Chapter Text
Every night since he’d been bitten, Cassian dreamt of gnashing teeth.
He dreamt of one set of teeth in particular.
It was always his teeth. Strahd’s teeth. Strahd’s clawed hands lifting him up, wrenching Cassian’s hair to yank his head to the side. Strahd’s jaws opening like the mouth of a serpent.
It was the paralysis he’d felt as Strahd gripped Cassian and bit into him harshly. It was the way he had twitched, helpless and limp, as Strahd gulped down mouthful after hungry mouthful of fresh hot blood.
The helplessness haunted him. It was the way Strahd had seemed to hypnotize him, to petrify his body frozen so he couldn’t resist. The way Strahd did it again and again in Cassian’s dreams. Cassian would die, and the dream would restart. Strahd would be biting him again.
Why hadn’t he drained him completely?
In his dreams, he always did. Strahd always drained him dry, or he must have, for Cassian could never remember the ending. He’d always just wake up with a jolt of panic, soaked in his own sweat.
This went on for a few days, as the bitemark began to close over. The relentless nightmares kept him from any meaningful rest.
On the nth loop, the dream started to twist itself. It was Strahd binding him so he definitely couldn’t fight back. Then, Strahd poisoning his mind to make Cassian bare his neck and beg for Strahd to bite him. Cassian didn’t want it, he was terrified, but whatever Strahd had done to his mind was so convincing he begged it and meant it and it made him want to keel over and retch onto the floor.
Cassian had gone this long without being bitten by a vampire, at least, until a couple of days ago. Lasted a whole twenty five years. Many of those years spent hunting these things and not a single bite, though he couldn’t say he didn’t get scraped up. Hazard of the job.
Of course it would be Strahd to break his lucky streak—self proclaimed all-powerful god being of this realm or whatever he said he was. He was an asshole, a dictator, a smug piece of shit bastard, Cassian thought.
But now Cassian knew just what it felt like to be bitten into like a piece of meat. To have his life force sucked out with gusto, with vigor. He got to relive it over and over in his dreams until he panicked himself awake.
◆─◇─◆
Cassian didn't know what time it was when his eyes snapped open. His heart still pounded in his chest. The inside of the old church was still dark. He peered over the shadowed outlines of cots and makeshift camp supplies. The other travelers were obscure sleeping lumps in the darkness.
Cassian’s vision was still thick with sleep when he spotted a blurred figure across the room.
A moment passed, his eyes focused, and then his blood fucking froze.
It was him.
Strahd sat across from him on one of the refurbished church pews. He smiled wickedly, showing his fangs. Around him, the other travelers of Cassian’s party slept soundly, completely oblivious to his presence.
Without thinking, Cassian scrambled back on his cot, trying to huddle himself in and press his back into the wall, as if making himself smaller would make him disappear. As if pressing his back into the bricks hard enough would let him sink right through them.
This had to be another dream.
"Go ahead and call out for help, if you like," Strahd said very softly, like a bat's wings on the night. Strahd knew full well Cassian's throat was still too damaged from the bite to make enough noise to wake anyone up. He just wanted to see Cassian squirm.
Cassian could feel his chest shaking now. Full body tremors. This couldn’t be happening. His throat clenched up painfully. Strahd was right. He’d had so little time to recover since Strahd had bitten his neck so hard it’d nearly killed him. There was no way he’d be able to scream.
“You’re— you're not— real,” Cassian hissed desperately, eyes wide, his voice still hoarse and strained. It hurt, but he was lucky he could make any sound at all, considering the gaping holes in his neck had just barely begun to heal.
"I'm not?" Strahd said, with feigned surprise. He stood up and glided silently, his feet hovering an inch off the dusty cobblestone.
Cassian was petrified with fear as Strahd floated towards him like an ominous specter. He could feel his breath quickening, until it took on a panicked, stuttering shape.
“No—!” he tried to cry out, but his words were stifled once again by his shredded throat.
“Dont—!” It was hoarse and painful. Hardly above a whisper. Pathetic.
Strahd reached out one hand, blackened claws still stained with what could still be Cassian's dried blood, and gently stroked Cassian's cheek. Amusement danced in his eyes.
Oh god, the vampire was touching his face— but gently? Like he was some small, fragile animal.
Cassian finally managed to react and tried to duck away from the vampire’s hand.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Cassian hissed. He’d wanted to sound intimidating, wanted to sound firm and stern and unshaken. Instead, it was another frantic, hoarse whisper.
Strahd let out a low, smoky laugh.
"You seem to be a bit confused, still, about who is giving whom commands here." Strahd took Cassian's chin between two fingers and forced the human's gaze into his face, to make eye contact.
"Look at me, now."
Cassian didn't have a choice. His limbs felt like they were encased in ice— frozen and heavy and unmovable. Yet the vampire lord seemed to maneuver him with alarming ease, gently tilting his chin up as though it weighed no more than a feather, as though his whole body wasn’t full of thick, viscous liquid-lead.
Cassian trembled as he gazed up into the vampire's face. He was fucking terrifying. All teeth— all teeth that Cassian had seen–had felt– in action.
“Wh-what do you want?“ Cassian cursed the burning in his throat and the way his voice shook, that terrified whisper he was forced to retain. No way to call for help. No way to alert the others.
Maybe if he could throw something? If he could lug something far enough as to hit one of the sleeping figures— but any brilliant planning abilities were now buried deep deep beneath the surface of his mind, sunken beneath hundreds of pounds of water pressure.
Strahd's eyes flared with the full force of his hypnotizing power, locking Cassian in his psychic grip. Easy.
All of a sudden, as quickly as that piercing ice had overtaken him, Cassian was struck with something warm.
Warm and hazy and urgent, the feeling pulled at his mind and twisted the corners of his vision like a sultry, persuasive vignette, until it was overflowing his every sense like a shot of heroin and had narrowed the whole world down to Him.
To Lord Strahd.
And he was terrifying and magnificent.
Strahd put one hand to his lips. "Shh. Quiet now. Let's move outside so we don't wake your friends."
Strahd’s voice warped in Cassian’s ears, as though he were speaking right through his very skull. As if Strahd had just said the most incredible, desirable thing in the world, and just hearing it made Cassian’s stomach lurch and his heart race to obey. It was beautiful and nauseating.
This was worse than the dreams, some deep part of Cassian knew.
But that part certainly wasn’t at the wheel right now. His eyes only saw Strahd. He fell silent. Nothing pleased Cassian more at that very moment than to fall silent. Because Strahd had ordered it so.
Strahd released Cassian’s face and motioned for him to follow, gliding silently out the door and into the cool night air.
Cassian followed Strahd like an equally haunted specter, eyes hazy and reverent the whole time, as he followed obediently, silently behind him.
Strahd led Cassian out into the darkness of the night, where his fiendish nightmare waited outside the church, its mane and tail blazing with fire that dimly lit its surroundings and cast jumping shadows all around. It pawed at the ground and let out a soft nicker as Strahd drew close.
"Good girl," he said, petting its nose. Strahd put one boot in a stirrup and swung up into the saddle.
All of a sudden, five vampire spawn crawled out of the shadows, almost invisible except for their glowing red eyes. They stalked towards Cassian with hungry looks.
This next part wasn't strictly necessary, but Strahd thought it would be amusing to make Cassian choose between being menaced by spawn or willingly getting up into the saddle with him. Strahd controlled them all, of course, every vampire in Barovia was under his spell. He just wanted to see what Cassian would do.
The spawn crouched nearby, letting out soft, unnerving hisses and slowly drawing nearer to Cassian with no expression on their dead, emotionless faces.
Strahd released his charm on Cassian.
As quickly as it came, the spell lifted, and Cassian was struck with horror as he took in his situation.
"We're going to Castle Ravenloft," Strahd said matter-of-factly. "There is enough room in this saddle for you to ride with me, if you wish."
Cassian staggered back, but the growling creatures behind him sent him whirling the other direction. He looked back and forth. He screamed for help, but once again no sound came out. Just an awful shredding feeling in the back of his throat. He was fucked.
Strahd’s terms were clear. Get terrorized by these feral vampires or get on that freaky horse with him.
To Castle Ravenloft.
He’d been there once before. Had seen what he was sure was only a tiny fraction of the bloodthirst and cruelty that took place in that awful castle. He could only imagine what went on behind closed doors. He preferred not to at all.
Cassian found himself backing away from the approaching prowling things anyway. Towards Strahd and that fucking demon horse.
“Please don’t take me,” he whispered desperately, as he was forced to draw closer to the vampire lord and his hellbeast. The spawn circled him. Cassian drew his silver blade, pointing it this way and that, trying to hold it up to keep the vampire spawn from getting at him as they prowled and snapped.
"This is not a negotiation," came Strahd’s voice from above.
Strahd held a hand down, extended for Cassian to take to climb up. Behind him, ominous green light danced in the air as the midnight ghost parade from the church graveyard began. Dozens of figures started spawning from the ground and shambling mindlessly towards the castle. The ones Strahd had bragged about when they’d first met, ghosts of the ones who’d opposed him and whose lives he’d snuffed out.
"I have half a mind to send you all to join them tonight, but luckily for you, you're all much more interesting alive. For now. Maybe I'll take you all one by one. That dusk elf woman would be next for sure. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's your turn."
No— fuck that. There was no way Cassian would just get on that horse after that little power trip of a speech and give Strahd his way.
Did Strahd think Cassian was an actual idiot? Did he think Cassian was just gonna get on that horse like some kind of obedient dog and blindly follow him to god knows what painful end? Cassian had cut down hundreds of vampires in his time as a hunter, what was a couple more feral things, right? He swung his blade, trying his best to behead the first one, still weakened by the bite injury and trying not to wince at the way his sore tendons pulled at his shoulder and collarbone.
Cassian slashed through one, then two, hoping to make quick work of these creatures and hurry back into the party’s camp at the old church. He didn’t know what he had done to earn Strahd’s attention, but he assumed it probably had something to do with being more than a little drunk and possibly quite rude at Strahd’s little ‘dinner party.’
Oh, and probably for stabbing him through the fucking throat with a silver dagger. Which was what had gotten him bitten in the first place. Okay. Cassian could admit, maybe he hadn't been so smart about his interactions with the man who was supposedly the most powerful being in the entire land.
For his best effort, Cassian got his ass kicked handily. There were too many of them–more and more vampire spawn kept crawling out of the bushes and out of the trees like they were generating on the spot.
Strahd watched with amusement as his spawn thrashed Cassian--the human got a few decent hits in, but the vampires in Barovia were far more powerful than the ones Cassian was used to slaying back in his homeland.
Cassian bared his teeth as the vampires circled in on him, it was too much, he was too weak from the bite and having his fucking life force drained. He didn’t last long standing.
Eventually, one of them knocked the knife out of his hand and the rest descended on him to nip at him with their teeth and claws. With his only weapon gone, he knew he was truly fucked.
Cassian was tackled to the ground. He kicked and thrashed as the hoard of vampire spawn pounced on him, but his weak protests were no match for their gnashing teeth. Like a swarm of piranha, they tore at his flesh and left him bloody and scraped, teeth marks and jagged claws leaving streaks of blood across his face, arms, chest and already-injured neck. He tried to scream for the others, one last ditch effort. Curse his fucked out voice. Curse the monster that had reduced him to this.
The hoard of spawn were obviously not going all out--possibly at the command of their master, to avoid killing him. They withdrew when Cassian was left battered and bruised on the ground.
Strahd got down from his nightmare and walked over to Cassian, taking proud, smug strides until Strahd’s boots filled his vision. From the ground, Cassian gave a weak cough, groaning in pain.
Truth be told, that was exactly what Strahd had wanted to see. So many people would have just been cowed and gotten on the horse--which was boring. Strahd liked targets that needed to be broken, like wild horses to tame.
Strahd grabbed Cassian by the arm, lifted him to his feet, and dragged him over towards the horse.
Oh god Cassian was so fucked. He was being dragged so easily, like he was a limp rag doll.
“Let me go!” He tried to cry out. Hoarse whispers came instead.
He tried to push away from Strahd but found his arms had hardly any strength in them anymore, having used the last bits of his energy and adrenaline to fight the hoard of spawn and fail so miserably. It was humiliating.
Fuckfuckfuck— Cassian was being hauled up to that fiery horse— was being thrown into the back of it like he was mere luggage.
Cassian screamed for help. Screamed his already injured throat raw, until it burned like fire and then some, as though it’d been stripped bare and whipped by his own hoarse screams.
And to no end. Nobody heard him. Nobody would be coming.
Strahd hefted Cassian up into the saddle, then got on behind him, sandwiching the human between Strahd's chest and the horse's fiery mane. It radiated heat, but did not burn him.
"Let's be off, then," Strahd said with a wicked grin.
The nightmare galloped off into the misty night, its fiery mane casting distorted shadows on all it passed.