London, England 1930

Her gaze never leaving her reflection, Pamela Swynford de Beaufort paused with the lipstick halfway to her mouth; she had been preparing to give her gorgeous, painted, plump lips a slight touch-up before realizing she was and had always been perfect just the way she was. Now all I have to figure out is whether I'm full of myself or just a women's lib cliché, she thought as she capped the lipstick and placed it among its sisters, cousins, aunts and all of those other boring feminine relations Pam had left behind when she began her glamorous new life with Eric Northman. Now there was a man whose ego could be knocked down a few pegs.. and there could be no better model for a woman who was twenty-five years Vampire.

Smirking, Pam gave her chin-length curls a final pat—she would never stop thanking Eric for the oil-free skin he had given her, never to grease and flatten her hair again—before opening the door of the water closet and walking right into the man himself. She prided herself on being tall for a woman, even without her pumps, but still she had to look up to meet her Maker's eyes. At nearly six-foot-five, everyone had to look up to Eric. (Even his own Maker was no exception.) The tails of Eric's tuxedo jacket, as they appeared to elongate him even further, made meeting his gaze almost ridiculous because it seemed to take so long to reach his face. It was like colliding with a very muscular giraffe.

While Pam was busy admiring what she had made Eric into, having transformed him from a fur-covered warrior to a classy bachelor, Eric was busy looking pained. "I can deal with a rose in my boutonniere, but are you absolutely certain my cummerbund tonight must be colored? Black would go very well with this suit. Hel, even white would be better than—Oh." There was the click of descending fangs. His gaze had just traveled the length of the midnight blue gown draping off her shoulders, and now he was practically salivating over her cleavage (just enough to be sexy but not so much that she looked like the average Whitechapel slut—she was never going down that road again). Her body went rigid as Eric lowered his head and skimmed his lips up the side of her neck. She could have sworn she heard the blood in her veins snicker impishly.

"Are you certain a man's touch no longer satisfies you?" he murmured in her ear, and for a moment she almost said no. She was already struggling to keep her own fangs on the roof of her mouth. "It would be over so quickly that your hair wouldn't have time to become disarrayed. Imagine it..." he whispered, and his tongue slowly reached out to caress that ear.

She could imagine it all right: she was warm, aching with need... and in bed the Viking had no equal...

… and her legs spread wider as she lowered herself onto him again and he thrust up to meet her. She had been surprised such a big man would consent to lying beneath her, propped up on his elbows, as they fucked—had been almost even more surprised than when he treated her to dinner before they returned to the brothel—but this angle made him appear powerfully attractive, proving his ability in bed was fantastic in any position.

She ran her nails down his incredibly defined pectorals as they began to move faster. His skin was cool and pale, and felt unbelievably good against hers. She was still trying to get over the shock that she didn't have to fake her gasps of pleasure, as with so many men before him who wanted their whores to show appreciation as they fucked them.

She tipped her head back, spots dancing across her vision as pleasure washed over her... and looked back down as a strange clicking sound accompanied his release inside her.

Twin fangs, one on either side of his middle incisors, were visible between his parted lips. (Only years later would she realize just how much restraint he had been employing in resisting the urge to expose them.) They gleamed yellow-orange in the low lamplight.

She threw herself off of him—a small part of her thrilled in the fact that he was still hard—and to the head of the bed, opening the drawer of the side table and reaching for the small pistol it contained before a cold hand gently closed around her wrist. "It's all right, Pam. I won't hurt you."

The sound of her own name on the stranger's lips froze her in place. The pop of the p, the sensual moan of the rest... They had introduced one another, naturally, gotten to know one another in the publically accepted way over their meal, but this was the first time he had uttered it. When she turned to look at him, her movements were strong, without a quiver. "I read Stoker; I'm not as stupid as some of the other girls in here. I won't let you kill me." It was only now that she realized, while she was covered in sweat, his skin was dry.

He smirked, but his eyes were gentle. "No gunsmith makes bullets that could hurt me."

"Perhaps." Her heart was pounding in her ears. "But somebody's bound to come running if it goes off. Nobody's that kinky."

He laughed and she found herself in his lap again with no idea how she had gotten there. It had happened so quickly... She recovered, slowly in comparison, beginning to struggle in his arms. "Let me go, you bastard. I didn't agree to this." She punched him a good one on the nose—and gasped in pain as she felt something give in her knuckles. "Shit!" She cradled the wounded appendage in her other hand unconsciously, glaring at her strange, difficult customer.

His brow furrowed as he reached for her wounded fingers, apparently unaware that his nose was straightening out before her eyes, blood running down from the nostrils and over his upper lip. "Here, let me see. I won't hurt you," he said again, firmly, as he took her wrist in his rough palm. She watched his face as he examined her hand, and was astonished to find nothing threatening in his expression.

She didn't have time to wonder why he was reaching to touch his fangs with his free hand before his fingers were in her mouth and something warm and wet was trickling onto her tongue. She choked as his fingertips forcefully prodded the back of her throat, black spots exploding behind her eyeballs for a second, before he muttered, "My apologies," and removed them, covering her mouth as she tried to spit. "Swallow that."

She stared at him. Swallow his blood? What good would that do? Had the sex been so good that he had lost his marbles, or was it merely a turn-on for him? But her mouth was filling, saliva mixing with the blood, and the liquid tasted of sweet, foreign spices. When she finally gave in, warmth spread through her like the most soothing bathwater.

Pam's eyes never left her hand as it healed. She flexed her fingers, stared at the new shine in her nails. "Will I become a vampire?"

Another laugh. "No. Not unless you want to."

A pale, perfect brow rose as she looked at him. "Do you say that to every woman you bed?"

A pale, slightly thicker, perfect brow rose to match hers. "What do you think?" Before that had come another chuckle and a muttered exclamation about the daughters of somebody named "Age-ear." He continued without waiting for her reply, "I can get you out of here. I will be the father you've never known, and a brother and friend to joke and fuck with as we please. You'll never want for money, never have to submit yourself to the greed of men you don't find attractive. Let me show you an eternity of night as I see it, and the only person you will ever have to answer to again is me."

Her other brow rose. "I knew my father."

He stared hard into her eyes, and a shiver crawled over her as she realized he saw her oppression in them. "I will be a better man to you than he ever was."

She stared back at him. She would never forget the honesty in his gaze as long as she lived. This was a man of power, and she wanted that power too. She couldn't be cooped up in this whorehouse until her body gave out and she was tossed out like the evening garbage. "Will I have to fake my death?"

He kissed her breastbone, and the glint in his eye excited her. "Let me worry about that." He settled her back onto the mattress, moving gradually, his lips traveling her skin. "Just relax, and think of your freedom."

She cried out as he spread her thighs and sank his fangs into her flesh.

It was only the thought that Godric would be whimpering, moaning, practically swooning under Eric's lips by now that brought Pam back to her senses. Unfortunate circumstance had revealed to her that the boy was more than happy to submit to Eric in occasions like this, to ironically take direction from him as he suggested she do now. But Pam was not that kind of woman.

"Save it for your Maker," she said in the monotone she prided herself on as she pushed Eric aside by his swollen crotch—squeezing his testicles just to piss him off more—and started down the hallway. She heard him snarl quietly at the back of her dress and then he had blurred to walk beside her. The snicking sound his fangs made when he put them up was timed so well with the striking of one gorgeous heel on the glossy wood that she scarcely heard them over the beautiful rhythm her shoes were tapping out simply for her entertainment.

"He's close." Eric was practically grinning now, and Pam could almost feel the bounce in his step lightening her own feet. He looked at her, smile faltering. "You didn't answer my question."

Pam lifted an eyebrow with natural elegance. "You didn't finish it." They began to descend the staircase which flanked the wall as it led down to the foyer of their spacious home. "You have to have a colored cummerbund because the occasion demands we match in some way or another." She said this as though the possibly cute value of the concept bored her when it actually made her happy and disgusted at the same time. "You can't look like an undertaker all the time." A beat passed before she spoke again. "Godric suggested he wished to see you in something that brought out your eyes." Eric would do anything for Godric. That made one of them.

The smile sneaking its way up Eric's face was worth the sliver of guilt she felt.

Congratulations, Pam smirked to herself, you just manipulated the master of manipulation. The fact that Eric had been a vampire for one thousand years as of tonight and she was still able to influence him only heightened her sense of accomplishment.

"What are you so smug about?" inquired Eric, nudging her elbow with his own.

Pam allowed her lips to curve fully before she answered him. "The vision I chose for your dinner tonight." One of the presents they had come to traditionally give each other for birthday or turning day celebrations was a breather whom one of them—and therefore the other—found particularly attractive in some way.

The Viking arched an eyebrow, an appreciative sound rumbling in his throat, and again his desire stirred within her. "Is she... experienced?"

Pam returned the gesture. "You expect me to spoil the surprise? My Maker would never be so boring. Give him back before I rip your puny, feeble heart out and use it as a wineglass."

Suddenly Eric snarled, his fangs snapping down less than an inch from the bridge of her nose. Ice shot through her veins as she waited, stock-still and wide-eyed, until he had retracted his weapons and kissed her temple.

"You need to stop being so fucking paranoid," she spat as she stalked down the stairs without him. "And don't go crying to Godric, because he'll tell you the same damned thing and you know it."

Eric met her at the bottom of the stairs. "I indicated that I was sorry, Pam." He sounded like a sulking eight-year-old, and she repressed a shudder at the thought. Children. The damned things were everywhere, putting stink in the air, messes on the ground and idiocy in the minds of women who were otherwise high-standing. The only reasons why she was able to tolerate Godric at all, besides the fact that he did none of those things and that Eric had more or less ordered her to, was that he was much older, wiser, and more powerful than the average fifteen-year-old which he appeared to be. Watching him hunt was quite an experience—even though he sometimes reminded her of a tiger kitten before the attack, with the way he sunk belly to the ground in the shadows as he observed his prey and waited for the right moment to strike, his ass practically wagging like a little fluffy tail, which nearly made her as sick as it made Eric hard—and if you weren't grateful enough to accept such an honor, then you were a fucking idiot.

Pam rolled her eyes. "You're just lucky I didn't try to keep her for myself."

"I'd like to have seen that," Eric smirked. "She really must be something special, given that you're so unwilling to—" He snapped his head around to regard the door as a gentle knock sounded on the wood; he had reached and opened it in the next second. Pam couldn't see the newcomer at all, but Eric's Nordic shout and the unrestrained joy that flooded their bond made his identity unmistakable.

There was the distinctive clap of a military cap hitting the floor before Godric was yelling, "Put me down! Eric, really!" as her snickering Maker swung him around by the armpits as though he were a little boy. Hearing Godric raise his voice was always surprising, but finding that she didn't feel a shred of disgust for the display shocked Pam even more.

Godric. He had been present when she had risen from the ground on the first night of her new life, and had laughed when she had immediately turned to Eric and asked why he had brought a scrawny little boy to her goddamned funeral. (He had laughed even harder when, after observing his eyes and manner of speaking and posture in the nights to follow, she referred to him as a "creepy old man." Strangely, he had seemed more amused by the latter remark than the former, and it was then that Pam realized he enjoyed being associated with an age closer to his mind than to his body. She couldn't find it in herself to blame him.) The three of them had shared a nest for ten years—the boy sometimes taking part in her training, sometimes not—before Godric decided to call it quits. She would never forget the look on Eric's face when he told her Godric had said it was time for the Viking to live on his own. He and Eric spoke on the phone at least once every few weeks after that, but it had taken Pam much, much longer than Eric to stop cursing him. When Eric suffered, she suffered.

"Don't you think I'm too old for that?" Godric teased as her Maker wrapped the boy in a hug. Eric rocked him gently, their faces so close they were practically kissing. Pam felt relieved even as she quashed the urge to vomit. "I'm not a little boy anymore, and with your back..."

"My back will serve you until the True Death." Eric rested his forehead against Godric's and closed his eyes. "I've missed you," he murmured in Swedish, so quietly that even Pam could barely hear him, as a pang of longing that was not her own twisted her gut. She suddenly wished her Maker had never begun to teach her his native tongue.

"I know." Godric squeezed his eyes shut, tightening his small arms around the Viking's neck. "It's good to be home."

"How long are you staying?" English once again.

"I'm hoping I can manage a fortnight without returning to find that Dallas has disappeared off the face of the earth." Godric, making a joke. Pam didn't know whether to applaud or question the boy's identity.

The boy's hands ran down the front of Eric's shirt to his cummerbund. "This is nice," he said, head tilting unmistakably as he considered the garment. "It matches your eyes," he said softly, smiling, gaze returning to meet Eric's, and Pam wanted to hug him. (She was definitely finding a way to stay out of her Maker's emotions now.)

"That's the general idea," smirked Eric, as if it were his idea all along, tilting his chin to capture the boy's mouth. "Your dress uniform is nice, too," he continued as their lips briefly parted. "U.S. Army, huh?"

"Mmhmm..." Godric agreed lazily as they continued to kiss, his body growing lax in Eric's arms. "I'm on leave..."

"Congratulations on finding someone short enough to impersonate convincingly," Pam said dryly, more to stop the boy's lips from parting under Eric's before she actually did vomit than anything else.

"Pam!" Eric barked as they broke apart, brow lowered dangerously.

The boy placed a hand on the Viking's arm. "No, Eric, she's right. I'm actually happy they fit so well." Godric leaned down to pick up his cap and the suitcase that had keeled over on the floor at the sight of the Viking's massive body standing in front of its owner as Eric finally shut the door. Tucking the cap under his arm, the feral boy she had only seen him become during the hunt faded from his eyes—brought on by Eric's lust, no doubt—as he turned to her and gave her a short, formal bow. "Please accept my apology, Pam, for neglecting my favorite hostess." The words fell smoothly enough from his lips, although they sounded more like something Eric would have said than his Maker. The affectionate look the boy was giving her reminded her of a grandfather surveying a favorite granddaughter over his tobacco pipe, and her skin crawled. "Would you be so kind as to show me my quarters so that I might unpack?"

"I'll do it," Eric said quickly, before she could protest, an ominously excited look in his eye as he led the boy up the stairs. "You'll be staying with me..."

"We only have an hour before the guests start showing up!" Pam called after them, more than slightly pissed. Her veins were throbbing, and she would be too busy for the next hour making sure the housekeeping and kitchen staff followed her instructions to get rid of the sensation properly. She went off to watch the alcohol being brought up from the basement, wishing for the first time since her turning that she could drink it as Godric's moaning reached her ears.

The celebration was in full-swing. Humans drank alcohol. Vampires snuck off to rooms set aside for drinking from humans. The wealthy groveled at the feet of their superiors. Fred Astaire flaunted his hyperactivity and noise-making shoes. And Eric eye-fucked everyone in the house.

Pam stood on the balcony above the ballroom floor, tracing the rim of the brimming champagne flute she was using as a prop with her index finger as she surveyed the chatting figures below her, every inch the cold stone her Maker was raising her to be.

"Hello, Pam."

She flinched before she could catch herself. She always knew where Eric was, but Godric's quiet appearances were equally unexpected. "Don't do that," she snapped. A poor recovery.

The small boy who had held her Maker's heart in his hands for a thousand years blinked, gray gaze wide, as though it were he who had been startled. "I'm sorry."

She turned away from eyes that were far too old for their face, and woman and boy watched Eric move through the crowd in silence for a long while, their hands resting on the balustrade.

"Why did you come if you stopped caring for Eric?" The question had been building inside her for fifteen years.

He searched her face for a while before turning back to the railing. "I didn't leave because I stopped caring for Eric." His voice was very soft. "I will always care for Eric."

"Then why make him so miserable?" Unrestrained resentment blackened her tone.

Godric sighed, fidgeting slightly with the cuff of his uniform sleeve before continuing. "I left because for hundreds of years I have been the old fool who never believes that his child is ready to go on without him. Granted, Eric is not ready now and will probably never be ready.

"Look around you. He mentions my name twenty times in a given half-hour while yours has been said barely five times tonight. He glances at me every five seconds; he has barely looked at you once since I arrived here. And you know as well as I how many times in the past he nearly risked your life for my sake when I was perfectly capable of handling the situation myself."

His voice grew even softer. "I left because his loyalty as my child was interfering with his duty as your Maker. The distance between us has been just as painful for me as it has been for him, and this is something which cannot be blamed on our shared blood."

Though Pam's facial expression never changed, her head spun. "Are you trying to tell me I've been pissed at you because you were trying to do what was best for me?"

Godric offered her the sad, tired smile of an old man who had just had a very, very long day and would like to think only of taking a nap. "I'm used to it—I did raise Eric, after all."

She returned his smile for the first time that night as they simultaneously caught sight of Eric dancing with an elderly, widowed human woman who was particularly high on the social ladder. Pam could see the glint of her diamonds from here, and she wanted them. "As soon as we convince him to marry her I'm raiding her jewelry box." Her no-doubt walk-in closet-sized jewelry box.

Godric chuckled and Pam came very close to flinching again; she had forgotten just how fucking creepy his laugh was. "I'll tell Eric not to stop you."

"Thank you." The song ended, and they watched Eric bow over the woman's hand, kissing it. "I'm glamouring her into letting me be his arm candy. There is no way he's going anywhere with that on his arm." She suppressed a shudder. "I don't want to know what the sex would be like."

"She would certainly enjoy it." His eyes were locked on his progeny, his mouth parted, his hands convulsing on the balcony railing until the wood creaked dangerously; he let go quickly, running his tongue over his bottom lip.

"I think we should let Eric do his courting in peace," Pam said dryly. Her desires for her Maker were not as strong as Godric's were for his progeny—women were becoming more and more appealing as the decades passed—but they were still there. "I'll show you the garden."

They descended the stairs together, Pam experiencing a sense of déjà vu as they did so, and slipped out through a side door. A short gravel path led them to an oasis of flourishing botanicals—all kept by gardeners, of course. Why get dirt under your nails when you weren't in danger from the sun? The multitudes of floral odors assaulted Pam's nose like a bundle of silky puppies, forcing her to breathe only when it was necessary to speak. Meaning, of course, that neither of them said anything for a long time. Pam was beginning to sense a pattern. She didn't know how Eric could stand it.

She inhaled, barely able to keep from wincing. "Tell me about Eric's turning. I've heard about it a billion times from him, but you know he's biased." She was expecting something sappy, knew she would get it, but still she needed to hear what Eric had been to the one who made him who he was today.

Godric's chin lifted slightly; a shine had appeared in his eyes that had not been there before. "He was—is—the most beautiful man I had ever seen. There was something about him the night before I turned him... an aura wouldn't be the right word. The way he moved, the way he fought... Confidence was in his every gesture, his every word. He inspired such loyalty in his men, I wanted to be one of them, to be his child—progeny wasn't as widely used, not back then—just so I could be near him. He caught a glimpse of me, just before he was wounded. Our eyes met, and I felt... I felt as if he were already a part of me, felt as if he could give me what I had never been given in my life, not even as a human boy."

The boy closed his eyes, the toes of his boots testing the ground before him to ensure he didn't step on anything unwarranted. "When he was injured... I felt as though I had been injured, too. A pain like I have never felt pierced through to my core, and when he cried out... One of his men beheaded the enemy with an axe, and this angered me because I had wanted to be the one to kill the man. But the sky was growing light, and once underground the sun's siren song lulled me to a restless sleep.

"The following night I was awake and clawing my way out of the earth as soon as the sun set. I tracked his winding path through the forest, wanting to keep some of the earth that was covered in his scent and blood, so that I might have something of him with me for a little while if I found him after it was too late. Each crackle of a leaf under my foot, each hoot of an owl, each squeak of a bat was the darkest laughter in my ears, for in every sound that was made I heard Eric's roar of agony.

"And then I heard his voice, heard it in my ear instead of in my mind."

Pam had not realized they had come to a standstill under an old oak. She was hanging on Godric's every word as she had Eric's for twenty-five years. And she felt Godric's awe, felt his pain, felt his elation... It was almost as if she were bonded to him too, and for once that thought didn't unnerve her.

Godric's eyes lifted towards the stars, their gleam reflected in his irises. "I heard his voice in my ear, though he was still many yards away, and I was the happiest I had felt in over a thousand years. My veins cried out for his blood to strengthen mine, as my blood would strengthen his. I rushed to crouch at the edge of the clearing where he lay dying. I watched in silence for awhile, observed the comfort one of his men tried to give him and how he denied needing it. His love of life was the strongest I have ever witnessed, and this too made me want to make him mine. He would suffer in the afterlife of his human upbringing, and he deserved so much more than that. And that is what I have tried to give him for a thousand years: Life. His heart doesn't beat, he has no need to breathe, yet he perseveres with a strength I can never hope to match."

"There you are!" Eric sauntered toward them, alone now, his dress shirt ghost-like in its fluorescence. The rose that had been in his buttonhole was gone, no doubt taken by the old hag who had been hanging on him like an innocent maiden reeling from her first kiss. "I was wondering where my two favorite vampires had gotten to," he continued, as if he hadn't already known through their bonds with him. He draped brawny arms about their shoulders and pressed slow kisses to their cheeks.

Godric closed his eyes and pressed his nose into Eric's boutonniere, inhaling slowly, mouth open as though to capture the scent on the roof of his mouth like a serpent. After a moment, he pulled back slightly, nose wrinkling. "I think the flower smells better than she did."

"And I smell better than the flower," Eric agreed—Pam rolled her eyes, even though she had to agree with him—as the three of them began walking together, Eric's progeny and Eric's Maker still in his arms. "You never showed me who you intended to be my supper, Pam."

She smirked, feeling his hunger in her own belly; by the way Godric's head lifted at the statement, she knew he felt it too. "That decaying sack of blood you danced with for half the night was your dinner."

He stopped so suddenly that, with his momentum no longer propelling them, Pam teetered slightly on the uneven, hateful dirt beneath her heels before steadying herself on the shoulder of Mount Everest. "What?"

The indignation in his voice was more beautiful than the rubies bleeding across her chest on their platinum chain. "I said, that—"

"I heard you." He stared out into the garden. "On my thousandth turning day, Pam? That's the perfect day for you to pull your first prank?"

"Oh, it's not a prank. I intended to give her to you as soon as she had accepted our invitation."

Eric imitated one of her patented theatrical sighs. "Thor's beard, what have I done to deserve such a child?"

"'A child is only as impertinent as her Maker,'" Pam recited smugly with a glance at Godric. It was something he'd once said about her to Eric during the first months of her training. He gave his creepy laugh again and she instantly regretted she'd said anything.

Eric dropped his arms from around their shoulders as they reentered the house and the company of strangers, but Pam felt the warmth of her Maker there until long after the night was over.

Author's Note: "I am Ægir, god of the sea, and you are Ràn, my sea goddess..." I love how playful Eric is in that scene. That's who Pam meant when she was talking about "Age-ear" and his nine daughters who each represented waves on the ocean. Hel, with one "l," is another Norse goddess living in the underworld, so Eric was swearing by her, not the place most Americans think of. The water closet, or WC, as it is called in many parts of Europe, is another term for bathroom.