Immortal Born (An Argeneau Novel)

by Lynsay Sands

  Magnus was so startled by the question that for a minute he was speechless. It was the last question he’d expected.

  “Was it like Stella? A rogue attacking and turning you?”

  “No,” he said firmly, and then felt a wry smile creep over his face before he admitted, “Actually, I was turned accidentally, like Elvi.”

  “Elvi was turned accidentally?” she asked with surprise, and then admitted, “I just assumed she was turned by her husband, like Leonora said she was turned by her Alessandro.” The admission had barely left her lips before she frowned and asked, “How do you get turned accidentally?”

  Magnus’s smile widened at her disgruntled expression. “For Elvi, it was in a bus accident. The bus landed on its side and apparently a wounded immortal was seated on the opposite side and ended up hanging from his seat belt above her, bleeding into her open mouth while she was unconscious.”

  “Oh,” Allie breathed, her eyes wide. “So, the blood just has to get into the person. Even swallowed? It doesn’t have to be injected into their veins?” Before he could respond, she added, “Stella didn’t know how she was turned. She couldn’t remember.”

  “I am not surprised,” he said quietly. “The turn is often quite traumatic. It isn’t uncommon for turnees to come out after the turn short of memories.”

  She nodded, but asked, “So is that how you were turned too? An accident where blood dripped into your mouth?”

  “No.” Magnus grimaced. “I actually did it to myself without meaning to, or even realizing I was doing it.”

  “How does that happen?” she asked, sounding half amused and half disbelieving.

  Magnus smiled wryly at the question, and then took a moment to figure out where to start his explanation. Finally, he decided the beginning was probably best. “I was born in 779 a.d. in what is now called Denmark.”

  Allie’s eyes went round as saucers and her jaw dropped at this news.

  Magnus grinned at her expression, then leaned forward, placed a finger under her chin, and pushed it up, closing her mouth. “You will catch flies.”

  “It’s winter. No flies,” she muttered, and then shook her head and asked with disbelief, “Are you telling me you’re a Viking?”

  Magnus blinked in surprise. He’d expected her amazement to be about his age, not his nationality. “We were not called Vikings back then. Or ever. We called ourselves Ostmen. We went ‘a’viking,’ which basically translated to overseas expeditions or raids. But it could be exploring too. And we usually did that in the summer between planting our fields and harvesting them.”

  “Oh. Okay,” she said. “But you were a Viking.”

  He nodded rather than trying to clear that up again. She looked far too enthralled with the knowledge that he was what people now referred to as Vikings. If she liked the word that much, she could call him Viking rather than Norseman or Ostman.

  “I can picture you as a Viking,” she said suddenly, and then pursed her lips and added, “Well, except that you should have long blond hair instead of short dark hair.”

  “Aye, the lasses in my day preferred their men blond too,” he said with amusement, and then realized his speech had slipped into his old accent and cleared his throat before adding, “At least, the blond part. My hair was long then.”

  “Really?”

  “Really what?” he asked mildly. “That the women preferred blonds or that my hair was long?”

  “The blond part,” she said with a faint smile.

  “Yes. In fact, most of us poor men unfortunate enough to have been born with dark hair used a strong soap with a lot of lye in it to bleach our hair. Some used it on their beards as well,” he informed her. “Handily enough, aside from lightening our hair, it killed lice, so that was our excuse for using it, but the truth was it attracted the ladies.”

  “Hmm,” Allie muttered, looking a bit disgruntled, and then she assured him, “Well, dark-haired men are better-looking anyway in my opinion.”

  “You just finished saying I should have long blond hair,” he pointed out on a disbelieving laugh.

  “Well, yes, because that fits the image of a Viking better. But I wouldn’t want you to actually be blond now. It wouldn’t suit you.”

  Magnus smiled crookedly at the claim, and then noted the appreciative way her eyes were sliding over his features and damned near blushed. Something he hadn’t done since he was a lad, if then.

  “Anyway,” he said to change the subject, “my family had a prosperous farm. I grew up there, learning to farm and fight, but in the summer of 793, I ran off to go a’viking.”

  “Why?” she asked at once. “Was it rebellion or to escape cruel parents or something?”

  “No. My parents were good people,” he assured her, and then admitted, “In truth, it was because of a female. I had a fancy for our neighbor’s daughter, but—”

  “Wait a minute,” Allie interrupted him sharply. “You said you were born in 779.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you were only fourteen when you went a’viking?” she asked with disbelief.

  Magnus grinned at her expression. “We lived much shorter lives and grew up much quicker back then.”

  “But fourteen?” she asked.

  “Lots of boys my age were already married and having children by then,” he told her. “And all of us were pretty much married by fifteen.”

  Allie stared at him with something like horror for a minute, and then shook her head and prompted him with, “So you were fourteen and fancied your neighbor’s daughter.”

  “Yes,” Magnus said, but paused briefly before continuing. “I wanted to take her to wife, but she said I was too poor.” He smiled wryly at the memory. It had stung at the time. His pride, mostly. Shrugging the memory away, he said, “A friend of mine had gone a’viking the summer before and come back with many fine treasures.”

  “So you ran off to go a’viking in the hopes you’d be similarly lucky, and could come back and win your lady love,” she suggested dryly.

  “Yes,” he said, unembarrassed. It had been the way of it back then.

  “I’m guessing things didn’t turn out quite the way you planned, though?” Allie asked, her voice gentler.

  “No,” Magnus admitted solemnly. “We landed onshore a little more than three days after setting sail, and attacked a monastery.”

  “A monastery?” she squawked with dismay.

  “They had the finest treasures,” he said helplessly. “And at that time were unguarded. Besides, we were pagans. We held no truck with their God.” Magnus waited and when she just stared at him wide-eyed, he continued his tale. “It was my first raid. I had been in battle before, mostly local quarrels, but this . . .” He shook his head. “I had never seen anything like it. They were men of God, not warriors. They just stood there praying while we slaughtered them, and the survivors went like sheep when we rounded them up to take away for slaving.

  “Once it was done, the men broke open the wine casks in the church to ‘celebrate our victory.’ At least, that was what they called it, though in truth I think it was to drink away our shame. That was what it was for me anyway. This had not been a fair fight, not even a battle, but a slaughter.” He shook his head with remembered self-disgust. “I drank hard with the others, but late in the night I staggered outside to relieve myself of some of that wine I’d consumed. I had just finished watering a bush when I heard odd sounds coming from beyond the bushes. I put myself away and stumbled over to see what was what and came across one of my comrades, Erik, being choked by a stranger with the bodies of at least three of our comrades already dead on the ground around them.”

  Magnus paused briefly before continuing. “I should have shouted an alarm to bring the others, but Erik and I had been friends since childhood. He was the one to suggest I go a’viking to make the coin I needed to win my bride. I did not think, I simply ran forward trying to help.” Grimacing, he admitted, “Unfortunately, with the battle over and drink in my belly, I
was foolish enough to leave my long sword in the church. I had no weapon to hand, so I grabbed the stranger by the nearest arm and tried to pull his hand away from Erik’s neck, but the bugger was mighty strong. I tried punching him, but that had no effect at all, so I did the only thing I could think of—I leapt on his back and bit into his neck. Not some little nip either,” he assured her. “I full on latched my teeth into his throat, and dug in, ignoring the blood that squirted into my mouth. Swallowing it to keep from choking, but not letting go, and in fact tearing at his skin and making him bleed more because he was not letting go of Erik.”

  “He was an immortal,” Allie breathed with realization.

  Magnus nodded slowly. “Yes. The stranger was an immortal. And I accidentally turned myself.”

  “Did he know?” she asked at once. “The immortal? Did he know that you’d turned yourself?”

  Magnus paused to consider that. It was something he’d wondered often over the centuries, but after a moment he shook his head. “He may have, but I suspect not. In battle, you do not feel pain like you should. Sometimes you do not feel it at all until after the worst of the fray is over and your adrenaline slows, and from what I know of immortals, he would have been well healed by then.” Magnus shook his head again. “No. I do not think he knew. I think he walked away that night thinking he killed me along with the others.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked with dismay. “What did he do?”

  “Well, after he finally finished wringing the life out of Erik, he dropped him, reached back to grab me by the scuff of the neck, and yanked me over his head like a wee pup. Once he had me dangling in front of him, he pulled a knife from his belt and gutted me, then dropped me and walked away, leaving me for dead.”

  “Oh, my God,” Allie breathed, her eyes dropping to his stomach and Magnus had the sudden, ridiculous urge to suck in his gut, sit up straight, and flex his pecs. Not that he really had a gut to suck in, but still, he had the urge to do so.

  “But you weren’t dead,” she said, shifting her gaze back up to his face.

  “No. Apparently, I had taken in enough nano-filled blood that the turn was starting before he finished killing Erik. That being the case, the nanos would have rushed straight to the wound in my stomach the moment it happened, stopped the bleeding, and closed it as quickly as possible before doing anything else.”

  “It’s a good thing you bit him, then,” Allie pointed out.

  “Yes. Well, I did not know any of that at the time,” he pointed out, and continued. “I woke up on the ground the next morning, lying among the bodies of my dead comrades. There were more than had been there when I was stabbed the night before. I stumbled back through the bushes and into the monastery and . . .” Magnus shook his head as he remembered the scene. The stone floors and walls that had been splattered with the blood of the priests when last he saw them were now painted with even more blood, and the bodies of his comrades lay everywhere. They had not survived their celebrations. Finally, he simply said, “Everyone was dead. We hadn’t been that large a party—only three boats, sixty men. But every one of them lay dead in and around the monastery. In truth, I half believed that I was dead too.”

  “What?” she asked with surprise. “Why?”

  Magnus listed off the reasons one after the other. “The wound I clearly recalled receiving was no longer in evidence, neither were the other small injuries I had sustained that day. And even my scars were somehow gone, yet my body was wracked with agony. I clearly recalled that the eyes of the man I had bitten had glowed.” He shook his head, and smiled wryly. “I now realize he had been an immortal, but knew nothing about them then, and worried he might have been the Christian God, or embodied by Him, and that I too was dead and in that hell the Christians carped on about. That it was a punishment for taking part in the raid on his church, and killing his priests. That I was now cursed to walk the earth as the dead for my sins.”

  “What did you do?” she asked, unconsciously shifting closer on the couch.

  “What could I do?” he asked helplessly. “I could not sail any of the ships on my own, and the bodies were already starting to stink.” He grimaced at the memory, and then said, “And I was not really sure I was dead and cursed, so I started to walk inland in search of aid. However, I was alone, unarmed, and hurting, so avoided the trails and riding paths to evade the enemy. But I was in a bad way. I walked for a day and night at least, although I do not remember much of it. At some point I collapsed in a copse where I was eventually found by a farmer. He apparently recognized that I was different and delivered me to Alodia Kenric.”

  “Who was that?” Allie asked at once.

  “She is a very old immortal, and head of the Kenric clan of immortals.”

  Allie blinked, and then said with disbelief, “Very old? Are you kidding me? You were born in 779. How much older could she be for you to consider her very old?”

  “I am not sure,” he admitted slowly. “Even back then you simply did not ask a lady her age. But I would guess she was probably born in b.c.”

  “b.c.? Like before Christ b.c.?” she asked with amazement.

  “It is not as rare as you would think, Allie,” he said soothingly, and then informed her, “Victor was born in the second or third century b.c., and Lucian was born a good twelve or thirteen hundred years before that.”

  Allie blinked twice at this news, somehow seemed to file it away somewhere in her mind where it was less troubling, and then shook her head and said, “Fine. Alodia was old. And immortal. And you were delivered to her. What happened?”

  “She got me the blood I needed to complete the turn and—”

  “Got you mortals to bite, you mean,” she interrupted him, and then pointed out, “There were no blood banks back then.”

  “No, there were no blood banks,” he agreed mildly. “She must have brought me people to feed on through the turn and probably controlled me to prevent my harming them.”

  “You don’t remember?” she asked, and Magnus shook his head.

  “I do not remember biting anyone, or even the turn, really, other than bad nightmares,” he admitted. When she merely nodded with a grim expression, he continued. “I eventually woke up feeling rather amazing, but wondering where I was. Alodia came to me shortly after and explained about my being found and brought to her. She explained what I was now and offered to mentor me.”

  “Mentor?” Allie’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly did that entail?”

  “She basically adopted me into her family and taught me how to survive as an immortal. How to hunt. How best to avoid detection, etc.”

  “Oh. Right, you were only fourteen,” Allie said now, relaxing a little. “Of course, she adopted you.”

  Magnus didn’t remind her that he had been considered a man at that age, and that many of his friends had been married with a child or two under their belt by then. He merely nodded solemnly. “Family is important to immortals. They understand that it can make the difference between an immortal going rogue or not, so clans often adopt stray immortals when they come across them.”

  She tilted her head. “Is she still alive?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated and then admitted, “One of her natural sons, Edward, lives here in Port Henry. You will probably meet him in the next day or two.”

  “How old is he?” she asked at once.

  “I believe he was born in 1004,” Magnus said slowly, double-checking the date in his head. “Yes . . . 1004.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “Well, I’m sure it will be nice for you to see each other.”

  “Maybe,” he said dubiously.

  Allie’s eyebrows rose. “Maybe?”

  Magnus grimaced. “Edward was not my favorite of her sons. He was a bit of a prick growing up. Alodia spoiled him rotten,” he explained. “Made him think a lot of himself. But I hear he has mellowed and become almost human since meeting his life mate, so it may be all right.”

  “Life mate.” Allie latched on to the word li
ke a dog on a bone. “Leonora said something about being turned after she met Alessandro and found out she was his life mate, and you called Victor Elvi’s life mate,” she pointed out. “What is it? Is it just the word immortals use for their mates? Or does it have some deeper meaning?”

  Magnus was trying to decide how to answer her when a tap sounded on the door and it opened. He turned with relief to see Leonora’s head poke in.

  “It’s been an hour. I need to take Allie’s vitals again,” she said apologetically.

  “Oh.” Magnus stood abruptly, beaming at the woman for her timely arrival. “Of course. Come in. I shall just take our coffee cups away while you do.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to chase you off,” Leonora protested as he bent to scoop up both his and Allie’s cups. “This should only take a minute or two.”

  “And so will this,” he said lightly as he walked toward her with the cups in hand. “Go ahead. I shall be right back.”

  Leonora peered at him with curiosity, and then her expression turned more focused and he knew she was trying to read his mind. He paused then, just feet from her, curious to see if she could. Normally, an immortal as young as Leonora wouldn’t be able to read him because he was so much older than her, but immortals who had just found their life mates were supposed to be easy to read for the first year after finding them and he was curious to see if that was the case. It would be more proof that Allie was indeed his—

  “Oh. I see.”

  Magnus blinked his thoughts away at those barely breathed words, and smiled at Leonora again. She could read him.

  “Take your time,” he said lightly as he eased past her to slip out of the room.

  “Well, he couldn’t seem to get out of here quick enough,” Allie said with disgruntlement as soon as the door closed behind Magnus.

  “Men do dislike anything to do with doctors and such,” Leonora said with amusement as she crossed to her side with the clipboard and blood pressure cuff in hand. She set both down on the coffee table in front of the couch, and then produced the thermometer from her pocket.