25. Lost Soul
Eric was used to it now; waking up to a sea of often conflicting, always overwhelming emotion. He smiled and stretched. Alcide had obeyed his instructions, Eric recognized immediately. She was awash in joy, muted by a strange, evocative sorrow.
He could only guess the origin of her sorrow, but the source of the joy had to be his gift. He entered the living room to find her lying on her back, a puppy curled up on her chest, sleeping. Now, he would not have to hear werewolves complain about being threatened with "smoochie, smoochie" anymore.
He had doubted that, now that she knew they were people, she would continue to be so carefree and playful around them, anyway. So really, he hadn't needed to get her a puppy to curb the baby talk. More honestly, it was his unspoken promise to her that she would not die at his hands. Somehow, he knew she would recognize that he would not give her a living animal to care for, and then kill her.
He watched her sleep, amazed that she felt the pervasive joy even then, rather than the usual calm serenity he felt from her.
There was a knock at the front door and it opened. Eric zipped over to disarm the alarm before it could blare and wake Arin. Then he stood staring at Bill Compton for a moment. "My Liege," he drawled, bowing a minimal, scant bow.
"Walk with me," Bill commanded.
Eric raised an eyebrow, but walked out the door, closing it softly behind him. The King's men surrounded the house, guns close at hand.
"I have spoken to The Authority about your human," Bill started without preamble. "She may live, Eric, but there are conditions. You must make her yours. If she will not be yours... or mine... she must die."
"She will never be yours!"
"So she is yours?"
Eric hesitated. "No."
"Then she must die, Eric."
"I will ask her again tonight. Perhaps if she knows the stakes, she will change her mind."
Bill stopped walking and turned to look at Eric. "She must have my blood, as well."
"That is not wise," Eric argued. "It may seem an advantage for you to be able to find her. But her emotions are the strongest I have ever felt. No offense, Bill, but you are not the most..." Eric searched for a word, "stable... of vampires to begin with. I fear that the depth of her emotion would be costly to you, and we will have to kill her anyway. Such depth of feeling, even not your own, could cause even greater instability in you. We cannot afford to have a king who is subject to sudden, unexpected bouts of amusement, furious rages, or gut-tearing waves of sorrow."
"The Authority has commanded it," Bill stated, looking at Eric as if he had lost his mind.
"Then I suggest you lie," Eric replied pragmatically. "You will not be able to handle her emotional outbursts. She lies asleep, and still her emotions are more powerful than the average human, and they are nowhere near their normal capacity. She makes Sookie seem placid, even unemotional."
Bill's eyebrows rose. "That seems... exaggerated."
"I assure you, I am understating the situation, if anything. She experienced such rage during my fight with Vinciente that he lost control over himself, and he is hundreds of years older than you." Eric stopped and looked out at the woods. "She is dangerous even for me, Bill."
"Then why do you not kill her?" Bill asked.
"I love her. She almost makes me believe that we vampires really do have souls. Though if I have one, I found it the night I found her. She makes me want to take a different path."
The King was silent for long moments, staring at him. "If you cannot convince her to be yours, Eric, it is out of my hands."
Bill walked to his car and got in. In a moment, he and his guards were bumping down the driveway away from Arin's house.
Eric walked inside and sat in the chair beside the sofa, listening to the patterns of her sleep. With no change at all to the rhythm, he found her blue eyes open and looking at him.
"Arin," he said, suddenly uncertain.
She stood up and turned, placing the puppy on the sofa. Eric chafed. He could feel little from her. He hated it when she did that—burying and hiding the feelings that told him so much that she would never say or express in any other way.
She stepped up to him, inches away from him, and the smile on her face was a glimpse of divinity. She pulled his face down to hers and he kissed her with all of the ferocious longing burning inside him.
But she pulled away, and he groaned, his fangs snapping out. "Please don't turn me away," he told her.
She smiled and took his face in both of her hands. "Take me to the beach, Eric."
"Not tonight. Please, I need-"
"Now, Eric. Take me to the beach now. I want to make love to you under the full moon, in the water."
What man—what vampire—could refuse?
A couple of minutes later he held her as she coughed and gasped, staggering. Finally, her heartbeat slowed and she melted against him. He kissed her again, and she didn't stop him. He tore at her clothes, needing to feel the heat of her skin against his, to hear the thunder of her heartbeat.
"Arin, I feel more alive since I met you than I felt when I was alive," he breathed. "I want to change," he whispered to her. "Show me the right path, and I will follow it and never leave it."
He felt her sorrow. It pained him and he felt blood gathering in his eyes.
"You must find it for yourself, Eric. I'm sorry."
"I will find it for you," he promised her.
Infinite sorrow. Indescribable lust. Regret. Longing. She felt it, so he felt it.
"Tonight," she whispered to him, "I will give you the only thing I have to give that is truly mine. But there is a price."
"There is nothing you could ask of me, that I am not willing to give."
Misery. Regret. Hope. Love. She felt it, so he felt it.
"What I ask is no small thing," she whispered. "All I ask is your soul."
He pulled his head back and looked at her, the moon gilting her features with a soft, delicate glow.
"If I had a soul at all, Arin, I would give it to you freely. It would have always been yours, anyway."
A breeze whirled around them. Sorrow and regret shot through her. The sound of dolphins came from offshore in the water. The trees whispered and gasped in the wind and bore witness. The moon stared, a silent sentinel overhead.
Then Eric forgot everything except her body against his. She tore at his clothes now, lust and love flowing through her so profoundly that Eric could not contain it and he smiled as he lifted her up and carried her into the water.
With the ocean all around them, he ran his hands across her body, feeling the tone of her muscles, the softness of her breasts, her heat and her pleasure. Touching her was like no other experience in his life, because he shared her feelings along with his own. Such depth should not have been possible, and yet he felt it with her.
The waves rose and fell around them, the beat of her heart thundering in his ears. Despite the deep longing and lust that he felt and the sensual, sexual nature of their mating, his fangs did not come out. She wrapped her legs around him and he thrust inside her, burying himself in heat and life and sweetness.
Her pain was swift, dissipating as he moved inside her body. A wave crested and broke around them, spraying them with warm ocean water. Her body flowed against his, slick and sleek and wet.
He thrust into her again and again, savoring her with every stroke into the tight confines of her body. Her lust sang through him, drowning out the roar of the surf and the breezy chatter of the trees in the wind. Her longing, her pleasure, her love thundered above the siren song of her heartbeat.
Eric felt full, complete, resplendent, and he did not know if it was his own feeling or hers.
Part of him made love to her there on that beach. Part of him felt oneness with her, even with the water and the moon and the gasping trees.
Another part of him rose up, as well, though. This part of him fucked her furiously. The beast in him rose and claimed her, possessing her, marking her as his own. It reveled in her cries of ecstasy as he drove into her, taking and claiming her.
But his fangs did not come out. The beast was subsumed by the new part of him until, united within himself, however briefly, he cried out with her under the silent moon, emptying himself into her.
He felt the pleasure of orgasm well up inside him, exquisite and sweet and intense.
...But then the world went insane. He felt himself ripping, tearing. A maelstrom of water and wind surged around him. The moon seemed to twist and whirl. The trees chattered and laughed, obscenely wicked.
Then the beast rose in him again, unimpeded. It sensed her hot, naked body and struck. His fangs tore her neck open and he drank without remorse... until something else... something him and yet not-him... surged forward and cried out.
His heart was breaking, but he did not know why.
Barely, he obeyed its wishes and he licked the wound closed. Tossing the body aside, he flew away, back to Fangtasia, where he greeted Pam negligently, took the first girl he could find, and dragged her to the basement. He fucked her and drank from her, but she could not slake the unfamiliar longing burning in him like rampant fire.
He discarded her, dragging another to this office and doing it over again. Only his methodical mind kept him from killing them in his dissatisfaction.
By the time dawn whispered around his senses, he had fucked and sucked six women and found nothing of what he craved.