Chapter Text
“Nandor, where the hell are we going?” Nadja complains. “The theater is the other way!”
Nandor isn’t listening. He strides through the streets with terrible purpose, long legs eating up the distance, without a care for his companions scurrying to keep up. Every now and again he stops and scents the air like a hound, then marches on.
Nadja is the first--besides Nandor--to catch the smell.
“Oh, no ,” she groans, pinching her nostrils. “ Really?” she demands. “You dragged us away from the festival films for this?”
“Film festival,” Guillermo mutters.
Laszlo sniffs and his whole face screws up in disgust.
“Oh, fantastic. We’ll never get him away now.”
“What? What is it?” Guillermo asks. “I don’t smell anything, what does he smell?”
“ Horses ,” the couple answers in unison.
The blocks have gotten irregular, have turned into winding streets that are mostly houses, and at last Guillermo smells it: leather, horse hair, and animal shit. Nandor turns a corner, and is out of sight. Laszlo and Nadja have dropped back, interest lost now that they knew the game, but Guillermo--never happy to have his master out of sight for long, for safety reasons if nothing else--speeds up.
A large sign marred by a horse smiling with human teeth announces that they have found ‘Happy Meadows Stable’, although this being Staten Island, there was not a meadow in sight. Despite the hour and the fall chill, there are plenty of people moving around, leading horses, riding horses, existing near horses in that particular horse-person kind of way.
Nandor sets his hands on the fence poles and breathes in deeply, eyes fixed on the animals moving by. His gaze is hungry, but not in the usual way. It’s less primal thirst and more...longing.
“Master?” Guillermo asks, trying to sound like he isn’t out of breath. “What are we doing here?”
“Look at them all,” Nandor says, voice filled with wonder. “I didn’t know so many people still rode horses.”
“For most of them it’s a hobby,” Guillermo says, leaning against the fence, imitating his master’s pose. “Usually rich people and kids. And rich kids.” He drums his fingers, debating whether or not he should say it. Nandor would certainly appreciate it. He would definitely enjoy it. Maybe he hasn’t ridden a horse in a hundred years or so, but he is a vampire--it wasn’t like he could get seriously hurt.
It’s everybody else’s safety Guillermo is concerned about.
“You know,” Guillermo says at last. “They’d probably let you ride one if you paid--”
Nandor’s entire face lights up with a smile so dazzling that Guillermo briefly forgets how to breathe. And Guillermo had made him smile like that, with such a small thing, just a few words--
“Blow that,” Laszlo says, behind them, and Nandor scowls at him. “No way, I’m not missing out on my boy Maxie in his sexiest role ever so you can go playing around in horse shit. Nadja?"
"It's Nosferatu, not Nosfer-horse-too," Nadja says, and it must be love that makes Laszlo smile.
"Excellent wordplay, my dear. Gizmo?”
“No, I’m definitely going to stay here and make sure this doesn’t go horribly wrong,” he says, though he knows if Nandor really gets it into his head to re-enact the good old days, there is little Guillermo can do to stop him.
With a flutter of wings, Guillermo is left to lead the way into the main office. It doesn’t smell any less horsey in here. They catch a couple of odd looks--well, Nandor does--but what else was new?
“What are they wearing?” Nandor whispers to Guillermo, staring at a gaggle of teenagers passing by, giving them much the same look they’re giving him.
“Uhh...riding pants? Riding boots? Helmets?”
“I’m not wearing any of those,” Nandor says, stiffly.
Guillermo’s imagination cannot even conjure up the image.
“No, master.” A horrible thought occurs. “You are going to wear pants, though, right? Like...any pants? At all?”
Nandor gives him a haughty look.
“I do not ride naked, Guillermo.”
And that is an image his imagination can, and does, conjure up.
The woman at the front desk looks up as they approach. Guillermo can see the quick calculations going on in her head, and in the end it is Guillermo’s eyes she meets when she says “And what can I do for you gentlemen tonight?”
“Do you rent horses?” Guillermo asks. “Or, uh, loan?”
Guillermo is not a horse person. It’s nothing against horses specifically; he’s uncomfortable with any animal more than half his size. It was hard to be at ease around something that could kick you to death with its feet on a whim.
“You mean for riding lessons?”
Nandor’s eyes blaze with indignation. He draws himself up and hisses “ I-- ”
“--have plenty of experience with horses,” Guillermo interjects, earning himself an irritated look that he ignores. “He just wants to ride one for a few hours.”
The answer, fortunately, was yes. Normally you had to schedule it in advance, but a quick glower and hand wave and jolt of hypnosis from Nandor, and they are being led out back towards the stables.
“You’re pretty tall,” the employee says. His nametag reads 'Timothy - Groom'. “So we’ll put you on Magna.”
“This is a stallion?”
“A mare. The stable doesn’t keep stallions. We have a few that are boarding here, but we don’t rent them out to people. Stallions can be too unpredictable.”
Nandor snorts derisively, sounding not unlike a horse himself.
“If your riders are not strong enough to manage a real horse they should not be riding in the first place.”
“...Right. Ok. How about, you guys wait right here, and I’ll go get the horse for you, great, ok, be right back.”
The young man hurries away, glancing back over his shoulder at them. Unconcerned, the vampire shrugs off his coat and hands it to Guillermo, who in turn hands Nandor a hair tie (he always keeps at least a few on him, in case a feeding frenzy gets particularly messy).
“I am not dressed appropriately,” Nandor says, twisting his hair up into what Guillermo does not --cannot--think of as a manbun. “But it will do for tonight. When we get home I will need you to find my riding clothes. They are in the house. Somewhere.”
“Yes, Master.”
He would look for them during the day, and if they turned out to be something that would very definitely get them un-invited to the stable, he would un-find them and get Nandor something from this decade.
Don’t think about him in jeans, don’t think about him in jeans, don’t-- too late.
“Here we go,” Guillermo says, cheerfully, trying to focus on the dark brown horse Timothy is leading down the...hallway? Aisle? Was there a special word for it? Probably. Horse people practically had their own language.
Timothy holds out the reins, but Nandor doesn’t take them. He examines the horse critically.
“This horse is dead,” he says at last. Both Guillermo and the groom look at each other.
“No, she’s not?” Timothy says, framing it as a question.
“Look at her! She is practically asleep where she stands! She has no spirit! She is barely alive! No offense,” he adds, to the horse, patting it on the neck. “You would be very good at pulling carts.”
Then he glares at Timothy and stalks down the hallway, examining the horses in their stalls as Guillermo and the groom hurry after him.
“I can find you a different horse,” Timothy calls. “Sir? Sir!”
Nandor halts in front of a stall containing a large horse with a reddish-brown coat. It eyes him suspiciously.
“This one,” he says. To Guillermo’s eye, the two horses are identical, except for the color.
“Oh no,” Timothy says. “You don’t want Bastion, she’s really picky about who she lets ride her. You have to get to know her first.”
Nandor ignores him, and slides the stall door open. The horse takes a wary step back, but Nandor begins to speak in a soft, soothing tone that Guillermo has never, ever heard from him before.
“Good girl. Such a pretty girl; a strong girl.” He steps into the stall and holds out a hand, flat. The horse noses his fingers and lets out a snort. Nandor begins to stroke the horse’s forehead. It swishes its tail peacefully.
“What the fuck,” whispers Timothy.
“Yes, you are not picky , you have pride . You are too good to be mounted by any bow-legged peasant with a saddle. Only the deserving may touch you.” He holds out a hand and twitches his fingers. “Guillermo, the bridle.”
Timothy pulls it down from the hook and passes it to Guillermo, unable to tear his gaze away from the scene before him.
“She bit Jerry last week and he’s been here for a year.”
Guillermo stretches his arm out, trying to get the bridle to Nandor without taking a step into the stall. The horse turns its head and eyes him, rumbling in its chest. Nandor shushes it and takes the bridle, sliding it on over the horse’s nose.
“Let us show them how it is done. We shall ride like warriors of old, with death at our heels.”
Without warning, Nandor swings himself up onto the horse’s bare back. The motion is so smooth and so practiced, Guillermo knows Nandor could do that long before he had any vampiric flight at his disposal.
“Uh, do you want a saddle…?” Timothy asks. Nandor gives him a haughty look.
“I am not actually riding into battle. I do not need a saddle for trotting around in a circle.” He digs in his heels and lets out a triumphant “ hyah!”
Guillermo, Timothy, and the unwanted horse barely have time to scramble out of the way as Nandor and Bastion erupt from the stall, flying down the hall towards the open doors. He disappears from view, but Guillermo can hear the screams of humans and horses alike as Nandor careens through the stable.
“Dude, what the fuck,” Timothy says.
“I’m gonna be honest,” Guillermo says, “this is a new one.”