"You're sure?" Beth fidgeted with her napkin. "Because I could get this wrapped up to go..."
"Beth." Tyr leaned forward, his expression warm. "I invited you here because you needed to decompress after a rough night. That means actually eating the breakfast you ordered." His lips quirked. "Besides, watching humans enjoy food is one of life's small pleasures. Their expressions of delight, the way tension melts away with good food - it's rather charming."
Beth felt herself blushing at his words, but she picked up her fork again. The first bite of pancake melted on her tongue, butter and maple syrup creating the perfect balance of sweet and rich. A small sound of pleasure escaped before she could stop it.
"See?" Tyr's eyes danced. "Charming."
Beth laughed, the tension finally easing from her shoulders. She glanced around the nearly empty diner - the truckers remained focused on their meals, and the elderly man lingeredover his coffee while absorbed in his newspaper. Leaning forward, she lowered her voice to barely above a whisper.
"So... how did you become a..." She glanced around again before mouthing the word, "vampire?"
Tyr's expression softened with memory, his blue eyes taking on that distant look that spoke of centuries past. "It was during the Black Death - 1347 in Genoa. My brother and I were merchants, just twenty-seven." His fingers traced patterns in the condensation on his coffee cup. "Not long after we arrived, the plague hit the city hard. First the rats died, then the people started falling ill. We thought we could outrun it, but..."
He shook his head, ancient grief flickering across his features. "Tobi got sick first. I refused to leave him, of course. By the next day, I was showing symptoms too. We both knew we were dying.
Beth's fork paused halfway to her mouth. "You had the plague? I thought that killed people within days."
"It did." Tyr's voice carried the weight of centuries. "Back then, we just called it 'the plague' - no one knew there were actually different types. What Tobi and I had was pneumonic plague."
"I thought..." Beth set her fork down, brow furrowing. "I always thought the Black Death was bubonic plague. You know, the one with the swollen lymph nodes they called buboes?"
"That was the most common type, yes." Tyr's fingers traced the rim of his coffee cup. "Bubonic plague spread through flea bites. The bacteria would travel through the lymphatic system, causing those characteristic swellings. Painful, but you could survive it if you were strong enough - maybe three in ten lived."
He took a slow sip of coffee. "But pneumonic plague was different. It infected the lungs directly and spread through the air - just breathing near someone who had it could infect you. Almost nobody survived that form."
"I've never heard of that type before." Beth wrapped her hands around her cooling mug.
"There was a third type too - septicemic plague. That one went straight to the blood." Tyr's expression darkened. "If you got that, you were dead within hours. Your skin would turn black while you were still alive, hence why they called it 'the Black Death.'"
Beth shivered, imagining the horror of watching your own body turn black as the infection spread through your blood. "So you and Tobi..."
"We had pneumonic plague. We were coughing up blood, our fever so high we were delirious." His voice grew distant with memory. "By the second day, we could barely breathe."
Beth's hand crept across the table before she could stop herself, her fingers brushing his cool skin. "That must have been terrifying."
"It was." Tyr's thumb stroked once across her knuckles, the gesture so quick she might have imagined it. "But then Antonio found us. He was an ancient vampire even then, and he saw something in us worth saving. He gave us a choice - die of the plague or live as vampires."
"Some choice," Beth murmured.
"Actually, it was." Tyr's voice carried centuries of certainty. "Antonio made sure we understood exactly what we were choosing - the need for blood, the darkness, watching everyone we knew grow old and die. He wanted us to choose with clear minds, not just from fear of death."
"But you both chose to turn?"
"We did." A smile touched his lips. "Tobi and I had already lost our mother when she died in childbirth. And a few years ago, our father's ship went down. We were all each other had left. The thought of one of us surviving while the other died..." He shook his head. "That wasn't an option we could accept."
Beth pushed a blueberry around her plate, fascinated by this glimpse into Tyr's past. "Where were you from originally? Before Genoa, I mean."
"Bergen… a port city in Norway." Tyr's eyes lit up at the memory. "It was part of the Hanseatic League - a powerful trading alliance across northern Europe. Our family had been merchants there for generations." His fingers traced the rim of his coffee cup. "We specialized in timber trade initially, but expanded into wool and furs. The profits were excellent, especially from the Russian furs."
"Wow!!! You're from Norway?"
"Yes, though of course, that was back in the 1300s." A fond smile played across his features. "The harbor was always busy - ships coming and going, loaded with goods from across the known world. The smell of salt air mixed with pine from the timber yards..." He shook his head. "Sometimes I can still hear the creak of the wooden wharves, the shouts of sailors in a dozen different languages."
"Is that why you ended up in Genoa? For trade?"
"Exactly. We were expanding our routes into the Mediterranean." His expression darkened slightly. "The timing couldn't have been worse - we arrived just as ships arrived from Caffa, a port city in the Crimea, carrying the plague."
Beth found herself leaning forward, drawn in by the way his voice softened when speaking of his homeland. "Do you ever go back? To Bergen, I mean?"
