"Brothers and sisters, we are on lockdown..."
Eric ascended the stairs, and the mechanical voice of the lunatic who had attempted to orchestrate his Maker's demise was a funeral march in comparison to his own aggressive stride. Aggressive, even in the face of a thousand memories, a thousand triumphs, a thousand fears... Aggressive, even in the face of his Maker's will: "Spill no blood on your way out."
Spill no blood? That was like trying to tell a cat it wasn't allowed to catch mice. Rebellion, and spilling blood, were part of both their natures—part of Godric's nature. If he hadn't freed himself two thousand years ago, he wouldn't be Eric's Maker today, and the thought of living a human life without the ageless boy, or even an undead life under a different vampire, made the Viking's jaw clench. What was Godric thinking? Had those sycophantic assholes begun to threaten his own life unless Godric called him off? It was the only explanation Eric could think of. They had nearly sacrificed their lives for one another many times over the centuries, and the berserker had no doubt that Godric, like Hrolf and Gunnar, would die for him in an instant. But he and his Maker would find a way to kill them all—they always had. No one attempted to end Godric and got away with their lives.
To end Godric...
Eric relaxed his jaw immediately on remembering its tension. To betray anything but confident strategy was weakness, and weakness was death. To say that he or Godric were weak was also death.
The Viking had felt many aspects of Death—Father, brother, son—but none resembled the one whose instruction he was now working to obey. The Death he knew would have rejoiced at bloodshed, ancient eyes gleaming with pride as the crimson fluid dripped down their chins. The Death he knew would have offered a layered smile and pressed his bloodied lips to Eric's forehead, answering his triumphant snarl with a quiet growl. The Death he knew would never have allowed himself to be captured in the first place.
There is no right or wrong. Only survival... or death.
And now it seemed Death's very survival was being fought for.
The Viking pressed his back against a wall, assured that the rednecks closing the double doors around the corner would not be alerted to his presence until he was ready for them to know. There were only three of them; hardly a fair fight. Eric was almost disappointed. It would have been a challenge to escape without spilling a drop of lunch, and Eric loved a challenge. "I could have you out in seconds."
"There's kids out there!" Sookie's voice was quiet—she wasn't stupid—but the horror in it was unmistakable, not to mention irrational. When you lived as long as he had, children were amusement, children were dessert, but they weren't worth fretting over. They were just miniature humans. The only child worth being concerned about, especially because he was so much more than that, was Godric.
The berserker forced himself to explain his view in a way that was still rational, in a way that wouldn't encourage one of her pathetic debates. (Watching her try to get in his face, back in his office in Fangtasia, feeling her slap him, had been as comical as it had been arousing. He had hoped that tucking her into his back pocket to keep Lafayette company would prove to be even more entertaining in the future.) "Well, those humans wouldn't think twice about hurting us."
Thankfully, she couldn't argue with that. "Why didn't you bring Bill with you?"
Working to ensure his facial expression never changed, Eric forced down a laugh, even though Sookie couldn't see it. Bill? Bill would have been about as useful as a hay bale in this situation. "Bill's attachment to you is irrational. It clouds his judgment... He would kill every child in this church to save you." Not to mention the fact that his abilities as a vampire are so weak that they would capture him in about a second.
"Why aren't you?"
Eric stared at her. Was she joking? No, no, he could see that she wasn't. But how could she possibly think he would kill anyone—especially the children she had just been terrified to see harmed—for her? She was attractive, yes, but she was merely human. If he killed anyone tonight, it would be for Godric, and Godric alone. "I'm following Godric's orders and getting you out, that's all."
She watched his face. "He's your Maker, isn't he?"
"I'll be your father, your brother, your son." They had exchanged these roles and more, not only to fit in with their food, but to amuse themselves, or aid in the teaching of a lesson... or, in Eric's case more often than not, as part of his seduction of his vampiric other third. (He and Pam had no need to use such terms: a glance, a flick of her hair with his fingers, and a shared smirk all seemed to be enough for her.) The words meant more to the Viking than he would ever care to admit, even to Godric, and the thought of never again watching them shiver from the eternal boy's lips made something deep in his core shrivel painfully. "Don't use words you don't understand."
"You have a lot of love for him."
Eric could only stare at her. "... Don't use words I don't understand."
He turned back toward his prey, a plan engraved in his strategic mind, intending to step out and conceal himself among their warm breath and thundering, delicious heartbeats—"Eric, no!"—but Sookie's protest made him pause. If she rushed out in an attempt to save him, her blood would be a literal presence on his hands—and he was in no mood to deal with politics tonight.
But no one was there to say stopping her couldn't be fun.
He didn't need the ability to glamour humans, even if she hadn't been immune to that ability, to put her into a subservient stupor. He moved toward her slowly, conscious of every ripple of muscle in his body and making her conscious of it too. The Viking stalked her with the merciless seduction of a beast obsessed that his female was in heat. He backed Sookie into a corner, towering over her, smirking inside because she could not tear her eyes from his. He lowered his head—he did not need to inhale to capture her unique, powerful scent—and resisted the impulse to let his mouth touch her hair. "Trust me," he murmured, his lip nearly curling as he watched her eyes lower in aroused concurrence.
Brief interlude successful, Eric turned and, shoulders hunched, lurched toward the humans on the other side of the next room. "Well, hey, y'all! How's it goin'?" Behind the grin creasing his eyelids—"I wish I could have watched the sun cross the sky for as many years as you did," Godric said quietly, wistfulness shining in his gray eyes as he touched the crow's feet on Eric's face—he forced down a laugh. Pam might have actually vomited blood if she ever heard him speak this way with any seriousness. At least her accent was tolerable—Bill's, on the other hand, was definitely worth mocking here. "Steve sent me over to... mind the exit area." The grown children stared at him, and his grin was as much a part of his disguise as it was his private amusement. It was funny, how their weapons just rested slack at their sides, as if they had never seen a human being without a tan before. "Think I can take it from here..."
"By yourself?" asked a balding man with a goatee, and Eric felt like applauding the question. They would attack him now, which would give him justification to defend himself, and surely Godric, whatever might be going through his head right now, couldn't possibly disapprove of that.
"Uh, yeah," Eric replied, as if he were any other human who had agreed to Newlin's request because he was bored and had no idea of the danger the post would put him in.
The man with the goatee nodded at Eric. "Well, you're big'n all—" Why yes, I am, and in ways that would terrify you, you close-minded pissant "—but there's a vamper on the loose."
The Viking's eyes widened, allowing his confident, carefree smile to drop from his face as though he had just learned the tail-gating party he had been looking forward to all week had been cancelled. "Oh."
"Where's your stake?" a second member of the party asked suddenly.
A sheepish grin pulled the Viking's lips back from his teeth. "Aw, dang..." His snort of laughter was not entirely playacting. He was verging much closer toward the theatrical than he needed to be, but he just couldn't resist. "... I forgot."
Yes, Pam would definitely be vomiting by now. And then Ginger, who had always sounded like she'd had one cigarette more than her throat could stand, would add her chorus of extraordinarily shrill, hoarse screaming... Home sweet home.
Eric faked sheepish laughter once again. "Maybe I could borrow yours, if—if that's okay?" The goatee'd instigator was moving around behind him, raising his stake in deliberate increments, a fraction of a hair by a fraction of a hair.
"I can't do that." The kid was clearly overreacting. Eric hadn't just asked the kid to cut out his own heart and feed it to himself, but his tone of voice implied that he had. "Get your own!"
Eric was abruptly tired of playing human. Godric was in danger, they both were hungry, and he didn't have time for this. His facial muscles relaxed, became calm, soothing. Emptying his mind took some difficulty—every pore in his body cried out for the presence and security of his Maker—but he was certainly strong enough to manage it. In his mind's eye, tendrils the ghostly white of death extended from his lack of thought to the boy's active resistance, wrapping themselves tightly around it, before slowly drawing the catch in to his own thoughts. When Godric had first taught him how to hypnotize people, he'd mentioned that imagining the process like this would help to make it come true, and Eric had adhered to the counsel ever since. The heat of the youth's defiance cooled rapidly, and his musings became cold and sluggish, like a pint of blood that had been shoved in the refrigerator so it might keep longer.
All of this happened in under a second. "I'd very much," finished Eric, ever the polite murderer, "like to borrow your stake."
The boy's face imitated his, but poorly, so that he looked more moronic than serene. "Yeah... Yeah. That'd be okay, I guess." He held the weapon out to Eric with the slow lack of hesitation common in the successfully glamoured.
Eric shifted as if to take it, timing the gesture perfectly with the man lifting the identical stick of wood he was planning on stabbing into his back.
"Stake!" Sookie's panicked cry was highly unnecessary—the Viking was already moving.
He ripped the twig from the man with the goatee at a speed Godric had reached a thousand years ago, pushing the human in the chest and sending his back into the concrete some ten feet away. He casually tossed aside the second human and lifted the third by the throat, slamming him against the wall and poising his own stake at his throat. The kid's eyes were wide as Eric, brow lowered, stared into them. The Viking was not truly angry, merely in battle mentality now—There is no right or wrong, only survival—and a berserker could not look anything but ferocious.
But wait, yes, the old heat was rising up to greet him with open arms. This boy could have helped capture Godric. Even if he hadn't, he was associated with the people who had, which made him deserving of death. Eric had been too absorbed in goofing off earlier to realize this—and that was weak.
The patter of Sookie's heels on the floor as she ran to them only served to increase this welcome irritation. "Eric, you don't have to kill him!" She said this as though she was excited about the fact that she had just realized sparing the kid might prove beneficial to them. (She was probably just trying to reinforce Godric's words, and if so, her attempts were laughable and blackballed.)
Humans really could use lessons in dictation. But in that moment the berserker was less than unwilling to give them.
He stared at the boy a moment longer before throwing the stake to the ground with a clatter and allowing the shaking child to slide to the floor after it. "Come on," he said to the telepathic waitress as he turned to open the door—
And was faced with the sight of a sweating cloud of men in gray approaching the church.
Soldiers of the Sun. He had laughed when he first heard of the moniker. The sun was powerful, there was no denying that, but the word soldier conjured up very different images for Eric: bear skins, a Schutzstaffel uniform, a funeral pyre, a laughing little boy with fangs sharper than swords...
"Those arrows're wood." Eric didn't feel the need to glance at the human whose companions were now leaving him behind with the scary monster from out of the closet. Strangely, there was no malign intent in the kid's voice; he only seemed relieved to be alive. "You'll never make it through..."
"Eric," Sookie again, always ready to help, "through the sanctuary!"
The Viking banged the double doors open, resisting the urge to run at speeds much faster than she ever could, but she still moved in a kind of half-trot to keep up with him. He needed to get her out as quickly as possible so he could return to help Godric. He swept past rows of pews stacked with blankets and sleeping bags without really seeing them. "Where's the exit?"
"Back that way." She gestured to the right of the altar.
"There are several exits, actually." Steve Newlin's white suit practically glowed with his sneer as he appeared, walking around to the front of the sacrificial table. Eric's blood surged. He quelled the impulse to rip the man limb from limb right at that instant. Once Godric was safe, Newlin would be the first to die, and he would die gradually. "For you, the easiest one takes you straight to hell."
Eric counted the Soldiers as they flooded through the entrances to the sanctuary. It would be impossible to get away from them all without spilling blood, and heat flared through him anew. Why was Godric so concerned about the people who had held him captive, the people who had probably tortured him for their own amusement? What was Godric thinking?
He searched through the bond... and was promptly lost in a deep, black nothingness. Eric's stomach lurched. Even when Godric was calm, Eric was calm too. He could feel that, slowly coursing through his veins like a healing touch. But right now he didn't feel anything. He was completely numb. Perhaps Godric was glamouring a human on his way out of the church? But a lack of feeling had never accompanied the action before. And the connection between them told him that his Maker was still standing in the basement right where he'd left him. WHY? What was wrong with him? Why wasn't he tearing the so-called warriors to pieces where they stood? Eric wanted to punch something.
"Let us leave!" The girl's shout brought him back from his musings like the breaking of a rubber band. She was looking around at the men frantically. "Save yourselves! No one has to die!"
Too late for that, sweetheart.
"The war has begun, you evil whore of Satan!" As much as Eric didn't like Bill, he still thought that was going a bit far. If such a Dark Lord really existed, it had to be more powerful Bill-fucking-Compton. "You vampires cast the first stone by killin' my family. The lines have been drawn. You're either with us, or against us. We are prepared for Armageddon."
"The vampire you're holdin' prisoner got away." The desperation in Sookie's voice was almost painful. Never show an enemy that you are afraid. It was a very old lesson, one that had passed from Godric to Eric, and Eric to Pam. "He's a Sheriff—he's bound to send for help!"
"I'm not concerned with Godric!" The sound of his Maker's name on Newlin's lips, distorted by primitive hatred and the hint of a Southern accent, was almost repulsive. "Any vampire will do for our grand celebration—and we got one right here!" He gestured to Eric.
Of course. It was the only way.
Sookie was staring at him. Eric returned her gaze. He would find a way to escape, but if Godric didn't reach safety... "I'll be fine," he said at last.
He hoped she would get out when she had the chance. Dying now would be such a waste of her... ability.
Newlin was still grinning when Eric stepped forward, head bowed, preparing himself for the pain to come. He reached through the bond one last time...
The Viking had known a thousand aspects of Death, but in each of them he had felt something. Godric, at his age, would certainly be able to hear his progeny's footsteps as he gave himself up for roasting—and yet Eric hadn't received even the tiniest sliver of concern from him. It wasn't as if Godric didn't care about him anymore; the surge he had felt when the ageless boy summoned him to the basement was solid proof that he did. Then why—
Eric swallowed. Was Godric...? No, no—if Godric was truly dead, was murdered against all odds by these stinking blood bags, he was certain he would have felt it. He would have FELT IT, GOD DAMN IT!
He still wasn't receiving any emotions from the immortal child... and he might never find out why.
Godric... Please.
"Brothers and sisters, there will be a holy bonfire at dawn!"
