Note: Some little steam and maturish themes. I wanted to give a head's up.
All I could hear was that damn truck door creaking in the light breeze, the high-pitched eek reminiscent of nails scraping a chalkboard. It was all I could hear because the vampire looming over me hadn't said a damn thing. The pinwheel of his emotions cycled through so many shades I couldn't catch a coherent one, except the last, which was pity. I didn't understand that at all. Dawn was coming. He really didn't have time for this.
"Do you want to know why I turned Alexander, Sookie?" Eric asked at last.
Pick a thousand responses that Eric would make to me confessing that I had heard a vampire's thoughts—not one of those thousand replies would have been this. The vampire rolled back on his heels, granting me room to breathe. And to think. The extra space didn't help.
"Because he's blonde?" I asked lamely—drably.
Eric smirked, his lips purple in the periwinkle hues of pre-dawn. "He's also blue-eyed. Those preferences couldn't be helped, and were entirely coincidental, albeit happily so." The smirk dissolved and a surge of devotion, admiration and fierce conviction flared within him, and within me. "He wanted nothing from me, Sookie. Nothing at all."
"That's..." I didn't know what it was, maybe refreshing? Maybe rare? Maybe..."That's beautiful Eric."
Who could say if my answer was right or wrong. I only knew that I'd appreciate meeting someone who didn't want anything from me, too. Because I understood better than anyone who wasn't also a telepath, that just about everyone wants something from everybody else.
"He could have wanted many things from me—research money, to interview me for his studies, my blood to use for experiment, for fun, for his own health. He wanted nothing."
"So you chose him?"
"So I gave him the opportunity to choose me—and he took it." And then Eric said something else that cut my knees out from under me. "I've known since she arrived that Freyda betrayed the edict where you are concerned, Sookie."
"What?" I croaked. Someone had put cotton balls in my mouth. "What?"
Eric lifted one brow at me. "Before Alex left for New Orleans, I found Freyda reading the section of your edict in our marriage contract and when I asked her about it, out of curiosity, she tried to hide the fact that she had been doing it. My queen loves her secrets. I didn't think much of it until Heidi smelled Alex at the site of your husband's death, and when I updated Freyda on the discovery and told her there wasn't any way you weren't the true target, her next move was to come to Louisiana. The timing seemed odd. I didn't check her phone records Sookie, but I did check her texts. Funny thing. Even now most vampires are terrible with technology. Like overlooking emptying the deleted text folder." Sadness textured Eric's multilayered mood. "Apart from hair and eye color, I don't trust coincidence. On the night of the staged accident, my wife sent a text to an unknown number with the language of the loophole as its content."
"So all this time you could have left her?" I asked breathlessly.
"Technically speaking, her revealing the finer print of the edict does not nullify the marriage contract."
"Yeah but that's if nothing else had been going on. You knew what she'd done had to be tied up in Alex and Sam and all the other crap."
"Yes, which is why on Alex's return, after seeing you in the hospital, I confronted her. She confessed about the text to me, claiming she had only been asked about the loophole by someone she had thought was Mr. Cataliades. Her confession came, reluctantly, but plausibly. The demon would have been a wise medium to use to hide the identity of the true seeker of your blood. I searched unsuccessfully for the demon after that. Freyda's half-lie proved more cunning than the truth."
"Why would you take her word for it?"
"I understood her betraying me in terms of, shall I say matters of the heart—I cannot fathom her betraying me by perjure to her own self-interest and to the interest of so very many."
I wasn't understanding any of this. Not his mood. Not his laconic, side-topic explanations. Not his avoidance at addressing my truth bomb. Not his marriage—sure as hell not his marriage. Not the fact that he was doing all of this when the sun couldn't be more than twenty minutes from breaching the horizon.
Eric's gaze was looking out at that very horizon. "Which other vampire minds have you trespassed to enter, Sookie?"
My heart was already in panic mode—this question thrusted it into full attack. "Why would you think I'd read any other mind? This was the first time. I think maybe because you almost turned me, and my new body—maybe this was just a fluke because of that."
The racing of my pulse slowed as I finished the lie—the brilliant lie. Damn. Genius witch. Genius vampire. Genius telepath. I couldn't believe my own quickness.
Eric turned to me, both eye brows lifted. "That confession sounds as reluctant and plausible as Freyda's lie. I am not known to be fooled once, let alone twice. And that is barring the fact that your emotions vaulted from fear to triumph just now."
Well. They just dove—face-planted—right back down. Maybe I should have gone with the demon-made-me-do-it, as well. And it wasn't fair that my emotions were as easy to read as a children's book while his topsy-turvy ones were like translating ancient Danish.
"Eric, I think we should stay on point here," I floundered. "You just told me your queen wants what's best for us all. That all does not include me. You need to tell me why you're still with her when you knew—"
"How many times have you read my mind?"
"I told you this was—"
"Did you ever read it while we made love?"
That warmth of feeling was unmistakable, a hopeful longing.
"No," I said, a little awestruck, adding in my stricken of awe voice, "I did think I read it once right after we had, though. You were leaving but you wanted to stay lying in bed with me."
"Only you would need to read my mind to know that." Eric's smile did not bless his eyes, nor his lips for long. "Have you really not wondered at the sudden fungibility of my edict in regards to you? At the new but ever-evolving expansion of its parameters?"
"You admitted there were compromises and conditions to those changes. That seemed like solid enough sense to me."
"I told you nothing of the conditions for tonight's allowances, and only that we would retire to Oklahoma as normal after the solstice for the first." He emphasized this last point in voice and feeling, in that absolute possessiveness from before in the cemetery when he had seen Bill speaking to me. "Would it matter to you if that we included you?"
Walls were encroaching on me as the sun encroached on the vampire. "Eric, we beat this dead horse a half century ago. In no scenario will I be some side piece locked away until you come out to play with me."
"You wouldn't be in the shadows. You'd be by my side."
"As what?"
"As mine."
"And Freyda?"
"Before I could overlook the deceit, and maintain a relationship in a formal way, believing the common good was a greater stake than her poor judgment, believing you would see as I saw, but with your added context, that deceit cannot be justified. Malice is a far cry from neglect."
"What do you mean you would maintain a formal relationship? Why would you keep her in your life? What greater good?"
"Do you know the expression, "Paris vaut bien une masse?"
Me as a mistress? Me knowing a random French expression? Had the Viking had one too many hits to the head tonight during the battle? "Uh. No."
"Paris is well worth a mass," Eric uttered, lost in a different time. "It's what Henri the Fourth told me when he decided to convert to Catholicism in order to bring peace to his kingdom. He was a Protestant in conviction, but a pragmatist first. He saved France—ended a vicious religious war and by his edict ushered in the novel idea of religious tolerance. It was a lesson I would never forget."
"And what lesson would that be?" History had been one of my strongest subjects in school—kinda easy to know the answers when the teacher thinks them right in the asking. But this wasn't a fifth-grade pop quiz.
"That sometimes you have to dance with the devil, and sometimes you have to be the devil, if you want to get to heaven and bring your people to the promised land."
For the third time, I had the sensation that the ground was moving under my feet. Eric took my hands and placed them against his temples, his cool, pulse-less temples, and gently wrapped his arms around my waist. "Read my mind Sookie," he commanded, closing his eyes.
"It doesn't work that way with vampires. I can't make it happen."
Eric opened one eye at me. "This is not a request I make lightly—or am inclined to do often. I value my privacy too much, but I am asking now." Eye shut. "Read my mind."
Flabbergasted. Not a word I'd use on any old Tuesday. But that's what I was flabbergasted.
"You weren't supposed to react like this!" I yelled.
"It's not as if I never wondered, Sookie. Now read my damn mind."
Clearly he hadn't grasped the paradigm-shiftiness of my admission. That it was a headline. This was a "hey remember where you were when that thing went down," kinda deal. Eric growled at my hesitation. The rattle of his empty lungs vibrated against my body, sending waves of unexpected desire from my toes to my tips. That hunger in him, the one constant undercurrent of his emotions, started to rise—as did other things.
"Eric, you need to go. You need to be underground. The sun's about to come up." And it was. The teal on the horizon was burning to magenta, the edge of a crimson as red as blood lifting from the black.
"Fine," he said, and in a whirl of ice and wind, he spun with me into the air. Screaming from shock, I clung to him and buried my face in his clothes. In a flurried minute, the hollow thud of rubble echoed in my ears and the air around me smelled of stale water and earthy minerals. Eric's embrace relaxed around me and I opened my eyes to total darkness. Not even his skin shimmered.
"Where did you take us?"
"One of the many tunnels around this region. It is why I pulled over where I did."
"Well how do I get out while you're asleep?"
"Who said I'm sleeping? Tell me Sookie, do you feel tired?"
Easy answer. "Not like I should, but—"
"I've never been more awake. I was drained last night. You died—went on vacation. We both gave of our blood multiple times. We should be unable to hold our heads up, let alone argue standing on the side of the road."
Had we been arguing? It had felt more like I'd said or asked something in plain as toast English and he'd responded in riddles and, literally, five-hundred-year old French expressions that he had heard first-hand.
"Sookie," his breath swirled against my ear, "it's our blood flowing together. It's the magic of your blood. I can feel it carrying your light. And somehow, the more of you I taste, the less I am overcome by your scent. Even before we were bonded again. The essence of your blood moves in me with warmth and joy—and peace. I need to be one with you. We need to be one, truly and always."
He kissed my neck where the skin thrums with blood. His hands slid up under my sweater, one gliding up my spine, the other seeking out my chest. All other feelings within him were submitting to the hunger, my will submitting to it also. I had one shred of resolve, dangling from my heart.
"Eric, you can't have us both. You must choose."
"I already have, Sookie." His hand reached the soft curve of my breast. His touch felt so good it hurt, a hurt that went from his swift strokes on the tender flesh straight to my knees. "If you can't read my mind, then let me show you in the dark what you showed me with your light."
His fangs scraped against my vein. If he tasted me now, there would be no going back.
"I don't like the dark, Eric. I never have. And you may have chosen, but I haven't. Not yet."
The saliva from his kisses and tongue chilled as frosted dew on my skin. I waited, breathing tight and shallow. The vampire was as near to me as before, but his hands and lips had ceased their caresses. His hunger remained unfulfilled and suddenly unimportant, absorbed into an angry, billowing cloud of emotion.
"Then why the hell tell me about Freyda?"
His voice ricocheted around the tunnel. He could have been ten feet or two feet from me now. I was at his mercy. I could blow up like a torch and he'd still be fine. Hurt him or not, my rage was building too. This would be an argument. No questions.
"Because I thought you deserved to know the truth about your precious wife. Don't come at me because you failed to see her for what she is—as fake as her nails and as big a liar as you are!"
"I have not lied to you."
"You sure as a pig is fat haven't told me the truth!"
"And you haven't asked me for it—not really. You have assumed the worst of me, at every turn. Even now, you do not ask about why I might have chosen to take over as Kingpin."
"I don't need to ask. You and the King who sold both of us out to that witch so eloquently told me—if you-all can't beat them, make a buck off of them."
"There is a distinct pragmatism to that approach. Regulate the product ourselves. Keep it safe. Not so long ago cannibas was illegal. Now it's sold at the supermarket next to the cigarettes."
"Pragmatic does not equal right."
"How is it not the right thing to do? Even Bill agrees with that logic—he allows me to regulate it in his state. The coven had been selling without my sanction. That had to be stopped, and now it is."
"I don't care about any of this. If you want to be some big wig, look who's the one that knocks, say hello to my little friend psychopath—go on ahead, but don't expect me to be at your side."
"Again. You are inserting words into my mouth. Do you know where we are Sookie?"
"Yes, hell. Because if I've learned one thing from all you vampires it's that hell isn't hot—it's freezing damn cold."
No response. No retort. Had Eric succumbed to sleep? His mood was abruptly tranquil. The dawn had surely arrived. For a full minute, all I heard was the drip-drip-drip of the unseen water.
"This is a tunnel that was used for the Underground Railroad," said his voice as soft as distant thunder. But he was no longer distant. He was right beside me again. "You have now seen more than one drained vampire—imagine seeing scores of them, living but desiccated vampires piled one on top of the other, imagine seeing draining farms, where vampires are kept as chattel, bled to within an inch of their ability to regenerate, day in and day out, until they meet the final death, or maybe you don't care—you are human. Maybe imagine then the cartel's assassins—not the same as your human hitmen—but vampire assassins who prey on those in your species who are already cast off to the fringes of society, and turned for the sake of draining them and discarding them."
When Eric had finished, my cheeks were wet with tears. I didn't want to imagine any of those things. I didn't want to know about such things. But that's the thing about knowing stuff. It can't be unknown.
"When Freyda and I defeated that cartel thirty years ago, that is the state of operations we found. And if I hadn't taken over, that is how operations would have continued. Did you hear what Edgington said about me? He was upset because in the past three decades, we have severely limited the pushing of V. Freyda and I have been systematically dismantling the cartel modus operandi. It is a difficult balancing act, to provide enough product in order to appear as a functioning cartel that is robust and intimidating, and to weaken it from within. All the while, spreading our influence. Recently, we took on and defeated the cartel that runs Georgia and the Carolinas. Texas is our next territory we have set our sights on."
"Freyda does this with you?" I asked, comprehension finally touching the corners of my mind. "She's been helping you...free vampires and save draining victims?"
"Yes," Eric said softly. "She was once on the fringes of your society, and had a child out of wedlock. In order to feed the child, she sold her body. The child died but she had to go on selling herself, until she was turned by one of her lovers. She asked to be brought over. Powerless for so long, she still hordes power as if she were a wretch without any food. She must have surrendered to it once again."
I didn't want to hear any of this. I didn't want her to be—not humanized—but real. Or comprehensible.
"That is why I was willing to remain with her, even after learning about her text, for the pursuit of shared goals. For what we have worked for all these years, I had been willing to continue in a certain capacity with her."
"And you wanted me to go with you? Freyda would be your business, freedom fighter, buddy wife, and I'd be your..."
"You'd be mine. The Queen had finally agreed to it tonight—because divorce is less palatable to her than you are. She broke her side of the deal in regards to your edict. So instead of breaking off the marriage, we'd tear up the portions that related to you not being able to be mine. Not only for your happiness should you come, but for your safety. You were always desirable, now you are powerful. Now you can save drained vampires. That information cannot be known. Do not be fooled by my detente this evening. Edgington will die. Soon. And made to look like an accident. I will not start a war over that pompadour."
I still wasn't sure if my "happiness" depended on my going along with his plan, but I wasn't about to go into that aspect of his perfect little white picket future. There were enough other questions to occupy my mind—my slowly fading mind. Fatigue was finally knocking on my body.
"Would it start a war because he was a royal or because he's cartel?" It was all so complicated to me. Alcide's was right. Damn fanger business was a damn mess.
"The interchange between royals and cartels is becoming messier and messier, and more and more interconnected. Another reason for maintaining a marriage with Freyda. But all of my recent intentions and expectations, my show of mercy and justifications where she is concerned are moot. If I did not wish for you to understand my motives in continuing our marriage even after learning of her betrayal, I would speak no more of it. I will speak no more of it again. All is moot. Freyda will no longer be Queen. What you saw in her mind, I hope you can now appreciate, is a treachery beyond the oaths of our marriage. It is in defiance of all that we vowed to eradicate, of the past thirty years of our lives. To knowingly hurt you. To intentionally drain my progney. There will be no mercy now." That terrible cloud of rage bloomed within Eric—and now I understood. The rage was not for me. It was for his wife—whose betrayal was about fifty shades of unforgivable.
"What are you going to do with your Queen, Eric?"
"She is no longer my Queen." His look alone curdled my blood, and that rage within him, vengeful, exacting and arctic could have frozen my marrow into jagged shards of ice.
"Is this what you wanted to show me with your mind?" I asked, an attempt to shake off the chill.
"Partially."
"Only partially?" My stomach curled inward. There was more? I didn't know if I could handle more.
"We don't need to right now Sookie." Eric flatly offered. Resignation was now mixing with his anger, and yes, that hollow hunger.
"No," I breathed in the musty air. "Might as well."
I felt around, wanting to at least sit down, and his cold fingers wound around mine. Without a word, I was cradled against him as he lowered us both to the damp, rocky floor. My lungs exhaled deeply for the first time since he'd began in that detached, mellow voice the reasons behind his title drug lord. And now I nestled my head into his shoulder, the scent of his minty shampoo sharp and pleasant. He combed my hair in the quiet of the pitch darkness.
"I wanted you to see that there is a way out. When we met, Alex not only didn't want anything from me Sookie, he wanted to help. He is close to creating a synthetic vampire blood. It cannot turn anyone vampire. It does not possess magical properties, such as healing, but the high from it, the heightened senses and lack of inhibitions is fairly similar. We are beginning to market it, or mix it with the real V." Eric experienced another flare of admiration for his son. "I thought he had been kidnapped for his biochemical breakthroughs, at first."
"Understandable." The yawn escaped before I could stifle it. "Anything else, you feel like getting off your chest, Don Northman?"
"No, especially not you."
And with that, I fell asleep.
Note: Oh so I loved, loved, loved all of your reactions and reviews from last chapter. Tell me does this Eric make more sense? I think he was curious about Sookie and vamp minds. And yeah. I think he'd react like this. I do believe Sookie changed him forever and that without her influence, he would not have been the vampire to try and help other vampires...of course, it is also complicated. He agrees with the ethics and logic of vampires controlling V, but he also works at a different angle. Thanks for the reviews! Cheers. I hope everyone is safe and that we can all find a little more peace and light in our lives.