Charlaine Harris owns the rights to these folks.
A/N: This is the sixth story in my series. Please enjoy Thoughts in the Night, Taking Action, Eric's Story, One Year Later, and Pam's Take on Things before starting Back to Normal. Enjoy!
Eric
Now that Victor Madden is dead, Sookie and I have decided that we want to be able to return to Louisiana, even if only to visit. So, after many nights of serious discussion, I called Pam first to tell her the news (although, she was the only person other than Sookie to know the truth). She swore fealty and offered to return my wealth, said all the things that she knew she should say as an obedient child. Then she said that she was pleased to know that I was safe and with Sookie. That kind of surprised me since I knew she wasn't always on board with the idea of my living with Sookie. We talked for hours as she caught me up to date with the bar and the politics. She asked my advice about some changes to Fangtasia. Then I called the local area sheriff and told her that I wanted to register as a resident vampire in her area. She was cordial and we took care of it on the phone in a matter of minutes. And just like that, I was back on the map.
Sookie called her brother and Compton and told them the news as well. I also called Stan Davis, congratulated him and swore my fealty to him as the new king, and told him that I may very well be a property owner in Louisiana again very soon and would register with Clancy as soon as I got back. He congratulated me on my rise from the grave, and I could hear the humor in his voice. He knew as well as I did that it was not at all uncommon for our kind to disappear and then reappear from time to time. We do what we need to do to survive, and then we all just move on. Or at least pick up from where we left off.
Sookie and I decided that we should plan a trip back to Shreveport. She wanted to see her friends and I needed to make some decisions about Pam and the bar. We booked our tickets for the following week. As the day approached that we had planned to travel, I could tell that she was becoming uneasy, but I wasn't certain why. She started to become insecure about our future much like she had been in the very early stages of our relationship. I tried to reassure her, telling her that I would never leave her and that I would always respect her wishes, and only wanted her happiness.
In a monumental error in judgment, I decided that perhaps it was a good time to tell her about Charlaine so that she would believe me when I told her that I would never turn her and would stay with her until her natural death. She kept saying that I would stop being attracted to her when her body aged, which was ridiculous. As a human, she could not possibly understand that age has a completely different meaning to our kind. Yes, youthful humans are very attractive sexually, but I knew from my relationship with Charlaine that when you love another being, their physical appearance means very little. It is their spirit, their soul that is cherished by loved ones and that love never falters. I asked Sookie if she would love me less were I to be altered physically. What if my legs were lost like Sophie-Anne's? What if Sookie saw me covered with the burns that I suffered after Rhodes? Would she leave me? Hopefully, that put things in perspective and she felt reassured.
We were lying in the hammock late one night when I began to tell her about Charlaine. I felt her strong emotions of course—jealousy, heartbreak, pity. She wept openly when I told her how I found Charlaine dead. I reached to her to comfort her and she pushed me away. She said she wanted to be alone and wanted me to leave her to "sort things out." I respected her wishes, of course, but felt terrible that I had caused her such pain. I told her that I would be on the beach and walked out the door, turning back to see her face buried in her hands while she sobbed quietly.
I walked all the way down the beach, far from the house so that she could have her privacy. I sat in the sand, and tried to allow her to have her space, but of course I could feel her through the bond. Such sadness. Such pain. And such shock and fear. Shock and fear? That made no sense to me. Then strong panic. I jumped up and started to run home when the panic vanished and she was asleep. I knew something was terribly wrong. I took off and flew to the house, burst through back door calling her name, and then stopped and stared at the open front door. Sookie was gone.