his voice echoed around the cavernous walls startled him. The dying fires left the halls dimmer and cast jumping shadows to play tricks on his eyes. He quickly retrieved the stake and returned to Toothless' side. "What does it mean if I have a Mermaid's protection?"
Toothless regarded Hiccup with a critical eye.
::It means the Sisters liked you for whatever reason:: he said.
Hiccup rubbed the back of his neck. It was his neck that threw the strigoi from him—not the scars on his lips from where Marmara bit him but the four pricks to his neck where her claws pierced him. The memory returned to him as his fingers traced the raised skin: Marmara had transformed as Alani had. She had revealed the darker side, the dangerous side that she had once held at bay for his sake.
And yet, he had returned to the cavern since then...
He often feared for his safety when around the Sisters, but never for his life.
"But why did they say I belonged to the mermaids?" Hiccup persisted. Toothless had to know. The dragon could always smell things or sense things he couldn't—like when a woman was in the early stages of a pregnancy or when basic objects held enchantments.
Toothless shook his saddled shoulders with impatience. ::Are we flying out of here or not?::
Hiccup narrowed his eyes. "Did you know this? Do you know what they were talking about?"
::...::
"Toothless!"
::It's not my fault you are—what's the human term?—Easy?::
"Excuse me?" Hiccup gasped, certain that he had heard wrong. "You don't even know what that means!"
::You're right, that wasn't the word I was looking for. You're a fish's boy-toy::
Hiccup reeled back. "I am not!"
::A pet human::
"TOOTHLESS!"
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A/N:
Recap: Toothless had a Big Damn Hero moment. I brought in a tribute to the mermaids and some mythology. I added the time/place up at the top to give you guys a general idea of what's going down.
Strigoi are Vampires. The real kind. Not the bedazzled mannequins taking over that genre. I want to keep the era and location in line for the terms used.
Okay, apparently Poslednei Glas is Russian for "Last Eye" (or equivilent) …because when a Night Fury hunts only its eyes are visible, and they're the last thing you see :D Thanks Blueway360!
Just a refresher for those who haven't read Hitchups in eons: Toothless uses human words, human expressions, and human contractions…he doesn't speak as a dragon would speak and its all because of Hiccup's influence, more now than ever after such strong exposure to the boy.
And now I give a huge thank you to you guys! I seriously, seriously, did not expect so many people to remember this vague promise. I expected less to like it as much as they did. So THANK YOU! I luff you!
So what do you think? Boo vampires? Yay vampires? Gross vampires? Any other mythologies you guys are interested in?
