Dead But Not Forgotten (41 page)

(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 she . . . ? 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
gram
s.”

. . . 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.

I won't ever settle for settling.

He is always amused by those who insist that having a good choice and a bad choice means having no choices. In the end, it
is
a choice, everything is, good and bad, and crying otherwise is for children. He is many things, but he has not been a child since William of Normandy walked the earth.

You've got no choice . . . There's no choice . . . You have to . . . You must . . . You will . . .
No. Eric has been forced, it's true, but he always,
always
has choices. Forced to be with Appius, and then Freyda. Forced to speak to people he would never have spoken to otherwise; forced to touch and be touched by people he would never have touched otherwise. Well. They are gone and he remains. And like Merlotte, he has ensured his line regardless.

Pam Ravenscroft and Karin Slaughter. His marriage/prison term with Freyda horrified Pam, because for all her morbid sense of humor and lethal charm, she values Eric's happiness above all things. Pam had been so young when he married the queen—less than two hundred years old—that she still hadn't picked up the knack of seeing the long con. She caught on after she'd been the Area Five sheriff for a decade. Karin, always more sanguine about such things, so pragmatic as to seem detached, caught on about a week after the wedding took place.