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Karma's a Bitch (And so am I)

Summary:

Stiles Stilinski survived everything Beacon Hills ever threw at her. She survived, and then she got out. FBI Internship, college degree, becoming an agent in what amounted to the Freak Squad for the FBI? She did it all. Survived it all.

Until a shooter with either horrible or impeccable aim managed what everything that had ever gone bump in the night had failed at accomplishing - but of course, because Stiles was the universe's favorite punching bag, it couldn't just end there. One moment all she could hear was the high-pitched wail of a heart monitor flat-lining. The next, she was hearing voice in her head, something was chowing down at her throat, and a bloody arm was being shoved in her mouth as she was forced to drink. Blink, she's FBI Special Agent Mieczysława "Stiles" Claudia Stilinski, magical human and nogitsune survivor; blink again she's Sookie Stackhouse, part-fae telepathic barmaid dying from a dual attack by drainers and a vampire who just couldn't help himself but bite.

Stiles didn't know where the blame fell for the weirdest twist yet in her story laid, but she had a pretty good place to start: with one Bill Compton, her would-be Maker.

After all: karma was a bitch, and so was she.

Notes:

Welcome to my latest round of insanity.

This is one of two plunnies that have recently infested my brain as I tinkered around with my vampire stories. Both of them are Stiles-in-True Blood crossovers, but they're very different from each other and follow completely different premises.

To start with, we have Karma - wherein Stiles has always been a girl, managed to grow into a badass woman, but ended up shot in the line of duty and is transmigrated into the dead/dying form of Sookie Stackhouse during the "Ratts Attack" that in canon ended with her drinking Bill's blood to survive.

Stiles is the main POV for this fic, but we do get to peek into some other heads, and due to all the trauma and PTSD that she doesn't want to deal with isn't always the most reliable narrator and at times acts what's arguably out of character when she dives into go-go-go mode instead of stopping to think about what she's doing. It's not forever, and she does snap out of it, but she's got trauma on top of new instincts and drives to deal with so she does the best she can to survive.

Please note that this is marked as part of a series. For good reason. This first story will focus entirely on True Blood and integrating a Stiles-as-Sookie into that world. But in the next story, Stiles's original world will come knocking all over again to add to the chaos. At the moment, it's only planned out at two stories for this series as a duology, but who knows that the muse will decide (definitely not me.)

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

(And so am I)

A True Blood/Teen Wolf Crossover fanfic 

by Sif Shadowheart  


Chapter One: Arise


Outside Merlotte’s Bar and Grille, Bon Temps, Louisiana

William “Bill” Compton knew he’d royally miscalculated his play for control of the telepath his queen had sent him to acquire when the scent of her spilled blood reached him from where his glamoured drainers were beating one sweet, young, Sookie Stackhouse within an inch of death.

He’d had little choice.

The queen wanted the telepath procured for her court in New Orleans.

However, due to unknown reasons - though likely due to her status as a telepath - sweet Sookie was unable to be glamoured which took away one of his main tools as a procurer.  Bill prided himself on the strength of his glamour despite his relatively young age as a vampire.  His skill was so advanced that he’d naturally progressed to being able to glamour using his voice alone and even imitate the voice of other males.

None of that would help him with his current mission on behalf of his queen, but it could still be a potential boon as it would keep other vampires from managing to succeed where he had failed if Sookie truly was immune to glamour wholesale.

Which was important, as without glamour his next-best (but highly frowned upon if another vampire learned of his actions, even in the grey area that was procurement) option was considered a blood offense.  Getting his blood in the system of the pretty little telepath would allow him a slower path to gaining Sookie.  But it was a nearly-infallible one, even above that of glamour.

The rub was that in both purists and the true ancients, giving blood to a human at all was frowned upon and forcing it on a human was outright illegal following the Great Revelation due to the human knowledge - and fear of - the vampire ability to create thralls with their blood.

Bram Stoker had well and truly fucked vampire-kind more than a century before the actual existence of vampires was revealed to the public.

With enough of his blood in her system, Sookie Stackhouse would become little more than a puppet on his strings - only she’d refused to take it when he’d originally offered it as “thanks” for “saving him” from the same drainers he used to complete his last attempt of procuring her short of outright abduction.

Which left him with no choice but to create a situation for him to “save” her in turn using his blood in a manner that would keep even her shifter of a boss from suspecting any potential foul play.

Retaliation against Sookie was perfectly in character for the cretins he was using to fulfill his plan, and even the worst vampire-hater would agree that saving Sookie’s life was a worthwhile endeavor - at least in theory.

Which was where it all fell apart.

He’d known that Sookie Stackhouse smelled truly delectable for a human.

Much like her cousin, who was the favorite pet of the queen, and the reason he’d been sent to procure sweet Sookie at all.

Sookie’s scent was far stronger and more enticing than that of Hadley, and as a result Bill had assumed that her blood would likewise be sweeter - only he’d overestimated his own ability to resist partaking in it once it’d been spilled.

He had enough of a mind to shove his bleeding wrist into her mouth and force her to drink, but was unable to control the urge to bury his fangs in her throat with her gushing head wound ended up directly under his nose in the process.

And as a result, though he didn’t know it, Bill Compton had signed his own warrant for his True Death.


It happened in flashes.

One moment the intolerable long beeping sound of a heart monitor flat-lining.

Then there was nothing.

One moment there was the searing pain of impossible injuries - not the same as Stiles had experienced before, and nothing like the gunshot wound that had put her in the hospital in the first place - and the cold of gravel and asphalt under her.

Then there was a burning and sucking sensation at her neck and sticky-copper blood being forced into her mouth, giving her no choice but to swallow if Stiles wanted to breathe.

And then there was a whole lotta nothing all over again.

Until there wasn’t.

Until there was a pull Stiles had no choice but to obey and darkness and lungs that didn’t scream and cry for air despite the knowledge that somehow she was buried alive.

Or…was she?


Three nights later (and after having to glamour far too many humans in Bon Temps to cover up the fact that Sookie was “missing”) Bill waited somewhat patiently for the sweet would-be-southern-belle to finish digging her way out of her resting place.

As her Maker, he’d rested with her for the last three nights as the magic of the Turning took hold and he felt her grow stronger.  It was a strange sensation, to be sure.  Almost nothing like the bond to his own Maker.

Intention, or so he’d been told in the past, made a difference.

Sookie as his Progeny wasn’t purposeful.

It was making the best out of a catastrophe.  If she retained her telepathy, and it was still limited to humans, then at least part of his favor with the queen would be salvaged.  He would simply have to loan the queen his progeny to “read” the humans of the court, and then contract out her services to other vampires as needed or requested.

If for some reason the Turning strengthened her gift, however…that would be most unfortunate, in which case the weaker bond of pure necessity between them would become a boon.

It would hurt him less to give her the True Death if their bonds were merely extant rather than strong and vibrant.

And Bill had never been one to harm himself or allow others to do so if it could at all be avoided.

In the middle of the spectrum was if Sookie’s telepathy died with her human life.  The queen would be most displeased, if that was the case.  Still, his lapse was understandable, especially if he simply failed to explain in depth what had happened and his own part in Sookie’s death.

Having a progeny as lovely and desirable as Sookie would hardly be a hardship either - once he trained her godawful backwoods accent out of her, and ensured she was properly subservient anyway.

As such, six-pack of Tru Blood in hand to ensure that she didn’t go feral and have to be put down before he could test her telepathy now that she was a vampire, he awaited her first rising as a vampire.

He could hear her begin to move under the earth, though he hadn’t left her covered too deeply after arising himself and making his preparations.

Just enough to fulfill the ceremony of Turning and Awaking as a vampire - after all, he didn’t want to traumatize her in the case that he didn’t have to give her the True Death.  Trust was easy to lose and hard to regain.  And he knew well that while a Maker’s command could be absolute, it was possible for remnants of issues that had been considered taken-care-of to arise in the future if a Maker attempted commands of an ephemeral nature such as over emotions.

Or for emotional undertones to persist, even when a command had stolen the reasoning behind them along with their memory.

No, no it was far easier to start as he meant to go on than to blunder and then have to be watchful for the rest of his - or Sookie’s - unlife, however long each may inevitably last.

Then she rose in full, and Bill saw the shining golden beauty that if anything was gilded by vampirism washing away minor flaws once present in her skin evenness and tone, and found himself satisfied with the outcome of his blunder.  Especially when he caught her gaze, Sookie appeared rather composed, and focused on his most graphic and explicit fantasies he’d entertained since meeting - and tasting - her cousin and learning of his assignment in regards to one Sookie Stackhouse, small town telepath.  Given her reactions to a single innuendo, and her utter lack of a reaction to his fantasies, he felt safe in assuming - to start with, though he’d have to test her again - that the worst case was not the scenario at hand.

Perhaps this trip to his godforsaken “home town” hadn’t been a total waste of time after all.

As he led her through choking down Tru Blood, cleaning herself up at his home, and then in her first lesson in glamour to regain her access to her own home via her grandmother, Bill Compton felt most pleased with himself.

It seemed the girl was a little slow in the mind after all, but he’d tested her extensively when it came to her telepathy and it seemed as if it remained the same from before her death.

Most excellent.

“Remain here,” he demanded of the petite - but womanly, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on those curves, so different from the stick-thin preference of the majority of blood whores - new vampire.  It was just short of a Maker’s Command, given her docility after rising.  Or perhaps she was simply in shock.  Regardless, he had more details to handle - and to put in place to cover his ass - before he registered his new progeny with the vampire authorities.  “It may be a night or two until I can return.  Do not leave until I return for you.”

“Yes, Bill.”  She told him quietly, as she stood seemingly lost and troubled in her childhood bedroom.  “Ah will.”

“Good girl,” he nodded approvingly, then sped away at full speed.

He had those details to handle, and asses to prepare to kiss.

The girl had Tru Blood and a roof over her head that would be safe from other vampires.

She’d get along well enough until he had time to attend to her.

Bill had far more important matters to see to in the interim.


Alright, she’d admit it: she was lost, confused, and more than a little fucked up over what Stiles was starting to think was the beginning of a bad isekai novel when she woke up in her own grave.

But, even so:

Bill Compton could go fuck himself.

It took her a hot minute to realize that she wasn’t having some sort of out-of-body experience or deathbed hallucination.

Everything that was going on, everything that Stiles only halfway remembered, it was all real.

As real as Bill’s firm hold on her arm and the gag-inducing taste of Tru Blood on her tongue that managed to make the gnawing hunger in the pit of her subside - at least for the moment.

Yeah, she’d say about the time she realized she was both hungering and having it diminish - but not stop, not fully - she stopped hoping that it was all some horrible nightmare.

Even if she was wrong, and she didn’t wake up ever again after however-long this night lasted, was it really worth the chance when weighed against the extremely small window she had to save her own - or, properly, Sookie-fucking-Stackhouse’s - apparently undead ass?

Stiles didn’t think so.

Not when she could feel Bill testing and tugging at her through a filament-fine pull within her.

Not when she could sense what was happening to Adele Stackhouse’s mind as Bill used poor Sookie’s grandmother as a test subject for… “Sookie’s” ability to glamour humans.

Oh no, Stiles knew this story.

Had found it entertaining in all the ways it aligned with - and yet was still so very far from - the reality that was her life during her high school years in Beacon Hills, and then again as she investigated the weird and wicked for the FBI.

Stiles knew the twists and turns and the fucking awful plans that Bill Compton had either been apart of or the designer of when it came to the Rattray’s beating Sookie…apparently to death, which led to her being Made as a vampire.

Or at least, that’s what everyone was going to believe happened once Stiles was done.

Transmigration wasn’t exactly the sort of happenstance she could tell anyone about, not unless she wanted to get locked up in the True Blood version of a lunatic asylum ala Eichen House - if not killed outright.

No, with Bill Compton having attempted to turn Sookie Stackhouse into a vampire, and clearly having plans regarding the matter, Stiles only had a small window to unfuck her future in this…life, world, dimension, whatever.

Stiles wasn’t going to be anyone’s puppet, especially not Bill Compton’s.

Which meant, if she was a little lucky - not that she was counting on that entirely, what with the dying thing taken into account - she was going to have to work fast to get herself clear of having Bill Compton for a Maker before he has a chance to start in with the commands.

No matter what she has to do to ensure it.


“Sookie, dear, what in the world are you doin’ still awake?”  Adele Stackhouse asked in shock as her sweet granddaughter wandered downstairs in the early morning hours post-sunrise.

It didn’t make a lick of sense.

When Bill was explaining how to glamour with Adele as her unwitting guinea pig, he compared it to fishing: casting a line, setting the hook, and then reeling in the human’s mind into your control.

Which made sense on the surface of things, but Stiles saw it more in alignment to treadcraft: crochet, knitting, even weaving.  Take crochet.  Following Bill’s rubric for effective glamouring, her control of the glamour was a crochet hook to Bill’s fishing set up.  Stiles took her glamouring hook, inserted it into a stitch in the human’s mind, and then once in place it was up to her what happened next.  She could do something simple like a slip stitch - a yes or no question.  Or she could - in time and with more experience - create a complex decorative affair.  Or she could back out entirely without having done a thing - which would be Bill’s catch and immediate release scenario.

Bill was a shit Maker, a cruel vampire - at times, and a worse person.

But he had taught Stiles the main skill a vampire needed to know to survive, or at least enough of the basics - no matter how icky she felt about who he insisted she test herself on - to start from and gain experience.

You know.

So she didn’t die for real this time because she was practically helpless as a vampire without the education and support a Maker was supposed to provide.

Bill was probably betting on her - or Sookie, rather - being far too dutiful and proper to experiment or try glamour on Adele again.

And that was one of the places where he’d majorly miscalculated because he was working with some seriously outdated information.

Did she feel bad about snagging Adele’s mind through her gaze as soon as the Stackhouse matriarch turned to see her standing behind her?

Yes, absolutely.

The woman had unknowingly lost her beloved granddaughter and then been used as a test dummy for the asshole who killed her and the invader piloting her granddaughter’s body around.

She honestly felt like the shittiest person ever - except for Bill, and probably his Maker Lorena, and… - for doing it.

Stiles simply needed information and time to work without bringing suspicion down on herself too much to act otherwise when her own self-preservation was a ripe and fresh drive in her mind.

“Mrs. Stackhouse, do you know where Rene Lenier lives?”

Adele’s voice went flat and her eyes glazed over as the glamour truly took hold with Stiles’s question, the turned-telepath able to hear the answer both in Adele’s voice and in her mind.

Taking an unnecessary breath, she gave her next set of instructions to the elderly woman:

“Mrs. Stackhouse, please rescind the invitation into your home for William “Bill” Compton.”

“William Compton, known as Bill, I rescind your invitation.”  Adele obeyed, showing with her ability to paraphrase that Stiles wasn’t pushing her too hard or too far - not yet.  Nothing like how the barmaid Ginger at Fangtasia was supposedly so over-glamoured that her mind felt like swiss cheese to the original Sookie.

She supposed in time that she’d figure out if that was true or not for herself.

Her next order was a bit of a gamble, but given that she wasn’t bleeding from her eyes, ears, or nose despite the sun being up and the weak morning sun that she’d tested on the back of her hand hadn’t even tingled when she was familiarizing herself with the original Sookie’s bedroom and belongings, she was willing to take the risk.

With being a True Blood universe - if not the True Blood universe - she was banking on the original Sookie being enough fae to have at least some of the benefits that the original Fae-Vampire hybrid Warlow was supposed to have.

Since the early morning sun hadn’t even tingled, let alone singed, and there was no sign of the sun having a pull on - let alone command over - her, she was hopeful about the results of her next test.

Especially since it was going to make everything easier going forward, much like being able to move about in sunlight and potentially even ingest human food and drink without harm or having to throw it up were definite wild cards.

If not the ace in the hole that would save her ass.

Not only was she not dead without so much as a by-your-leave, but she was constantly pushing back her internal screaming over how much this wasn’t her body, and how it didn’t look, move, or even feel right.

The fact that she was a vampire, and a hybrid at that, was probably the only thing keeping her from either screaming hysterics or breaking down crying.

She’d been done.

Now she’s not.

And Stiles didn’t have the first fucking clue what to do with that, except to carry on and hope that something, anything started to make sense at some point.

“Mrs. Stackhouse, rescind my invitation.”

“Susanah Stackhouse, I rescind your invitation to my home.”

Nothing but…she needed to double check, as she wasn’t sure if it counted given that it was Sookie’s body but Stiles’s…mind? consciousness? calling the shots.

“Mrs. Stackhouse, rescind the invitation for Mieczysława Claudia Stilinski, also known as Stiles.”

Stiles took an unnecessary breath and held it, then grinned with fiendish delight when no mystical power swooped down on her butt and started pushing her out of the Stackhouse residence after Adele repeated the name, even managing not to mangle the Polish monstrosity under the power of Stiles’s glamour.

Ha!

Score one for the part-fae vampire.

What was the line?

All their strengths, none of their weaknesses?

Granted, she wasn’t a full-fae like Warlow, nor nearly as old.  She doubted she’d be able to do all that he was supposed to.  Not unless/until she lived to be just as old, if that was even possible for her.

But even some safeguards and wild cards in her favor after waking up undead, in an entirely different universe weren’t anything she was going to turn up her nose at.

She hadn’t built up the courage to test herself on silver yet, let alone fae weaknesses like iron and citrus, but she had time to play with those.

The abilities she might have that’ll help her win free of Bill were a different story altogether.

“Mrs. Stackhouse, when I snap my fingers you’re going to turn and go back into your room for a lie down.  You will forget everything that happened after sunrise, along with any knowledge of my being awake after sunrise.  As far as you know, I’m a regular newborn vampire.”

“You’re a regular vampire.”  Adele parrotted, then at the snap of Stiles’s fingers turned and wandered away up the stairs to the master suite for her nap.

Focusing, Stiles located that place inside her that felt like tugging or pushing earlier before Bill left, nudging it just slightly like trying to push aside an intrusive thought whilst meditating.

Feeling that it was there but not sensing anything from it, she smiled and then sped over to the telephone with original-Sookie’s wallet in hand.

She had a couple pins and passcodes to change, then a stop to see one Rene Lenier, potential murderer, before she really got started on taking care of her would-be Maker.

Other than being Released, Stiles knew of only one way for a progeny to free themselves.

If the original Sookie was still around, she likely never would’ve thought of it, let alone followed through.

Unfortunately for Bill, he’d fucking killed the original Sookie.

And if it was the last thing Stiles did, she was going to make sure be paid for it and being such a fuck-up that whatever Powers-That-Be decided to drop her bitchy, ruthless ass in the middle of Bill Comption’s clusterfuck.


Running as a vampire was a fucking trip.

It wasn’t like how running at super-speed was often shown in films.  Or how Scott or Derek in the past had described running with werewolf speed was like.  Where you moved so fast that everything around you was a blur.  It was almost the opposite.  You moved so fast that if anyone was watching you seemed to blur or disappear but from your own perspective, everything was normal.

God, Scott.  Derek.  Everyone.  Yeah, she’d left Beacon Hills behind her, but she’s kept in touch with those she cared about over the years.  She was going to miss all of them like hell when she let herself.  Honestly it was only that she’d already done all her mourning for her dad after his heart finally gave out that gave her any ability to push all of that aside to get shit done.  Well.  And the pissed off look Peter would give her if she fucked around wasting time on emotional bullshit when there was plotting to complete and schemes to enact, the asshole.

Stiles was able to see and process everything as it happened, instead of blurring by so fast that she overshot her destination - even though it took her minutes, or even seconds to travel a distance that if she’d run it in the past would take at least an hour.

And all without the need to breathe unless she chose to.

No pain or strain in her body, no lungs that felt like they were going to explode, no fatigue or exhaustion.

Just point A to point B as fast as she could push her new body.

Which even as a “baby” vamp - or fae-vampire hybrid as seemed to be the case - was far faster than seemed either possible or reasonable but was nonetheless true.

Stiles timed things about right from what she could tell.  Focusing, she reached out with the telepathy she’d been gifted by the original Sookie that was just a smidge different than her magic (former magic?) as a spark and tried to see if she could touch on more than one mind as she stood in the treeline behind Rene Lenier’s single-bedroom house on the edge of Bon Temps.  She’d tried playing with the power off and on while she investigated the Stackhouse home and waited for Bill to die with the dawn, but Stiles knew from experience she still had a long way to go before she gained any real control beyond “on” and “off.”

And that last bit she thought she only had because Bill had been so insistent on seeing if her “disability” was still functioning hand-in-hand with his brusque training in glamour.

There was some evidence in the TV show she remembered for a lot of what a vampire could do being innate, while other traits were actually skills that required training.  Like anything else, there was also innate talent or facility with a skill or talent varying from vampire to vampire.  All of which was before specific subsets of talents and skills seeming to run in vampire bloodlines came into play.

Some vampires, particularly those abandoned or released too early by their makers, likely stumbled on some vampire powers like glamour to keep themselves alive or through sheer necessity.

Most did not.

In that, loathe as she was to admit it, Bill having an agenda when it came to Sookie Stackhouse worked to Stiles’s benefit however fleeting it would be if she let him continue to exist long enough to really exert his control over her.

Pulling up the hood on the Bon Temps football sweatshirt she threw on along with jeans and Sookie’s beat-up Keds, she made sure she looked about as innocuous as possible.  Just in case.  Then she darted to and rushed through Rene’s backdoor, grabbing him and pinning him to the wall with one hand over his mouth keeping him from screaming.

In the next moment - only a heartbeat if hers was still capable of doing so - she captured him with her gaze and hooked him with her glamour.

“Hello, Rene.”  Her smile was all teeth.  “Or should I call you Drew Marshal?  We need to have a talk about your hobbies…


 

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

(And so am I)

Chapter Two: Petty Enough for Payback

Stiles left Rene’s - Drew’s, she’d been right about that at least - feeling like she needed to take a long bath in boiling water to get the ick off of her.

Glamour may be useful as fuck, especially when combined with telepathy helping her know just what to say and ask, but it didn’t stop her from seeing and hearing the worst things to be found in someone’s mind when she went looking for it.

Jesus fuck it was a miracle that the original Sookie never went stark staring mad if she heard shit like what she’d just dug out of Rene’s mind all the time.

It certainly put into perspective why the original Sookie had fought so long and so hard to keep up shields and never use her “disability” if that was the sort of mental sewer she’d been exposed to from a young age.

One dive into Rene’s head and Stiles felt a lot less guilty about how she was using him.

He was genuinely psychotic with almost a split personality.  When on an even-keel, he was just as affable and loving and patient as he’d portrayed for years from what she understood of the story she’d found herself living in.  But when his darkest urges were roused, he was as big of a monster as any.

Two murders were more than enough for one Rene Lenier, aka Drew Marshal, to commit, there was no reason why Stiles felt she should let him keep going.

Not when she knew now instead of just suspecting, and could use his own psychotic urges for her own benefit and hit two birds with one stone.

After deeply embedding her commands into Rene’s - Drew’s, whatever - mind, Stiles sped off to get started as it was getting to the starting hours of the day when people would really start moving out and about.

Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for poor unsuspecting complacent Bill, Stiles knew a thing or two both about vampires and their weaknesses…and how to start a fire.

A real fire, whether a controlled campfire or a brush-clearing bonfire.

She’d grown up throughout high school taking out one threat after another to her home, including having to clean up the evidence.

Her old home.

(Fuck, stop thinking about that.  You can break down after Bill is handled.  Until then, you gotta keep your shit together if you want any kinda life - unlife, whatever - worth living.)

All of which to say, she’d started a bonfire or ten in her life - old life, fuck - and knew what she was about.  If Stiles failed, and somehow Bill managed to survive, then she’d run the risk of trying silver and/or staking on him.  But first she wanted to try the path of least resistance and lowest likelihood of having her only survive this one day in this fucked up hallucination or transmigratory nightmare or whatever-the-fuck it was.

Running back to the Stackhouse place, Stiles listened for Adele and found her still enjoying her glamour-inspired nap, and then checked the time before snagging an empty duffle bag from the original-Sookie’s room.

Moving at vamp-speed through both the Stackhouse place and their garden shed, she gathered up old newspapers, grease rags, and - mainly - everything that they had on hand that made a half-decent accelerant.

She did not want to try and risk plans B-Z for getting herself free from Bill.

Which meant she was going to go all-in on plan A: burning his dilapidated family plantation home down around his undead ass and hoping he goes up with it.

Stiles could still sense him, and in a far more concrete way than any form of pack bonds she’d formed in her- than any pack bonds had ever felt.

She knew he was there: buried down in what was probably the manor’s old root cellar like a tick dug into a hound and twice as bloated on his own ego and plots.

Everything from the paperbag of dryer lint to her nail polish remover, old fry oil from Adele’s cookery to a couple of nearly-depleted propane tanks that hadn't been turned into the county for recycling yet for some reason that went with a small portable camp grill - all of it went in Stiles’s duffle.

Then there was the actual gasoline and oil from the shed for the lawn equipment, besides what she’d glamoured Rene to bring with him when he showed up closer to noon.

It was simple math.

The higher the sun was in the sky, the more control it had over vampires.

Bill Compton was supposed to be strong for a young vampire, but even stronger vampires than him were able to be killed by fire while they were in their daily death in the source material.  Unless something roused him, and he smelled the accelerants and felt the fire coming for him, burning down the house was her best - and safest - bet.  Stiles simply had to keep calm to keep from nudging him awake via their “bond” as progeny and maker, and choose her time wisely to light the match.

So to speak.

After collecting everything she could think of - especially since she didn’t want to chance anything truly incriminating being left at the scene - she put on a pair of thin cotton knit gloves to keep from getting fingerprints on anything and zipped over with her bag of goodies to the Compton residence across the graveyard.

She was starting to tire and feel drained, she was still a baby vampire after all, but her resolve was more than enough to push her through until Rene showed up and they could finish what Bill had started.

Stiles lugged the duffle inside the Compton place, not even having to force the front door, and gave an instinctive flinch at all the competing and conflicting smells permeating the old place.  Forcing herself to focus when she’d rather gag - despite having nothing but Tru Blood to cough up, given that she didn’t trust herself not to simply drain Rene entirely if she gave into the temptation to bite him - she unloaded her duffle and slung it over her shoulder.  Stiles didn’t know what all she was going to find as she spread out the mostly-innocuous accelerants, but Bill was a vampire.

And thanks to him, so was she.

If a bit of arson and murder wasn’t outside what she was willing to do to survive, not to mention actively framing Rene, theft definitely wasn’t off the table if Bill kept a handy stash of cash given how reluctant human businesses often were to deal with vampires.

Or gold, or jewelry.

Given that he killed the original Sookie and set up the circumstances that dropped her into his clusterfuck, whatever she did afterward (and her moral compass had never really pointed towards goodness and mercy even on her best days) wasn’t going to keep her up at night.

Or the day.

Only a baby vamp for one night and Stiles was already over the issues it was posing when it came to language, let alone everything else.

Tired, but not bleeding - at least not yet - Stiles set about going through the antebellum manor house, clearing it room by room and scattering and/or soaking her chosen accelerants throughout every room and every floor.

All as calm as you please.

On the second floor she hit paydirt in what had to be the master bedroom, given the prevalence of both Bill’s scent and his belongings.  With quick hands she snatched up a laptop and charger, both looking distinctly out of place in the rundown residence.  Stiles moved from drawer to drawer and even tested for hidden caches and cubbies, effectively tossing the room for valuables.

In the end, she had a haul from his bedroom of his laptop, some innocuous cufflinks she could pawn in gold with and without diamonds, an antique pocket watch, and approximately five thousand dollars in cash.

Stiles was tempted to take his wallet along with his bank card, but refrained.

It would be a shame to go through so much trouble to cover her ass when it came to Bill’s death only to fuck herself over by getting greedy.

In the kitchen of all places after tossing the upstairs levels she found his stash of anti-vampire gear and a fridge full of blood bags, proving - as if his other actions hadn’t - that he was blowing smoke up everyone’s ass about “mainstreaming” as far as she was concerned.

The thick silver chain, silver-coated knife, and set of silver-lined handcuffs - how did he even get those?  The Queen? - all went into the duffle and then she snapped up a cooler she found after a quick looksee and took all but a handful of the contents of the fridge.

Asshole had dozens of pints of blood in various types in his fridge and let her have her first feeding on Tru Blood.

Selfish prick.

Though it wasn’t exactly a surprise, the depths of it was almost impressive.

Especially since Stiles had half a thought that those silver cuffs and chain were probably for her and not preparing for a random encounter.

Job mostly done at the Compton house, she zipped her haul - both items and blood - over across the cemetery.  Stiles tucked the blood away in a crisper drawer in the fridge she emptied out, the duffle itself tossed in Sookie’s closet.  But above all, the now mostly-empty gas and oil cans went back into the shed.

Then she ran back over to Compton’s and waited in the shadows of the treeline for Rene to arrive and get the party really started.


Like any good-ol’-Bon Temps boy - psychotic murderer or not - Rene Lenier knew how to make molotov cocktails among other potentially problematic skills - and if he hadn’t, Stiles had picked up the skill herself from Lydia way back in sophomore year of high school.

Shootin’ things and blowin’ shit up might as well be considered earnest pastimes in Bon Temps so long as no one got hurt.

Granted, it wasn’t exactly the most exciting place to live.

Or that molotov cocktails were a hard thing to figure out even without having someone around who knew the ins-and-outs to explain things.

So long as you didn’t try and get too fancy with them, or use the wrong materials, they were easy to fashion and easy to use - so long as you had a half-decent throwing arm, anyway.

Which, now that Stiles was a vampire, she had in abundance, even without a lacrosse stick to help her out.

So it was, as Rene went through the instructions she’d given him during her early-morning visit: taking the gas cans he’d gone and gotten filled up and drenching the ground floor, including the kitchen below which Bill slept and she’d already given a once-over; that Stiles sped to the easy dozen molotov cocktails Rene had put together and grabbed two for herself.

She already had her own lighter.

Moving around the back to where the hidden doors to the root cellar were located, she eyed the window leading into the kitchen as well as the doors.

And then she waited.

Until she heard the click and woosh of Rene lighting his first homemade firebomb and then lit and let fly with her own.

One then two flying through the air and exploding into flame on contact: first the cellar doors, and then the kitchen, the whole place going up faster than a bonfire with how thorough she’d made damn certain to be.

Rene was still going strong out front, moving from window-to-window, then moving around the sides.

For her part, Stiles darted back to the treeline and hopped up into a shady tree.

Watching, and waiting, until either Bill escaped or she felt their bond break.


The sheer reverberation of the near-empty propane tanks exploding and knocking out the entire top floor, causing a cascade down of the flaming structure imploding and collapsing down, came almost in sync with a wrenching tear far worse than anything Stiles was expecting.

Weak bond or not: Bill Compton was still her Maker.

There was a bond between them.

Until there wasn’t.

Crunched down into the fetal position, almost falling out of her hidden perch in agony, Stiles let out a broken, animal keen of pain and confusion.

This was what she wanted.

She actively took part in Bill’s death.

So…why did it hurt so much, in a place that she’d never even know she could hurt?


Eventually, after several minutes that felt like hours, the sound of sirens roused her and sent her speeding away to the nest she’d already set up in the Stackhouse root cellar - after a quick swing through the nearby river for a dunk to get some of the smell off of her, and snatching a couple blood bags from the fridge to handle her nearly ravenous hunger.

She’d gotten what she wanted.

She was free of Bill now - forever.

Now it was everything that came next that was the problem.

But for once, Stiles was going to give herself a break and worry about all of that later.

Much later.

For now she was exhausted and drank down the blood packs before stripping down in the cool quiet of the root cellar.

Collapsing into her nest, Stiles finally closed her eyes and let the sun have its way, forcing her down into a sleep so complete it felt like death, half-hoping that when she woke, it was to the sight of a hospital room and not the Stackhouse root cellar no matter what it might mean for her state of mind.


“I ain’t sad about it Gran,” when she finally woke - like magic, Stiles able to feel the exact moment that the sun sank below the horizon and snapping awake - it was to the sound of who had to be Jason Stackhouse speaking in the house above her.  “That fuckin’ fanger changed Sook.  An’ you can’t tell me that she woulda wanted ‘im to.  Sucks that Rene was crazy, he was my friend and I can hardly believe he done what he said he did to those girls, but ya can’t ask me to mourn Compton after what all he done to Sook.”

Huh, she gave a mental huff as Stiles listened in while she stretched then dressed in the change of clothes she’d left for herself the previous night on Bill’s order, before he left her on her own to plot - successfully at that - against him.

Just an oversized shirt and an old pair of shorts, but good enough until she could run up to the second floor to the original Sookie’s bed-and-bathroom to get cleaned up and ready for the day…night.

Fuck.

“That as it may be, Jason.”  Adele lectured her grandson as he sat at her kitchen table and stuffed himself with her cooking, one eye on the sky and waiting for Stiles to wake for the night.  “But think about your sister in all this madness.  We don’t know a thing about what it is to be turned, and now with Mr. Compton’s unfortunate end, there’s no one to help Sookie let alone us understand it.”

Bustling around the kitchen, she grabbed a Tru Blood out of the case that she’d sent Jason - complainin’ but helpful as ever - all the way to Monroe to buy for his sister, cracking the top off and setting it in the microwave to heat as she saw it was startin’ to get dark through her kitchen windows.

“There’s the AVL, Gran.”  Jason countered bullishly, not swayed from his stance that all of them - especially Sook - were better off without that fuckin’ fanger hangin’ around after he done killed Sookie.  He may have also turned her, but that didn’t change that he killed her in the first place to Jason’s mind.  “Or even that fanger bar over in Shreveport.  If Sook needs help, we can get her some.”  He said firmly.  “Probably be better help than Compton coulda done.”

“He’s not wrong Gran,” Stiles interjected, figuring that was as good of a segue as she could’ve asked for as she pushed through the hatch in the pantry and entered the kitchen-proper.  From the minor jump that Jason and Adele alike both gave, scaring them in the process but she couldn’t help that.  As it was, remembering to call Mrs. Stackhouse “Gran” was likely going to take all the fucks she had to give at the moment.  “I could feel it when he died.”  She went on, even as she accepted the hug and Tru Blood from Gran, keeping a bit of a distance from Jason Stackhouse until he decided on how close he wanted to get to his “vampire sister” now that she was staring him in the face instead of being a thought exercise.  “It hurt, I’m not gonna say it didn’t.”  Stiles got out, remembering to copy Jason and Adele’s accent instead of her own Cali-born-and-raised west coast one, between the sips of Tru Blood she choked down, making sure to remember which type Mrs. Stackhouse had given her to ensure she didn’t ever drink it again - O Negative - since it tasted even worse than the ones Bill had forced on her the previous night.  “But I could tell from what the Rats were thinkin’ that things weren’t right.  An’ the beatin’ they gave me was bad, but not bad enough to kill me, I don’t think.”  She speculated.  “It was him feedin’ on me that pushed me over the line.  Him turnin’ me was just…damage control, near as I can tell.”

Jason waved a hand at his Gran in a there, see gesture, waiting for Sook to finish her liquid breakfast before rising and darting around the kitchen table and snapping her up in a big, squeezy hug.

“Damn it, Sook.”  He buried his head in her sun-streaked golden hair, hiding his tear-filled eyes.  “I ‘bout died myself when Gran called and told me what happened.  Didn’t I say you needed to stay away from that fuckin’ fanger?”

“You did.”  Stiles couldn’t deny it.  Just about everyone the original Sookie Stackhouse knew with the notable exception of her grandmother had warned her away from Bill Compton.  “You did, an’ now you’re gonna hear me say something I rarely do: you were right, Jason.  I shoulda stayed away from Bill.”


After the hugs, and the tears, Adele finally got her own hug in before sending Stiles upstairs to get cleaned up for the night.

They - as a family, apparently - were going to have a sit down and plan about their next steps.

If Stiles fell to pieces in the shower, red blood dripping from her eyes instead of tears, over the friends - found family - and life she’d lost along with the family and life that the Stackhouses had lost, that was no one’s business but her own.

Afterward, she scrubbed herself thoroughly until there wasn’t the slightest hint of smoke, fire, or the accelerants she’d used on Compton’s house.

Stiles didn’t know how soon she’d end up meeting another vampire, or how good their sense of smell might be, but she wasn’t taking chances.  It was bad enough that she had motive to kill Bill.  No reason to leave evidence laying around just waiting to be found.

And for that reason, after she pulled on a pair of clean jeans - without underwear, as there was a line now that she’d woken up again still existing as a vampire version of Sookie Stackhouse and using her underwear was on the other side of it - freshly-washed bra and a simple Bon Temps Eagles football t-shirt, she dug out the duffle with her haul and started sorting through it.

First plugging in and booting up the laptop, only to be stymied fresh out of the gate: he was careful enough to have it password protected.

Damn it.

Groaning softly under her breath, she forced a hard-boot and then restored the factory settings, effectively wiping any information off of it.

Which was probably for the best anyway.

Having suspicions about what all Bill was up to was one thing.  She’d prefer - given her new-and-improved eidetic memory courtesy of vampirism - to avoid having information stored in her head that she’d never be able to make go away.  With both Bill’s former position in Queen Sophie-Anne’s court, and his proclivities…yeah.  There were some stones better left unturned.

Doing a hard restore on the laptop helped get rid of the fact it was Bill’s in the first place, but it didn’t wipe away his scent on it - only time would do that.

Which was fine, even if it churned her stomach as she shut it back down and buried it and its charger under a pile of Sookie’s dirty clothes to help block out the stench of Compton.

If anyone found it before the smell was replaced with her own, she’d just claim he gave it to her - and since any of his personal information was gone from it, and his own True Death, there was no one around to naysay her without Bill to use a Maker’s command to force it out of her.

Stiles did the same with the other goods she’d helped herself to before torching the Compton house, scattering them all around what was now her room and mostly burying them in her dirty laundry basket to soak up as much of her scent as fast as possible.

Except for the cash.

That was ease itself to handle without odd methods: simply depositing it using a different branch of her (Sookie’s) bank, at least what she didn’t intend to spend right away.

Steeling herself, she stepped up to the full-length mirror hanging in Sookie’s room after she’d done just about everything she could think of to distract her.

Gritting her teeth, she opened her eyes that had been clenched shut, and took a candid inventory of what she saw.

It was both better and worse than she expected.

Better, in that for some reason it didn’t feel entirely foreign to see that face and that body in the reflective glass.

Worse, in that it wasn’t her face or her body that she was seeing.

Sookie Stackhouse had been intentionally and inhumanly attractive.  It was the fae in her, the same as her brother who was just as handsome as expected when she met him an hour before.  Fae were both shapeshifters and vain.  Part-fae children were always more attractive than the average according to the standards of the people they were born among.  It was purposeful, a way to stand out and excel - vanity, whilst also fitting in.

Sookie, Jason, and Hadley were all blonde haired with large eyes, and far prettier than the average person.

It wasn’t that the face staring back at her was pretty that was the problem.  She’d been pretty, just not Sookie Stackhouse pretty.  Pretty enough for hate sex with Jackson Whittemore before he figured himself out, but not enough (and too weird) for him to date.  Not like Sookie Stackhouse.  She was wrong pretty.

The face in the mirror was heart-shaped with delicate features, arching brows, and a full mouth with a cupid’s bow shape.  It was tanned from the sun.  Surrounded by sun-streaked golden blonde waves of hair.

Her face had been oval.  She’d had a fair complexion and the features to go with it.  Her bottom lip had been thinner than the top.  Her hair was a dark golden brown with curls.  And as long as she could remember she’d been speckled with tiny moles.

Don’t even get her started on the differences with Sookie’s body compared to her own.

She may have dreamed of having a bikini model’s body, but she never would have wanted to literally die to gain it or the extra weight that came with it rather than being boy-thin.

Not that her wishes meant anything.

As a vampire, there wasn’t even anything she could do about any of it.  Her body was unchanging now.  She was stuck like this.  Yes, there were absolutely so many worse options than that of Sookie Stackhouse.  But that didn’t alter the fact that she could lose an entire limb and so long as she had time and blood it would grow back - exactly the way it was when she rose from her grave to find Bill Compton waiting on her.

She could wear makeup.

She could cut and dye her hair.

But no matter what she did, the face and body she would see in a reflection would be that of Sookie Stackhouse until the day she met the True Death.

And there wasn’t a fucking thing she could do about it - about what had been done to them both - other than what she already had.


As she alternately freaked out and killed time upstairs until she felt ready to face Sookie’s family all over again and play the role she’d apparently been assigned, a list of problems was percolating in the back of her mind.

And as it did, a list of names - and solutions - came to life alongside it.

She hadn’t wanted this life.

Unlife.

Whatever.

Stiles hadn’t chosen it.

But she was stuck in it nonetheless.

That being the case, she had no intention of dying because some people were either prejudiced or bat shit crazy or a wonderful cocktail of both.

Rene and Bill were handled.

They, however, were only the tip of the iceberg.

She’d bought herself time with how she’d set things up, but Stiles wasn’t going to fly under the radar forever and she was going to need help if she meant to survive and have a long existence as a vampire.

Which meant, after she tied up a couple final details and before she was fully outed as a vampire, she needed to take a little trip…

If that trip would also serve to distract her from her new reality or having to make any real decisions about what she was going to do now…that was beside the point.

Everyone she actually cared about was death and an entire world away.

This was it now.

And until she figured out what she was going to do, Stiles might as well get started with taking out some trash.


 

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Three: 99 Problems

Three Nights Later:

Erik Northman was almost terminally bored as he sat and entertained the vermin at his bar - and front for his business as the vampire Sheriff of Louisiana’s Area Five - from his throne upon Fangtasia’s stage.

At first it had been entertaining:

Having humans so deluded and desperate line up out the door and pay for the mere chance to speak to a vampire after so many centuries of having to either remain in hiding or act with discretion among humans.

Which often meant using glamour to cover up their activities more than truly being discreet, but that was no matter.

Even vampire affairs did little to amuse any longer, more an unwanted responsibility - complete with a petulant child-queen to appease - than anything.

Sophie-Anne was up in arms over the death of her favorite procurer in one unlamented (as far as most were concerned) Bill Compton.

Especially given the few details they knew or could piece together about his death once Erik sent his progeny Pam and dayman Bobby out to Bon Temps to investigate once word reached them from their mole in the Renard Parish morgue about a vampire killing in the tiny shithole on the edge of Erik’s territory.

There were few actual facts in regards to the situation to be gleaned:

  1. The night before meeting his True Death at the hands (and fire) of a disturbed human, Bill Compton had submitted a Notice of Turning and a pair of Residency Requests to Erik’s official sheriff’s email.
  2. Bill had submitted the forms close enough to dawn that Erik didn’t see them until the following night.
  3. Despite Bill ostensibly - from the way she was acting - still being in the employ of the Queen, he had notably not submitted his Notice of Turning directly to the Queen as would be expected from a member of her court. - which roused Erik’s curiosity regarding what exactly Compton had been up to in rural little Bon Temps in the first place.
  4. The name on both the Notice of Turning and the Residency Request for Compton’s apparent Progeny was one Susanah Stackhouse, who was a (formerly) twenty-five year old barmaid and native to Bon Temps.
  5. Susanah, who apparently went by Sookie, was not a known vampire to the residents of Bon Temps with the notable exception of her own family.
  6. Sookie, when both Bobby and Pam investigated, was also nowhere to be found in Bon Temps though her scent was present for Pam - both pre and post Turning - to pick up but her trail was lost when the baby vampire’s vehicle hit the highway.
  7. Compton was killed the day after he submitted his forms to Erik via email, by a madman named either Rene Lenier or Drew Marshall.
  8. The killer did an exemplary job of destroying all of Compton’s home in Bon Temps, with little evidence left behind - except for himself.
  9. He admitted to the crime along with a pair of murders, including a dime-a-dozen fangbanger and his own sister, but then committed suicide in lockup.

Altogether, the facts at first seem like plenty of information - if it weren’t for the holes.

The biggest of which was what exactly happened to Compton’s progeny.

Losing a Maker was no small thing.  It wasn’t out of the question that she might have been acting on instinct.  Or simply packed some of her things and ran in fear that she might meet the same fate when her state became known to more than her family among the residents of Bon Temps.

Without her, however, it was impossible to say what had happened other than that something clearly had.

It was a puzzle, but an idle one only barely more engaging to Erik than playing Tetris on his phone as the vermin goggled at him.

Then the door to Fangtasia swept open, bringing with it both the object of his idle contemplation and the owner of one of the sweetest scents he’d ever encountered in another vampire, walking into his domain bold as brass.

As if she wasn’t a single night away from being declared missing and sheriffs around the country alerted to a potentially disoriented and feral new-turn to be on the lookout for.

Well, now…this might be interesting.


Whelp, Stiles was right in the end: she was not going to be able to do this whole…vampire thing…on her own, even with support from the Stackhouses.

Honestly, the only reason she hadn’t lost her damn mind already and gone feral or attacked someone was both because she had a goal to focus on, moving from one item on her list to the next obsessively, had stolen half of Bill’s blood stash, and this wasn’t her first go-around with having strange instincts to deal with or teach restraint.

Even if back-in-the-day it’d been her doing the teaching to keep Scott from going feral and not the other way around.

Still.

Stiles knew a thing or a hundred about keeping herself in control, especially after she’d had to deal with the post-Nogitsune trauma in college once she admitted she couldn’t duck it anymore.  Fucking Derek and his interventionist self.  Stiles could’ve happily closed the door on that episode of her life for good…you know, if it weren’t for nosy werewolves, paranoia, night terrors, just a few symptoms that grew more difficult to manage the longer she tried to ignore them.

Anyway.

After taking the highway to Monroe in the original Sookie’s beat up old Honda Civic - one of the first things on her list to replace thanks to the windfall that was Bill Compton’s rainy-day fund - with a cooler of blood bags and a pack of Tru Blood hidden in her backpack, Stiles bought a ticket on the first bus heading west.

Everything else aside, living in a True Blood world meant that Sarah Newlin was a big fucking problem.

One that was far bigger in general than Bill Compton whilst the latter was a more personal issue for her depending on what path events might’ve taken.

Sarah Newlin looked pretty as could be, with a sweet southern smile and a reverend husband, but she at heart was a holier-than-thou bitch.  Her vendetta against vampires would end with thousands - if not millions - dead.  Both vampire and human alike.

She didn’t act alone, and the two others who were the main actors against vampires in True Blood: both Dr. Overlark and Truman Burrell, would be taken care of in due time once Stiles was able to locate them.

A task which, given her former status both as an incurably nosy teenager trying to survive a literal hellmouth and as a former FBI agent, she was more than capable of taking on.

Sarah Newlin on the other hand, Stiles knew exactly where to find, and without Sarah to conspire with, Stiles hoped that it would serve as a setback against both the concentration camps of Truman Burrell and Dr. Overlark’s research into creating Hep-V as a biological weapon against vampires.

Don’t get Stiles wrong, she was all about self-preservation, but even with her new mindset - she’d growled under her breath when someone tried to encroach on her claimed space at the very back of the Greyhound she boarded to Tyler, Texas apparently channeling her inner-Sourwolf - but the body count due to Newlin, Burrell, and Overlark was extreme even for so violent a world as True Blood.

She’d had to stop for a couple hours in Tyler before the bus to Dallas departed, but that worked out to give Stiles a chance to rein in her new instincts and feed.

Pulling the blinds at the motel across the way and setting an alarm had her at least somewhat rested during the early hours of the morning, and thanks to a big metal water bottle she bought in Monroe Stiles was able to mix up a fresh blend of donor blood mixed with the synthetic shit - as that was how it tasted, even if true-to-canon some were better to Stiles’s new palate than others - to keep her under control for the next leg of her trip.

A plain hoodie, a shawl Stiles used for cover, and pulling down the blinds once more at the back of the bus - after showing everyone one her bleed-free face and tanned skin - had her written off as just another tired traveler.

It wasn’t fancy, but it worked - and that was more important.

By the time Stiles made it to Dallas, she’d lost almost a whole day between departure times and traveling, and it was closing in on night again.

Since traveling westward had proven how long it could take between Monroe and Dallas, it didn’t leave her with a whole lot of time to plan or wait for the perfect opportunity - she’d just have to wait for daytime and hope for the best.

If worse came to worst, Stiles would have to work on a few extra explanations in her back pocket to explain where she’d gone and what she’d done while she was “missing.”  Which at that point, she might as well wander into the Hotel Carmilla and play the disoriented new-turn for Godric to send someone after.  Getting lost in her instincts would probably garner her less questions than turning herself in in Shreveport, or just showing back up in Bon Temps.

If it took her more than a day to carry out her plan - which she didn’t think it would.

During the day, given that vampires closely controlled information about their ability to glamour, most humans - including human supremacists like the Newlins - went blithely about their days “safe” in the knowledge that the vampires were locked away in their daily deaths.

Stiles was going to use that to her advantage.

And so she did.

The first night after her arrival, Stiles paid for another motel room in cash, did a bit of shopping around the tourist areas of Dallas, and then took a nap to recharge so that when the sun rose she was prepared to wait until she had a shot at Sarah Newlin.

Literally.

Stiles didn’t know which late male Stackhouse the hunting rifle she’d found at Adele’s belonged to, along with ammunition, but she thanked them both - the late Earl and Corbett - for it.

A well-used and loved Springfield .30-06, it shot straight and true and that was all she needed - along with the nerve to use it.

Funnily enough, whether it was the fae or the vampire - both of them were predatory after all - but after waking up in her second life as Sookie Stackhouse, she had zero qualms about killing anymore.  Even in comparison to the lack of fucks to give when it came to “sanctity of life” before.  Stiles had had blood on her hands for years.  To ensure that she survived all over again, she wasn’t about to shy away from adding a little bit more.

All she needed, in the end, was one minute.

With vampire speed in play, Stiles was able to take her shots so fast even with the bolt action and a five-round clip, that by the time the first shot made impact, the last one was already in the air.

She wasn’t even shooting all that far away, which for a rifle meant to take shots up to a thousand yards, meant that even a miss on her original targets - so long as the bullet made impact - was still massively damaging to a human.

Stiles felt both Sarah Newlin, her husband Steve, and their rapist of a bodyguard Gabe hit the ground and their minds blink out - then she was gone, leaving not even the brass of the shots left behind for the police to find.

She’d always been a good shot.  With a sheriff for a father, she’d learned gun safety and safe use from a young age.  Add in the reality of hunters, werewolves, and all that went bump in the night and being an FBI agent?

Yeah, it could be taken as a given that Stiles could shoot.

Add in a bit of time to practice and vampire sight and reflexes?

Stiles hit exactly what she was aiming at, and the Newlins were dead before they even knew what was happening, leaving their sycophants to scream and panic in the wake of their bodies dropping.

As for Stiles, she cleaned herself up, broke her rifle back down into parts and buried them at the bottom of her duffelbag, and was on the first bus heading east before the sun was even close to setting.

All at ease with the fact that while there would still be problems in the future - Sanguinistas, Russel Edgington, Sophie-Anne, to say nothing of Sarah’s potential co-conspirators - at least they were future problems and not likely something that would bite her in the ass in the next little while.

Or so she hoped.

By the time Stiles dragged herself back to the Stackhouse place, it was to the news that “people” had come poking around and asking questions about her - specifically about her and Bill.

Looked like her time was up on running wild.

Good thing too, as now that the Newlins were taken care of and Bill couldn’t Command her, she was finding herself a lot more…twitchy without an immediate target to focus her ire on.

Stiles was back to square one: an orphaned (intentionally, but, anyway) baby vamp who knew - objectively - jack about actually surviving as a vampire.

Great.

Just…great.

At least she knew where to go for first crack at learning more than the bare bones of how to survive.

So…there was that.


After placating both Adele and Jason, Stiles let herself die for the day to rest.

It’d been a busy few days (and nights) and even her newly-made hybrid vigor was starting to fray at the edges, letting her know that there were in fact limits beyond merely feeling anywhere from tired to exhausted if she forced herself to remain awake past daybreak.

Jason would be driving her to Fangtasia to check in - and see what ideas one Erik Northman had in mind when it came to handling her orphaned state.

Stiles snapped awake and aware in the dark root cellar in the manner she was slowly becoming accustomed to: nothing one moment and then everything the next.  She’d been constantly swapping out the ice in her cooler, and took it down with her with the couple of blood bags that’d survived the trip to Dallas and back, allowing her to feed first thing.  And not on the Tru Blood “her” family was going to expect out of her.

Adele had had questions about the blood left in the fridge, but was placated easily enough with a “Bill gave them to me.”  Whether that would’ve been the case if Bill hadn’t died in Adele’s eyes was a different question, especially with how Stiles was spinning the tale of her turning.  Then there would’ve probably been a lecture embedded in Adele’s acceptance about charity or independence or allowing him to buy a clean conscience.

Something like that, from what she could tell of the older woman’s character.

Now that he was dead, truly dead, that was a whole other kettle of fish and Adele Stackhouse was never one to speak ill of the dead.

Stiles tossed the emptied blood bag in the outdoor trash, then rushed inside and up the stairs to get cleaned up.  Call her crazy, but she’d had a feeling that she was going to end up before Erik Northman and/or Godric eventually, and had planned for the occasion.  Not in a buying a formal outfit way.  Rather, in a getting something that feels like her and not the original Sookie way.

How the original girl had dressed was very much in a modest, raised by an elderly southern woman, fashion.  Lots of flowy sundresses and sensible pumps.  Some t-shirts, jeans, and shorts.  The odd cardigan for cool weather.

Which as a whole was a look that both worked and made sense for a twenty-something waitress who was human and part fae.

Not so much for a transmigrator with her own sense of style and fashion that leaned far more to “tomboy raised by a single dad who’d undergone an intervention-via-Lydia Martin” than anything else, though she did like the occasional sundress herself - just not for her first meeting with another vampire besides the one who’d made her and she’d in turn unmade.

Plus there was the mental cringe over wearing a dead woman’s clothes along with her body and piloting it through the ashes and tears of her lost life.

Stiles considered herself morally grey, or maybe ambivalent, but she’d never really been the sort of bitch to come down on the side of desecration.

At least, not without due cause.

It’s a whole entire mindfuck for her to navigate through and the simplest way to start mucking through it was to change - if slightly and bit-by-bit - the way “Sookie” dressed.

It might not be her face and body she saw in the mirror when she did her nightly tempering as she forced herself to stand and stare and take in who she was now versus who she used to be, but it could become - over time - her fashion style, her way of doing her makeup, and her way of styling her hair.

To that end, while she’d been killing time towards dawn in Dallas, she’d gotten herself a mani-pedi in a deep crimson gel lacquer at an all-night salon that was close to the Hotel Carmilla, bought a seemingly simple strappy tank top with a sweetheart neckline that matched the color exactly, a pair of also-matching red strappy platform high heels, and two pairs of mid-rise jeans in a dark wash and light wash.  The jeans and tank she’d taken to another all-night business and had them tailored on the spot - for a rush fee, of course, Bill’s money doing the Lord’s work - and while that was being taken care of, hit the MAC cosmetics at the mall.  That first night while Stiles waited for Bill to die for the day, she’d gotten a thorough catalog of Sookie’s possessions, and knew that nowhere anywhere was a makeup color scheme like what she wanted.  Lydia had been a strict instructor when she got tired of Stiles running around as a total tomboy their freshman year, and Stiles had lived in fear of Lydia Martin’s rules for a proper turn-out ever since - even when she was ignoring them.

And again: using a dead woman’s things.

She mentally figured that depending on how things went with meeting other vampires, she could always donate the majority of Sookie’s actual personal belongings like clothes, underwear, and makeup to a women’s shelter.

Someone should get some use out of them, since it wasn’t going to be her.

In addition to the more expensive items she’d picked up in Dallas and that she was going to wear to Fangtasia, choosing the light jeans over the dark after a moment’s waffling in front of the mirror, she’d also stopped at the Wal-Mart in Monroe on her way back to Bon Temps.

It wasn’t much on the face of things, and others might not understand, but there was something almost grounding about trying on bras and underwear, and figuring out sizing for a four pack of basic t-shirts or capris that the store had on special 2-for-$15.

Cheap fast fashion - that smelled so weird - , undoubtedly, but things that she’d chosen and not a ghost.

Though as she shimmied herself into her well-fitted jeans and tank top, buckled her heels in place and brushed her hair into a high tail, not bothering with makeup for this first impression, she felt more herself than she’d done since waking up undead and having to claw herself free of a shallow grave.


“I don’ like this none, Sook.”  Jason had no problem speaking his mind as soon as he had his sister alone in the cab of his truck, on their way to take her to a damn vampire bar.   “First you go an’ disappear for days, then ya come back an’ say you gotta go meet up with more vampires?  After what the last one did ta ya?”

Stiles had to admit that his incredulousness was justified.

On the face of things, it was an odd series of events, to say the least.

Jason didn’t have her personal insights into the situation.  He wasn’t living with what amounted to a caged tiger inside of him every moment he was awake.  He wasn’t the one slowly growing more and more fearful of someone getting so much as a papercut and snapping because he couldn’t control himself.

He didn’t know the fear of killing someone because he lost control rather than because he chose to take a life.

He just didn’t know.

And to keep him from drawing the wrong kind of attention, there was only so much he could know before he ended up with someone like Pam glamouring the fuck out of him to ensure he either forgot entirely or could never speak of it.

“I’m terrified of myself, Jason.”  Stiles admitted after a long pause that saw them all the way onto the highway and speeding towards Shreveport, still mimicking the accent of the Stackhouses.  “I’m mostly in control, it’s true.  So long as I start my night with feeding, I can keep a handle on myself.  But, Jason…”  She took a deep breath simply to sigh.  “I don’ know much of anythin’ about actually surviving as a vampire.  Other than buyin’ Tru Blood, Bill didn’t have much time to teach me.  And I need teachin’, Jase.”

“Alrigh’ I could see that,” he mused after he let his own thoughts slowly form.  This whole loop that they’d all been thrown for because Bil-fuckin’-Compton couldn’t keep his fangs to hisself was a motherfucker to deal with - and that was for him.  What Sookie must be going through was a whole new level of hell.  She was dead.   She had to pull herself outta her own grave.   Ain’t nothin’ normal about any of that, and normal was all his baby sister ever wanted to be.  “How sure are ya ‘bout this bar?”

“Sure enough,” she prevaricated.  “I figure even if no one there can help me, they should be able to point me in the right direction.”

Jason nodded at that, frowning and still thinking hard.

“You sure I can’t wait on ya?”  He waited for a few more miles to click by so his sister knew he was really thinking and not just rushing ahead like he often tended to do.  “You an’ I both know that even with you tellin’ Gran not to fret, she’d still gonna worry until you turn back up.”

Given that one of the last things she told Adele Stackhouse was that she might need to stay with another vampire for training for a while, and not to worry about it if she didn’t come home with Jason, she didn’t blame Jason for wanting to double-check now that they were well away from the Stackhouse matriarch.

If only to see if there was anything she might be willing to confide in him that she would hesitate to say around the dear - but elderly - woman.

“Jason,” she shot him an amused grin.  “Even if I don’t end up havin’ to stay the day - and I’d honestly be shocked if they let an orphaned newborn vamp just waltz on outta there scot free - I can run back to Bon Temps almost faster than you can drive it.”

“Huh.”  He supposed that was true.

He still didn’t like it none, and he made sure she knew it, but he knew better than to fight his sister when she got a stubborn look on her face.

Anyone who ever thought that Sookie was as sweet as spun sugar had clearly never gotten on her bad side.

She may not be outright mean like their friend Tara, but mercy if his sister didn’t know how to hold a grudge.

He may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he generally knew better than to actively rile up the tempers of the Stackhouse women.

Thank you very much.

Though as soon as they pulled up to the dark exterior of the bar that was barely lit up with the neon sign proclaiming it Fangtasia and the dim lights in the parking lot, and he got a gander at the line of people in goth wear and leather, he had to ask again.

Ya know.

Just to check.


“I’ll be fine, Jason.”  Stiles told him, ducking her head both to unbuckle her seat belt and to hide her eye roll at his protectiveness.  “I can handle myself.  You go on back to Gran so the two of you can cluck over me in good company.”

She didn’t have to look back as she sprang out of the truck with a nimble little jump.

Far more gracefully than the original Sookie likely would’ve been able to manage from what she knew about her, but she’d been in this body long enough to get used to it - for the most part - and how it moved.  More, she had practice both with heels and getting out of lifted trucks.  Even in concert.  She could have hopped out of the back of the bed without falling so long as she chose her landing spot to be solid and level.

Her and her - fuck, fuck, fuck - her former girlfriend Malia used to practice and challenge each other with running in stiletto heels when the werecoyote decided she wanted to learn how to strut in them like Lydia, let alone a solid pair of platforms with a secure ankle strap.

A paved parking lot and the cab was barely a challenge in comparison.

Which likely stood her in good stead as Jason pulled out of the parking lot after she slammed the door of the truck closed, and strode right for who she likely thought was Pamela Swynford de Beaufort based on the teased blonde hair and leather mistress outfit carding and taking the cover fee at the door of the infamous vampire bar.

For Pam’s part, she could smell a delectable scent both coming off the young vampire - Jesus fuck but she smelled young, and based on her looks the missing baby vamp they’d been trying to find - and from her.

Well now, that was interesting.

In more than a century Pam had found that other vampires could at times smell good to her, or even enticing, but also sometimes foul and rank.

Never had one smelled almost as sweet as a pure breather - at least, not until now.

It was ripe and present, even under the stench of Tru Blood and Bill Compton.

Stronger even than the fang-dropping scent of one Jason Stackhouse that was all around her, likely from the handsome - for a breather - blood bag giving the baby vamp a ride to the bar.

“Hello sweetness,” Pam greeted the baby vamp as the sweet young thing approached her bold as could be, not faltering at all in a great pair of heels.  “We’ve been lookin’ for you.”

“So I’ve been told.”  Stiles shot right back, not apologizing or being subservient but not testing the hot-tempered vampire’s temper either with rudeness.  “Things have been a bit…crazy this last week or so.”

“So I’ve been told.”  Pam echoed her, nearly mocking but not quite.  With that, she undid the rope and let the baby vamp by to enter the bar.  “Make sure you stick around, sweetness, the Sheriff is gonna have a lot to talk to you about.”


Stiles had a plan as she straightened her spine and strode into the dim lighting of Fangtasia - and, she had to agree with the original Sookie: it did indeed look as if it was an R-rated vampire themed ride at Disney World; completely camp.

She was going to meet with Erik Northman.  Make her case about what happened to her.  See if he could hook her up with a trainer - Stiles doubted either Erik or Pam would want to, but as long as it wasn’t someone like the Disco Triplets she’d manage.

Then she’d get on with living a life as a vampire Sookie Stackhouse as best she could in between hunting down the names off of her “problem children” list.

That was the plan.

It was fucked as soon as she stepped down into Fangtasia proper and locked eyes on Erik fucking Northman - and worse, he locked eyes on her.

Good-fucking-bye being an anonymous newborn vampire.

Bill Compton’s pitiable orphaned new-Turn.

Fuck.

Not only was he hotter than the surface of the sun - oh no, he couldn’t just be sexy as sin and distracting as fuck, hell she was used to that given that the Hales and Jackson existed - but she could feel his power from all the way across the room.

The predator that lived under her breastbone rearing up and roaring to life at sensing the King of the vampire Jungle.

It deserved to be stated again: fuck.


 

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Four: Problem Childe

She was walking temptation wrapped in challenge as she stopped and met his gaze head on.  As a vampire should be: a predator with a built-in lure to their prey, even without using glamour.  Everything from her scent - like sunshine and sweetness and something that tingled at the edges of his memory - to her looks beckoned.  Like a sun goddess playing mortal in high ponytail cascading down her back and long legs encased in perfectly-fitted denim.

And her breasts…

No, Erik couldn’t say he was bored any longer.

Or that he was going to be calling up James to come and take charge of Bill Compton’s orphaned little problem childe - at least, if she had even half a brain to go with the looks and scent.  

Which, given that she’d survived several nights on her own after Bill’s untimely true death on the heels of her Turning, and seemed neither feral nor the worse for wear, he would be willing to bet there was considerable intelligence or, lacking that, cunning, behind those stunning eyes that reminded him of the precious Baltic amber his people used to trade for when he was human.

He might not want the burden of her himself, it was true.  His Pamela was often still a handful at times.  But…he knew his Maker.  Godric had been growing increasingly detached and even melancholy through their bond over the past century.  And there was nothing like having a newborn to handle and train to force a Maker - if they were worth the blood in their veins - to engage with the world once more.

Anything would be better than the slow creeping grey apathy that had been taking over his Maker and only growing stronger despite Erik’s best efforts.

True ancients were rare.  Reaching a thousand years of existence was a feat not many were able to accomplish, doubling that to become a true ancient was almost unheard of.  Erik would guess based on who he knew was still running around the old world along with one or two in the Americas, that there were perhaps between twenty and thirty true ancients still extant.  Considering that there were now millions of vampires with the vast majority of those under a decade in vampiric age, it spoke volumes to how great an accomplishment Godric’s age was.

To a human, it might seem strange.  After all, the older a vampire grew after their turning, the more powerful they became.  To reach Erik’s age made one almost undefeatable in single combat by another vampire, let alone lesser supes and humans.

Perhaps there was a measure of oddity to it, but not when one considers that the greatest enemy of old vampires isn’t each other or an attack - but themselves.

At a thousand years old, Erik still enjoys his life - and he knew he was rare in that he considered it just that: life.   A magical life.  An undead life.  But it was life nonetheless and he was engaged in living it.

It was when boredom and ennui and worst of all apathy set in that old vampires were lost.  They stopped caring.  They stopped living.   They stopped guarding themselves as they should.  Then they made foolish mistakes that ended with their true deaths.

Or, worst of all, they took matters into their own hands and sought the sun.

Erik would not lose his own maker because Godric no longer saw the joys of life and had started to merely exist.   A thousand years of companionship had taught both of them the strengths - and the weaknesses - of their counterpart.  And though his Maker was almost tame - if such could ever be dubbed so as a vampire - over the last five or so decades as his ennui truly took hold, he was still both a vampire and a man.

As both, his Maker had always had a weakness for feisty blondes, as Eriki’s own turning and Godric’s ongoing amusement - one of the few things that did amuse him anymore - towards Pam could attest.

The girl’s sweet scent would likely fascinate him if nothing else.

After all, in a thousand years Erik had never met a single vampire who held onto the scent of sunshine after their Turning.

If engaging Godric’s lust with her looks failed, then perhaps that mystery of her scent might work to snag the same impulsive curiosity that a thousand years ago led Death to hunt down and speak to a dying Viking on his burial pyre and then take him for his companion.

Oh yes, Erik Northman had plans upon plans for one Sookie Stackhouse, and with that locked in his mind he held up one hand and motioned her forward as she seemed to pause - as most often did - at first sight of him.


Stiles despised being summoned like a dog - or an underling, she supposed - nonetheless in this instance she obeyed.

This one vampire could either smooth the way for her into her new vampiric existence or he could make things difficult - or if he truly wanted, could find a reason or even an excuse to give Stiles the True Death.

Without a Maker to mourn her and few people who were even aware that she existed as a vampire, it was a tenuous position she was in to say the least.

One at least partially her own making, but in the end she’d choose the shifting sands currently underfoot than the bedrock that would’ve been existence tethered and bonded to a vampire who had no scruples about bending her mind and commanding her for his own gain.

“Ms. Stackhouse,” Erik greeted her, Pam zipping over to stand at the side of his throne as the vampires in the bar all seemed to focus on the scene as Stiles came to stand at the bottom of the stage - all the while the humans were none the wiser, other than noticing that a pretty blonde had gotten his attention.  “We were starting to believe you were truly lost.”  He gestured to the seat at his side, icy blue eyes tracking her every moment as she moved intentionally at vampire-speed up onto the stage.

Which was a relief, as focusing on keeping the cacophony of minds out whilst also controlling the urge to hunt and feed on any of the decent-smelling humans - which weren’t honestly that many - in the crowd was a chore to say the least when they were calling her all kinds of nastiness.

People being people, those same nasty minds did an immediate pivot as soon as she showed that she was simply a quite tan vampire rather than a human who’d caught his attention.

Dirty thoughts about her were easier for her to lock out than name calling for some reason, maybe because for the most part it was more idle than active.

Whichever, the lessened pressure allowed her to better focus - and with Erik Northman staring at her like she imagined a cheetah would track a wounded gazelle, was something she rather desperately needed if she wanted to walk out of the bar without fucking up spectacularly.

“It’s been a…rough week,” Stiles said, searching for the best way to describe Bill’s clusterfuck without giving away too much to all the listening ears locked onto them.  “For a bit I thought I was lost, too, Mister…?”

“Erik Northman,” he introduced himself then barely tilted his head towards Pam without losing his intent regard on the sweet young thing.  “My progeny Pamela.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.”  Pam bit out laconically.

“I’m sure.”  Stiles echoed her, nearly spot-on in her mirrored interaction of mere minutes before.

“Aren’t you sweet?”  Erik noted almost mockingly, entertained by the byplay between the pair.

“Not even close,” she shot right back, not sure whether she should smirk or cringe when his eyes almost seemed to flare at her response.

Whoops.

She honestly hadn’t meant to say that, to mimic the original Sookie’s interaction with Erik and Pam so closely, but it was almost instinct to bite back when they were poking at her.

Sharing a split-second look with his progeny, Erik rose and offered sweet Sookie his hand, preparing to escort her into his office rather than provide additional entertainment to the vermin and his underlings.

“Come, Ms. Stackhouse.”  He said just shy of an order, Stiles rising after a quick glance between Erik, Pam, and his offered hand.  “We have much to discuss.”  Then he flicked his gaze down at the now-empty throne as he felt her hand slip into his own.  For some reason, and for such a small gesture, it felt like victory.  “Mind the vermin, Pamela.”

“Yes, Master.”


Stiles remained poised as she felt - and heard - the bar kick up behind them as Erik led her, gently but firmly, through the crowd that parted like the Red Sea before him to a door marked “Employees Only.”

To no surprise, on the other side was a simple, average hallway that led to storerooms as well as their destination: Erik’s office both as the Sheriff of Area Five and as the owner of Fangtasia.

Granted, she wasn’t supposed to know that first bit unless Erik would assume Bill would’ve told her before his true death - unlikely but possible - but by now she’d have to be particularly idiotic and/or naive not to have realized the latter just from how everyone acted around him.

Even if Stiles couldn’t tell that Erik Northman was one of the most dangerous people she’d ever met, maybe even more so than the likes of Gerard Argent and Peter Hale, the way others treated him and watched him would’ve been one helluva clue.

Glancing up at him, Stiles took a moment to mentally bitch about how much of a freaking giant the vampire was.  Sookie Stackhouse was average height, perhaps even an inch taller, and at the moment Stiles was wearing four inch platforms.  And still she had to look up at him, Erik towering at least a head over her with his chin maybe level or a fraction above the top of her head.

The unfairly tall bastard.

If she didn’t already know about his background, Viking wouldn’t be a jump.  With the looks of far Northern Europe, the height, and the muscles…yep.  Not a hard one to figure out once a ballpark regarding his age was given.  Either professional warrior/soldier or a blacksmith were really the only professions back then she could think of that would result in a man built like a modern body builder - only even then, it was clear his build was more functional and less decorative.

But then, from what she understood, most older vampires - pre-Revelation, she should say - had been chosen for reasons of their Maker’s vanity if they weren’t just made willy-nilly.

Before the Great Revelation, most vampire progeny were likely exceptional for one reason or another.

Fact of the matter was, that Stiles with her magical fae-bred-and-chosen looks would fit in better among vampires than she ever did with regular humans.

Erik led her to a chair and Stiles gratefully sat, even as she did her best to prepare for whatever information the Sheriff was going to demand.

“You are an orphaned new turn, Ms. Stackhouse.”  Erik began briskly, wanting to get the details hammered out before he started truly maneuvering things in his favor.  “This has left you in a precarious position, though that you have come here and turned yourself in speaks in your favor.”  He sat swiftly in his desk chair, waking up his computer and typing rapidly as he spoke, splitting his attention between the beauty in his office and filling out the proper forms to take her under his care - however temporarily - before someone else tried to steal her away via bureaucracy.  “Tell me,” he commanded.  “How did you come to be Compton’s Progeny and what did he tell you about your new unlife?”

“Almost nothing, in regards to the latter.”  She responded at once, not trying to play with him now that he’d turned all-business.  “He mainly focused on seeing if my human talent carried over into my vampire self, and teaching me the basics of glamour.”

Erik’s attention snapped fully onto the girl at the mention of her possessing a human talent.   There’d been hints.  Glimpses.  In the information gathered by Pam and his dayman Bobby regarding how Sookie Stackhouse was considered a bit off-center by the inhabitants of her small town.  Other.  Crazy Sookie or so the reports read.

But nothing real.

Nothing actionable.

And most importantly: no mention of it in the paperwork Bill submitted before he was killed for the final time.

“Human talent?”  He prodded when she paused at having his gaze focused utterly on her gorgeous self.

“It ties in to your first question.”  She told him frankly, weighing her options and deciding - again - that Erik Northman with his lack of overweening ambition was her best bet for survival outside of his own maker.  Getting access to Godric, let alone securing him as a mentor or sponsor or whatever the vampire term was for someone taking charge of an orphaned or abandoned baby vamp, was far too complicated and risky.  At least with Erik she both knew where to find him and a decent idea of what she’d be risking with trusting him.  At least to an extent.  “Imagine for a moment, that you’re different.  You know how you’re different, but not why.  Others all your life know that you’re not quite the same as them.  That you’re other.  That you can do things, hear things, that other humans can’t.”

She paused, thinking over Sookie’s childhood and how unbearably lonely it must have been outside of her grandmother and brother.

Oh, she had friends for certain in Tara and Lafayette, but that wasn’t the same, and though they tried their best, they couldn’t always be around.

And they couldn’t guard Sookie from the voices that she heard, or the nastiness that dwelled inside human minds.

“You live this way all your life.  Crazy, they call you.  Some people gain a decent idea of what you can do, and don’t necessarily mind it, but almost no one is all that comfortable with it.  Then when you’re a young adult the news breaks: vampires are real.  All of a sudden, you’re not the strangest thing your small town had ever heard of.  You’re not alone in your otherness any longer.  You think wistfully about maybe meeting a vampire, but you don’t act on it.  You were raised to hide, not to stick out anymore than you already do.”  She quirked an unhappy smile at Erik’s unfailing attention.  “You don’t go out of your way to meet a vampire.  You don’t drive to a nearby city to a vampire bar.”  She shot a look back towards the dim dancefloor and the dias they’d left behind them.  “Instead, two years after the vampires come out of the closet, on an average night at your waitressing job, a vampire walks on in.”

“Suddenly, you’re not alone anymore.”  Erik filled in the blank.  “There’s another other around.”

“Mmm,” she nodded.  “Not like you, not really, but also not human.”

“Is that why you agreed to be turned?”  Erik couldn’t blame her if it was.  Odin knew he’d heard far worse reasons in his thousand years.

“Keep listening, Sheriff,” she warned him, not even pretending not to know his status and position given the way he was acting.  He could believe whatever he wanted to believe for how she knew that.  God knew, people were good at filling in blanks with their own biases when granted the opportunity.  “We’re gettin’ to the good part.”

“Now,” she resettled herself.  “Imagine you’ve met this other other.   He seems a little out of place.  A little intense at times and a little odd at others.  Only, you’re not the only one interested in him.  A pair of local junkies also paid him attention and were interested.  And, given what made you other, you were able to hear exactly why he’d caught their interest - even though they never said a word.”

“Telepath.”  Erik breathed, entirely enthralled - and starting to get an idea of what had brought the Queen’s procurer to a podunk town like Bon Temps.  Between how sweet Ms. Stackhouse still smelled after turning in concert with a unique talent like that?   He didn’t have to wonder at all, other than over how Sophie-Anne came to learn of Sookie when even Erik as the Sheriff closest to her hadn’t the faintest idea she existed before news of Bill’s True Death hit his desk.  “That’s an incredibly rare talent.  You said Bill wanted to know if it remained?”

“It does,” she answered the implied question behind the question.  “And no, he tested me thoroughly when I rose: I still can’t read vampires.  Long story…less long at this point I suppose, I saved - or thought I saved - Bill from the drainers.  Only the next night, they ambushed me while I was waiting on him to show up for a meeting we’d arranged.  He was late.”

“He turned you on accident.”   Erik wanted to curse the truly deceased.  What a fucking idiot.   He could absolutely see the edges she was hesitating to fill in.  The pieces where what she’d originally thought happened didn’t match up against her current reality.  “That-” he snarled in his mother tongue, not wanting to foul her ears with what he thought about Bill Compton.

And here he’d thought his impression of the asshole couldn’t get any worse given how they’d met.

He was wrong, as it turned out.

“I picked up enough from the Rattrays - the drainers -” she clarified.  “That I knew something wasn’t right before they knocked me out.  I woke up for a bit with Bill’s fangs in my neck and his bloody arm in my mouth.  Then nothing at all until I crawled out of my grave and he was waitin’ on me, easy as could be.”

Something about her tone, about how she chose to spin her story, tugged at his instincts.

He couldn’t blame her for being angry at Compton.  Furious.  Enraged even.

Instead she was almost…blank.

Like none of it happened to her at all.

It wasn’t the worst way to deal with an unwilling Turn, he supposed, but there was still something off with it.

Ah well, he’d consider it more later or it’d come to him in time.

“I know almost nothing about being a vampire, Sheriff.”  She made her case now that her story - or a majority of Sookie’s and a fraction of her own - was out in the open.  “With what little I know combined with my talent, I could probably survive.  But as it is, the first time a human bleeds near me, I doubt I’d really be able to control myself, and there was no time before I felt the bond break for me to learn how to feed.”

“Cutting you loose would be an unacceptable waste of both talent and a young vampire, Ms. Stackhouse.”  Erik told her resolutely, turning back to his computer and sending a few filled out documents to print.  “Nearly criminal in fact.  For now,” he told her how it was going to be, without leaving room for argument.  

Even without her talent, she had a resilience and adaptability that would make for a formidable vampire - if she was given the chance.

For that alone, he’d ensure that she was trained.

As it was, he had a feeling her story would appeal to his own Maker, especially if what he was beginning to suspect - suspect only as he had no real proof, only a thought - about Compton’s timely demise turned out to be true.

If it was true, it also made her dangerous - and that too, was a trait that appealed to their kind.

Erik was starting to think that he’d pleased a god in a past life, as he’d had a solution to an ongoing worry regarding Godric dropping nearly gift-wrapped into his life.

“-you will be in my care.” He continued, no sign of his internal scheming showing in his face or actions as he directed her where to sign on the forms.  Pro Tem Guardianship over a New Turn.  Official Petition for Residency.  Declaration of Vampiric Turning, etc.  “You will remain by my side unless otherwise directed and show me the respect and loyalty due to a mentor in lieu of a Maker.  You will take your daily death in my residence.  You will not hunt without permission.”  He outlined the main points of the arrangement.  “At most I expect as such from you for a year, perhaps two, unless I can find another, better suiting arrangement.  In return, I will care for you as if you were my own Progeny.  Train you in all you need to know.  And at the end of our time together, provided it reaches a satisfactory conclusion, will sponsor you to live in any territory of your choice.  Agreed?”

“Agreed, on one condition.”  Stiles glanced through the paperwork, not finding any hidden clauses that shouted out to her or that would come to bite her in the ass later.

Erik arched a brow, unsure of whether to be impressed or irritated that she deigned to try and bargain with him.

“And what might that be?”

“Sookie Stackhouse is the name of a telepathic barmaid from Bon Temps that somehow caught the eye of the vampire who set up a situation where I’d either end up overcooked on his blood or turned.”  Stiles said bluntly.  “I’d rather not have it follow me into my new life, or unlife, whichever.”

Erik pursed his lips but the declaration was a rather common one when a newborn vampire was trying to come to terms with the reality of being undead.

Cutting ties was one of the basic realities, and at times that meant changing names.

It wasn’t an unusual request, and with what he suspected about Compton, it might even be one that once granted bought him and Ms. Stackhouse a bit of room from the pressures of the likes of Sophie-Anne falling on their heads.

“What would you like to be called, then, Ms. Stackhouse?”  He asked, already pulling out a new set of forms to make it official with the Authority and human bureaucracy alike.

“Stiles,” she corrected.  “Stiles Claudia Hale.”  She smiled at the twist of fate that let her take that name twice-over, as in her first life it belonged to her ex-husband Peter, and in this one to her grandmother as a maiden name.

It was an homage, of sorts, to the wolf that both turned her life inside out but also helped her find her way through the darkest of hours.

They may not have been able to make it work in the end, too many demons haunting them for anything approaching a healthy relationship, but she’d miss having the sassy undead bastard popping up in her Georgetown apartment for a booty call or for research help before he flew back off to “troubleshoot” the latest supernatural issue for whoever could pay his fee.

Being a Hale for those few short years had been one of the happiest times of her first life.

She could only hope that a little of that joy made for a good omen for her second one - or, barring that, that some of Peter and Derek’s inability to give up or give in would help carry her through now that she didn’t have them to lean on.

Not anymore, now that they were a whole other life and world away.


Erik led her through signing and filling out the needed paperwork for him to file, then produced another set: this time regarding Bill’s True Death, showing her the documentation submitted by Bill claiming her as his progeny along with a coroner’s report from Renard Parish and the Decree of True Death that Erik had created upon the latter and his own investigation.

“I’m unaware of who Compton used for legal counsel.”  He admitted, even as he tore through the details behind her situation with her at an even clip.  “However, as his acknowledged progeny, you’re entitled to his estate.  With your agreement, as your mentor I’ll have the law firm I patronize get started on the process of uncovering and claiming Compton’s assets.”

He met her gaze with a little smirk at the grimace she made, the thought of claiming Bill’s estate sitting even worse with her than her little episode of light-fingers had done.  That Stiles’d taken as the least she’d been owed for his Turning her and killing Sookie with his bullshit.  His estate…

Ewww.

Huh.  Guess some of her Scott-acquired scruples were still hanging around.  Oh well, she was sure she’d get over it soon enough.

Though-

Bill’s money, his entire estate, wasn’t just dirty, it was dripping with filth and misery from how he’d made it.

But-

“If you don’t claim it, Stiles,” Erik told her, easily navigating the name-change as he’d never really known her as “Sookie Stackhouse” other than a problem to handle.  They’d also moved beyond formality now that he’d positioned himself as her mentor - for the moment, anyway.  “Then his Maker and/or any potential vampiric siblings will.   If you thought Bill was bad, his Maker Lorena is a real piece of work as I unfortunately know all too well.  Better in your hands than hers.”

-there was that bit to consider as well.

“Alright.” 

Stiles agreed in the end.  Scruples aside, she was a survivor and knew from living paycheck-to-paycheck or one a single-parent’s budget just how much money could help make life smoother.  Erik also had a valid point - if she didn’t claim it, someone else would, someone who was potentially worse than Bill.  At least in her hands Stiles could donate to charities and shelters fighting human trafficking and helping victims of physical and sexual abuse instead of spending it all on herself or letting it sit and collect interest.  It wouldn’t fix or right what Bill had done or who he’d been, but it was better than the alternative.  

“Let’s send the information to your lawyer and see what he digs up.  I don’t really want Bill’s dirty money.”  She made sure to be clear with Erik.  “I’m gonna donate a lot of it.  But better that than the other, who knows what this Lorena might do with it.”  She said pragmatically.  “I certainly don’t want her building a new house across the cemetery from Gran if she’s as bad as you say.”

Erik lifted his brows in surprise.  At the reasoning, not the decision itself.  That was both rather selfless and had a practical, ruthless edge all at once.

Interesting.

It seemed that once convinced on a matter, Stiles Hale didn’t shy away from what needed to be done.

She really was going to make a formidable vampire - once she finished shedding her breather scruples anyway.

T’s crossed and i’s dotted, Erik sent off all the necessary paperwork.  Most electronically.  Some however, he intentionally delayed - such as the notices that were required to be sent to the Queen - by sending via certified courier that would grant him an extra day or two of space from Sophie-Anne’s machinations once she realized that that “asset” that she likely sent Compton to acquire had been Turned and orphaned instead.

Or that Erik had taken her under his wing.

He imagined that he’d be able to hear the spoiled young queen shriek with outrage all the way in Shreveport from her New Orleans palace.

Rising once more, he led Stiles outside via the employee entrance at the rear of the building, then over to his blood red Corvette - which he was entertained to notice matched both Stiles’s nail color and shoes, women were such fascinating creatures, if he didn’t know better he’d say she planned it that way but as it was simply took joy in the happenstance - and ushered her into the passenger seat.

As he started the sports car and the engine had them roaring out of the parking lot, he shot her a grin as she gave a breathless little gasp.

Erik reminded himself that he’d taken command of her for Godric.

Even so, he defied any male with blood in his veins to not enjoy the sight she made with her lips slightly parted and her pupils slightly dilated as she sank into the enjoyment of a nearly unparalleled ride.

Oh, the animal that lived inside of him purred, this was going to be so much fun.


 

Chapter 5

Notes:

Consider this your warning for this and future chapters regarding NSFW content.

We gon' *earn* that Explicit rating y'all.

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Five: Who is in Control?

By the time all the details were sorted out and the paperwork handled, the night was fading fast.

Not as fast as Erik Northman drove in his vehicular monument to testosterone, but fast nonetheless.

Not that Stiles was complaining about riding in Erik’s Corvette.  She knew enough about cars, even fast cars, and drivers that she knew the entire time that Erik was absolutely in control - hello, Derek Hale much?  Besides which: she was just petty enough to deny him any squeals and fright that he might be hoping to scare out of her.

Too bad for him, but he wasn’t the first speed-demon with a hot car she’d ridden with - just the first one as Stiles Hale and not Stiles Stilinski or Stilinski-Hale.

The silence between them was only broken by the rev and roar of the Corvette, but it was an easy silence.  Both of them had plenty on their minds, to be sure.  Erik figuring out all the angles.  Stiles meanwhile focused on re-framing her goals with Erik’s time-frame for her mentorship in play, though only to an extent.

Survival was survival, and the problems with Overlark and Burrell were long-term issues, not ones that had to be tackled right that instant.

For the first time ever, she had limitless time stretching out in front of her.

She could just…stop for a bit.

Rest.

Recover.

Learn.

Plan.

And none of it would affect her future in a negative way.  She didn’t have the rush of days threatening to speed away.  She didn’t have the slow creep of age and infirmity to worry about.

Instead they’d been replaced with endless nights carrying on into the far distant future - which meant she might want to think more about what Stiles wanted that to look like in practice and reality rather than constantly moving and rushing ahead.

The reality of becoming a vampire was that she was going to live until she was killed or chose to meet the sun.

Stiles wanted to make it an existence that was lived despite being undead rather than merely going through the motions because she’d been stolen away from her deathbed and spirited away to live out someone else’s undeath.

There was no point in bothering with just plodding through day by day if she wasn’t going to take any joy in the gift she was starting to believe she’d been granted.  Not for any reason she could think of.  She hadn’t been particularly special outside of her mind and ability to use it.  The lone weak human, albeit with a spark of magic, running with wolves.  But what she couldn’t really deny anymore was that it had happened and no amount of denial or self-flagellation or cursing the heavens would change it.

She was here, now.

In this body, with this identity, in this world and reality.

She’d already started as she meant to go on: taking out threats, making small changes to allow more of herself to show through, making this unlife her own.

Stiles thought that, maybe, Erik taking charge of her for a year - which initially had seemed like a long time until she remembered: she was a vampire now, she had all the time in the world - might also be a gift and in more than the obvious.

He - or any vampire - wasn’t really going to have any preconceived ideas about who she was or how she should act, talk, dress, behave, etc.

In turn, by being in his “care” she could justify or otherwise explain changes to Sookie’s family and friends - whoever still wanted to be friends with a vampire, which she was going to bet wasn’t going to be all of them - as coming about through being Turned and/or as a result of her training.

It was like having a get-out-of-jail-free card - only it was to be herself instead of a caricature of someone else.

Erik may have locked her down via contract and vampire law - but she was free nonetheless of the chains of being purely Sookie Stackhouse.

She’d have to repay him someday for it, even if he never understood why or what he’d really done for her.

She knew.

And that was enough.


“It’s beautiful, Erik.”

Erik sent his lovely companion a look of slight surprise as Stiles broke the pleasant quiet between them after he’d sped through the electronic-operated gate that had swung wide at his approach thanks to a transponder in his Corvette.  

His Shreveport residence was one of his most modern and lavish of all his properties as he had a position to uphold as the area’s sheriff.  Nonetheless, rather than buy up one of the newer “McMansions” as they were becoming known as, like his progeny had done in the wealthiest part of the city, Erik had chosen an estate outside the city limits.  One with plenty of land, privacy, and a single two-story residence built atop a hill that came ready with an unfinished basement and underground drive-in garage.

He’d expanded the sublevels of the estate, made them far more accommodating to vampires until they nearly equaled the square footage in the daylight portions of the house before he had it fitted with light-tight shutters, but all in all it wasn’t anything outlandish or overwhelming.

The exterior was all glass, seasoned cedar planks, and local river rock which appealed to his aesthetic sensibilities when he wasn’t playing a role.

He quite agreed: it was beautiful, but found himself surprised nonetheless that Stiles thought so given how simple it was compared to what he often found in the modern era as a partiality to either overt gilt and overblown luxury or utter restraint with little in between.

And Erik’s residence certainly wasn’t either of those for all that it was chosen as part of his role as the Sheriff of Area Five rather than out of any particular attachment to anything other than the amount of land, location, and convenience it came with.

“Thank you,” he repaid the youngling’s courtesy with his own.  “Come,” he parked the car and sped over to her door, opening it and holding out his hand for her once more.  “There is much to do yet before the sun takes you.”


Stiles walked at Erik’s side almost on autopilot as he went through adding her into his security system and showing her how to navigate it in case she ever needed to stay alone at his residence without him.

It was a fancy bit of modern technology, but nothing that was beyond her ability to use - and thanks to her shiny-new vampire “vault” of an eidetic memory and speed, she didn’t even have to worry about the logistics of typing in a randomized alpha-numeric twelve-digit passcode in the mere seconds the system allowed.

Clearly something designed with vampires in mind, because even on her best day as a human she doubted she could’ve managed the process without being too slow or fumbling and setting it off on accident.

Erik brushed right passed the upper floors of the home with an absent assurance that they’d have time for that another night.  It was a level of consideration that would’ve surprised her if she weren’t already aware that while Erik Northman could be both cruel and brutal, it wasn’t his default.  As much as that would likely surprise those who didn’t actually know him.  Rather, especially with those he decided to take an interest in, he could be quite patient and even careful with them - to an extent.

Leading her instead downstairs to the basement levels, Erik showed her how to trigger the wall panel release to show the security and control panel for the invisible door to the descending stairs.  It was all very Batman or James Bond: all pressure plates and seamless sheets of metal or careful masonry powered by hidden generators and nearly silent hydraulics.  Expensive as well.  But she supposed that for a being with as many vulnerabilities as vampires, reaching a thousand years old was no mean feat accomplished due to a lack of caution.

Once they actually accessed the basement through the main house, Stiles noted the wide open “common” type area that looked like a cross between an old fashioned study and a modern, comfortable living room, Erik pointed out the five different doors and labeled each one for her, before moving to the last and typing something into yet another security panel, though this one like the others on the basement doors, wasn’t hidden at all.

Erik apparently was a true believer in both prudent planning and escape routes, as counting the “main” entrance that he’d led her into the basement through there were two other access/egress points corresponding to two of the doors he showed her.  One leading to the garage.  The other to an actual escape route and light-tight tunnel that ended well out of sight of the house in an emergency shelter.

In addition to his own room that he told her she could key in a code and he’d be alerted if Stiles needed him but that she wouldn’t have access to, he pointed out “Pam’s guest room, that she almost never uses except for closet space” with the same rules as his own, and then the one that he’d apparently assigned to her.

Stepping aside, he spoke: “Try your code on the door.”  He instructed her, not having missed any of her rapt inspection of his living spaces as they’d moved through the garage and the house above, let alone his security measures and the below-ground quarters.

He was torn over giving her Godric’s guest room.  Ever since he’d purchased his first residence centuries before, he’d maintained a space first for his Maker and then later his Progeny.  Both Godric and Pam did the same for him, as well as each other.  It was their way.  And for all that visits from Godric had grown rare over the last few decades, and he never stayed anywhere but with Erik when he did fly through, part of Erik was loath to put another in the room he had built and designed with his Maker in mind, even temporarily.

Still, though he intended to introduce the two in hopes that Godric might become intrigued by the baby vampire, that might take weeks to arrange.

Besides which: Pam was far more territorial over her spaces than Godric had ever been.

That was a fight he had no intention of having to mediate between his Progeny and his temporary (hopefully) adoptee.

He smirked as the door swooshed open with a soft gust of air and Stiles gasped a little, eyes wide with delight.  A promising sign.  There was nothing quite like seeing a vampire’s true nest when it came to revealing the parts of them they hid from public view.

And while his guest room in Erik’s recent residence wasn’t precisely the same as a true nest, it had been designed to echo and evoke it, Erik long having fond memories of nights spent entwined with his Maker in many such rooms over their centuries together.

That Stiles’s immediate reaction to a room meant for Godric’s comfort was delight spoke well of the odds of success for Erik’s current course.

Good.

He would do both far more and far worse to shake his Maker out of his doldrums than sponsor a baby vamp and plot to toss her straight into his Maker’s bed - literally and figuratively.

Stiles stepped into the room as if hypnotized.  It was a large open space dominated by a massive California King bed draped in a luscious cream spread shot with thin soft-gold threads.  Rather than wallpaper or paint, the walls had been made into art: a massive seascape mural that was all storm-tossed waves behind the bed then as she circled and turned naturally shifted to a night calm and dark sea with the stars mirroring it above.  

It was gorgeous, and it took her about two seconds to realize it was likely meant for Godric.  The bed itself beyond the bedspread that felt like real silk when she couldn’t help but pet it, was all clean lines and exotic purpleheart wood.  Her heels clicked softly on the pale wooden floors that gleamed with - according to her nose - beeswax polish.  

As Stiles finished her circle of the simple room, Erik caught her eye from where he was watching her with his shoulder propped on the door jamb and tilted his head towards the pair of what looked at first glance to be rectangular light fixtures but when she opened them showed off an empty walk-in closet and a luxurious bathing room that was strictly for vampires.  Not a toilet or bidet to be seen.  Only a shower, sink, and even an inset Roman bath that contrasted nicely with the seascape-masculine bedroom in its copper and oiled bronze fixtures with slate tile flooring off-setting the simple cream walls.

“Erik…” she breathed out, eyes wide and nearly wordless at the “guest” room.  “This is amazing.”

“Then you’ll have no problem staying here while under my care.”  He gestured her back out into the living area that the underground level shared, which was a benefit when you were a vampire old enough to rise long before the sun set.  The entire house could be made light-tight if necessary, of course, all his residences were the same.  But often though it was a luxury provided by modern conveniences, Erik often still found himself more comfortable below ground until dark.  “Pamela will no doubt be eager to assist you in making it your own and filling out the closet.”  He waited a beat for a protest and found himself both mildly baffled but also pleased when none was forthcoming.

Odd, from a modern woman unless she was the sort who expected such things - which hadn’t been his read of Stiles Hale.

Though there was something to be said for her pragmatism.  Or perhaps her ability to recognize when a battle was lost before it was even waged.  Either way, it was a relief to see that for all her boldness at times, she wasn’t going to constantly fight him on trivialities.

Erik allowed himself to sprawl out on one of the absurdly comfortable couches in the living area, beckoning her to sit beside him.

His mood flipped back from contemplative to interest as he noted that she didn’t shy away from him or react to having him so close to her due to the sheer amount of space he tended to take up when he wasn’t actively containing himself.

Either in body, or in power, as his own nest was one of the few places he could truly be unrestrained and he wasn’t about to alter that, even to make assimilating into her new life easier for the beautiful new Turn.

“We still have much to discuss.”  He told her, half in warning.  “Taking care of the details and formalities of your Turning and orphaning is merely the beginning.  The night grows short, however, and I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t begin as all true Makers should: by teaching you how to feed…”


Stiles took an unneeded - she was a vampire now, unless she was trying to smell something or talking, Stiles had no need to breathe beyond habit - but steadying breath as Erik broached the topic she was most concerned about.

Not the blood thing.

She might be a literal baby in terms of her vampire life, less than a week old at this point, but that had been long enough to get over having to drink blood or blood substitutes.  And frankly - with how bad to outright awful Tru Blood tasted to her depending on the “flavor” (A, B, O, AB, +, -, it was a whole spectrum) she’d gotten over any lingering scruples about donor blood fast.   Mixing the two helped make the supply of blood she’d lifted from Bill’s fridge last, but Stiles wasn’t an idiot: it wasn’t reasonable to expect she’d be able to have free and unlimited access to purchased sustenance options forever.

A vampire who didn’t know how to feed properly would kill people.

Period.

End of conversation.

As her new pseudo-Maker it fell to Erik to teach her how to feed - and, likely, given who he was, how to hunt.

In time, he’d probably teach her all the ins-and-outs of being a real vampire.

But to start: he needed to teach her how to control her fangs and bite and feeding, and without the ability to Command her, together with how he was all sprawled out beside her with nary a donor in sight, she was starting to get a damn good idea of how he was planning to do that.

On himself.

Oh, hell.

She was so fucked.

“The first thing you need to know before anything else is this: the blood is sacred.   Your situation makes events unconventional, as typically, vampires only share blood with their maker, progeny, or mate.  Some bend the rules and share with a serious lover, or a companion they intend to Turn.  Selling and dealing vampire blood is a death offense.”  His eyes and tone were as cold as his homeland as he relayed - and elaborated on - what his own Maker had told him a thousand years before.  “Vampire blood is one of the most magical substances known.  It can grant unnatural strength, healing, and endurance to those who taste it.  Sharing blood can create or strengthen bonds.  Young vampires can gain increased strength and power from feeding from their Makers, it helps them survive in the dangerous world that they’ve been reborn into.”

“Only, my Maker is gone.”  Stiles noted after Erik had paused to allow her to understand what he’d told her before continuing.  “And unless I’m completely off the mark, you’re much stronger than he was.”

“Yes.”  Erik agreed simply to both statements.  They were simple truths.  “He is, and I am.  You have already proven yourself a survivor.  I find myself interested in the vampire you may yet become.”

Then he waited, watching her idly almost as a big cat would a mouse, until she at last moved of her own volition.

No demands, no commands, no beckons.

Just her, making a choice, and having to live with the results of it.

You know.

No pressure.


Erik stifled the urge to give a triumphant grin as another facet to his new protégé’s character snapped into place: when she was moved to a decision, she truly moved.

If he weren’t a vampire himself, let alone centuries Stiles’s superior, he never would’ve been able to catch her flex and twist as she went from sitting at his side to seated on him, taking him up on his implicit offer but in her own way rather than agreeing and then waiting upon direction.

No, while she could be obedient given cause, he was starting to believe, Stiles Claudia Hale was far from subservient.

Good.

If she ever aspired to be more than someone else’s underling, she’d need that spine and sass to carry her through, much like his own Pam.

Knowing when to bow her head and when to stand her ground would be even more important for Stiles than for another vampire, as she hadn’t even the illusion of a Maker or a bloodline to fall back on and support her.

Though in her case, given Compton’s lineage, that might not be the worst turn of events.

Someone like Stiles would’ve been wasted on the likes of Compton or his own Maker, let alone whatever horrors might await in that line.

Erik tilted his head a fraction to the side, then continued with her training:

“The neck and thigh are both easiest for the vampire and leave the least damage on the donor.”  He murmured as she slowly leaned in, almost mesmerized by the combination of his low, silky words and the smell of his blood under pale skin now that she was focusing on it.  Erik smelled like sea air and sex tangled up with a heady hint of what she could only call power.   Like she can feel his age not only through his presence but also in his scent.

For the first time with an actual intent to bite instead of being pure reaction, Stiles felt her fangs snick down into place.

In the back of her mind she wondered at Erik’s control.  She might as well have been all the way across the room for all his body showed no reaction to having her straddling his lap.  His hands remained lightly resting on the back of the couch, his thighs - as well as was laid between them - didn’t so much as twitch when she perched upon them.  If Stiles was relying solely on her eyes - when she had a mind, later, to think on the scene rather than being actively involved in it - she would’ve thought he was a statue of an indolent male.

As a vampire, however, not only wasn’t she restricted in what she could sense, Stiles’s mind was capable of processing it at a rate some computers would envy.

Erik acted above-it-all, but his scent gave him away especially once her nose came a breath from his skin as she chained her instinct to snap and bite and feast to just slip her fangs through the skin of his neck and pierce the vein.  The scent of sex - that was probably a mixture of smells that her vampire brain assigned meaning to - almost roaring out to cover up everything else she picked up from him.  Oh, he was affected all right.  He was just able to control it.  And that, more than anything, was what Stiles needed to learn as he knew and exemplified all at once.

“That’s good, excellent control.”  Erik praised her.  She was a surprising creature.  Most newborns, even out of wariness and self-preservation, wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to snap and tear when finally able to use their fangs.  He certainly hadn’t on his first rising - though Godric had brought him prey for that first feeding to get it out of his system and then educated him on the nuances of biting.

Reaching up with one hand, he nudged her chin a bit to force the initial seal created by her fangs and lips to break and allow blood to flow as - due to that self-same control - she didn’t do so naturally.

“There,” he murmured as her instincts took over with the first taste of him hitting her tongue, his head tilting back a little as he basked in the erotic sensation of being fed upon by another of his kind for pleasure.  As she likely didn’t have any idea of the implications of how she’d used her fangs on him.  She was going to be a joy to train if her first instinct with him was one of ecstasy.  It almost made him regret planning to give her to his Maker.

Almost.

“With a human, the seal is more important with how easily their blood flows.”  He continued to teach her even as he reveled in the scent of her lust beginning to rise as she shifted her hips ever-so-slightly as she swallowed his blood - swallowed him - down.  

Stiles shivered, unable to keep her iron hold of her reactions in place as her eyes threatened to roll and her lashes flooded as she swallowed and everything that made Erik Northman, Erik Northman, rushed through her system like a wildfire.  The first taste of him on her tongue made her tingle with want.   Her nipples pebbling and the folds between her legs growing damp as the predator that dwelled behind her breast purred at the taste and scent of a powerful, desirable, one of their kind.

Erik’s pupils dilated at the sound of Stiles’s vampiress purring out in temptation to his vampire, having to bite back the urge to answer her as his beast rose up to fight at his control.  He shoved it back ruthlessly as it urged him to pin her down and bite in turn.  To show her who it was she played with.

It was only the incessant reminder that she wasn’t his that restrained him from giving her what they both clearly wanted.

As her tongue worked on his skin and left fire in its path as she chased every last drop of him and the scent of her want and growing need threatened to pull them both under.

As she moved so delightfully upon his lap in a dance as old as time.

“That’s enough, Stiles.”  Erik warned her after she’d taken several mouthfuls.  Perhaps a couple ounces of his blood all total.  

As she’d come to him well-fed and not a starving feral thing, Stiles didn’t need to truly feed from him even with her young age as a vampire.  This was training, and to form a blood-tie so that he could track her and ensure the safety of both Stiles and those who might trigger her hunger or wrath during the volatile first weeks after her rising, for all that she’d seemingly avoided making any scenes thus far.

Color him shocked that she failed to obey his implicit order to cease.  Rolling his eyes, newborns, for the first time since they’d sat down he moved.  With all the swiftness of his kind and age, he lifted one hand and had Stiles’s ponytail wrapped around his fist in a blink of an eye, using it to control her head and keep her from digging in as he lightly - but firmly - pulled her away.

Stiles gasped a little and whimpered.  Her head lolled back as the sweet-sharp pain of a kink she was all too aware of hit her like a brick to the face as she finally let go of Erik’s neck.  Panting, she bared her neck as her eyes fluttered closed and she ground down into the very male body beneath her.

Erik arched an eyebrow with a little smirk as his neck healed without her fangs continuing to worry the wound open.

Well now.

That wasn’t the reaction he’d expected - a newborn was far more likely to react with rage at being taken from a meal than lust - but: noted.

Once she was upright, albeit panting and grinding on his lap with bloodlust that had predictably shifted to basic lust, Erik let loose of her hair and wrapped his hands around her waist to hold her up off of actually grinding down into him.

He was a vampire and the farthest thing from a saint, there was only so much temptation he could resist.

New Turns could be skittish around sex and their heightened drive for it.  Stiles was attracted to him, he had no doubts about that, but he hadn’t seen any real intent behind it until the bloodlust took her.  He wanted the beautiful, wild creature in his bed, it was true, and he was not a being who denied himself what he wanted.  But he was not an impatient youngling, rushing ahead impetuously for instant gratification and no thought to the long term.

Stiles was a vampire now, and potentially an adopted member of his bloodline either as his protege or his Maker’s.  He had centuries now to make her his - whether for a fleeting time, as with his Pamela, or for the length of their long lives like with his own Maker.  He would not allow some human regret that sprung up within Stiles because they gave into their desires immediately, ruin that potential.  Not with what he could assume about where the human mores still infecting her likely laid in wait like a poisoned trap.

She was too beautiful a creature to waste in endless misery because her early nights and first experiences were mishandled.

He was a better Maker than that.

Erik shifted her, pulling her legs around to rest lengthwise over him as he held her steady on his lap and was rewarded as after several long moments her panting slowed and her eyelids fluttered open, a heady flush of color from his blood roaring through her granting him a glimpse of what she might have looked like as human.

She truly was a lovely little thing.

Had he met her whilst still human, he would have wanted her for his own though whether or not he would have turned her he was uncertain.  It would have depended on how much of how she was now, was the Turn, and how much had been already present in her human self.  What was the vampire, and what was the being behind the vampire?

An impossible question to answer, but an interesting puzzle to pick at in his idle moments as he learned her.

“Will it always be…like that?”  Stiles had to ask after she finally wrestled back coherence out of the pit of fucking lava and instincts he’d dropped her into with a taste of him.  

Holy fuck.  She’d been turned on, aroused, even needy before.  Hell, she’d been married to Peter-fucking-Hale and god but that man knew what he was doing in bed.  But.  She’d never felt like that.   As if she would either shatter or shatter something if she couldn’t be satiated.  Damn.  If that was what feeding from a person was like, no wonder vampires had a reputation of being sex fiends.  

She’d noticed - of course she had, it was impossible to miss - how frequently and fiercely she’d been flipping from normal to needy since Turning.  At first she’d thought it was just another symptom of being a vampire.  Just another round of vampiric mood swings.  Vampire puberty as her body got used to its new state.  Whatever.  She was a grown ass woman, she knew how to take care of her own needs, thanks.

What she’d felt from feeding on Erik?

Stiles didn’t even have a frame of reference for that.  Not even at her most ardent and passionate.  Not at her neediest or with her best partner.  Nothing.

It wasn’t sexual need or desire as she understood it, to the point of being almost frightening once she wasn’t being burned alive inside of it.

The moment she’d slipped her fangs into Erik’s neck, her brain had taken a backseat to her vampire, and she had no idea how to reconcile that against someone who was desperately fighting for control of her own unlife.

“No,” Erik tucked away any sign of amusement as much of her thoughts showed themselves on her face, playing events as forthright as possible to help her center herself.  “It won’t.  First feedings are always volatile.  Experience will make it easier to compartmentalize your instincts and keep control.  Despite what the AVL likes to spout,” he sneered at the thought of their pandering to the human public.  “There is far more involved in feeding than mere sustenance.”

Rising as he felt the sun creeping ever higher towards the sky, Erik set her on her feet as his blood began its work in forming the tie between them, allowing him to get a sense - however faint - that she was tiring.

“We will have time for more questions on rising.”  He held off any questions she might have with a look, turning her pointedly towards what was now her room while she stayed with him.  “There is much to discuss and learn.”

For both of them.

Stiles gave in to the urge to pout, playing up the eager newborn after information that he seemed to respond well to, but nodded and zipped off, typing in the passcode to open her door and then closing it behind her.

Leaving a rather pleased with himself and the world in general - if almost unbearably aroused - vampire behind her.


 

Chapter 6

Notes:

Happy 4th of July to my readers in the United States!

Note on language:

So, in the show and therefore a lot of time in fanfic (often including my own) Alexander Skarsgard as Erik speaks Swedish. Which makes since, as AS is a native Swede and that's his first language. Allan Hyde who plays Godric is Danish. Together they speak either Swedish or potentially another language that might be Danish or something else that I haven't been able to find out online, or potentially an attempt at a reconstructed version of Old Norse or something similar.

But, since Old Norse or a language of similar age/provenance is what is thought to likely have been EN's mother tongue, in Karma when they're speaking to each other and using an "old" language, it's going to be Icelandic since that's the closest extent language to anything like Old Norse.

It's also Google Translate Icelandic, so if there is a translation issue I've muddle up as a result, please let me know in the comments so I can fix it.

Since we're looking at entire conversations taking place in Icelandic between these two, I've decided to format it with Icelandic in Italics and then the translation into English in [brackets].

(Now with corrected Icelandic, hopefully, courtesy of one of my fabulous readers! Thanks Fimbulfamb for the help!)

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Six: Setting the Deck

Stiles knew better than to let Erik get even a hint that she was anything other than a normal baby vamp, quickly rushing through cleaning up before settling in to let the sun force her to die for the day.

Letting him think she was good at this-or-that, or even exceptional was one thing.

Having him figure out that she was different was another.

At least until he was attached or invested in her.

It was a fine line to walk, between engaging his interest and being seen as a threat.

The fact that vampires had an innate ability to track the position of the sun relative to themselves was both fascinating and fucking useful.   Punitive, as well, when it came to the bleeds.  But still: useful.

Not as useful as a vampire’s ability to control and command their blood to the point that some believed it was actually where their consciousness resided, but still pretty damn awesome.

Between the two, Stiles was able to continue her charade as a regular vampire by commanding her blood to allow to both die for the day and not rise until after the sun was fully set as Erik would expect from a baby vamp so young.

She wasn’t taking any chances with that big ass Viking figuring her out.

Not yet.

Stiles knew that if she wasn’t on top of things and careful to the point of near-paranoia, she’d mess up and he’d catch her out on the differences that shoved her from being a quick learner or even talented and into what the fuck territory.  Erik Northman was no fool.  If she didn’t take precautions, whether through his blood in her or just hearing that she was awake when she wasn’t supposed to be, he’d know something strange was going on in a hot second.

She was reminded that it wasn’t true paranoia when they really were out to get you.  As the first thing her senses locked onto as soon as she snapped into awareness with the sun fully set was the scent of Erik being far more present in her room than it had been when she’d gone to bed.  Following on the heels of that realization was the sight of a quart-sized thermos sitting on the nightstand.

Color her shocked: Erik had come in while she was at rest.

At least he hadn’t seen her naked since she didn’t smell his scent on the covers she’d pulled over her and she hadn’t exactly brought sleeping clothes with her to Fangtasia.

Besides the linens on the massive bed were actual fine linen and felt like slipping into cozy luxury.

Stiles wasn’t about to deny herself that feeling after a week of constant strain.

Feeling her hunger beginning to roar and threatening to claw right out of her, she rose and snapped up the thermos before rushing into the bathroom in case she spilled.  Not likely, but also not unheard of.  This whole adventure was fraught enough without getting blood stains on cream linens and a silk bedspread, thank you very much.

She spun the top off the thermos and set it down with a soft click on the marble countertop of the wide bathroom sink, hopping up and sitting as she gulped down the warmed and prepared blood that to her surprise didn’t have the strange plastic notes of the bagged blood she’d swiped from Compton.

Interesting.

Erik must have a different way to source his blood stock.

Stiles didn’t know if she’d ever get used to even the least scrumptious of real blood slipping over her tongue like warm chocolate and spice and curly fries and all the things she’d ever craved in her life.  She’d known that vampires could have preferences in regards to real blood and not just synthetic.  Just not that it was something they could tell right off the bat and not a trait that developed after months and years of being sustained by the same substance night after night.

The blood she’d stolen from Bill had all been in the rh-positive range: O, A, B, with none of the rarer blood types being present.

Whatever blood Erik had provided for her to wake up and beat back her instinctive hunger with, it wasn’t any of those.  It was more complex.  A little hot and threatening to rouse her rather than sate her.  Tingling on her tongue, like hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon and made with whole milk and cream then spiked with Kahlua.

Stiles could feel herself grow stronger, if infinitesimally, as her focus divided in her surprise at the taste rather than simply allowing herself to enjoy it.

About halfway through, she pulled the thermos away from her lips, licking them and eyeing it speculatively as she narrowed her attention to trying to discover what that intoxicating note was.  What made it so different?  It wasn’t just that it was the freshest blood she’d ever had, or the lack of what she assumed were anti-coagulants and plastic packaging that muddled Bill’s stock.  There was something else…something…

Oh.

Oh that glorious bastard.

Stiles didn’t know if she should be furious over him taking the option out of her hands or impressed with the underhandedness or if it was just Erik following all the way through with his pledge to treat her like his own progeny.

The older vampire had added his own blood to the mix, but in such a small amount that if she wasn’t at least partially used to both drinking human blood and the concept of mixing it with synthetic it likely never would’ve occurred to her that there was even something to be found.

In the end, she rolled with it, toasting him absently with the thermos before lifting it back to her lips and polishing it off.

Fuck it, they were vampires, and he was Erik fucking Northman.

If he wasn’t trying - at least a little - to get one or a dozen over on her, she’d think he’d either been completely mischaracterized or had been replaced by the vampire version of a pod person.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t already consented to either his patronage or taking his blood.

Or dealt with having a close relationship - though she wasn’t sure what tone this one would take - with a twisty bastard before.

Stiles was sure eventually he’d really cross a line that she’d need to fight him on.  With the power dynamics in play however the last thing she wanted was to be at constant odds with him.  Better to save up her energy and pick her battles.

God knew, with Erik Northman, there was sure to be one in time.

And at least if he didn’t know all of her tells and the weapons in her arsenal before a big blow up came, it would make it harder for him to either win or force a draw.

The conniving fucker.


Erik looked up and sent a knowing smirk towards where he could feel Stiles.

At first she was calm but hungry upon rising.  Proof that she’d taken care of her needs well enough, that she was so young and didn’t rise near-feral with thirst.  Then she’d been what he would call thoughtful, before shifting to surprise as want began to shift through her.

Want that was steadily climbing as he heard the low hum of the water system kicking on.

Ah.

She was indeed capable of handling her needs it seemed.

As it was, he found himself splitting his focus as he worked through answering a few emails and sending out orders, clearing away a portion of both his business and his duties as sheriff to make time for Stiles.  A few things required following up on after the previous night.  In addition to the fact that Stiles still had much to learn before he could present her to his Maker.

Loose ends that needed tied up, a few final details to settle.

They had a busy night ahead of them.

Pity.

He would have enjoyed seeing if she was interested in adding pleasure to their business, but with much still to be done it would have to wait once more.

With that in mind, and Stiles occupied, Erik checked his bond with his own Maker out of habit before swiftly dialing the first number in his speed dial.

Godric was calm and that insidious grey in their bond, as always, but Erik felt no sensation that he was busy or otherwise engaged that would have had Erik putting off speaking with him until another time.

The phone had barely rung when Erik heard the click of Godric answering his personal line, the vampire turning a new strand of focus to speaking with his Maker while others kept track of Stiles, made plans, and worked on the few pieces of paperwork on his desk that required a physical touch including his signature.

“Sæll, sonur minn, [Hello, my son,]” his Maker greeted him in the soft tones that hid the forged and tempered steel underneath his peaceful, almost mild, demeanor in the modern age.  

The sound of Erik’s birth tongue warning him that Godric wasn’t alone in his nest without any actual warning needed.  Erik felt the questing tingle in his blood that was Godric paying attention to their bond, seeking out his state and mood, their bond strong enough to do so despite the distance in miles between them.  As they rarely spoke on the phone without warning any more, he wasn’t surprised that Godric was close to concern over the reason for the sudden - to him - contact.

“Góð uppkoma, bróðir minn. [Good rising, my brother.]” Erik returned in the same language.  “Ég er með fréttir sem ég verð að deila. [I have news I must share.]”

“Ó? Hvað hefur gerst? [Oh?  What has happened?]”

Erik nearly smiled as he felt a mild spike of interest flow through their bond.  It was soft, almost indiscernible if Erik weren’t listening so intently to what his Maker wasn’t saying with words.   Under other circumstances, where they both weren’t using the bond between them, it wouldn’t have been a strong enough pulse of emotion for him to note.

There you are, he purred in satisfaction at the meanest hint of Godric’s true self peeking out from under his deadening ennui.  You’re not as dead to the world as you might believe, brother.

“Nýfædd vampýra varð munaðarlaus á mínu yfirráðasvæði. [A newborn vampire was orphaned in my territory.]” Erik sketched out the vague edges of the situation for Godric, dancing on the line between withholding information and not wishing to reveal too much thereby snuffing out Godric’s budding intrigue over what Erik has gotten himself involved in this time.  “Ég hef tekið hana í umsjá mína á meðan að ég leita af réttum bakhjarli. Hins vegar, þá virðist hún vera mjög efnileg. Áður en ég afhendi hana veikari ættlegg, vil ég fá álit þitt á henni, skapari minn.”

[I have taken them into my care while I search for a proper sponsor.  However, they show promise.  Before I give them over to a lesser bloodline, I wish to have your opinion on them, my Maker.]

The pause from Godric as he processed the implications behind Erik’s request was short from a human perspective, but more than enough for a vampire as old and cunning as Godric to have examined it from every angle he could think of.

That it also allowed Erik a moment’s reprieve to wallow - discreetly - in the sensation of Stiles bringing herself to a second peak before her want finally ebbed away, was good timing as even with his tie to her being carefully separated from the portion of himself speaking to his Maker, she was…distracting, in the totality of her pleasure.

Oh, the rewards of winning her into his bed would be great indeed.

That his gratification must-needs be delayed would only make the outcome all the sweeter for the building anticipation.

Through his true maker/progeny bond with Godric that had been rendered unbreakable by centuries of loyalty and love between them hand-in-hand with sharing themselves completely: blood, mind, and body; Erik could feel Godric twisting and turning Erik’s words over and over as well as thinking through the implications on every level.  Personal, within their bloodline, within their territories, to the greater hierarchy of vampires and the supernatural world.

“Lofarðu? [Promise?]” Godric pressed for more information.

He carefully guarded any hint of exasperation over his progeny’s timing from crossing their bond.  Godric would always have room in his unlife for Erik, no matter what it was he needed.  Always had, always would.  Mere decades of distance between them was nothing compared to a thousand years of love and loyalty.  Still.  In this instance his timing could have been better - and hopefully it wasn’t because he liked the turn of this one’s face or form.

Godric would give his progeny anything he wanted - and had proven that without fail, even to the point of turning Nora and taking her as his progeny despite feeling a lack of pull to her - simply because Erik wished it.

It was a devotion that his Viking repaid tenfold and without question or hesitation.

Had the implied wish for either Godric to come visit Erik’s territory or Erik to come to his in order for Godric to meet and inspect this new vampire for potential adoption come at a different time, he wouldn’t be hesitating now either.  But.  With the murder of three high-ranking members of the Fellowship of the Sun several days before, despite the overwhelming evidence that it was a crime carried out by humans, Dallas was in an uproar.

He could not leave, and his former discourse with the church had fallen into disarray - hardly helped by the likes of Nan Flanagan with the AVL provoking Reverend Theodore Newlin on prime-time television over the death of his son.

Dallas was a war zone ready to erupt into violence at the slightest provocation.

Godric could neither leave it in the hands of his underlings to manage - underlings who wouldn’t have the power to hold off the more high-handed demands of the AVL - nor would he willingly bring his progeny into such a mess that wasn’t of Erik’s making.

For his part, Erik was a bit surprised that Godric pressed the matter, but also not - even humans would have to be living under a rock to be unaware of what was going on in Dallas at the moment.

The timing was bad, Erik could admit, but there wasn’t much choice for it.

His pull to her was strong and only growing stronger.  Erik was an old vampire, but he was still a vampire.  He could only resist his inner predator that wanted to take and have for so long without either casting her away or bringing her into his retinue fully.

“Hún varð munaðarlaus, daginn eftir fyrstu uppreisnina sína. Hún náði ekki einu sinni að eyða tuttugu og fjórir klukkutímum með skapara sínum áður en hann var drepinn af manneskju. Síðan lifði hún af í næstum heila viku, án teljandi skaða. Hún er sannur lifandi.”

[She was orphaned the day after her first Rising.  Not even twenty-four hours with her Maker before he was killed by a human.  Then she survived almost a week on her own, none the worse for wear.  She is a survivor.]

Erik left out the rest, the details about Stiles Hale that he knew would be like an irresistible lure to his Maker’s attention.  That she was beautiful, that she smelled like sunshine.  Her intelligence and strength of will.  The self-control that was impressive in such a young and unguided newborn.

As a survivor himself, Godric had always approved of those who weren’t merely content to follow after those stronger than themselves or riding coattails.

Then he went in for the kill as he felt Godric’s curiosity ripen: “Hann hafði ekki einu sinni kennt henni að nærast. [He hadn't even taught her to feed.]”

This time the spike of interest was strong enough that Erik knew he would’ve felt it whether he was actively searching for it or not.

Gotcha.

Godric debated for a moment, running the logistics even as he rolled his eyes over the smug satisfaction he felt that Erik wasn’t even trying to hide.  Yes, yes, his Viking was so very clever.  Honestly.  If his childe had wanted him to come visit there was no need for such subterfuge.

Erik and his games, though Godric couldn’t deny that the playfulness his progeny was capable of was one of the traits that had drawn him to the powerful warrior all those centuries ago along with his beauty and battle prowess.

The Viking could no more refrain from playing games than Godric could kill the hunter inside him, they were indelible traits that carried over from their human selves and would never fade until they met their True Deaths.

“Ég kem til þín eftir viku. [In a week, I shall come to you.]”   Godric decided, as it would give him enough time to diffuse - or dispose of - the worst hotheads in his territory so that his second wouldn’t struggle unnecessarily to keep control without him.  “Þá sjáum við hversu efnileg þessi nýfædda vampýra er. [Then we shall see how promising this newborn vampire is.]”

“Já, meistari. Svæði fimm mun vera tilbúið að taka á móti þér. [Yes, Master.  Area Five will be ready to welcome you.]”

“Um það efast ég ekki. Þangað til, sonur minn. [Of that, I have no doubt.  Until then, my son.]”

“Þangað til, bróðir minn. [Until then, my brother.]”


When she was finished - in more than one way - with dealing with the results of drinking Erik Northman’s blood, Stiles stepped out of the massive steam shower that was large enough to host an orgy, wrapping a thick and fluffy towel in pristine white around her body and then twisting another up onto her head to contain her locks.

She zipped through brushing her teeth, having to pause and concentrate a moment before she got her fangs to drop now that she was calm, then rinsed out the toothbrush she’d found sealed along with other toiletries in the under sink cabinet before doing the same with the now-empty thermos.

Small tasks knocked out, she followed the trails of Erik’s scent back out into the bedroom and over to the walk-in-closet.

A small smile that she couldn’t help twitched up the corners of her mouth as Stiles opened the door to reveal a floor-length mirror on the other side, as well as a small selection of clothes and shoes - including her clothes and heels that she’d kicked off and set against the bedroom wall before dying for the day.

She tracked Erik’s scent over to one section of the bank of drawers built into the right-hand wall that was shared with the en-suite bathroom, pulling open the three drawers marked with his scent one by one and rolling her eyes at the contents.  He may be taking mentoring her seriously - at least from what she could tell - but he was still Erik Northman.  Instead of anything approaching sensible undergarments, he’d apparently had his dayman either purchase or pick up an order Erik himself had made of nothing but scraps of silk and lace.

Too bad for Erik, but the wordless taunt was useless on her: even before rising as a vampire she didn’t have a modest bone in her body.

Years of public school and gym locker rooms would do that, and even if they hadn’t, between Malia and a few other loves with a hefty exhibition streak, Stiles had learned a long time ago to refuse to blush if at all possible.

A glance at the tags had her reluctantly impressed over his eye if nothing else - though she wasn’t about to turn up her nose at him spoiling her with La Perla, even if it was more for his own prurient interest than any real regard for her - as they were exactly her size.  Though it could also have been Pam with the good eye for sizing based on visual estimation alone.  Without questioning the pair she’d never know - and given the givens, she wasn’t about to give Erik the satisfaction.

Her own scent led her to the labeled laundry sorter tucked into one corner - but instead of the standard “whites, darks, colors” system she was used to, this one had a very vampire twist to it.  “Dry Clean” “Blood-stained” “Ruined” and “Launder” wasn’t quite what she was used to.  Though she also couldn’t say she was surprised either.

Erik’s taste in lingerie was about what she’d expected: all black and red.  Cliched, but standard.  Men.  Pretty much every male she’d ever dated had been the same, though she couldn’t lie and say that the women were immune to the way red looked against her creamy skin either.

Stiles shimmied into a pair of cheeky hipsters that were more lace than actual fabric and the matching plunge bra that made her already fantastic breasts turn show-stopping before hiding the lingerie beneath a plain v-neck silk t-shirt in blood red and a pair of low-rise jeans.  For all that the clothes were simple, they were well-made and designer based on the labels.  Not bad, if not tailored or bespoke.

She finished the look with her own heels, then pulled her hair up into a sleek high-ponytail.

Turning to stare at her reflection, Stiles gave herself a quick mental pep-talk then went in search of Erik, pausing only a moment to make the bed at vampire speed and snag her wallet.

Exiting the room, she heard his voice above her without even having to search with her new-and-improved hearing, and she sent a speculative look at the now-closed bedroom door.

That was some damn-good soundproofing.

But then: vampires.

Even if Erik rarely had guests in his home, which based on the lack of other scents that she could pick up now that she was looking seemed to be the case, soundproofing would likely be invaluable for a species with such heightened senses as she knew from running with the pack.

Good to know that vampires were on the same scale of auditory acuity.

It would give her a frame of reference for how far to go to get out of earshot or how quiet she could have to be if she wanted to poke around without making it obvious.

Stiles located the kitchen on the ground floor first, dropping off the empty thermos in the sink, then sped up the stairs as half her attention took in the interior of the “day” spaces of the house with their natural wood and stone.  There were walls painted in light colors: pale blues and white with a very faint grey, mostly - but most of the walls and flooring were all natural wood and/or stone.  She liked it, even if it, much the same as the below-ground rooms, wasn’t what she expected being neither totally modern nor a more rustic style but something balanced between the two.

“Come in, Stiles.”  Erik called for her without raising his voice as she hit the top of the stairs, Stiles turning towards the left-hand hallway that broke off from the large loft space that looked to her to make up the majority of the second floor.

As she entered his office, Erik hid the urge to smirk in triumph as he smelled himself both on and in her.  Showering with the specialty products that stripped away the scents they picked up throughout the night simply from moving through the world around them had taken away the traces of his scent on her from the previous night.  Only as he’d personally handled each of the items he’d ordered to see her provided for until another option was utilized, a small - if faint - hint of him was carried by the clothing and transferred to her skin.

Along with the scent he knew well of silk, his mind feasting on fantastical images of what she must look like with his chosen garments caressing her beautiful body without the hindrance of her outer layers in the way.

His pride was nearly purring with satisfaction to see this beautiful creature he’d taken into his care wearing tokens of his provision.

Even though she’d availed herself of the simplest options of the clothes from the boutique he frequented in New Orleans that his dayman had picked up and delivered before sunset, she was glowing with her new status and natural loveliness.

And those heels Stiles clearly favored despite having other - and more expensive - options that he’d purchased for her were giving him nothing but ideas.

Testing her state of mind through his blood-tie, he noted that she was a mixture of amused and exasperated at his presumption, but not angry, irritated, or even offended as he’d halfway expected.  Interesting.  If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was intentionally reacting contrary to his assumptions.

“Your new documents,” he moved with full speed as he grabbed the folder that Bobby had left along with the clothes and shoes and placed it on the desk, Stiles speeding over and taking a seat before picking it up and flipping through it.  “Identification, debit card for your new account at a supe-run bank with the funds from your human accounts, and a credit card linked to one of mine for your use so long as you’re in my care - and all in your chosen name.”

That was all in line with what they’d already discussed, so she just nodded distractedly for the first two points, then looked up at him in question at the last addition.

“As if you were my own progeny.”  Erik reminded Stiles of his pledge so long as she was in his care.  He reached out and tapped the platinum American Express card with her name on it pointedly.  “Until Pamela had built wealth of her own, she relied on my funds,” he huffed a little.  “Though back then it was a case of cash in hand and gold rather than lines of credit and electronic transfers.”

“What’s the limit?”  Stiles asked instead of fighting a losing battle, flipping open the tooled leather wallet she’d purchased in Dallas to slip the new cards into place, having already given over the old ones to Erik for him to reference while processing the change over from her human life to her vampire one.

She knew what high-handed rich assholes were like when it came to shit like that - fuck, she’d married and divorced a prime example.

Stiles would rather save her energy for a fight worth winning instead of in an effort of futility.

“Ten thousand a day.”  Erik told her nonchalantly, then added: “but when Pam takes you shopping tomorrow evening, she’ll be using my card instead of yours.  Ah,” he held up a finger and arched a brow when she frowned and opened her mouth as if to argue.  “You’ll be shopping for your Fangtasia wardrobe as you’ll be spending much time there with us.  And unless I have seriously misjudged you, Ms. Hale, I doubt you have appropriate attire to meet the staff dress code.”

Stiles grumbled a little under her breath but conceded the point.

From a certain angle, it could even be considered a business expense rather than a personal one.

That didn’t mean she was entirely comfortable with Erik acting the wealthy patron as given the power dynamics in play it gave sugar daddy implications, but at the end of the day: it was what it was.

Rich bastard’s gonna rich.

It wasn’t as if she had any evidence that he wasn’t simply acting as a proper stand-in for a Maker, Bill Compton wasn’t exactly a sterling example, and everything she knew about Erik himself said that he’d always been quite indulgent towards Pam unless she tried to openly buck his authority or wishes.

“If that’s tomorrow, what are we doing tonight?”  She asked, changing the subject from the sticky one of money.

“Tying up the rest of your loose ends.”  Erik told her as he rose, waving for her to join him as he sped out of the office and led the way down to the garage.  “We’re going to Bon Temps.”


 

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Seven: Home Sweet Home

Stiles had frozen for a split second as the words “Bon Temps” dripped out from between Erik’s lips, then rushed after him, catching up as he stood in front of an open lockbox hanging on the wall that he’d opened to show an array of car keys.

Blinking at how many there were, Stiles frowned and then turned back to the garage, noticing for the first time that it extended far underground in the opposite direction from the basement living area - likely hiding a good portion of the escape tunnel along with housing Erik’s car collection.

Taking a real good look at the options while Erik was deciding, she offered up: “Might wanna take that SUV,” she warned him.  “The roads in Bon Temps aren’t exactly in the best shape.”

Erik gave her a considering look, then snapped up the keys to the Range Rover.  It wouldn’t fit in any better than one of his sports cars, but if she was right it would manage sub-par conditions without taking damage like his ‘vette.  And given that he’d flown the handful of times he’d had to go take care of problems or check in on his people in the more rural areas of his territory, he’d have to trust her judgment in this case.

“We’ll go to the shifter’s bar first, as he was your former employer.”  Erik decided as he unlocked the black SUV, vamping over to the passenger door and opening it for her, then giving her a hand in.  “Before your former home.”

“I’ll need to call my brother and gran, then.”  Stiles told him.  “Otherwise they’ll find out I’m in town before we ever get there.”

Knowing Jason, he’d end up rushing to Merlotte’s and making a scene, the drama king, rather than wait patiently at the Stackhouse place.

Erik hummed, then pulled a new Iphone out of his pocket and handed it over to her, complete with a protective case in crimson and a screen protector that would help regulate the pressure her fingers applied to the touchscreen if she wasn’t careful about moderating her strength.

“For you,” Erik said as he pulled out of the garage.  “It has the important numbers already programmed: myself, Pam, the bar, and my Maker’s personal line.”  He instructed, eyes flicking a look at her before focusing on navigating towards Bon Temps at a speed that would be reckless if the driver didn’t have vampire reflexes.  “I expect you to use them if you have need.”

He didn’t know whether to find it refreshing that Stiles wasn’t fighting him on every little thing or disappointing.

He was looking forward to seeing what kind of fire she held inside, but other than when she was feeding, he’d yet to sense even a hint of it.

“We also need to discuss what happened during your first feeding.”  He broached the subject as Stiles started poking at the Iphone, refamiliarizing herself with the features before making the call to her brother.  “And how you want to deal with it in the future.”

Stiles shot him a knowing look from under her lashes, half amused and the rest of her a tangle of attraction and hesitance.  She knew his reputation.  She knew how he was about sex and women.  While she doubted he would treat her as disposable as he did his oh-so-charmingly titled “fuck-n-feeds” he also wasn’t the type to allow himself to grow attached if he could help it.

She also knew he was interested in her - at least to an extent - and was forming some kind of plot involving her or she was a monkey’s uncle.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t throw her away, or at least out of his bed, when he got bored of her.

All of which was at war with the reality of her own wants: here was a fucking gorgeous and sexy specimen of male, with a thousand years of experience with sex and how to wring pleasure out of his bedmates, and who wanted her as he’d never bothered to hide the way he looked at her even if he’d yet to act on it.

If she’d been oblivious to his attraction - and she wasn’t - or too naive to pick up on it, the contents of her lingerie drawer weren’t exactly discreet for all that they weren’t a direct proposition either.

“I’m sure you have a preferred way you’d like to handle it, Erik.”  Stiles sassed him shamelessly.  “That doesn’t mean my legs are gonna magically open for you, whether I’m in your care or not.”

“That has nothing to do with this,” Erik emphasized, shooting her a steady glance, waiting for her to nod in agreement before he looked back to the road.  “I’ve never been interested in having others in my bed out of anything but mutual desire, and I have no intention of starting now, understood?”

Yeah, she could see that, though the power and authority issue still had to be acknowledged regardless so she didn’t regret her statement.

“It needed to be clear, Erik,” she refused to apologize, but did clarify, figuring out on the fly how to make her own experiences when it came to sex and intimacy make sense through the lens of being the vampire-formerly-known-as-Sookie-Stackhouse.  “For my own sake, if nothing else.  I may not be the most experienced woman - or vampire,” she corrected when she noted his mouth opening to correct her.  “But with my telepathy I’ve seen all sorts of things over the years.  I’m no naive innocent.  I know sex can be about exerting authority or turned into a weapon.  I want nothing to do with those sorts of games.”

“You’re right,” he had to acknowledge that.  “Sex can be used that way.  There are some in the vampire hierarchy who revel in such things or demand sex as tribute from their underlings.  I’m not one of them, and neither is anyone in my bloodline.  So long as you’re under my protection, that is not a worry you will need to carry, Stiles.”

That if she chose to leave his protection and his territory, that such might not be the case anymore is an unfortunate and even distasteful reality but it was one that she needed to be aware of - and from her acceptance in the blood tie, she took the unspoken warning in the manner he intended it.

As a caution, not a threat.

She was a clever little thing, that much he was certain of, as she picked up nuances the way Pam picked up new pairs of shoes.

“If,” she stressed.  “We fall into bed, I want it agreed that it’s separate from everything else.  While I am aware of our differing power and status as vampires, in bed none of that matters to me.  I take partners to my bed, and I won’t be treated any other way.”

It wasn’t a demand.

It was a line in the sand.

Her no, you move, position.

“When,” Erik corrected her, all masculine assurance.  “I take you to bed, Stiles Hale, the last thing on your mind will be power or social position, lover.  Of that I can guarantee you.”

Stiles just gave him a challenging look, the snap-and-crackle of banked fire flaring between them flaring for a split-second before she pushed it back down.

Turning her attention back to the phone, she typed out the number to the Stackhouse place, impressed that the phone was able to keep up with her speed without jittering.

Must be vampire-hardened tech.

“Hello?”

“Hi Gran…”


Sam Merlotte turned his head towards the parking lot when he heard a strange rig pull in and park.  Bon Temps was a small town, not directly located on any major thoroughfare.  They didn’t get strangers very often.

Add in that Jason Stackhouse had pulled in not long before and parked his ass on one of Sam’s barstools with a direct view of the door, and Sam knew somethin’ was up.

Then the doors swung open, bringin’ with it a scent he was worried he’d never smell again, along with the tinge of death and vampire, and he felt all his worst fears come home to roost.

Aw hell, cher.

Just what did that asshole Compton do to you…?

“Sookie!”

Before anyone else could react to the sight - or even realize that there was anything to be seen - Jason’s shout was announcing it to the entire bar as the former star quarterback bolted up off’a the barstool and darted over to sweep the blonde bit of sunshine up into his arms and swing her around.

Payin’ no nevermind to the form that had sauntered in behind her and seemed content to watch while holdin’ up a bit of wall: none other than Area Five’s very own vampire Sheriff, Erik Northman, which took a bit of worry off of Sam’s shoulders all over again.

He’d never be happy that Sookie had clearly been turned - likely by Bill before he was killed by Rene.

Not with all the doors her turnin’ had shut between them before some of them could even ever really open.

But he supposed if she was gonna be a fanger, there were far worse ones than Northman for her to hang around with.

At least Northman kept things mostly calm in his territory.

It was better than some, and done without as much blood bein’ spilled in the process as most.

Gossip and whispered kicked up like a knocked over wasp nest, and before Sam could really move to talk to Sookie, Lafayette peeked out of the kitchen window to see what the fuss was about and came boltin’ on out, ignoring everything he was workin’ on in the process and leaving’ Big John hangin’.

Though Sam couldn’t rightly blame ‘im.

Most of Bon Temps had been convinced Bill Compton had killed Sookie, even after both Adele and Jason had suddenly gone real calm and quiet about things a few days after she “disappeared.”

Compton had done a good job with his glamour, Sam’d give him that, but that only held until he died - then people started askin’ questions when they realized no one had really seen hide nor hair of Sookie after she met the vampire.

Then having both a female vamp and a random human runnin’ ‘round town askin’ about her had really set the fox among the hens.

Sookie showin’ up vamp would confirm some’a those rumors, and refute the rest, but for the most part wasn’t gonna do anything to help endear the small town to the fang.

After all, if a sweet young thing like Sookie wasn’t safe from bein’ preyed upon - as the meanest would see it - or bein’ hurt on account of gettin’ involved with, as most would likely say, with vampires, then who would be?

Honestly, Sam wished he could burst the lot of their bubbles and tell ‘em they’re too boring and small-minded for fangers to take more than a passin’ interest in on account of the blood in their veins, but he knew better than to run his mouth in a small town if he wanted to stay in business.


Stiles let out a little giggle as no sooner than who had to be Lafayette snapped her up and spun her back around.

“Hookeh you’se Stackhouses are some dumb bitches.”  Lafayette burst out in sheer relief to see her standing upright and walking around, even if she was a bit cold to the touch.  “Disappearin’ on everyone like that, what the hell were you thinkin’ girl?”

She took a breath and went to answer, only to pause for a split second and dart her eyes over towards where Erik had straightened up and was watching Lafayette with a cold look on his face.

Aw shit.

True Blood.  Lafayette.  This would be before he’d gotten terrified out of his mind by Erik in regards to selling and dealing in vampire blood.

Fuck.

In the wake of worrying about everything else, she’d forgotten about that plotline.

Only as a vampire, she could smell that Lafayette had V in his system.  Old and faint: but there nonetheless.  The same with the smell of vampire on him.

Double fuck.

Stiles let Lafayette pull her back in for a hug and stared at Erik over his shoulder.  She liked him.  Thought that he was one of the bravest characters she’d ever read or watched on TV.  And that was before she heard his heart stutter as he must have caught onto the fact that she wasn’t breathing and what that meant but kept holding onto her anyway.

Later, she mouthed, expression silently pleading.

Erik studied her for a long moment, then gave the faintest dip of his head.  Too small for anyone but another vampire to catch.  He’d wait.  The V-user was clearly important to Stiles, and if the way his scent had spiked with fear but then immediately faded as he continued to hold onto her, she was important to him.

Close friends, according to the information his people had gathered, as the V-user matched Bobby’s description of Lafayette Reynolds - though being merely human, his dayman hadn’t noticed the signs of V-use on the colorful (in both dress and manner) man.

“C’mon, Lala.”  Stiles twisted them around and ushered him over to the bar, where she perched with Lafayette on one side of her and Jason on the other, Sam coming around to watch the rest of the semi-full restaurant as she did so.  “And I’ll tell you what happened…”


She left pieces out, of course.

Erik had been firm with her on the ride over what could be shared with non-vampires about the Turning and the circumstances behind Stiles’s case.

Overall though, she told them the facts: the Rattray’s almost killing her, Bill turning her then being killed himself, and her seeking out help after she’d been left alone as a newborn.

Short, simple, and concise without giving away any vampire secrets or anything that would make them look worse than the majority of Bon Temps already thought of them.

“Guess that means I really am short a waitress now huh, cher?”  Sam commented and broke the ice of the silence that had fallen over Merlotte’s as she spoke.

“I guess so.”  She admitted.

“I always knew the Ratts were trash,” Lafayette’s voice was low and mean with temper, dark eyes snapping.  “I’m glad you’re still ‘round honey chile.”  He told her, pulling her into his side and giving her a kiss to her head.  “Real glad, an’ that ain’t ever gonna change even if your sweet self be livin’ it up in Shreveport now wit’ that fine ass motherfucka,” he tilted his head with a teasing grin towards the tall drink’a water holdin’ up the wall like he was standin’ guard over Ms. Sunshine.

Stiles glanced around the bar, but no one else seemed inclined to add anything - though their minds were sayin’ plenty.

“...knew nothin’ good would come of hangin’ around fangers…”

“Poor Adele, first one goes missin’ now the other’s dead…”

“Knew those Stackhouses were no good, she’d a been better off dead…”

“What kinda god fearin’ girl wouldn’t go out an’ meet the sun…”

Oh, the “good” people of Bon Temps had plenty to say alright, they were just too afraid to say it to her face.

“Are you gonna come with us to Gran’s, Jase?”  She asked after one last hug from Lala before he went back to his kitchen and Sam rounded the bar as it seemed they were safe from an imminent explosion.

“Course.”  He shrugged, then stood, offering her his arm like the gentleman their grandmother had raised them to be.  “She’s waitin’ on ya.”

That as soon as the swinging doors whispered shut behind the trio, the noise in the bar kicked into an uproar, surprised exactly no one.


“About the user…”

“I went looking to see what was going on with him.”  She admitted, wanting to double-check before she tried to sell Erik a load of bullshit and ended up screwing both herself and Lafayette over.  “It’s complicated but he’s not a drainer like the Ratts were and not a real danger to anyone but himself.  I’ll explain it all later.”

Erik shot her a look.   “That better be one hell of an explanation, lover.”  He warned her.  “Desecration of the blood is a death offense to our kind.”

“It is.”

“We’ll see.”


Erik while busy plotting about what he was going to do about the little V-user they’d found among his new protege’s friends, found himself thankful that she’d suggested the Range Rover as she’d been right: the drive leading up to a farmhouse that’d seen better days was more pothole than gravel.

It would’ve torn the shit out of the undercarriage of most of his favored vehicles.

On the porch of the old house was a stately older woman in a pressed dress and pearls, her white hair smoothed back and tidy, and in the rearview mirror came the flash of headlights as Stiles’s brother caught up to them.

Erik hung back, observing as first Stiles and then her brother approached and were embraced by the Stackhouse Matriarch who both grandchildren referred to as “Gran.”

There was love there, even a vampire as cynical as Erik could see it, and it seemed both of Stiles’s remaining close family members were of the type to support their kin no matter the turns their lives - or unlife, in Stiles’s case - made.  It was surprising.  A rare quality for Erik to find among breathers, and Stiles seemed to know several.

Generally, vampires had a policy of complete separation between the vampire and the human they once were for newborns.  They were volatile.  A bundle of instincts on a hair trigger.  As more than one Maker had come to learn over the years, there was nothing more likely to trigger their progeny into a feral episode than those who knew them when they were human.

Though the night was young yet: there might yet be a human in this decrepit armpit of a town that could set Stiles off and provide him with some much-needed entertainment.

“Gran,” Erik nodded at the white-haired elder as the small family’s attention turned to him, Stiles gesturing towards his form as she faced her grandmother the same way she seemed to face everything: head-on.  “This is the Sheriff of this area for my kind: Erik Northman.  Sheriff Northman, this is Adele Stackhouse, the Stackhouse matriarch.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Stackhouse,” Erik shot the elderly woman his most charming smile, checking a hint from his blood-tie to Stiles of a hint of heat that on a human likely would’ve been a blush at the sight of it.  “Your granddaughter is a credit to you.”

“Why thank you, Sheriff Northman,” the elder blushed and offered her hand, which Erik took in a rare consideration towards breather sensibilities.  “I’m much obliged to you for watchin’ over her now that there’s been that unfortunate business with the late Mr. Compton.”

Erik felt his smile stretch into a genuine grin at the woman’s turn of phrase.

“Please,” the elder turned and gestured for them all to follow her inside.  “Won’t you come in?  We have Tru Blood and a bit of the bagged that Mr. Compton left with Sookie to offer.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Stackhouse,” Erik worked at charming the woman completely as Stiles shot him an amused look and her brother looked like he’d been slapped by a wet fish.  He also noted and didn’t speak of Stiles not correcting them in regards to her chosen name, anymore than she’d done at the shifter’s bar.  She well and truly meant to draw a line between her human life - and self - and that of her vampire.  Interesting.

“I insist, Sheriff.”  Adele persisted.  “And as I suspect askin’ you to call me Gran the way everyone does would be laughable, it’s Adele.”

“Well Adele, then I must insist on Erik.”  He smoothly vamped forward and held the door for the grand old lady.  “And an AB- Tru Blood will have me well seen to, thank you.”

“Very good,” Adele beamed, then shot her grandson a commanding glance, Jason grumbling under his breath but moving towards the kitchen with good grace, as she led the vampire sheriff - and wasn’t that a wonder? - over to the living room.  “Sookie, why don’t you go pack?”  She ordered as a suggestion.  “We’ll keep your Sheriff company.”

Erik filed away the effect as he watched Stiles actually obey the elderly woman without so much as a hint that she was bothered at the iron fist in a silk glove treatment.

Though, granted: he didn’t have more than two decades of history with the newborn to have gained the same sort of respect and compliance as her very human grandmother.

Which was an interesting piece of information to add to the puzzle that was Stiles Hale: whatever it was that she and her brother had inherited that made them smell delectable, it wasn’t from Adele.

From the lingering traces in the house surrounding him alone, he could tell that Stiles’s scent had once been truly remarkable, far more so than Jason, or the hints of sweetness and sunshine that had persisted after her turning.

“Now, tell me Erik,” Adele leaned forward slightly with eagerness after Jason had brought them all refreshments: a Tru Blood for the sheriff and ice-cold sweet tea for them.  “You wouldn’t have been around durin’ the Civil War, would you…?”


Stiles barely held in the urge to snicker at the baited trap that Erik had just blithely wandered into as she rushed upstairs to pack up a few things and left him to the “tender” mercy of Adele Stackhouse neé Hale.

Hah.

Sucker.


Stiles stared around the remnants of a lost life for a long moment, capturing it in her mind, then she started to move.

In black trash bags she’d snagged from under the kitchen sink, she tossed all the clothes that’d belonged to Sookie that she knew she’d never be able to bring herself to wear.  The infamous red-and-white sundresses.  Tiny black shorts she’d worn as part of her uniform at Merlotte’s.  A few twin-sets and church dresses that were sweet but too twee for her taste.

Together with the toiletries from the bathroom, Sookie’s undergarments and nightclothes, and all but one pair of shoes, it all went, Stiles zipping back and forth between the bedroom and the ‘81 Honda Civic still parked in the drive, both to go to a shelter in Monroe.

Over Stiles’s staked body would Erik allow a car like that around him, and if she wasn’t going to need it then donating it at least helped lift a little of the lingering guilt she felt over her being here and Sookie being gone.

She left a couple changes of clothes and underwear, along with the plain black Converse chucks that had belonged to Sookie in the closet.

Just in case.

Then in a clean dufflebag she’d bought during her shopping trip to Wal Mart, she packed up the small amount of new clothes and canvas slip-on shoes she’d used part of Bill’s money on, the laptop and charger, and the scant amount of makeup and personal care items that were truly hers.

Glancing around the room she checked to make sure she got everything she intended to take with her - given Erik’s shown tendency to wander around her guest room while she slept, she wasn’t going to risk bringing the silver, not that she thought having it would do her any good against a vampire as old and fast as Erik Northman.

Pam, maybe.

But not Erik.

A flash of sky blue and sunny yellow caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, and she reached out before she could really help herself or kill the impulse.  It was one of the crocheted afghans that’d been sitting on the window seat, just waiting for someone to come and cuddle up under it.  With a black center, yellow ring, and blue border, it was worked to look like a giant sunflower against the sky.

Thinking of the beautiful but not personal room back at Erik’s she found herself tucking the blanket in on top of everything else, unable to force herself to leave it behind.

With quick hands, before she could spiral or start second-and-third guessing herself, she zipped the duffle closed and slung the strap over her shoulder, vamping down the stairs to find Erik still engaged with entertaining Adele while Jason watched with a wary expression.

Poor kid.

He was probably never going to get over losing his sister to Bill Compton’s fangs, even with a placeholder up and walking around.

It would never be the same, and Jason knew it even if he never admitted it.

Stiles had just set down the duffle next to Erik’s seat, when she found her head turning at the sound of a car barrelling up the drive - and the feel of an angry mind projecting all-but-shouting at her.

“Who is it?”  Erik asked, seeing the expression wash over Stiles’s lovely face and feeling the dread rising inside of her.  “A problem?”

“Worse,” Stiles shot Adele and Jason a look.   “It’s Tara.”


Tara was as mad as two cats stuck in a one-cat sack.

First, her best friend Sookie ups and decides: hey, I think vampires are just swell, and even though they're dead fuckers and dangerous, and like to eat people, I’m gonna befriend the first one I see.

Then, to compound the utter stupidity that only a Stackhouse could get involved in, she went an’ saved that dead bastard Compton from the Rattrays.

Which: fine.

That’s just Sook.  Too damn nosy for her own good and never learned to leave well enough alone.  She showed up for work the next day and everything seemed like it would go back to normal with the vampire blip over and done with.

Only…that was the last time anyone but the Stackhouses themselves remembered actually seeing Sookie with their own eyes.

Oh, there were rumors.

People sayin’ that she was takin’ a few days off, or felt under the weather, or had even driven off to spend time in Monroe with her Aunt Linda.

But no one knew, until suddenly everyone did after Compton’s house got torched and everyone seemed to wake up at once and realize they hadn’t seen Sookie Stackhouse for days and that the last time anyone did was Sam who coulda sworn that Compton had taken off with her after the Rattrays beat her almost to death.

Not that he was tellin’ just anyone that.

Between Tara and Lafayette though, they’d gotten it out of ‘im, even if the Stackhouses themselves had closed ranks against everyone else.

Even Tara, who prior to that had always been made to feel like family.

Guess that just went to show how deep that sentiment truly ran if they could shut her out during such a time.

Now, addin’ insult to injury, she didn’t even hear that Sook was back and with a big ass motherfucker followin’ her around Merlotte’s like some kinda guard or somethin’ from Jason, or Lafayette, or even Sam but from that fuckin’ loudmouthed gossip Arlene when Tara came into Merlotte’s for a drink.

Tara gave both Sam and Lala the cussin’ out of a lifetime for not sayin’ a damn word to her, then lit out for the Stackhouse place before either one could try’n stop her.

The shady ass fuckers.

She’d get them back, just wait an’ see: but first she had a bone or a hundred to pick with sweet, butter-wouldn’t-melt, Ms. Sookie Stackhouse.

You know: the one that was supposed to be her best friend but that couldn’t even be bothered to tell her she was up and runnin’ around.

Dead.

If Arlene wasn’t on some bullshit, Sookie was fucking dead, but still kickin’ as a fuckin’ fanger.

The very thought of it made her stomach turn.

Still, there was only one way to find out if Arlene was bullshittin’ her or if Sookie really had been turned - and that was to track the heifer down and get it outta her own damn self.

As soon as she tore through the front door of the house and into Ms. Adele’s parlor, Tara knew it was true.  It was all true.  Sook was dead.  An’ some undead thing was wearin’ her body around like a pretty blonde suit.

“Well hell Tara, what do ya really think?”  Stiles snorted, rolling her eyes at the pure prejudice all but pouring out of Tara’s mind and fouling up the air.  For a woman who’d only met Bill Compton prior, she sure as hell had a pretty damn solid opinion about what she thought of “Sookie” being turned.  “Would you have rathered that Bill left me to die?”  Her tone was pure acid.

Erik shifted slightly, intentionally catching her attention, but she gestured vamp-fast with the hand nearest for him to wait.

Not that he minded, this whole trip while rancid with breathers had been educational about the baby vamp - which was the whole reason he was present instead of sending Pam or another underling to ensure Stiles didn’t go off and start nibbling on the populace.

Or as he felt her anger light up bright and fiery inside of her, almost reveling in the strength of it, so different in its purity than the emotions Erik was dealing with, keeping her from snapping and tearing a mouthy bloodbag’s head off.

“Tara Mae.”  Adele scolded the young woman sternly.  “Say it isn’t so.”

“She can’t.”  Stiles countered immediately as Tara floundered, finding herself on the backfoot with a version of her “friend” that was willing to snap back instead of just taking the woman’s temper.  “She means it.”

“And what if I do?!”  Tara relocated her tongue and doubled-down, her temper flaring brighter as Sookie plucked her worst thoughts right out of her head - she fucking hated it when she did that, and Sookie knew it too.  “My friend is dead.   All you are is some damn fanger who looks like her!”

“That’s a lot of fear and resentment to carry around, Tara.”  Stiles told her honestly, going for the other woman’s weak spot.  She could hear it all right there in Tara’s head: she really did mean it, and now that she’d called her out on it, she was only going to dig in her teeth, like a dog with a bone.  “If you’re not careful, it’s gonna get you in trouble.”

“Don’t you do that!”   Tara shouted, tears of frustration springing to her eyes.  “Don’t you talk down to me and patronize me like you’re so damn perfect, Sookie Stackhouse!”  It was bad enough before.  Now?  As a fuckin’ vampire?  It was nothin’ less than fuckin’ infuriatin’ was what it was.

“I’m not.”  Stiles replied, tilted her head, every inch of her the collected predator rather than the almost human-warm person she’d been most of the night.  “I’m the last person to act like I’m perfect.  But I’m allowed to be disappointed when I find out that my oldest friend would have rathered I’d be beaten to death and left to bleed out or been too ashamed over what was done to me to live with it and chosen to meet the sun.”  She didn’t give an inch.  “I’m allowed to be angry, and upset.  What I’m not allowed to do is attack you for it, even if I think you deserve an ass whoopin’ for being so small-minded and bitter.”

Which meant, as Stiles was not always a turn-the-other-cheek type like the Sookie, that she was going to use her words to make Tara regret being a bigot.

It wasn’t that she didn’t feel for her.  She did.  Tara had had a hard childhood and felt stuck in a small (and small-minded) Louisiana town.  Now she felt like she’d lost her best friend.  She had sympathy for the loss that Tara was feeling, but not for the ugliness of wishing her friend was dead - especially as, though Tara didn’t know it, Sookie had died at the hands of Bill and the Rattrays.

“Not precisely.”  Erik spoke up for the first time, his voice too soft and fast for the breathers to pick up.  Images of Stiles in a rage dancing through his mind.  She would be glorious to behold in a fight.  “You could, in fact, kick this ungrateful bloodbag’s ass.  We would simply have to glamour the humans afterward.”

Stiles shot him an exasperated little look.  Not helpful, Erik.

“Whatever,” Tara dismissed Sookie, turning back around and storming away, not able to tolerate bein’ around bloodsuckers for another fuckin’ moment.  “My friend is dead.   You’re just the thing walkin’ around wearin’ her face.”


“I’m so sorry you had to hear such ugliness in my home, Sheriff,” Adele immediately moved to apologize as the slamming of the door resounded behind Tara.  “And that you had to hear it at all, Sookie.  Don’t you believe her now.”  Adele demanded of her granddaughter.  “There ain’t a thing wrong with you and we’re happy you survived, even as we regret that you were put in that position in the first place.  Right Jason?”

“Too right, Gran,” Jason was quick to nod, his head turning from where he was scowling after Tara’s furious ass.  “Any sister in any condition is better than no sister at all.  Tara don’ know what she’s talkin’ ‘bout.”


“Interesting humans, your family.”  Erik commented after they’d taken their own leave and Stiles had handed over the license to her Civic for Jason to handle making the donation for her before climbing into the Rover, Erik tossing the one bag she was taking into the backseat.  “Such acceptance is rare.”

“They’re good people.”  Stiles agreed easily.  “Gran’s a bit old-fashioned, and Jase’s a horndog, but they’re good at heart.”

“Now.”  He shot her a demanding glare.  “Your V-user friend.  Explain.”


 

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Eight: Playing a Role

Stiles was quick to explain both what she knew because of the story line and what she’d gleaned from Lafayette himself to Erik, laying out the bare facts.

Which was one of her main strategies for dealing with the Viking if she was being honest: making matters as simple as possible to limit the amount of wiggle room he had to either go digging for more information or to maneuver her to his liking.

It helped that Lafayette’s situation was one that could be laid out in a linear manner: his mother’s mental illness and the expense of keeping her in a home, his struggle to make ends meet, then falling into the arrangement with “Eddie” trading sex for blood as he was already a sex worker and occasional drug dealer.

Lafayette Reynolds would be the first person to admit that he wasn’t a good person, but he was a survivor.  Given all the risk involved, without the situation of trying to care for his mother, he never would’ve fallen so far down the sinkhole of mingling sex work and drug dealing.  Let alone adding V-using and dealing into the mix.

“Those are reasons.”  Erik could see that Stiles had sympathies for the V-dealer, but that didn’t lessen his offenses against their kind.   Which was a mindset that she was going to need to learn if she truly meant to survive.  Their own first, last, and always.  Their bloodline, their nest, their territory, their kind - then everyone else.  “They do not pardon his offense.  That no vampires have been harmed in his trade is the only reason in turn that I’m not taking him into custody immediately for punishment.”

As it was, he’d have to come up with a fitting sentence and punishment for Eddie - who was the next best thing to a waste of a Turning, and that was a prospect that failed to fill him with joy.

Punishing those under his protection as Sheriff was usually a chore and at times filled him with vindictive pleasure, but with soft younglings like Eddie it could feel more like picking wings off a fly for sport.

In this case it had to be done: offenses against the blood were not a crime he was prepared to overlook.

The same went for Stiles’s friend, as if he couldn’t pardon one of his own, he wasn’t going to pardon a breather for taking part in the same crime.

“What if he gave you his entire network?”  She asked, trying to think of ways to work around the “chaining Lafayette up in the basement for weeks in his own filth and torturing him” bit.  “Dealers, suppliers, users, the works.  I know he has contacts outside of Renard Parish, even outside state lines.”

When Erik whipped his head around to stare at her in shock at the implied reach that a single dealer from Bon Temps could have, she just shrugged.

“Lafayette has always been good at making connections.”

“Hmm.”  Erik mused, turning back to the road as the Range Rover ate up the miles under his direction.  “There may be a way.  I will have to think on it.”

Stiles’s smile was brilliant.

“However,” he continued, shooting her a warning look.  “It would remain between us three, if it became public knowledge I would have to punish him regardless, and it would mean that you owe me, Stiles.”

“If it keeps one of the best people in my life out of chains, I can agree to that Erik.”  She wasn’t comfortable agreeing to owing Erik Northman a favor outside of the mere fact of being under his protection.  But for Lafayette, she’d do it anyway.

“Then I’ll think on it and inform you when I’ve made a decision.”  He closed the conversation about the V-user, changing the subject.  “Your control is exemplary for a newborn, lover.  Hardly any flare ups and nothing you weren’t able to handle without intervention.”

Stiles glanced at his profile, then went back to staring out the window, deciding how she wanted to respond.

“Most of the time, since Rising, I don’t feel connected to whoever Sookie Stackhouse was before becomin’ vampire.”  She danced around the truth a bit, reframing her experience to fit within the framework of the world around her.  “I cannot go back to yesterday, for I was a different person then.”   She quoted.

“Lewis Carroll.”  Erik hummed, familiar with the sentiment.  It was one his Maker had espoused, Godric hanging on far more firmly to the years since he made Erik his progeny than those surrounding his own life and Turning.  He’d been different, but then…he’d lost much of his bonds to his life long before Godric found him dying on his funeral pyre.  “A fitting notion for a new vampire.”

“They love me,” she continued, speaking of the Stackhouses.  

She was a little confused about why Erik wasn’t shutting her down.  It seemed…un-Erik-like.  Unless it was for Godric, anyway.  More about solving problems than sitting around talking about them.  But hell.  If he was willing to listen to her get some of this shit off her chest and outta her head, she wasn’t gonna look the gift-vamp in the mouth.  

Transmigration was a mindfuck that she was mostly dealing with by not thinking too hard about it and just getting on with the situation in front of her.  It was interesting to her what came easily and what didn’t in the process.  She’d gotten used to being called Sookie by the Stackhouses before she set out to Dallas.  Hearing the same name over and over again would do that, she supposed, even if it never grew comfortable and she didn’t like it.

Being taller and learning to move in her new body had been a bit of a challenge.

Looking in the mirror still surprised her sometimes, much like the sound of her own voice.

Stiles knew that she wasn’t reacting to things the way she should.  Or felt she should.  She just didn’t know if it was from a lingering shock that refused to wear off, or because she’d changed species along with her identity that altered her reactions and potentially even thought-patterns.

“But I understand even if they don’t that we’re never goin’ back to the way things were before.  And even if I could,” she admitted.  “Why would I want to?  Live in the root cellar, subsist on Tru Blood every night, and be ostracized by most of Bon Temps?”  She snorted.  “No thank you.  Their hearts are in the right place, but they’ll never really understand that they lost their granddaughter and sister when Bill put me in the ground and climbed in after me.”  She paused for a moment, shooting Erik a there-and-gone look, then said: “Him letting them know I’m a vampire, bringing me to Gran that first night?  It was a cruelty to them, one that I wouldn’t have forgiven unless he made me.”

Stiles wouldn’t go so far as to agree with Tara that she would’ve been better off dead than a vampire, but there was a reason why those Turned usually cut off all contact and formed an entirely new identity, even after the Revelation.

If it had been Sookie Stackhouse going through all this, she imagined the cognitive dissonance would have been hell to deal with.  Fighting both with new urges and powers, wants and instincts, on top of family drama?  Not to mention Bill.  It would’ve been a clusterfuck even worse than having her go through it in Sookie’s stead.

It helped that she didn’t have deep emotional bonds and connections to Bon Temps and the Stackhouses.  Stiles was able to be mostly rational.  She wasn’t buried under memories and warring instincts.

She was an interesting little thing.  Her mind worked in ways that Erik had never seen before.  At least not all at once and within one person.

The more he learned of her, the more smug he grew over his assumption being right: she would prove to be a formidable vampire.

Stiles had the correct temperament for it.

The right outlook.

He’d yet to see her inner predator come out to play, though he felt a glimpse of it earlier with that rude bloodbag, but he was certain she would be a glorious sight when she inevitably let loose of all that innate control.

Sweet but a little dim or “not right in the head” had been the consensus of Pam and Bobby’s reports on the formerly-missing newborn vamp.

Erik had known most people were idiots, but Bon Temps must be a special brand of stupid because the vampire sitting in his passenger seat was anything but mentally challenged.

If she hadn’t told him previously, it wouldn’t have been until the scene with the rude bloodbag that Stiles Hale was anything other than an abnormally controlled and rational baby vamp.  She was good at hiding her telepathy.  Or Turning had had an effect that made it easier to control, perhaps.

That was not the mark of a “dim” woman, even if her intelligence didn’t show in other ways prior to Turning.

The more he learned of her over these last two nights, the stronger he felt pulled towards her - which was a problem and a complication he didn’t need.

It was a good thing he’d already made arrangements for his Pamela to handle her the next night, he needed some distance to help keep the pull in check until his Maker arrived.

“If a clean break is impossible, you may want to consider a slow decay,” Erik suggested, as he would to any vampire who’d been tossed into such a situation by an idiotic or unworthy Maker.

“You mean wean them off of seeing me in person?”  Stiles hummed a little under her breath.  “Or putting a little distance between us?”

That was a pretty good solution, actually.  She liked the Stackhouses and didn’t want to hurt them, but she didn’t love them the way their Sookie had.  The less she was around, the less chance she’d cause them pain - one way or another - but with the situation as it was, a clean break wasn’t the best way to handle it.

Slow and steady might work better, Erik was right about that.  Less visits in person, defaulting to phone calls, then rare visits, then rare phone calls, and so on.  Until eventually she became more of a fond memory rather than an integral part of their lives.

It was workable.

She’d have to think about whether it was viable with how stubborn she knew the Stackhouses could be when she had some time to think it over in detail.

“I’ll think about it.”  She told him honestly.  “Thank you, Erik.”

He merely nodded, letting another of their comfortable silences fill the Rover, and soon enough they were pulling back up to his residence outside Shreveport to spend the rest of the night in and continuing her training.


“Well, aren’t you a scrumptious one?”

Stiles looked up from where she’d been waiting on Pam and tooling around on the internet using Bill’s former laptop, her mind going a million miles an hour as she took the time to sit and think over everything she’d learned since waking up undead.

Erik’s lessons the previous night had been what amounted to “Vampire 101” as she zipped around her room putting away her things and then practiced regulating her strength with oranges out on the back deck of the house.  Yeah.  Oranges.  He Twilighted her.  Because it was apparently true if she couldn’t hold fruit without bruising the flesh, let alone squashing them, then she wasn’t controlled enough to spend time alone out of the house.

So she’d spent more than an hour working on regulating her grip strength and ending up smelling like an Orange Julius stand while she was at it, as Erik lectured on everything from vampire laws, to their power structure, to the basic political bullshit Stiles needed to be aware of before she was introduced officially as his protege.

That sunset she’d woken to another thermos of blood, again spiked with Erik’s own, and a note that said Pam would arrive by nine to take her shopping.

Joy.

Stiles appreciated that apparently she’d proven herself not to be utterly stupid the night before since Erik was willing to leave her untended for a few hours.

After he’d been glued to her side since she walked into Fangtasia, she’d been starting to wonder.

As he’d also left her with an address to send any orders to for his dayman to pick up, she’d decided to entertain herself with a little unsupervised web shopping (and surfing) before Pam swooped in and tried to take over.

(If a large part of her shopping binge was at the Barnes & Noble website and not Victoria’s Secret like Pam walked in on, that was between her, her debit card, and the poor schmuck who had to haul the boxes from the book retailer to Erik’s house.)

“Hello again, Pam.”  She gently closed the screen of the laptop and rose to her feet to face the looming vampiress, not surprised to see the older woman - both in human and vampire years - looking like she’d stepped off the set of a Chanel lady’s suits runway in a pink tweed ensemble and beautiful pumps and not the Dominatrix Vampire Barbie getup from the other night.  “Erik said we’d be shopping tonight?”

Pam was a little put out with the sweet thing.  Not a jump in surprise.  Not an incredulous look at her outfit.  Not even a frown over the nickname.

Sugar was ruining all her fun and they’d barely even got started.

Still, she was beautiful enough she supposed, and when dressed right would become one hell of a draw at Fangtasia for the vermin.

There were worse ways to spend a rising than playing dress-up with a lovely baby vamp, and at least this one wasn’t an inch from feral or rude or high on delusions of power like so many new Turns were nowadays.

“You know how to work a pair of jeans, sugar.”  Pam drawled, dragging her gaze over Stiles’s second pair of tailored jeans - this time in a dark wash - with the same heels, before wrinkling her nose at the plain redneck-special white tank top that she’d tucked into the top of said-jeans.  “But you need work clothes and a wardrobe worthy of being under Erik’s protection if you plan on stickin’ around.”

“I have an idea about that, work-wise.”  Stiles said rather than give her the satisfaction of taking offense over the sneer at her plain white tank.  Cotton was cotton, and she didn’t see the point in spending tens or even hundreds of dollars on a plain tank top or tee shirt just to placate a label whore.  Work and formal wear was a different story, and she wasn’t sneering at designer clothes.  But sometimes snobbery was just snobbery.  “Did Erik tell you about my talent?”

“Telepath, right?”  Pam replied as she led the younger vampire out of the house and over to her hot-pink minivan.  “Except for vampires.”

“Any sapient being with brainwaves.”  Stiles explained a little.  “Which, yes, excludes other vampires.”  She hopped in and buckled up, well aware she was probably going to need the seat belt if Pam drove anything like Erik.  “Which in turn means I got a pretty good idea of how your clientele see you when I was at Fangtasia the other night.”

“Oh?”  Pam arched a brow, shooting the blonde a look.  “Do tell.”

“Dominatrix Vampire Barbie.”  Stiles spelled it out for her.  “And Badass Vampire God, respectively.  All the other vampires including the bartender are just seen as part of the decor for most of the humans, more like movie stars or cartoon characters than actual people.”

Pam’s grin was nothing short of smug over the first part but grimaced over the second.

Vermin.

So many bleat about how it wasn’t right for vampires to objectify humans.  That they should respect the walking bloodbags.  All the while ignoring just how humans treated them, and what they’d do to them if granted even the smallest chance.

“You want to play a role, not be part of the decor.”  Pam caught onto Stiles’s idea immediately.  “Now why would that be?”  She questioned.

“I want separation between who I have to be at Fangtasia and who I am outside of there.”  Stiles explained, bluntly.  “Making it a role different from how I actually am would help with dealing with the sewer that are the minds populating Fangtasia.  To keep up my shields if I know they’re thinking about a character I’m playing and not actually, you know, me.”

“That’s sweet and all.”  Pam rolled her eyes.  “But what’s in it for us?”

“Having an exception that proves the rule.”  Stiles answered, not shaken at all by Pam’s unsympathetic tone and flat expression.  “Contrast to play off of.”

“And what would be a fitting contrast between a Viking Vampire God and Dominatrix Vampire Barbie?”  Pam asked mockingly, shooting the petite blonde in the passenger seat a challenging look.  “Undead cheerleader?”

“I was thinking Ice Princess, actually.”  Stiles allowed a slow smile across her face when she visibly caught Pam pause in thought.  “Perfect, pristine, untouchable.” Potentially based in part on the fabulous Lydia Martin - but only in part.  “Not just want everybody wants, but who everyone wants to be.”

“Oh, Princess.”  Pam purred, a wicked glint lighting up her dark eyes as she passed down firmer on the gas pedal.  “We are gonna have so much fun.”


Per the information/warning that Pam had given her, Stiles was resigned to the inevitable when they pulled into the parking lot of the Shreveport Nordstrom's, Pam with a plan and Erik’s AmEx in hand.

Resigned to purchasing an entire wardrobe under the gimlet eye of General Swynford de Beaufort, wasn’t the same thing, however, as letting Pam dress her up like a doll.

On the contrary, every time Pam tried to direct her towards clothes that she either hated or simply weren’t her style, Stiles stood her ground with the older vampire.  Erik may be footing the bill, but that didn’t mean Stiles was going to let his progeny make all the decisions.  Especially in areas like her everyday wardrobe where technically it didn’t matter how she dressed.

On some labels they agreed: Alexander McQueen, Burberry, Chanel, etc.

Others…not so much.

Stiles straight up laughed in Pam’s face when the older vampire tried to get her into a floral A-line dress from Dolce & Gabbana.

Pam almost tossed her through a clothes rack when Stiles tried to grab a pair of Ariat Chelsea boots in the shoe section or looked too long at anything flannel.

But overall, they made it work as well as several salespeople’s day.  The shoe section in particular was looking properly pillaged, as while they might not agree entirely on what clothes Stiles should wear, both of them loved good shoes.  With Erik’s card in hand, and no spending limit, there really was nothing stopping them from running wild.

The Sheriff really should have known better - and Nordstrom's was only their first stop.

For her Fangtasia wardrobe, they had to drive all the way across town to a private boutique that apparently supplied all of Pam’s many and varied outfits for the bar, when she wasn’t having them custom made.

“Do you have a tailor you favor or am I going to have to do some research?”  Stiles asked as the staff at Nordstrom's finished loading their hefty haul in the back of the van, though despite the heavy damage they’d done there was still room for more.

“I’ll text you the information.”  Pam promised, pursing her lips a little as the baby vamp continued to stun with both her control and her behavior.  She wouldn’t have thought that a young sheltered woman from a small town would’ve had any notion of tailoring off-the-rack for a perfect fit and look.

It was almost impressive how easily Stiles Hale was adapting to being a vampire - almost.

“Now, c’mon Ice Princess, time to go make sure you look the part.”

The boutique was a discreet sort of place.  No flashy signage.  No large glass windows showcasing their wares.  The type of establishment that no one would know about or ever walk into by accident.

Considering that they had to have at least six figures - if not more - worth of leather goods and fetish wear as far as the eye could see, that was probably the point.

Pam marched her right over to the back of the boutique and onto a podium surrounded by mirrors on three sides, one of the staff striding over with a measuring tape in hand.

“Alright, princess, down to the skin.”  Pam directed as the male - vampire, given that she couldn’t read him and how fast he moved - zipped around closing the curtains to grant her a bit of privacy.  “Measurements, then try-on.”

Oh god, this was going to suck.

Stiles wasn’t wrong.

If she’d thought Pam had turned all commanding general marshaling the troops in Nordstrom's, at the boutique she was all barked orders ala a drill sergeant.

Good thing she genuinely didn’t care about anyone seeing her stripped to her skin in a setting like this.  Other than Pam and the vampire staff - Gregor, apparently, he of the dyed dark blue hair and fabulous painted on black and royal blue leather - there was no one to see.  And while both of them showed off their fangs at the sight of Stiles naked, she paid it no mind beyond a compliment.

Nobody was about to try and fuck around with the sheriff’s new project, had been the impression she’d gotten from Pam over the course of the night.

At least, not and risk pissing Erik off before he presents her to the rest of the territory.

“No spikes.”  Stiles vetoed as Gregor started zipping back into the dressing/try on area where she was waiting with armfuls of leather in various shades.  He darted a glance at Pam but as the older vampire was just sitting and examining her nails on a waiting chair, Gregor took that to understand that she was allowing the baby vamp a measure of control over her look.  “Anything in a dark color scheme would be for my personal wear, not Fangtasia, and for when I’m on duty we’re shooting for ice princess so white, silver, very pale grey, blue, purple.”

“No pink?”  Pam mocked lightly as she glanced up from her manicure as Stiles started wiggling into the first pair of painted-on-tight leather pants that had lace-up sides in a deep matte black.

“No pink,” Stiles agreed.  “Wouldn’t want to step on your toes with your signature color, darlin’.”

“You are a smart one, Stiles Hale.”  Pam’s grin was all fangs as she stood and vamped over to help lace the younger vampire into the first corset top of the night in a killer crimson red silk.  She stepped back after it was done and pursued the very picture of a young vampire that Stiles made in the stereotypical black-and-red color scheme that breathers had come to expect of Fangtasia with pursed lips.  “And I see what you mean.”  She conceded even as Gregor came back over with a smaller pile of light-colored options filling his arms.  “You just look like either a co-ed playin’ vamp in that, or Vampire Barbie.”

“I want them both,” Stiles shot the suddenly worried-for-his-commission Gregor a reassuring smile.  “For myself, but I wouldn’t style them together, you’re right.”  She wrinkled her nose.  “I’ll leave lookin’ plastic and fake to Nan Flanagan, thanks.”

Both the older vampires chortled, Pam stepping forward to assist Stiles in quick-changes, ripping through the stack of dark-colored options in less than an hour as tops designed either to be or with elements of corsets and stays were put on and swapped out in less than two minutes.  Stiles found herself with a small pile of tops in a mixture of black, dark grey, and jewel tones that she was happy with, and a pair of more relaxed leather pants in the same light-drinking matte black.  Then Gregor and Pam teamed up on her to get her into a couple matching leather dresses: both cut tight to her body and conforming to every curve, if she wasn’t a vampire she honestly thought she wouldn’t have been able to get into them even with the hidden side-zippers.

One in the same deep crimson that she loved, the other in a gleaming metallic graphite grey, they were gorgeous but would need breaking in if she expected to do more than stand around in them.

Pam tried - and failed - to talk her into leather miniskirts, but the dresses were the closest she got from the “dark” pile, given that most of it was to supplement her personal wardrobe and not to wear in Fangtasia except when she wanted to shake things up.

The smallest round of the night was the “brights” pile: the sort of electric saturated colors that weren’t the typical vampire look but weren’t the ice princess aesthetic they were shooting for either.  Gregor had caught her eye and winked when he saw her admiring his bright electric blue ensemble and brought over a couple options when Pam was distracted by texting on her phone.  He had her zipped into a cropped patent leather set of an asymmetrical mini skirt and a one-shoulder crop top that showed off her toned stomach in a similar vibrant aqua blue in seconds.  To scoffs and an eye roll from Pam when she glanced up and saw them striking matching poses, but she didn’t bitch in favor of demanding that Stiles get the matching thigh-high boots to go with it if she must look like an extra from an 80’s music video.

Gregor helped her change out of the set and into a pair of brilliant white PVC pants, then into a series of bright blue and saturated green and even bright purple tops before she tried on the first white corset top of the night, Stiles pulling her hair up tight into a tail and then slipping on a pair of white knee-high boots before slapping a bored look on her face and turning to face Pam with one hand on her hip.

“Ohhh, Princess.”  Pam nearly purred, sitting up straight as she saw in living color what Stiles meant by playing to contrasts.  “The vermin are going to fall all over themselves for one bitchy look from you.”

Gregor had to agree, grinning wildly and almost bouncing on his toes in excitement.

“You look like everything desirable but as if our hands would freeze off if we dared.”

“Good.”  Stiles broke character and smirked.  “The higher the chance of frostbite, the less likely anyone tries to paw at me.”

“Oh, I dunno about that, princess.”  Pam drawled, arching a brow as Gregor helped her to swap out the look again for a mini dress that she could wear with the same pair of boots.  “The problem with looking unattainable is the greater the danger, sometimes the more the truly idiotic want to touch.”


Erik was pleased to arrive back at his residence an hour before dawn to find that his progeny and protege had returned from their excursion, even as he dreaded to see the balance of his AmEx account in the morning.

Pam did not know the meaning of restraint when it came to shopping using his accounts.

Even though he could fund her excesses for the rest of their immortal undeath without issue or running his funds dry, that did not mean that he relished in doing so, especially as forcing her to pay for her own habits had been one of the ways he was enforcing her independence from leaning too much on their Maker/Childe bond.

Godric had once done the same, though through very different means and measures, after they’d traveled together for a century in order to ensure that if the Maker was given the True Death that the progeny would not only survive but thrive under their own power and recognizance.

His Pam wouldn’t be his Pam if she didn’t try and get around his rules and edicts - when they weren’t a matter of his position or authority - and he wouldn’t be shocked to learn that at least a portion of the damage done on this night had been to support Pam’s love of couture, likely shoes.

Speeding into the living area, he arched a brow first at the sight of half a dozen shopping bags filled to the brim with unpacked clothes, then at the two lovely blondes sat side-by-side, Pam even having an arm slung over the back of the couch behind Stiles’s pretty head, and hovering over the laptop open on Stiles’s lap.

“Tailoring,” Pam answered his silent question, then lifted her near-empty glass of blood in a wordless question of her own.

If he was a little put out that his night wouldn’t end with Stiles writhing on his lap as she fed from him again, he kept that to himself as he knew his progeny would be the furthest thing from sympathetic and would merely mock him relentlessly for it.

Though another part of him was pleased that the two seemed to be getting along.

With female vampires, who tended as a species to be even more territorial than males, it was always impossible to predict whether two or more would be able to stand being in proximity with each other, especially when a male was involved.  That Pamela was his progeny and not his lover - hadn’t been his lover in nearly a century - and Stiles was so much younger and therefore lesser in power helped.  But it didn’t completely defuse the issue.  Only the females in question could do that, and he was glad to see that they’d come to some sort of accord as unlike other cases of Erik finding a sponsor or mentor for a lost baby vamp, he intended that this one stuck around for a long, long time rather than have another bloodline benefit from her potential.

One way or another.

“Have you made an appointment?”  He asked after shaking his head.  He’d helped himself to a fuck-and-feed at the bar, he was sated for the moment.  “You know Angelo detests drop-ins.”

As an aged vampire of Italian descent who was a master at his craft of over four hundred years, turned during the height of the Renaissance despite his being over fifty years old at the time, the master tailor was one of the few outside of his own bloodline that Erik trusted implicitly.  At least when it came to Angelo’s craft.  It had taken almost all of Erik’s wiles and cunning to convince the artisan to relocate to the New World in the first place, and even that might not have succeeded if his master Babiana hadn’t encouraged him to spread his wings in the 1920s, rather than remaining with her nest in Milan.

That Babiana had recently taken on a new progeny had likely spurred Angelo on, but that was inner-bloodline politics and none of Erik’s business or problem.

Which didn’t stop him from taking advantage of it, but that was a different affair entirely.

Vampires from everywhere within five hundred miles had started flocking to the master tailor after he’d set up shop in his lushly appointed but discreet restored plantation house that was part business and part residence outside of Shreveport.

Saying that such a vampire “detested drop-ins” was an understatement.

“I was going to send her to Maria Katherine.”  Pam admitted, frowning a bit when Erik shook his head and took out his phone as he sprawled in his usual indolent manner in the chair across from them.

“Angelo.”  He spoke in facile Italian over the phone as Stiles at last glanced up and smiled at him in greeting before being distracted by Pam pointing something out on her screen.  “Hello my old friend.”

“Hello, Sheriff.”   Angelo’s light tenor was like music even through the tinny speaker of the phone.  “What can I do for you so early, my friend?”

“I have taken a newborn under my protection while a suitable mentor or even new Maker is found for her.”  Erik was candid with his tailor as he was with few others outside his own bloodline.  “My Pamela has seen to filling her wardrobe but much of it needs tailoring and a few bespoke pieces wouldn’t be out of the question.  Can you see her?”

“For Erik Northman, of course, of course.”   Angelo assured him in his bubbly manner.  “It is no trouble at all.  Let me think,” there was a split-second pause as the tailor reviewed his schedule for the coming nights.  “There is a project I had slated for two nights hence that I can push back.”

Given how lately Queen Sophie-Anne was always slow about payment, and too wise even for being such a brat to try Angelo’s already stretched patience, she would swallow the delay like a lady or no longer enjoy Angelo’s craftsmanship on her ubiquitous Old Hollywood aesthetic.  As if throwing diamonds and pearls on everything made it elegant rather than overdone.  Silly creature, but better than the tasteless caricatures of what it meant to be vampire that had been turned in recent decades for the most part.

“Send pictures of this young one as well as measurements and the clothes for tailoring and I will see what I can have ready for fitting when you come.  Seven o’clock?”   He offered.  “I will set aside the whole night for your retinue, my friend.”

“Thank you, Angelo.”   Erik almost smiled over how transparent his friend’s curiosity was, but as it suited his own aims he didn’t mind it.  “See you soon.”

“Finish up, Princess.”  Pam told Stiles as she rose and sped over to the bags of clothes, already sorting through and compiling outfits again.  “We have to do a fashion show and take pictures for Angelo.”

“Who’s Angelo?”  Stiles asked absently even as she clicked through closing out the shopping cart on the Saks Fifth Avenue website that they’d been using to fill so-called “gaps” in what they’d already bought.

She didn’t really see it, as they’d bought everything short of ballgowns including a couple semi-formal and cocktail dresses at Nordstrom's, but Pam was the boss - for the night, anyway.

Though given that it looked like Erik wasn’t planning on going anywhere but was hunkering down to enjoy the show, she was glad she’d put on a plain set of cotton underwear rather than the wisps-of-nothing he’d gotten for her.

They may have a tentative agreement that something was likely going to happen at some point, but that was it: nothing had actually happened yet.

And until it did, he could just keep on imagining what she looked like strutting her stuff in nothing but skin, thank you very much.

“My tailor, good evening Stiles.”  Erik answered and greeted the petite blonde easily, enjoying the dressed-down version of the newborn in her pajama shorts and tank top just as much as he had the other forms of her he’d seen over the past nights.  “We have an appointment in two nights,” he informed her as she obviously didn’t speak Italian like him and Pam.  “Angelo needs pictures of you in the clothes to be tailored as well as measurements so he can get started before your fitting.”

Stiles merely nodded, as while it had been a while, she remembered what it was like visiting Peter’s tailor.

Once upon a time.


 

Chapter 9

Notes:

Content Warning for this Chapter:

There are parts of this that are *definitely* NSFW.

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Nine: Instinct

The next night was a Monday, which meant that Fangtasia was closed while Erik and Pam saw to other business or relaxed depending on how fraught things were within Area Five.

For Stiles, that meant for the first time after coming into Erik’s care, she woke up without a warm thermos of blood waiting on her when she rose with the setting sun.

Having an idea for why the change, Stiles rushed through cleaning up while she could still think through the hunger, throwing on a simple pair of linen lounge pants and a plain t-shirt before heading out to the common area.  Where, as she’d expected, she found Erik waiting.  Sprawled out as she was starting to see was his usual attitude, with his strong limbs and tall body taking up as much space as possible, whether at Fangtasia or lounging around in the residence, he always looked like a king surveying his territory.

It was very Jackson Whittemore of him, though she would never say so if only because he’d both be insulted and wouldn’t understand the reference.

On this rising, he wasn’t dressed to go out, with only a pair of what looked like soft and broken-in grey sweats slung low around his hips, showing off the rest of him.

And there was a lot to show.

Vampires froze and remained physically unchanging from the time of their turning, it was well known.  Stiles was going to look like a pretty blonde-haired brown-eyed co-ed for all of time.  Pam like a mature woman.

Erik would forever be frozen in time as the Viking warrior he’d once been, and his body showed that he’d worked a very physically demanding profession.  Sure, there were fit vampires.  Ones who’d led active lives and ate well.

Erik Northman was a different breed altogether.  He had the stacked and cut muscle of a warrior during an era where that meant fighting for hours or even days at a time wielding a heavy sword or spear or even axes.  He’d been accustomed to wearing armor and had possessed the strength required to still move in it, and the well-defined legs and ass of a man who’d trekked for miles on foot when he wasn’t on horseback.

Simply put, even in the modern era, let alone when he’d been turned, Erik Northman had been an elite example of his kind: handsome, tall, strong, and from what she understood a near-unparalleled fighter.

Why Godric had chosen to turn him was no mystery.

Erik Northman really was that impressive: and worse, he knew it.

“Time for our next lesson.”  Erik spoke as soon as her wide eyes stopped drinking in the sight of him - he’d never get tired of having a beautiful person do that - and focused on his face.  Holding out his hand, he waited a flicker of a moment for her to take it, then pulled her down onto his lap, seeing no reason to pussyfoot around when it was clear to both of them where this rising was going.  “The effects of the blood and how it can be used.”

“The tug I felt when Bill wanted me to act a certain way.”  Stiles nodded, aware of the issue both from the TV series and personal experience.  “Or how I can feel you in me.”

It wasn’t, to her surprise when she’d first managed to focus on it, what she’d expected having a tie to an Erik Northman who wasn’t invested in her would feel like.  Erik’s blood in her was as different from Bill’s oiliness like wine and water.  Maybe because she’d rejected and struggled against Bill from the moment she’d risen as his progeny for all that she’d kept it from him and made her struggles strictly mental until he was dead for the day and couldn’t stop her.

Erik felt like a banked fire inside of her, waiting to flare up either at his command or from her drinking more of him down.  All power and passion, barely contained.  It was heady, almost intoxicating despite the fact that she had a vampire’s resistance to the effects V could have on a human.

That the blood was sacred made sense.  It was their power.  Magic and age and life all running through their veins and granting them their eternal undeath.  If a witch or even a regular human really knew what could be done with vampire blood, it would be a nightmare.

Why vampires rarely shared their blood - at least the older generations - except with their maker and progeny was understandable.

Even when it was shared only one-way, if the recipient had the ability to study it within them, they could get a sense of the vampire even if all the power of the exchange was within the control of the one gifting the blood to another.

Stiles wouldn’t be shocked if vampires kept a damn tight lockdown on the secret that they can use their blood within other vampires to a similar effect that they did on some humans - especially with a big enough power differential in play - or that it was likely one of the reasons that Makers had such strong and complete control of their progeny.

Erik felt a flare of startled - but impressed - respect light inside him for a moment, then gave her an approving look.  He’d known vampires wandering through undeath for years without that level of awareness unless their Maker was directly pressing their will upon them.  He was growing ever-more certain of the path he’d chosen to take with her, rather than turning her over to someone like James to mentor.  Stiles was a rare creature.  One who had truly been meant to be a vampire, even if it happened as an accident and wasn’t purposeful.

She would be wasted on a lesser bloodline than his own.

And nothing irritated Erik more than a talent going to waste.

“Yes.”  Erik agreed, seeing no reason to lie to such a creature while she was in his care.  “By having you feed from me, I instituted a blood tie, which occurs during a one-way gift of the blood.  In another vampire, it allows me to take a read of your mental and emotional state and track your location.  Were you another supe, you would also potentially have dreams of me and an increase to your sex drive.  Humans who take vampire blood from the vein, have all those same effects but if a vampire knows how, they can also manipulate the human using the blood as they have no innate defenses - and some supe species are also susceptible, but not all.”

“The blood mutates away from the vein.”  Stiles speculated, thinking of the symptoms V-users were known to show.  “That’s why V-users are so erratic.”

“It does,” he arched a brow and felt the corners of his mouth flick up in a there-and-gone smile.  “Clever girl.”

“Bonds?”  She prompted once she filed all of that away.

“Vary.”  Erik continued, removing his arms from being spread out across the back of the couch and lowering them to his sides, his hands coming up to gently cup her thighs just above the knee as Stiles straddled him.  “It’s an even exchange of blood, taken within a short time frame.  A single exchange is enough to create a blood bond, three exchanges with the same human makes a permanent bond.  They’ll carry a link to you and be part of you until they die - and you will feel it.”

“And with vampires?”

“The Maker bond is the most known.”  Erik shrugged.  “It varies in strength as it is the result of the magic of the turning and a single exchange.  Additional exchanges as well as sex can strengthen the bond until it is absolute and unbreakable.  Some maker and progeny pairs barely have a bond at all.  Some are so strongly bonded that even centuries apart doesn’t diminish the tie between them.  Releasing a progeny removes the ability for a maker to command their childe, but it doesn’t sever the bond entirely.”

“I felt Bill meet the True Death.”  She murmured, turning her head away from his compelling eyes that had been utterly focused on her since she came out of her room.  “It was the worst pain I ever felt, but it faded fast and now it doesn’t even ache.”

“From your own words, you didn’t wish Compton as your Maker, or to be a vampire at all.”  Erik said.  “Intent is key, in your case it would’ve forged an uneven bond between you as Compton forced his will and you fought it.  That the wound of having it torn from you is already healed is no surprise in such a case.”  He leaned forward a bit and scented her skin-deep rather than the shallow read of her scent he gained from being in close quarters.  “You barely even carry his scent any longer underneath that of your own and mine, most would have to scent your skin or blood directly to tell that he Made you.”

“And the other types of vampire bonds?”

“A simple bond often forms between bedmates.”  Erik laid it out for her.  “Which, given your one experience with bonds being Compton, you need to be aware of.”  He flexed his hands on her thighs, as heat began to rise between them.  “Vampires who wish to walk the ages together but are not Maker and Progeny can create a permanent Mate bond by undergoing three exchanges on consecutive nights.  Otherwise the bonds are breakable if they’re spread further apart, no matter how many times they share blood or their bodies.”

“Do vampires not marry then?”  Stiles asked the expected question despite already knowing the answer.  Not that it mattered to her.  She’d tried the institution once, and it hadn’t quite lived up to the hype.

“We can, but rarely do.”  Erik shrugged.  It was a theoretical question for him, one Godric ensured he knew the answer to, but had never been anything more.  He rarely took vampires to his bed for more than a night and never exchanged blood with them - too much hassle and political bullshit when humans satisfied him nearly as well and had blood to offer on top of their willing bodies.  “Most often it is between monarchs to solidify political alliances and lasts a century.  Rarer still Mates can choose to pledge to each other, an act that is respected and honored without question.”

“Sneaky sneaky, forming a blood tie to me without my knowledge.”  She called him out on it, though she knew he wasn’t going to apologize.

“Needs-must, lover.”  Erik purred at her.  “As Sheriff I can’t have an orphaned newborn running around Shreveport without being able to track them.  You also needed to learn to feed.  Win-win.”

Stiles knew that was bullshit - at least in part - but didn’t bother to call him on it.  He could’ve given her over to someone else for training.  He didn’t have to take her on himself, and he certainly didn’t have to form a blood-tie to keep her in line.

He wanted to, even if she was still figuring out why.

Stiles let out a little burst of air as Erik suddenly flexed his hands on her legs and pulled her forward, her own hands flying up to land and brace her against his muscled chest as he stared down at her with burning eyes.

“Lesson to be continued,” he nuzzled his nose against her tousled blonde waves of hair.  “I can feel your hunger growing, lover,” he whispered like it was a naughty secret.  “And not just for blood.”

“You know what you look like,” she retorted unapologetically.  Though it probably came out a bit more breathy than snarky as she felt as well as heard his fangs drop and rub against the smooth line of her neck.

Someday she might be so used to Erik’s… everything that she doesn’t react to it anymore, but today was not that day.

Tomorrow wasn’t looking so hot either.

Erik Northman on the other hand?  So hot.  So very. fucking. hot.

Hands scooped her up and had her lifted and turned around with her back pressed against his chest and her legs hooked around his own and spread wide in a reverse straddle before she really clocked what he was up to.

And as one of his arms rested over her belly, his large palm clinging onto her inner thigh, the other coming up and offering her his wrist, she figured school was back in session - just on a different topic as her fangs clicked down as her pulse sped up.

“You’ll have to take care of the depth of your bite,” Erik’s deep voice rumbled his instructions into her ear, his nose running along the silky length of her neck as he buried his face in her sweet-smelling mane.  He almost purred at the scent of her and the feel of her blood beginning to rush with pure want.   “Or you can do damage when feeding at the wrist, elbow, or back of the knee.  As it is, most humans experience bruising from how hard we have to pull at bites there to gain enough blood to be satisfied.”

Reaching up, she cradled his wrist in her hands, marveling a moment at how large his own were in comparison, and then leaned forward to set her fangs into the veins running shallowly under his skin.

Immediately, she noticed what he meant.

The veins and blood vessels were skinny in the wrist, along with there being lots of bones and tendons, connective tissues, and so on.

If she’d bitten into a human the way she did Erik at first - too deeply and with too much force, to a gruff growl and a harsh squeeze of his hand on her thigh in correction - she would injure them.

Unlatching from his arm, but already feeling the little bit of blood slicking her mouth starting to pour through her like liquid fire, she backed off for a moment, licking at the deep wound with kitten-licks of her tongue until it healed in a wordless apology.  Fuck.  No wonder Makers were supposed to teach their newborns how to feed before unleashing them on an unsuspecting world.

Even something as basic as feeding was far more complicated than it seemed at a glance.

Erik’s hand on her thigh softened, his thumb starting to rub small circles on the soft flesh that were part soothing and part sensual.

“Try again.”  He prompted, lips moving in a caress against the edge of her ear, breath tickling and rousing all at once.  “Just slip your fangs into the wrist between the bones.  Don’t worry about the blood vessels, they’ll heal once you close the wound after you’re finished feeding.”

He wasn’t concerned - yet - with teaching her how to alter the effect of her bite through their intentions.  There was no need.  With their natural attraction to each other, a vampire’s bite was already inclined towards giving pleasure rather than pain.

When he - or his Maker - taught her to hunt, then ensuring the bite was agony would come into play.

Not here, not now with her spread out so delightfully on his lap and both of their lusts - for blood, for sex, for each other - rising.

Erik closed his eyes and let out a throaty groan as Stiles followed his directions exactly, the sharp sting of the fangs blending seamlessly into the heady pleasure spinning and spooling between them.

“Better,” he slowly let his fangs run down from within his jaw, then ran them lightly over the tempting curve of her neck.  “Now pull back.”

He didn’t know if she would be able to manage it.  The grip she kept on herself and her instincts was strong but not unbreakable.  And nothing was more likely to make her formidable mind bend or break under the sway of her instincts - her most animal self, her very vampire nature - like being in a position of want and need.

Neither of them had acted - yet - on what was growing between them, but both had recognized it was there.

Short of dropping a sweet smelling human into her lap and expecting her to resist the urge to drain them dry, putting Stiles on his lap and then forcing her to control her bite was the next best thing.

She gave a whine far more animal than human, thoughts buried under the liquid rush of Erik surging through her, but managed after a moment’s struggle to stop feeding from him.

But no matter how she tried, she burned too brightly to drag her fangs out of him.

Erik chuckled a little under his breath, lifting his free arm from where he’d been tormenting her thigh, enjoying the feel of soft flesh and flexing muscle under his touch.

“Do you need help, little one?”  He purred in her ear, nuzzling against her like some great cat.

She whimpered, tongue laving over his skin and picking up the scant droplets of crimson temptation that seeped out from around her fangs, hips shifting as she fought to keep from ignoring his order altogether.

“Greedy little thing,” he remarked, but it was said like a compliment, not an insult.

With his now-free hand, Erik grasped her - his massive hand spanning the entire back of her skull - around the neck.  His thumb and middle finger pressed just so against the hinge of her jaw, and with a precise jab he forced her jaw to unlock and her fangs to retract.  The pain of it roared immediately to the forefront, pushing lust to the side - for the moment.

A soft gasp was the only outward sign of the sudden pain she gave as Erik’s grip immediately moved to soothe and stroke over her arched neck, guiding her head back to rest against his shoulder.

Erik didn’t know what it was about this one that made him be so… soft with her other than his desire to have her in his bed.  It wasn’t because he thought she might intrigue his Maker.  He felt no such softness for his vampiric sibling Nora beyond that which had wished for her turning.

The relentless compassion that had moved him for the first time in centuries hadn’t outlasted Nora being made vampire.  They shared a maker.  Fucked like champions and competed like siblings.  But there was no disgusting softness there.

Stiles was valuable, certainly, but that didn’t explain it either.

Any other vampire and he would have-

But that was the problem wasn’t it?

Any other vampire would have never dared put fangs in him other than his progeny or his maker.

He didn’t do the “mentoring the young” thing.  Pamela took up more than enough of his patience, and she was far from a newborn.  There were mature vampires who enjoyed that sort of shit, but Erik had never been one of them.

Godric, he reminded himself sternly.  He had to keep pushing Stiles onward, keep her out of trouble, for only a few more days.  Then his Maker would come and then she would no longer be around making him all… soft.

One way or another.

“Unless you intend to drain your donor, you cannot afford to lose yourself to the bite.”  He rebuked her sharply, holding her in place with his hand around her throat in wordless warning.  “You rule your instincts, your instincts do not rule you.  Again.”  He demanded, moving his arm over so she was faced with his elbow instead of his wrist.  “And this time, when you will stop when I say.”

Stiles did not want him to supply the or else that went with the warning, nodding as much as she could as he held her head and neck immobile against his chest and shoulder.

Her instincts were at war.

Bite/feed - listen/careful/danger - want/have - Feed/More - strongmale/challenge/want/run - FEED!

On and one it went.  One rising, then another as her rational mind fought against her instincts.  As one set of instincts “faerie” Stiles vs. vampire Stiles made war one moment and then aligned the next.  Her vampire wanted to submit to Erik, her fae side wanted to challenge him, to force him to prove himself worthy of her obedience.  But over and above them all, growing stronger by the moment, were her mingled lusts, the most basic tenets of any creature - to feed and to mate.

To survive.

Erik felt his surprise cross over his face as he felt the war within his protege, the turmoil unlike anything he’d ever felt before, even when he was guiding Pam into her unlife as a newborn.  There was a factor within her that he didn’t recognize its origin, only the results.  A piece of Stiles that fought him, that resented his attempts to have sway over Stiles’s actions even as her fangs slipped back into his skin as she lost the fight against her hunger.

Together with what he’d already seen and felt from her, that set of almost foreign instincts were a type of confirmation of what he was truly dealing with in Stiles: a hybrid of some fashion.

It was rare, but Erik was old enough to recall other unique “humans” who’d been turned over the centuries of his undeath.  Shifters who retain the ability to change their form.  Weres who become the most loyal and fierce fighters of any vampire.  Witches who can glamour as newborns better than centuries-old vampires.  Perhaps the greatest example of all came from several vampires back into his own bloodline, the Ancient Pythoness who was said to have been an oracle of Delphi before her turning as an old woman and retained significant powers of foresight into her unlife.

When a vampire turns someone who is Other, the results were usually interesting and occasionally extraordinary - but at times, also came with complications.

Vampires who are able to turn into animals - but had a ferocious hunger as they required large amounts of blood to power their change, much like a vampire would need in order to heal a grievous wound - were the simplest example of there being a catch to turning someone who is more than human.

In Stiles’s case, it seemed that whatever it was that had made her Other - granted her a scent that was delectable from the lingering notes of it in her former home, a scent that still came through as a note of sunshine in that of her vampire, along with her telepathy and potentially other powers that might show themselves as she matured - had also given her strong instincts that she had to control.  No wonder she was both having moments of fierce struggle with herself as well as rare control.  If she’d been dealing with another set of non-human wants all her life, even if she never recognized them as such, she would have been prepped to handle the effects of being Made even if she wasn’t consciously aware of it.

It was a problem as much as it was a revelation.

They needed her to accept a new maker.  As a species, they couldn’t afford to have a newborn with Stiles’s talent meet the True Death because her instincts - either set - took control and she ended up making a mess they couldn’t clean up.  An elder vampire - Godric, Erik, hell even Nora if necessary - had to have the ability to command her, to stop her if needed without having to take dramatic or even lethal measures.

He would not lose a vampire of her potential to another bloodline.  It would pain him, but he’d see her meet the True Death first.  The survivor and the strategist in him would never be able to tolerate it, to say nothing of the male vampire who would lash out against having his claim over her countermanded.

No, nothing but having her bound as tightly as possible to his bloodline could be allowed.

“That was better,” he whispered into her ear as he let her indulge in his blood.  Let it flow within her and spur her physical lust to rise just as high as her bloodlust rather than working more on her ability to stop herself mid-feed.  “You’re learning fast, little one.”

His hand on her throat became a caress down the lovely length, over her shoulder and trailing down her side.  His voice an invitation to sin.  And his blood within her flared.   Not forcing her to any emotion or to give into her instincts, merely in an echo of what the vampire himself wanted in that moment: her and the pleasure they could share together.

Stiles released him with a moan, the sudden spike from steady increase to consuming want taking her unawares as she’d focused on her feeding and reveling in Erik’s powerful blood that slipped through her like the best cognac that had been mulled to heat and sweeten the flavor, making it headier than the already intoxicating drink was whilst plain.

The spike of arousal pulled her attention for a split-second as she gasped, but that was all Erik needed, the elder vampire moving fast even for one of their kind as he turned her head and stole a kiss from her, his arm dropping and his hand coming to join the first in dragging soft, teasing caresses up and down her sides and over her legs.

His kiss - their first kiss - wasn’t tentative or soft or gentle.

It was as fierce and commanding as the vampire himself, his lips firm and controlling on her own as his tongue dove into her mouth to plunder and relish in the mingled taste of his blood in her mouth, agile muscle flicking tauntingly over her extended fangs.

Fangs that, apparently, had another purpose beyond feeding because whoa fuck, that was new.

She’d known that fangs were linked to arousal, but she’d had no fucking idea that having someone play with them while she was already hot and turned on would have the same effect as if he’d worried her neck or stroked over her core.

From the deep, masculine chuckle that came from Erik as he felt her slight startle, the pretty bastard knew it too.

Turnabout was fair play, however, and she’d always been a quick learner.

Reaching up, she tangled one hand in his hair as she met his kiss with all the experience of her previous life - and lovers - had taught her, more than capable of keeping up as she loosened her control over not jumping the impossibly beautiful vampire’s bones.  She wasn’t some sweet little thing that needed him to teach her, though she was sure with his centuries of experience Erik had a few tricks up his sleeves she’d never heard of.  No, she was a grown and mature woman who was comfortable with her sexuality - even if it’d been supercharged by being made into a fae-pire hybrid.

Her other hand coasted down the length of Erik’s bare arm, pausing a moment on the heavy muscle of first his shoulder cap and then his bicep to caress the muscle and appreciate the remnants of his human self.  He really must have been a sight to see back in the day, she thought as Erik changed the angle of his kiss and shifted their bodies with a flex and turn, pressing her back onto the soft cushions of the couch.  Her hands flew up to his shoulders, steadying her in instinctive response to the shift, even as she moved with it rather than fighting it.

Why would she want to fight it?

Erik was gorgeous.  With his age and confidence, she knew he’d make sex good, if not the best she’d ever had thus far.  Even if nothing ever came of it, of them and he pawned her off once he got bored of her, so what?

It wasn’t like she was in love with him or anything.

But she sure as hell wanted him, and given both the heat of his kiss and how quick his hands were to make short work of the lounge clothes she wore, even before she arched up as he tweaked one of her peaked nipples and felt the evidence for herself - he wanted her right back.

She arched her head back on a breathy moan as Erik turned his attention to dragging his fangs over the softness of her skin, pausing to toy with one rosy nipple and send her panting, the mixed scent of Erik’s blood and their lust an all-consuming bouquet in the air filling her senses.  Strong swordsman’s hands dragged down her sides and caught on the waistband of her bottoms as he worried first one breast then the other with tongue and teeth and fangs.  Fuck but she was right: Erik Northman sure as hell knew what to do with a woman.

His mouth was a trail of heat as he first lavished a kiss between the deep valley of her breasts, then followed a line down her center, pausing every few inches to worry a new spot of skin with his fangs and send another spark of want flying through the writhing blonde under him.

Stiles was gorgeous.  The heady scent of her arousal nearly divine as it mixed with that of sunshine and honey and fruit ripening on the breeze.  He pinched the skin of her lushly-rounded hip between his teeth, teasing it carefully to have blood rising but not breaking skin as he tugged her bottoms the rest of the way off her dainty feet and tossed them away, leaving her completely bare to his ravenous sight.

Glorious.  Her hair was a tousled golden halo.  Her skin yet retained the warmth and glow of the sun.  But it was the gleam of pearl-white fangs and the sight of the predator peeking out from behind her gleaming golden eyes that had him wanting like he couldn’t remember wanting another besides his Maker.

Tempting little thing, she might be the True Death of him yet if he couldn’t find a way to sate this ever-growing want within him.

Pressing a kiss to the inside of one silky knee, he maneuvered her legs over his shoulders, his fangs aching to slide into her sweet-smelling flesh and taste the source of her heady scent.

So he did one better, dragging his fangs down her trembling inner thigh as she keened in want at his teasing, slow pace, then leaned down fully and buried his face at the source of the inferno blazing through Stiles and into him, feasting with lips and tongue and the scrape of fangs on her soaking, tight little pussy as he wished to do on her blood.

Stiles cried out in shock at the lash of heat and pleasure that coursed through her as Erik tasted her.  One hand falling from where she was gripping the couch to bury itself back in his fall of blond hair, the other holding onto the surface beneath her for dear life.  A sudden sharp nip of her clit had her crying out all over again as orgasm ripped through her with all the subtlety of a lightning storm, sending her tumbling over the edge before she had more than an inkling it was building.

Not that Erik stopped there - oh no.

As she came back from the edge, eyes still slightly dazed from the bright wash of pleasure, she looked down to see him nibbling and kissing first the crease of one thigh then the other, part gentling - but also keeping the fire inside her active rather than allowing it to be sated.

His eyes were dark, nearly swallowed by his lust-flared pupils, and his mouth and chin were streaked with her arousal.

He was pure sin in a Viking package.

And as he bent his head back to the throbbing place between her thighs: utterly without mercy.

All Stiles could do was hold on and enjoy the ride - and oh, enjoy it she did, eventually (after three orgasms, or was it four…five?) eventually finding the will to flip them around and return the favor, getting her hands on the infamous “gracious plenty” of one Erik Northman.

And she couldn’t lie - there was certainly plenty to be found, even with her own thighs already sticky with the proof of just how much the Viking enjoyed playing with her and driving her out of her mind and all control.

He was a vampire, as she was coming to learn, that meant a mere one or two climaxes barely scratched the surface of what he was capable of both giving and taking.

His cock was heavy, long, and uncut under her hands and then her tongue.  The taste of flesh and salt and musk that she’d always enjoyed bright to her new sense of taste but with an intoxicating and overriding note of blood.  She couldn’t take much of him, especially since she couldn’t control her fangs well enough to keep from opening furrows along his length if she tried more than an inch or two but that didn’t stop her from pulling out every trick she knew otherwise.

“Fuck, you’re not a vampire,” Erik cursed as he twined his hands in that luscious mane of golden hair that was currently occupied with testing his control.  “You’re a damn succubus.”

Sweet little country mouse, his Viking ass.   He cursed in his head.  Clearly he needed to replace his dayman if Bobby could gather such an inaccurate impression of one Stiles Hale.  The woman sucked cock like it was her favorite game.

It was a dichotomy: she smelled relatively pure, though not virginal, but either she’d picked up more than a few tricks by reading minds or there was something he was missing because while Erik was proud of his cock, it’d scared off more than one virgin or inexperienced bedmate.

Stiles, as she sealed her lips around the dark-plum colored head of him and alternated between actual sucking and tempting flicks of her tongue, sure as fuck wasn’t scared.

If anything, he’d say she was taking handling him in all his glory as a challenge.

He fucking appreciated that in a woman, a person who knew what they wanted and how to get it rather than a frightened mouse that was as intrigued as they were afraid.

Sometimes that was a fun game, coaxing sweet things out of both their clothes and their inhibitions, but it could grow tiring.

There wasn’t a Loki-damned thing tiring about Stiles Hale.

Then she rubbed the pad of her thumb over the thick vein running down the backside of his cock, together with a lavishing stroke of her tongue and just the hint of threatening fangs - and Erik lost the ability to do more than feel and come his fucking brains out with a roar.


 

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Ten: Playing with Matches

Stiles had been a vampire for less than a month when she found herself learning first hand just how quick, hot, and long a vampire’s lust could rage once it’d been let loose.

Honestly, if it weren’t for how she was able to think on multiple levels at once, and keep a decent amount of control on her needs, she would wonder how vampires got anything else done ever when they were newborns.  Between the urges to feed and fuck and fight, it was like puberty all over again but cranked up to a thousand.  Complete with a hot as hell supernatural something-something to fixate all that lust and want and rage on.

She must’ve spent hours, almost the whole night from sundown to sunrise tangled up with Erik in the basement common area.  Moving from the couch to the floor, the floor to the wall as they tasted and teased each other.  Despite her assumptions, they didn’t fuck as she was expecting due to a similar love of giving head and driving their partner fucking insane.

Stiles had always had an oral fixation, a fact which delighted pretty much everyone ever that she’d fucked around with, and as it turned out Erik Northman not only wasn’t an exception to the rule, he was almost as bad (or good, depending on how she looked at it) as Stiles herself.

It was half a step from a competition at one point, which also was a departure from expectations.  She’d never expected to have fun with Erik.  Based on what she’d personally seen from him and around him, she thought he’d be like Jackson or Malia in bed, all heat and drive and intensity.  Instead he’d been more like Theo: fun, flirty, but with an underlying dominance that no one could really deny.

That they would end up in bed she hadn’t felt worth lying to herself over.  She’d known before she ever stepped foot in Fangtasia that she’d want him.  That he was old and powerful and dangerous, a vampire - a man - who liked a challenge.

Fun, hadn’t even been on her radar, and yet once the immediate flush of want had worn away after a while, fucking around with Erik was exactly that at points: fun.

Stiles wasn’t able to break Erik’s control to the point where he’d bitten her, but at one point she did catch the scent of his blood in the air and peeped a bite mark on his bicep when he gave into the need to bite - but not her.

For all that he wanted her, he was actively stopping himself from creating even a first-level bond - and that made her wonder about what he was plotting in that tricksy twisty vampire brain of his.

Made her want to shatter that impeccable control until he marked her in bite and cum as well as with his blood - if only to see what he would do next.

She’d always liked to play with fire, and Erik Northman was turning out to be one step away from an inferno that she couldn’t help but want to touch despite threatening to burn her right up.

When he kissed her it was all-consuming.  Stiles couldn’t think of anyone or anything else as he demanded her total attention.  When he put his mouth and hands on her, it was like the two of them were the only beings to have ever existed in the totality of forever.  He made her feel with an intensity she’d never known, even when she’d thought herself in love with Jackson or when she was in love with Peter, and if she was a smarter woman she’d probably be terrified of what he could do to her.

In the cold light of day after he’d whisked her off to her own room and washed her after she couldn’t take any more, every inch of her oversensitive and nearly painful, before heading off to see to his own affairs once he was certain her legs could hold her, she admitted if only to herself that a part of her was frightened of what he could do to her.  The responses he could pull from her with only part of his repertoire.  Fucking around with Erik Northman as a vampire herself, with a vampire’s senses and sensitivities and drives, was like tiptoeing to the edge of a cliff and daring the wind not to make her fall.

He was an expert in the art of pleasure, that much was crystal clear.

If she wasn’t careful, he was going to tear her apart whenever whatever this was that he was manipulating the pieces into play for was over.

Her Peter and/or Theo flashbacks were strong.  Though it wasn’t a fair comparison to Peter.  He’d been honest, as much as he was able, about Stiles herself being his end goal when they got together because of the Ghost Riders fiasco.  Peter never set out to use her or his connection or relationship with her for his own ends.  It was always a consequence of simply being involved with him in the first place, the twisted up asshole couldn’t help it at times where his mind took him and how he ended up acting out.

Theo on the other hand?

Oooh yeah, Theo.  He’d used her, she’d used him.  Definitely shades of Theo’s tells and behaviors in Erik Northman.  Stiles could only hope that Erik’s endgame was more securing his position as Sheriff against a pain-in-the-ass Queen and less megalomania wanting-to-rule-the-world bullshit.

Of everything she’d done and everyone she’d met in this world since rising as a vampire, Erik was probably the single greatest threat to her surviving intact - and all because he could ruin her if she allowed it.

She’d done this dance before and with a man she’d really and truly loved.  Peter Hale had torn apart her world and then years later helped her put it back together.  Incredibly selfish one moment and then shockingly selfless the next.  He’d made a place for himself both within her life and in her heart.  The problem was, that at the end of the day, their broken pieces couldn’t stop cutting into each other and tearing themselves up.

Stiles would have to call herself insane if she saw another clusterfuck like that coming and went with it - at least without trying to build in an escape hatch.

The catch was that she was already allowing it.  Had been ever since she came into Erik’s “protection” and had no idea how to stop the chain now that the dominoes had started to fall.  The match had already been struck.  The inferno began the moment she took his blood for the first time and allowed him to begin carving out a place inside of her.

If Stiles didn’t want him to ruin her in ways that no one else had ever managed, including the Nogitsune.  If she didn’t want to simply allow him to use her as another piece in whatever game he was playing around her like Scott and Deaton had once done before she beat some sense into her brother-from-another-mother, she’d have to do better.  There was no stopping the dominoes now, but she might be able to shift the direction to an extent.

Stiles had made a deal with a devil.

If she didn’t want him to burn her with it, it was about time she started fashioning a few loopholes before it came fully due.


The next rising was her tailoring appointment, and Stiles was pleased to find another thermos of Erik-spiked blood waiting on her nightstand.

Being a vampire meant that she didn’t sweat or have a human’s body-smells, but it showering every rising still felt good even if she didn’t necessarily need to bathe or wash her hair that often, though with the appointment looming and having showered the previous night, she skipped it for once in exchange for a quick face wash and teeth brushing after drinking her breakfast.

As the ex-wife of a smarmy, fancy motherfucker in one Peter Jerome Hale, Stiles knew a thing or two about day-long tailoring endeavors, hence even having the concept about getting even her everyday clothes tailored being on her radar.  Peter had taught her a lot about a lot, and not all to do with the supernatural or the intrinsic difficulties in having a functioning non-toxic relationship with someone who’d been broken in so many ways that neither of them could even count them.  (Unfortunately, she wasn’t only talking about Peter in that scenario.  By the time she was legal and Peter had started looking at her as more than an annoying kid out to foil his grand plots, between Beacon Hills’ general amount of fuckery and the personal ones she’d dealt with, or not, in the Nogitsune, Gerard Argent, Theo, and even Peter himself, she was pretty fucking broken.)  He’d also taught her about the differences between rich people and people of wealth.   How to identify and present not as someone trying to look like they had money or show it off but as someone who actually did have generational wealth in their back pocket.  The sort of people who gave presents in the form of real estate and college educations and not fancy cars or flashy trips because wealth, real wealth, was all about investment and sustaining their position.

Peter being Peter, there was also fancy cars and flashy trips abroad when they’d been together, but that was for fun not how he used what he already had to generate more wealth to indulge his hobbies with.

Hale money was the type of wealth where Peter could have - and lose - One Hundred and Eighteen Million Dollars just sitting in a safe in the Hale vault beneath Beacon Hills High School and while be pissed someone stole it, not actually have any more consequences to his financial portfolio than Stiles would at dropping twenty bucks on the ground.

So no: this was not her first go-around with the sort of rich bastard who kept a personal tailor on retainer, and she knew what she was in for with “Angelo” and probably Erik as well depending on how many opinions the vampire intended to air despite it ostensibly being Stiles’s fitting.

To that end, she dressed in a standard set of white t-shirt bra and cotton bikini panties, but packed additional changes of underwear as how garments laid on the body changed at times depending on the undergarments, and if Angelo was anything like Peter’s Francesca, Stiles might end up having to change from the skin-out at times.  Her previously tailored jeans - the lighter ones that’d gotten washed by one of Erik’s people while she’d been out with Pam - went on, then a simple red t-shirt.  Several different pairs of shoes, both heels and flats, went into another bag for the same reasons as the underwear, while Stiles felt more like the scruffy tomboy that had fallen for a werewolf (or two) than a vampire as she slipped white ankle socks onto her feet and then into a pair of vibrant red Converse All-Stars that Pam had wrinkled her nose at and refused to buy only for Stiles to whip out her own debit card and get them anyway.

Stiles didn’t bother with makeup again that night, but did throw in a few different hair styling tools, mainly ties, clips, and pins into a toiletry bag and that went on top of the underwear to take to the tailor in case she - or they - wanted to try how a garment looked with her hair done differently than her regular, sleek high ponytail Lydia showed her once-upon-a-time once she started growing out her hair at the queen-bee’s demand.


The clothes for tailoring had already been delivered to Angelo’s by one of Erik’s people, which had the vampire giving the pair of bags she came out of her room toting a look.

Especially once he got a peek inside of them.

Chalk up another point in the failure column for Pam/Bobby’s report on “Sookie Stackhouse” as unless she’d spent some time digging through the internet and doing research on tailoring appointments - which he doubted, since Stiles came to him with tailored clothes albeit not many - the girl they’d reported on shouldn’t have any notion about what went into a major tailoring spree.

Which, to Erik’s unrelenting interest mingled with frustration, was par for the course with Ms. Stiles Hale.  Almost nothing about her fell in-line with the report Pam and Bobby had gathered from the “good people” of her home.  Not even what was reported from her family members in Adele and Jason Stackhouse completely matched.  There were a few spots of alignment, Erik wasn’t going to say that the reports were completely faulty.  However, the more time he spent with her the more gaps or outright fallacies he found.

That Stiles might have been putting on a show of a sweet southern belle who was a bit simple for her neighbors was interesting.

That Erik couldn’t say that that was the reason behind the dissonance was where the frustration came in.

The departure from her expected character came in little moments - like her feistiness against her former “friend” when they visited Bon Temps when Bobby in particular had made her sound like a doormat - but also in quite large ones as well such as deciding to change her name as a vampire or her lack of body shyness.

Stiles was a puzzle that was driving him crazy since while he normally would relish in the challenge of untangling her secrets and unlocking the gates to her innermost person, she wasn’t his to discover.

Stiles was for Godric, and the more he had to remind himself of that, the less effective the warning became.

Having her under - and over - him had been a fucking revelation, and one Erik was struggling to come to grips with.

She made him want to be possessive.  To keep her for himself until he knew her completely inside and out.  It was unacceptable and Godric could not arrive soon enough to save him from it.

That didn’t mean that Erik was going to deny himself her pleasures while she was still his.

One of which he was anxious to get started as he ushered her towards his Corvette and zoomed away towards Angelo’s manor home/workshop.

When Stiles left with his Maker, she’d do so draped in clothes that Erik and purchased for her.  Drenched in his scent.  Tied to him through his blood.

That would have to be enough.

Erik would make it be enough before he had to let her go.


“Stiles, my dear,” Angelo, who turned out to be a nattily turned out Italian vampire of roughly middle age when he’d been turned, took her hands in his own after taking the bags of supplies she’d brought to facilitate her fitting to one of his many apprentices (a human, which she hadn’t expected) and a beaming smile that was belied by the appraising look in his dark brown eyes.  “You are a vision of beauty, che meraviglia, Erik, dove l'hai trovata?”

Stiles was tempted to slip into the smooth, cultured Italian that Peter had taught her.  To tell Angelo that Erik hadn’t found her at all, but that arguably she’d found him.   That wouldn’t do, however, not when there was a game yet to be played and Stiles was holding her trump cards tight to her chest.

Erik had been far too hot and cold with Stiles since he took her into his care for her to risk it.  Not yet.  One day she might trust someone enough to let them in on the secret of who she really was, but until then under the radar was the safest place for her to fly along in relative peace.

In a few years, maybe a decade - and fuck, now she had to think in terms of decades and centuries rather than months and years - it wouldn’t matter so much if she slipped up in a major way between who Sookie was and who Stiles actually is.

For now, no matter how much it chafed to be spoken of like a stray pet or a lovely vase on display, she had to bite her tongue and take it, pretending like it flew right over her pretty little head.

The fuckers.

She’d get her own back, eventually, but at the moment it just wasn’t worth the risk if she wanted to keep surviving instead of rolling the dice on how someone like Erik fucking Northman would react to finding out that the universe was much larger - and far more fucked up - than he’d ever considered.

While Stiles was keeping a chokehold on her temper (which Erik had caught through their tie if the amused look he shot her was any sign, asshole) Angelo and Erik carried on a cheery conversation over her head as Angelo led her with one hand ensconced in his own over to a parlor that was set up as his tailoring studio, raised platform with triple mirror set up and all.  There were a handful of mannequins draped with the beginnings of suits and gowns.  Racks of fabric bolts and muslin for making mockups.  Along one wall sat a couple of leather wingback chairs for the likes of Erik to reside in state while waiting or being an active participant in a fitting.

Meanwhile on a pair of long rolling racks were the contents of the Stiles/Pam clothing haul that between them they’d decided would need tailoring, containing everything from casual shirts and jeans to the body conforming Carolina Herrara silk cocktail dress in a crimson so deep it was almost black that Pam had refused to leave Nordstroms without.

Once she was in place on the measuring platform and Angelo was bustling around her, he turned his attention back to his new muse instead of prying more information from the Northman in regards to parameters.

At which point Angelo found himself utterly delighted as it seemed that his most loyal patron was in an indulgent and giving mood, and would allow Angelo to play so long as his new protege’s tailoring needs regarding her off-the-rack purchases were met.

Pah!

Off-the-rack was an abomination no matter how high-cost, but such were the evils of the modern day he supposed.

Mainstreaming and the modern day delighted him with its potential for profit and living outside of the shadows of the world, but there were negatives as well - such as the creation of polyester.

“To your underthings, my dear, there you are.”  Angelo cast an appraising eye over the newborn, impressed that for such a new vampire and from this dreadfully repressed area of the world that she didn’t hesitate even for a moment to strip down with an audience.  Such fearlessness would help her navigate her new life considerably if she managed to adapt.  Angelo hoped she did if only so he could have access to such a lovely model for his work for ages to come.  “An interesting name, Stiles, one I’ve not heard before.”  He chatted along as he moved with quick, precise hands taking her measurements and locking them away in the file he was building for her in his mental vault.

Angelo was pleased to see that the darling and daring Pamela had taken accurate measurements, but he wasn’t surprised given the age she was turned in where such skills were more common.

“A family nickname.”  Stiles said honestly, far too aware of Erik’s ice-blue eyes locked on her face and form, eating up every little flicker that crossed her face to try and lie outright.  What family on the other hand, she left for them to interpret.  “Something both old and new to carry me into my unlife.”

Angelo made an approving sound both at her answers and the measurements he completed, having found only a single inaccuracy of a mere two millimeters, nothing that would negatively impact the work he’d already done.

Thereafter followed what could only be called a gauntlet of clothing fittings interspersed with the most genial interrogation Stiles had ever been a part of.

Either as the victim or the interrogator.

Clothes almost flew onto her body between her own speed and Angelo’s, either pleased noises coming from the tailor over his work or a displeased cluck that preceded new pins being set into place for additional alterations.

Every now and again Erik chimed in with either a comment regarding the clothes or Stiles and Angelo’s conversation, but for the most part he played the part of a rather handsome statue as he slipped into and out of downtime depending on the topic (or clothes) at hand.

“You are lucky in your body, dear one.”  Angelo sighed with pleasure, one hand held to his cheek as he took in the sight she made in the deep red cocktail dress, the last of the off-the-rack fittings.  “You will not have to worry about such curves going in-and-out of fashion like these rail-thin waifs.”  He scoffed a little under his breath at the current love affair the world seemed to have with women who were more sharp edges akin to human clothes hangers than healthy bodies.  “Men will always be pleased to meet a woman who looks like a woman rather than a boy.”

Stiles tried not to take offense as a former “rail-thin waif” who couldn’t put on weight or “womanly curves” to save her life but it was a tall order.

One that was not helped along as Erik made a noise of agreement as he rose and circled her in the skin-hugging deep red, almost burgundy, silk that draped in a sweetheart halter top into a body-con torso and skirt that hugged each Sookie-given curve before coming to a stop just below her knees.

Angelo tucked a pin here-or-there to ensure that the straps were the right length and there was no pulling or slouching in the fabric, but was quick to step aside when Erik hopped up onto the platform behind Stiles and rested his hands on her full hips.

“Red is your color, little one.”  He all-but-purred as he leaned down, brushing his nose along her elegant neck as his hands flexed, relishing in the feel of silk over her body.  Wanting nothing more than to rip it back off of her and fuck her in the torn scraps of silk.  He glanced at Angelo and nodded, the tailor ducking back into the depths of the studio.  “I’m glad I chose it.”

“For what?”  Stiles asked, meeting his burning eyes in the mirror as Erik stepped back once Angelo returned, the tailor’s arms spilling over with a fall of lush red velvet the same color as arterial spray, answering the question even as Stiles asked it.

“Pam did a good job ensuring you had the necessities.”  Erik grabbed hold of his self-control with both hands and fangs before his vampire had him tearing that scrap of silk off of Stiles after all.  “As I swore to care for you as my own, mere necessities is not enough to satisfy my pledge.”

Erik said nothing about how it made his instincts roar with pleasure to see her draped in the garments his money provided, or the growing desire to drape her in other riches altogether.

She wasn’t his, despite his pledge.

It wouldn’t be appropriate, anymore than forming a blood-bond rather than a mere tie would be.

Stiles gasped a little, her inner feminine self almost bursting with delight as what she could only describe as a gown fit for royalty was held up by a proud Angelo for her inspection - or the bones of one anyway, as it would need fitting and a few alterations.  The top was more ephemeral than actual.  A gorgeous rendering of peek-a-bo gold and crimson lace shoulders and sleeves overlaying the brighter red of the structured bodice that was boned and corseted.  (One of the needed alterations needed to adjust the fit of the bust, as Sookie had been…graciously endowed.)  The bodice itself was cut straight over her cleavage but plunged in the back aside from the necessary open lacing that held the bodice tight to Stiles’s front and sides but left the majority of her back uncovered aside from the thin silk cords.

Acres of layered skirts in the brighter arterial-spray-red velvet draped over a golden-silk lining skimmed Stiles’s hips and fell in gleaming sheets of smooth lush fabric to the floor.

Angelo had her step into a pair of five-inch golden stiletto heels that Pam had also insisted she buy despite not being her usual style, then ripped through pinning the hem of the skirts so they hit perhaps a millimeter from actually kissing the floor.

The skirt had a small train that had appliques of the same crimson-gold lace decorating the couple of large pleats that started at the small of her back, but Angelo assured her she’d be able to dance in the dress as he intended to add a hidden loop-and-button that would allow her to either bustle it or loop it over one of her fingers.

“Bellissima, Angelo.”   Erik murmured as he took in the sight of Stiles once the tailor had coaxed her into pinning up her hair into a messy bun on top of her head to supply a bit of an idea of the whole effect.  “You’ve outdone yourself.”

“It helps to have a gorgeous canvas to begin with.”   Angelo smiled with pride at the nearly-flawless sight.  He could just picture her at a royal ball or a formal event of the High Council: draped in gold and rubies, a coronet in her hair, and flawless in Angelo’s fashions.  He sent Erik a sly grin.  “She would look divine in a crown.”

Erik scoffed immediately, rolling his eyes at the implication, not hesitating to break Angelo’s hopes to pieces.

“And I have no wish of one, nor is she my consort.”   He scolded the old meddler.  Some days he thought Angelo spent far too much time around the Medicis.  “Let us see the blue,” he ordered.  “As well as the pant suits before it grows too early and we run out of time before dawn.”

All the while, Stiles herself was listening and taking careful note of the byplay.

Erik had no wish of a crown despite others thinking he should have one, hmm?  Yeah, that tracked.  It was one of the more infamous traits of Erik Northman if she was remembering correctly, that he considered climbing higher in the vampire power structure far more onerous than desired for the amount of work that came with being a monarch.

The bit about consorts was also interesting, as it confirmed them as a thing despite Erik not having mentioned them thus far in his Vampire 101 lessons.

Not that she had ambitions in that direction.  On the contrary, when it came to vampire monarchs, she kinda thought Erik had the right idea.  No information was worthless, however, and given how many fucked-up things existed in her one self, to her knowledge may very well end up being priceless when it kept her alive.

Undead.

Whatever.


 

Chapter 11

Notes:

Posting delayed due to Ren Faire, hope you enjoy!

(Now with minor Icelandic corrections provided by Fimbulfamb!)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Eleven: The Beast Inside

Stiles spent back-to-back nights playing bouncer and doing door duty with Pam after her tailoring appointment.

Erik had apparently decided that her grace period away from both Fangtasia and humans in general was over, and proceeded to make her run the gauntlet of controlling both her telepathy and her newborn’s thirst.  He wasn’t doing it to be cruel - at least, she didn’t think so - but as a challenge.  Stiles had arguably done it to herself, as she’d asked how long it would be until she was let off-leash or without a babysitter.  Erik had been less-than-amused and shot right back with “when you can last a whole night at Fangtasia without dropping fang.”

She took that bet.

Erik was still playing by the newborn vamp rulebook while Stiles had thrown it out the window.  Between the perks of being in a body that’d been part-fae upon turning and having lived through possession by a Nogitsune?  Leaning to control her thirst around humans was far simpler than coming to terms with an embedded lust for chaos, strife, and pain that had been just one of the “symptoms” of Nogitsune possession Stiles had fought with long after he’d been defeated.

This wasn’t her first go-around with a beast inside her she struggled to understand and control.

Only the latest and honestly?  Compared to the Nogitsune’s desires and drives, the relatively simple and uncomplicated wants of her vampire (faepire?) were easy to comprehend.  A vampire was a creature of survival.  It wanted for blood first, sex second, and territory third.  Everything else, all the anger and rage and lashing out, that all came from someone or something infringing on those base wants.

Trying to stifle the urge to cause - and revel in - chaos and strife was a far different monster.

Admittedly, that first night she dropped fang several times when Pam provoked her or a human got too up into her space before they learned the no-touchy-the-Stiles rule.

Borrowing Derek’s glare and eyebrow game had helped with keeping the fangbangers back considerably, and on the second night Stiles greeted Erik after closing with a strut in her step and a smug grin, Pam echoing her as the pair gave the Sheriff the news: Stiles had managed to keep from dropping fang all night, and had won herself a bit of a loose leash.

Pam had also won - as she’d put a bet down on Stiles figuring it out inside a week against Erik’s doubt - to the tune of a shiny new pair of pumps for her shoe collection that made Erik actually wince at having to hand over his black AmEx to pay up.

Hah.

Sucker.

Though Pam having an end goal riding on Stiles’s success did fill in the blank regarding why she’d been so helpful - abnormally and out of character so - with the tips for keeping one’s fangs in check.

After all, the deal wasn’t that Stiles couldn’t get pissed off at the humans or other vampires, she just couldn’t show it via dropping fang.

With a loophole like that, Stiles could drive Erik’s precious Corvette through it, let alone win a night to herself, the first she’d had since walking on into Erik’s bar and presenting herself before the Sheriff.

Which was how just over a week or so after she’d been taken under Erik’s wing, rather than playing Ice Princess for the third night in a row at Fangtasia, she woke for the night with a different agenda entirely in mind: that of meeting up with Jason and Lafayette at Merlotte’s to get the details on how Erik had ended up handling Lala’s issue since the big bastard had been mum on the subject ever since Stiles lobbed it into his lap.

Stiles killed the time between rising and when Erik left for Fangtasia by showering and throwing her hair - she was starting to get used to the blonde - into ringlet curlers.  By the time she’d blown her hair dry and taken it down, tousling and separating the curls into a playful look, she felt Erik’s void to her telepathy leave the house.  She slapped on a bit of makeup, nothing Fangtasia-heavy but a shimmery golden liner and pinky-gold gloss, then threw on a plain white set of underwear and sports bra underneath a white tank and dark jeans.

A matching red belt to go with her Converse and a pair of dangly gold chain-link earrings made the whole thing look purposeful instead of more dressed-down than she’d been in days, and then she was rushing out of her room to drop her latest round of emptied-thermos in the sink.

Stiles huffed a little laugh at the note and car keys already set out for her, ones she recognized as belonging to Erik’s Range Rover, and then she was out the door.

A night of being footloose and fancy-free awaited her, and she wasn’t going to waste anymore of it rolling her eyes over Erik’s not-so-secret plan to keep her from taking one of the more expensive cars in his garage for a joyride.

The giant buzzkill.


Erik chuckled under his breath as he took flight from the back porch of his residence to the undertone of feeling Stiles and her even split between eagerness for her night of freedom and sheer, unrelenting calculation.

Stiles thought that she’d gotten one over on him and was reveling in it.

It was cute, but naive.

While Stiles believed Erik was heading out for another night entertaining the vermin at Fangtasia, instead he landed at a quiet, secluded clearing less than a mile from his residence.  There he remained, lifting his face to enjoy the light of the moon and stars on his skin, as he fell into downtime allowing all his thoughts and schemes to fall away, leaving only calm in their wake.  And he waited.

Less than two hours passed before the sound of a body moving swiftly through the air, faster than any bird could sustain outside of a downward dive, and the feel of his Maker ran riot through his senses as his bond to Godric opened fully for the first time in decades, since the last time they were within proximity to each other.

Dallas and Shreveport weren’t the outer reaches of a progeny-maker bond, especially one as strong and unbreakable as theirs, but it wasn’t the same as being within the same city let alone within touching distance of each other.

Smiling, Erik woke out of downtime fully and lifted his gaze from where his eyes had been closed, taking in the sight of Godric landing on silent feet just within Erik’s arms’ reach.

As ever when it came to Godric, intentionally so.

His ancient maker was far too proud a creature to ask for anything, but he had a way of making his wishes and wants known nonetheless.

No sooner had Godric’s booted feet touched the ground than Erik was pulling his deceptively slight form into his own.  At a glance, his Maker looked well, if pale.  The immortal teenager had dressed for flight in leather boots and jacket, with a pair of worn-in jeans that modern humans would peg as vintage but Godric had probably owned since they came off the production line, and a paper-thin cashmere sweater in a soft dove grey, one of Godric’s rare indulgences in opulence.

Erik could feel that his Maker hungered but that Godric was firmly restraining his thirst for some reason, and likely had been doing so for some time.

Fuck, that was never a good sign.

Perhaps he hadn’t been acting precipitously with maneuvering Stiles and Godric together after all - depending on how everything turned out, naturally.

Godric allowed Erik to indulge his own (and Godric’s) need for physical closeness for only a few moments before resolutely pulling away and giving his beloved childe an arch look at the lack of “promising” baby vamps to be found in the clearing he’d tracked his Viking to through their bond.

“Ég er glaður að sjá þig heilan, sonur minn.” [I am glad to see you well, my son.]   Godric told him honestly, as he would never feel anything less than joy at noticing signs that his Erik continued to thrive.  “En hvar er þessi efnilegi ungi þinn?” [But where is your promising young one?]

This wasn’t an idle visit, but one with a purpose behind it.  Erik had lured him away from running damage control against an increasingly-aggressive Fellowship of the Sun, leaving Dallas in the hands of his seconds, in order to inspect a prospect for adoption into their bloodline.  And yet: they were alone with only the wildlife for company in the lovely glade that Erik had chosen to greet him in.

As Godric hadn’t felt Erik moving through their bond for quite a while as he flew, it was a case of Erik choosing the moment and location to greet him and not a matter of happenstance nor would Godric believe that the lack of newborn vampire presence was anything but purposeful.

Godric didn’t believe it was a case of his progeny risking his ire by drawing him to Louisiana under false pretenses, but he knew Erik far too well to believe that his childe wasn’t up to something with how he’d chosen to arrange matters.

It was simply a case of needing to discover what his clever one was up to.

“Er það svo rangt að ég vilji heilsa þér án truflana, bróðir minn?” [Is it so wrong that I wish to greet you without distractions, my brother?] Erik teased him lightly, careful not to cross the line that would spark Godric’s ire rather than his humor.

Godric sent him a teasing look, Erik’s humor in their bond lightening his own mood, if only for a moment.

“Er þetta hógværð frá þér Erik?” [Is this modesty, from you Erik?]  Godric smirked, running his eyes up and down his progeny’s impressive form that was shown to advantage in tight leather pants, motorcycle boots, and a thin tank top under a leather jacket, all in black.  “Að þú haldir að einhver annar gæti dregið athygli mína frá stórfengleika þínum?”  [That you believe another could distract me from your magnificence?]

“Ekki hógværð, meistari, veruleiki.” [Not modesty, Master, reality.]  Erik let one side of his mouth kick up in a grin, falling out of the old tongue.  “I know how you are about fierce blondes, and Stiles is beautiful enough to draw even the most jaded eye.”

Godric blinked innocently at him, even as he felt an answering smile tug at the corners of his mouth, turning them up for a split-second before falling once more.

“Where is your Stiles, then, my Erik?”  Godric asked, opening and extending his arms in an encompassing gesture.  “She - she?”  He double-checked, as he recalled Erik speaking of a female previously, but the name was a strange one for a woman of the modern age, then continued on the heels of Erik’s confirming nod.  “Is the reason you have asked to see me?”

“Stiles is an…interesting case.”  Erik felt his way through what he wanted to say, trying to describe her in such a way as not all the mystique he was counting on to engage Godric’s interest was stripped away whilst also not being disingenuous with a vampire he respected bone-deep and in a way he’d never felt for another being in any life, including his human parents.  “She uses masks, personas,” he explained as Godric watched him with those incisive glue-grey eyes that saw everything.   “With flawless skill.  She has been with me or my Pamela constantly for over a week, and in all that time I do not believe I have seen her true self in full.  Pieces,” he pondered aloud.  “Flickers, but not the fullness of her or the predator inside her.  A consequence of her human talent, I suspect.”

“Oh?”  Godric cocked his head to the side in intrigue.  “She was a talented one before being turned and orphaned?”

“A telepath.”  Erik’s smile as his Maker’s eyes widened with surprise was all teeth.  “A talent which survived her Turning but only for, as she describes it, sapient beings with brainwaves, which excluded vampires for obvious reasons.”

Godric nodded slowly, thoughtful.  “What were the circumstances of her Turning?”  He asked, full engaged in finding out more about this talented - and, ah, his Erik did so enjoy surprising him, he could feel his childe reveling in it through their bond, but in turn Godric enjoyed the rare surprise as the older he grew the rarer it became in turn - youngling.  “Tell me all you know.”

At the implied order, Erik did just that, laying it out in succinct order all that either Stiles herself had told him or implied, as well as what he’d learned himself.

Godric in turn listened with both his senses, testing Erik for veracity, as well as with their bond, thinking on Erik’s words for long moments after his childe was finished with the report.

“What are the odds,” he finally asked slowly, verbalizing a thought that Erik himself had toyed with.  “That she arranged events with this Rene Lenier to kill her Maker before he could truly take command of her?”

For the first time, Erik allowed himself to truly sink into that line of inquiry which he’d been scrupulously avoiding, lest it affect how he treated Stiles in turn, either for good or ill.

“Good, if it were not for the timeline.”  Erik admitted that he saw in Stiles the sort of cunning ruthless pragmatism that might allow someone with her mind the ability to overcome the natural loyalty between maker and progeny to commit premeditated murder.  It was one of her traits that fascinated him.  The idea that both she was capable of such a thing against her own instincts, but also that if one were to gain her loyalty, it wouldn’t be a rote empty thing.  It would be earned and all the fiercer for it, he imagined.  “Unless she is capable of both denying the call of the sun as a newborn and moving openly despite the sun, the logistics of it given that she claims to have been with Compton her entire first rising and her grandmother confirmed as such, enter the realm of impossibility.”

“Is she capable of denying the call of the sun?”  Godric asked the next logical question, not quite satisfied with Compton’s murder not being set into play by his own progeny rather than a matter of bigoted happenstance.  “To your knowledge?”

“She never has, since coming into my care.”  Erik chose his words with care, not wanting to mislead his Maker, especially as the bald truth was that he didn’t actually know.  As she was so young, and risen and fallen so predictably with the sun and as expected from a newborn, he’d never tested it, despite the holes he saw in the story of Compton’s death.  “However, there is a week between Compton’s True Death and Stiles coming into my care that is relatively unaccounted for.  A week that she could have, in theory, spent examining what she was capable of and learning to conceal anything that falls outside the expected behavior of a youngling.”

Godric took that in, a rare expression of insecurity from Erik, with steadfast calm.

Then he shot his beloved progeny an exasperated expression, dismissing the calm for a moment and allowing himself to truly feel for the moment.

“þér er ljóst að ég er ekki barn sem þarf á skemmtun að halda, er það ekki??” [You are aware that I am not a child in need of entertaining, yes?]   He asked, tone almost scathing for his childe’s presumption.

Erik, for his part, was utterly unrepentant even as he felt the lash of Godric’s temper over being manipulated into participating in one of his schemes through their bond.  He’d take it, and gladly.  If it meant his maker waking from the apathy of the last decades?  He’d take any amount of ire or disapproval from Godric, if it meant he started living again instead of just coasting through his existence, steadily growing more and more like a statue who hungered rather than a vampire thriving in his undeath.

“Maybe not,” Erik shot back, arms folded mulishly over his chest.  “But you are bored in this modern age.  Play the refined, restrained ancient for others all you like, my son,” Erik sneered thinking of the sycophants that flocked around Godric in Dallas, his choice of appellation precise to engage the rarely-used portion of their relationship that had been in place since he’d been Turned.  That of a father, teacher, to a son or student in need of guidance.  It was a rare dynamic that they enjoyed, one where Godric was even willing to listen to counsel from a vampire so much younger that he also made, but it was also one of the reasons why their bond was so strong - it was flexible, adaptable, rather than utterly rigid.  “I know, I remember, the hunter that hides inside you.  If you see her, meet her, speak with her,” Erik drawled, brows raised haughtily.  “And do not wish to take her for your own, then so be it, you will not hear another word from me about it.  You can return to Dallas and your nest with the knowledge that your wayward progeny is being foolish.  I will stay and take Stiles for my own.”

“You would like that,” Godric pointed out, taking a sharp sniff for emphasis.  “If she’s the one who smells of honey and grapes ripe on the vine, she is all over you, father.”

Erik shrugged, unbothered.  “Stiles is beautiful and fiery.  Her passions run hot.  I have not bedded her fully or taken her blood to bond her to me.  Not yet.  I may be a presumptuous childe, but I am filial to my maker and have not taken that which should be yours if so choose to take it.”

“I will not be able to change your mind, will I?”  Godric sighed, rolling his eyes at Erik’s stubbornness, all-but-conceding which would shock most of those who knew him.

“Tell me that your apathy and boredom haven’t grown strong.”  Erik demanded in turn.  “Tell me that they haven’t grown dangerous,” he danced around but didn’t broach the languishing that could strike their kind and lead to their True Deaths.  “And I will drop it.  I will not press you to meet her, or say a word when you return to Dallas to play the mainstreaming peacemaker for the AVL.  Tell me that I’m wrong,” Erik demanded again.  “And I’ll stop.”

Godric looked away from those pleading blue eyes, shamed that he could not answer his beloved Erik with the words that the indomitable Viking desperately wished to hear.

Over the phone, by email, from a distance - it was easy to lie.  To dismiss the ennui as the warning sign it was.  To simply let it all just…play out to its inevitable end.

Without Erik in his face and demanding answers, playing his games just to try and snag Godric’s interest in living again with any lure that came to hand, denial was easy.

Staring into that handsome face and red-rimmed eyes that were one breath from tears as Erik read for himself in the bond just how deeply Godric could not deny his words, could not dismiss Erik’s read of him, Godric found himself incapable or just unwilling to maintain the pretense.

“Where is your talented, beautiful, cunning Stiles?”  Godric asked instead, which was all-but an admission in and of itself.  “Show her to me.”


Erik was at war with himself as he flew through the air with his Maker following.

Part of him was elated: he’d won, at least in part.  Godric wasn’t trying to conceal the apathy and depression any longer, he’d opened the bond and kept it open even when Erik could feel that he wished to hide.  Even if Stiles didn’t capture Godric’s attention and interest as she’d done his own, Erik had made inroads to if not defeating the malaise that had taken hold of his maker, at least he might be able to push it back while he worked on his next attempt to battle what plagued his maker.

The rest of him was conflicted.  The problem with being right, in this case, was exactly that: he’d been right.   Godric was suffering and attempting to hide it from Erik.  He was in danger of languishing if a way to reinvest him in the living world wasn’t found.  If not caught in time, such circumstances were as good as a sentence to the True Death.

Erik could only pray to any gods who might be willing to listen to an aged vampire that Erik had caught it in time, and that he would somehow manage to shake Godric out of his ennui, even if it meant abandoning his duties in Louisiana and dogging Godric’s footsteps until his maker woke himself out of his depression from sheer frustration.

Then there was also the reality that Erik’s first salvo against Godric’s apathy both relied upon Stiles and relied upon Stiles.

If he was successful then the beautiful creature would surely be leaving for Dallas with his Maker who would become her Maker.  Stiles would be brought into their bloodline, but not as his in all ways, but as Godric’s.   She wouldn’t be another Nora, who was made only to satisfy Erik.  If Godric in his state chose to take her as his own, it would be in all ways and she would have the same status within their bloodline as Erik himself as Godric’s chosen progeny.

He had set this turn of events into motion and yet he couldn’t help, territorial and possessive creature that he was, the jealousy that the mere thought had roared to life within him.

For Godric, for Stiles, for both, it was all tangled up and ferocious within him even as he was careful to conceal it from his bond with his maker.

Whether he was successful or not was impossible to say, as Godric had always been superior to Erik when it came to reading their bond, even if after a thousand years of practice Erik was no novice.

All he wanted now that he knew Godric was in danger - not from any outside source, for what could be a danger to a creature so strong? but from himself - was to pin the slighter form of his Maker to his bed and keep him there until between them they’ve fucked and fought and fed any iota of an idea of an end to them out of the knots that had tangled up his Maker’s mind.

He would do anything to save him, even, or perhaps especially, from himself.

No matter what it took, or what it cost him.

As he landed on silent feet just outside of Stiles’s range, able to see the sheer life and party-like atmosphere of Merlotte’s with Stiles front-and-center, he had a damn good idea of just what, or rather who, it was going to cost him.

Erik struggled to accept that his manipulations were closing in on their finish line - and all that would come after.

It would be worth it.

Godric was worth it.

He was worth anything, let alone a spark of something that was mere potential at the moment, that had yet to grow beyond that alone.

Through the windows of Merlotte’s they, as Godric landed next to him in the shadows of the trees edging the shifter’s parking lot, could see her there:

Golden, and vibrant, and alive in a way that not all vampires managed.

She was tossing her head of curls back with a throaty laugh at a joke from one of the handful of breathers that circled her like she was the sun at the center of their universe.  Most of them Erik recognized.  The would-be V-dealer, the sweet-smelling brother, a fangbanger who he’d tasted at Fangtasia, even the shifter himself with a faint smile as he brought over another round of drinks, including a Tru Blood for Stiles that she plucked up with a smile for the man.  One was a stranger, but at a glance seemed an affable sort.

The rest of the bar watched the group that had clustered around one of the pool tables and taken command of the miniscule dance floor between it and the lone juke box against the far wall.  Some with wariness or disgust.  Others with interest, like they’d watch lions at the zoo.

Waiting for Stiles or one of the others to snap or otherwise provide them with entertainment.

They watched silently as Stiles snapped a pool cue out of the air from her brother to good-natured teasing, and then ran the table putting her new agility and reflexes to use before flubbing a trick shot due to using too much force and having to relinquish the table to the affable-one in turn, with a flourishing little bow to jeers from her brother.

“You were right,” Godric murmured far too quietly for even a vampire to hope to pick up between their distance and the noise of the bar.  “She is beautiful.”

Erik remained silent, jaw flexing as he was torn between celebrating his Maker’s growing - and he could feel it in the bond - interest in Stiles and his own want for her.  Anything for Godric.   He chided himself and the possessive creature roaring within.  Anything.   Even her.

The fangbanger changed the song on the jukebox and Stiles was whirled into a dance in the V-dealer’s strong arms, the two of them: him all flash, her dressed down but all the more lovely for it, making quite the sight as they two-stepped and dipped and twirled to the overplayed Smooth, the fangbanger joining them as the now-trio put on a show to hoots from their redneck audience.

It was a markedly wholesome scene for a vampire to be involved in.  Exactly the sort of thing that would make the AVL quiver in joy.  In that moment, among those she enjoyed, Stiles was the picture of a mainstreaming vampire, sliding back into the harness of her human life as if she hadn’t changed at all.

Of course, while he’d wanted Godric to see her this way, a version of her that Erik had only suspected from her occasional playfulness with him existed, he hadn’t counted on it and had laid his bets on another version altogether.

Right on time, his insurance that Godric would see the predator coiled inside of Stiles and find it desirable came tearing into the parking lot, completely unaware that they’d done so in full view of their Sheriff and an ancient due to them cloaking their presence from Stiles.

“James,” Erik murmured as Malcolm Beaumarchais and his detestable nestmates Liam and Diane sauntered on into Merlotte’s, killing the joy in an instant.  Stiles’s hidden guard - as if he’d be so foolish as to let a newborn completely run free - stepping out of the trees behind him, having to stay farther back and rely on his hearing alone as he couldn’t conceal himself as effectively as an older vampire would.  “Back her up, but don’t intervene unless necessary.”

“Yes, Sheriff.”

The young - only a mere two decades - vampire sped over into place just outside of the still-swinging doors of Merlotte’s at his command.

Ah, Malcolm.

A pain in the ass, but a predictable one.

The merest hint that Erik was going to be distracted with business that night and out he’d come crawling with his underlings to cause havoc.

Truly, that Beaumarchais had managed this long without someone granting him the True Death was almost impressive with how irritating he could be.

Almost.


Stiles should’ve known that it was too good to be true.  The idea of a normal night out.  Or as normal as it could get with a guard lingering in the shadows of the trees and her status as one of the newly undead, anyway.

She didn’t mind the guard.

They weren’t up her ass and Erik had to be safe.

Having the Sheriff’s new protege going on a rampage because he let her off-leash too soon wouldn’t be a good look, and the consequences potentially too severe for a vampire who’d survived a thousand years to truly risk it.

She sensed the guard waiting in the treeline once she arrived for her “night-out” after swinging by the Stackhouse place.  Adele was ecstatic to see her and hadn’t let her leave without a Tru Blood and chat, but that was fine and nothing she hadn’t expected.  Poor woman had lost enough without Stiles being an out-and-out bitch to her.

It was a price Stiles was willing to pay to have a bit of insurance tucked into the back of her waistband, just in case she’d mis-timed events and ended up with trouble on her hands.

Whether Stiles had ended up jinxing herself into needing to use the silver-coated knife she now carried or not was the question, along with whether her personal karma really was that bad.

Or if it was the Disco Triplet’s timing and karma that sucked a big one?

Hard to say.

After all, it didn’t get much worse for a witness to their bad behavior than the new foundling taking refuge with the area sheriff or her guard, except the sheriff himself.

“Well so this is the little watering hole Bill liked so much before he went up in flames.”  Stiles rolled her eyes from behind the bulk of Hoyt Fortenberry, the former linebacker that he was, as who could only be Malcolm Beaumarchais, leader of the fanon-dubbed “disco triplets” breezed into Merlotte’s with all the subtlety of a bulldozer.  “Get us three Tru Bloods.”

Sam stepped up to the plate, right on cue, as Stiles eyed the hold that Diane had on a teenage boy - which was both good and bad.

Good, in that it kept her mostly stationary.

Bad, that she couldn’t guarantee that she could take the heifer out before Diane snapped the poor kid’s neck.

Fucking disco triplets.  Once whoever reports back to Erik, it’ll be months before I’m gonna get a semi-free night out.  Asswipes.

For the sheer inconvenience alone Stiles would be inclined to tear them a new one - and thanks to running with a wolf pack and the lessons she’d stolen from a Nogitsune once-upon-a-time, she knew she could at least make them bleed even if she couldn’t take them on in a fair fight.

But then…fair fights had never been Stiles’s style, especially when outgunned.

“Y’all need to go somewhere else.”  Sam tried to push off the trio of vamps that even if he didn’t have a nose for the blood marking them he’d know were trouble when combined with how Sookie was watching them despite remaining out of sight for the moment.  “This is a family place.  Locals only.”

Malcolm was having none of that, eyeing up the bar’s stable of fleshbags like they were walking happy meals.

“Well we just closed on a little place up the road.  So that makes us official citizens of Renard Parish.”  Malcolm smiled.  “We’re the new locals.”

“My place, my rules.”  Sam bit back, not giving an inch.

Malcolm let a disappointed look cross his face.  “Discrimination against vampires is punishable by law in the great state of Louisiana…”

“It’s not discrimination.”  Stiles had had about enough of that, zipping around Hoyt at full speed, snagging the pool cue out of his hand while she was at it, and came to stand at Sam’s side.  “Sam’s just a bit discerning about his clientele when it goes bump in the night.”

“Ah, there you are.”  Malcolm’s smile turned wicked.  “I was wonderin’ when you were going to show yourself darlin’.  Bill’s little lost lamb.  I’ve heard that you’ve done well for yourself after your Maker’s unfortunate demise.  Perhaps he mentioned me?”  He queried.  “Malcolm Beaumarchais, an old friend.”

“Bill didn’t know me long enough to mention much of anything.”  Stiles didn’t give an inch to the troublemaking vampire, she wasn’t interested in anything he might be selling.  All she wanted was him out and away from those she called her own.  “But I have found myself well looked after in his absence.”  She arched a brow.  “That much is true.”

“Oh yes, so we can tell.”  Malcolm leered at the sweet young thing who was nearly dripping in the scent of Northman’s cum.  “Quite the upgrade for such an innocent little lamb.”

“Honey, if you think I’m a lamb.”   Her smile was all teeth.  “Then whoever you’ve been drinking has made you seriously delusional.”

That was about enough of that.  “You.  Are.  Not.  Welcome.  Here.”  Sam interjected before fangs could drop and what was a disagreement could become something much bloodier.

“That shit only works on private homes.”  Diane chuckled at the shifter’s futile attempt to expel them, loving the scent of fear pouring off of her plaything.

“Let me rephrase for him then.”  Stiles was there one moment and had Malcolm down on one knee, her silver blade burning into his neck the next.  “Get the fuck out and leave the locals alone in the process, or I’ll cut your fucking head off and use it for a pinata.”

Taking his cue, Sam snapped the pool cue Sookie had passed him in two and faced off with the bald vampire while a stranger with vamp-speed ripped through the doorway and had Diane off the kid before the humans even knew anything was going on.

The balance of power shifted in the blink of an eye as Malcolm chuckled even as he started to pant with pain from the burn of the blade and the feel of the edge of it digging into his neck.

A soft clap came from just outside the softly swinging bar doors, and then they opened, two more figures entering to Sam’s exasperation.

More fucking vampires.

What the hell?

Had Sookie turned into vampire crack with being Made or what the fuck?


 

Notes:

We have one more chapter of this before we take a break, so I hope you've enjoyed the ride thus far and I will see y'all again next week for the last chapter in this set of updates.

Chapter 12

Notes:

Alright darlings, here it is: the Godric/Stiles meeting and our last chapter before we break.

Enjoy!

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

Chapter Twelve: Meet Your Maker

Stiles tagged her guard/watchdog as James Kent as he rushed to assist, who Pam had introduced her to her first night at Fangtasia, then lifted her head to meet Erik’s iced-over blue gaze head on as he strode through the doors of Merlotte’s and held them open for the slighter form following him.

It was the deference that was the main clue, even if she would’ve made certain assumptions about any teenage-turned vampire male around Erik.

So that was his play, huh?

She had to admit, it wasn’t a bad one, even if being used as a game piece by the big bastard chafed right from the start.

Then again, was it even the first time Erik had done something like this?  Supposedly Erik had asked for Nora Gainsborough to be turned by his maker.  What was his grand plan?  Find Godric a project every time he got depressed?  (So long as Erik was aware of it, she supposed.)  Lob women at him until one stuck?

Stiles was likely going to benefit from it this time so it was hard to complain about having a potential protector as strong as Godric who according to Erik himself was “twice my age and ten times the vampire” when speaking about his Maker in True Blood.  She’d considered going straight to Godric and asking for his help when she’d been body-snatched into this world.  Even so - that it worked to her advantage this time didn’t mean that being treated like a party favor Erik wanted to pass along didn’t burn.

Still, she couldn’t really build up a good head of steam about it, even if she didn’t like how he operated.  The manipulative ass.  In the end, she’d been using him just as much as he was using her.  It was just her manipulations were far less likely to have permanent consequences than his own, at least if she was reading Godric’s presence correctly.

As Erik had escorted him to her in Bon Temps, maybe even set this whole scene into play somehow, she didn’t think she was.

Especially since those grey eyes that felt heavy with age hadn’t looked away from her once since Godric had stepped through Merlotte’s door in all his boy-next-door glory.

“Now now, Beaumarchais.”  Erik tsked mockingly as a smirk lit up his face at the sight Stiles made - like a shieldmaiden made flesh with her flowing golden hair and sure grip on her blade (though he’d kill to know where she got a silver knife from, or where it’d been hidden as she didn’t have it at his residence) - as she kept effortless control of Malcolm with one hand gripped in his hair and a foot firm on the back of his leg.  “That’s hardly the sociable way to interact with the locals expected within my territory now is it?”

Malcolm hissed in irritation - and then again, in pain as the petite blonde who Malcolm would’ve previously bet he could tear into pieces with little effort simply dug the edge of her blade in deeper at the rude noise towards her patron.

“Apologies, Sheriff.”  He got out between clenched jaws.  “But she attacked first.”

“She,” Erik raised his brows expectantly, blatantly unimpressed with the attempt at diverting the blame.  “Knows full well the laws we live under, Beaumarchais.  I taught them to her myself.   You were asked to leave.  When you failed to comply, you all became trespassers, and my charge was perfectly in accordance with the law to handle you as she saw fit.  Weren’t you, Stiles?”

“Yes, Sheriff.”  Stiles answered blandly.

A beckoning flick of his first two fingers had her releasing Malcolm with a push forward onto the floor at Erik’s feet, Liam backing off from Sam as James brought over Diane to add to the vision of a penitent trio of troublemakers knelt in supplication to their Sheriff.

Stiles wiped the blade of her knife on her pants, then tucked it away in the waiting sheath at the small of her back, folding her arms lightly across her waist as Erik stared down at the nestmates.

“Disturbing the peace.”  Erik clicked his tongue.  “Bad form, Beaumarchais.  Very bad form.  James,” he shot a look at the young enforcer who was coming along quite well in his opinion.  “You’re free to go.  Beaumarchais.”  He sneered down at the suddenly-respectful pain in his ass.  “Present yourself before dawn for punishment along with your nestmates.”

“Yes, Sheriff.”  The cowed trio muttered, keeping their head low and their eyes lower as Liam helped the weakened Malcolm stumble out of Merlotte’s.

They knew better than to try his patience.

Making trouble under the radar was one thing - so long as Northman never learned of it.

Having a pissed off Viking on their asses was a fate they didn’t want to have coming down on their heads like a ton of bricks mixed with the wrath of the Almighty.

They’d show up, hence Erik not needing James to escort them, and every vampire (plus Sam) in the building knew it.

“Say your goodnights.”  Erik commanded Stiles, Godric remaining silent and just drinking in everything he could about youngling before engaging with her.  “We have business.”

“Yes, Sheriff.”  Stiles nodded, granting Erik his due respect then rushed through her goodbyes, including a hug from a stiff-backed Sam whose nose couldn’t help but wrinkle at the smell of her, much to her own amusement.

All the while, the two males watched her every move, and were watched in turn.

And, as expected, as soon as they were all three out the door of Merlotte’s, a cacophony of noise kicked up behind them.


“Keys,” Erik requested as they stopped at the side of his Range Rover gleaming under the weak lights of the shifter’s parking lot.  He caught them without looking after Stiles tossed them over, then turned so he was equidistant between his maker and Stiles at an impatient look from Godric.

“Godric, allow me to introduce you to Stiles Hale, currently under my protection as an orphaned new Turn.”  Erik provided the introductions, ever-watchful as the two focused on each other utterly, only flicks of their eyes darting towards him-and-back showing that they were still aware of what was going on around them.  A fact - that focus - which was not helping him keep a stranglehold on his jealousy, damn it.  “Stiles, this is Godric, a senior member of my bloodline and Sheriff over Area Nine of Texas.”

“Sheriff,” Stiles bowed with one hand fisted over her heart, as expected from a baby vamp when greeting an ancient regardless of their position or formal authority.  “It is an honor.”

“The honor is mine, Ms. Hale.”  Godric returned with a soft voice and a firm nod.  “Erik.”  He turned towards his presumptuous progeny, having indulged him as much as he was inclined towards for a single rising.  “We will continue our earlier discussion tomorrow.”  He dismissed him, then sped over towards Stiles and held out his hand in a gesture that was part offer and part demand.

Stiles flicked her eyes between the two vampires, aware of the undercurrents due to knowing the relationship between them that most outside of their bloodline were ignorant of given how rarely vampires revealed their Makers.

She couldn’t be certain what was going on, but she could make a few guesses and all of them had to do with Erik maneuvering Godric and Stiles together as a weapon against Godric’s depression.

Maybe.

With vampires, even with her insider knowledge, the contents of their thoughts and their actual motivations could be impossible to discern let alone predict.

Erik had surprised her more than once since she woke up undead in this world instead of being allowed to die and rest in her original one.

So had Pam.

With how little was actually known about Godric except through interpreting his actions and how he was viewed through the lens of Erik, or even Nora, Stiles wouldn’t give herself good odds on knowing what was going on in his head or predicting how he would act.

Godric was a question mark, more myth and outline than a fleshed-out being.

And he was offering her his hand in a gesture that might be far more significant than Stiles was prepared to deal with, despite how she’d tried to mentally prepare herself over the last week or so for the outcome of Erik’s plotting to be revealed.

Stiles took a moment to ensure that when she reached out for him that her hand would be steady as a rock, then gently placed her smaller hand in his own callused one.  She managed not to flinch when he broke his stoic expression to smirk at her apprehension and swooped her up without warning into his arms.  Then they were airborne, and everything else was left behind far below.

Including one arrogant Viking vampire, who was staring after them with an expression that Stiles couldn’t even begin to parse out the meaning of.

Though, perhaps…the phrase be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, might be apt.


If her heart was capable of pounding, it would beat right through her chest in anxiety mingled with sheer excitement and joy.

Stiles was fucking flying.

In Godric’s arms, like the vampire version of Superman and Lois Lane.

She was allowed a mental flail-swoon-sigh moment, okay?

Now, Stiles was no stranger to having a guy swoop her up in a princess carry.  She’d topped out at a hundred and twenty-seven pounds of pale skin and fragile bones in her first life.  Not exactly hard for a fit person to pick up if they were so inclined.

And, as it so happened, the majority of the people in her life for a several year span had been of the supernatural variety, complete with a level of physical strength that was fucking unfair when Stiles was already at a disadvantage.

Stiles was no neophyte to being hauled into someone’s arms or over their shoulder or even hitching a ride piggyback.

Add in a werewolf ex or three, one of whom she’d been married to for several years, and she wasn’t even a stranger to the sort of sexy-fun-times that involved feats of strength like being pinned and had against a wall or a door or car or…

Ah hem.

Anyway.

Supernatural strength: nothing new.

Flying on the other hand…brand spanking new, and as a result was both thrilling and mildly terrifying even if she had decent odds on surviving a fall if Godric suddenly decided to try his hand at a little Stiles-murder through particularly convoluted means.  You know.  Given that as a two thousand year old vampire he could just tear her head from her shoulders or the heart from her chest before she could even blink.

Needless to say, she wasn’t overly concerned about him dropping her.

Especially not before she really had a chance to irritate him or really do anything to deserve it other than be used by Erik in his epic game of suicide chicken with his Maker.

With another vampire, that might very well be enough to their mind to warrant a true death, but this was Godric, he of the remorse and the regret and the heavy conscience after a couple thousand years of rampant murder.

If one was inclined to think of a vampire being a vampire as murder.

Stiles’s opinion was still being weighed as she learned how a vampire actually thought and what their instincts were like first hand.  She was torn.  She wouldn’t call a wolf a murderer for bringing down a deer.  At the end of the day, vampires weren’t human.  They were made to prey upon humans.

It was a grey area to her so far, as when sapience came into play the question of murder and crime and inalienable rights got a lot more complicated than the wolf/deer metaphor allowed.

Regardless, whether one considered Godric what amounted to a serial killer mixed with a spree killer for his blood-drenched past or not, she wasn’t dealing (she didn’t think) with that version of the ancient vampire at the moment.  Restraint and patience were traits that Godric, per True Blood, had mastered.  She doubted that he would intentionally hurt her without just cause, and even then it would likely take severe provocation.  She genuinely didn’t think she was in physical danger from him, which made her far more comfortable even in a new and strange situation - like flying in his arms - than she was around literally anyone else since she’d woken up after being stuffed like so much stardust and soul into the empty shell that used to be Sookie Stackhouse.  

Stiles followed Godric’s lead on remaining silent while they were in the air.  Instead of trying to chat over the sound of the wind - which they could do with vampiric hearing in the mix - she focused on the pure sensation of flight.  The bite of the wind rushing around her but not hurting her despite the high speed that Godric maintained.  She gazed around at the endless night sky and the landscape darting passed far beneath them.

Then, sooner than she would have expected, they were leaving the sky as swiftly as they’d taken to it, Godric landing with a soft flex of his knees.

Though he kept holding her in his arms, turning those ageless grey eyes onto her as she held onto him in turn with her slim arms around his neck.

“Erik was right.”  Godric admitted even as he tilted her in his arms and allowed her to regain her feet.  “You are a beautiful female.”  He said with certainty after having studied her face at close distance.  “Your eyes in particular are quite striking, they appeared gold in the shifter’s bar with your anger.”  He continued, turning nearly poetic.  “But they’re precious amber in the moonlight, both rare and lovely.”

“If Erik is any sign of what you look for in progeny,” Stiles replied.  “Then I would assume that you think I’m beautiful would work to my advantage.”

“You are aware I am his Maker?”  Godric arched a brow as he led her to walk alongside the quiet and still lake that had taken his fancy from the air as a private enough location for their talk, their bodies bare inches apart as they seamlessly fell into step.  “I was under the impression that Erik hadn’t confided in anyone but his Pamela and the required documentation as to my identity.”

“He didn’t.”  Stiles knew that the expression on her face was sly, if not as foxlike as her original given the differing cast to her features versus that of Sookie.  “You just did.”

Godric let out a soft laugh in appreciation for the bit of clever strategy from the pretty thing.

“He did warn me you were clever.”  He tilted his head in an almost-nod of concession.  “I see that he didn’t overstate that matter any more than he did that of your fairness.”

“My mind has always been my greatest and most valuable weapon.”  Stiles informed him.  “Looks, strength, even life as it turns out,” she huffed a little laugh that was far darker than Godric’s own.  “Can all come and go.  My mind remains.”

“A wise perspective for one so young.”  Godric admitted, growing more and more interested, dare he say even impressed, with the youngling the more he saw of her.  

Damn Erik anyway for knowing him so well.

His progeny had always known him a little too well at times.  His loyalty and strength had drawn Godric to him all those centuries ago.  It almost seemed fitting that those same traits perpetually stood in his way when he grew weary of his unending and unchanging unlife.

Short of commanding him, Godric doubted that there was any other way to keep his Erik from scheming to keep Godric walking the earth with him, no matter how weary he grew.  It was the promise they made each other after all, to walk beside one another forever, and as such Godric could never blame Erik for his stubborn refusal to let him slip away.  He supposed it had been centuries since Godric’s ennui grew so virulent and all-consuming, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that Erik noticed the change and took action before Godric could do anything irrevocable.

“I consider it practical.”  Stiles didn’t disagree with Godric’s opinion, even though she didn’t share it herself.  Arguing over what amounted to semantics with a vampire as old and powerful as Godric of Gaul seemed like an excellent way to fuck herself out of the strongest protector she could find in the New World.  Especially since the only known vampire Godric’s senior was a potentially-crazy bastard in Russell Edgington.  “With a talent like mine, knowing my own mind in and out was a necessity, not an option.”

“Erik told me of your talent.”  Godric mused, eyeing the golden creature walking along at his side as they paced slowly parallel to the shore, the sounds of water softly lapping and other natural sounds filling their ears.  “Together with your scent…”  He drew in a deep breath of sunshine and sun-ripened fruit, like the vineyards of the ancient world he once trod of a night.  “Tell me, Stiles, what do you know of your family?”


Stiles shot the ancient vampire a stunned look, that slowly washed away into resignation.

“You know, don’t you?”

Godric clicked his tongue, giving her a teasing, nearly playful, smile.  “I am old, young one.”  He explained without explaining.  “There isn’t much of the world that I have not experienced.  I imagine your scent, heady as it is now, would have been quite something when you were a human.”

“Hard to say.”  Stiles tread carefully with the ancient vamp, not wanting to give away any more of her secrets than what she must.  “Bill was the only vampire I met - that I know of - before he turned me.”

“The scent of fae is hard to forget and in the case of a full-fae nearly impossible to resist.”  Godric put a halt to their dancing around the subject.  “You will have to be careful with your blood, young one.”  He warned her.  “Even after Turning, depending on the strength of the part-fae,” for a full-fae had never been turned to his knowledge, even that pest Macklyn Warlow was merely half.  “Your blood will be quite tempting to other vampires.  If Erik had tasted you,” Godric’s smile turned cunning.  “He never would have managed to entertain even the idea of turning you over to my care instead of keeping you within his own.”

“He’s been careful not to taste me.”  Stiles gave a little sigh.  “Too cautious about creating a bond, if I had to guess at his motivations, before you decide if you want to bother with me or not.”

“Mmm,” Godric resisted the urge to laugh over how put out both of them were - his Erik and Stiles - over Erik’s rare bout of restraint.  

He imagined it wasn’t often that a woman as beautiful as Stiles had any male who was inclined towards the fairer sex turn down her overtures of any kind.  As it was, with how their scents were either strong or dispersed to his nose, he could tell that while they had indulged in each other, it wasn’t in full.  Whether in blood exchange or sex, his Erik had - somehow - kept this beautiful creature at a precise distance.  If anything, it merely reconfirmed for Godric how prepared - and devoted - his progeny was in meddling with Godric’s current state, no matter the cost.  

“Erik, for all that he prefers to dwell and thrive in the moment, can have patience and plot like no other at times.  It is nearly a gift of his, carried over from his human life, compared to how impulsive many of our kind are.”

“It’s too bad that Erik didn’t realize I would have been willing to plot with him.”  Stiles commented, still feeling a little raw - even with her own culpability - over being launched at Godric like a surface-to-air missile with approximately the same amount of subtlety.  “He didn’t need to manage me.”

“Erik is slow to trust, my fault of course.”  Godric smiled, bemused, over how much of a conversation he’d intended to be about Stiles she’d skillfully turned to Godric and Erik instead.  Clever little monster.  “Have you tested if any of your fae traits, beyond the telepathy, might have followed you into your undeath, my dear?”

Godric picked up the spike in her mood instantly, watchful as he was for any sign of deceit or prevarication on her sight.

Fear, or anxiety, something along those lines would be his best guess without a bond to her.

“You have.”  He answered for her, when the silence grew too long.  “Allow me to make another guess, then?”  He spun and faced her, the two coming to a halt under the moonlight, Stiles’s eyes wide with uncertainty despite Godric’s calm demeanor as he cupped her cheek in a gentle hold - that nonetheless put his hand directly above her neck and in position to strike, if such was his decision.  “You used those traits, whatever they might be, to arrange for the true death of your original Maker, didn’t you?”

Stiles couldn’t say it.

Couldn’t make herself admit it.

It was far too dangerous, her situation too precarious, to risk it.

Even knowing that of anyone, of any vampire in all the world, it would be this one who might understand what might have driven her to do such a thing.

“Ah, I see I have pressed too hard,” Godric tilted his head a bit to the side in interest, lightly caressing her gold-tinged cheek with the edge of his thumb.  Fascinated by her at times restrained and at others wholly natural responses to him and his questions.  “Erik doesn’t believe it possible.”  He assured her.  “It is only that I know what a part-fae turned vampire is capable of, that the question arose - along with my own history.  I will not say anything more.  I have been informed regarding the circumstances of your turning and the implications of Compton’s potential motivations.  The murder of another vampire, let alone one’s Maker, is a severe crime in our culture, young one.”  He kept his tone soothing and his touch careful.  “However, we can be a savage, terrible people.  Especially when threatened.  Be assured,” his expression turned dark.  “I of anyone will not judge you for what you felt necessary to your survival.”

“I can be impulsive and reckless.”  Stiles spoke around the subject, unable to bring herself to admit it.  She might not ever be able to say the words.  Not unless she wholly and without reservation trusted the person she spoke them to.  Considering her, well, everything, she wouldn’t be surprised if she lived twice as long as the ancient before her and still the day never came where the admission of what actually happened to Bill crossed her lips.  “But I’m a survivor before anything else.”

“I can see that.”  Godric nodded firmly, choosing to be contented with a confirmation-that-wasn’t, then dropped his hand but made no other move to return to their wander along the water’s edge.  “To have made it to your age, with your gift, and remained sane, is no little feat.  A determination to survive against all odds will suit you well as a vampire.”  He paused a moment, grey eyes feasting upon the beauty of her and the clever mind that beauty concealed hand-in-hand with what had to be an iron will.

Killing one’s Maker was no small feat, much like remaining sane with a gift like telepathy, to say nothing of the other myriad “gifts” the part-fae could be blessed with by their magical forebearers.  To work around the innate loyalty the Turn caused in a vampire required a will that was as strong as tempered steel and a healthy amount of viciousness and spite to spur one onward.  To get away clean from the doing, complete with tying up loose ends? - an incomparable cleverness and ability for planning and foresight.

Yes, Stiles Hale would grow to become a formidable vampire indeed, and if her loyalty could be gained, an incomparable asset to any bloodline.

Erik had chosen his bait well this time it seemed, as Godric found himself as enticed by her nature as he was entranced by her beauty.

“Particularly as a vampire of my line, if you would accept me and swear to me as your new Maker.  If you would be willing to so swear, then I would be willing to undergo the rites to claim you as my own progeny.”

Stiles was many things, but she’d never been an idiot - not truly.

With the way this world worked, there was really only one answer she could give to such a question - and opportunity.

“Yes.”


 

Chapter 13

Notes:

Posting this while I have a minute but it hasn't been proofed yet, so it might have typos. I'll go over it tomorrow, but for now enjoy!

Translations:
Elskan - sweetheart, darling, an endearment
Reið - vixen

Chapter Text

Karma’s a Bitch

(And So am I)

Chapter Thirteen: Claimed

“Yes.”


The grin that Godric gave her at her agreement, at her choice to become his - his progeny, his charge, perhaps more - would have been boyish and charming if it weren’t for the dark predatory glint in his eye that belied the mask of fresh-faced youth he wore as a result of his being Turned at a young age.

“Excellent.”  Godric all-but-purred in satisfaction, his grey eyes eating up the sight of her, now that she’d agreed to be his in a way that would - once they were done with the required rituals - bind her as tightly as a vampire could be bound to a Maker and bloodline.  A bond as tight and unbreakable as the one he’d crafted naturally over years and decades with his Erik, only made as such through a sacred blood rite of their kind.  “I shall ensure that you never regret your choice, elskan.

“What happens now?”  Stiles asked, holding back the desire to fidget under that intent, proprietary, gaze through that sheer will that Godric seemingly so admired about her.  Well.  No one had ever accused her of being tractable or not stubborn.

“Now we get to know each other for a short time,” Godric reached out and clasped her hand then lightly spun her in a circle so that she was at his side once more rather than facing him, Stiles giving a soft huff of laughter at the playfulness making an appearance.  

She’d thought that Godric couldn’t be solemn and serene and intense all the time.  Not with how Erik was.  There’d been hints in True Blood that Godric was more than the infamous near-child vampire Death, or the legendary sheriff Godric of Gaul.

Seeing those hidden pieces of the ancient beginning to peek out from underneath the total calm and control was a relief as well as intriguing.

“If I know my progeny at all,” he continued as he tucked her hand into the curve of his arm, prompting them to begin strolling beside the water once more now that the serious business at hand was taken care of.  “Erik will already be making the arrangements to see our agreement through.”

“He launched me at you with all the subtlety of a surface-to-air missile.”  Stiles commented with a rueful shake of her head for the other vampire’s antics.  “He has a lot of love and concern for you, for all that he’d deny it if anyone said so.”

“My beautiful Viking.”  Godric gave a put-upon sigh, sharing a warmth-filled glance with the equally-beautiful creature that his progeny had secured for him and his pleasure.  “He plots far too much when left alone too long.”

“It’s what you get for turning a king, I suppose.”  Stiles said idly, missing the sharp look of intrigue that her knowledge of Erik’s origins gained her, too busy in her own mind now that the major issue of the night had been taken care of and she’d avoided having to admit to planning and seeing through Bill’s True Death.  Relief making her sloppy, even if she didn’t realize it at the time.  “At least this time he meant well, even if I am put out with him over how he went about it.”

“And your own plots?”  Godric asked, tucking away his suspicion for the moment as he wasn’t even sure what he was suspicious about when it came to the knowledge that Stiles had or the assumptions she’d apparently made.  “Are they set to have as advantageous of outcomes?”

Given that she’d admitted to being willing, potentially, to plot alongside his Erik, Godric couldn’t dismiss the possibility that whilst being left of his progeny’s plans, beautiful vicious Stiles had been making plans and plots of her own.

“Since I didn’t manage to break Erik and get him to either bed or bite me,” Stiles shot Godric a sly, if slightly sheepish, grin of her own.  “But he did turn me over to you, I’d say I both succeeded and failed all at the same time.”

“You wanted Erik for a protector on a more official basis than an acknowledged mentor.”  Godric said with a spark of understanding lighting his eyes over the undercurrent of disappointment that he’d been seeing in her expression and scent since Erik had brought him to meet her.  

Likely due to being unknowing of the process of being truly adopted into a bloodline, or if it was even possible.  He could see her perspective.  His Erik was a glorious creature and one of the strongest vampires in the New World.

Any woman of taste who enjoyed men would want to bed him, and any vampire with sense would desire his protection if they were in need of such.

There might also be a sense of hurt pride warring against satisfaction, if he wasn’t wrong.

The former due to Erik being willing to give her to another, and the latter because he found her worthy to introduce to his own Maker.

Yes, he could see where a cunning thing like Stiles would have mixed emotion and thoughts about what his Erik had done - and that was before her innate vanity as a fae hybrid came into the equation.

“Wouldn’t you in my position?”  Stiles asked rhetorically, Godric conceding with a soft hum.

“Tell me about you, elskan.”   Godric changed the subject away from his Erik, as he had a premonition that it would lead nowhere productive at the moment, with Stiles’s pride still wounded and Godric himself dealing with lingering frustration over his progeny’s meddling.  “Soon we will know each other in the way only true Maker and Childe can.  But that is blood and magic, not the more simple aspects of your daily rising or preferences.”

“Will you do the same?”  Stiles asked in turn, almost challenging but not quite.

“If you wish, elskan, though I imagine my own habits and preferences might seem quite…staid or boring to a creature raised in this modern era.”

“Maybe so,” Stiles allowed, though she doubted it given what she knew about this particular vampire’s background, even if he’d been playing the good boy vampire in the public eye since the Great Revelation.  “I’d still like to learn and decide for myself.”

“Very well, we have another accord.”  Godric felt a smile twitch at one corner of his mouth, finding himself more entertained with Stiles and her near-contrary nature than he’d been in years, maybe even decades.  “I shall even allow you to go first.  What would you like to know?”

Stiles studied him a moment from the corner of her eye, and immediately decided to go for broke, asking the questions she’d wanted the answers to back when she was binging True Blood between Beacon Hills emergencies.

“You know I’m a hybrid because you’re one aren’t you?”

Godric’s eyes flared with shock and pleasure, his there-and-gone smile all teeth.   “Clever, clever, reið.”

Hah!  Stiles nearly reveled in the rush of being right.   She’d - and many other fans of the show - had thought so.  Erik’s Maker in the books hadn’t been anything but vampire, but Godric also wasn’t Erik’s Maker in the books.  There’d been a lot of room to extrapolate, especially since True Blood’s “Godric” hadn’t had much in common with the vampire sacrifice at the Fellowship of the Sun… “Godfrey” Stiles thought was the name but couldn’t recall it with any clarity.

It was a time-honored TV tradition when adapting books to TV or film to smush characters together - Game of Thrones did it too with the Sansa/Jeyne storylines - in order to keep casts manageable for both production and audiences.

Doing it with Erik’s Maker - with Godric - had left a lot of room for head-canons and fanon to reign free and run wild.  Many of those imaginative turns had been regarding his origins other than what Erik - or another reliable character - flat-out stated regarding the enigmatic character.  With his on-screen death via the sun and blue flame being the main catalyst that fanon ran with.

No other character - no matter the circumstances, no matter their age - died like Godric in True Blood.

It was even seen in Season Four, what happened to vampires in the sun - and it wasn’t a clean blue flame and dispersing into what amounted to fairy dust.

And that was leaving out Godric’s apparent ability to astral project himself from his afterlife - some fucking how - until he was killed again by Lilith.

Fans had gone nuts speculating on what was up with Godric’s background and that he might have been another hybrid like Warlow, but if that was what had been set up by the showrunners, it never got answered and lingered as an unresolved potential plot line.

“In the ancient world,” Godric continued, answering the implied question instead of making Stiles poke and prod for the information she was clearly in search of.  “Intermingling between species was far more common.  The supernatural didn’t hide - at least not as totally - as we all eventually decided to do.  They mingled with humans, mated with them.”  He shrugged a shoulder.  “With how much smaller the human population was then, it wasn’t uncommon to have a member or two or even a handful among a tribe or clan that were something else.   It was rarely so apparent as to be truly noticeable.”

“But it was apparent with you?”

“It is no accident that I have survived the ages that I have.”  Godric admitted.  “Before I caught the eye of a cruel Roman master who was a vampire in disguise, before my village was ever attacked by the legions, I was already a man by the measures of my people.  Stronger, faster, a better hunter, I had completed the trials and stages of maturity by my thirteenth summer, several years early among my kin.”  His smile was proud, even as it could be a struggle to remember those days so very long ago.  “By the time the legions came when I was fifteen, I had been made the village leader.  A chieftain would be the closest equivalent.”

“Do you know what you were, are?”   Stiles was fascinated by the glimpse into a time long passed.

Godric shook his head.  “None of the tales my mother told explained it in ways that could point out my heritage with any certainty.  Her father was thought to be the product of her mother being visited by one of the village patrons, a sea god, but such tales are far from proof.”

“Water-aligned fae, or a selkie, or somesuch then.”  Stiles speculated.  “Which, if it was your great-grandfather, then we’re probably the same amount of Other if likely different flavors.”

“Then my question is in a similar vein.”  Godric at last took his turn in their little game.  “Do you know how you came to be part fae?”

“Know?  No.”  Stiles shook her head, the golden curls bouncing around her shoulders and upper back.  “Suspect…?”  She shot him a knowing glance.  “As I said: probably my great-grandfather, my paternal grandfather’s father, is the fae from family stories.”

Which was accurate to both True Blood and the books, if this world followed either when it came to the Stackhouse family secret.  Whether Earl himself being half-fae, or Adele having had an affair with the half-fae Prince Fintan, hardly mattered at the end of the day insofar as Stiles cared.  The percentage of fae that Sookie, Jason, and Hadley all inherited remained the same.

“We’re all a rather charmin’ bunch, though stronger on my daddy’s side than my aunt Linda’s, the same with my generation.”  Stiles explained.  “Far as I know, I’m the only one with any kinda active gift as a result, but my brother and cousin Hadley have their own more subtle gifts too.”

“Charm, sweet smell, love of the sun.”  Godric rattled off what he knew from either Erik’s reports or his own observations.  It helped that the still-sunkissed skin Stiles possessed, as well as the matching tones of her brother in that rundown bar, were a giveaway of the latter.  “Sky Fae of some measure, then.”

“What’s your favorite invention of the last…”  Stiles paused, trying to decide on a time frame.  “Fifty years?”

“Turbo injection engines.”  Godric grinned, excitement lighting up his face.  “If you’d asked within the last hundred and fifty years, I would have said the motorcycle.”

Sure, vampires could run or in Godric’s case fly, faster than most automobiles and motorcycles, but that didn’t strip away the sheer thrill of operating them at high speeds.

Stiles laughed, nodding in agreement, as as inventions went, motorcycles and fast cars were pretty fucking awesome.

“Hmm, you’re not of enough years to have a similar time frame.”  Godric noted, eyeing Stiles.  “Favorite invention of your lifetime?”  He asked instead.

“Public access internet.”  Stiles said without hesitation.  There’d been a lot of advancements in healthcare, in tech, in everything basically during her lifetime, but for someone with ADHD and chronic curiosity?  The internet was hands-down her favorite.  “It can make life more difficult, but for someone who’s as curious as I am, the internet might as well be a blessing from the divine.”

“Favorite color?”

“Tyrian purple.”  Godric answered almost as fast as Stiles had done the previous question, barely having to think about it.  “I still remember the first time I saw it, the purple edging on a Roman official’s clothing.  Everything was horrifying, but that …”  He sighed a little, shaking his head.  “It was beautiful, a rich color I’d never seen before even in nature outside of the rare sunset or sunrise.”

He glanced at Stiles, pleased at the deep, unstinting interest in her face.  “Same question.”

“Crimson.”  Stiles was just as quick, her mind flashing for a split-second to the color of Peter’s eyes once he’d won himself an alpha spark again, or the color of fresh blood in dim lighting, or her favorite hoodie from high school.  She wiggled her free hand with her nails facing Godric, who glanced at her manicure with blatant amusement.  “I just…like it, but a bright vibrant blue is up there too.”

Maybe it wasn’t fair of her to dodge giving context as Godric had been so willing to do, but at the end of the day there was no way for her to genuinely answer that question.

“What is your…”


More than an hour later, after asking and answering questions that ranged from complex philosophical rhetoric to the simple and everyday, the phone in Godric’s pocket let out a short buzz, the elder vampire reading the accompanying text message in a literal blink of an eye.

“The preparations are finished, elskan.”   He told her, tucking the phone back away and turning to face her, offering his hands once more to carry her so they might fly.  “If, that is,” he teased.  “That the knowledge that I would, indeed, kill Baby Hitler, hasn’t changed your decision?”

Stiles snorted, rolling her eyes.  As if it would.  Especially given Godric confided that he’d been in Europe during World War II and gotten an up-close-and-personal view of exactly what sort of atrocities had occurred.

“One last question?”  She asked instead as she stepped forward into his embrace, letting him pick her up into a princess carry as easily as earlier in the night.

“Mm?”

She frowned a little, tilting her head.  “How did Erik know to make whatever preparations we need?”  She was only mildly curious, but also wanted to know.  It wasn’t like they had any guarantee that either of them would say yes to Erik’s little scheme.  Sure, Godric had assumed Erik was taking care of “preparations” but he’d only said if he knew his progeny at all, that Erik would be doing so.  That doesn’t really clear up the whys/hows of the situation.  “Why would he assume both of us would agree?”

Or that she’d seen Godric sending Erik a message either, once she had.

Unless there was a telepathic link between vampires of the same bloodline, she was at a genuine loss to understand how and why Godric had been so certain that Erik was “making preparations” - which she didn’t yet know what that entailed either - or how he’d been right.

Though in the case of Godric/Erik, she supposed it might just be a case of having known each other for so long, as Godric had said, that they were able to predict what they’d do given the overarching situation, and Erik in turn able to trickle-down orders to Pam.

“After a thousand years of loyalty and care, the bond between myself and Erik is thick, firm, and unbreakable.”  Godric noted with pleasure, already anticipating with no little excitement the bond he would share in turn with Stiles.  It would be a wonderous thing, almost as strong due to the ritual involved as the one he shared with Erik, and in time would grow to match it, he was sure.  “We can sense each other through it from a much farther distance than the mere handful of miles between us now.  He felt my reaction to your agreement, and I felt his acknowledgment of it.”

With a soft push of his power, they were flying through the air, making swift time of the short distance between them and his favorite progeny, landing mere moments after takeoff on the balcony of Erik’s home where his Viking awaited.

Erik studied the pair for a moment that was nothing and forever all at once.  His face showed not a flicker of what sped through him at the vision they made together.  His emotions and thoughts and desires all tangled and clashing - and all of it his own fault.

He knew better than to get attached to Stiles.  He knew that Godric wouldn’t be able to resist her and both her beauty and wit as much as the challenge she provided.  He knew.

But if there was anything else he knew just as much after a thousand years, it was that knowing something in his mind didn’t mean shit to his instincts and often-frozen heart when one or the other (or both) were roused.

He wanted what he wanted and logic, and all his plots, could fuck off and die.

Godric gave him a long look, no doubt sensing an echo of Erik’s roiling self and warring desires despite Erik doing all he could to shove the darker aspects - the regret, jealousy (for both of them, which was some bullshit) even shades of rage and grief - down and forget about them.

This was what he wanted.   For Stiles to do what Erik hadn’t managed in the last fifty years.  To draw Godric back into living instead of going through the motions and that dreaded apathetic grey that threatened to languish him.

He doubted it was a successful attempt at keeping Godric ignorant, but at least he tried to have the good manners not to act like a spoiled brat who wanted to have the best of both worlds: Godric living and thriving, but Stiles for his own and only for his own.

He’d get over it.  He had to.  Hopefully once the bond kicked in between Godric and Stiles, and his own tie to Stiles was stripped away, all the damn conflict that Erik was suddenly dealing with at having his plan come to fruition would fade out and leave only the satisfaction of a job well done behind.

If not…well…

Erik would have no choice but to swallow his pride and talk to Godric about the situation, because if he couldn’t get his instincts in check when it came to his desire and possessiveness over Stiles, they were going to have a massive fucking problem.

The bond would fix it.

The bond had to fix it.

There was no other option that Erik could allow now that everything had come so far.

Godric was set to claim Stiles as his own in blood and bond.

Everything else, nothing else, mattered but that guarantee his Maker would remain walking the Earth with Erik for at least another century.  Erik would give anything, do anything, if it meant keeping Godric from languishing.  His instincts would just have to shut the fuck up.

“Everything is ready.”  Erik informed them as soon as Godric swung Stiles down from his arms, absently noting that she didn’t wobble even an inch.

As if she was used to such a gesture.  A thought that he tucked away for later consideration.  Along with all the rest that didn’t exactly fit with the profile of the vampire before her accidental Turning.

“Excellent, my childe.”  Godric gave Erik an approving look, tucking away his concern over the undercurrents he could feel troubling his Viking.  Such was natural, to an extent, when a new progeny - a true progeny, not a random turn - was brought into a bloodline as close and selective as their own.  It wasn’t anything to truly worry over - not yet.  If Erik still struggled after he and Stiles rose anew as Maker and Childe…then he would have a word with his eldest progeny, but there was no need to make mountains out of molehills until that time.  Especially as equally present in their bond was Erik’s determination to overcome his dark impulses churned up by the situation.  “The contracts?”

“In my office.”  Erik confirmed, falling in on Godric’s right hand side, as Stiles had been tucked into Godric’s left once they entered the house proper.  “Your resting place has been prepared in a sheltered copse, well protected within the grounds.”  He continued with his verbal report.  “A trusted were’ will patrol the premises during the daylight hours - without knowledge of why - and I will oversee the nights, with my Pamela temporarily taking on my duties while I keep guard.”

“Perfection, my warrior.”  Godric praised.  “As expected.”

“What exactly happens, when takin’ on a new childe, or maker, outside of the normal way?”  Stiles questioned with a slight frown, as it seemed a lot more involved than when Erik became her mentor and took on her training.

Though from the sound of contracts there apparently was an element of that too.

“Paperwork to affirm that you’ve both chosen this of your own free will.”  Erik said after a prompting glance from his Maker.  “Taking on a new Progeny from another bloodline or an orphan isn’t done often, but it has happened enough that there have been issues of coercion in the past when it comes to particularly talented newborns being suddenly acquired by another bloodline.”

“Like me.”  Stiles sighed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes over the drama and politics, but only just.  “So it’s to avoid Bill’s Maker from tryin’ to say that y’all had him killed so that you could claim me, yeah?”

“Not many would dare and make that claim regarding our bloodline.”  Godric said with no-little amount of amusement.  “Observing protocol, even when it doesn’t strictly apply to a situation, however helps keep the paperpushers at the Authority content and out of our business.”

Erik gave a soft scoff of agreement.  Damned vultures.  As if any New World power could try and judge their bloodline in the first place, though Hela knew the likes of Nan Flanagan wished they could.

“That’s the legal formality.”  Erik picked the order of events back up.  “Then there’s the blood rite to make it more than ink and paper.”

Stiles narrowed her eyes on the pair of males, suspicion rising sharp and fast.

“Why do I have the sudden feelin’ I’m about to have to take a dirt nap again?”

Both of their grins at her were totally unrepentant, more than a little mischievous, and all teeth.

Assholes.

Why’d she agree to this bullshit again?

Oh yeah.

They were two of the most powerful vampires on the damn continent, and better protectors while she leveled herself out and found her footing she couldn’t ask for.

Still.  Ugh.   Getting the dirt out of her skin and hair had been a nightmare last time, and given her entirely too many flashbacks to her high school years from hell.

This was gonna suck.

Pun only partially intended.


“Would you be a companion to Death?  To walk the world beside me for all of our days?  To teach and be taught, protect and be protected, to be loyal and have my loyalty in turn?”  Godric asked, the words taking on a cadence of ritual to Stiles’s ears, even as they knelt in the grave that Erik and Pam had dug for them, and stood witness for them, after the contracts had been signed to make them Maker and Progeny, and they’d been shown to the prepared spot on Erik’s property.  Protected, and secluded, as he’d promised.  “To be mother, sister, and daughter?  As I will be father, brother, and son?”

“I will.”  Stiles agreed anew, and in full, to the choice that Godric had placed before her, secure in the assumption - the knowledge - that in all the New World vampires, there was no better option for her.  Not even Erik, no matter how much she desired him and was desired by him in turn.

The words had barely slipped from between her lips than Godric was at her neck, draining her of what was a strange cocktail of bloods and blood magic - her own, Bill’s, and Erik’s - replacing it all, overwriting it all, with his own.

Even Erik’s magnificent power and the bonfire he’d lit inside her at first sip of his blood was nothing compared to that of a true ancient like Godric as he finished with draining her - a prospect no less terrifying for it being her choice this time - and her vision began to fade when Godric made a slit in his own neck and pressed her mouth firmly to the opened vein and he poured into her like liquid fire ten times more virulent than Erik had done.

Searing everything - everyone - else away.

The ancient vampire that held her in his arms could feel the moment she slipped away, her former Maker’s power waning and his own reaching within her very self and taking hold.

Laying her down with care, Godric settled next to her, both of them wearing little more than plain - if fine - linen robes given that they’d be dead to the world for the next few days as the magic of the Remaking truly anchored and bound them together.

“I’ll be waiting when you arise, brother.”  Erik promised him, as unlike a normal Turning, Godric would have to stay with his new progeny the entire time to link them fully together.  “You have my word.”

“I know you will, my Erik.”  Godric nearly purred as he sank into the magic that was rising to surround himself and his new charge.  “I know you will.”


“What’re you gonna do if they rise and your instincts are still being a bitch and a half?”  Pam questioned him as soon as they’d buried the pair, and Erik had felt his Maker sink into unconsciousness under the sway of the blood rite.

“I don’t have a fucking clue.”  Erik said with raw honesty, scrubbing one hand roughly through his long hair and tangling it up in the process.  “I was never like this with Nora.”

Pam snorted.  “Nora was a fucking diversion.  You thought her human compassion might carry over into her vampiric self and give Godric a new project.”

Sure, it’d worked to an extent, but not forever.

“You never wanted her like you want our little ice princess.”  Pam carried on.  “Or been faced with the possibility of your Maker wanting another the same way he does you, when there’d never been a question of who was Godric’s favorite.”

“Two-fold jealousy and I feel like…”  Erik groaned.  “I fucking feel, which is the problem.”

“So, claim them both.”  Pam shrugged at the look her master gave her.  “Half the old world has been waiting for you and Godric to fess up and officially claim each other and make your pledges since long before you Turned me, Erik.  You have to know that.  There’s other close Maker/Progeny pairs and even groups, but none like you two without also being pledged.”

“It never felt necessary.”  Erik admitted.  “Not when we spent most of our years as nomads.”

“Well you’re not fuckin’ nomads anymore, master.”  Pam pointed out relentlessly.  “You’re two of the oldest vampires in the New World and Sheriffs of your respective territories.  Stiles is set to be one of the more valuable assets around.  If you don’t want that cunt down in New Orleans to come demandin’ her presence at her Court, or the King of Texas to do the same, it might be time to put the will’o’the’wisp away and start actin’ like a fuckin’ King again, Eirikir.”

Erik growled lightly at her, Pam spinning on the toes of her pumps and speeding away having made her point - and not wanting to truly try his patience - but leaving him with plenty of food for thought.

More than he’d ever wanted or asked for.

And yet…

And yet.


 

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