Chapter Text
Being a vampire granted Mydei the kind of immortality that was dead useful in his line of work. It was also the kind of information he didn’t want spread around, especially among the clients that had hired him to hunt, well, monsters.
That meant having to fake being extremely careful around the siren he’d currently been hired to exterminate.
Sirens were a kind of cursed human, likely but not necessarily women, who sang a deadly song to lure people to their deaths. They were even rumored to be able to charm the winds. Truly a terrifying prospect; if you didn’t have magical immunity, that is.
There had only been one casualty in the time the siren in question had been here, which was making him doubt that this was a siren at all. It could be a lost mermaid who liked to sing, or a lonely river nymph. Hell, it could be a human for all he knew, since the village council who hired him were entirely unhelpful.
Still. They were paying him, and the commission he’d get would pay for his Hunters’ Guild membership for another two years. His pride wasn’t above that.
So he tracked the faint melody through the glade, right down to the water’s edge, with much less trepidation than he probably should’ve felt.
The target was perched naked on a rock just out of reach from the shore. He was almost definitely a siren, judging from his slightly green complexion and the wings sprouting from his shoulders, looking very lonely indeed as he sang a song so melancholy it made Mydei’s heart wrench and made him want to drop everything to wade over and help him.
…Wasn’t he supposed to be immune to charm spells?
Mydei shook off the distraction and reached for the bronze arrows in his quiver, loading his bow and aiming it at the creature.
The siren looked up sharply at the twang of the bowstring being pulled taut, slit blue eyes locking with his own as he bared his fangs, snarling at Mydei. He waited, one, two, three seconds, mentally preparing himself for a fight.
Sirens never failed to surprise, and it had been far too long since Mydei had a challenge.
But then the siren squawked, jumped, and tumbled face-first into the water, flailing his arms around gracelessly. He just laid there for a second, then lurched up, shooting a highly alarmed glance his way before scrambling behind the rock with a series of rather unstealthy splashes.
Once hidden, he called, “Uh, don’t shoot? Please?” His voice cracked a little at the last syllable.
Mydei lowered his bow a little, bemused. He’d never seen a siren use ‘charming ineptitude’ as a seduction technique.
It was working, though, just a little bit. He had to give him that. Sirens never did fail to surprise.
Mydei lowered his bow further, jerking his head in the direction behind him.
“Are you the one that’s been haunting the village over there?”
The siren peeked around the rock. His single visible eye had gone from a bright, burning turquoise to a more mellow shade of cerulean.
“Um, kind of? It’s—it’s a long story.”
“I was hired to exterminate you,” he informed him mildly. It was a much less appealing prospect than it had been before he’d heard him speak, but well. Siren. That was the whole point. “You’ve been luring men to their deaths.”
“Oh, come on!” He snapped indignantly, jumping up and flopping back down in front of the rock with a scowl. It seemed he had neither the otherworldly grace nor the self-preservation tendencies that most sirens do. Maybe that’s why male sirens were so rare. “It was one guy, and he deserved it, I’m telling you!”
Mydei cocked an eyebrow at him. “Did he, now?”
All the reports he’d heard of Zagreus had been glowing, and most were heartbroken that he was gone.
The siren’s expression hardened. “My sister. He ruined her. Death was too kind.”
His tone was flat, devoid of any emotion, as if he’d turned the question over in his mind many times and arrived at the same conclusion each time.
“I see.”
The siren sighed, then his face lit up. “Oh! Maybe you would know, since your job is to hunt demons or whatever — is there any way to, like, un become a siren?”
The scars that Eurypon had left on his neck burned for a moment.
“No, I’m afraid not,” he finally said. “And I hunt monsters, not demons. They’re entirely different things.”
“Ah, damn it.” The siren pouted. It was such a mild response for someone who’d been cursed with immortality that Mydei had to do a double take.
…Come to think of it, didn’t Zagreus’ corpse only turn up a year ago?
“How old are you, again?”
The siren rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
“Well… I was twenty before, y’know. Before I was turned. And then I lost track. Can’t be too much older than that, though.” He paused. “Maybe I’m still twenty.”
“Zagreus died a little more than a year ago,” Mydei informed him.
“Oh!” He clicked his fingers. “Then I’m twenty-two, I think. Is it October yet?”
“In two months.”
“Twenty-one, then,” he amended. He refocused on Mydei. “How old are you?”
“Around two hundred,” he said vaguely, offering no further explanation. Definitely closer to three hundred, but still two-hundred-something. Probably.
Twenty-one might be an adult for a human in these times but…
“Holy shit,” the siren said, eyes wide.
Mydei wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he pulled the trigger here, or if he walked away at all.
If Castorice hadn’t found him when he’d first been turned and set him on his feet…
He muttered a silent prayer, and dropped his bow fully, sliding the unused arrow back into his quiver. Then he met his eyes again and gestured to him to come over.
The siren balked. “I’m like, naked. Not that that’s a bad thing, though, ‘cause I know I’m hot and all, but I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable—although I’m not really sure how I could make a two-hundred year old—”
Mydei held up a hand, stopping his rambling in its tracks, and shrugged off his overcoat to hand it to him.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the shore, one hand clamped over his crotch as he grabbed the coat and tried to cover himself up as best as he could. Mydei kept his gaze pointedly averted, trying to expel any thoughts of the very naked person behind him from his brain.
Although in his defense, part of being a vampire was having excellent peripheral vision, and it’s not like he saw anything he hadn’t already seen from afar.
Up close, the siren was much more beautiful than he’d anticipated; silver hair, strong jaw and light blue eyes with slit pupils. His skin shimmered faintly, much like Mydei’s own did, and his wings glinted gold in the sunlight. Part of it might be the glamor that covered all sirens, Mydei thought, but he must’ve been exceptionally handsome as a human, too.
“Don’t touch the pockets,” he instructed. There was a second part to that statement, something about there being dangerous things in there, but the siren was… far more distracting than what he was used to dealing with, and the words slipped away from him.
…Wasn’t his libido supposed to be dead too?
“So, what are we doing?” The siren asked, idly kicking a pebble into the lake. He sounded like he’s game for nearly anything, and suddenly Mydei was very glad that he was the hunter who stumbled across him, and not someone who would’ve killed him without a second thought. Or worse.
“Making you my apprentice,” he said, reaching for an empty vial in his pocket.
“You’re making me your appre— yikes !” He yelped, as Mydei sank a fang into his own wrist, collecting the dripping blood in the vial.
“Young fae shouldn’t be left alone,” Mydei told him. “That’s how monsters are made.” He corked the vial and closed his fist around it, muttering spells — a protection charm, a tracking spell, a stealth spell. That was about as much magic he could imbue into a few drops of his own blood, but it should be enough to keep him safe for the time being.
“Hold on,” the siren said, crossing his arms. “I don’t even know who you are. Or what you are.”
Mydei threaded the vial through one of the silver chains that were around his neck and held it out to him.
“Mydeimos. I’m a vampire, and I hunt monsters for a living. Put this on.”
He accepted the talisman, looping it around his neck.
“What d’you mean, ‘shouldn’t be left alone’?”
“They do things they shouldn’t because they don’t know any better,” Mydei said absently, casting a few more spells to make sure it couldn’t be used to harm him, or that it couldn’t be removed until he was strong enough to remove it himself. “So I’ll make sure you know better.”
He stepped back to check his work, and then realized: “Why haven’t you put your wings away yet? Do you want to be caught?”
The siren blinked. “I… I can do that?”
Mydei sighed; he should’ve expected it, really, given how new he was to the ‘siren’ business.
“Close your eyes and touch the ground. Visualize them melting away into thin air.”
He obliged, and a moment later his wings disappeared from view. He whooped in shock.
“Fucking hell, they’re really gone!”
Mydei shook his head. “That was just a simple glamor spell. They’re still there, just invisible. Someone who knows how to discern these things would still be able to see them, though, so be careful. Let’s go, we have things to do.”
Mydei talked as they walked. “Stay away from bronze, it’ll kill you. Don’t touch the shiny rocks. Don’t eat anything that can talk.”
“ Shiny rocks ? Is that, like, diamonds and stuff? And—“
Mydei halted, giving him a hard look. “I’m serious. Our kind may be immune to many kinds of harm that affects mortals, but we’re even more vulnerable to other things. You’ll know what shiny rocks are when you see them.”
“Okay,” he gulped. “Got it. Where are we going?”
Mydei turned on his heel, gesturing for him to follow. He resisted the urge to respond with wouldn’t you like to know? Honesty was probably the better option right now.
“First to get you some clothes, then to register you as my apprentice with the Hunters’ Guild. We’ll have to go see Anaxagoras too, for him to train you to use your siren powers correctly. And then there’s a chupacabra infestation we need to take care of. Should take about a month or so.”
“Chupacabra infe— hey , goats are peoples’ livelihood, y’know! They’ll all be dead by then!” He said, sounding genuinely upset by this. Mydei frowned.
…Huh. They would, wouldn’t they?
“Alright,” Mydei conceded. “First clothes, then the chupacabra infestation, and then we’ll do the other stuff.”
Mydei saw him pump his fist in celebration out of the corner of his eye, and felt his own lips curl up at the corners of their own accord. They walked in silence for a while, skirting the edge of the village, and then the siren spoke up again.
“So, you’re a vampire, huh? Can you turn into a bat too?”
Mydei huffed out an involuntary laugh.
“Heavens, no, I wish. It’d make all of this a lot easier.”
“Damn it,” he groaned. “That would’ve been fucking cool.”
Mydei huffed. “Hmph. Maybe.”
─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───
They bought clothes from a seamstress on the outskirts of the village. She looked quite apprehensive at first, but a few honeyed words from the siren had her relaxed and helpful almost immediately.
Mydei watched in amusement as he talked to her animatedly while she measured him.
Finally clad in attire appropriate for a hunter—a fitted shirt, pants, a doublet, brogues and a red overcoat that complemented his hair quite nicely—they headed to the southern hills, where Mydei collected the chupacabra pelts for the client, and showed him how to drain the life force he needed out of them.
Then they headed back to the capital, where he paid a visit to the fae queen. She’d appraised the siren with a cold look, and rebuked Mydei quite harshly for impulsively making decisions that could lead to the endangerment of their kind, but ultimately gave her blessing for them to proceed.
“Be careful, Mydeimos,” she had said. “Your profession needs secrecy, and sirens naturally draw attention to themselves. You already have enough of a target on your back without him adding to it.”
Good old Aglaea, Mydei thought. She may appear tough but she is fair. If it had been the king who had met them, though…
Mydei shook away the thought of having to face the king, and instead focused on the Guild paperwork in front of him. It was only then that he realized he’d never bothered to ask for the siren’s name.
Hmph .
Phainon of Aedes Elysiae was his new apprentice, Mydei discovered. Bright, expressive, conscientious, and more human than not. In just a few days, he had established himself as a near permanent fixture in Mydei’s life. Good choice for an apprentice, he seems like a smart kid, the man from the Guild’s headquarters had commented when he approved his application.
After that, it was time to hunt down Anaxa, which turned out to be much harder than he’d ever expected. Anaxa was virtually unreachable unless he wanted to be found, and the only one who could be expected to know his whereabouts was Hyacine, a healer who resided deep within the forest. It was at some point during that long, relentless search for Hyacine that Phainon finally asked.
“Why are you doing this for me? You could’ve just left me there in that bog, but you didn’t. Why? What do you get out of it?”
Mydei considered the question, poking at the bonfire idly.
“Company. Help with work. Moral support.”
Phainon blinked at him incredulously.
“…Seriously? Moral support? ”
Mydei nodded seriously. “Especially moral support.”
Phainon laughed softly. “You’re a strange guy.” He rose from the ground, stretching his arms over his head and rolling his shoulders.
“Going to bed yet?”
“In a bit,” Mydei said, instead of I’m a vampire I don’t sleep , like he had the first time Phainon had asked. Since then, he’d discovered that just because he didn’t need to sleep didn’t mean that he couldn’t . He was learning!
“Okay,” Phainon said, yawning. “Night, Mydei.”
“Good night.”
Silence surrounded them, except for the chirping of crickets in the distance and the rustling of blankets while Phainon got comfortable, and then:
“Hey, Mydei?”
“Hm?”
“Thanks. You saved me. Literally.”
Mydei glanced sideways, just enough to catch a glimpse of Phainon’s bleary smile before he pulled the blankets up further. He couldn’t help but smile back.
“It was… my pleasure, Phainon.”