What’s the half-life on ‘Happily Ever After?  For me and Sookie it should be just about infinity divided by two, but things never quite work out like they should when it comes to me and Sookie.  I felt her stiffen against my back and knew she had just heard that.

“Damn right I did, Northman and you cut it the fuck out right now!”  Her hissed whisper made it plain she was not fucking around.  I felt the despair crack in my chest, a little light coming in at her words.  She chucked softly behind me and for a moment pressed her back tighter to mine.  Gods, she is amazing.  Looking down the barrel of a gun loaded with iron bullets and she is thinking of me.  “Fuckin’-A”, she confirmed.  Pulling out of my downward spiral I smiled slightly as I looked straight ahead and found myself facing a barrel full of silver bullets.

We were surrounded.  A dozen guns with various flavors of pain encircled me and the woman I loved beyond all things.  It was so quiet in the room I could hear the sink drip…drip…dripping behind me and to the right.  The dozen adversaries that encircled us holding us at gunpoint were slowly realizing they had actually caught us.  When their brains caught up with their muscles, things were going to come out of pause and we were going into fast forward. We had run out of places to hide in this world.  She deserved better than this!  She laughed then, out loud.

“There is nothing better than you, than us, Eric.”  My chest seized at her words.  I felt her in the full bond we now shared, there was no fear.  No regret. Only love, deep spiraling, unending love.  No matter what happened when someone pushed play, right then I knew that the time we had was right.  It was the best of my thousand years and I would trade it for nothing, even if it ended right now.  I pushed that feeling of love and triumph back to her and again she pressed her back to mine. I wanted to touch her, hold her close, but like himself both her hands were full of metal. We might die here but we would not be going to Valhalla alone. We would be taking these assholes with us, and she would stand beside me and fight their unworthy shades all the way to Freya’s hall.

Today was a good day to die.  In the moments I had left, Sookie pressed to my back, guns in her hands, guns in mine and Death hovering in the corner, remembrance tugged at me. Like a loose thread in my mind I went back to where this all started.  I wanted to spend what time I had left remembering how I got my Happily Ever After, because that is what mattered.  How long it lasted was always beyond our control.  What mattered was that after so very long, I had reached that place with her at my side.  I had reached that place with Sookie, the woman of my undead dreams.

 

Three years ago…

I had stood in the woods and watched as she waddled to the table with yet another dish of food.  I had stood in the woods and watched as she stepped into the arms of another and then sat down, heavily pregnant and joined all he friends and family for a meal that I had not been invited to share.

Everyone else was present, Lafayette, Jason, Arlene, even Willa, my progeny had a place at this magical table of food and forgiveness.  I felt my heart ache that not only was I supplanted at the head of her table, I was not even invited to share it, at all. I felt a lone blood tear slide down my cheek as I allowed myself to feel the pain of this rejection.  I wanted to run, I wanted to fly, I wanted to forget again, and wondered for a moment if I could call Marnie forth from the grave and bribe her into taking my memories again.

This time for good.

My pain was overwhelming and not being able to stand another moment of seeing all this happiness and joy that I had been barred from sharing, I took to the sky with such force that I broke the sound barrier.  Thunder echoed my departure from the warm scene.  As I flew through the sky I allowed myself to think all the things that I usually kept back.  I allowed myself to feel all the things that usually I suppressed, that dark maelstrom of emotion swept me up and despair took me as it had in Morocco, in France.

My taste for oysters was slipping again.

I shouldn’t have gone tonight!  But I needed the smell of her to be refreshed in my mind.  I did not want to forget that she smelled like…nothing.

Nothing?

I stopped in midflight, suspended in the air.  I did not smelled her tonight.  Running quickly through the catalog of people there, I realized that I had smelled none of them at all.

And Willa?  I had released her but I could still sense our tie faintly in my blood, especially when she’s less than a dozen yards away.

Something wasn’t right.

I turned around and flew back toward Hummingbird Lane.

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

There had been lanterns in the trees.  There had been tables in the yard.  Just moments ago this had been a party that I had not been invited to.

Now, the party was gone.

The yard clearly had not been touched in years.  The windows of her home that I had painted yellow like she sun she was to me were boarded over.

No one was here.

No one had been here in a very long time.

Someone had stolen my Sookie!  Self- loathing filled me, I had been in Shreveport nursing my broken heart like a self-indulgent tween!  My scream of rage split the night.

“SOOKIEEEEEEEEEE!”

Her name was still echoing in the woods around her abandoned home when a bright lavender light split the night next to my head. I turned toward it, still in the grips of my rage, ready to kill anyone and everyone who came near me.

A large scroll hanging in mid-air unfurled itself before me, the calligraphy a deep purple that called to mind ages past when handwriting was as much as art as oils and sculpture.

Viking,

Sookie is safe, for now.

It could be lies. It probably was lies, but I needed her to be all right.  I needed her to be my Sookie.  That had never changed.

She is someplace that only you can find, if your heart is true and if you remember the road to love.

Walk that path again.  Claim your love there.

Take this scroll if you wish to see her again, or walk away now and never turn back.

The choice is yours.

Not hesitating, I reached out and grasped the scroll, feeling a charge of electricity travel up my arm, not unlike the feeling I got when I touched Sookie.  The reminder was pleasant, calming  and I chose to take it as sign that I had made the right choice. Never mind that it was the only one I could make.  The scroll started to light up again and I watched as the script changed.

To find the path you must go back to the beginning.  Start where your heart first knew what you mind was not ready to accept.

“I’m coming, Sookie!” I vowed, taking to the air again, scroll clutched tightly in my hand love and determination filling my heart.

This will be multi-chapter and will go on when the contest is over.

Comments

  1. Reply

    Okay you have me sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for an update. Really impressed with where you are going with this fascinating story.

  3. Reply

    You had me at “SOOKIEEEEEEEEEE!” and the blood tear. Now I can’t wait until the contest is over for more! Best of luck to you!

  5. Reply

    Wow! You’ve got me waiting with baited breath. Can’t wait for more after the comp is over. Good luck 🙂

    1. Reply

      Thank you! 🙂 Always a treat to hear from you! It was hard to wait and not comment back right away. I got the next two chapters up already. Let me know what you think.

  7. Reply

    Wow! Just Wow! beautiful and it seems like we have the “end” at the beginning –which I surely hope is not true –but wow! Can’t wait to read more!
    Pat

  10. Reply

    I like this!!! It is more a tease than a one-shot but I am definitely intrigued and looking forward to Eric’s treasure hunt… Who stole Sookie? I always suspect the f-ing fairies personally… Loved the flash forward at the beginning when they are facing their enemies together… So yeah, fabulous teaser you author!

      1. Reply

        Awww! Very exciting – just signed up to your website… I think you should have the ‘follow by email’ button further up the page as I only found it by chance… And out of curiosity ,are you continuing the BIG BANG? Loved that story with all the inverse roles and stuff but it went suddenly very quite

  11. Reply

    This is going to be an amazing story if this little bit is a sample of what is to come. Can’t wait until you are able to post this and continue it.

    1. Reply

      Thank you for the well wishes. I have this up on my site now and have added a couple of chapters. Come on by, feedback welcome! 🙂

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