Annika Northman: Part Two

Chapter 12: Certainly Not My Way

I pause once in the hallway, because the humming tells me to. It fills my feet – imagine water being poured into your shoes, bubbling water – and doesn't stop until I'm still. I'm at a corner when this happens, and I wait, perfectly happy to do so, and I understand a moment later why this happened: Two men are muttering just around the corner, two men whose voices I don't recognize but who mutter and mutter – I don't pay attention to what about, I don't care – and before moving away on what can only be booted feet, clomp, clomp, clomp. A minute passes, and then the humming draws me forward again. I feel like I'm floating as I turn the corner and walk down the hallway, past dramatic portraits and relics on shelves. The humming is in charge of me, like a current would be, taking me wherever it cares to, and that's lovely, lovely . . . It's nice not to have to make decisions, or doubt anything, myself or otherwise. Right now, I worry about nothing, because the humming – or, whatever the humming belongs to – knows exactly what to do. Knows exactly what I should do.

I walk down the staircase and into the foyer. Two servants, both male, hurry past me and spare me looks, but neither stop. From the foyer into an empty sitting room with velvet on the chairs and a grandfather clock as tall as Eric . . . then into an office. The desk is bigger than Eric's, but the room is bigger, too, it's a proper office . . . Really, it's a study. Yes, like Eric's study on Öland. Öland. Why did I ever have to leave Öland?

The humming concentrates itself in my chest, swarming happily, and then tugs me forward, towards the desk. No. Towards what's behind it. A cabinet, of sorts. Giant, as wide as the desk, and at least two meters tall, probably more. Instead of wood or glass, the cabinet's doors are made of a sort of metal mesh, so I can see everything it holds, all sorts of things that glimmer in that special way only old treasures can.

My eyes lock on a piece of gleaming gold, and my insides surge.

I go to the cabinet and open it. The doors fall away from what they guard like they were just waiting for my say-so. Oh, the humming, the humming gets so strong – waves of pure approval, waves of certainty . . . and waves of that unmistakable, irreplaceable feeling of home as I gaze up at the golden crown that, I understand instantly, is the something that found its way into my head. The something doing all the humming. The something that wants my attention like my old rabbit Beowulf.

It isn't a dramatic sort of crown, no jewels, no spikes – just a band of dark gold about the same width as my hand, curving into a V-shape at its center, but that's the extent of the decoration. Oh, but it's lovely despite the simplicity, maybe because of it. It's a crown made for someone who isn't afraid to get dirty, to do the hard work themselves, to fight. I love it immediately and with all my heart. And it hums, and hums, and hums, and tells me to touch it, so I do, my hand perfectly steady as I reach out and lay my fingers on the gold. And my mind is overtaken.

. . . . .

A man with long hair and a long beard, older but not old, wearing the golden crown. Standing at the head of a crowded table, shouting gleefully in a language I can't understand before falling back in his chair, grinning as the people around him, all dressed in furs and leather, laugh and shout back. He reaches out and takes the shoulder of the man beside him – Eric. Not my Eric, but Eric, living Eric, really living – human. He smiles at the man in the crown and rips some meat from a bone with his teeth. His skin seems ruddy, but that's just because it has hot blood running beneath it.

I try to go to him, because all I want to know is what Eric Northman's heartbeat sounded like long before he was Eric Northman, but that's when I discover I have no feet here, indeed, no body, and anyway, the room has changed, emptied. Now it's just the man in the crown at end of the table with a woman about his age. She's rocking a baby, cooing at it, and he's watching with a little smile, seemingly half-asleep. And Eric, human Eric, joins them, and says words I don't know, words that make the woman lift her eyebrows and speak dryly, and he grins at her – oh, he looks so young – and gazes down at the baby, and the man in the crown laughs for no reason I know, and it's wonderful, yes, so very much, but something isn't right, is it? Something – something is coming, and –

. . . . .

My hand is yanked from the crown.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" someone screeches as Eric drags me from the cabinet. "Do you have any idea how valuable those things are?" Talbot stands just beyond the desk, his hands on his hips. Gone is the vampire who called me adorable.

And, in this horrible moment, I understand why. I look back to the crown, that telling crown, which is no longer giving me a single vibration. The humming is gone. The crown gave me what it needed to give me, and now I am on my own. Left to pay for its sins.

"I didn't –" I turn to Eric, who still has my wrist in his unforgiving grip. "Eric, I swear, I didn't mean to . . ."

But Eric isn't listening. He's seen the crown.

"You didn't mean to?" Talbot repeats.

"I didn't, I –" But what am I to say? I'm psychic and that crown all but hypnotized me into coming down here. Cross my heart. "Eric . . ." I hook my hand around his wrist, because his fingers are tightening on my arm. "Eric, please, that hurts . . ."

His hand opens stiffly, like a steel trap letting loose, and I step back, shaking my head at him, ready to plead, but he's still staring at the crown, so I address Talbot. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . . I didn't . . ." But there are no words. None that can guarantee my safety. And Eric's.

"Speak, you idiot child!" Talbot snaps, making me flinch. "You wander around my home and put your grubby hands on artifacts one hundred times your age and two hundred times your value? Hmph!" His eyes flash to Eric, and he crosses his arms. "Is this how all Louisiana vampires handle their humans? Or is it just the sheriffs?"

Eric closes the cabinet doors, so softly they don't make a sound. "I can't speak for all of them," he tells Talbot, stepping towards me, "but it is certainly not my way."

He hits me across the face, snapping my head to the side with such force that I don't realize I've lost my footing until I'm on the ground, my right wrist wrenched beneath me. "How dare you shame me like this?" Eric hisses from above. I don't answer him, I don't look up at him, I don't move. I can't. I stay on my knees, supporting myself on my screaming wrist, my damp hair hanging around me as the left side of my face tries to understand what just happened to it.

"I am so deeply sorry," I hear Eric whisper to Talbot. "She is normally quite well-behaved, I never would have expected this from her. But you have my word that she will do nothing like this again for the remainder of my stay. I will make sure of it."

A deep sort of sting is settling into my face, especially in the corner of my lip and my cheekbone, as Talbot heaves a sigh. "It's fine. All she was touching was that . . . random tribal crown, there were a hundred of them. Oh – I overreacted, Eric. I apologize."

"Please. My human was out of line, there is no excuse. I will take her back to my room immediately for proper . . . chastisement."

"Don't be silly, you've barely seen half the collection. There's no reason to let this ruin the tour. Send her back, deal with her later."

" . . . As you wish."

The next instant, Eric has hold of my arm and is pulling me to my feet, drawing a whining sort of sound from me that I don't mean to make, that I've never made in my life. An inhuman sound. "Return to the room. Now. We will discuss this at length, I assure you of that." He flings my arm away, causing me to trip towards the door, but I don't fall, no, I stay upright and walk out of the study and through the sitting room and through the foyer and up the stairs, chased by the sounds of Eric and Talbot's laughter.

No humming to guide me this time. I'm all on my own. Down the hallway. Past a tall female vampire who frowns at me and may speak, not sure, can't understand – through the bedroom door I go, into the place where Eric and I slept, just a vampire and his human. I reach to touch my face but decide it would be better to just lie down, so I go for the bed, but collapse against the wall and sink to the floor, wrapping my arms around my head and hiding in them, my arms and my hair, hiding and shaking, shaking like I never have before, and that's how I stay until later, some point later, when the door opens and my guardian comes in to deliver proper chastisement.