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storiesbyrhi · 2 months

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Witch!Reader x Bat/Vampire!Eddie Munson Series Masterlist The Grimoire The Timeline

Warnings: canon typical violence, horror genre typical violence/some infrequent gore, swearing, animal death, no beta, death in childbirth (mentioned, not described), abusive parents, suicide, spiders/bugs, grief/mourning; light smut; warnings updated each chapter.

Synopsis: No witch has stepped foot in Hawkins since 1845, but when Vecna opens the ground and poisons the town, a voice begins to call to you. Have you been brought back to this cursed place to heal the townspeople’s wounds, to save a hexed bat that always finds its way to you, or to redefine your history with a reunion 150 years in the making?

Chapter Summary: Pulling strings and aura reading. 3124 words.

1986

Hedy Lamarr: Golden Age movie star and inventor. George Antheil: avant-garde composer and inventor. Together, at the beginning of World War II, they developed a radio guidance system for the Allied Forces that could employ frequency hopping technology in order to overcome the issue of the Axis Powers’ signal jamming. Decades later, their innovation would become the basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth tech.

The Hollywood dinner party Hedy and George were both invited to would mark their meeting in 1940. Hedy hadn’t planned on attending.

“I hear you won’t be the only free thinker there, Hed,” Abby sing-songed from the passenger seat of Hedy’s car. “Maybe you should go. And besides, Janet’s parties are always so fashionable. I’m sure even more so now she’s married that little costumer designer of hers.”

And with that, Abby had pulled yet another set of strings. It was what she excelled at. Mostly, that was a good thing. She was a good witch. However, you hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye, especially since she was prone to stealing your clothes. When she cleared her throat, you noticed she was wearing the purple lace top you loved. Not lost on the road trip to Hawkins then.

“While it is in a witch’s nature to romanticise… well, everything... I must redirect your attention to what is clearly the most critical issue…” Abby started. She shot you a look. “Where is your angelic vampire now?”

Gillian looked at Sally. She had assumed you’d left Eddie in Hawkins. Certainly, he couldn’t be within the walls of the coven. A vampire couldn’t cross the hidden forest threshold.

You felt Kelsey move closer to you, standing behind you, closing ranks.

“Somewhere safe,” you told Abby.

“Can’t be more specific than that?”

“Fuck, Abby, does that matter?”

“I just want to know if you’ve made the same mistake twice. Did you bring a fox into the henhouse again?”

“I resent the implication of being a defenseless hen,” Kels complained.

The witches were talking among themselves once more, Abby planting a seed of fear in the coven. Eyes darted around, often flicking to you with accusatory stares. Your stomach was churning and Eddie was pushed as deeply into the corner of your pocket as he could go.

“Doesn’t this boil down to – do the means justify the ends? Because we have never abided by that before,”

“If the ends are the survival of the coven and the safety of the humans, then yes!”

Arguments were breaking out across the hall.

“Why didn’t she tell us about the vampire as soon as she happened across it?”

“Because we are a coven, not a hive mind. We are allowed to explore and learn for ourselves.”

You couldn’t gauge if a consensus was forming. Questions were coming hard and fast.

“Can we trust any of them again?��

“Where is the justice?”

“If it really is good, if… he has a soul… were there others?”

“What else have we been wrong about?”

“Even if it is good, what if it makes more, and they are the monsters we used to know?”

The tension was continuing to build. Those in the coven who were conflict-avoidant began to filter out of the hall. Whatever happened, what conclusion came, they would accept unconditionally. Other witches who had hitherto said nothing, began to share their opinions with those near them.

A voice called from within the crowd. A demand to be brought closer. Guðrún sat in her enchanted rocking chair, letting it glide just above the ground until she came to a stop before you. She was the oldest in the coven, having lived lives upon lives upon lives.

You knew Guðrún would scold Gillian and Sally later. To keep her in the dark about such important matters showed her a deep disrespect. That matter would be settled in private, among friends. You, though, the way she looked at you was as cold as ice.

“You are a healer. A rare and special gift for a witch. It comes as no surprise that you believed you saw life in something undead. When you tell your story, conviction yellow. Beloving pink.”

Guðrún was the only aura reader of the coven. Ancient wisdom gave her additional senses.

“But now. As you stand. Green turning bad. Not yet deception. Something concealed.”

Don’t break eye contact.

Don’t hold your breath.

Don’t roll over and show your soft belly.

“Too many. Too many hues. What is concealed… It is a… void. Not black, but a vacuum.”

Guðrún’s gaze trailed down to where Eddie was in your pocket. She couldn’t see him, but she could see the empty space around him where an aura should be.

Sally had figured it out the night before. The way you sat, careful of the way your jacket draped over body. Other physical cues. It was that, and that she just knew you. You’d never be parted from Eddie again. She kept the secret from her sister.

Gillian worked it out only then, following Guðrún’s line of sight. “You couldn’t unhex him completely? He returned to the bat form?” she asked you, stepping closer, ignoring the coven’s growing sense of anger and terror.

You said nothing.

She narrowed her eyes. “No. You did. But… This is how you got him through the gate… A trick of form?”

Realisation rippled outwards. For a moment, curiosity and anxiety were radiating from the coven in equal measures.

“If it is good, such a well behaved creature, then show us,” Abby called.

“He is not a show dog, Abigail,” you spat at her.

“Obviously not a dog. A bat. You’ve always had a penchant for the poetic. It’s a bit on the nose though,”

“Shut the fuck up, Abby,” Kelsey growled.

A strange sort of anticipatory silence fell across the hall. You knew what they were all waiting for.

…

1986, a few days earlier

“It smells nice,” Eddie commented.

He was sitting on the couch behind you. You’d dragged your coffee table altar closer to it, so you could sit between his legs on the floor and do your work.

“It’s the sage. You always say something when there’s sage.”

Your protection spell for Eddie had been finished, but in the eleventh hour, you had a stroke of inspiration.

The potion was a total risk. It was more guesswork than witchcraft. Almost a Hail Mary. You’d probably be throwing up into the mix out of stress if Eddie wasn’t gently playing with your hair.

It was symbiosis. He liked to have his hands on you. You liked his nails on your scalp. Everyone was kept sedated.

“It’s a good idea, my love,” Eddie told you, again.

“In theory,”

“And in practice. It will work.”

…

1986, a few days later

You knew what they were all waiting for.

“Remember that what you put into the world comes back tenfold,” you warned.

After one last look to Kelsey for support, you reached into your jacket and scooped Eddie up. While keeping your hand touching your chest, you uncurled your fingers to reveal the small bat.

Mostly, the witches were underwhelmed. Some, confused.

“Turn it back,” a voice from somewhere in the crowd said.

“Again. He is not a fucking show dog,” you sneered.

“Then how do we know it’s not dangerous?” Abby asked. “Who says as soon as it’s back in its vampire form, it won’t try to kill us all?”

She’s a good witch, you reminded yourself. A good witch. Part of your coven. But every family has the shit-stirring little sister that could stand to be brought down a peg or two. Alas, it was not the time nor place.

“Me,” you answered.

“And me,” Kelsey added.

“If you come pleading for absolution, the condition of an introduction is not too great an ask,” Guðrún declared. “If it is not a monster, then a meeting should pose no challenge,”

“The challenge doesn’t lie with me. It is with the coven,” you told her.

“You fear violence,”

“Yes. Should I not? Can you tell me all the colours emanating around us are peaceful blues? I know you see red and black and midnight tones. Why shouldn’t I fear this?”

Guðrún studied your face, briefly read the room. Before she could say anything else, and before Abby could move things along with a tug of a string, you let yourself really feel the fear. You wanted to puke.

“I have everything to lose,” you said, voice cracking. Eddie’s tiny little bat hands clung to your shirt, your hands shielding him still. “I am entirely prepared to lose my place here. And, you know what happens to a covenless witch. I have spent weeks agonising over this. All the possible outcomes. Yet here I fucking am. Telling you, all of you, what I did. What I did wrong. Why I did it. Telling you that I was stupid and I feel embarrassed. But that I was in love. That I am in love. That I was hurt in an immeasurable way. But I have found a way from there to here, and that means something. It is worth something.”

Everybody was silent.

It was always going to come to this.

Turning to Kelsey, she pre-empted your request, casting darkness over the windows, then heading out the hall.

“His name is Eddie. Edward. He was twenty when he was turned. It was 1586. He had no choice. He’s almost finished The Lord of the Rings. He helps me forage. He does housework… Eddie has a list of cats throughout history he thinks are cool. His favourite is Unsinkable Sam… He’s… He’s not what you think he is.”

Still, nobody said anything.

Kelsey reappeared at your side, holding out a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. Taking them, you turned your back on the coven, standing close enough to Kels that you formed a small partition. Your teeth were trying to chatter, nervous energy screaming to get out of you.

Please. Please. Please.

You didn’t know who you were praying to.

You said the words, Eddie appeared.

The silence became a living thing. It ate up gasps and giggles. Words and wind.

Eddie dressed quickly, but not too quickly. No vampire speed. No sudden movements. He looked you dead in the eye, your reflection in that deep darkness. Hand in hand, you stepped to reveal him to your coven.

There was not a single face of indifference.

Becoming hyper-aware of everything in your surroundings, you first focussed on Sally and Gillian. Their slumped postures. Deep set frowns. Resignation. No threat.

Abby’s fast and shallow breathing. Blown pupils.

Guðrún was squinting so hard you could barely see her eyes. She could will it all she wanted, there was no aura to read. She had no better insight than you. Than any of the others. It made her feel powerless, but in that was grace. If she had no better vantage point, her vote meant nothing more. She ceded.

The grief was written all over Sara’s face as she moved silently through the coven. You stepped in front of Eddie, held a hand out to her.

“Bug, wait,” you asked. Sara – Bug – who you used to spend hours drying and pressing flowers with. Preserving colour and beauty. Happy in each other’s company.

“Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that anymore,” Sara snapped. “You walked by our side for centuries, but by a single moonlit night you betrayed us?”

“Sara-”

“No. She died in my arms… You were there. You tried to stitch her together. But her skin was too shredded. Too much blood loss. They ripped her apart and now… Now this?”

Sara’s grandmother was older than Guðrún but perished at the hands of Eddie’s colony. You had tried to heal her. Save her. There hadn’t been any hope though.

Sara’s hand moved in her pocket and you became acutely aware of why she had not said anything earlier. She hadn’t been in the room. Sara had disappeared and filled her pockets with the death dust. Most witches had stored theirs away, the need gone. Not Sara. Not ever.

She moved fast, her palms flung open and a deep breath out pushing dust up and at Eddie with supernatural speed and force. It would only take a single flake of it to kill him.

It all happened in an instant. The magic hit the border of the protection spell and Sara was showered in the dust, as if she had been the intended target. Simultaneously, Eddie hissed, an innate and unconscious reaction to an attack. And you grabbed him by the arm and yanked him backward, putting space between him and the coven.

Everyone froze, processing your warning of tenfold and the events that had transpired.

Tears streamed down Sara’s face. “You’re choosing him over us?”

Abby walked to her, wrapped an arm around her waist. “Bug,” she said softly.

“I’m asking to not have to choose,” you tried to explain.

Sara wasn’t listening, not to you, not to Abby, who was whispering something to her. Distracted by this, you did not see Alexis.

Alexis did not come for death. She came for pain. She held a dagger made from carnelian, steel, and crocodile scales. She drove the dagger through the air, but hit the spell border just as the death dust had. The spell was a mirror, it would reverse the magic back to sender.

Alexis’ blade spun from her hands and glided too quickly at her. It aimed for her heart, as she had aimed for Eddie’s. Its trajectory would have seen it plunge through her ribcage’s gaps and into her still-beating heart. If Alexis died, it would all be over.

But Eddie was there.

He moved in a blink and caught Alexis with one arm, holding her safely. His other grabbed the dagger, letting it slice through the side of the hand so he could catch it mid-air. The room held its breath. Alexis’ green eyes were wide and set on Eddie. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t pull herself from Eddie’s embrace.

“I mean you no harm,” he murmured quietly, just to her. “And I like your freckles.”

Eddie let Alexis go; she stumbled a few steps before steadying herself. He moved slowly again, turning to the coven and dropping the dagger, letting it clang against the floorboards.

You rushed to him, throwing your arms around him. “Are you okay?” Looking down, Eddie had already healed from the blade. You held him tightly. He closed his eyes and melted into you.

The witches watched. Some submerged in waves of grief, some choking on anger. Some could smell honeysuckle, a sure sign of true love. Others felt a ripple of change, their skin prickling with goosebumps.

You looked to the coven.

“This is… too much. It’s too much for me. And for each of you… But it’s done…” You shook your head, then shrugged. “I just… I don’t know… We have been guided by so many forces. By what we learn. By fate, and life, and death. By the systems of morality we take from the humans. By each other. And I don’t know what’s really right. So, I’ll make my own meaning now. It’s… yeah, it’s been working. What I’ve done in Hawkins. It is good. There’s good to be done there…”

It was resonating. Ev, Meg, and Hailey. Ash, Mel, and Kelsey. More and more witches, lost in a liminal space of post-purpose. What did it mean to be a witch without a goal? What did it mean to be a woman in 1986?

Eddie watched you. I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel, the book echoed in his head. You held yourself with the same loveliness as Galadriel. Not always, but now.

“I’m going back. Maybe I’ll stay there. Maybe I’ll find somewhere else that needs help. But I don’t belong here anymore. And, maybe that’s okay. Maybe it will… it will be okay…”

As your thoughts trailed off, you met Abby’s gaze. She nodded once, a promise that you would be left alone. You nodded back, then looked for Guðrún. She had already left, putting faith in the youth of the coven.

Some of the witches began to leave the hall. You had no way of knowing who you had hurt and if you would ever be forgiven, but you were willing to pay the price of that shame to keep Eddie.

Kelsey was the first to come to you. “I’m coming with you,” she announced fearlessly.

“Me too,” echoed Mel.

The others stepped up, nodding.

“You don’t have to do this,” you told them.

“And you don’t get to tell us what to do,” Meg replied.

“You’re right. Maybe you don’t belong here. But maybe you’re not the only one,” Ev said.

A deep exhaustion was taking over. Your energy was draining into the protection spell, the mirrored bubble around Eddie took so much of your magic to keep intact. All you had in you to do was nod. You’d argue with them another day.

“Hi,” from Ash then. She grinned at Eddie.

“Hi,” he replied, flashing her a trademark smile. He took your hand. “I, ah, look forward to meeting you all. But I believe it might be best if I depart. For now,”

“Yeah,” you agreed. “Do you wanna go ahead? I know this looks like a truce but it feels more like a stalemate. I’ll be on the road in a few hours... Sic fiat,” and the bat swirled through the air and out the open door. He flew up, up, up, until the wards of the coven were far below him.

Eddie covered miles of Catskills quickly, before finding a nice tree to huddle in, awaiting your arrival.

“You’re leaving already?” Kelsey asked.

“You don’t have to go right away,” Hailey told you.

“I’m causing more sorrow than joy being here. It’s not fair on the others,”

“What happened wasn’t fair to you,” Mel pointed out.

“I know. But… This isn’t black and white… But I’m kind of tired… Meg… Any cinnamon rolls ready? You know, for the road?”

You sat with your sisters, drinking tea and eating baked goods. They told you about their lives, about what the past few months had looked like for them. And while none of it was on the same scale as Henry Creel and revived vampires, you realised you were not alone.

When you imagined the path forward, you were always holding Eddie’s hand. You were the only witch walking though. However, all it took to build a coven was a couple of witches with overlapping notions of love, magic, and morality. Maybe there was room for more.

End Note: Thank you to @jo-harrington for teaching me about the very real Hedy Lamarr. If you don't know about her, she is absolutely worth a Google.

To the newest additions to the coven - @munson-blurbs and @littlesubbyflower. Thank you for being the face of objection.

And, to anyone that loves Catfish and the Bottlemen as much as I do... I had to do it. Hopefully, it wasn't too cringe lmaoooooo.

Grimoire is updated.

REBLOG AND TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELS!!!

Love yas.

Fic Taglist: @paranoidmunson @idkidknemore @paprikaquinn @stardustworlds @loz-brooke @wyverntatty @vintagehellfire @dark-academia-slut @scarletwitchwhore @becks1002 @mrsdollardog @heyndrix @luceneraium @rosaline-black @devilinthepalemoonlite @goldencherriess @iamwhisperingstars @wiltedwonderland @blueywrites @breezybeesposts @jadehowlettthewolf @spikesvamp79 @foreveranexpatsposts @tortoiseshellspells @wingedpeachjudgegiant @stardustmunson @live-love-be-unique @fangirling-4-ever @reanimated-alice @b-irock @gh0stlybunnie @myown-worstenemy-2003 @woozzz @cyberxlust @hiscrimsonangel @buckysbarne @m00nlight101 @word-wytch @spicysix @briasnow-blog @goth-cowgirl-03

All Eddie Taglist: @solomons-finest-rum @ruinedbythehobbit @sweetpeapod @thorfemmes @corrodedhawkins @grungegrrrl @lilzabob @averagemisfit03 @ches-86 @ilovecupcakesandtea @onehotgreasymechanic @hazydespair @mel-the-fangirl @eddies-hid3out @siren-lungs @aheadfullofsteverogers @hiscrimsonangel @dashingdeb16

#Mine #Burning Yarrow #Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson x Reader #Eddie Munson x You #Eddie Munson/Reader #Eddie Munson/You #Vampire!Eddie Munson

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