Page 13 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

She heard a rustle, the fast thudding of racing feet, too fast to be his, but before she could turn, she felt a shocking slice against her throat, a tearing of muscle and artery and sinew, a sharp, blinding pain that stole her breath. She felt her body slide into shock, her limbs leaden and impossible to move, as she bled onto the beach.

She was immortal. She was stronger than ten men, faster than any of them, and yet the pain was so consuming, so sharp and bright, that she couldn’t muster any of her strength or speed. She couldn’t even cry out. She felt her lips, thick with tears and pain, shaping around her love’s name though no sound came from her ravaged throat, as if she could summon him and his help, his weapon of a body with only a word.

And then, all of a sudden, he was there. She heard his hoarse shout from behind her before he dragged her body into his lap.

“Marjory. Marjory, mo cridhe. Nay, nay, nay,nay.You cannae—I didnae—You cannae leave me alone,” he’d whispered against her hair, clutching her against his chest.

She wanted to tell him what she was, that she would survive this. She only needed to sleep.

But she couldn’t tell him any of that because of her tattered throat. And so she turned her nose into his chest, the movement agonizing, and smelled blood. His shirt was drenched with it, soaked red from collar to hem, and she gripped his arm with her fingers.No.It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be as badly wounded as she was. He would not survive it. He would die. She couldn’t live with that. Not when she’d gained so many promises to save him this evening.

Tears streaked down her cheeks as she clung to him. He rocked her, his body feeling so cold compared to how he normally felt at her back. Something had happened to him, something had starved him and wounded him, and now he would die before she ever had a chance to tell him the truth.

She felt her blood pulsing thickly from her neck, smelled it mingling with the salty sea. The wind whipped angrily around them, nearly drowning out the soft sobs that echoed hollowly in his chest. It was so unfair. She wept for the unfairness, her own sobs choking on thick blood. She loved him enough to walk the entire earth to find him, enough to ask a god for a favor, enough to spend eternity with him. And instead, after a mere few years together, he would be ripped from her.

She looked up at him. His face was bloody, his cheek and jaw shining red as he’d no doubt buried his face against her neck. It merged with the blood on his throat, on his chest, his own lifeblood mingling with hers. At least that was a poetic thought, much good poetry would do her when he was dead.

She felt her strength waning. She needed sleep to heal, and the animal of her body was taking over now, chasing rest with a single-minded determination. She reached up with a weak hand and pressed it against his cheek, feeling his stubble against her palm. And before the world went dark around her and she slipped into unconsciousness, she imagined walking into the shadow cave, not stopping until she stood at the feet of the keeper of the underworld, and demanding they return Callum to her.

6

PRESENT

Alive. The improbability—hell, theimpossibility—was staggering. Marjory had died in his arms. He had held her in the dark on that beach while the moon climbed the sky and her heart shuddered to a stop. And then he’d held her longer, clutching her to his chest until the dawn had threatened. Only then had he gone. But there she’d stood, her black hair like a wild tumble of seaweed around her shoulders and her green eyes flashing in the yellow glow of the kitchen’s overhead light. Joy and relief and shock and—godsdamnit, was that hope?—had all swirled in his brain like a cyclone. They were feelings he hadn’t felt in a very long time, almost long enough to forget them entirely.

It had been a disaster. Cover to cover. From the moment Esther had flown into Hank’s kitchen to the moment Jory stormed out. They’d fought. She’d always been a fighter. Even more than him. He’d been a sword for hire in his human life, his life with her, but he’d always known when to leave the field. Marjory had never once walked away from a fight.

As she’d raged, as he’d tried to make sense of it, tried to place her anger, he had remembered climbing the masts of ships, remembered how it had felt to have rope slip through sweaty hands, to lose his grip and fall briefly before he regained his hold. Close calls. Near misses. He felt it the moment that the rope of his temper slipped out of his hands, and he fell, free and flailing, into the churning of his feelings, all of which rose to consume him.

But she’d been there, just beyond the reach of his trembling fingertips. He had tried to hold her, and she, slippery as water, had kept herself out of reach. She’d called him a liar. She’d called him a murderer. And when he’d explained that he’d only been trying to find Esther so that he could glamour her, to tie up the loose ends, she’d called him a monster.

In the end, after explaining the mechanics of how Sanguine operated, he and Esther had shaken hands. She gave him her word that she was leaving Georgia, that she had no interest in making trouble for him, and he’d believed her. He’d gotten what he’d come for, what he’d been seeking for months, and yet there was no victory. No pleasure in it. He’d left, unable to stand another moment in that kitchen with the snarling creature he’d been longing for for centuries.

Callum stood in the middle of the street for a long time after Marjory left. He watched her taillights as she sped away from him and forced himself not to follow her. He could chase her. Before she blinked, he could be in front of that sleek, black sedan of hers, forcing her to a stop like Superman in front of a runaway bus.

But maybe that wasn’t true after all. Because while he could catch the car with ease, there was no guarantee he could catchher. Was she like him? A vampire? Or something else entirely? He didn’t know, and that not knowing ate at him. After a thousand years of existence, there wasn’t all that much he didn’t know at least something about. But his Marjory was an entire mystery to him. How was she here? How was she alive? And the question that burned the hottest: why didshehatehimso much? She was the one who had lied.

He couldn’t recall ever having been so angry in all his years. His rage had more of a pulse than he’d had in centuries, but it was more than that. Because beneath all of that anger, deep within the empty drum of his chest, rested a petrified heart that had once beat for no other purpose than to love her, that had sat in memorial of that love, hadkeptloving her. Through the years, through the despair, through the wins and losses, he had never stopped. And so the rage hurt. It felt like betrayal. Because she washere. She hadn’t died. And what did that mean?

Lost in his thoughts, Callum was startled by a throat clearing behind him.

“You gonna stand in the street all night staring after her like the dog she left behind?”

Callum spun slowly on his heel and saw a small woman standing directly under the streetlight. She wore a shiny silver puffer jacket and bright red sneakers. Her purse was covered with sparkles and shimmered, even in the dim yellow glow from above. Her hair was long and straight and gray, hanging over her shoulders.

“May I help you?” Callum asked.

She smirked, looking him up and down from head to toe, and said, “Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

As a general rule, Callum didn’t like people who spoke in riddles. He’d met a Sphynx once in Egypt and had found him to be maddening company.

“I beg pardon?”

“Such nice manners, Mr. MacLeod,” she cackled. “Good to see you’re not just a fancy suit.”

It was immediately apparent that she knew more about him than he knew about her—which was nothing. He hated that.

“It seems that I am at a disadvantage,” he said, feeling his brogue smooth out and away, leaving behind a neutral, clipped accent that sounded posh and refined. It was a good illusion, a voice that matched the exterior he presented, and it had served him well over the years.