Chapter Text
It all started when an overly cheerful witch walked into Fangtasia one Friday night.
“Welcome to Fangtasia, the bar with a bite,” Pam greeted her, bored out of her mind.
“I'm looking for a Mr. Eric Northman,” the young woman chirped.
Pam raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrows, but that was the only sign of her surprise that she outwardly showed. “Really, now?”
The young woman nodded.
“And may I ask who you are, that you must speak with my boss?”
“My name is Morgan Maulers,” Morgan Maulers grinned. “I'm a witch.”
Pam's eyes darted around, but they were alone, and nobody heard. She glared at the redhead. “Let me rephrase that. What do you want with my boss?”
“Nothing, I have to help him,” Morgan replied, bouncing on her heels.
Pam had been placed well and truly in a quandary. Should she bring the little human girl to Eric, or should she signal to Chow and have her tossed off the premises, glamoured so hard she would barely remember what year it was? Choices, choices, she thought, but her concern for Eric won out.
“Chow!” she summoned, and the Asian vampire appeared at a superhuman speed, smiling with his fangs out. Morgan was unimpressed. “Watch the door.”
He looked at her for an explanation, but she gave him a look that said later, if you don't piss me off too much, so he just nodded and took his place.
“Come with me,” Pam said, leading Morgan around the side of the building to a door that was all but hidden by a conveniently placed dumpster. She opened it and led the witch through a storage room and into Eric's office.
“Wait here and don't touch anything,” she ordered the girl. Morgan simply nodded, drumming her fingers along the side of her hip. Pam was momentarily distracted, but she strode out the door with all the poise of a queen. She walked quickly through the hallway and into the club, ignoring the fawning gazes of the pathetic humans and the inquisitive ones of the vampires. She didn't stop until she reached the chair where Eric sat, staring off into thin air.
“Eric?” she said quietly, and that was enough to startle him out of his reverie.
“Yes, Pam?” he sighed.
“There's a human in your office waiting to see you,” his child informed him.
“Pam, I told you I am not hungry-” Eric began.
“It's not about that, although you will need to eat eventually,” Pam scolded. “It's...something else.”
The way she emphasized her words had Eric's interest piqued. The only reason Pam wouldn't tell him everything right then and there was because whatever the girl was...she wasn't all human.
“Watch the bar for me,” he ordered, rising from his chair and eliciting several sighs from various dazed onlookers. Pam replaced him and shot every one of the fangbangers a glare that they could write home about.
Eric strode back to his office, wondering what was waiting. He opened the door to see a smiling, freckle-faced redhead, which wasn't particularly unusual. However, the levitating pens swirling around her head in what appeared to be some type of bumper-pens game was.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and the pens immediately fell to the floor.
“Are you Eric Northman?” the girl asked.
Eric nodded.
“My name is Morgan Maulers,” she introduced herself. “I'm a witch, and I'm supposed to help you.”
Not much had surprised Eric in the past four centuries, but this came close. “Oh, really? Help me with what?”
“I know what happened with your maker, in Dallas,” Morgan began, and suddenly Eric was across the room with a supernaturally strong hand wrapped around her throat.
“Nobody knows about that,” he seethed, fangs in full view. Morgan simply raised two fingers, placed them on his forehead, and gave him a rather painful jolt of magic. Eric's hands immediately dropped from her larynx.
“Play nicely,” she warned, letting an edge of steel into her voice. Oh, this was a powerful witch. Eric grinned, trying another tactic.
“I'm hungry, you know,” Eric grinned lazily, adding as much sensuousness into his voice, as well as a hint of glamour. “I haven't fed in a week. Aren't you a little nervous, stuck in a room with a hungry vampire?”
Morgan simply shot him a look that she had apparently learned from Pam. “Nice try. I'm here to help you, not to be dinner.”
Eric sighed, resigning himself to whatever magical do-goodery this girl had in mind. “How did you know about...” Godric, his mind supplied but mouth refused to speak.
“Crystal ball,” Morgan replied, back to grinning.
Eric's eyes widened. He hadn't come across a witch able to use a crystal ball or scrying bowl so accurately since the sixteenth century.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked, hiding the twinge of apprehension he felt.
“Well, the ball only told me I had to help you, but I'm not sure how, so I'm just going to let my magic loose and see what happens, all right?” she bubbled.
“I'm not so sure-” he began, but was cut off when she raised her hand and held it rather close to Eric's face. Morgan began muttering something in Latin, which he was once fluent in but hadn't spoken aloud in a few hundred years. Then she started in English, which worried him even more.
“Cleansed in water, purged by fire, scattered by winds and buried in mire,” she intoned, voice hollowly ringing like a bell in an old stone church. Eric didn't need to see the sparks swirling around her fingertips to know what she was doing. She was calling out her magic, and as much as Eric wanted to either run away or rip her throat out- he didn't do well in potentially threatening situations- he knew that if she was interrupted, her magic would probably explode in their faces. Better to just let it run the course. “Cleansed in water, purged by fire, scattered by winds and buried by mire...cleansed by water, purged by fire, scattered by winds and buried in mire-!” she squeaked out the last bit, and suddenly the room was filled with a blinding light and there was a slight fizzling as the electrical circuits burned out. Eric blinked, seeing clearly in the darkness, but appreciative of the candle the witch managed to light.
“Nothing happened,” she frowned. “Aw, fuck.”
He almost smiled at her consternation. “There, there, I certainly appreciate your efforts,” Eric assured her, his mind already on how he was going to get the electrical system up and running.
Then he heard a voice.
“Eric...”
It was a whisper, barely audible, and one that was terrifyingly familiar.
Eric whirled on the witch. “What did you do?” he growled.
Morgan shrugged nervously. “No idea. Here, let me go check the circuit breaker!” she scampered out of the room in the general direction of where the electrical controls for the building were. Twenty-seven seconds and several interesting swears later, and light was restored.
“Eric!”
The voice again, that tiny voice. He knew that voice. How could he not? He had spent the better part of a millennium listening to him...
“Eric, I'm down here!”
The former Viking whirled and honed in his hearing on the thread of sound and followed it to his desk, specifically, the third drawer down on the right.
“Is everything all right?” Pam asked as she entered, dragging a rather confused- but still determinedly smiling- Morgan Maulers behind her. “I heard the lights go out-”
Eric held up a hand for quiet, and silence descended over the office.
“Eric! Please, a little help?”
With great caution, he slowly opened the drawer. On top of a stack of relatively unimportant papers lay the framed photograph of Godric- Isabel had taken it the night of Godric's party, the night the bomb went off, and had sent it to him after Godric had....but that didn't matter.
What mattered was that the boy in the photograph blinked.
Eric gently lifted out the framed piece and stared at the witch, who squirmed under Pam's iron grip. “What did you do?”
“I don't know!” Morgan squeaked.
Eric looked down at the photo.
“My child,” Godric smiled up at him. “How have you been?”