Page 5 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

He was thirsty, so very thirsty. He hated being thirsty just slightly less than he hated quenching his thirst, and so he sat moodily in his dark office. Whenwasthe last time he’d eaten? And what time was it now?

Callum looked at his watch, a Vacheron Constantin Tourbillon Chronograph that he remembered his assistant telling him cost $200,000 dollars. But what was money when you’d been making it for almost a thousand years? Sometimes he rubbed elbows with humans who liked to pontificate about “old money.” Politicians and socialites mostly. But their slimy talk about “old money” was laughable. His money had its roots in payment he took for fighting a naval battle for some ancient earl nearly a thousand years ago. He’d hoarded it, not spending a penny. Because what need had he had for money when he’d hadher?

She’d been a miracle, a marvel, a gift to him from the gods. And he had worshipped her. They had lived in a small cottage by the sea, on an island in Scotland where the sheep had outnumbered the people several times over. They had eaten what could be gotten from the land and sea, worn what could be gotten from the sheep, and burned driftwood in their hearth. He’d buried that money and not dug it up until after she’d been gone. When the idea of living in a now-empty cottage by the sea had been unbearable because no matter how many times the tide had washed them away, he would still see her bloodstains on the sand.

And so he’d taken his money and he’d left. Somewhere along the line, he’d invested some of it. And his old money had become more old money. And then half a millennium passed, and his old money became more money than one person could ever spend in a lifetime, spread out across different accounts and businesses. He paid people good new money to track that old money, to grow it into more.

That money had gotten him into ballrooms and throne rooms alike. He had property on every continent but Antarctica. He dressed like a man who could use hundred-dollar bills as kindling. He employed thousands under various aliases in hundreds of businesses, some within the scope of the law and others… well, the others lived in the murky edges of rules that clung to the law like a parasite. Not legal, perhaps, but… useful.Helpful.

But none of it meant anything.

Callum spun in his chair to stare out the windows behind his desk. They looked down on the gardens behind the club. Savannah was full of gardens. Gardens were utterly useless to a nightclub and even less useful to people like him, people who couldn’t look upon flowers during the day. He maintained the garden so that his employees would have a nice place to go for their breaks, smoking or otherwise. In the spring, he had it on good authority that the azaleas bloomed a wild, nearly neon pink and tumbled over one another in heaps along the brick garden wall.

Several of his associates supervised daytime activities, when Callum was locked away deep under the ground. Always with security camera footage rolling, always with his phone, but shut away. Those associates always complained about how the azalea pollen stuck to their cars, their clothes, the inside of their noses. And yet on the security cameras, he could see them bend to smell the flowers anyway.

The azaleas were so different, foreign creatures entirely, to the Scottish heather and bluebells of his life before. But he was haunted by visions of a black-haired beauty with skin the color of clay and strong, calloused hands bending her nose to the heather, gathering up heaping armfuls of bluebells and putting them in earthen pots around a tiny, seaside cottage.

Of that same woman stuffing a mattress with heather so that whenever he’d rolled over, whenever she’d shifted closer, whenever he’d thrust deeply into her body, into her heat, he’d smelled heather.

She would love the azaleas. She would love the magnolias and camellias and dogwoods. She would love the sticky heat and the way the air always smelled—Spanish moss and flowers and, underneath it all, decay. She would smell everything—things that no one else could smell. He used to tease her that he needn’t bother with dogs because she could scent dinner for them. And she’d laughed but would go out and come back with a fat rabbit dangling by the ears just the same.

Once, just after buying the Savannah property, he’d gone to the garden at midnight. Stepping out of the club’s back door and into the already warm spring had made his suit feel heavy and tight, but he’d gone anyway, his Ferragamo oxfords scraping against the brick path. He’d approached the azaleas like they could bite him, like he should be afraid of them. He, who feared almost nothing. He’d bent his head, gathering a stem from the bush and bringing it to his nose.

They smelled to him like the distilled, hundred-proof version of what flowers should smell like. They overpowered him. Too sweet. Too strong. Too… much. He’d felt his chest tighten.

How very like his life. How very fucking like his life. To want the earthy musk of heather and get the cloying perfume of azaleas. To want to live long and be strong for the duration and to be given immortality instead. To find the most perfect love and have it ripped from his hands before he could do a thing to save it.

Callum had crushed the blooms in his hand and gone back inside. He hadn’t returned to the garden since. As it was, staring out into the night, Callum couldn’t see the bloomless azaleas. He could only make out the shapes of the magnolia trees along the back of the property because of the fairy lights that his assistant had hung up, insisting they were romantic.

As if people needed romance while smoking cigarettes on fifteen-minute breaks. As if his bartenders needed romance while scrolling on their phones absently, taking their shift break outside where it didn’t smell like beer and grenadine and the bass didn’t reverberate in your ribcage like a second heartbeat. As if his bouncers needed romance while they silently devoured their keto meals or protein bowls or whatever the fuck human men who spent too much time in a gym ate.

That wasn’t fair. They weren’t all human.

He made it a point to hire as many people as he could who needed a safe place to work where they could get time off for full moons or fairy circles or whatever the hell else was required of people who were…not quitehuman. Savannah was stuffed with otherworldly creatures. Ghost tours were a dime a dozen, and witches made a pretty penny telling fortunes and selling crystals and potions and, if you knew who to ask, spells. Among other things. Less… legal things. Things that lurked in those same murky edges of legality that, while not legitimate, were certainly useful.

Sanguine was like his other nightclubs all over the world. They operated as luxury spaces marketed for human consumption. Delicious drinks, top-tier dance music, and an atmosphere that made a person feel like they were a part of something special, something expensive, whether their mini dress was couture or consignment.

That was the front. But in each of his clubs, he ran a different sort of experience for creatures like himself. He was a networker. He found willing blood donors, people who thought it thrilling to have someone like him feeding at their throats. They were compensated handsomely and only glamoured enough to prevent them from telling anyone where they really went when they left the dance floor.

His clubs were the safest place for humans to feel that electrifying thrill of unsafety. His team employed biometrics that would send shocks through the vampire feeder when the donor’s blood volume dropped below a certain point. If the vampire ignored the warning, they would be removed and their membership revoked without question.

Sanguine’s feeding salon was blood red, with comfortable settees designed specifically for the comfort of both the donor and recipient. His patrons were welcome to partake in their meal and then relax while his employees took care of the donors. The humans would be taken home, given IV fluids and a meal, and then, if they chose, glamoured again to forget the experience, the memories of their donation replaced by memories of being put in a cab by a caring friend who then made sure they ate before passing out.

The club was packed every night it was open, even during the week, and Callum employed a large staff to keep it running. Housekeeping and hospitality, bartenders and barbacks, bouncers and security, DJs, promoters, management—almost all of them not quite humans. And, in some cases, not at all human. Though never, ever a witch.

Callum did not mess with the witches of Savannah. They had an understanding. He would not interfere with their businesses or income, and they would not interfere with his. They could operate alongside one another, feeding on the pockets of tourists, feeding on the necks of others, and never have to share.

But their livelihoods relied on secrecy. Witches could be out now, as long as they plied their trade with knowing winks and a lighthearted delivery, as if to say, “Don’t worry. Magic doesn’treallyexist. This is just a souvenir shop with a good story.”

Just like they said, “Don’t worry. Tarot is just a party game.”

But he had no such luxury. If more humans discovered the truth about vampires, they would hunt them to extinction. And while Callum had long since grown weary of immortality, if he was going to check out of this earthly realm, he wasn’t going to do it writhing in agony as the blinding southern sun turned his cells to dust, popping them like bubble wrap while he screamed because the humans wanted to “set him free.”

But when Esther MacLaren had tripped into his club one evening with a job application in hand, he hadn’t been able to resist hiring her. She was alone, covenless, and utterly disconnected from the establishment.

She was beautiful, funny, and carried herself with a confidence that would drive patrons wild as they tried to gain her attention. Her first night behind the bar, Callum watched as men held up twenty-dollar bills between pinched fingers, waving them overhead like flags, begging for her notice, for her to lean her forearms on the bar in front of them and take their orders for Bud Light or Fireball or Red Bull mixed with Crown Royal, a drink that seemed like a criminal waste of alcohol.

Esther was magnetic because she didn’t know she was magnetic at all. She simply moved around the world wholly as herself. Callum could recognize her beauty and her spark, even if neither held any interest for him. She was an asset behind the bar.