Chapter 64: Drain the Blood

The vampire King of Mississippi gave him an unsatisfying non-answer. Eric gracefully left the Estate after kissing Edgington's ring, which he hoped would help make his case for his new allegiance. It was the cherry on top of this treason Sunday - kissing the ring of a King behind the back of his own Queen. But it was clear that Edgington was suspicious. Not of anything Eric told him, but about everything that he didn't.

If Sophie-Anne was as destructive as Eric made her sound to be, why should Russell move a finger? He could simply wait for her reign to inevitably end and pick up the pieces without breaking a sweat.

Ultimately, Eric had failed. He found himself running down a hallway, every door he tried to escape through shut right on his face. He was running out of options - quickly.

Blasting music on his way back to Shreveport, he tried to forget for a few hours that his whole world was imploding. He tried to be grateful for the things he had, even if they might be just for the moment. Like a beautiful and gloomy sandcastle, watching the tide come in. One wave and it would be all over.

There was no stopping the ocean.

Eric looked at the clock on the dashboard and realized he would arrive around Fangtasia's closing time. He would go home to change clothes, then head to the bar to update Pamela, pick up Olivia and the money deposit for the bank as his usual routine. Maybe Eric and Olivia could spend the day together somehow. Ever since she asked why they didn't it was all he could think about. His mind slipped down that easy dream. Maybe he would take her swimming somewhere secluded and untouched. Make her laugh, put wildflowers in her hair, feed her fresh strawberries, and kiss the sunshine off her skin. They'd be alone, away from all of this. Just once. Just one day before it all ended.

Without warning the ground shifted underneath him as if there had been an Earthquake. But everything stood still. The road was wide and free, and his car drove quietly as it always did. Yet, the sweet dream had turned into a dark and vicious nightmare. His frozen heart tightened painfully in his chest. His legs suddenly burned from the inside, as if silver crawled in his veins. His soul screamed for its other half. Olivia was in trouble and she was far, far away.

Suddenly the imminent tsunami that was about to engulf him didn't matter. There was only one thought that consumed him: he must get to her. There was a whispering voice in the wind, calling out for him, begging and screaming. She was in danger, and so very afraid. Her fear was tugging at him in the invisible cord that tethered them together like a sail at a storm.

Olivia was many things, but never afraid.

His foot hit the accelerator as far as it could go and the car shot through the night, warping cities into a mesh of passing lights by his windows. He followed the echo of her screaming conscience. Her flesh was being torn, and her heart was full of fear and anger. Time slowed itself down, savouring the torture. Her pain was vivid and he felt it as his own. A tall wave pushing him down with vicious wrath, and Eric wasn't sure what was drowning him - the helplessness of not being there to save her or the fear of losing her forever.

His fangs dropped, and his eyes masterfully scanned each and every passing car and truck he encountered, weaving through all the lanes as if it were a matter of life or death. Because it was - life or death. He didn't know if the joining would simply end if she died, but he knew for a fact he would never be the same if he lost her. He would never go back to being the person he was before he laid eyes on her, his white Swan, crossing the club floor.

He couldn't simply forget her. She couldn't just fade away into the past as Sylvie did - Olivia would never just become a memory, he could not allow that to happen.

Eric reached for his phone and called Pamela. It rang and rang, and rang, but no answer. What if they had come for her too? Without their bond, there was no way of knowing. Eric's mind started spinning out of control. He should have taken her with him. He should have done more, he should have loved her harder, he should have done so many things.

Then, it all ceased. The fear stopped, slowly dwindling into peaceful, calm rest.

He still drove as fast as the engine would take him, frozen in fear. It took him a full minute before he dared feel out their bond. When he did, it was still there, connecting the two.

She was still alive.

But that didn't make him drive any slower. His screen lit up, a message from his progeny that read -

'she's ok.'

Eric should have been able to slow down now. Whatever happened, Pamela handled it like he knew she could. Or rather, hoped she would. But yet, he still ran home. What happened? Vampires? Cops? Wolves? And even a worse, much more dreadful question - whose wolves?

What if it wasn't the Long Tooth pack, but Edgington's? What if Russell wasn't satisfied with all his half answers, and quarter truths and was willing to rip his secrets right off his hands? Eric could not stomach being responsible if something happened to her or Pamela. He already failed them too many times.

He blew past every red light, every stop sign and every other driver on the road without hesitation. He just held onto their bond, feeling its warmth, counting the slow beats of her pulse through it. She was okay. He came to a quiet stop, parking across the street from Pamela's Porsche. Floating out of his car, he landed just on the other side of the gate. He ducked under Olivia's overgrown front yard trees, then saw his childe sitting on the front steps of the dark house, only lit by the moon and the street lamps. Pam was calm, all in one piece, filing her long red nails and enjoying the nightly scent of Olivia's citrus trees. The only sound in this strangely quiet night was of her shower running inside the house.

"What happened?" Eric demanded immediately.

His progeny admired her claws for a second, pleased with their sharpness. "Wolves got her. They wanted to know where we stashed the V, but she gave 'em nothing. She's a tougher cookie than she looks."

A small weight lifted off his shoulders - it hadn't been Russell. But his skin still felt chills of her fear and her pain. "What did they do to her?"

Pam shrugged. "Nothing you can't fix."

"Are they dead?" It may be a rhetorical question, but he needed to hear it.

"Yeah, Thalia is burning the barn down. There was too much fairy blood everywhere to just let the corpses rot."

Eric stood there for a moment, preparing himself to face whatever it was they did to her. Turns out, it needed more courage than he thought. Eric finally took an eager step towards the front door, but Pamela's raspy voice called him out again. "She's breaking, Eric. The longer you keep her, the more hurt she's gonna get."

He shook his head. That was a pill he refused to swallow. "No, she won't. I came back, and I won't let her out of my sight again-"

"Yeah, you came back," Pamela stood up on the front step with him. "With no fuckin' army. Do you understand how fucked we are? The gravity of our situation?"

A muscle twitched in his jaw. Pam knew exactly who was in Jackson Mississippi, and she was smart enough to figure out what he was there for. Still, her tone didn't sit right with him.

"Our? This is our situation now? I am responsible for this, Pamela. It's my fucking head on the chopping block, it's my Area to take care of, it's my war with the wolves-"

It's my Olivia-

"This does not have to be your burden alone, Eric," she pleaded, with a look on her face he did not like.

"I've sacrificed more than you know for it to be."

Eric had always given her the freedom he long yearned for himself. Hell, he even let her make a newborn in the first few years she was a vampire. He didn't even scold her when that went ultimately terribly. Pamela was allowed to feed and fuck whoever and whenever she wanted. He let her leave whenever she was pissed off. He let her do or not do anything she liked, and she never worried about money, not even once.

When he was made Sheriff of Area 5, he didn't make her come or stay in Shreveport. When he was forced to release her, he didn't push her away as Godric had done to him. What else could he possibly have to sacrifice in the name of love?

"Even your trust in me?" Her voice trembled.

Eric's brows knitted together. Surely he was pissed off at her for how she tried to sell Olivia off behind his back to Bill Compton, but he still trusted her with his life.

"What are you talking about?"

A cold wind ruffled the lemony leaves of the trees around them. Her red teary eyes sparkled in the dark.

"You think I haven't noticed the mileage in your car? It's hundreds of miles higher at sundown than it was just before dawn," her words were just a whisper but shot at him like sharp arrows. "Who's driving it? What is it that you aren't telling me?"

The resounding pain in her voice was unexpected, and it felt like a gut punch. It had been Eric driving it, aimlessly, roaming the long roads of the American south, exploring a world that had long been forbidden to him.

It may seem like a pointless and insignificant pastime to most but to a vampire, day walking was defying the laws of nature. Eric should have told her how the colours of the morning were different from the colours of the afternoon. How loud the waking world was, how bad traffic congested the roads and the songs of birds. Of the dust harvesters lifted when they drove over crops, or of how full coffee shops were during the day. He should have told her about the soft warmth of sunlight, and how it felt on the skin. Maybe Pamela was young enough to remember it, despite it being the very first thing he ordered her to forget. It was what Godric had done with Eric, and his own Maker had done with him.

Would she understand? Would she be bitter with envy?

Would she be afraid?

Pam was right, he didn't fully trust her, not with this.

Parts of him wanted to tell her the truth. But he wasn't quite sure what the truth even was at this point. The joining had fundamentally changed everything - it had changed him. There was one cardinal rule in their existence: vampires don't walk in the sun. It's an incontestable fact like gravity. It was simply the price of immortality. But yet, the sun didn't set him on fire. Its warmth felt just as heavenly as having her living yet immortal body in his arms.

It was like the young witch said - unnatural and downright blasphemous. It broke all the rules, angered the Gods, it defied his own creation and the natural order.

But yet.

"It doesn't matter," he told her softly.

"How can it not matter, Eric?!" She cried, a tear staining her magnolia petal skin. "I may not be your everything anymore, but you are mine. Bonded or not, you will always be."

Eric pulled his childe into his arms and embraced her tightly. Her long arms wrapped around him, and he felt out for their bond like he had done a thousand times before. He only met the dark and cold void, mocking him. Power was never free.

He squeezed her harder, feeling her gentle tears fall on his chest. Bond or not, void or not, what he could still feel and what he would always feel, was his love for her. That required no searching. This bold, fierce, vicious and cold-hearted woman he loved and made with his own blood. He stroked her long hair, feeling his undying adoration and pride for her. Bond or not, Olivia or not, he would always love Pamela too. The two of them were all he had, and he should never forget that.

Eric promised Pamela greatness, but he promised Olivia safety. He bent the knee to Sophie-Anne but kissed Russell's ring. As each night goes by, the world proves to him again and again that he cannot honour his promises. He was failing them, as he failed Godric and his own father a thousand years ago. Over and over again, his own twisted honour was the sword he fell on.

"Turn her, Eric, please," she begged quietly into his arms. "I know you want to keep her, but the only way of making her truly yours is to make her like you've made me."

He cradled her beautiful face, wiping away the red tears off her soft skin with his thumb. To Pamela, love was absolute. It was to give yourself to someone wholly and without fear or hesitation. It was unconditional, transcending humanity, reason, death and time. It was worth sacrificing everything you've ever been, everything you've ever had, your family, your friends, your very own beating heart; it was to let go of all your dreams and all your hopes and take a leap into the abyss of death. Love was complete and total surrender, to belong to the darkness, forever.

That's how Pam loved him, and anything less than that was unacceptable. 'To love is to let go' is a human sentiment. To most vampires, to love is to keep. Eric saw love quite differently: to love was to give. And freedom was the biggest act of love of all.

Perhaps Godric loved him the most.

"I cannot, Pamela. Not unless she asks as you have asked me."

"Stop this insanity, Eric!" She cried out, her sadness turning into anger. "All of this - selling vampire blood on the internet, the strip club, the money laundering schemes, the fraud and the tax evasion, all the ledgers, the Casino, the bribes, the blackmail, the contracts with the neverending fine print, my God! The enemies you've made?! Don't you see? It was all her, Eric! Turning her is the only way to control her!"

Control her?

Eric's brows knitted together and his arms let her go. His whole world shifted again under his very feet. He realized it then Pamela wasn't talking about love. No, she was talking about power. Perhaps the only thing other than him that she ever loved. And now he questioned when she started loving power more than her own Maker. Maybe she had all along, and he just never saw it.

"You say over and over again that the Queen is a blackhole, who sucks everyone down into the abyss with her," Pamela said loud and clear, no trembling on her voice this time, facing his gaze dead on. "But when are you going to realize that Olivia Carson is a blackhole too?"

Alcide's warning echoed in her head, repeating itself like a scratched record.

Everything that you've done, and everything that happened to you… Just know that you have brought it on yourself. You've made your bed. Now you will lie in it.

Eric slowly entered her bathroom, his eyes showing nothing but sorrow - just like the night he found her bleeding in her kitchen. Even his movements were the same, slow and careful, the heartbreak glittering in his pure blue eyes. She was stuck in this carousel, going round and round, and round on the same loop. Hugging her bleeding knees, Olivia sat on the floor of her bathtub this time, watching the streaks of red water swirl down the drain. It washed away the blood on her skin, but never the blood on her hands. Not really.

Without a word Eric undressed, gently folding all his black clothes onto a neat pile on the counter, and hanging his heavy leather jacket on an empty towel hook. He slid open the shower door, carefully stepping inside and sat down right behind her, placing her curled-up body between his legs. She leaned back against his marble body, surrendering herself fully to him and letting the hot shower water rain on her stomach. Her legs stretched out between his, revealing what they had done to her. There was no sense in hiding it, even Olivia could smell her own exposed flesh.

The pain and the blood, the violence etched into her body was awful in ways she could not even describe. But Alcide's curse replayed in her mind, reminding her again and again that she deserved it. And that she should be happy even, that it had been her and not an innocent life. Tonight could have easily been Dawn or Crystal hanging in that barn. Tomorrow it could be Lafayette, Portia, or Tara, or-

Eric. He was not innocent, that she knew. But she could not stomach the thought of losing him again or feeling what she felt at the bottom of that pool. She didn't want to grieve him - she wanted to love him, undead and whole.

Without looking back at her vampire, she knew he was staring at the artisan work of Arthur Herbert's pocket knife. His slashes were done everywhere but her left thigh. Debbie's claw mark remained untouched and unviolated as if he had purposely preserved her scar as some sort of sick joke. Olivia couldn't help but think what they'd have done if they caught Dawn or Crystal instead. The image of Dawn's lifeless body hanging in that barn wearing her own lilac dress haunted her mind. They trusted her, and they came so close to dying for it.

It wasn't too long before Eric's wrist appeared by her mouth, two glistening red dots oozing his own crimson blood near her lips.

"Drink," he whispered into her ear. "I can make it all go away."

His promise sounded too good not to accept, even if deep down she knew he couldn't really take the pain she felt deeper than the cuts on her skin. Olivia closed her eyes and drank him until she lost herself in the paradise his blood took her to. She drank until she felt nothing but Eric Northman coursing through her body. Every inch of hers pressed against him, every soft kiss that he placed up and down the side of her neck. Until all there was left was the cold spray of the ocean, and the presence of ancient trees that no longer existed. Until all she heard was the prayers to old Gods no one worshiped anymore. Until all she could feel was the weight of his sword in her hands like she always dreamed of.

Olivia truly believed she was going to die tonight, alone in that barn. And it scared the shit out of her how okay she was with knowing it would be to protect him and everything they've built. What happened to her rules? What happened to self-preservation above all? What happened to saving herself?

Eric pulled his wrist away and caressed her wet hair. "See?" his deep voice rumbled quietly.

When Olivia reopened her eyes all the red was gone. Other than the wolf's faint scar, every cut and slash had completely healed, the water ran clear into the drain, and any evidence of tonight's kidnapping disappeared as if it had never happened at all. This is how Eric worked: bloodshed somehow always wiped away more bloodshed.

It's over, a little voice whispered in her heart. She was safe. No one could touch her here. Olivia didn't want to know whose voice it was.

"Where did you go, Eric?" She muttered, looking up at him. It was time to face reality. "What were you doing?"

What was it that he wasn't telling her? That was Eric's own curse - his unspoken secrets.

His fingers traced her cheek, down her jaw, neck and collarbones. She couldn't read his thoughts, but she felt every intent in his touch. This small detail shouldn't fix everything, but it did. The silence of being in a man's arms was completely foreign to her, and it should feel untrusting, and distant. But the trust her heart felt being here was like finally being whole. She didn't need rules here.

"You went through a lot tonight, I'll tell you everything after you rest."

She was going to protest, but he kissed her and it was salvation all over again. It was easy to forget this whole night - the Mayor, the girls, the wolves, all the blood - when he kissed her like this. His lips kissed her everywhere. Her cheeks, her eyelashes, down her neck, her shoulders and her arms. His hair darkened with the water, and his skin felt as hot as the steam that engulfed them both. It was as if she were dreaming again. Months and months of having this man haunt her dreams, and now she was here again in this surreal place.

He continued kissing her even when they eventually made their way to her bed. She had prayed for him to save her, and even though he wasn't there then he was here now, giving her another kind of deliverance entirely. He dried her off with a towel, pulled a nightshirt over her body and tucked both of them under covers. Soon she succumbed to sleep. Her whole body wrapped around his as if it were afraid to let him go. She didn't want to wake up in an empty bed anymore. She didn't want to let him go. Ever.

AN:

Well, well, well, what do we have here? An update in the middle of the week?! Madness!

It's because when I finally finished chapter 64 I realized it had *checks notes* 12 thousand words (pre-editing)! So needless to say, I chopped it up at its natural stopping points because it was WAY too much plot all at once.

Last but not least, there is a rumour going on that this website is shutting down. Now, I've been in and out of here since 2007 and if you are an OG you know these rumours always come up every few years. Their team says all the recent glitches are due to them "upgrading the website to bring it to 2022 standards" but you know what that sounds like to me? Sounds like another freaking PURGE. It happened in 2002, it happened again in 2012... Not saying they pull this shit every 10 years but... I'm not NOT saying that either. All just to say - if this story disappears, all my works are also available on AO3 under the same pen name and work titles. If that's not your cup of tea and you'd like a PDF copy of any of my completed works, please DM me and I can email it to you :)

Now enough rambling, love u til next time xoxo