Eric

Chapter Sixteen

One of the downsides of having to plan my travel around another was more often than not, she ran late. Being a woman meant she just had more to do in terms of preparation. She was also human. I didn't hold it against her; I just made use of the time while I waited. Now while she dressed for the outing at Sophie-Anne's estate, I met with Bobby.

"By years end…" he began.

I was distracted as a scream rent through the house. By his continued speech Bobby didn't hear it, but I did and so did every Britlingen in the estate. The scream had been blood curdling. It was so out of place in the normal order of things in the house. Of course it originated from my wife's suite. I ghosted out of the room and beat Hellion, Damascus, and Clovache to the source.

Batanya, however, was not about to let me pass. "No," she said.

I was about to reply when another scream sounded. Being this close, I recognized the voice. It was Nancy, the stylist. I couldn't smell blood, but she had been screaming bloody murder. My nostrils flared, and I could feel power so normally cloaked and controlled dance up my spine. The only other person in there with her was my wife.

I realized something a few months back. There was something wrong with me. It could have been some glitch of my old age or a subconscious self-destructive notion, I couldn't say. In choosing Sookie, I had unknowingly tied myself to what was probably the only creature in the world that had no regard for what or who I was.

Humans fawned over me. Vampires feared me. Creatures of nearly every species never deigned to cross me. I had my Maker to thank for my reputation. Appius Livius Ocella would forever be known to the vampire world as "The Harbinger." A Roman soldier during the time of Christ, he witnessed what it was to be a God, a legend. He was gifted as some vampires are, but his gift for detecting extra sensory abilities couldn't have been bestowed upon a more ill-suited soul. In his madness for true immortality, he plunged Eastern Europe into an age of darkness and he used his children to do it.

Having been associated with him, no one disrespected me. I'd forgotten what it was like to be the recipient of direct and flagrant insult. I was ashamed to say I did not react well. For the first time in ages my temper had gotten away from me because of it. Since then, whenever Sookie was present the unspent hostility wasn't far behind. She was a no one, from nowhere, but she said things that had struck me, and I was still nursing my grudge.

"What has she done now?" I asked, still fuming.

I could hear more shouting. It was all Nancy; either she had lost her mind and was arguing with herself or Sookie was terrorizing her and doing it silently. After I'd witnessed her tantrum not too long ago, somehow I doubted the latter presumption was correct.

Batanya grabbed my arm and began dragging me in the opposite direction. I didn't resist. "What is with you?" she asked, rubbing at her neck.

"Her insolence is beyond galling," I replied, calming as fast as I could. "All she has to do is sit down, shut up, and smile. This seems to be entirely beyond her."

"Do you want me to kill her?" the Britlingen asked - point blank.

"It won't look good to have a marriage end so quickly, plus I'll have to pay a huge fine and begin the search all over again." I said while rubbing my eyes. "She's not worth the hassle."

I knew Batanya could make it look like an accident but…I just hated feeling like I was giving Sookie the satisfaction. It rankled in a way I couldn't imagine. By wanting her dead, I was admitting she bothered me. Nothing she said should have ever gotten to me but it had.

The captain of my guard ran a hand over her spiky dark hair. "Something's gotta give; she's not good for you. Up until three months ago I forgot I had this," she turned her neck to the side and showed me a containment seal. "Now every time you see her face, it burns."

This was her special ability. With my blood she tattooed her neck with a small circular mark resembling a labyrinth. It alerted her to the increases my power radiated. She could siphon enough from me to the point where I would not present a danger to others. She was also the only creature in the world that wouldn't get fried in the process.

Of the dozen of us who had come and gone at the hands of Ocella, all had been gifted in some way. Leta was telekinetic. Asha could command and communicate with animals. Mikah had the gift of making himself invisible. I had an affinity for lightning. Of the dozen, only Leta and I were left, but it was not only the two of us who suffered.

"Greatness," as he'd once said, "lies between madness and death."

In order to tap into our gifts, Ocella had pushed our minds beyond the brink of what anyone should ever endure. Only after he had nearly killed our bodies and broken our minds, only when our souls were barren and our hearts were bare did he turn us. For it was then that the innate talents we held shone brighter. It was effective in creating weapons but it left our minds in an eternally fragile states.

I was powerful, but I had little control over how to use my abilities once I was free from my Maker's control. When I got angry, my power was simply uncontainable. Only Ocella had been able to keep the indiscriminate monster he'd created on a leash. The angrier I became, the more powerful I was, but I also became the greatest danger to all of those nearest me.

This was the reason why I always had to remain in control. It was the reason why I was determined to never allow anything to shake my cool. This was why I had my army of Britlingens. They weren't here to protect me; I didn't need it, they were here to protect the rest of the world from me. They were a necessity, a fortress, to keep those who attempted to get close enough to affect me. I couldn't risk any upset caused by unpredictability in the fluctuations of my emotions. That would truly be a really bad day all around. Sookie, however; now appeared to be an automatic trigger.

"I'm fine," I told Batanya.

I rubbed my eyes again as I found my cool and centered myself. I couldn't allow an insignificant human to rile me.

We both looked up as Hellion and Damascus exited Sookie's suite. Clovache followed behind them carrying Nancy from the room. She looked shell-shocked and bereaved, but otherwise unharmed considering someone who only minutes before had been screaming bloody murder.

I arched a brow. "What happened?" I asked.

"She's a monster!" Nancy wailed, "Look! Look what she did!" She held out a red dress to me. It had been stabbed and shredded repeatedly with what appeared to be a fork and was sporting food stains to prove it.

"She cut the dress," I deduced.

"Murdered it! Limited edition…only four were made." The woman began weeping. She clutched the tattered garment to her chest as if it were her first born child, "And the shoes, they were twenty-seven hundred dollar Zanottis! She killed them! Just hacked them to bits."

One human branded another a monster because she destroyed apparel. This was what qualified for hysterics these days? There were some things I thought I would never see, but the list was getting shorter by the day. I couldn't even begin to understand this debacle, yet I found I was strangely amused though I wasn't entirely over my irritation.

I turned to Nancy and held her eyes with mine. I watched her face go blank and then I planted the suggestion. "It's alright," I said pulling at her mind, "It was just a bad dream, go back to sleep." Relief eased her features making her look less crazed and her eyelids drooped.

"I'm going to talk to her," I said, heading toward my wife's room.

"Eric," Batanya called, walking behind me. "I seriously wouldn't recommend that."

Sookie's outburst may have caught me off guard the last time but no longer. Now that I thought about it, it was most likely the vampire blood she was given that made her so erratic and out of character. The first dose of it into a human's system was unpredictable. I surmised she had not had a pleasant mental reaction to the substance.

She had apologized, after all, for her fitful behavior rather quickly. It wasn't her, but now I was realizing I wasn't sure what was her. I'd assumed Niall had given firm warning at just how she was playing with her life. Prior to these last few days, she had behaved herself for almost three months now. It wasn't long enough if you asked me. I was demanding her obedience for at least five years.

All of this sounded fine except it didn't explain her altercation with the stylist. Hellion and Damascus had never had any trouble while working on her detail. She was polite and liked to venture out in very low-key guises. They thought her to be quite nice, and very quiet. This fit into precisely what her background check uncovered. The human staff I hired all liked her, though they felt she didn't need much. Everyone else liked her and she was amicable to them. It seemed I was the exception, and for the first time, being the exception left me feeling it wasn't a good thing.

I adamantly refused to believe I was the cause of drawing out the unpleasant aspect of Sookie's character. If this was indeed the cause, it meant she was the only person who could tamper with my self-control. As it stood now I was teetering, every time I let her agitate me I slipped a little more down that slippery slope…I wasn't sure I could keep from falling. Killing her would save me the risk of her pushing myself control on a daily basis. But also made me feel like a coward, by killing her I was admitting that she was mentally stronger than I was.

"I can handle it," I told her.

"I don't like this," she said, stepping aside. She didn't have to.

I entered Sookie's suite. She was wearing a peachy little robe that was riding up so high it barely covered her thighs. She was seated on the floor and her human maid, Abigail, sat across from her painting her nails. They were both laughing with their heads close together. Before this moment, I'd never seen my wife smile or laugh. I just assumed she enjoyed being miserable in order to show her malcontent for the marriage, but this didn't seem to be the case either. It didn't look like a warped happiness, as though she'd been enjoying the lasting thrill after having traumatized Nancy. She just looked content.

Both women saw me as they looked up and I watched as their smiles faded. Abigail got up and gathered the dinner tray, mindful of the polish Sookie had just applied to her nails.

"I'll come back and do your hair, Miss."

"I told you to call me Sookie," she said standing, "And that would be great, thank you."

After Abigail left, it was just Sookie and me. She looked at me with an almost identical manner mirroring our first altercation. I made sure I had placed the necessary control on my temper before I addressing her.

"Clearly you have a problem. Again," My tone was calm and reassuring. From my experience, humans respond in the tones to those in which they've been addressed. "Tell me what it is and we can resolve it in an agreeable manner."

Sookie rolled her eyes, long and hard to insure I received the full effect. I did but refused to show it. This was harder than I ever possibly imagined. Even having discovered my near-exile hadn't upset me so much. That was more likely because I had a solution for it, but this? I didn't have a solution for her that wouldn't set me back and cost me an arm and a leg.

"Agreeable," she asked, "You'd love it if I bought into that bullshit wouldn't you? Well, I can't because I know better, so spare me."

Control is never really lost. It is, however; transferred. 'Do not give her control,' I chanted mentally. 'She is no one.'

It apparently didn't work so well because Batanya entered the room with a supreme look of 'I told you so'. Damn it! I knew I had to leave but again, I just refused to let her have the victory.

"You can have a solution to your problem or you can have an audience for your tantrums, but I refuse to be both."

"Of course not," she sneered, "You're so busy. Too busy to realize that you have a telepath trapped in a house full of busy buzzing human minds." Her disgust at the obvious oversight was apparent. "If that isn't bad enough you keep me up until dawn. I'm chronically jet-lagged but when I get back, I can't sleep because you hired people to kiss my ass and wipe it for me. Their minds are in my head all day long."

Most of this was directed at identifying her problem so I still had some control left but not much. Her sneer was testing me. It was because it was something she reserved just for me. "I see," I said, and I actually did.

I've never met a telepath and I hadn't cared to learn much about this one. She could manage her ability, so much so that she had passed for normal. There were no signs she couldn't control the influx of the open minds around her. Had she not told me I wouldn't have known what she was. I suspected this was why Niall wasn't aware until I'd disclosed it. I hadn't stopped to think the additional humans in the home could cause her unrest. I had done it simply to try to assist and help her acclimate to this new life.

"I want your time with me to be as easy as it can be given the circumstances. I will no longer allow them in the house while you sleep."

She eyed me for a long moment as if she didn't believe what I said. "That was an oversight and it was not my intent that you suffer."

"Thank you," she said.

I should have left it at that, but I was curious to what had caused her murderous acts against the designer. Addressing this might be helpful to simply reinforce the behaviors. Her persistent state of sleeplessness had caused her to act out tonight; like vampire blood had caused her to behave out of character the last time.

"What did you do the stylist?"

"Chapter sixteen, Section three in the contract; I objected to her choice for my evening wear as is my right."

Yes, I'd say. I was fighting a smile. It was the most confusing thing. Amused as I was, I still wasn't entirely over my irritation with her.

Sookie was leaving the living area and heading into her bed chamber. I'd never watched her walk away before. I mean I have, but I'd never quite enjoyed the view. The idea never crossed my mind. Maybe it was the robe or her impassioned swagger, or the sway of her hips and the way she held her head. I couldn't say. I watched her go with a secret smile on my face and a hunger in my loins. Both had been absent for ages.

It wasn't just the way the woman looked leaving the room. I was now finally taking notice of her scent. It so deeply saturated this area that was all her own. I could pick out the traces of the Britlingens, both Hellion and Damascus. I could set aside that of Nancy and Abigail and even the beautician Emmanuel. All that remained was a soft floral scent. It wasn't exactly Fae. It was pleasant, like a rose bush after a light spring shower. It was airy, alluring, but not too strong. Wrapping my lips around a bottle of blood with this taste in my mind would be hard.

When she reemerged from the room, my body took full attention of my wife's. To replace the red dress she had destroyed Sookie opted for a short white satin one that sported lace work down the sides. Seventy years ago it would have been considered undergarments. The way she wore it, it was temptation. The thin straps and asymmetrical neckline displayed the perfection of her breasts. Her back was bare, offering a titillating view of her shoulders and the arch of her back.

Other than the smoky liner on her eyes, blush, and blood red lips matching her shoes, she was devoid of makeup. Her hair was pulled into a neat and simple ponytail. She was adorned in simple flawless diamonds I'd gifted her. I shook off my hunger for her and focused on my current problem.

Looking at the way she commanded this small a space, the night was going to be difficult. Vampires weren't attracted to black. They lived in the shadows. White and red were head turners. Normally I only needed Batanya and Clovache, but Hellion and Damascus would be needed to accompany us for the Queen's first joint venture with her new husband. Given Sookie's present attitude I could only hope they would be enough.

I left the room as Abigail returned.

"What was that?" My bodyguard asked once we were out in the hall, "You were hot and cold."

I had no idea what was wrong with me. There was no question that something was amiss. It was a testament to how old I was that it took verbal sparring with a woman to get me to notice her curves. It took her terrorizing another woman for me to notice her scent. Noticing those things hadn't extinguished my irritation I realized. I had added attraction and thirst to my list. This woman was driving me crazy, well crazier.

A positive interaction is long overdue and I felt like we finally get some background on the cool customer Eric is in this Fic. So what do you think?