The hardest part was showing Jennings with my mind before he'd seen it with his eyes. I avoided the misery of his expression as he internalized the memory, the knot of turmoil in his thoughts so instant and so bleak it broke my broken heart anew. His body dashed past me, the haste of his worry a breeze across my face, tousling my hair. I heard my son sob, that barren, vacuum sob that sucks the breath, as he drew his sister to his chest and rocked her as a child.

Somehow I found the strength to move then, to drag myself to my son and daughter and hold them in my arms. I kissed them both on their foreheads, the one warm, the other cold forever. Wiping Jennings' tears away, I convinced him to go into the house, open a bottle of brandy, and start drinking. I'd join him in a minute. Before obeying, he hugged me as if to never let me go and whispered, "I love you." He had no words for Eric, who had just finished cleaning away the evidence of the cursed murderess. I was thankful the Viking had sullied his hands with his mad, incidental progeny's ash and blood. I could not have borne it. He stood now, a vacant, enigmatic statue against the shop wall. Slowly, my son went into the house.

I'd felt Eric's presence throughout the scourge of the witch's wretched finale. I couldn't think about how my terror had roomed within him. Or think about the confusing company of emotions that had inhabited me, my sorrow mingling with the detached curiosity of Eric, as the owl had dispatched into the night sky. I couldn't think about the owl. I could hardly think at all.

Meticulously, I fixed Adele's clothes, straightening her collar and buttoning her jacket. I didn't want her to catch a chill while she transformed. The impulse was ridiculous, but human and my own. The last time I'd be allowed to treat my daughter as a human, too.

"Do you think the witch's blood will be different? Will Adele be different from other vampires?"

"There aren't many guarantees in crossing over—as you witnessed with the were-witch. She might have done something magically as she drank my stolen blood to ensure that she would turn, should she die. With that said, I believe her abnormalities were due to her own abilities and genetics, not my blood. And Adele has likely more of my blood in her than even the witch's blood. I fed her more while you were speaking to Niall."

There was some emotion Eric was trying to conceal or combat, but it leaked through his voice, as it was seeping through his feelings. I turned to him. The thing was cracking through his usual mask of indifference.

The Viking peered at my daughter, his gaze intense and raw. I recalled too then that he had called her by her name. He hadn't done that for any of my kin. Jennings had been sobbing it; I'd just said it; I didn't wonder at him knowing it. I did wonder at the way he had spoken it. My wonder was fading as my wariness rose. This would be his test. And he just might fail.

On some level, Eric had always wanted one thing since meeting me, and now he very nearly had it. She was of his bloodline. She was of my blood.

"She looks just as I always imagined you would look, Sookie," he said. "Just as you looked last night." As his blue eyes fell on me, and a gash of excitement and trepidation and triumph and control surged through his insides and into mine. I understood then, too, that this admission had cost him some pride. So he also knew this must be his test.

Who did Eric really love? The idea of me? Or the reality? Or was it love at all? Was it possession and attraction and domination? Was it my blood and my warmth? My body or my heart? None or both or all of the above? In a night or two, he'd have a near physical replica vampire of me, at his command. And to hell if she was my daughter. Or had a husband who'd loved her and who she had loved; their sickly, sweet adoration and enduring passion after twenty years of marriage fodder of gossip for their jealous friends, a love I'd bet on abiding beyond this passing grave. Or that she was a mother to two teens and a second-grader, who may still need her, even undead. All four of whose hearts I must damage in the next half hour—as well as the hearts of her siblings which I must wound.

But for the vampire, he would have to decide what sort of man—if any—he was.

"How old was she?" Eric asked.

"Forty-five."

"I did not meet her the other night when I came to your door. Yet alive, she was like you in more than appearance—and did not age as a normal human."

"When she was in her twenties and I was in my fifties, most people thought we were sisters. She didn't love that then. She loves it now. Most people think she's closer to thirty."

"How did she feel about your transformation?"

"She was adjusting."

"We've all had to adjust." Eric's gaze wandered down to my abdomen, where my blood was still sticky and warm. That hunger he'd been taming for the better part of a day yawned wider, blackening all other feelings. Maybe he wouldn't fail the way I thought he would. Maybe he'd fail in an entirely different way. "You look the same. You smell different. The light in you is different. It's still overwhelming, but it's somehow less."

I thought about Bill's explanation again. "I bet I'm more like eight bouquets instead of a dozen." Dully I wondered if I was some version of catwoman now. Nine lives to kill. I'd lost maybe four tonight.

"You called the owl, Sam." Eric approached me and titled my chin up with a frigid, gentle thumb. "He took you to the land of spirits last night. That is where you went." I didn't respond. It hadn't been a question. "But you forfeited the Summerlands for your son."

I still didn't answer. What was there to say? Nothing. Did my heart ache for what I had sacrificed? Yes. Would I do it again and again and again, if asked? I didn't need to answer. And the one I had abandoned wouldn't have expected anything else from me. He would have done the same. I would have expected nothing else from him. This wasn't the "Choose yourself." This was the—no need to say. Because they were our children. And it wasn't a choice. It was a biological imperative. It was breathing. It was blood pumping. It was decided the minute they were mine.

I stepped back from the Viking. What he craved was not something I would give. Space and a shower were what I craved. Time and distance were what he must now give.

"Why'd you come, Eric?"

Surprise mixed with his hunger. "I have something that belongs to you, and to tell you that Edgington is dead."

Now surprise mixed with my sorrow. "That was quick."

"Christmas time provides all kinds of opportunities. The King was known for his excess of Christmas lights and blinking lawn decor." Eric's mouth turned down in disgust. Heaven forbid someone put a dancing Santa in his yard. "It wasn't difficult to have one of the cords short out during this afternoon and burn his house down."

"How many other people died?"

"The humans all left as quickly as possible. Shockingly, none of the manifold boys bothered to wake him. His husband was in his home state. I'm not certain who else perished."

And he didn't give a damn, either. No humans. That was a boon for me. "What about Mr. Darling?"

"Oh, he wasn't there. King Bill took him in for more questioning last night. I wonder if he did it with the vampire's life in mind. It would be a shame to lose Joe. North by Northwest is unparalleled."

"And here I had you pegged as a Bringing Up Baby fan," I said it, but I didn't feel it. I didn't feel anything, wedged in the stillness between the storms. The other one had past; the gale on the spiky horizon gathered. I wanted be alone when the downpour slashed through the sky. "When you deal with Freyda, feel free to call. I'll know it's you since you put your number in my phone."

"Freyda is in the wind. She has a remarkable sense of self-preservation. I think she realized that the gig was up when I did not meet her at Bill's last night as we had planned. Or somehow she intuited that I had learned about her deeper involvement in the plot against us. If she even suspected I was aware of her prior knowledge about my and my progeny's draining, she knows me well enough to flee."

At the moment, I was struggling to give a damn, but within that struggle, I scoped the breadth of how industrious the vampire had been before yielding to sleep.

"I will find her, Sookie," he vowed. "Word is traveling of Edgington's dangerous deal with a temperamental witch, and beneath the astonishment and judgement, a whisper of Freyda's involvement follows as a caravan at night. Those in her court will pay me honor above her majesty when the truth inevitability comes to light."

The Queen and her absconding into the underbellies of society signified little to me. But I wasn't done. Not yet. My eyes drifted to my daughter, and all the steel in me liquified.

"Will you put her somewhere safe? And keep her until she wakes?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

The complementary shades of our blue gazes met. The vampire's emotions dizzied me, swirling in a twister of brief nothings, finishing once more on pity.

"Why pity, Eric?"

"Because you feel so much, Sookie. I had forgotten how much you feel. Of everything."

I realized then that many of the emotions I was sensing in him were my own reflected back. Our bond must be exhausting on him. It was exhausting on me. Chalk it up to his hundreds over hundreds of lives lived. He was handling it better.

"I need to go to my son. I need to call my son-in-law. And her siblings."

"I must return to Oklahoma tonight. It is, for now, without a Queen."

"I imagine it'll get a King as a replacement soon."

There was a pause, but Eric did not invite me or entice me to come away with him. And I did not know if it was compassion or confusion, mercy or ambivalence, that wavered in his heart.

"I will keep her longer than until she wakes," he said quietly.

"I know." Something clenched in my throat. "Will you be her Maker?"

"The closest form of one, though not entirely. It will be complicated."

"Good thing you're used to complicated."

We both smiled, with smiles that failed to touch our eyes. We were bonded. We were not one. That would not satisfy the vampire; satisfaction is a word from the lexicon of the living. He closed the gap between us and framed my face with his long fingers.

"You are so quick to doubt me. Why?"

I was too hollow to lie. "Because I'd rather be wrong than disappointed."

A spring of determination spurred out from the hunger. "I will prove you wrong then." His cool lips pressed upon my forehead, his hands and nearness fell away, and he whispered, "Goodbye, Sookie."

"Goodbye Eric," I whispered back.

I turned around, my heart as heavy as the absent moon. Behind me, there was a pulse of desire and hunger, and a feeling as ancient as its owner, a feeling of longing for home. A breeze rustled in the pines. An animal scurried in the flower bed beside the back porch. The porch where only a couple hours ago singing and laughter and life had filled its boundaries. My hand rested on the screen door knob, and I knew it was useless to glance back. The void had vanished with the wind, the music of our bond quieting to a far-off lullaby.

Still, I would chance a glance. I had forgotten to ask him what thing of mine he had come to return. He'd left a red rose where she had lain, ensconced in my grandmother's crystal decanter.

Note: Forgive the length of this! I wanted Adele and Jennings to have their moment and so I divided what I may have otherwise kept as a single chapter. So sorry to make you cry in the last chapter. I cried while writing it...So I think that even if nothing were to change post-canon, (and following After Dead), as in nothing in my story had happened, Eric would still need to do something to prove he was worth Sookie's time. He needs that now more than ever after my convoluted plot. And I can't think of a better way to prove himself than by how he would react to a surrogate Sookie vampire under his control. I think when he tells her during their break-up in HED that he should have just turned her, or had Pam turn her, once he developed feelings for her, he was telling the truth of what he had always wanted. Except when he was memory-less Eric. We shall see if he fails as he did in choosing Freyda or triumphs.

But I was supposed to finish this story by June 1, according to my own timetable. I say this because I have one more chapter which closes out this part of the story. Goodness knows I never intended on this being a two-parter. But folks. As it stands and how the story goes. It looks like it will be.

The next chapter can be viewed as an epilogue.

Thanks for all the wonderful reviews and thought-provoking insights. Cheers! It's been fun getting to know this fandom. If you want to know what other fandom I write for on this site, just PM me. Even though I haven't updated my story there in years!

All credit and characters go to C. Harris. Except for Cookie Crackhouse.