Page 40 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“Well, the legends say that the Berserkers were fighters who went into battle in a near trance. They went without armor. They fought with impossible strength and speed and rage. They couldnae be felled by normal means. After the battle, surrounded by the carnage of their felled enemies, they recalled nothing that had transpired.”

She waited, still rubbing the T-shirt between her fingers.

“I remember finding them, the dozen of them sitting around a fire, as if nothing could touch them. The next thing I remember is standing in a dark clearing, that full moon shining down, my body soaked with blood. It was in me and on me. And magic. The warlock had been powerful, and the leavings of his magic hung so heavy in the air that I could almost taste it.”

His voice sank into the timbre of storytelling, something he’d been raised with, as a way to pass the long nights. He’d told stories to his comrades on ships and in soldiers’ camps, and he’d told stories to Jory as he’d held her just like this in front of their little hearth, their driftwood rocking chair creaking beneath their combined weight.

“That sated the thirst for a time. Glutting yourself will do that. And then I wandered. Eventually, I found a woman who was like me. She came upon me when I was unearthing myself after a day beneath the ground. She took me in. We lived in the Highlands for a long time, hunting wayward men up to no good. She helped me learn to control my thirst.”

“You were very lucky to have found her,” Jory murmured, her body tensing slightly in his arms.

“Aye,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “She taught me to blend in. How to breathe and blink and sigh and yawn at intervals, though I didnae need to. She’d been the daughter of a Highland laird. She’d once been a pawn for a doomed alliance that ended with her entire clan nearly destroyed and her becoming, well…”

“A vampire.”

“Aye.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dead,” Callum said flatly, the pain of that loss still sharp.

“Dead?” Jory asked, looking up at him. “Vampires don’t die.”

“We can, even if we are verra hard to kill.”

“How did she die?”

He felt his eyes go unfocused as the memory swept in. “She said that she wanted to feel the warm grass beneath her toes. That she wanted to be with her family. She walked out of her crypt into a beautiful spring morning when the flowers were blooming.”

“Oh,” Jory said, an involuntary, shocked sort of sound.

He had been shocked too. He’d watched from the shadows as she’d stepped out into the sun, as she’d disintegrated into millions of sparkling, shimmering particles and blown away on that gentle spring breeze, leaving no trace. As if she’d never been there at all.

Callum cleared his throat, feeling it growing thick with his own tears. He had no desire to weep blood on Jory. He didn’t think she’d be able to handle another shock for the day.

“It sounds like you loved her,” Jory said. He could smell her jealousy. He felt it in the rigidness of her body in his hold.

“Aye,” he said. “Elspeth saved my life. I wouldnae be here without her.”

She tried to remove herself from his arms.

“Jory, stop.”

“I don’t want to hear about a woman you fell in love with days after killing me.”

She flung herself off his lap.

“Would you listen?” he said. “I didnae love her like that! I have never loved anyone the way I loved you!”The way I still love you!his brain screamed, the words on the tip of his tongue. He bit them back.

“But you loved her enough!” she spat.

“Aye,” he said, feeling those tears rising again. But this time, he did nothing to stop them. He felt one slip past his eyes and slide down his cheek. Jory gasped. “I did love her. Elspeth was the closest thing to a mother I’d ever known. She was old when she’d been cursed. She had watched her entire family fall to ruin. Her children. Her husband. And then she’d been turned into this.” He gestured to his torso.

Jory blinked at him, biting her lips as if she, too, might cry from how tragic it all sounded. And it was tragic as all hell. So many wounds, self-inflicted and otherwise.

“She said I reminded her of her oldest son,” he said quietly. “So, aye, I loved her verra much.”

Jory stood a few feet away from him, and they were both silent, staring into the blank middle space where memories lived.