Dead But Not Forgotten (40 page)

The words race through my brain. The girl in Scotland died slowly, watching helplessly while we fucked in the snow. Lily is giving me a signal.

One of the reasons I am so fond of Sookie Stackhouse is that despite her ridiculous refusal to let Eric turn her, she makes the most of her opportunities. It's a quality we share, and it's what attracted me to Lily close to a century ago.

Go.

I step forward, and Lily does, too. It feels as if we are both moving in slow motion. While she would never break her word to Morgan, Lily might well engineer a situation where someone else must kill him. And while it might make sense for Morgan to bring his best troops with him, only Lily could have arranged such runts to guard me and given me a too-small dose of silver. If Morgan succeeds, Lily will get more power as his fortunes improve; if he fails, she'll be free of him, one way or another.

I have to decide how much I can trust my instincts. Trust her love.

I bring the sword down. It bites deep into her shoulder. I hear it cleave through muscle and bone.

It's a magnificent blade; the balance is perfection. I don't take her head, but it looks as if I'm fighting for my life. Even if I'm wrong about her, Lily won't be able to follow me.

She collapses. When I see the faint smile on her face and her hand twitch, I know for sure. I follow the direction she indicates, out through the confusion; the animals are yowling and scattering, the vampires fighting, and the orangutan is shitting all over the place as it bites the guy in the gimp suit. I need to get out front, because Eric and Morgan have disappeared and that's where they'll be heading.

I find something unexpected at the top of the stairs off the arena. Scarcely believing that I correctly interpreted Lily's plans, I pull the tarp from it. Something small and light falls as I do.

Underneath the tarp is a gleaming red motorcycle.

I bend down to retrieve what has fallen. A sprig of bluebell tied up with a stem of lavender. Gratitude and faith, in the language of flowers.

This is a gift, a fast exit for me and Eric. This is Lily's good-bye.

I tuck the flowers into my pinafore and start the bike. It thunders to life, as beautiful and deadly as Lily herself.

As I reach the front of the venue, the crotch rocket swerves dangerously. I fight to keep from ditching, feeling my fangs poking out. It's almost as exciting as a tiger between my legs.

Chaos: I see Quinn, still a tiger, batting combatants apart. I see Eric tangled with Morgan.

I love to watch Eric fight; you can see his Viking heritage in his berserker glee. Eric is my everything: sun, moon, and stars.

Lily is the perfect reflection of my joy in being a vampire.

But I'm the one who should kill Morgan.

Eric lands a crushing blow—he's using a stanchion to beat the shit out of Morgan—and draws back for another.

“He's mine!” I shout. Eric cocks his head at my costume and my demand, then nods graciously. He steps back and pulls out his phone.

I stand and raise Lily's sword.

I swing, screaming her name.

I let the blade have its way now. When it strikes, Morgan's battered and bloodied head comes off cleanly, suspended in the air a fraction of a second before it goes to goo.

I hear a click, somewhere beyond the roar of the engine, the screaming.

Eric has taken a picture of me as I kill Morgan. A blood-streaked, katana-wielding Alice wreaking vengeance astride a Ducati.

I adore Eric. He has as much an eye for a moment as I do. As much a taste for retribution, too.

But my inattention means I lose control over the motorcycle. I vault away, before it crashes into a wall and bursts into flame. You have to admire such a grand finale to the party.

I tumble and roll. I'm careful to protect the katana, because when the dust settles, and Morgan's treachery is revealed, Lily will be gone, fleeing the memory of her ill use by Morgan. But someday she might seek me out, and if she does, she will certainly want the sword back.

Until she claims it, however, her katana—like her heart—belongs to me.

MARYJANICE DAVIDSON

MaryJanice Davidson was always an Eric appreciator; he's the man with the plan. Her story “Widower's Walk” takes place 201 years after the events of
Dead Ever After
. Eric is nursing a drink and musing over life, death, the state of the world, and the repercussions of love and sacrifice. Since he's a multitasker, he's going to flirt with yet another waitress . . . and keep an eye on the assassin targeting Sookie's descendants.

—

When is a betrayal not a betrayal?
When it's not a betrayal.

He's been here before, except he hasn't. Two hundred one years ago, Louisiana was a different place, which stands to follow as it was also a different time. The bar was here, but now it's called Were About. There are still waitresses here, but instead of leaving tips on tables customers use the datpads to send credits wherever the waitress
(petcash, savings, WorldTax, 401K, direct-to-IRS)
wants them. There are blond waitresses here with big eyes and sweet smiles, but they aren't Sookie. There are bad people here.

Of course.

Eric Northman waits for a waitress (not for the first time) and ponders the nature of change. It would be difficult not to, since everywhere he looks he is reminded.
Whoever wrote “The more things change, the more they stay the same,”
he thinks,
had a brain tumor. Because the more things change, the more things change. Even the youngsters can see it.

Louisiana, as a starting point. Because first it was known for its mound complexes and status as a de rigueur Native American paradise and then it was known for the bow-and-arrow welcome that hostile tribes gave the Spanish (perhaps they saw their future once Europeans hit the shore?) and then the French got their claws in and hung on until it became Slavery Central and then England spanked the French and took some of Louisiana as a penalty/prize and Spain snatched the rest, which only increased the slave population (Louisiana by now being, essentially, the Walmart of slavery), and then Napoleon more or less declared, “You know what France would like back? Louisiana. Cough it up, bitches,” but then changed his mind and sold it to the United States, which knew the deal of the century when they got it and never once had buyer's remorse.

And then things settled down but not really and Louisiana was known for exporting sugar and cotton and a bunch of rich guys decided to secede (“Um, if there's no slavery, who's gonna build levees? Besides us? Which, obviously, is not acceptable. Who's ready to throw a secession soiree?”), which did not work out
at all
, and then the whole Reconstruction thing happened and the slaves were free and the supplanted planters took it pretty well (except for the KKK, the White League, and, um, the Colfax Massacre)—okay,
pretty well
might be an exaggeration—and then the state was known for the rabid discouragement of African Americans registering to vote and then it was known for a sizable section of the population moving to California and then it was known for civil rights and then it was known for the Hurricane Katrina clusterfuck and then it was known for its seafood export (until they lost New Orleans to the hurricane that made Katrina look like a spring breeze) and then it was known for its petrochemical industries and now it isn't.

Now Louisiana is primarily known for (1) tech and (2) paranormal inhabitants. And Eric isn't there for a computer upgrade.

Shaking his head, he thinks,
I have been spending too much time in the Wikipedia archives.

He considers the cars and trucks in the parking lot, and the fact that at least four-fifths of them are solar-powered or electric. It's still legal to own and operate gasoline-fueled engines, but only for so many hours a week, only for specific jobs (for example, farm equipment), and it's generally understood that even those will be phased out within twenty years.

Which is fine with him. He knew electric cars would kill petroleum-fueled
anything
back in 1995, for God's sake, and planned (and invested) accordingly. It was all well and good to be proved right, and it was even better to get rich doing so. Besides, it's much easier to make mischief when you have the checkbook (not that anyone used those anymore) to back it up.

“Hi, welcome to Were About.”

“How too cute,” he replies, almost-but-not-quite bored. She's cute, too. Blond, but then, he has a thing for them. “TrueBlood, please, straight.” No ice, God forbid, no cinnamon sprinkle, no salted rim. After fixing the ozone dilemma and developing the prostate cancer vaccine, as far as Eric was concerned the greatest accomplishment over the past few centuries has been engineering TrueBlood as a palatable drink. The downside to that? People who weren't vampires now drank it, which caused all sorts of trouble. “Passing” was becoming a problem. Not since the dark days of the
Twilight
franchise had it been so trendy to be dead.

The waitress walked away, hips rolling beneath her uniform, and he watched for a second and then decided,
No, too small. And too blond.
She didn't have to come over to take his order; he didn't have to speak to place it; this wasn't the twentieth century. It was all done by Net, like everything else. But Were About prided itself on being quaint. No, that wasn't right. Retro, was that the word?

Retro, ha. The new Louisiana, on the surface of things, could almost pass for the old, except for the fact that for the first time in an age the state doesn't have a vampire king, but a human queen: thirty-two-year-old Adele Merlotte, of the famed and formidable Stackhouse-Merlotte clan.

Eric smiles in spite of himself and glances down at the table. Headlines and a stock stream flick past, as well as inane “news” about whatever celebrity delivered a baby, got married, or was torn apart by a shrieking mob the night before. And supe news, of course, always. Which vampire was running for reelection, which shifter was stepping down, which norm came out about not actually being a supe (would that be coming out about coming out?), et cetera, et cetera, boring boring boring. He can get more details by tapping the table but doesn't bother. It just reinforces what he already finds hilarious: Humanity was so busy worrying about vampires, they never saw the shifters coming.

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.”