'Mine'
It troubles him, decades later, that he didn't notice any changes in her body until it was too late. At 55, Sookie Stackhouse was older than his mother had been when she'd died in 900 AD, but thanks to her fairy heritage and superior nutrition, as well as frequent sips of his blood, she looked like she was only on the onset of middle age, the far side of 35 rather than a little over half a century old. But that time had passed, ever so quickly and in the blink of an eye, it seemed, a tiny fraction of his existence.
Instead, she gets the news from her doctor after a few tests come back abnormal; it's deep in her fragile body, in her bones- leukemia. He doesn't want to lose her, can't bear the thought of it, and thinks about turning her against her will more than once because of it. Eventually, she would forgive him, as all progeny forgave their makers.
Just as his second progeny, Pamela Swynford De Beaufort, was hiding out in Japan (as if he didn't know it) and had been there sulking, pouting, and designing clothing for the better part of three decades. All because of his rash and impassioned threat, addled by exhaustion and confused in front of those fucking witches.
But while he and Pad had eternity to resolve their differences, he and Sookie did not. In the end, he respected the fierce independence that had won his love too much to betray her wishes. She deteriorated quickly, wasting and limp within weeks. In her final moments, she laid out in her yard on a lawn chair while he watched her soaking up her beloved sunshine. She cried a few tears as she watched him- a bloody-faced mess on the other side of an LCD screen, 30 feet away in her light proofed basement. She faded into the light, and he descended into darkness.
A month after Sookie was buried and gone, he had a dream in the daytime. In it, there was a pretty young blonde, buxom and curved, ringlets springing around her cheeks as a frame for her almost comically large blue eyes. She laughed under her bonnet as a short little Englishman told her a tawdry joke, and her tinkling laughter drew him closer. Here was a creature of darkness cloaked in light, and he knew from that second that he wanted her. His eyes fixed on the back of her skirts, and he followed her home, stowing away in her cellar.
The next night, he slipped up behind her and sweetly snapped her neck, tearing open his wrist as she writhed, uncomprehending, her eyes seeing stars. He dug her grave and lay with her, stroking her soft waves and rubbing her cheeks, hoping it had worked. He'd only made a child once before, and had twice failed.
As she stirred, he felt her awaken in his blood, the panic rising swiftly. He cradled her close, murmuring reassurances in her ear. He remembered what Godric had said to him- brother, father, son- and crooned it to her in her native tongue. He'd added 'lover' because she'd been made as his companion, and he hoped she would see him as such when she came into her own.
And happily enough, she had.
He goes west, finding himself in an alley in Los Angeles. Eric hasn't been here since the early days of Hollywood, when he'd fed and fucked his way through silent movie stars. He's disgusted by the metropolis; by the waste, the filth, the glitz and gaudy exteriors.
He hears a strange noise and comes across a slick man in a cheap business suit standing over a hooker he's just stabbed in the chest. Something in him snaps at the sight, and he kills for the first time in over 20 years. He tears the man into pieces in seconds before dropping down to look into the eyes of the murderer's victim. Her hair is short and dyed pink, and her eyes are brown. Her heart is ruined, torn apart by the blade, and she slips off into death within a moment. He doesn't try to save her.
He'd felt his first child die- a man named Thorne- a few days before he created Pam. It ranks as perhaps the fifth most painful experience of his long life. Thorne had been a Dane and an excellent fighter, and Eric had turned him as Godric had he- on the battlefield. Blonde and green-eyed, he reminded Eric of his son, so brashly, only 15 years a vampire himself, he'd turned Thorne. Godric had been angry for years afterward.
The woman at his feet reminds him vaguely of the young man he brought over- in the shape of her face and the cleft in her chin. Perhaps she is some distant descendant of his. He leaves both bodies for the police to find later, and takes to the sky, reaching Hawaii before sunrise.
He doesn't call her because he can feel her, and is encouraged by the fact that she stays where she is, though she must be able to feel him coming. The next night, he buys a shirt online from her men's collection and had it ultra express shipped to his hotel while he waits for Anubis airlines flight 1013 to Tokyo. In the meanwhile, he's surprised to find that the Polynesian girls have blood sweeter than the general population. He attributes this to their frequent consumption of pineapple.
He wears the shirt as he disembarks from his flight, smiling to himself and wondering if she'll recognize it as 'hers'. Though, to be fair, it's just simple black silk button-up shirt with "PSDB-N" embroidered on the back of the collar. He's amused that she's tacked his last name onto her own in her business dealings and brand name- an amusement Sookie, also a Northman by name, shared. She'd been buried wearing lace and leather PSDB-N lingerie under her prim little church dress, just like she'd asked.
Tokyo is even dirtier than Los Angeles.
He glamours the doorman outside of her apartment building and skips the elevator, heading up the stairs instead. He passes a sheepish and confused Japanese girl who smells of Pam on his way up, and she gives him a lengthy headlong stare. He ignores her. Now that he's this close, Pam feels like an extension of him again, a familiar friend. 'You're mine,' he thinks, and just then, she opens the door.