Disclaimer: See part 1

Note: Thanks to all who read and especially to those who took the time to comment. I cherished every word. I wrote this chapter entirely from Eric's point of view, decided I didn't like it, and re-wrote it as Jack's, thus the style's a little different etc. The third and final chapter will be Eric again.

Chapter 2

The vampire would punctually die at dawn. Jack still had quite a few hours until then and decided he had time for a few previews before the feature presentation.

Fangtasia was a place born out of human guesses at what something vampiric might look like. It reached out to passersby with crimson promises of the strange and powerful. Once vampire buildings had been as arrogant as their owners. Their roofs sat like noses in the air, aloof from the transience that played about their foundations like so many school children.

Though there were bare minutes left in the last hour before Fangtasia closed for the day, there were still bodies wall to wall, investing time and breath and hope in this little crossroads. The remaining minutes were closing minutes, the kind that got pinched between the two hands of a clock, squeezed lifeless by the knowledge that some clocks ran fast and some slow so we might as well all call it a night. Last call minutes for last call lives.

Jack had taken a seat near the back wall and scanned the room for eyes that snagged on him and turned fearfully from yet another vision of something no one else could see. But all the eyes stayed glued to their own business, rushing ahead to catch the bartender's attention and a last drink, fleeing back to might-be lovers who might-be waiting. It was better this way, as much as Jack liked toying with unwitting sensitives, one in this crowd could never keep his mouth shut about a glimpse he'd had of the supernatural. It would make that one the tribal god of the other sheep people, someone to be venerated in corn husk images and the first to be eaten by wolves.

Sooner or later the vampire in charge would hear that his bar was haunted and Jack suspected that it wouldn't take Eric Northman more than a few pinched lifeless minutes to realize the Walker had gone exploring. That would never do. It was infinitely easier to let vampires live in their snow globe lives of omniscient invincibility.

Jack had chosen an already occupied position at a booth, double-parked, since the space afforded the best view of the room. While the original occupant was turned into the table, leaning his pierced and plucked face toward the woman opposite him like he was in danger of falling downhill, Jack sat turned to face the bar. His body sunk into the man's lap so their legs described a right angle. Though Jack's legs, of course, looked insubstantial even next to the spindly denim wrapped lengths of meat and bone. He was like an image of person edited into a photograph. When reality saw the photograph she fell down stunned and, scratching her head, added a wispy watercolor of a man and nodded along with the irrefutable pictorial evidence.

The man straightened up and shook his leg in annoyance like a dog worrying a shoe. As was typical, Jack had unconsciously chosen to sit down on the closest thing to a sensitive in the room. He'd been drawn, like every human being, to the person who had the greatest chance of recognizing him for what he was. If only he had a rolled up newspaper.

No matter, the show was starting now anyway. Eric had been sitting in the center of the room for the last hour. The vampire was the statue of a god recovered from a vanquished empire and smuggled home to a people who didn't know his name. They didn't know what he was but they could all sense his power, the relentless strength of the kind that holds atoms of a thing together against the outward, chaotic rush of the universe.

The vampire bouncer approached Eric and Jack looked at the shape of the souls under their skins. There was a kind of family resemblance there, as if her soul had inherited his cheekbones and the arch of his foot. They were maker and child.

Jack left the corner booth to occupy, instead, the third seat at Eric's table, sitting across from the vampire in the spirit as he'd done in the flesh. Only this time, Eric was not at all surprised to see him, since he couldn't.

The female vampire sniffed a greeting at her maker. It said, Where have you been? Who have you been? "You really mean to go through with this." The female was beautiful. Or aloof, unusual, and regal which amounted to the same thing.

"Yes, Pam."

"She is a woman." Pam might have said, "She is alive" since that was the chalk line on the playground of eternity that separated the vampires from the humans. But few vampires managed to cultivate or acknowledge a true distaste for the living. Most of them spent time dallying with kids from the wrong side of the tracks.

"You've noticed."

Pam's eyes rolled, fish going belly up put of sheer exasperation. Theirs was an interesting relationship. If Eric Northman was something of a god then Pam was the priestess that didn't mind giving that god an earful when the rainfall came late. "I mean, she is only a woman. There are so many of them."

"This one intrigues me."

Pam snorted. "Does final death intrigue you as well?"

Spare the stake, spoil the child. "I will contact you at dusk tomorrow."

"You plan to do this alone? Walkers are not trustworthy creatures. It's probably here watching us right now."

"I'm sure." Eric grinned, white on white, and gestured right at Jack, or, at the chair in which Jack happened to be sitting. The effect would have been ruined if Jack had chosen to stand but, as is, it looked impressive. Eric had a flair for showmanship. "This is much more what I had in mind. Though I did hope you'd bring a translator."

Pam looked from Eric to Jack and back again and rolled her eyes with her whole body. "I sincerely hope you are talking to an empty chair."

"Jack Walker, Pam." Eric kept it to a one-way introduction since his child couldn't see the person she was supposed to be meeting.

Pam did not find the stunt especially amusing. "You're still doing it."

"If you do not hear from me at dusk, you will know there has been treachery."

"I'll be sure to take the chair into custody." Pam's tone never changed from one of dry as desert disapproval but for an instant her soul seemed to shudder, shrinking away from her skin and its ties to the outside world. Jack leaned forward in his chair. Witnessing a disturbance in a vampire soul was rare indeed. He couldn't help feeling a measure of respect for this Pam whose face remained impassive even as she contemplated the the final death of her maker.

What she thought Jack would do to Eric to bring that about was beyond him. Superstitions about his kind were like rabbits- numerous, varied, and impossible to eradicate. She might think he could open his eyes in Eric's mind and step into the night in the shape of borrowed death. She might think he could snuff out Eric's soul with a little spit and a pinch of his fingers. In the spirit, Jack was less dangerous to the ancient vampire than a breath of wind. Of course, very few winds remained that spoke any of the languages of memories and Jack spoke them all. How many ways were there to say Genocide Jack?

"Master, you should not do this alone."

"I couldn't if I wanted to," Eric replied.

"Where will you go?"

"I've booked a suite at the Hyatt." Jack had already discussed the details of location with Eric. He suspected the vampire knew it would be the work of a few moments for Jack to discover the location of Eric's home once he'd gone Walking but vampires were nothing if not territorial.

"I will make a reservation."

"You've requested tomorrow night off. You have plans to see the witch, I believe."

"She is only a woman." Pam's words were flat but the implications behind them were enough to draw a sharp look from Eric. Only a woman, she'd said. Remember, master, this is how a vampire behaves.

"Take the night off," Eric said, his face melting back into the stony mold. He might attack, he might fall asleep. The danger was in not knowing.

The vampire staff was busy herding the patrons out of the bar. Jack turned his gaze from the maker and child to watch the spectacle of wolves up on hind legs snapping and growling but failing to attack the sheep. The threatening looks and shows of fang did little to oust the fangbangers. They put down roots at the sight of sharp canines, germinating in the dark of this caricature of another world. They pretended at courage and managed only moribund fascination. They tried to wrap themselves in sin and fell short at soot. Sad little chimney sweeps in a city of the dead.

The passing souls were soft and malleable. He thought if he reached out to touch one it might shiver into a new shape, any shape, so long as he directed it. Finding the world too free a container, the souls had streamed here hoping to surrender freedom for a vessel that could not be spilled. He wanted to shake them, his children. That urge hadn't died, it had survived the long years of his life, living through a thousands other little deaths in him.

Suddenly he was tired of them. Tired of their sooty feet that stuck to the floor. Tired of their sniveling worship. Tired of their faces like lumps of starchy vegetables, rotting away on the souls beneath.

The vampires provided a welcome distraction.

Pam had gone off to round up the potato-faced chimney sweeps, to turn them out for the day to stand in the sun with atrophying eyes and pockets full of clipped pennies. In her place was another vampire, this one ebony and ivory but with no heat the match the cold.

Eric had, for the second time that evening, found himself face to face with someone he didn't expect. That it was a vampire, and not another human that had surprised him seemed to do little to appease the Viking. The dark vampire's eyes were fixed in a piercing stare, sighting Eric's head where a smoking hole should be.

Eric sniffed the air and his mouth twitched as if he scented a weakness. "Bill, I must say I'm surprised to see you here. Isn't your usual scene more domestic?"

The young vampire had gotten to his feet, all cold anger and helplessness. "You mean to pursue this?"

"This?"

Bill's teeth ground together like the warning cracks before an avalanche. "Sookie."

"Ah. 'Her' would have been more appropriate, don't you think?"

"She does not want to be part of our world."

"Your world," Eric corrected. "For a native English speaker, you have a terrible grasp of pronouns."

"A Walker...." Bill said as if he had no idea what the end of that sentence was and he'd rather not find out.

"Word travels." There was no 'fast' to add since it was the verb that had won Eric's ire.

"Do you care for her?" Bill's voice never climbed to the heights of a question, sprinting, instead, down the hard concrete surface of challenge.

"That's what I intend to find out."

Jack wished he had a tape recorder and the solidity required to push the record button so one day they could play back this scene and wonder why there wasn't a laugh track.

"Of course you cared for her then, Eric. You were afraid of your own shadow and she... she's kind."

Jack thought if he took a Walk into Bill he'd find a veil of crystalized memories dangling about the vampire's soul like a chandelier. He'd remember this woman in pixelated close-ups with all the nastier bits cropped out. He'd remember her in a montage set to a love song and ending in tragedy. Jack had seen it so many times in humans that temptation to glimpse it inside a vampire was almost too great. But if he Walked into a vampire who was awake, in would be the last place he'd end up. And Jack Walker was not ready to end up anywhere just yet.

Bill had paused, his mouth stopped up by caution and ceremony. Long of tooth and light of years, Jack thought. "Now, Eric," Bill said in the manner of a man fording a swift river. "Do you care for her now?"

The blond vampire didn't look away but he didn't speak either.

Bill seemed to hear some answer in the silence. "You are dangerous to her."

Eric smiled. "Give her some credit, Bill, she's dangerous to herself."

"She was safe before she became involved in vampire politics."

"You opened that door. I'm only walking through it. Don't worry, I'll make sure to close it behind me since you failed to do so." Eric seemed to be enjoying the battle of words. But Jack heard real anger too.

"You think you can keep her safe, Eric?" Bill said, soft as venom. " I hear your maker still lives. He must be quite the vampire to have lived this long. Possesive probably. Jealous of what's his. What will you do when he calls you? What will you do when you stand between your maker and Sookie and he tells you to hurt her?"

Eric blinked once, a twitch of an eye batting coyly at a thousand irrelevant years of self-control. "That won't happen."

"It happened to me."

Eric paused for a split second. A second too long. "Rest assured, Bill. I am not you."

Bill stood and drew an unnecessary breath. "Don't fool yourself into thinking it was you that she loved."

With that exiting speech, the vampire took his leave.

The human staff was busy sweeping the floor and scrubbing surfaces. Dark and dank were part of the atmosphere, dirty was not. The waitresses-turned-custodians pushed cigarette butts and lost rhinestones into dustbins, sweeping them up alongside bits of lost dignity and discarded selves.

Eric sat, silent, long enough that Jack thought perhaps he'd forgotten there had been a fly on the wall of his conversation. But then Eric grinned, nodded, and addressed the fly. "Room 817, Walker. Don't be late."

##

Time of death 5:48 am. Jack still had an hour or so left until then. He retrieved his body and checked into the Hyatt Regency hotel, purchasing a double room on a human floor down-wind of the vampires. The young woman at the desk who checked him in talked in a voice husky with sleep and promises of things other than sleep. Her acrylic nails were thick and shiny as cockroach wings. Jack didn't bother to see if any of her other attractions fared any better.

As the night's concentration broke and gray seeped in to lay a pale stain over the stars, Jack loosened his joints, coaxing out synovial fluid. He stretched. He hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door knob. It wouldn't do at all for the maid to take out his body with the dirty linens.

Then he got into bed and stepped out of his skin.