In The Dark

Chapter 21

End Game

**

The anxiety I felt for Sookie while she was gone…

The heaviness and desperation I felt while waiting for her to calm down enough to explain…

Nothing compared to the unhinged panic I felt once Sookie suggested Pam could be a targeted by Halfdan.

Sookie could have been wrong… but I couldn’t bank on it.

I could hope… but I still had to plan.

And I still hadn’t heard why Sookie thought Pam could be in danger. I still hadn’t heard the first fucking thing about the skip she’d just returned from.

I didn’t have to.

Sookie overreacted in small increments. She let herself succumb to anger and frustration, but in the time we’d been together, she didn’t fear. Not this way. Not to the point that she couldn’t do anything other than hyperventilate and choke ‘sorry’ after ‘sorry’ because she could feel how much I needed answers.

Even if she wasn’t preventing me from using our bond to help, I was too rattled by Sookie’s behavior to have been of much use in that aspect.

**

Getting the attention of the waitress to have the children’s food sent to our suite hadn’t been an issue. Everyone in the small dining room was watching Sookie’s emotional collapse as though it was dinner theater.

Since Misty had taken charge of Magnusson’s needs, Tina (my second most no-nonsense child) approached the waitress to remind the woman to see to drinks and condiments and give her our room number.

“Because I don’t think it was a coincidence that Halfdan contacted you for a job right after we ran into Appius.”

That was all I had to go on until Sookie could explain.

“Because I don’t think it was a coincidence that Halfdan contacted you for a job right after we ran into Appius.”

It left too much to the imagination.

“Because I don’t think it was a coincidence that Halfdan contacted you for a job right after we ran into Appius.”

He’d only intruded on our holiday for 27 minutes and he was all too amused by my ‘mid-life crisis’, claiming that he always knew I’d rebel against what I was eventually. He insulted Sookie by treating her like a servant, then again by suggesting she was a donor. He’d exposed his fangs when the children wanted to talk to him. He’d asked me about Pam for the first time since I brought her over…

If I hadn’t been so protective of my family, I would have known better… Appius only ever visited when he wanted something from me. Since he didn’t ask for a favor, I assumed his social call was a formality… an obligatory hello since he knew we were in the same small town. The Eric in the journal who suffered a visit had been asked to assist with Alexei’s discipline. Since our version of Alexei had been jailed for draining two children and was facing a death sentence, I thought the matter was settled and actually had the gullibility to feel relieved when Appius left our room.

While the children instinctively left the table and walked towards the elevator in an orderly fashion, I forced myself to remember every fucking facet of the phone call I’d gotten from Halfdan two nights after my Maker’s visit…

**

The phone was brought to me by the concierge while everyone was eating dinner. Shelly was on my lap and Magnusson was trying to remove my bottom lip at the time…

I didn’t care who was calling. The interruption was annoying… There was a reason Sookie and I left our phones in our room and only checked them sporadically.

It was a fucking vacation.

What’s more, we’d checked in using the names Mike and Carol Brady (as a joke) since we had six children in tow… but the concierge presented the phone to me while bowing and addressed me as ‘Sir Northman’.

Lovely.

I answered my ‘urgent’ call only to hear a familiar voice.

Even Halfdan’s whispers boomed. “If I had feelings, I might be offended you’d come all this way and fail to visit me in Kiel.” He had plenty of feelings, just no redeeming ones.

“There’s over a thousand kilometers between Kiel and Zermatt, your Majesty. I’ve notified Lord Brandeis of my presence in Clovis’s Kingdom.”

“Am I to believe your itinerary doesn’t include your estate in Eijsden?”

“Not this time, your Majesty. I was considering a visit in the summer though.” The farm and river were more enjoyable in the warmer months. Jenny and Tina were looking forward to constant access to the stables because riding was cathartic for them.

“Are you aligned with Clovis now?”

“I’m on holiday, your Majesty. I’m still a Sheriff under Queen LeCerq in the States.”

“Your Queen is an émigré of France.”

“No more than I’m an émigré of Ireland, Majesty. I believe I was there longer than Sophie-Anne was in France.”

“If you have no loyalties, then I have an errand for you. I have a long standing problem and I’ve been eager for you to return. You’re the Knight I need for the task.” I had plenty of loyalties. Most of them were scowling while they ate their meals because they were annoyed my conversation was in Danish so they weren’t being given any clues. They’d all learned German too quickly.

“I’m sure you have capable Knights, Majesty. I’m not free to work at the moment.”

“You’ll be compensated handsomely for the time away from your family.” He didn’t have enough cash to do that… for that matter, I was surprised he hadn’t called for a loan considering what my sources had told me.

“My apologies, Majesty, but I’m actually looking forward to retiring, not moonlighting.”

“You’re a Knight.”

“I was once… For Dmitri, Rodrigo, Tyson and you… At the moment, I’m a Sheriff for Sophie-Anne.” And the clock was running down.

“You’re refusing a task.” That would have been a big no-no if I were still working for him.

“I’m declining your offer to relieve me of my vacation.” I would have been more annoyed if I could think of anyone who liked hearing ‘no’. Vampires, specifically Vampire Kings who’d been Kings while they were still alive, were far worse.

“I’m sure I could convince you to accept the mission.”

“I’m not a Knight any longer, Majesty. It’s been long enough that I’m probably quite out of practice.”

He scoffed, “Nonsense. The mission is complicated and I’m sure you’re the only one I know of who could accomplish it. You’ll be hearing from me.”

**

You’ll be hearing from me…

At the time I assumed he was going to dispatch a messenger with a formal proposal, including a vague outline of the chore he wanted me to complete… I couldn’t have been more relieved when I hadn’t heard from him. I knew, in essence, what he wanted. Halfdan wanted me to end someone. Since he described the situation as ‘complicated’, he probably wanted several Vampires to be ended quickly and quietly for political reasons. That had been my specialty for years.

If I had to venture a guess, I’d speculate the rumors I’d heard about the Northern Kingdom’s finances meant Halfdan wanted me to help him make a move on France. The Kingdom was lucrative enough to bolster Halfdan’s finances and we already knew at least one version of Halfdan that had finally made a move. Those assumptions had only been supported by the information we learned during our last skip… second hand information, but there was a version of me whose hand had been forced… Pam called that Eric’s situation being ‘painted into the throne’, rather than a corner.

And I thought I pitied the Me who was stuck with Louisiana and Arkansas.

I didn’t enjoy the political games American Kings and Queens played… and there certainly wasn’t any room for melancholy in regards to my previous life as a Knight… The only good thing to come from that era was that I found Pam while on a mission for Tyson.

But whatever Sookie had learned in her skip made her connect Pam… to Appius… to Halfdan… and the connection made the most verbose woman I’d ever known too overwrought to explain.

As the children silently gave themselves something to do in the living room of our suite, I took Sookie to the bedroom and set her on the bed…

Keeping myself busy by wetting a rag and taking it to her…

She sniffled and sputtered for the next few minutes, calming herself down to the best of her ability while I waited at her feet.

The wait was agonizing.

She finally offered, “We’re together because of Pam.”

“She pushed, but we were already…”

Sookie shook her head. “We could still be stuck in the same retarded dance we were in until I had Mag if she hadn’t been so pushy… We’re together because of her, but she hasn’t witnessed any of our skips.” Fuck. That hadn’t occurred to me. As curious as she was, Pam hadn’t been as much as a spectator. Because of our locations each time, it hadn’t been possible.

“What happened with the other Us?”

Her eyes filled again, and her voice was strained. “I woke up on a sofa at your place in the Netherlands. I had to beat the crap out of a couple of guards to get close enough to Eric to get his attention. I ended up having to play Hide and Seek to get into his chambers to explain… The normal explanation. He hadn’t skipped or heard of me before because he was too busy being King like from the new edition of the journal… but… He never went to the States to work for Sophie-Anne… He stayed in Europe and Pam ended up getting murdered.” Oh… fuck… the first time I witnessed a skip, we learned about a Pam who’d been ended.

“Murdered?”

She nodded. “Murdered. The other Eric was conned into doing the job for Halfdan because Pam was being followed, right? Well, the one tonight, Pam was taken with Appius and held hostage to make sure Eric would do the job. Appius ended up getting her killed when he tried to escape… Eric, you told me he was jealous of how close you are to her… When he was here, he asked where Pam was.” And he’d veiled the question to make me think he was suggesting I’d replaced Pam with Sookie… and I’d told him no one could ever replace either of them.

“You think Appius might have struck some sort of deal with Halfdan… but in the other version, where I was King, Halfdan ended Appius.”

“The other You turned him down initially because he was sure Halfdan would end him to tie up loose ends too…”

“Killing Appius and threatening Pam made the threat more compelling and once the task was finished the assassin would have been… that Appius overplayed his hand, probably for nothing more than a Lordship.” And the vainglorious fuck could have simply commanded me to accept the task… but if he’d done that, I’d have known he was scheming, risking Me and My child for his own ambition.

“And in the version I met tonight, Pam was ended instead of watched because she was still at Eric’s side… In my head, it makes sense for Appius to volunteer to be ‘used as collateral’ with Pam to make you think Halfdan was covering his bases.”

I nodded in spite of the growing knot in the pit of my stomach. I’d ignored my visit from Appius. I’d ignored my call from Halfdan. I wanted to enjoy my vacation… so I missed clues that something big was happening. I was standing in the eye of an over-ambitious political shitstorm. “Clovis would have been told that I was in the Kingdom because I was a Knight, but Halfdan and Clovis have always been rivals… Appius hasn’t ever been a fan of France… Halfdan knew I was here, and he mentioned my family… because Appius told him.”

She nodded. “It had to be Appius… It had to be Appius and if he’s in cahoots with Halfdan to have you help him take over France, someone could be following Pam and waiting for an order.”

“Or waiting for me to take you home so that everything I love is in one place.”

Sookie shook her head. “Pam’s there. We’re here… you can’t protect us all. Appius is vain enough to think you’d want to protect him too. They think you don’t have a choice but to do whatever they ask.”

“I have choices… I have plenty of fucking choices. It’s just that none of them offer any guarantees.”

“Where is Pam? Does it feel like she’s still in Louisiana? What about Appius? Is he still local?”

“Pam seems to be where she should be and if I had to guess, I’d say Appius is in Geneva. Not far enough away…”

“Four skips… The skip that put us together. The skip when we found out about an ended Pam. The skip when we heard about the Eric ruling the Northern Empire. This skip… without a Pam…”

“We learned a lot from the first two skips. Is it possible for tonight’s version to have needed something from you? Did that Sookie know about Brandon? Or Misty and Jenny, or Hunter?”

“Everything was the same for her until she decided to stay in Bern instead of going home for school. She stayed with Allecks… one kid, already using telepathy because her in-laws were assholes… she already had custody of Misty and Jenny… The other Eric said they got stuck once because they missed something. When Eric and Sookie seemed like they had everything they needed from me, I laid down on her bed and a couple minutes later, I opened my eyes back in here. Eric wanted to bond to her. As soon as he heard we still have Pam. He lost her in the 70s and he’s been miserable ever since. He gave two shits about anything else I told him. He just wanted his own bond so he could see Pam…”

“I’m sure Sookie was happy to hear that.”

“She’d already had one skip. She said the difference between the first Eric and this one was scary. This one’s mind is like a bucket of pitch. Smaller, denser, darker… She felt horrible for him. She wasn’t going to give him a hard time about wanting Pam back. He knew it would only be small increments… Eric, I was in a T-shirt and panties. I was in the shower with him. I snuck up on him. He had me pinned to a wall. He didn’t once have an Ericy reaction. No sniffing. No jokes or sarcasm worth mentioning. He was like an Eric wrapper… and I saw it… Pam… He’d been given this long list of Vampires to end in two kingdoms… he was almost done when Appius pulled his stunt…”

“How convenient.”

“Are you trying to stay disconnected from what happened to them? Is that how you’re staying so calm? I saw what was in his head…”

“I’m not at all disconnected. I’m very aware that there’s a very real threat…”

She lunged forward to hug my neck and wail, “Then what are we going to do?”

“The only thing that comes to mind… I don’t think we’re going to be retiring.”