Chapter 13
EPOV
I've been in a perpetual state of boredom for the last two centuries or so. It was my reason for turning Pam. I saw her climbing out of her window and was immediately intrigued; women were bound and judged by misogynistic standards in those times, and her actions were untoward a lady of her station. I kept to the shadows and followed Pam to her trysting place. Their meeting was innocent; light kisses and foolish declarations of undying love, but it was enough to have disgraced her. If her midnight rendezvous were to be discovered, and the male did not agree to wed her, no other would have her. She knew this, but still she dared the consequences.
Her audaciousness determined her fate that night. When she tried to move silently through her garden, I showed myself and drained her. After I placed her back in her bed for her family to find, they buried her thinking she'd died from a mysterious ailment. Three nights later, I dug her up so she wouldn't awaken in her coffin, and she's been my most loyal companion since.
Pam's training and tutelage kept me occupied for over a century, but even then, I couldn't escape the all-pervading sense of ennui.
I'd thought the Great Revelation would give me at least a decade of reprieve, but I didn't take into account humanity's obsession with death.
Humans. They were weak, had an unreasonable amount of unwarranted self-importance and greatly overestimated their intelligence and worth. I didn't hate them; that would imply that I cared. I simply endured, night after night to the point where I began regretting my decision to operate a human friendly vampire bar. The vermin, as my child Pam had so accurately dubbed them, reeked of even more desperation than the rest of their tiresome species.
So it was with great relief that I departed for the Stackhouse home some hours after receiving the most peculiar phone call from a woman since the invention of the telephone. She had killed her would be rapist and phoned a vampire establishment seeking aid; it truly was a first for me and I was intrigued enough to seek her out.
My first impression of her was that she was attractive. It wasn't until I appeared at her doorway that I truly appreciated her beauty. Five foot seven or eight, voluptuous curves, hair the same color as mine, eyes a She was, quite simply, radiant. A drop of sunshine after a thousand years of darkness, I was determined to have her. When it became clear that my child had purposely hidden her from me, I began questioning whether this woman was worth the strain in my relationship with Pam when I inevitably tired of her; sunshine and telepath or not, she was just a woman.
That was easier said than done. I'm seldom denied what I want, and when I decided the woman, Sookie was forbidden fruit, it made her all the more appealing. I found myself thinking about her nightly, on my throne and when I partook of the fangbangers. Instead of a sea of desperation and darkness, I saw her golden hair and pink tank top and bed shorts. Blood began to lose its appeal after I compared everything to what I'd imagined her to taste. Fucking became even more of a chore as I struggled to keep her face and body out of my mind. She became a distraction that I didn't need, but found myself welcoming nonetheless.
After two months of the self-induced torture, I realized I was my own worst enemy. It was impossible for any woman to be as mesmerizing as the one in my memories, and therefor, she did not exist; she was simply a figment of my imagination. All I had to do was visit the real Sookie Stackhouse and see once and for all that she was just a beautiful woman, nothing more. I'd fuck her, get her out of my system, then glamour her to forget. Pam would be none the wiser, and her precious Corbett's sensibilities would be spared.
That was the first misstep I'd make.
I was so completely and utterly wrong to underestimate this woman's hold on me that I blurted the first thing on my mind when asked why I was there; I'd tell her in private. As I sat in the depressing excuse of a restaurant and pondered my next step, I decided my original plan to fuck and glamour was still the best option. I knew she was attracted to me, most women were, and I took no small amount of pleasure when I caught her ogling me. When her face flushed, I knew then and there that I'd want her to remember our encounter. It was too rare to elicit that kind of an honest response from a woman, and I looked forward to teasing her every chance I got - Pam and Corbett be damned.
After overhearing that she was untouched, I knew my former decision of allowing her her memories was a sound one. Learning of her ability to withstand glamour didn't alter my plans, but it did make her more interesting and made me wonder, just how much my child keeping from me.
She was cute when she tried to cajole me into teaching her survival tactics in my world but when she spoke of her ability and services in telepathy with such a self deprecating air, I found myself growing more curious and for the first time in my existence, I wanted to know a human. I wanted to know what made that frown appear when I inquired about her decision to waitress in her dilapidated town. I wanted to know why there was an air of sorrow, pain and despair surrounding her even though she radiated beauty, innocence, and life. And most of all, I wanted to know how she sounded when she screamed my name in pleasure.
What changed the outcome of the night was when I found my body moving unconsciously towards her. My hands moved to touch her, my feet took steps towards her. It was constant and it was unacceptable. She was a weakness I could not allow, nor could I afford. And so, I grew angry, with her and with myself, and took off in my Corvett without a backwards glance.
That was last night.
Tonight, I came out of my daytime slumber with a renewed determination to not allow this woman, this twenty-something year old child, toy with me. I would use her to shore up my power base and have an advantage over my enemies, and I would fuck and feed from her if I so pleased.
I barely glanced at her when I arrived at Fangtasia, but it was enough for a vampire to see and remember every detail. She looked delectable in blue and gold; the colors enhanced her delicious tan and emphasized her golden locks. The thought angered me.
My anger escalated to unmitigated rage when Longshadow leered at her like a piece of meat. When he dropped his fangs at her obvious discomfort, I was close to ripping his head off his shoulders. And when he launched himself at her and dared sink his fangs into what was mine, I ended him.
Once again, I found my body reacting unconsciously when it came to this woman and I quickly extricated her from under Longshadow's decaying corpse. I would've relished the sight and pleasures of sharing a woman covered in blood with my child and her progeny, but the thought of taking Sookiein such a brute manner sickened me. I was always possessive, but I never denied Pam her requests to share bed partners; yet, the thought of sharing Sookie with anyone renewed my rage. She was mine, whether I accepted that fact or not.
Upon arriving at my nearest safe house, I carried her to my bathroom. Of all the things in relation to this woman and her effect on me, the fact that I allowed her inside my bathroom was the biggest surprise to me. Pam wasn't even allowed use of my rooms. I prepared a separate light tight suite for her in each of my safe houses, but she never shared my bed or bath. Not after we stopped fucking a few years after she discovered the pleasures of the finer sex.
My second misstep was giving her my blood. I almost came undone by the sensation of her lips wrapped around my wrist, sucking deeply, drawing my blood into her body. Knowing a part of me was coursing through her unleashed something primal within me that demanded I take her. When the sweet scent of her arousal drifted into my nose, it took every ounce of my will to control my desire to part her legs, wrap them around my head and taste her.
When she closed her eyes, I couldn't help myself and brushed my lips quickly against hers. I wanted more than the stolen kiss, so when she stunned me with her declaration of trust, I kissed the foolish woman and only stopped when I felt her pain.
The night ended sourly when she overstepped her boundaries and thought to tell me how to run my business. I was annoyed and quickly dismissed her unwarranted concerns. In her anger, she was quick to paint me as a monster and failed to learn and understand that when I said Ginger and Belinda's over glamoured states were of no concern to me, it was because I didn't oversee personnel, and also because the women were Longshadow's pets. Human problems were low on my list of concerns, this is true, but they were under my employ and thus, I had an obligation to their well being. It's why I supplied them with health insurance and paid overtime, for fucks sake.
I didn't know whether to fuck her or kill her when she heatedly equated glamour with rape. After centuries with Ocella as a maker, even if one had the previous inclination, which I never had, for forced sexual acts, one quickly loses the appetite it. Her insinuation was both offensive and hypocritical because she seemed to have forgotten her assault on the shifter was due his accusation of the very thing she accused me of. Even knowing she behaved the way she did due to her physical and emotional state; adrenaline and hormonal levels spiking in her body after her instincts to fight or flight ran its course, it only sought to remind me of how fickle and weak humans were.
And thus began my third and final misstep taken against the woman.
"Who am I killing?" My child always had a flair for the dramatics but I was ashamed to admit her question wasn't entirely off base.
"Why are you here?" I glanced at Corbett, "Why are you both here?"
The bane of my existence looked at me accusingly and shrugged. "Thought this was a party, my baby girl being here and all." Then he added in almost an afterthought, "Thalia's watching the bar."
I ran a hand over my face and tried to quell the desire to pull my hair out. "You thought leaving a bar full of excited humans in Thalia's care was a good idea?" I would've preferred Ginger, idiot that she was, over the homicidal vampire.
Pam grinned. "She hasn't broken any bones all week. I thought it'd be a good reward and a show of good faith."
She'll see it as a punishment, that I had no doubt. However, she did need the test; I had to know I could trust her to run things in my absence. If this proved too much for her limitations, I would need to send for Chow to manage Fangtasia during the unlikely event of Pam, myself, and Corbett being otherwise occupied.
Sookie, sitting pensively through all this, suddenly raised her hand. Three heads swung her way.
She cleared her throat and said, "First, I just wanna say how sorry I am for causing the mess I did. If I waited to tell y'all in private about what I saw instead of raising the alarm, y'all wouldn't be short a business partner and owe restitution."
I glared at the two idiots of my blood. Just how much of our ways did they reveal to her?
"Second, I'm really grateful to you, Eric, for... Well, for everything you've done for me tonight and everything you've ever done for my family. Please don't think I'm ungrateful just because I tend to run my mouth when I'm nervous or uncomfortable."
I nodded, it was true. Her family was in my debt, especially for putting up with Corbett's insolence. But I placed that blame solely on my child; she gave him too long a leash for someone so young.
"That leads me to my third point, which is how sorry I am for saying those horrible things to you and for being the world's biggest hypocrite. I know glamour isn't the same as-" her cheeks flushed at how embarrassed she was by her own words, "rape. I feel like one of those bigoted assholes at my old job just repeating it."
I acquiesced to her apology. I already knew she didn't mean her earlier words, it was what she did mean that annoyed me. The sheer fact that she had the audacity to tell me what to do was baffling; humans were too meek to voice their opinions nonetheless demand I change my practices to suit their sensibilities. It was suicidal. And so I waited for the next part of her apology; for not heeling and for over stepping her bounds.
It never came.
"Daddy, I know I should've told you sooner but with everything that happened tonight, I never got the chance."
Corbett looked curious as he replied, "What is it?"
"Remember how Hadley got married and had a kid?"
He nodded slowly, "Yeah... "
"Well, she upped and left about half a year ago."
He huffed, "That girl has all of her momma's looks but none of her heart."
"Remy, that's her husband, showed up at our house today with their son, Hunter." She hesitated and chewed her lower lip. I was amazed by how much I still wanted to kiss them. "Hunter, he's uh..." She glanced at Pam and me, "He's living with us now."
Corbett stared at his daughter for a beat before nodding, "Yeah, yeah. So few of us left, oughta take care of our own. Let me know what y'all need, I'll get everything together by tomorrow night."
"I'm not sure yet. Remy's supposed to bring Hunter's things over tomorrow morning."
Pam rummaged through her oversized handbag for a pen and paper. She scribbled something on a dollar bill and handed it to Sookie. "Call Bobby Burnham with a list of things you'll need. He'll have it delivered by the end of the day."
Sookie took the note and asked, "Burnham? Wasn't that the name of the guy y'all were looking for two years ago?"
Yes, and they killed him for embezzling.
Corbett gave her a sheepish grin, "This is the son."
Because Pam's evil streak mandated abusing the fuck out of his descendants and hiring Bobby as my day man. He was another reason for my distaste for the human species; his self inflated ego, desperation for approval, and overestimation of worth and intelligence was only made tolerable by the "errands" Pam sent him on. My favorite was when he donned rainbow attire and attended a Tea Party rally; he made the news for starting a nationwide movement. Bobby didn't fare so well when Pam had him wear nothing but adult diapers and a belt made of mutilated dolls to attend the pro choice march in DC.
"Delicious as you smell covered in dried blood, you look like absolute shit. Why haven't you cleaned yourself yet?" Pam asked.
Sookie blushed a spectacular shade of pink and replied, "Hadn't gotten around to it yet."
Because we were preoccupied with other matters. Such as taste testing how my blood tasted on her tongue.
"Because you were busy not fucking my maker."
Corbett growled.
"What, it's true! Their clothes are still on and the room only smells of her arous-"
Corbett slapped a hand over her mouth. "Woman, I do not need to hear about my baby girl's se..se.." He floundered. It was cute.
Oh, this was turning out to be a good night after all.
"Your daughter's sex life." I offered helpfully, with a leer in Sookie's direction.
She looked like she'd rather be under Longshadow's decaying corpse than here.
"Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious." He gestured towards his daughter, "Tell us what you got from Belinda's head, then Pam'll get you something to change into so you can shower and come home with us."
My original intention of leaving Sookie, and her suicidal tendency to speak out of turn and demand things she had no right to from me, alone was quickly abandoned. Nothing was more delicious than a bite into the forbidden artery.
"That won't be necessary. Sookie and I have unfinished business to attend to."
"Over my dead body!"
With a blink, I was directly in front of him. Looming over him, I spoke quietly and enunciated slowly, "You forget your place, Stackhouse."
He took a step back but shook his head. "Look, when it comes to political shit and everything else, I'll defer to you like a good lil baby vamp. But when it comes to my kid, you don't get to pull rank because I'm her goddamn father and I... I changed her diapers!"
The buffoon was serious. Only years of controlling my expression hid my mirth.
Pam, through our bond, of course knew otherwise. "Oh, I don't know, Corbett... Your baby girl and your grand pappy? Isn't that the norm in Bumfuck, Louisiana; population three hundred; two hundred and fifty of which are sister-cousins?"
It was times like these that made me appreciate my child's twisted sense of humor. She truly was worth all the years of frustration she caused me as a fledgling.
Sookie groaned. "Not that it's any of your-" she looked pointedly at her father and Pam, "business who I'm seeing, sexually or not, Eric and I are just friends. If we do decide to take things to the next level, it will be because we're both consensual adults. Eric, fifty times over, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms that's nunya business either."
Corbett opened his mouth, in protest no doubt, but his daughter held her hand out to stop whatever nonsense he was about to spew.
"I don't really talk about my disability with anyone, not since Daddy left, so putting what I do instinctively now into words is kinda weird, but I'll try my best." Hands smoothing over the hem of her dress repeatedly, she cleared her throat and raised her head up high. "I used to hear peoples's thoughts. I mean I still do, but ever since I started poking around in their thoughts, I found out I could dig through their memories if I directed them to what I wanted to know. With the memory thing came the mental pictures of what they were remembering. I keep my shields, the mental walls Daddy helped me build to keep the voices from overwhelming me when I was little, down most of the time now. It started after Pam scared the ever loving shit out of me as a child, but continued well into my teenage years to stay a step ahead of Michelle. The only time my shields are ever up are when I'm with Gran, but even then I don't lock my mind up completely - that's how I was able to hear her screaming in my sleep when she was being strangled by Rene.
"When my shields are down and I'm not focused on anyone in particular's mind, thoughts just sorta become a background buzz. Like the sound a refrigerator makes when it's real quiet. Every now and then, a keyword I'll hear would jump out at me - a name, a phrase, anything that would pique my interest - and I'll focus to locate where it came from."
Her ability worked similarly as vampiric hearing. Having highly advanced auditory senses and thus being able to distinguish every nuance in sound and hear even the lightest whispered conversations in a room, vampires have had to find ways to cope with the sensory overload otherwise we'd all have succumbed to madness by our first month. "Background buzz" was a fitting description to the constant influx of noise, and we shared the ability to cipher chaos into useful information through the use of "keywords".
I knew vampires who were overwhelmed by their new state of hearing, so for a human - and she must've been a child no less - to not have only overcome, but to have mastered it as well, was more than impressive. Sookie Stackhouse was full of surprises, a rarity in a breather, and I found myself wondering just what else she was capable of.
She'd excell at being a vampire.
That thought caught me off guard. I hadn't found a human worth siring since Pam. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that no, I didn't want to be Sookie's progenitor; children never stayed with their makers for long.
Then, what did I want?
The question baffled me. Did I want another companion? I had Pam, and much to my rancor, Corbett as well. Did I want a pet? Just the thought of a vacuous, desperate, depressing puppet of a woman catering to my every whim was enough to disgust me - so no, I didn't want a pet. Did I want an equal? I thought back to our previous conversation and the issue that roused her ire and irritated me so; she demanded better treatment of the blood bags in my employ and I was annoyed at the fact that a breather was demanding anything from me at all. Was it irritation? I analyzed my feelings, or what the little I retained from my humanity was called.
Yes, it was irritation - but irritation brought on by a feeling of... Unease. Why? Why did this woman's boldness make me uneasy?
I studied her. She was beautiful, that was an undeniable fact, but I'd met greater beauties in my millennia. She had the fae allure, yes, but I've fucked and fed from purer bloods than she and, other than reminiscing the taste of their blood when I suffered through periods of drought, I hadn't thought of them since. This woman, however, plagued my thoughts; and no woman, alive or dead, had elicited this kind of response from me. How did her ability to glamour me, and that's exactly what she'd done to me, relate to my feelings of unease? I pondered that for a stretch of time and came up with only one answer.
I was... afraid - I tested that word in my mind, I hadn't felt fear in, unwisely, far too long and had become unfamiliar with it - to want her. I knew the facts; she was quick witted, wielded more power with her mind than she ever knew possible, was certainly brave when it came to defending those she loved, and was pragmatic enough to not romanticize me - as evident in her conversation with the fangbanger at Merlotte's. She also had a deliciously voluptuous body and radiated light and life.
So why the fuck would I fear her?
She looked up at Pam, "That's how I knew the Rattrays were drainers, by the way. And you're welcome."
Pam's fangs dropped, and she grinned viciously at the memory of that errand. She had fun with the inbred morons for over a week in the Dungeon - Corbett's term for Fangtasia's cellar - before eventually draining the drainers. It was quite fitting, really; Hammurabi was right.
Sookie shuddered, "After reading the women who y'all allow over at your house, I learned pretty quickly how to tell when someone's been glamoured." She began smoothing over the hem of her dress again, and looked at us with something close to terror in her eyes. "I've never done this before, I swear. Hell, I don't even know how I did it but somehow I managed to, to unglamour Belinda."
I was wrong. She wielded more power in that beautiful mind of hers than even I thought possible.
I straightened from my casual position against the glass wall. "This does not leave the room."
Corbett nodded, but surprisingly, it was Pam who appeared relieved by the inference of my protection.
"Sookie, does Belinda realize what you did?" I asked.
"No, I mean I don't think so. I guess unglamour isn't really the right word since I didn't restore her memory. I um-" she looked at me sheepishly, "I kinda stole it from her completely."
"Can't steal something that's already gone, baby girl."
Even a broken clock was right twice a day.
"Daddy, you don't understand," she looked at Corbett pleadingly, "Glamouring leaves holes in a person's memories but there's still a shadow, a hint of something, a residue or whatever it is that's left behind. What I did scrubbed that hole clean and left nothing in its place. No remnant of what should've been there at all. That's how I knew she was skimming money from the tip jar. Longshadow found out what she was doing and made her split her take and taught her to how to falsify the bar and gift shop's inventory. But instead of just seeing it through her memories, I was there. I was the one that stole and I was the one he, he-" she looked sick, "used and fed from."
I felt an irrational wave of possessiveness and anger but ignored it. "I wonder," I mused aloud, "if that was why your nose bled. The transference of her erased memories must have had an adverse effect on your mind."
We were all thoughtful for a moment then, Corbett broke the silence.
"Useful and fucking amazing as it is what you can do now, baby girl, until we know what it did to your brain, you shouldn't do it again."
Sookie nodded but asked, "How would I know what it did to me? It's not like I can get a CAT scan while doing whatever I did at the same time."
"Oh, but you can." Pam said.
"And risk doctors or the government finding out about my disability? No thanks, I'd rather not get kidnapped in the middle of the night by men in black suits and wake up in Roswell."
"You watch too much television." Pam said, shaking her head.
"Oh, that's rich coming from the vampire who wanted to drain the entire cast of America's Next Top Model."
"Threatened. I threatened to drain them!"
Sookie sniggered, "Sure, whatever you say."
Pam's eyes sparkled with mischief, "Since I'm your boss now that you work at Fangtasia, I think I'm going to have to insist on enforcing a rule on uniforms."
"Actually, and I really hate to burst your bubble, but Eric's my boss. I don't work for Fangtasia, I work strictly for Eric as his financial consultant."
Pam pouted. "Fine, but you'll still have to wear a uniform."
"Nope,"
"Eric will give you a clothing allowance if you do."
"She'll be getting one regardless." I interjected before the conversation grew even more irksome. I had other pressing matters to attend to. I straightened, "Your presences are no longer needed here. Leave."
Sookie moved to stand.
"Not you. You will stay."
Her head snapped up and fire ignited in her eyes, "I'll do whatever the hell I damn well please, thank you very much, and no man - vampire or not - is going to stop me."
My cock twitched.
She stomped over to the glass doorway, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get home."
Never one to force a woman against her will, I lowered my head to hers and whispered against her ear, "This is not over."
Her cheeks flushed deliciously pink, "No, it isn't," she conceded. Then she placed a chaste kiss on my cheek, - which her father protested vocally with another growl - and said, "I'll see you tomorrow night, Eric."
A/N: thank you guys, so much, for all your kind words and support last chapter. I know the endgame of this story; the journey getting there seems unclear but that's what makes this fun for me :]
this chapter was unbeta'd so any faults you found are all mine.