Page 78 of Vow of the Undead
“I don’t have a choice.” He blinked away from me, his gaze lost on something vague in the shadows. “Have you ever made a mistake that consumes you even years later?”
Breath caught in my throat. Every muscle in my body stiffened as my lips dropped open and I drew a sharp gasp. Did he know? Astrid and her partner were dead, gone, thanks to the Gods’ help, and the king had only known about their deaths because they’d never returned to resume life in the castle with the other royals.
Of course, I’d done worse than hurt Astrid and Sten.
I gave myself a little shake as if to rattle the creeping memory out of my mind. It was so long ago, and I’d only been a child.
I dragged my eyes back to Kayn. Focusing on him and whatever he was clearly wrestling with helped pull my mind out of an impending spiral.
He clenched and unclenched his right fist, seemingly unbothered by my reaction. Though I didn’t find comfort in forming a fist, the movement was familiar; the repetitive action of calming oneself.
I, too, repeated the same phrases over and over in my mind to ward off thoughts of the horrible act I’d committed.
“What is it?” I prodded
“I persist,” he continued. “Hating myself more with every Polar Nocturne that passes, and I’ve had many years, hundreds, for this to build upon itself. I turned too many innocent humans into monsters.”
He’d made more vampires. No wonder guilt plagued him.
The twist of his mouth and sadness in his dark eyes sent my heart skipping and feeling every word he said as my own shame coursed through my veins. I hated what I’d done, but I’d only been haunted by it for twenty years. I couldn’t imagine living as long as he had knowing this and while keeping the secret to myself.
I wanted to forget it, but I knew I never would.
I tried to catch his gaze, but his eyes were fixed at my feet. “Is that why you filed down your fangs? So that you wouldn’t turn anyone else?”
He only offered me a grim smile. With a slow breath his dark eyes finally met mine. His throat rippled with a rough swallow. “After the only person I cared for died, I was entirely alone.” He thumbed the pad of his finger against the flat surface of his broken fang. “It consumed me, drove me mad until I could no longer face loneliness. I found myself in a village of men and women and…” he swallowed again. “Children too. After I drained the first woman I found, I turned the rest. Every single one of them.” Pain wracked every word he forced out. I stopped eating and sat forward, clutching the bowl in my fingers as I absorbed his story. “A child of the woman I drained followed me. He was a vampire then, too, of course. I’d turned him. I couldn’t be rid of him. He thanked me because he said that as a human he was always starving and in pain. As this creature, he was only starving.”
“You don’t feel pain?” I couldn’t help my curiosity. I cut through his story with the hot knife of my need for knowledge. I swallowed each piece easily, bites of truth I’d been dying to uncover.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said. “Vampires feel plentyof pain, just as we do pleasure. But the boy was newly turned, he felt strong at the time compared to his weak human body. He soon learned vampires starve more often than humans.”
Kayn dropped his head in his hands. After a moment, he sucked in a tight breath and looked at me. “Even after all that, I didn’t snap my fangs off. Not until the boy had hunger pangs and the vessel I’d captured didn’t have enough blood for us both. It’s hard enough to resist human blood, so I took a stone and broke them off so that I’d have to rely on hunting and consuming animal blood so that he would have enough to drink from the humans we captured..”
“Where is he now? The boy?”
“With Hel,” he said.
The underworld. Hel was the goddess of the place our souls descended if we were not granted passage into Valhalla or chosen by Freya for Folkvangr—both places of varying honor for life after death.
“He died dishonorably,” I whispered my understanding. Kayn only frowned, not offering more details on the boy’s passing. I wasn’t about to ask. The twisted grimace revealed he was in enough agony already, but there was one question I couldn’t tame back from my tongue. “Isn’t it true that vampires no longer have souls? What part of him could Hel have claimed?”
He raked his teeth over his bottom lip. With a shuddering inhale, he forced the air out quickly. “Vampires age slower than humans, so by the time he stumbled upon Hel in Midgard, he was a young man.”
“In Midgard?” I shook my head. Monsters dripped into our realm from the others, but Hel was a goddess, not even Odin and Freya came to Midgard. How could Hel? It was impossible.
“I don’t know the details of her summoning, but she was here. I witnessed it with my own eyes. Once a human turns into a vampire, their soul is ash, but she didn’t needto find the flakes of his soul, she took his body instead. I don’t claim to understand why the gods, including Hel, do what they do.”
“And you feel responsible for his death, too?” I guessed.
“Guilt ravages me for all of it.” He nodded. His hand shook as he scraped his fingers through his hair. “The only relief I find is to act as though I am still the human that Freya and Odin draw sacrifices from. I know you’re curious about why I’d want you to take up a Call that’d require you to eventually destroy me, but destruction will be my final relief from this guilt.” He swallowed hard, the muscles in his throat tightening. I didn’t know if Draugr could cry, but in the firelight, his brown eyes shimmered with an emotion I’d suppressed for too long; pure, all-consuming guilt.
I stood and walked over to him with the bowl still in my hands. Perching on the rock beside him, I offered him a sip of the soup. “I don’t know if you enjoy human food.”
He sat up and accepted the offer, taking the spoon and tipping the liquid into his mouth. “It’s very sweet,” he said, swallowing and squinting with displeasure.
I smiled. “You don’t like sweetness?”
“I haven’t tasted it in years.”
