Second of the Winterset Coven Read Online Free Page B

murmured, “Sometimes I think I remember her voice. She sang this old lullaby when I was a kid. And then she sang it once when I was grown and I’d come home from battle badly wounded. She thought I couldn’t hear her. By that time, her voice was old and frail, but still had the same tone.” He swallowed hard and sang a string of guttural sounding words in a language she didn’t recognize. His voice was rich and deep, but broke on the last word.
    “What does it mean?”
    “It doesn’t translate well. I don’t remember any of it but that line in her voice. Maybe because I had been clinging to life so hard the last time she sang it, I don’t know. Means… ‘And my boy will be a man someday, a man, but I’ll always love the boy, my boy.’”
    Chills rippled across her skin, and Dawn snuggled against his ribs.
    “My mother was there when I got my tattoos, too,” he said with a sad smile. “The chieftain, too, my uncle.” He traced his head in a slow arc from his temple to the base of his skull, but his hair was too long for Dawn to see them. “I got the tattoos to tell the stories of the battles I’d fought. I wanted to remind Odin of my bravery so he would let me into Valhalla when I died in battle.” Garret gave his attention to the rafters again. “They’re all waiting for me.”
    “Who?” she asked softly.
    “My family. My friends. My people. They’ll be waiting for all eternity. Asmund made sure I would always be severed from them.”
    Dawn’s heart was breaking. It felt like it was ripping in two at the desolation in Garret’s voice. He should’ve died centuries ago with the people he loved in life. She hated the thought of him long-dead in a grave, but that was how it was supposed to be. She and Garret should’ve never met, but just the thought of how empty her life would’ve been without him was unbearable. She hated Asmund, but a selfish part of her was glad he gave Garret time to make it to this moment, with her. She was sick with herself.
    “Why did Asmund choose you?”
    “Loneliness. Selfishness. He wanted a son. He wanted to make a man into a monster just like him so he wouldn’t feel so bad about the things he did to hurt people. I left my mother, my woman, my village to go on the spring raids. I was high in our village, trusted by the chieftain, trusted by the king. I had proven myself and was confident in battle. Fearless. Stupid. I took risks to protect others. I was ruthless.”
    “Geir the Destroyer,” she whispered, repeating Asmund’s words.
    “That was the name I was given, and I was proud of it. My family was proud of it. My woman knew what was going to happen. Torunn refused to say goodbye, and I was angry with her for asking me to stay. The raids were an honor. Dying was an honor, but she told me I was going to die and I wouldn’t see Valhalla. I was pissed. When I left, she was sobbing. I told her I would come back for her.” Garret swallowed hard and looked sick. “And I did.”
    “But you were a vampire?”
    A slow nod. “We got blown off course in a bad storm and landed on the shore of a place we hadn’t drawn on our maps. There was war, but not with humans. These men were feral, and they changed into monstrous beasts with fangs and fur, and their eyes were soulless. We were slaughtered by werewolves. I was laying in this field of carnage, bleeding, dying, fighting for every breath and pleading to Odin to take me faster. I’d been bitten over and over, ripped up, and had to hold my insides in place. Some of the bodies around me were twitching, Changing into the monsters that had killed us. Most of us died, but some did not, and I could feel it, too. My blood was like fire in my veins, and there was something growing inside of me. Something dark. The wolves were howling all around us, like they were calling their new brethren. And I remember chanting, ‘Don’t let me turn into one of them. Don’t let me.’ The howling stopped, just…cut to nothing, and