Even for a ruthless entrepreneur like myself, the night began much like any other.  After more than a thousand years, they all seem to run together; an unending march of inky sameness.  I find it interesting in a pathetically human sort of way that the most drastic changes from one century to the next seem to be largely stylistic.  Music.  Clothing.  Hairstyles.  And to a lesser degree, body shape.  Fat.  Thin.  Fit.  Rubenesque.  As if it matters.  They all taste the same.  I have never much cared, as long as the bodies are young and fresh.  I have found humans don't change much; not in any appreciable manner.  No matter the age they live in, they are bound by the same reinvented yet uninspired rules that keep their fragile existence from tearing itself apart.  Skirts are long or short; hips and breasts are big or small... but they still have the same conversations about the same things night after night, year after year, century upon century. 

I suppose the detachment I have come to feel is only natural.  Observing the cyclical nature of their brief lives from a predominately fixed and linear position affords one a certain unique.... perspective - certainly among the breathers... and even among our own kind.  Few reach such an advanced age, but for all its banality, it can be quite... singular.  I have raged, lived for eons in darkness; spent decades - at times even centuries - wandering, searching... alternately consumed by madness, curiosity, bloodlust, carnal lust, boredom...  but above all, consumed with survival.  What else is there but that and death?

After a few centuries, once the initial....novelty... has faded, things change, though I am still very much a warrior in my cold, undead heart.  To be Vampire is a... curious existence, if one can keep back the tide of overwhelming sameness.  At present, my own little diversion is this establishment of mine.  Fangtasia.  Who would have ever imagined a time where human and vampire were served side by side and drank shoulder to shoulder - without a glamouring and without breaking any of man's laws?  To be sure it violates every law of nature.  Perhaps one day their tiny minds will expand enough that we might openly serve real blood instead of a synthetic substitute. 

Still, I can't help but find even that lofty goal a bit... tame to suit me.  Where is the thrill in feeding off the willing?

But it is quite the little social experiment, so it seems.  We are officially out of the closet, but not the coffin.  Some even choose to mainstream, or at least give the appearance of doing so.  Some, like me, sail closer to the wind than most, living by our own code.  Not a rampaging renegade, cutting a swath through the human cattle in such a way as to draw undue attention, and yet not exactly mainstreaming either.  I am Vampire.  I sell Tru Blood.  I do not care to drink it.  My own tastes run.... What is the popular expression these days?  Bloody and on a plate still mooing and kicking?  Keep the plate and that serves me well enough.  I don't require as much blood as I once did, but I haven't yet lost my taste for it, either.

It is a good life.  I have all the power and responsibility I want.  I have ties to the distant past through my maker, Godric, and ties to the recent past through my own creation, Pam.  This little bar of ours and the current changing political climate have kept us more involved and thus more tied to the present than we would normally find ourselves.  It is much too easy to let decades slip by unnoticed, until the sudden unpleasant realization that time is marching invariably on in the faces and bodies of the humans around us while we remain untouched.  On the whole, my existence is a comfortable one.  Money.  Security.  New technology to explore.  And an endless stream of lithe young bodies, offering themselves to me for my... entertainment. 

I have long since grown used to my word being law.  But then, I'd long since grown used to being a law unto myself.  My job as Sheriff of Area 5 is merely an extension of that.  Is that not what the honorable do?  Watch out for those lesser creatures around them?  And so I sit here, night after night.  Watching.  Doing my duty serving my kind.  Waiting.  For what, I'm not exactly sure.  Jaded as I am, the world is large and I have yet to see it all.  Who knows what the night might bring? 

Such lofty thoughts from my 'Chair of Servitude'?  I squelch an inward prick of humor over Pam's name for the throne-like seat of authority I occupy nightly.  It might almost amuse me, were it not for the sameness surrounding me tonight.  There are a few general types of people who come here.  Tourists, a necessary evil and also our primary demographic.  Annoying, but the turnover is fast and their shaky hands are always quick to tip, and tip well.  Vampire, which is to be expected as this is a 'vampire' bar, though I am not so foolish to think they actually come here for sustenance, which is as kind a word as I will ever have for artificial blood.  And where you have Vampire, you will also have the hangers-on.  Wannabes and fangbangers.  I particularly like that accurately descriptive euphemism.  It loses something in Old Norse, but in English it rolls well off the tongue.

The wannabes are my least favorite, mostly pathetic bloodbags from the Goth scene.  Uninspired breathers trying to emulate us with their white painted faces, glue-in fangs and miles of artificially pale skin and cheap black leather.  Now, in my lighter less brooding moments, I am a curious sort.  Over the years I admit to tasting my share of vampire and Goth alike, but at the end of the day they fail to realize even the most basic of principles.  Who wants to fuck themselves?  I much prefer a warm, nubile, young body.  Even after all these years, the sight of a full flush of blood under fragile pink skin can still move me to hunger... of both varieties.  The feel of a pulse pounding under your tongue and the way their skin rends so smoothly under fang and cock is far superior to the cold sterility of the synthetic alternative. 

While I would not for one moment change who and what I am, I do find pleasure in our differences.  We are cool to the touch where breathers are so hot inside.  Molten.  A thick gush exploding in your mouth, pouring a hot opaque river of life down your throat to heat lukewarm flesh, in much the same way the act of sex does.  The Fangbangers understand that much, at least.  Blood lust and carnal lust twist darkly with our own special brand of seduction.  Sex and blood.  Hunger.  Need.  Violence.  Desire. 

Sex and violence.  It all comes back to that.  Not much has changed in the last thousand years.

I scanned the room without really looking up.  This rising had been fairly unremarkable.  A few frat boys from the nearby college in on a dare.  Tiresome tourists.  Insipid fangbangers.  The usual trickle of legitimate problems brought to me to resolve.  The everyday annoyances any businessman has in the day-to-day operations of his business.  Nothing out of the ordinary until Pam left her post by the door to saunter up to my chair, somehow both petulant and mischievous as she insinuated herself at my side.

I had already scanned Bill Compton and his companion twice when Pam quietly informed me that they were there asking uncomfortable questions of the staff.  At least now the vision in white toile at Bill's side had a name.  Sookie Stackhouse. 

I wanted her.  At first it was only my usual reaction to such a prime piece of young flesh... a brief flicker of warmth at the idea of feeding off such a sweet morsel and then my gaze slid away.  I was mildly surprised to find my eyes sliding back to touch her again.  It was more than her dress - for fuck's sake, who wears toile to Fangtasia? - there was something else.  Something about how she held herself that spoke to me. 

I summoned them, curiously hopeful that I would not be disappointed.  

I was not.

She rose like a queen, taking her time to approach me.  She was led by Bill Compton, an acquaintance of mine.  He is known to me as a recent transplant to my Area.  While I could hardly keep track of every vampire who passes through, like any responsible Sheriff, I do try to keep track of the permanent residents in my Area.  I like to keep my finger on the pulse of the people, so to speak. 

As they approached, he deferred to me grudgingly, but Sookie did not.  How long had it been since someone who knew what I was had stood before me like an equal, not cowed nor fawning or with their eyes lowered in respect or fear.  Gods! And that dress!  If it weren't for the intelligence sparkling in her eyes, I would almost have believed she was some lost little slow-witted debutante, good for little more than a snack before I glamoured her and sent her running along.  Instead the woman standing before me was so very much more.  She was out of place, and yet also somehow not.  Definitely a divergence from the usual sameness.  How intriguing. 

She might have been on his arm, but she preceded him as they presented themselves to me and she was the one to step onto the dais first.  Well, well.  Such fire was wasted on a child like Bill.  Part of me was pleased.  I respect courage.  Part of me was annoyed.  No woman of mine would have done so without feeling my displeasure.  Time has long taught me that women are a man's equal in most things.  And surely, they are the more dangerous sex when angered.  And yet even after all this time, I cannot seem to let go of that part of me that says, 'how can I protect you adequately if you are not behind me?'  I realize I am Bill's Sheriff and not some vampire unknown to him, but I did not like his carelessness with my future lover.

And I was correct.  The woman standing so proudly before me was indeed a find to be cherished, smooth and golden like a treasure of old.  Her skin was tanned and luminous, her hair honeyed and thick as it fell in shiny waves around her face.  I could smell the sunshine on her skin.  It was as if summer itself had strolled into Fangtasia for an audience.  The effect of her dress made it doubly so.  It seemed to make her almost glow.... Those red flowers against a white field-

I was suddenly transported by a memory of my youth.  Ten centuries have passed since my human years, and yet the memory her presence called forth was so crisp as to be painful.  It was the summer of my fifteenth year.  I still had the leanness of youth, without the long ropes of heavy muscles wielding a sword and shield in battle would give me in time.  I was free, running with my boyhood friends through a field strewn with red flowers as we stripped what little we wore and threw ourselves into the icy water of the fjord.  I can remember pulling ourselves from the frigid water to dry our lanky bodies on the craggy sun-warmed rocks, naked and carefree with the salt crusting on our skin and our hair loose and windblown, tickling as we slept.  

It is the last time I can remember being warm.   

The depth of the memory startled me, and yet even after all this time I knew it to be true.  I remember because I married at sixteen and the following summer my wife was heavy with our first child, born at summer's zenith.  Another memory of the sun.  How had I forgotten the feel of his fragile weight as I held my naked child in my arms and called his name to the Gods, claiming him as my son?  He had smelled of milk and women, and his alabaster skin was warm and pink from the sun.  Looking at Sookie now, I could almost feel the sun's kiss on my upturned face as I had that morning so long ago.  Remarkable, for one who has not felt its touch in over a thousand years. 

More remarkable still were the memories she had stirred in me.  How long had it been since a woman - since anyone - had brought even the whisper of children to my mind?  Such memories cut deeply.  It was a different age.  I was a good father, if an absent one.  I gave my wife six children, three of whom lived to adulthood.  Giving them was the easy part.  Long cold Scandinavian winters spent wrapped up together in a pile of furs were good for that.  So were the feasts and the jubilation upon our many triumphant returns.  I was forever gone, raiding, trading, warring.  Such was the life of a Viking man.  We were bound to each other by honor and loyalty.  We ate.  We slept.  We loved.  We raided.  If we wanted something, we took it.  I am glad I do not remember more of it so vividly.  There are times I think I would much prefer such a simple existence, and that ship has long sailed for Valhalla without me.

I shook away the memories, glad the pair before me thought I was merely making them wait for my own amusement.  I acknowledged the vampire first, as if he hadn't ceased to matter the moment my eyes touched his companion.  "Bill Compton.  It has been a while."  He looked nervous.  Good.

"Yes, well... I've been-"

"Mainstreaming."  I felt my lip curl into a sneer.  Even the word was distasteful in my mouth.  "I heard."  I turned my attention to Sookie, looking deeply into her eyes.  I was pleased when she did not look away.  "I see that is going.... well for you."  However did the young Mr. Compton come by one such as she?  More to the point, what could she possibly see in him?  Though I suppose everyone needs a 'starter' boyfriend, do they not?  Someone easy to cut her teeth on.  The irony amused me.  She still had the unmistakable scent of virgin blood, which made the sight of her on his arm mildly tolerable, at least for the moment. 

I wonder if he has given her his blood.  It is one possibility.  I would have.  I will yet.  It would explain her strange attachment to such a creature... it would also explain his uneasy displeasure.  He would feel her attraction to me, sense her desire and know her want of my touch.  I like this very much.

"Yes, of course.  Uh...sorry."  Bill was nervous and did not care for my interest in the girl at his side.  Or for her interest in me.  While I cannot blame him, I also make no apologies for it.  "Eric, this is my friend-" 

"Sookie Stackhouse."  I let her name roll off my tongue before he could.  He let it pass.  She did not.

"How do you know my name?"  Careful, little human.  Who are you to make demands of me?

Pam answered for me.  "I never forget a pretty face.  You're in my vault."  She touched her temple.  Her mind is like a steel trap.  It's one of the reasons I love her like I do and also one of the reasons I tolerate her petulant insubordination. 

"Great.  That's just great."  Sookie's words tripped quickly from her mouth, drawing back my gaze.  "It's nice to meet you."  Nice?  Where was the fire of a moment ago?  Was I too quick to judge her worthy?  It would be too cruel of the fates to tease me so.    

"Well, aren't you sweet."  It was not a compliment.  I have had more than my fill of charming, empty-headed southern bimbos.  

"Not really."  Ahhh.  There it is.  Nothing but steel in her now.  This time I let them see my amusement.   Bill gripped her hand, giving her an ineffectual chastisement.  He knew the danger.  Sookie did not.  Or if she did, she was either too confident or too foolish to care... and despite her taste in male companions, she did not strike me as a fool.    

Well, well, well.  It appears our little zoo is growing.  I said as much to Pam.  She agreed.

"Miss Stackhouse, I understand you've been asking questions about some of my customers."  I cut to the chase.  I might affect boredom, but I am a busy man, and even when I am not, I still like to cut to the heart of things. 

"Yes, I have."  She didn't deny it.  

"If you've anything to ask, you should ask it of me."  My tone held a touch of censure and I was pleased to see her settle slightly, certainly more than she had when Bill had tried it only moments ago.  A human asking questions here was bad for business, however, it wasn't the only reason I wished for her to speak with me... and only me.

"All righty."  I was not expecting the pictures she retrieved from her purse and held out to me.  "Do you recognize either of these girls?"  

I did.  And the memory was pleasant.  "Mmmm...."   I savoured it, and the tension of the moment.  Her eyes were on me.  I had what she wanted.  The first of many times, to be sure.  Answering her gave me pleasure.  I touched the first picture lightly.  Her scent and warmth clung to it.  "This one offered herself to me, but I found her too pathetic for my attentions."  I paused, to see how she might take that revelation.  Oh, yes, little girl.  Whatever Bill has told you of me, and whatever you might imagine on your own, I do have standards.  My future lover should know this about me.  I touched the second picture and smiled.  "Now this one, however... I have tasted." 

What will she make of that, I wonder?  Odds are if Sookie is asking after those girls, she must know them in some capacity.  Are they her friends?  Will she care that I tasted one of them?  My answer was clear.  I have had the pretty one in every way one can have a woman.  Will that change anything between us?  Does the idea that I satisfied myself with the pretty one disgust her?  Arouse her?  Sookie came in on the arm of a vampire, however, so we must not be repellant to her.   And yet, she is still virgin.  Why?

So many questions, Eric.  It amused me.  Usually the humans were the ones with questions.  Can I take your picture?  You are welcome to try.  Will you turn me?  No.  Will you bite me?  Yes.  Will it hurt?  Yes.  Will I like it?  If I choose.   Have you ever killed anyone?   I'm considering adding to the number.  Can you cry?  It is possible.  Can I feel your fangs?  You will soon enough.  Can you come?  ....  I never deign to answer such questions, at least not with words.  I am no longer a man, but I am still male.  More primally than I ever was before.   

I do remember the pretty girl in the picture, but not her name.  She was more comely than most, well used to having her pick of male partners.  She did not like waiting for me to choose her.  I almost didn't.  She was too arrogant and capitulated much too easily, but her blood was sweet and rich and she had a very talented mouth.  I liked her better when she wasn't talking.  I have an apartment nearby - a place to feed, not to live.  I took her there... and then I took her there.  It was a mutually beneficial exchange.  I wanted to feed.  She wanted my attentions.  I took my time with her, an enjoyable few hours.  She wanted to be bitten where others would see it.  I obliged - a deep thorough pounding and a savage bite on the neck - to start, neither of which she will forget anytime soon.     

Pam and Sookie were talking; I watched the exchange with my usual detachment.  I did not mind Sookie's willfulness when directed at me, but she should have been more mindful with Pam.  It annoyed me slightly, but only because I was going to have to suffer Pam later.  Even a thousand years has not made listening to a woman complain any less unpleasant.

"Well, thank you very much.  That is all your time I need to take."  Sookie retrieved the pictures, readying herself to go.

"I'm not finished with you yet."  I was not yet ready to relinquish such a treasure back to the night and the words left me more harshly than I had intended.  There was fire in her eyes now.  A tactical error on my part.  Eric, Eric.... does one not catch more flies with honey?  I was too used to giving orders.  It did not even occur to me to phrase it in the form of a request.  I could be charming, though it had been many years since I had needed - or wanted - to expend the effort.  I smiled.  "Please....  Sit."  My voice rose with boyish excitement.  It sounded foolish and insincere even to my own ears.  Gods, I was rusty.  First too stern and now obviously trying too hard.  Perhaps I would be better served addressing the vampire.  At least I knew I wouldn't be too soft with him.  I never took my eyes off her as I spoke to him.  "So... Bill... Are you quite attached to your friend?"

I do like to be direct.  There is nothing to be gained by pretending I do not want her.

"She is mine."  Well, well... it appears the boy does have some fang in him after all.  Good to know.  I still did not bother taking my eyes from her face while he spoke.

"Yes.  I am his."  Hmm.  The scent of her virgin blood was strong and her words did not have the ring of truth.  Yet.  Perhaps a more accurate answer might have been 'He wants me to be his', or possibly a more troublesome 'I want to be his', but that is not what they chose.  Interesting.  Instead they spoke more binding words.  Our people do not have many laws, but feeding from another's property is forbidden.  There is nothing in the rules, however, about coveting another's property, openly or otherwise.  

"Well what a pity... for me."  I finally allowed myself the pleasure of letting my eyes drift from her face, down her swanlike neck and over the radiant skin of her shoulders to the generous bounty of her cleavage.  Mmm... my mouth watered.  I hardly ogled the girl, but I did let her see my...  appreciation.  The way she looked tonight was not a random mistake.  If she had not wanted male eyes to linger, she would have chosen a different dress, though I found myself thinking I would have looked twice even if she had been wearing a fishing net.  She was delectable, if a little on the petite side for my tastes.  I am large and at my full height, she would not even come to my shoulder, yet her delicate nature did not make her appear weak or frail.  Fragile, perhaps, but then weren't they all?  I would enjoy finding positions with her that allowed us to take advantage of our many differences.  Unbidden, my tongue touched my lip.  To my great pleasure, her eyes followed it.  Bill, forgotten by us both for a moment, shifted restlessly and I knew I could no longer ignore him.  "Sit with us."  It was not a request.  "We have catching up to do, you and I."  I finally turned my head away from Sookie to meet his eyes.  "It has been too long."  I would suffer his company to enjoy hers.  And he knew it.     

"Yes."  He looked as if he would rather be anywhere than here with me.  I do not blame him.  I took the opportunity to let my gaze travel down Sookie's smooth golden legs.  They were long for such a petite woman and the image of them wrapped around my waist while her toes and heels flexed against the backs of my legs flickered behind my eyes.  Behind my closed mouth, I pressed my tongue against my aching teeth and looked away before I exposed my fangs, or the true nature of my thoughts.

Bill sat, and for a moment I felt a bit like a proud feudal king of old, looking out over my kingdom, such that it is, with a pretty woman at my side and my somewhat loyal followers in audience.  Truth be told, I would have preferred a great hall with fresh rushes on the floor, long tables and dogs and children running underfoot while honeyed mead and spiced wine flowed and my people drank and sang.  Instead I had an establishment full of the fringes of society, vampire and human alike.  All thinking about sex, which had not in any way changed from how things used to be, save for what now passed as acceptable behavior and what was deemed shocking. 

All these pathetic creatures trying to be so different... and yet all going about it in exactly the same way.  Do they not see the irony, the hypocrisy in that?  Let us all be different by being exactly the same.  How unimaginative.  They all thought they were on the edge of what was acceptable.  Leather.  Collars. Latex.  Skin.  Electrical tape covering their nipples and lewd open displays of lust in all its many forms.  This is supposed to be shocking?  It was laughable.

That is what amused me most about the patrons of this place, with all of them trying so hard to behave in such a sexually shocking way, even the tourists came for the shock value, is that they failed to see the obvious.  The way I had lived would shock even my most hardcore clientele.  In my day, sex had been a joy, a celebration, not a thing hidden and whispered about until it was subverted and perverted by Christianity into something unrecognizable.  We lived communally, often many generations sharing the same open living space.  We made love and had sex without walls or doors, hardly on display, but there was little true privacy.  Small children who were too curious about giggles under a blanket were attended to by wrinkled old grandmothers or gently chastised by who was to hand.  We all shared furs in the winter, and many nights I had my wife with my children sleeping warm and safe beside us.   

I even remember one early morning when curious little fingers would not stop lifting the edge of our furs, I pretended to be a big, growling, lumbering bear and left my poor unsatisfied wife to chase my pack of little ones screaming in blissful glee out into the early morning sunshine, all of us naked as jaybirds.  The very same ones who would condemn me for letting a child catch a glimpse of two bodies celebrating life are the same ones who sexualize children today.  Now there is the real abomination. 

I wondered what an innocent like Sookie would make of this establishment of mine.  Would she see it as an abomination, or would someone open enough to accept a vampire's attentions find this place as curious as I do?  She might not understand all the subtext or have the benefit of a perspective as long and varied as mine, but I was interested in her reaction nonetheless, and I was disappointed when her unnatural stillness was broken and she all but hissed - "We have to get out of here!" 

Excuse me?

"Sookie!"  For once, Bill and I were in perfect agreement.  

"Eric, the cops are coming.  There's going to be a raid."  Her jumpiness of moments ago faded to a strange sort of focused energy.  It was such a pity that I was too busy processing the implications of her little announcement to properly savor my name on her lips, though some part of me registered that I had not introduced myself or given her permission to address me so informally.

Unfortunately, there were more pressing matters at present.  "Tell me you aren't an undercover cop."  Attraction be damned!   If she is, I will rip them both to shreds.  It actually took real effort to remain still.  I wanted to crawl inside her and rip the answer from her throat.

"I'm not, but that man in the hat is."  Relief flooded me at her answer.  I had not wanted to be forced to destroy that which I desire but have not yet sampled.

"Even if you're right, we do nothing illegal here."  Bah!  Humans!  Everything is always so urgent with them.      

She was persistent.  "There's a vampire in the ladies' room named Taryn with that man you kicked before."  I felt my eyes grow wide, and I would have inhaled sharply if my body still drew breath.  "She's feeding on him."  There was no way she could have known that and yet her hurried words had the crisp ring of truth.  Her answer was too earnest for this to be some kind of staged trick.    

What was she?   

"How do you know this?"  Bill was shaking his head at her, warning her not to answer.  His reluctance was answer enough.  Sookie Stackhouse was something more than human, that much was clear.  How very interesting.  In that moment I was more certain than ever that the engaging Miss Stackhouse and I would come to be quite well acquainted.

In a split second the police rushed in like ants, announcing their presence with a cacophony of heavy concussive noise.  The very idea of catching a vampire that way is absurd, however the usual screaming and running ensued as everyone took flight like a flock of startled birds.  Pam and Bill could take care of themselves but I would see Sookie to safety this night.  Even if I did not have a personal stake in the matter, some much-abused and long lingering remnant of honor demanded it of me.  A mass glamouring is difficult and tasking... but was not entirely impossible in the initial chaos.   

The way sufficiently cleared, I rose.  "Follow me."  They did, and we made a hasty exit.  You think an old hand like me would not be prepared for such an eventuality?  I have not reached such an advanced age by accident.  In moments we were slipping out the back through my bolthole, simply hidden in plain sight, as has long been my preference.  Humid air enveloped us like a living thing and the night's warm embrace soothed me like an old familiar lover. 

I did not have to turn to know if Sookie followed.  I could feel her energy at my back, propelling me onward.  So that was the way of things?  For all our haste, it was a gauntlet I could not resist.  Still in flight, I turned to catch her gaze one last time as we all hurried into the shadows.  

"I enjoyed meeting you, Miss Stackhouse.  You will come again."  Her eyes defied me, but blood does not lie.  I will see her again.  Soon.

The night swallowed us in beautiful darkness as we scattered.

Though I do not yet know the full measure of it, I have heard the first distinctive notes of the seductive melody of her blood's song.  I have seen the rose flush of it under her skin and been tantalized by its cadence pulsing strong in her fragile body, and intrigued by its unique scent; something more than virgin.  Something more than human.  I can only anticipate the taste, as one might a treasured and rare vintage, deep red and thick with life. 

What an intoxicating elixir.  I can scarcely imagine the pleasure of those singular notes partaken together... let alone blended with the chords of my own dark ballad.

Despite the dark distance between us now, I could still hear the refrain, low and deep, calling to me.  Blood to blood.  Even to my jaded ear, it sounds like.... desire.  And hunger.  Perhaps even need.   The complex underscore was enthralling.  Sex and violence.  After centuries of imagining myself above it, how perfectly amusing to find myself caught up in the cyclical swirl of humanity once more.... and yet the song played on.  Passion.  Willfulness.  Lust.  One note rose higher than the rest.  Possession.

The enigmatic Miss Stackhouse will be mine.

The bloodsong has begun.  The tempo might change, and what might happen after the crescendo is anyone's guess....but one thing is certain.  Whether she is ready for me or not, I will make her my lover before the last note fades.