An: Contains a creepy Viking who expresses intent to grow a young girl into a potential mate. He is stopped.
Marcel listened for a half hour to the mumbled conversation in Vinny's room. Then she was asleep and he sighed, heading downstairs to sit in his courtyard. Vinny's reaction was hardly new. She never seemed happy to find out she was an omega and that her carefully built life was about to collapse. Marcel couldn't blame her, either. It didn't take long for her nightmares to start. They always did. Marcel simply waited, ready to step in if they got out of hand. I wonder which one she's started with.
x
The Viking stood over her slain father, not even panting. Blood dripped from his golden hair onto his leather jerkin. Inga stood behind her mother, fear pounding in her heart as she had to watch a change come over her last parent. "Run." Inga's mother shoved her toward the back without looking at her. "Gods girl, run!" She snatched the sword Inga's dad had been so proud of and interposed herself between the Viking in the leather vest and her fleeing daughter.
Her child's heart pounding in her chest, Inga ducked out of rear exit and began to run through the village, dodging other Vikings and trying not to watch as her home was pillaged and burned down around her. She just had to make it to the forest and surely they'd leave her alone. They were coastal raiders, after all. Didn't they have superstitions about the woods? A huge weight landed on top of Inga and all the air went out of her lungs. Hot breath gusted against the back of Inga's ears as she squirmed and cried breathlessly, struggling to draw in air under a fully armored man. "Hmmm. What a prize! I think you're going to flower into a beautiful young omega."
Inga found her lungs at last and screamed, kicking and thrashing as the man's meaty hands found the ties at the back of her dress. "Maybe you've already flowered. You wouldn't keep such a secret from old Thoren, would you sweetling?" Inga screamed and bucked again, and the man groaned against her mocking her animal cries of terror.
"Da!" She cried, feeling like a bleating helpless goat. "Mama! Mama! Please! Help me!" And then just as suddenly the weight was yanked fully from Inga's person. Acutely aware of the pain in her leg, Inga flipped onto her side and prised the dirt and blood from her bitten lips. My leg is broken. She thought, looking at the blood slowly seeping through her dress. She began to crawl, hardly registering the thuds of repeated fist blows landing behind her as an iron determination to live set in above the din of the agonies wracking her young form.
What Inga hadn't counted on was the wave of weariness that settled on her seconds later as the animal fear for her life left her. She stopped, on her hands in mud and blood and flopped on the side of her un-injured leg; glancing back as she did so. The Viking in leathers stood over her, peering down at her with an unreadable and stony expression. He tossed something at her feet and spoke. "Pick up your da's blade. You belong under clan Mikaelson now, and will grow as companion alongside my own children." Behind him Thoren staggered to his feet, freshly beaten and Inga realized her alternatives. She seized her father's broken sword and then bravely spoke to the man towering over her.
"My leg is broken. You'll have to carry me." A muted look of approval flashed across his face so fast it was almost never there.
x
Vinny woke startled yet again. Inga's tears were still wet on her face and when Vinny pressed a hand to her wildly beating heart, she realized for the first time she had not forgotten the details of a nightmare. I was...Inga was...that was me. I was Inga. I guess I sort of still am. Gathering herself and shaking the last bit of sleep from her mind, Vinny realized something else that made her heart keep it's slightly agitated pace. I know that house. I know it from more than the nightmare itself. Nonno Vincent said I needed to go there, just last night. More pieces were starting to snap into place, parts of a much larger picture Vinny knew she wasn't ready for yet.
Marcel keeps acting like this isn't the first go round we've done of this. And well...maybe he wasn't lying. I definitely lived what Inga lived. Even as she sat there, Vinny saw more and more how true that was. Slowly memories of a life on the European coast a long, long time ago were filtering into her head. Very detailed and specific things. A horrible sickening jolt filled Vinny's belly as she sat there recalling things she shouldn't be able to. If this isn't my first encounter with Marcel, it sure isn't the first time I've run into Elijah either. Elijah hadn't aged a day. It was impossible, but he had lived for so long now. It wasn't...it couldn't be anything proper or natural. None of them have aged.
What are these people? Vinny shook her head and stood, finding a backpack and shoving things into it before going to the balcony and looking down. In one hand she clutched her alpha mace tight. Nothing natural. They...All three of them are something horrible. Demons, maybe. They shouldn't still be alive. With one last look at the barricaded bedroom door, she slid down the steel water drain pipe on the side of Marcel's villa and slunk into the busy night life filling the streets of New Orleans. I think it's time for me to get the hell out of here.
x
Marcel watched from down the street, more than a little exasperated. Another side effect of the curse on the soul calling itself Vinny was the fact she couldn't stay safe for long. Whether by her own hands, the actions of others, or pure chance any safety or illusion thereof was always shattered before long. He had no doubt she was probably off to check if the nightmare she'd just had contained any basis in reality. He needed to be there when she saw there was in fact a base. One, to keep her from freaking out again and two to keep any alphas from smelling her slowly developing omega scent.
Here we go again.