A/N – Yeah, I did it. I wrote a vampire AU. It happened. Don't ask questions; just go with it. I know I have too many stories open right now. I know I'm probably in over my head. I'm a writer with severe Scatter-Brain-ois. I've been on a low-carb diet for a week and I ate bread yesterday and I've got enough energy to climb something…like one of those rock piles. I won't because dirt.

I also said that I wouldn't post this story until Funkytoes's vampire AU was finished. However, I am confident that they are not going in the same direction – which was my biggest concern. So…here you go. Take this story-crack and enjoy! Read responsibly.

X

Chapter 1: Wounded

Hiccup's heart bounced out of his chest, or so it felt like. Every bone and muscle went rigid; breath came with labor in his tightened lungs.

When he had set out on an expedition to a new island around Dragon's Edge, he expected to meet new dragons, familiar dragons, maybe even the stray dragon hunter – he did not, in any form or fashion, expect to stumble upon a sleeping vampire.

Yet, here he stood. There she slept.

He had never seen a vampire before, at least not alive and in person. The demonic drawings that spotted the darkest corners of the Great Hall's walls spun stories of bloodthirsty demons, fanged beasts, vicious, a death sentence to any who set eyes upon them. The stories told around haunted campfires painted vampires as menacing creatures of darkness, cursed and vile, as rare as a Night Fury and worse by tenfold.

The blonde vampire Hiccup spied in the shallow cave looked nothing like a flesh-eating monster. She breathed, as implied by the gentle up and down of her chest. Not ugly by any means, she wore the beauty of the cruelest vampires, as told by campfire legends.

His father told the tale of his untimely run-in with a grown vampire, 'cold as ice,' 'mean as a hormonal Monstrous Nightmare.'

The legends passed down said that vampire's looks reflected their souls. Pretty faces hid ugly hearts. If that were true, then the sleeping vampire must be the worst of her kind. Yet nothing about her suggested malice or an internal nature to slaughter on sight.

Hiccup stood within the shadow of the canopy. The trees overhead blocked most of the sunlight. Toothless snoozed at the campsite within shouting range, however, as fast as Toothless ran, Hiccup stood too close to the vampire.

Sunlight dazzled on the grassy island ground between him and the shaded cave. If he stood in the open sunlight, would she attack him? Vampires craved the shade. He stepped forward into the bright midmorning sunlight. If she stirred, she would hurt herself trying to get to him.

In stepping into the sunlight, he also stepped closer to the cave. Closer, he saw the vampire in better light.

She looked ill. He heard that vampires looked sick, but she looked deathly ill.

Hiccup crept closer still, inching his way through the grass, barely moving his feet at all.

Her white skin darkened underneath her eyes. Her chapped lips had gone as white. Her clothes, leather and wool by the looks, were crusted with sea salt as if she'd swam in the sea and dried out. Dried salt crusted along her slender legs, stuck into the material of her dark pants. Her slow breaths came in short bursts, struggling inhales and worrisome exhales. With each inhale her chapped lips parted slightly, between the lips he spied the fangs, pearly white and sharp.

Hiccup swallowed against his dry throat. He'd left his canteen at the camp, too.

No doubt about this strange girl. Vampire.

Gobber had always said vampires didn't stray this far south. Too much sun, too little shade on the open ocean. They slept underground or in complete darkness.

Given what he knew about them, everything about this skinny vampire told him that she was in trouble.

Trouble or no, Hiccup reached for his knife. Death was the only cure for vampires.

His hand trembled around the tight leather handle; he nearly dropped the short blade. He gripped it in both hands and held it out between himself and the vampire, encroaching upon her cave, silent as he could. In what felt like a terrible short span of time, he stood just inside the cave's mouth, on the edge of the sunlight. Beyond him the cave fell into shade, not darkness, the sun shone too bright this morning; she slept against the back wall, a few feet from him, not as far as she could have gotten; she had collapsed, he figured, rather than took shelter for the day.

His breath came in short gasps that he could not control. This close, he could see the otherworldly aura about her, a strangeness, a glow that defied natural people.

Her breath shuddered and his grip on the knife tightened.

Any other Viking would have already slit her throat and carved out her fangs for a trophy. Anyone else would have jumped on the chance to kill a vampire single-handedly, even if that vampire lay sick and undefended.

Hiccup, however, was no ordinary Viking, as he proved many times over to his father in his eighteen years.

The same hesitation that had taken hold when he held a dagger over Toothless' heart pushed the dagger he held above the vampire toward the rocky ground. His eyes remained on her throat, on the pulse that somewhere inside of her beat slowly. He could end her, destroy her, claim a victory worthy of only the best Vikings.

He could. But he couldn't.

He lowered the dagger back to his side. With his resignation, the trembling halted.

He had been focused on her throat, on his own internal fears; he had not noticed her stare. Icy blue eyes watched him, sleepy and half-dead, exhausted and nearly gone. Around the center of her blue eyes, a dangerous red lined the edges.

Hiccup stumbled backwards with a yelp. In his fumble, he dropped the knife. It clanked on the rocky cave floor and bounced closer to her, readily within her easy grasp.

"You!" he gasped. He held his stance in the sunlight. Without the knife he was unarmed. "You're alive."

"Surprise," she said, her smoky voice dry and etched with pain. She strained, barely moving her arm to her torso.

He hadn't seen the wound on her side before her hand moved. Deep red seeped into her dark tunic, blood by the thin metallic smell.

"I didn't know vampires could bleed," Hiccup said, wishing he had his knife.

"Again, surprise," she said. She coughed, a heavy-lunged sound. Her entire lithe body lurched. Her breaths after were quick and strained.

In her distraction, Hiccup crouched and snatched the knife quickly.

Her fit passed. Her breaths calmed. Hey icy blue eyes fell again on Hiccup and his knife. "Are you going to finish the job?"

Hiccup raised the knife between them, more a show than a real threat. He would only attack if the vampire attacked first, or proved that she would hurt him.

"Well?" she asked. "What are you waiting for?"

Her blue eyes narrowed in pain. She winced once again, fist clutching her shirt, knees buckling, eye punching shut.

"What's wrong with you?" Hiccup still held the knife, poised to strike, although he doubted his feeble attempts at self-defense would matter against a vampire.

She laughed, a rough sound that itched his throat. Suddenly, he craved the cool water of the stream by his camp.

"I'm dying," she spat. "What does it look like?"

"I-I don't know. I've never seen a vampire before, let alone seen one about to die."

"Lucky you."

"How do I know that you're not lying?" Hiccup wiggled the knife at her, not from a threat but from the anxiety that ran through both of his arms. "You might try to rip my throat out if I get any closer, or if I turn around."

She grinned, a sad expression on her otherwise lovely face. "If I could, I would have already. If I could move you'd already be dead."

Hiccup felt a rock fall into his stomach. Her stern glare told him she meant those words. He swallowed and held onto the dagger's handle. "Why?"

"Why?" she repeated. "Because I'd rather not die if I could help it. Sorry if my desire to survive confuses you."

Hiccup held her stare. He held a knife in defense of his survive, the same reason she claimed to have. "Why attack me. I haven't done anything to you."

She considered him for a moment. "You're holding a knife to me. You are an armed stranger, looking at me like I'm the monster that's caused every problem you've ever had. I would rather attack first than be attacked."

She coughed again, a rugged and desperate quake that grabbed hold of her entire body.

Hiccup relinquished his grip of the blade and took a step back, further into the sunlight. Had he looked at her like that? "I-I didn't mean to-"

"You didn't mean to?" She laughed. "Of course you meant to. It's the way humans look at me. It's the way they are. Always are, always have been and will be. Suspicious. Angry. Suddenly determined and vengeful."

Hiccup felt the weight of the blade in his hand. Had he looked like all of those things? He hung the blade in his hand at his side, loosely, but not without readiness to bring it forth should he require.

He asked, "What happened to you? I thought vampires were supposed to be immortal."

She didn't laugh, but she smiled like she would have if she could. "We're not."

She winced again, this time twisting onto her side. A few tears glimmered along her eyelids. Pieces of dried blood flaked off her shirt with the movement, yet fresh, shimmering red still lingered in the worst of the wound.

Hiccup returned the knife to his belt and crept forward, hands out and exposed, his eyes on her blues. He stepped back into the shade of the cave, metal foot clicking, even though everything inside his head shouted at him not to, and leave this vampire to a fate suited to her kind, however every other part of his body told him to stay.

"Let me see," Hiccup said, kneeling beside her, metal foot first. He reached for the hem of her tunic.

She glared, but gave no objection.

The wound lay above her hipbone. A gash, made with something slashing past her, grazing her, a spear or an arrow even, bled and had been for some time. The salt water she'd doused herself with hadn't helped.

"It's not healing," Hiccup said, more to himself. The center of the wound still looked as fresh as though it had just happened although the edges of the blood had long dried.

"It…the poison," Astrid said.

"It's keeping it from healing." Said Hiccup, finishing her thought. He didn't know poisons could even do that, however logic was thrown when a vampire entered the situation. He knew little about them, as it turned out.

Hiccup stood and stepped back to the cave's mouth. "I've got healing supplies back at camp. I'll be back as quick as I can. Don't…go anywhere."

She laughed, a worrisome sound.

Hiccup jogged back through the woods to his campsite. Toothless stood on the edge of the clear stream, head submerged.

"Toothless," Hiccup said.

The urgency in his voice brought Toothless above the water with such haste that he sprayed water in every direction. Hiccup didn't have the reflexes to protect himself, and took the chilled droplets as they came. He reached the saddlebags and quickly found what he needed, and hugged them to his chest. With a curious Toothless on his heels, he jogged back the way he'd come.

The vampire hadn't moved. At the sound of Hiccup's return she opened eyes and at once they settled on Toothless a few paces behind him.

Toothless stepped into the small clearing before the cave and immediately responded; his back arched and his claws spread; a vicious warning growl emitted from his throat.

"It's alright," Hiccup said to Toothless.

He stepped into the mouth of the cave and set his supplies on the ground. She lay still, eyes wider than they had been before.

"Night Fury?" she gasped.

"Yeah," Hiccup said, grabbing a bowl from the supplies. He pat Toothless' head, who then upon command, spit into the bowl Hiccup held. "This is Toothless. Toothless, this is…uh…"

Hiccup gestured toward the vampire with a blank knowledge.

"Astrid," she said, more to Toothless than Hiccup.

Toothless sniffed his way to Astrid, until he stood with his snout a few inches from her face. He looked down over her, and let out a low warble. He sniffed her blonde hair, burying his nose in her loose, dirty hair.

"I haven't," she said with a wince, "seen one in quite a while. I was beginning to think they were really all gone."

Hiccup nearly dropped the bowl. "You've seen other Night Furies?"

"Not in a while, I was little." Astrid lifted a wobbling arm and laid a hand on the side of Toothless' head.

Toothless did not seem at all perturbed by Astrid's presence or her being a vampire. He seemed almost…comforted by it. Hiccup tore his attention and his thoughts away from the two of them and started to mix the basic healing salve, aided by Night Fury saliva. He lifted the hem of Astrid's tunic and cleaned the wound. He layered it with a hefty coat of the salve, and then wrapped it as best he could with her laying down.

"Thank you," said Astrid, hand resting against Toothless' nose.

"It didn't look that bad once cleaned," Hiccup said. "I'm surprised that it caused you so much trouble. You should be alright now."

She kept her blue eyes on Toothless. She looked less than enthused.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter."

"What doesn't?"

"You tapping me up like that," she said. She closed her eyes. "It will only delay the inevitable, a few hours maybe."

"What?" Hiccup dropped the used bowl back into the supplies. Had the poison been that potent? "Why?"

She half-grinned at him. The red rim around her eyes had grown darker, marking her pupils seem too large. "It wasn't the worst problem."

Hiccup felt the same shiver that she's caused on first sight. He wanted to run back into the woods and take refuge in the brightest sunlight. "What happened to you?"

"I've been," she paused, a woozy gasp eating at the end of her words, "I haven't…eaten in a while."