Disclaimer : Charlaine Harris retains sole rights to the SVM and its characters and I am in no way attempting to infringe on the world she has created. Her characters are being borrowed as creative inspirations, and are being portrayed here merely through my interpretation of their interactions. Some of the dialogue has been borrowed from True Blood season 1, episode 9, and all credit goes to the HBO writers, Alan Ball, and the actors themselves for bringing it to the screen - I just interpret it for my own uses in this story.
Timeline : This takes place in episode 9 of TB, just after the scene where Bill stakes Long Shadow at Fangtasia.
Author's Note : I will definitely be continuing this through the tribunal scene as my time allows. For now, enjoy the Eric perspective as he schemes and plots and...well you'll see. Thank you for all the reviews! Eric appreciates them as well ^_^
"How did I end up with you people? Jesus, Mother Mary in Heaven. I'm so sorry Mama. I'm so sorry." If she hadn't been cleaning up the remains of a vampire, Ginger probably would have been holding her knees and rocking back and forth attempting to will herself into numbness. Had I still possessed the human functions needed, I would have felt nauseous just looking at her.
"When Ginger is finished, glamour her for me," I instructed my child. Erasing memories was considerably easier than planting false ones and I was confident she would do the job impeccably.
"Are you sure? She's been glamoured one too many times already, who knows how much of her is left." Pam was uncharacteristically concerned and I briefly wondered what had gotten into her.
"It's either that or turn her." I left out the option of killing the human since it didn't do for our employees to go missing more often than they absolutely had to. And we already had one irrevocably in that category. "You want her?"
All vestiges of her concern disappeared at that suggestion. "Please. I'm not that desperate. Glamour it is."
"Excellent," I replied dryly. After sparing Pam a sidelong glance I turned to our surly companion and indicated he should follow me to my office. Bill had been doing his best to look unconcerned while we watched Ginger go about cleaning up Long Shadow's remains but his tension level was practically making him hum.
"Come, I'll buy you a Blood."
**
The microwave dinged and I reached in to remove the bottle, not bothering to shake it to disperse the hotspots before offering it to Bill. "Thank you," he said crisply, forcing himself out of his thoughts. It was always amusing when he stuck to his 'Southern Gentleman' persona and I decided to egg him on a bit.
"How do you stomach that stuff? Don't you find it metallic and vile?"
"I don't think about it, it's sustenance that's all," he replied politely.
That was too rich, coming from the mouth of a vampire who had been feeding on one of the most unique humans I'd met in my long existence. My grin slid onto my face but I wasn't so much amused as openly cynical.
Bill looked unhappy at being the butt end of a joke he hadn't caught. "What?" he asked, as I walked around my desk to sit in the chair behind it.
I settled myself in while I answered. "If you're their poster boy the mainstreaming movement is in very deep trouble. TruBlood, it keeps you alive but it will bore you to death." My eyes met his evenly as I waited for his next move.
"Let's cut to the chase shall we?" he said with more confidence than I would have given him credit for.
He moved to sit down in one of the chairs across from me which I chose not to make an issue of. Protocol was more annoying than useful most times anyway. I pushed such concerns to the side as I considered the younger immortal. "You killed a vampire, Bill. For a human. What are we going to do about this?"
He shifted uncomfortably and looked away. "What do you have in mind?"
"I'll take the girl," I began only to be interrupted as Bill couldn't stop himself from responding.
"No!" His voice sounded more than a little desperate and I began to reconsider the particular reasons that motivated him to kill Long Shadow. I tilted my chin up in a silent challenge and Bill visibly forced himself to relax into a more casual posture and tone. "You can have anyone you want, why do you want her?" he asked, trying a different tact to refuse the offer.
"Why do you want her?" I countered, not distracted by the useless question. The fact was that she would be mine one way or another both because I wanted her and because it would draw out the piece of filth who thought he could usurp resources in my Area with impunity. I had little faith that Compton had discovered Sookie on his own luck, which meant he must be acting as someone's agent. Still, my years of experience were telling me that there was more to his outburst than concern about letting down whoever had sent him for the girl. "You're not in love with her are you?" I asked, genuinely curious how he would answer.
Bill's feathers immediately got ruffled. "Sookie must be protected," he said, practically spitting out each word.
That answer was more along the lines of what I had been expecting. "Now that sounds like an edict but how could it be because I would know about that." His silence provided a surprising lack of insight and I covered my uneasiness at by repeating the taunt, "Admit it. You love her."
Bill affected a more reasonable tone but his next dodge was anything but. "If hadn't done what I did, would you have let his disloyalty stand?"
Did he actually think he'd done me a favor? He'd been here as nothing more than a puppet and had played his part beautifully. But I'd never expected he actually cared about the girl. Emotions clouded reason and meant I couldn't rely on logic being the prevailing source behind his action. This development was forcing me, to use a modern euphemism, to throw all my assumptions out the window. But Bill didn't need to know that. "Whatever I would have done to Long Shadow I would not have done in front of witnesses. Especially not vampire witnesses." I let that sink in for a minute and then added, a bit unnecessarily but I needed to make a point, "Not smart Bill. Not smart at all."
The silence stretched between us. I considered the possibility that Bill was under vampire orders to protect Sookie but no matter how many angles I looked at it there was no clear answer why I would have been left out of the loop unless there was a great deal more going on here than I suspected. I also couldn't dismiss the possibility that his feelings for Sookie could easily be the sole explanation for his extreme reaction to her being in danger. Still, he would not have involved himself with the girl without someone directing him to do so, that much I knew for certain. It would have to be someone who knew of Sookie's talents although it was also possible, but much less likely, that someone wanted her for her beauty. But why have Bill Compton contact her first? Bill disliked prolonging his relationships with humans, a fact that he took little pains to hide.
If she had changed that about him in just a few short weeks… A cold feeling settled into my gut as I considered that particular feat.
Cursing mentally, I berated myself for the shift in my train of thought but noted that I would have to proceed with an excess of caution. There was always the possibility that Bill was purposely hinting that he cared for her or that I was reading too much into his reactions, which would put me back at square one where I wanted to be. And nothing changed the fact that there was something more going on here than a simple case of a vampire taking a human lover.
I quickly assessed how best to draw out an answer to the dilemma. "If I assure you that I can protect her, will you turn her over to me?" I asked, deciding to call the lesser of Bill's bluffs.
He immediately tensed and I could almost hear the gears of his mind trying to come up with an answer that he thought might satisfy me. If he had been instructed just to keep the girl safe until some undisclosed time he would have little to lose by letting me watch over her. But if he was actually jealous of my desire for Sookie or if he'd specifically been instructed to keep her with him then he would dodge again. "Surely your duties as Sheriff would be more important than having to worry about the safety of a mortal."
With the game playing itself out in my mind, I tossed another variable onto the court. "I have minions for that sort of thing," I countered calmly, knowing that Bill should recognize the veiled implication.
His reaction was emotional again. "You would entrust her care to others but claim her for your own?" he scoffed at me. I arched an eyebrow in response but chose not to travel down that avenue just yet.
"Are you questioning my ability to look after her, Compton? If I say she will be safe, she will be utterly and completely safe."
"Sookie will not take kindly to being locked up and guarded like a priceless jewel," he said confidently. "She needs to be allowed her freedom, or at least the illusion of freedom, if she is to remain cooperative."
"Sounds to me like she needs to be broken," I said, linking my hands behind my head as I regarded him through slitted eyes, my face betraying nothing of my thoughts.
Bill became openly furious at the suggestion. "She is not a recalcitrant horse!" He slammed his bottle of TruBlood onto my desk, causing papers and knick-knacks to jump into the air. "Sookie is a young woman who has known much suffering, and yet is whole, and strong, and overwhelmingly good."
His emotional tirade almost caught me off guard. By the gods, he really does love her. Fuck. I conceded the point. "Very well, Bill, since you are so set on training her yourself I'll let you have your chance." He seethed at the implication that intended to 'break' her himself but I knew Bill Compton well enough to never let the thought seriously cross my mind. "But," I continued smoothly, "Since you are so intent that she remains independent, she will be treated as such. If she chooses to break association with you your claim to her will end."
His eyes narrowed. "She is mine until I choose to end our association."
I brought my hands around from the back of my head to rest on the desk as I leaned forward towards him, suddenly within arm reach. He froze, fangs running out at the threat of my nearness and I let mine pop forward in response. "If she can't be glamoured," I knew she couldn't from the night she'd first set foot in my club, "she is only with you of her own choosing. And if you insist on not binding her to your will one way or another she can always change her mind. When that happens, what will you do?" I arched an eyebrow to emphasize my final jab. "Lock her up like a jewel?"
His jaw clenched as he realized that he had stuck his own foot so deep in his own mouth that he should be tasting the cotton of his gentlemanly socks. "You needn't concern yourself about that," he said with no small amount of bravado once he relaxed enough to actually speak.
I grinned. "I'll take that bet. Now," I said, leaning back into my chair again and letting my fangs retract, enjoying the torment flashing across his face, "What are we going to do about Long Shadow?"
**
I rang the doorbell twice before clasping my hands behind my back, amused that Bill actually had the device working in such an old home. He really was going all out with this mainstreaming facade.
After a moment I saw his face in one of the glass panels alongside the door, which then opened. "Eric, Pam." Bill silently nodded his head at our other companion since they had not yet been introduced.
That was easy to take care of. "Bill, Chow. Chow, Bill," I said without inflection as I walked through the open doorway.
"Nice to meet you," Chow greeted behind me. My eyes were taking in Compton's home as I listened for any guests he might have had over but I heard nothing that indicated a human was in the house and had to repress a flicker of disappointment.
"Chow is Long Shadow's replacement," Pam explained smoothly to ease some of Bill's obvious apprehension. I wondered if he would think it odd that we had found a new partner so soon but wasn't really concerned even if he did. I'd been in contact with Chow once I discovered Long Shadow's disloyalty and it hadn't taken much incentive to get the Asian vampire to become our new bar tender at Fangtasia.
"Oh," Bill said as he took this in. He chose to ignore any suspicions he might have had to say resignedly, "I take it by your being here there was no way around it then."
My eyes swept over the staircase as I turned around slowly. "I can't really say. Didn't exactly look into it." That wasn't precisely true but I had no desire to make Bill think I had done him any favors. It hadn't been for his sake that I'd looked for alternatives.
Pam chuckled falsely, illustrating her thoughts regarding Bill's foolishness in hoping that I might have gone out of my way to save him from the punishment he was due. She believed the tribunal had been contacted merely to insure Bill shouldered all of the burden from killing Long Shadow because that had, in fact, been the original plan. I had reasoned that with Bill out of the way thanks to vampire justice I would have been free to claim Sookie and force Compton's puppeteer out of hiding. I was confident that no vampire would ever have counciled another kill one of their own kind over a human, no matter what their potential value, and as such it should have been safe to assume that Bill's murderous actions were at the direction of someone other than a vampire.
But I'd apparently been relying on the wrong human expression in Occam's Razor since it now seemed that Murphy's Law was more appropriate for the situation. "Anything that can go wrong, will." I followed my thoughts down the familiar path they had been tracking since Bill had left my office the other night though here was little to savor in the repetition.
Never in my long life had I cursed the foolishness of emotions than the moment I'd come to realize that Bill actually cared for the telepath. But by then the course had been plotted and the boats launched. All I could do now was pray that I hadn't gotten myself caught in a silver net because I hadn't bothered to look for an ambush under the calm surface of the water. If I didn't hand Bill over to the Magister there would always have been the perpetual risk that someone who could take advantage of such information would discover Long Shadow's murder since it had taken place right on the premises of my business. If Bill hadn't killed Long Shadow I would have had plenty of time to relocate the other vampire to a much more suitable site for his final death, one where I needn't have worried about alterting the Magister regarding his disappearance. Instead I was finding myself scrambling to recover from the over-success of my machinations.
If Pam knew the risk she might have staked Bill herself. But it wouldn't do to cause my child excess worry. I wasn't in my permanent grave yet and that meant, if there were vampire politics behind this, they had other plans for me.
Somehow that thought was less than comforting.
Bill's anxiety flared into disgust and anger at Pam's goading. "Tell me," he addressed my child, "Do you enjoy it living half-way up his backside the way you do?" He stood in front of me as he ended his outburst.
Pam smiled sweetly and her voice fairly dripped with pleasure as she replied, "Yes. It's nice, you should try it."
He ignored her to hold my gaze. "We're gonna have to stop by the bar where Sookie works first." Ah, so that's where she was. I inclined my head and kept my face carefully blank which Bill interpreted as a refusal. "She needs to know that I'll be gone," he continued sourly. When I still didn't speak his anger returned. "Don't forget how this started. She came to Fangtasia to help you." As if that was a threat, but I was tired of hearing his reasons and didn't want to spend time arguing with him.
"Fine. Go to the bar," I said with a forced casualness.
Pam practically leaped into the opening left by my tone. "Might be smart to check out the competition," she teased, feigning interest in one of her boots as she spoke.
"Yes, indeed," I agreed calmly, wondering if my child had a death wish. My interest in the telepath was still too new and unexplained to her that she couldn't resist every opportunity to throw it in my face.
Chow stepped in and interrupted our exchange as though he hadn't noticed it. For his sake I hoped his ignorance continued. "What's your game?" he asked Bill.
Confused, Bill raised both eyebrows. "Excuse me?" He didn't seem to know how to react to such a loaded question.
Unable to resist showing off, Chow clarified, "You were playing Wii. What's your game?"
Bill blinked a few times and then shifted the remote in his hand. "Golf."
"What's your best score on Pebble Beach," he prodded further.
There was the briefest of hesitations before Bill's reply. "7 under," he said proudly.
"Mine's 11 under," Chow boasted, sneering.
Bill turned back to me and deadpanned, "I liked Long Shadow better."
I could say the same thing to him.
Thanks for reading! TBC