Even now, so many years later, Eric was vague on all the details of the Great Reveal but had nothing but admiration for the endgame. The shifters’ decision—to wait a few years after the vampires revealed themselves before doing the same—paid gigantic dividends in the long run, as constant infighting forced alliances that had never before been considered. As when vampires came out, things were chaotic and violent for the first few years. Lots of “you never told me you were one of those” and “well, you never told me you were one of those” and “but some of my best friends are shifters, I am not an anti-wereite!”
Humanity ultimately decided the undead were the bigger problem and behaved accordingly, because when you gave them two choices, humanity invariably picked wrong. Which eventually put shifters into the enviable position of being kingmakers. Literally.
All that to say that after a century of conflict, the vamps were (kind of) humbled, humans were (sort of) grateful the dust was settling, and shifters controlled the White House and several states. Even more interesting, sociologically speaking, humans who came from shifter families were accorded the same respect as their fuzzy brethren. Your parents and older brother are shifters, but you aren’t? Run for Congress.
Hilarious! The very best kind of irony. And all that most of the vampires could do was wait and watch. The ones who stuck their necks out lost them. The ones who stayed out of it . . . well . . . speaking of Bill Compton
(was I?)
he had been so busy playing The King and I with anyone but Sookie, he almost didn’t notice the trouble until it was too late, which is what Eric would expect from a man who didn’t notice the Civil War until he was in it. By then Compton was King of Louisiana, of course, which saved him. Or perhaps his computers saved him; Eric could not make himself care.
Suddenly it was trendy to be a were or a shifter, and if you were uncool enough to be a garden-variety human without so much as a shifter cousin to claim, you made were friends, got yourself a were boyfriend or girlfriend, went to shifter bars. And when a Were eventually became president things really changed, and not with the glacial slowness normally clogging government progress. These days that particular political post was more ceremonial than anything—like the kings and queens of England before the Windsors ruined it for everyone—but still much loved by the sentimental. And no entity spins so well as politicians. Before long humans were wondering why it had taken the weres so long to get into gear. Eric admires this finest, most brilliant way to triumph: when the losers are glad you came. Sometimes he wonders if the entire nation succumbed to Stockholm syndrome.
Cute Little Blond Waitress returns with his drink and gives him a big smile along with an alarming number of extra napkins (does she think I’ll drool?) and implores him to zap her if he needs anything, anything at all.
Eyeing his drink, and not troubling himself to watch her hips on the exit, Eric ponders the fact that not only have many things changed, but some came as a surprise, some he indirectly manipulated, and some he brought about full-on in front of the world. He thinks of Appius for the first time in a long while, the way the man would study Eric as if he could know him if he simply looked long enough.
Your thoughts are like wheels inside wheels; there is always something going on in there. Then his maker would tap Eric’s forehead, hard, and let loose a long, cheery laugh.
When Eric thinks of Appius, it’s usually about the laugh.
Wheels inside wheels, yes. Vampires worrying about humans worrying about weres worrying about fairies, and who could have predicted that the supe situation would implode at the worst possible time for Castro? And who could have guessed that in her attempt to undo the damage, Freyda, his wife and queen, would also suffer true death?
Well. Eric could have, if anyone
(Sookie)
had troubled themselves to ask. Always have an exit. That was something else about him Appius often saw and shrugged off.
Queens who rise quickly are to be loved and feared and, above all, aware that a fast rise can be followed by a dizzying fall. Poor Freyda. Right to the end, she had had no idea what she had signed on for. Sometimes he thinks about her face when the knowledge that true death was something that could actually happen to her hit her like a boulder, that it couldn’t be flirted away or bribed or ignored, he thinks of her eyes and how they got big, so big (“I don’t—I can’t—Eric . . . why?”) and he laughs and he laughs.
When is a trap not a trap? When it’s your trap.
So things had worked out more or less according to plan, no thanks to anyone but him, and he had too much pride to dash to Stackhouse Central the moment he was free. So he waited—and not just until what would have been the end of the contract. He tacked on another year for no other reason than to prove to himself that he could. Because pride might goeth before a fall, but sometimes pride is all you have
(the thing they can’t take; the thing you can’t ever ever ever LET THEM TAKE)
and you protect it the way a dragon guards treasure.
“. . . would have sold my soul to the devil for a shot at that man!”
“Please, you would have sold your soul just to look.”
He shrugs off the customer chatter that flows around him like a polluted river. He thinks, Anticlimax. He thinks, Who would have thought the devil would be such a bore? He thinks, Keep your soul, leave the devil out of it, and invest in Martian water shuttles instead.
He remembers a throwaway line from, of all things, Stephen King’s Christine. A horror classic, required reading for the last hundred years along with literary giants Edgar Allan Poe, Dave Barry, and Janet Evanovich, and the line that caught his attention, seized his attention, had come from a willful, unpleasant character, a woman so used to dominating her loved ones that she had forgotten what losing felt like.
The character’s self-realization had slammed into his brain and he’d nearly dropped the paperback; he had instantly recognized himself in a woman who had never existed, a character thought up by a long-dead resident of the state of Maine.
“And if her own family thought she was hard sometimes, it was because they didn’t understand that when you went through Hell you came out baked by the fire. And when you had to burn to have your own way, you always wanted to have it.”
(No, he couldn’t relate to that. At all.)
(He bought a Plymouth Fury to honor the book, if not the hero’s mother, and keeps it in an underground garage outside Tulsa. Tulsa itself is also underground since the EF5 tornadoes of 2100.)
So Eric is a widower, and that is fine, he is a king sans queen and that is fine, too, and he has money, which is good, and power, which is better. In short, he has everything he set out to gain for himself, and his fear, his “you know what happens to people when they get everything they want” fretting, was unfounded because he discovered that getting (almost) everything you want is wonderful. Even better than his wildest imaginings. And so he has no regrets.
Well. Almost. One regret, perhaps, one blond regret, but regret is irrelevant even if the lady herself never was, and—
Ah.
Finally.
Eric watches a family come into the bar; they don’t know it, but they’re there for him and he for them. It’s a chattering, charismatic group; any one of them could fill a room by themself. He watches them and thinks of his one almost-regret; several have her eyes.
The problem with living without the person you can’t live without is eventually realizing you can live without them.
While he waited out the supe situation he’d set in motion to make him a widower (and, it must be said, a tidy bundle of cash and a secure power base), he had missed Sookie Stackhouse, oh yes. Missed, in fact, scarcely covered it. He missed her, and speculated about her, and wished her well, and wondered if Sam Merlotte had the vaguest idea of his good fortune (doubtful), and was pissed at her.
How could s
he . . . ? Why would she . . . ? Most of all, worst of all, why would I . . . ? For all those years, why would I . . . ?
But as the years slid by and her name popped up now and again in national news (to his delight, and her displeasure, because being in the news interfered with Operation Housewife), and then the names of her children and of their children and their children’s children, the ache became longing, longing became nostalgia, nostalgia became fondness, and after a while he could see the funny side of it.
A long while.
Now here they are, her many descendants, a riotous, charming group, and he has no trouble picking up the snippets of conversation they drop so casually. They talk the way people do when they know they’re in a safe place. They talk as if everyone knows them, ergo no one means them harm. They talk like even if something bad happens, it’s fixable.
They are so young it would hurt, if he allowed it.
So he is here, good, and they are here, also good, but now comes the tedious part . . .
“She’ll scorch us, she’s exactly like her mom who’s exactly like her mom! We’ll try the spin and she’ll scorch us so dry!”
. . . deciphering slang.
There was keeping up with slang so as not to stand out more than necessary, and then there was an utter refusal to sound like an ass. Until toast was no longer a synonym for fucked up, he was out. He’s heard of hysterical blindness; he cultivates hysterical deafness.
They are a mixed group of young men and women, blonds and brunettes and one redhead; he estimates their ages between fourteen and nineteen. They are well-spoken and polite, noisy and good-natured. He knows without conscious thought that at a party, people gravitate to them and don’t know why. The children do know, and never question it. He thinks again that any one of them can fill a room by themselves.
“Come on, we’ve all heard the stories and the ’rents are right. You don’t, nope, can’t, you can’t picture the horror,” the redhead was saying, voice high with glee, “when you bring someone home because you like ’em enough to get horizontal—”
“Oh, yuck,” one of the younger ones interrupts. “That’s all you think about. And talk about. Double yuck.”
“Shut up, Sam—and there’s your caliente great-great-grandma running around braless in a white dress—”
“How old is that white dress?” another one yelped. “We’ve all seen pictures. She wore it all the time.” This in a tone of restrained affection.
“My theory: She had a closet full of them.”
“Talking, still talking here, still have the floor and still talking and anyway, assuming your would-be horizontal bang buddy wasn’t starstruck, even though they all were, they always were and they always lied about it—”
Another family member—this one small and dark-haired and dark-eyed and positively elfin—singsonged, “I’ve neeever met a faaaaairy before,” to the groans of everyone else at the table.
“That’s another tall tale they keep handing down—come on. Most of them didn’t even know she was fairy. Barely fairy, at that.”
“Well, there was plenty of stuff they did know. ‘Did you reeeally catch your grandma’s killer and figure out how to make lumpless gravy like you were Nancy Drew if Nancy used to be a waitress? Didja? Didja?’ Followed by, always followed by, ‘No, I’d love to stay and drink gallons of sweet tea and listen to you talk about the good old days and hear how you palled around with the Eric Northman. Wonderful white dress, by the way.’”
At the mention of his name Eric almost spills his drink. He’s not sure if he’s pleased or appalled that Sookie turned him into a bedtime story for her progeny.
“Uh-huh, and while all that’s going on, our grandma’s grandma would quietly step back out to the porch so she could throw up in her mouth a little,” the eldest finishes, equal parts triumphant and horror-struck. She has to raise her voice to be heard over the chorus of giggles. “Because back in the way back, that was a fourth date at Casa Stackhouse-Merlotte, also known as the House of Pain.”
Eric does not quite snigger, though it’s a near thing. There is nothing funnier than pampered young adults babbling about houses of pain as if they understand the concept. It reminds him of Goth angst, shortly before the Goths grew up and began the destruction of the Republican Party, then stepped back and let their children finish the job. Goth is now a synonym for sabotage, which is a tremendous improvement over when it was a synonym for black-clad angsty douchebag.
I’m dating myself. Nobody says douchebag anymore. He tries to care. He fails.
If nothing else, it was interesting to hear confirmation of what he suspected even before his “marriage” to Freyda: Sookie’s intent hadn’t been just to live and die in Bon Temps; she meant to stake, defend, and keep a claim, and not just for herself, but for her family, down and down through the generations. Eric swallows a laugh, thinking of the old saying: If you can’t join them, beat them. Bon Temps held Sookie in contempt for years; now her descendants hold Bon Temps. And the rest of the state. Heh.
But the slang, dear God, the slang. Good things were ice or cupcake, bad things were armpit or blade, boring things were allday or flick. At least like was back to being used properly instead of as a maddening verbal tic.
“—like?”
“Pardon?”
The waitress is smiling down at him. He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed her approach, which is shameful, really; he knows better. Her corn-fed good looks are somewhat marginalized by her Ask about my finger-lickin’ ribs! hat. “Just checking back again, seeing if there was anything else you’d like.”
Properly used! The pure joy of it nearly left him dizzy. “Like?”
“Prefer?” She licks her lips in what he assumes she thinks is a subtle signal of carnal intention. Or perhaps her lips are chapped; his interest level is the same either way. “Desire?”
“I would prefer you continue using like as a modifier as opposed to a vocalized pause.” Since she just stands there, blinking, he adds, “And another glass of TrueBlood.”
She vamooses again, allowing him another few seconds of eavesdropping . . .
“Quit complaining; it doesn’t matter what Gram looked like. She never jumped any of the ’rents’ ’rents’ boyfriends. Or girlfriends, for no other reason than who hangs with a fetus by choice?”
“It’s true,” another striking blonde in the collection of striking blondes adds. “She’d only hang with a fetus if she lost a bet. A really big one.”
“Twenty is not a fetus,” another one corrects, voice light and tart, like lemonade.
“Comparably speaking, twenty was absolutely a fetus. I mean, come on. She lived for a long time.”
“Um . . . anybody remember when she was born?”
“Nineteen sixty-nine?”
“That’s the moon landing,” another sibling corrects, fond and exasperated. “Not the Gram landing.”
“Damn. We should know this. At least one of us should know all the sordid weirdness of the matriarch’s sordid past when she was running around in white dresses being sordid. We need to appoint one of us—”
“I nominate anyone but me.”
“—to be the unofficial family historian.”
“Oh, yawn. Pass.”
“You pass on everything; could you maybe step up just once?”
“Shush up.”
“You shush up.”
“Make me.”
“I will! Right after I order some apps. I can’t be the only one who wants chicken wings, right?”
“Better get two baskets.”
“I’m getting two for me. Any of you other hogs want some, order them yourselves. After we remember how old our gram’s gram’s gram’s gram is.”
“I don’t think you used enough grams.”
. . . which reassures Eric that the family sees nothing, knows
nothing, suspects nothing.
Good.
He sips and thinks that everyone got what they wished for, with all that entailed. Sookie wanted sunbathing and babies and Merlotte, probably in that order, so his darling had chosen to live in a swamp and have puppies with a sentient Labradoodle, or whatever the hell Sam Merlotte decided to be that month. Gone now, of course, like
(his no not his never his not for a long long time)
Sookie, she to the heaven she so unwaveringly knew awaited her and Sam to wherever the souls of Labradoodles go. Eric is sure Sookie mourned, but Merlotte’s children remained, and his grandchildren, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam, and that would have been enough for her; she would have died happy knowing her line would go on and on.
Like Eric goes on and on and will after true death. Merlotte is not the only sire to ensure his line continues. He has Pam and he has Karin, and through them many others, and soon he will have a nation.
It had been his maker’s will that Eric and Freyda marry to consolidate power and eventually take the United States. (Well. The first part was all Appius, to be sure. Eric might have tacked on the second as an addendum.) And he had been fine with that plan, once he tweaked it, because—oh, yes, there’s always something—he had always known he wouldn’t need Freyda to take the States. He only needed the more powerful supes to be looking the other way when he made his move, which worked out nicely, but only for him. The Stackhouse-Merlottes can have their swamp, and welcome to it. He’ll take more. He always takes more.
He wonders when his plan-within-a-plan finally became clear to Sookie. If she kept up with the news, she would have realized in less than a decade that things had never been so cut-and-dried as they’d appeared. He wonders if she regrets giving him up—or letting him be handed over.
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