Chapter 6
Niillas
He barely dares to move, afraid of breaking the strange spell that has them in its grip.
Sander nestles close to him, his now-warm hands still resting on Niillas’ back and his head leaning against Niillas’ shoulder.
But Sander’s face is still too pale, his body still shivering from time to time.
Absent-mindedly, Niillas runs a hand through Sander’s soft hair, and his proud captain lets him. Niillas can hardly believe his luck.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. Safe.” The last word seems to slip out almost against Sander’s will, and he blushes faintly. The soft hue complements Sander’s hair and makes him look unbearably cute. “How did you get her to leave us alone?”
“Huh?”
“The ghost. Nothing I said seemed to matter to her. But she listened to you.”
Niillas considers his answer carefully. Too much truth might scare Sander, but after what they’ve just been through, lying feels all kinds of wrong.
“My grandma is a woman of many talents and interests. She taught me about the tales of my people and about shamanic traditions.”
“She taught you how to drive away a ghost?”
“Umm—kinda?”
Niillas is no shaman by any means, and he isn’t cut out for the sophisticated rituals and elegant courtesy a shamanic spiritual encounter entails.
But how is he supposed to tell Sander that Marta most likely retreated because she was aware that Niillas’ claws could rip her to shreds and send her to whichever unpleasant place her kind gets banished to when it no longer can enter the human realm?
“Kinda?” Sander echoes, but he sounds amused, not angry.
Tilting his head up, he studies Niillas with his intelligent eyes bright with curiosity rather than skepticism.
It’s unsettling how easily Sander accepts the supernatural, how readily he’s adapting to a world where ghosts and trolls exist. Most people would be out of their minds with terror or denying what they’d seen.
“You handled her well,” Niillas says, avoiding Sander’s initial question. “Kept her talking, kept her focused on you instead of…” He trails off, not wanting to voice what might have happened if Sander had panicked, or if Marta had dragged him to her cold dwelling place.
“I was terrified,” Sander says, resting his head against Niillas’ shoulder. “But she seemed lonely more than anything. Desperate. Like she was trying to save me from something worse.”
“The stállu.”
“Huh?”
“The troll.”
Sander tenses.
“It’s out there, right? I saw it moving between the trees.”
Niillas nods reluctantly.
“A being from the old stories. They hunt in the deep forests, feeding on human flesh.”
“Will it come inside?”
“Probably not.”
He has encountered trolls before during his extensive hiking trips, and most of the time, they recognize him as the more dangerous predator.
But trolls are also dumb, and Niillas isn’t sure if the one circling outside is able to resist the delicious smell of warm skin and cold fear radiating from Sander.
And something else, something a troll might find even more enticing.
“You’re baptized, right?”
Sander shudders.
“Yes? I’m not religious, haven’t been to church for ages, but—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Niillas says, holding him closer on instinct, and looking down at the bloody scratches decorating Sander’s leg. Shit. Christian blood and fear. Irresistible to a troll.
“Oh, god,” Sander breathes.
The Nordic tales about trolls and the Sámi myths about the stállu are similar enough that Sander knows exactly what he’s talking about.
“Does—does that mean a Christian symbol could stop the troll? A cross or a prayer?”
Niillas smiles against Sander’s hair despite their circumstances. He’s more clever than most people give him credit for. Quick to adapt. Always strategic. That makes him so successful on the ice.
“Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. Unless you’re a true believer or secretly a Lutheran priest.”
Carefully, Niillas pulls the little devil’s horns from Sander’s hair.
“Damn, I forgot about those.” Sander presses closer again, still so cold and spooked. “What do we do? Just hope the stállu doesn’t dare to enter the house, or doesn’t think about crashing the building with rocks?”
Niillas has to swallow an irritated growl. As if he’d let anything happen to Sander.
“My grandma taught me a few tricks. I’ll drive the stállu off if it comes to that.”
A soft sigh escapes Sander’s lips. Relief, Niillas realizes.
Sander is quiet for a long moment.
“You knew about the stállu, right? That it could be out there.”
Clever. And way too perceptive.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because its dwelling place is near, isn’t it? I didn’t make the connection right away, but I was on the other side of the lake this past summer for soil sampling. There are relics of ancient buildings above the treeline.”
“A stállu site.”
“Yes, that’s what Professor Lindalen said they were called. The remains of several buildings; I hiked right through them.”
“Yeah, I know the place.”
“Is that why you volunteered to accompany me tonight? Because you knew what we might face?”
Niillas doesn’t have the heart to deny Sander’s assumption.
“I couldn’t let you come alone.”
“Even though you think I’m reckless and stupid.”
Sander’s voice takes on a self-deprecating edge, and Niillas can’t help but pet his hair some more to ease the sting of it.
“I never thought you were stupid. Reckless, yes. But brave. Too clever for your own good, if anything.”
Sander huffs a laugh against his chest.
“I’ve been called a lot of things, but too clever isn’t one of them.”
“You thought this would be a good way to keep the defense in line, especially Henrik. What’s one uncomfortable night compared to a successful season, am I right?”
“Henrik is an undisciplined ass. So yeah, maybe I thought—”
The barking of a dog makes Sander flinch. The sound comes from outside, loud and angry.
“What the actual fuck?”
“Karo,” Sander says, eyes wide with rekindled fear.
“Who?”
“Marta’s dog. She said it barked at the troll.”
“She may have gone outside to investigate,” Niillas says. The story makes a sick kind of sense. “And the troll caved her head in.”
The temperature in the room drops, and Sander shivers against him.
Marta is still nearby. Niillas can sense her cold presence lingering at the edge of his awareness.
And outside, the stállu is moving among the trees, its smell tickling Niillas’ nose from time to time.
The barking certainly lures it closer to the house, just like the night it killed Marta, which is probably why she sent her dog out in the first place.
To make Sander desperate enough to come to her. Vengeful bitch.
“You need to eat something,” Niillas decides, reaching for Jonas’ forgotten picnic basket. “Your body needs fuel to warm up.”
He needs Sander as resilient and alert as possible, and he needs Sander’s trust if it comes to the worst.
“I’m not hungry,” his captain complains predictably.
“Good thing that I didn’t ask if you were hungry then,” Niillas counters, both out of frustration and the need to find out whether Sander will defer to his authority if he acts boldly enough.
He unwraps a granola bar and pushes it into Sander’s hand.
“Eat,” he orders.
And Sander does. No further protest, only breaking the bar in two and returning one piece right back to Niillas. Warmth spreads through Niillas’ belly. He uncaps a bottle of juice and offers it to Sander.
“This too.”
“Bossy,” Sander says, but drinks obediently.
“You like it.”
The words slip out before Niillas can think better of them, and Sander’s cheeks flush pink in the firelight. But instead of pulling away and putting some distance between them, Sander makes himself comfortable against Niillas’ shoulder again.
“Maybe,” he admits so quietly that Niillas almost doesn’t catch it.
The wild and protective part of Niillas’ soul jumps on this one word, hoarding it like a precious jewel.
Sander fits so perfectly in his arms, warm and pliant and trusting.
It would be easy to tilt his chin up, to kiss him until he makes those soft sounds Niillas has imagined him making so many times.
But not here. Not now, with a vengeful ghost and a stállu both out for Sander’s blood.
Not while Sander is still unaware of Niillas’ own dual nature and unable to consent to binding himself to such an entity.
Unsuspecting of Niillas’ inner struggle, Sander finishes the granola bar and most of the juice before his eyelids start drooping. The warmth from the fire and Niillas’ body heat are doing their work, lulling him toward sleep.
“I should stay awake,” Sander mumbles, even as he curls up in Niillas’ lap. “We need to keep watch.”
“No. Rest. I’ll watch.”
“But—”
“Sleep, Captain.”
It’s a testament to how exhausted Sander is that he doesn’t argue further. Within minutes, his breathing evens out, and his full weight settles against Niillas’ chest. He marvels at the trust Sander places in him, and the fact that he’s able to sleep at all under these circumstances.
They are granted maybe fifteen minutes of rest before the nightmare begins anew.
It begins with a roar like storm winds in barren branches, and then the dog starts barking again. Sander stirs in his arms but doesn’t wake. Small mercies.
But he can sense Marta’s presence drawing closer.
The temperature in the living room plummets, and Sander whimpers in his sleep as he senses it too.
Every protective instinct Niillas possesses surges to the surface.
Let her come. If she gets anywhere near Sander for a second time, Niillas won’t spare her again.
And outside, heavy footsteps circle the house.
The stállu is growing bolder, drawn maybe by the dog’s barking or by the sweet scent of fear that still clings to Sander.
The front door rattles as something huge brushes against it.
Damn, the stállu must be hungry if it’s willing to come this close to human settlement, even if the house is as rundown as the farm.
If both creatures decide to attack them, Niillas isn’t sure if he can defeat them. At least not in his current form.
Fuck.
Carefully, he eases Sander onto the sleeping bag, making sure he’s positioned close to the fire and as far away from the door as possible. Then he stands, muscles already expanding with the beginning of change.
“Please don’t fear me,” Niillas whispers, looking down at Sander’s prone form.
The shift comes easier than usual, perhaps because the veil between the worlds is thin tonight, or maybe the change is helped along by the intensity of his need to protect.
His human form dissolves, muscles expanding, bones lengthening and thickening.
Thick fur sprouts from his skin as he grows into the form of an enormous bear.
Not a brown bear native to Northern Scandinavia, but a polar bear by form.
Only larger. And pitch black. The kind of bear Niillas’ insecure thirteen-year-old self thought was incredibly cool when he first changed.
The irony isn’t lost on him. A simple brown bear would be so much more practical.
And probably less terrifying. But also probably less suitable to fight a stállu, so Niillas isn’t going to complain.
He sniffs the air, and his enhanced senses immediately catalog every threat. Somewhere in the rafters above them, Marta’s icy presence hovers, the troll’s foul smell is growing stronger, and Sander’s breathing has grown shallow in the dropping temperature.
Moving on silent paws, Niillas walks over to Sander’s sleeping form.
His spicy-sweet scent fills Niillas’ nostrils.
Cinnamon and blood orange, the human part of his dual spirit supplies.
Fate, the bear says. Niillas settles around Sander oh so carefully, his massive body creating a living barrier against the cold.
Sander stirs briefly as warm fur envelops him, but doesn’t wake, instead burrowing deeper into the protective cocoon with a contented sigh.
The front door rattles again, more violently this time. Through the windows, Niillas catches glimpses of something tall and wrong-shaped prowling outside, and the stupid ghost dog keeps barking.
But if the stállu gets bold enough to come inside looking for Sander, it will have to go through Niillas first.
He curls tighter around his sleeping captain, his head coming to rest protectively right over Sander’s heart.
Let the stállu come. Let the ghost try her tricks.
They’ll find that Sander Eriksen has the protection of something far more dangerous than either of them.
Something that will tear them apart with teeth and claws before it lets harm come to the man resting trustingly in its embrace.
A content purr rumbles from deep in Niillas’ chest.
His ears perk up.
The black polar bear waits.