Monstrous May Prompt Fills

They came for Loki during the day, as he slept in the reinforced chamber he and Thor had built under Thor's cabin. It was late on a spring evening, the sun low but a while off from setting. Thor’s sheep dogs began to growl and stare toward the house, hackles raised. Then one yipped and howled, and something howled back, deep and ominous. Thor took off at a sprint down the rock strewn grassy hillside, heedless of the possibility of breaking a leg in his haste.

Loki had warned him, warned him that the longer he stayed put in one place, the more inevitable it would become that the werewolves would find him, honed in on the traces of his vampiric scent. Thor cursed himself now, for his weakness and inability to let Loki go when he’d explained how they hunted his kind relentlessly under the protection of daylight, and thus how he mustn’t tarry somewhere so long. But things had been so good between them, and months turned into years in which Loki never went more than a few weeks before returning to Thor. They simply couldn’t quit each other.

The werewolves came into view as Thor grew closer, a group of at least five raggedly dressed individuals, looking human as far as Thor could tell, if ones with dirty skin and wild hair. They were tearing apart Thor’s cabin in search of Loki, following his scent to the hatch just as Loki had described.

“They need not wait for a full moon to turn them to beasts and risk facing off a vampire at night,” Loki had warned, “They need only locate us in their humanoid form, during the day when we cannot shake our undead rest, and expose us to the light.” 

Thor had taken every precaution he could, building a well concealed hatch in the floor, locked tight from the inside and reinforced with steel. But it wouldn’t stop the group forever, and they had an hour of daylight at least. 

He slowed as he neared, crouching low and looping around the side to approach the barn. Any sound of his footfalls would be drowned out by his two horses, both making a racket in their panic, neighing and kicking the sides of their stalls. Thor peered through a crack between the far doors and watched as a skinny, greasy haired woman opened the stall doors and chased the panicked horses out of the barn, snarling and yipping at them like a dog. The woman’s back to him momentarily, he quietly unlatched the barn door and slipped inside, taking a hard right and ducking into the tack room before she turned back.

There on the wall was his rifle, and Thor took it up along with a handful of bullets he slipped into his pockets one at a time. They weren’t silver, but the werewolves weren’t turned at the moment, either. He checked it over, reloaded and primed it with practiced moments. He could only hope that it mattered, that the years of his life he spent shipped off to war in a foreign land, killing for a king he never met, would serve a greater purpose at last.

He could hear the woman back inside the barn, kicking around the hay in the stalls for any sign of a hidden vampire’s nest, chasing old traces of Loki’s scent in his steed’s stall. Thor waited, hoping she had already checked the tack room and would leave, but no such luck, footsteps approached the door. Thor shot her in the chest the moment she rounded the corner. She crumbled backwards and did not move; not that he waited to see. He packed the next round, cursing that once he ran out of time to do so he’d be down to nothing but the long utility knife he carried, not even a real dagger or sword. Then ran toward the far doors, and the cabin.

Howling sounds and raised voices were already filling Thor’s ears before he reached the door. He took aim at the closest werewolf running at him, a squat, bald man, and struck him in the neck. Again he sped through loading, falling back on long training, every second ticking by in an eternity of swab and bullet and packing rod. Thor was only able to get the rifle up fast enough to catch the next man in the leg as the man leapt at him. He threw it aside, drew his knife from his belt, and slit the man’s throat. Another man and a woman were approaching him, broken teeth bared, and he could hear at least one more inside, attempting to pry open the metal door on Loki’s chamber by the sound of it. He was running out of time. 

Thor rolled onto the balls of his feet, knife held at the ready, but the two didn’t rush him. Instead, they changed. Thor’s mind didn’t want to accept what he was seeing as they twisted and stretched to the grotesque sound of snapping bones, curved claws bursting from their fingers. Fur coated their arms and saliva dripped between their elongated fangs. The sun still shined, but just behind their heads, peaking over the still-blue horizon, was a nearly full moon, rising as the sun set. Somehow they had learned to shift early.

Thor's soldier’s instinct kicked in and he charged them; better to face two monsters in the midst of transforming than to wait like startled prey to be torn limb from limb. He buried his knife in the male werewolf’s belly, yanking the blade upwards towards its sternum even as its claws tore at his shoulders and back, shredding his clothes and drawing blood. The werewolf let out a curdling canine bellow as his entrails slipped through the gash, hot and wet over Thor's knife hand, but before he could escape its dying grasp the other wolf was on him. 

They tumbled through the dirt, Thor struggling to bring the knife to bear as she savaged him with her huge, clawed back feet. Dripping fangs snapped inches from his face. Thor drew his head back and butted her, cracking his forehead down over her nose. It gave him the space he needed to sink the knife under her jaw and into her brain.

Thor pushed up onto his hands and knees; his entire body was a blaze of pain, bleeding from more wounds than he could count. The two werewolves still shuddered and moved, so he took up a large rock and caved in their faces for good measure, lacking in anything silver to finish the job with. He stumbled to his feet and limped to the cabin as quickly as he could. 

The final werewolf–a massive, ugly, scarred thing–was pulling Loki’s unconscious form up from his subterranean chamber by the hair, moments from dragging him into the last rays of sunlight. A matter of feet was between his love and a brutal death.

“How in hell are you still alive,” The werewolf growled. 

Thor’s head was swimming. “Get your fucking hands of my lover,” He slurred in response. 

“Your lover? Oh, you poor fool, I thought this parasite had simply been hypnotizing and feeding off of you.” The wolf bared his teeth. 

Thor threw himself at the werewolf with a howl of his own, but his body had gone slow, so slow. The wolf grabbed him by the throat and shook him like a ragdoll. Then claws pierced his belly, tearing through him like he was made of paper. The pain was beyond anything Thor could have imagined, seeming to light up every nerve in his body in perfect, distilled agony. His jaw clamped shut over his tongue and blood filled his mouth as the werewolf ripped his claws free. 

“I would have let you live if you’d just let us be,” The wolf said. 

Thor forced himself to focus through the pain, focus on Loki lying half out of his cell, doomed to burn if Thor gave in and let darkness take him now. 

“I don’t need to live to succeed, you bastard,” He muttered, and swung his arm high, burying the knife in the werewolf’s eye. 

The wolf shrieked and dropped him, falling to his knees and scratching at his face. The jarring of his broken body hitting the floor was the agony redoubled, yet even as spots filled Thor’s vision and he felt unconsciousness approach, it was clear what he must do. He took the werewolf by the hair and slammed his face into the sharp corner of the metal chamber hatch, until only pulp remained. 

Thor pushed the wolf’s twitching body aside and wriggled over to Loki, too weak to even crawl. He shoved his lover’s still form back into the chamber, knocked the hatch closed, and laid down to die. He shuddered, now more cold and numb than in pain, as the blood ran out of him, yet he managed a smile. The square of light from the window had climbed high up the wall, and was fading as the sun dipped behind the hills. Loki was safe.

Even before full consciousness had returned to Loki, he knew something was wrong. It was too quiet: no neighing of horses, bleating of sheep, or sounds of Thor shuffling around on the floorboards above making supper. He came to fully, and realized he wasn’t laid down in his nest of quilts, but slumped in a half sitting position near the hatch, like he’d tried to crawl free and not made it. 

Then he smelled it: blood, so much blood. The fear hit as a deafening rush in his ears, because all at once he knew, he knew.

Loki burst forth from his den with no thought of first checking for dwindling rays of light. The blue gray tones of twilight had overtaken the cabin, but there was no mistaking the glossy crimson blanketing the floor. A half turned werewolf lay in the puddle, still twitching and attempting to move his limbs despite his caved in face, and beside him, Thor. 

A wail of animal pain tore from Loki’s throat, and he dropped his knees and pulled his lover against him. He could hear the faint beat of Thor’s heart with his preternatural ears, struggling to circulate what blood remained in him. Thor was a mess of ghastly scratches, his clothes tattered and soaked in blood. But worst of all his belly was a torn, stinking mess where long claws had punctured it. Loki shook with a deep sob of hopelessness at the sight of the wound. Thor couldn’t die yet, he was still young, and good and strong and beautiful. In the grand scheme of Loki’s life, they’d yet barely had any time together. He wasn’t ready to let go. 

Loki reached out and dragged the half dead werewolf over by the arm, then lifted him enough to expose his neck. The rancid animal taste of him when Loki’s teeth broke the skin turned his stomach, but if he wanted to save Thor, he couldn’t do it hungry, so he suppressed his urge to vomit and drank deep. When the body was empty and the wolf truly dead, he shoved the corpse aside with contempt, bit deep into the flesh of his own wrist, and let his renewed blood pour into the ragged wound in Thor’s abdomen. 

Loki watched as the skin of Thor’s belly attempted to knit itself under the spell of vampire blood, just as the gash in Loki’s wrist was, but the torn organs under it were difficult if not impossible to mend, and it was all tainted with the contents of his shredded intestines.

Bloody tears dripped down Loki’s cheeks and landed in his lover’s hair. He tore his wrist again and again as it healed itself, dripping more blood onto the wound. “No, no, no,” he pleaded. 

Eventually he moved Thor onto the bed, and set about shedding blood onto Thor’s lesser wounds to close them, returning back to the one in his gut after no more than a few seconds break. One by one they closed, and Thor’s heartbeat smoothed out, but the injury to his belly was no better. Loki padded blankets around him to keep him warm, and all the while he cursed himself. Of all the selfish, lowly creatures of the universe, to indulge in tarrying here with Thor–brave, kind hearted Thor–until this came to pass, he was damned twice, thrice, four times over. 

Thor would surely die, and then Loki would join him, lie down on the bed at Thor’s side with the curtains pulled wide, and wait for the burning sun to cleanse the earth of his wretched self.

“I won.” The quiet words startled Loki from his reverie, and he looked over to see Thor’s eyes open, trained on him but glossy and distant with fever. “You’re safe.”

Just like that, Loki’s fantasy of self-immolation turned to ash. Thor had given everything to save him. Him, a sneaking leach of a creature, so that he may go on. How could he turn his back on that sacrifice?

“You bastard,” Loki replied, lips trembling. “What did I always tell you? Don’t try to stop them, it isn’t worth it. I am not worth it.” 

“No,” Thor whispered. 

Loki wiped his eyes with one hand and took Thor’s with the other. Thor’s face was deathly pale and beaded with sweat.

Loki opened his wrist again and went back to tending Thor’s wound. “I’d give you water, but…but I’m afraid it will only make things worse.”

“Loki.”

He looked up from his bloodletting, and Thor’s eyes had sharped, fixed on him. “Thor.” 

“Let me join you. I can’t go into the afterlife knowing we may never be reunited there, since you are immortal.”

Loki shook his head, his tears redoubled. He felt sick with the werewolf’s foul blood, and with sorrow. “No. I couldn’t. You are good Thor, destined to reach heaven, or Valhalla. I was already a liar and a thief when I was turned, already damned to one hell or another. I couldn’t doom you thus by tainting you with this devil’s curse.” 

Thor attempted to squeeze his hand. The weakness of his grip broke Loki’s heart all over again. “Do you? Feel cursed by it?”

Loki shook his head. “No. I told you, I am a wicked thing that loves life too much.” 

“Then I am already damned for loving a wicked thing more than my own life.” Thor managed a smile. Then he took a long, rattling breath, and his eyes went vacant once more. 

Loki shook his shoulder and he groaned. “Thor, no, Thor!”

Thor refocused on Loki. His lips shaped the words more than spoke them. “Loki, my love.”

Loki could feel Thor’s heart jittering under his hand, a last ditch attempt to cling to life. He was dying. It was now, or it was never. 

With a cry of frustration and despair, Loki tore the flesh of his wrist a final time, straight down to the artery so the blood gushed like a fountain. There was no rational thought in it, no morality, no grave decision. He did so on a surge of emotion too deep to question: he was in love, had been in love from their first meeting, so perhaps both their fates had been sealed that day, and in all the days that followed Loki had simply been in denial of it. He could never let death take Thor from him.

He clapped it over Thor’s lips. “Drink,” He commanded.

At first Thor was still, and it seemed a race against Loki’s vampiric blood trickling down his slack throat, and the waning of his failing heart. Then the next moment he was gripping Loki’s arm with both hands, his fingers like vices, sucking with all his might. Loki gritted his teeth and hissed with the pain of it, even as his heart swelled with hope. 

“Ah! Not a minute in, and you’re as strong as a boar already,” Loki said, laughing. 

He twisted his wrist out of Thor’s grasp and Thor moaned at the loss. Loki laughed again, and leaned down, exposing his neck. “Take all you need, my love, you can’t hurt me, not really.”

Everything he could give, he would. Thor required no coaxing, overtaken with the thirst as he was. He gnawed at Loki’s neck with his half-formed fangs until the blood flowed. Loki moaned at the closeness, the intimacy of Thor’s lips on his neck, consuming his very essence, their roles at last reversed.

For a spell their minds joined, and all of Thor’s stubborn love and determination washed over Loki. He gave back with memories, his favorite ones, taking Thor in a gentle rhythm as he sipped from the sweet fount of his neck. Or the times he was pressed down into the bed, snarling for Thor to take him harder, harder while he scraped his fangs over Thor’s forearm and licked up the welling blood, lapping and mewling like a beast with the overwhelming sensation of taking and being taken at once. Oh, they had made the walls of the cabin shake. Now they would do so again and again, stretching into an unknown future of wild nights.

Loki only realized he’d lost consciousness when he awoke, cheek to Thor’s fuzzy chest. He tried to sit up, and the world listed as if he was a drunk mortal. Every nerve, every inch of skin across his entire body felt drained and raw.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said, his voice a vibration under Loki’s ear, full of worry. “I took too much, you look so terribly thin and pale, like a wraith.”

“Not-too-much, can’t die,” Loki slurred. “You strong, so strong.” 

Thor was alive, hale and whole and changed, his heart beating loud as a war drum in his chest. Loki wanted to admire him, the new ethereal shine his blue eyes would no doubt now have. He was sure Thor looked more beautiful than ever, a golden lion of the night, but Loki was too weak to lift his head. 

Thor wrapped his thick, warm arms around Loki’s cold husk of a body and the world tipped as he stood, cradling Loki like a baby, or a bride. He caught sight of his own limbs. Thor had a point, he had gone as thin and wispy as a tree branch, his body drained to the last drop, but unable to be touched by death regardless.

“Time to go find you a meal, those other werewolves might still be crawling around out there.” The moon and stars swam into view as they left the cabin, splayed in a ring around Thor's upturned face.

"No, gross.”

Thor’s body quivered with a chuckle. “No werewolf, then. Gods, the sky is beautiful, I had no idea there were so many stars! And in so many colors.” He was silent for a moment, contemplating the universe through his new eyes. He returned his gaze to Loki, and smiled. “Well, we have a ways to go, and I need to find the horses, anyways. Shall we see how fast I can run?”

Loki nodded, and grinned: Thor was as practical as ever. He could feel joy peeking at him from behind his blood-drained haze, waiting to swallow him whole. They would walk through the centuries together, arm in arm. They would haunt bustling cities clad in finery. They would lose themselves in the wilderness of the earth’s deepest jungles, subsisting off the blood of beasts and sleeping in deep caves with the bats. There was no threat they couldn’t take on together.

Thor tensed his legs and took off up the grassy slope, swift and silent as a deer. It felt like flying.