The Girl Who Was October

by Nyah

October tells a Halloween story of Eric and Sookie that goes like this: "This is a love story, not a falling in love story." A submission for the Eric and his Great Pumpkin one-shot contest. Rated M for love and all that involves.

Eric and His Great Pumpkin One-shot Contest

The Girl Who Was October

by Nyah

Characters: Eric, Sookie, cameos by Pam and Amelia

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball, and a bunch of legal people. I am none of these. Thus, no affiliation here.

Note: I made it just inside the word count with this one and several scenes were left on the cutting room floor. I promise to present the complete version after the close of the contest. Thanks immensely to pixiegiggles and assumepresume for being the red pens that made this things intelligible.

The Girl Who Was October

"Oh, you can call me October, by the way," the girl next to you says. "Everyone does."

You smile and tell her your name. The two of you talk for a little while about how this is such a common exchange between backpackers. You run across each other at a hostel somewhere and strike up a conversation and who knows how long it'll last or if the person is on her way somewhere else so you don't get around to exchanging names until hours later. In this case you've been discussing the dubious nature of the film playing in the hostel's common room: Twilight.

"October, huh?" You say. "Interesting name."

"Well, it's not really my name," she replies."Hey, do you want to go to a bonfire with me?" She asks.

Your car's going to be in the shop for at least another day and there's nowhere to go in this town and no way to get there anyway so you say, "Sure." Why not?

On the highway she tells you to keep your eyes peeled for a water tower that's shaped like a peach. You scan the side of the road, expecting an oddly shaped water drum. Instead, in the last of the light that's pouring over the edge of the highway you see a tower that's shaped and painted up exactly like a huge peach. "Hey, I think that's it."

When October parks it's at the end of the dirt road in an impromptu lot that characterizes backpacker gatherings. It's getting dark fast but you'd guess there are about a dozen other cars and some of them look pretty pricey. "You have some rich friends," you say. You've been doing this traveling thing long enough to be a snob about not having money.

"Well, they're not exactly my friends," she says.

"Like October's not exactly your name," you joke.

"Right. They're my family. This is kind of a reunion."

"Okay." You wonder, briefly, if the family's going to think you're dating October or something and if that would be such a bad thing anyway.

"And my name really isn't October," she says, just in case you missed it. "I am October."

"What?" You say at the same time that you stumble over a rock and start laughing at yourself so it takes you a few minutes to realize she's serious. "Like the month?"

"Yes."

"You are the month of October?"

"Right."

"Cool," you reply. You met a guy at hostel in Texas who spent two hours recounting a past life as a duck-billed dinosaur so if a cute girl wanted to tell you she was the month of October, you'd just go with it. "So what happens at this reunion?"

"We tell stories," she replies. "You know, around the fire. It's fun, and kind of a contest. I'm first up this year so mine has to be really good or everyone'll forget about it by the time September finishes hers."

"Like the Oscars," you say.

"Exactly."

"Like Chaucer meets the Oscars."

"No." You can hear an eye roll in her voice. "We invite him once and he pulls it off as his idea."

The ground ahead slopes and you can hear voices coming from over the hill and that just might be smoke rising up over the stars. "Hey, not to be rude October, but why did you bring me?"

"Well, there are two rules we have about the stories," she says. "They have you take place in the storyteller's month and they have to be true. You're my witness."

"I am?"

"Yep. You were there, you just didn't know it. Don't worry, being a witness is easy. You just have to listen to the story. And if I win you get to share the prize. You get to help me decide how it ends."

Over the hill and around a crackling fire is October's family. There are a lot of them... "That's March and there's November," she starts pointing them out and you can't really keep up but at least you can guess that there are probably eleven. Family members at least. They all appear to have brought "witnesses" of their own.

A matronly woman wrapped in knit scarf and gloves against the chill clears her throat and the sound carries, blanketing the gathering with quiet. "Welcome, family and guests to our Leap Day celebration." As she speaks the world seems to shrink in around the fire and you swear you smell snow. "On this day of crossed paths and common ground, it is our tradition to come together to mark the years passed in tales...."

"What's today?" You ask.

"Leap Day," she says.

"Oh."

"That's January," October whispers in your ear with a breath like hot cider.

"October!" January's voice snaps and echoes. "The stage is yours, my heart."

October smiles, a little nervously you think, and pulls you with her into the firelight. This close to the brightness of the fire, the audience has become nothing but dark shapes and glowing eyes. "Why does this suddenly feel like Halloween?" You ask jokingly, trying not to give away the fact that you're actually a little nervous.

October smiles at you. "I'm October," she reminds you. "It's my turn to tell the story and I'm the setting. The setting changes everything."

She introduces you by more names than you've given her ."I have something a little different for you all this Leap Day," October says.

There's a slight murmur from the assembly and a laugh or too. You can see the other witnesses looking around kind of nervously at the family. "Does it start on a dark and stormy night?" Someone who's voice sounds like snow-melt asks.

"Well...yes," October replies.

"Are there scary monsters?" Asks a voice that knows both death and flowers.

"Yes."

"Blood and gore?" Cracks a voice like a canon.

"Yes!" October cries in exasperation or excitement. Red apples have bloomed on the white painted cheeks. "Definitely, yes."

"So it's different how, little sister?"

October smiles, lovely and ghoulish and just a hair shy of saintly. When she speaks again you swear her voice comes from the fire and falls straight into your soul. Or maybe it's the other way around. She says, "This one's a love story."

##

"This story starts with a kiss....

"Backwards?" A few months of the year ask.

October sighs in frustration. She'd just started to get into storytelling mode, fading into the background, letting the story take center stage and they'd already pulled her out. "Not if you were listening. I said it was a love story, not a falling in love story. The difference is this: a falling in love story ends in a world shattering kiss, a love story begins on the world that condensed from the debris.

The one kissing is Eric Northman. You'll all remember him, I'm sure. He's come up in your own stories a time or two and he's got a few pretty noticeable attributes, namely: tall, blond, and dead. The one being kissed is Sookie Stackhouse: telepathic, blond, and alive.

Kissing, for them, is unremarkable only because it goes unremarked. Picture, if you will, a terminal kiss. A kiss that rides the balancing point of death and life. A kiss that would serve very well as your earliest memory or your very last act in this world. Now you're getting the idea.

When he kisses her, she's wrapped in an old quilt he's learned to tolerate because it makes it easy for him to trap her hands when he kisses her awake. He buries one hand in the open weave of the blanket and tucks the other into a familiar place behind her neck that is warm and damp from sleep.

His existence is such that he can see her lower lip, sleep swollen and smoothed, even in the dark. His begins his claim there, pulling her back from dreams with the cool pressure of his own lips. It takes an instant for her body to register his presence. When it does, her return kiss is not a not a timid 'hello' but a proper 'good morning.' She's been dreaming of him.

The nights have gotten cool, so she's wrapped in her old quilt and she can't reach out and touch him, can't distract herself from the kiss. Her world shrinks down to her lips and her tongue and to his lips and to the planes of his face that have grown into monoliths because they are the only things that exist.

He pulls away from her and she strains forward, unable to pursue him with anything but the curve of her neck. She can't see him in the dark but she can feel his stab of pride at what he's done to her just as he can feel her momentary distress. Their shared lust is a different entity all together. It loops. Feeding back on itself so that one's want increases the other's. Positive feedback, something so rare in the body because it throws things out of balance, elements ceaselessly building upon themselves, unchecked, uncontrollable until it can only be stopped by an event.

He rushes back to her like the tide and she changes shape beneath him, rising and falling to meet the forces of his body, hips grinding like the plates of the earth before the cataclysm. His hands burrow beneath the quilt, pulling it apart just enough that he can slide into the warm pocket she slept in, introducing her, in the most pleasant of ways, to the chill of early morning in October.

With little effort and practiced ease he rolls her on top of him so he can feel the weight of her, the heaviness of round hips and breasts and luxurious thighs that is substantial enough in his hands that he can think, for just a little while, that he possesses the beauty of her.

She's impatient in the early morning and it's not long before her gasps of pleasure becomes gasps of demand. She wants what he came for and he's all too happy to provide. With him inside her, her muscles pull her spine straight and then too far, rolling her head back and forcing the air from her lungs. She's not sorry to see it go.

She pauses a moment, or tries to, but the loop has begun and it demands forward motion. Her spine rolls again, head to hips, rocking against him so the sharp angles of his pelvis press the backs of her thighs. His hands know her rhythms and he holds her back the space of a grace note, keeping her a hair's breadth away from losing herself-- there's a savage beauty in an unresolved chord, in the dissonant notes of moaned frustration. But he cannot delay the inevitable for long and here two events are inevitable: their release and the dawn.

He lets his body dictate the tempo, quick and deep, the tempo of the lost and found. Her body wrings unnecessary breaths from him, low growls of exquisite frustration. Her answering moans, high and almost anguished, are what push him over, momentum crashing spectacularly into event. Sound with no meaning except release is ripped from his throat and when he can focus his eyes again she is hovering in his vision, not yet sated but glowing with a fiercely proud smile.

Lust builds easily between them and there is time enough before dawn for a few more orgasms.

Everyone's day should start just like this.

Later that day, Sookie is an odd jumble of content and troubled. It's hard to be down when you start your day off with a little toe-curling but it gets easier when the last thing your lover tells you before he goes dead for the day is that he must talk to you about something and you can feel his trepidation.

Eric had been absent lately. Not in an inattentive, distant sense, but in a "my vampire boyfriend goes away for days at a time and doesn't tell me why" sense. At first, Sookie was not worried. Eric was engaged in enough business ventures and political maneuvers to make her head spin. Eventually he told her about most of them and she was bored or interested depending on the specifics of each. But whatever Eric had gotten himself into now he was playing close to the vest. Maybe this morning he'd realized that it was starting to come between them.

Now it's seven o'clock on October 30th, Devil's Night, and the sun has just given up on the day. Sookie is standing outside Merlotte's with Sam and a plastic pumpkin full of assorted candy. Tomorrow is a Sunday and the town of Bon Temps decided to push Trick or Treating up a day so the kids wouldn't be out on a school night. Sookie suspects that some of the more staunchly religious members of the town council might have had an ulterior motive or two for moving the celebration to a Saturday.

Speaking of which, Arlene Fowler approaches Merlotte's front entrance, proceeded by her two children. Coby is dressed in jeans and a brown bathrobe and carrying a walking stick. "And who are you?" Sookie asks.

"John the Baptist," Coby replies Sookie is amazed at the choice until Coby pulls out a water pistol and squirts her in the face. "I baptize you in the name of John!" He declares.

"In the name of Christ, sweetie," Arlene corrects patiently.

"But I'm John the Baptist," Coby insists.

Lisa, looking around a little nervously because she thinks she's getting too old for this, is dressed like Princess Jasmine. "Again this year," she confesses to Sookie as she's selecting her candy. She leans in conspiratorially. "I wanted to be Bella from Twilight but Mama said no."

"That's too bad," Sookie says with a wink. "I hear that actor who plays Edward Cullen is pretty good looking."

"Yeah!" Lisa says enthusiastically then she drops her voice to a whisper. "Who do you think is hotter, Edward or Mr. Northman?"

Sookie can't do a thing to contain her laughter and Arlene clicks her tongue in exasperation and then says with strained politeness, "I like your costume, Sam." He'd dressed like a Nascar driver which delights all the kids who walk the extra block out to Merlotte's for Sam's famously good candy selection.

Lisa pulls a box of Lemonheads out of the plastic pumpkin.

"I didn't know they still made those!" Sookie says in surprise. "Those were my favorite when I was your age." She'd always been partial to lemon-flavored candy. Which was kind of ironic, considering her fairy heritage. But maybe it was the opposite and the fact that lemons were a few generations shy of deadly to her made their dangerous tanginess all the more thrilling.

Lisa looks at the box of candy skeptically then shrugs and puts it in her pillowcase that's acting as a candy sack.

"And what are you supposed to be, Sookie?" Arlene asks, straining to contain enmity with politeness for the sake of the kids.

Still laughing, she brandishes her plastic stake and costume jewelry silver. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Sam chuckles. He'd heard that answer a round dozen times already but he has a healthy appreciation for irony. He'd definitely appreciate Sookie's taste for lemons.

"That's a little inappropriate, don't you think?" Arlene asks, not sure why she's bothered, just that she is.

Sookie shrugs. "I think a person would only take offense if she was really trying to," she says pointedly.

"Well I'm offended," says a voice only one of them expects. "And I'm not trying that hard."

Arlene urges Coby and a blushing Lisa away with little tact but she can't really be blamed, if she finds Sookie's costume inappropriate, she needs a whole new class of adjectives for Eric.

"You are not offended," Sookie says, stabbing playfully at Eric's shoulder with her plastic stake.

"No." He takes in her short skirt, high boots, and long sweater. "Isn't the day for costumes tomorrow?"

"We changed it," Sookie says with an eye roll. "It's probably been changed in Shreveport too. Doesn't Fangtasia hand out candy?"

"Not this year," Eric says then, "I need to show you something."

"I'm working," Sookie protests.

Eric looks at her skeptically. "I'm sure Sam can deal with the distribution of sweets. These children are no more minions of Satan tonight than usual."

"Go ahead," Sam says because he knows there's some kind of trouble that's been growing between them and even if he hates how often she smells like sex and death, he's never seen her so happy and he won't have a hand in ending that.

They take a short, cold flight to a farm outside Shreveport. Sookie's never been there before but she's passed it when driving into the city. It has a haunted barn and a corn maze set up for Halloween. There's a long line of kids outside the maze. Well not kids exactly, and not adults either. It's a line of in-betweens, youths too old for Tricks and Treats and too young to be chaperoning children of their own. They stand in clumps, some costumed and painted, some in jeans and t-shirts.

One group is particularly boisterous, joking and shoving at each other and stumbling out of line. Sookie recognizes underage intoxication when she sees it.

"That one, right there," Eric says, staring at the loudest boy in the group. He's taller than the rest, handsome, laughing, and trying too hard. "His name is Nathan."

"What about him?" Sookie asks.

But Eric answers with a question. "Do you know why tonight is called Devil's Night?"

Sookie shrugs. "Because kids run around smashing up mailboxes and egging cars?"

"No," Eric replies, not smiling. "They do those things because it is Devil's Night, it is not Devil's Night because they do those things."

"Okay, I give up," Sookie says, not at all in the mood for games.

"It is because tonight is the night the devils choose."

His voice is cold and flat and Sookie takes a step back from him before she can stop herself. "I really don't like the sound of this."

Eric tells her anyway. "Halloween is one of the few holidays vampires recognize. But a true Halloween, an orthodox Halloween is only... celebrated... every five hundred years."

"What happens then?"

"The population is replenished. Every vampires is obligated to make another."

"What!" Sookie cries loud enough to alert the people standing in line. "What?"

"It is tradition, preservation of the species." Eric says, unapologetically. "For most of our history we were hunted and slaughtered. The Great Turning of Halloween kept vampires from dying out. Devil's Night became what it is because the humans believed that we, the devils, preferred the good and the pure so they did everything they could to convince us they were neither."

The pieces fall together in Sookie's mind. "This year is...."

"Yes."

"And you have to...."

"Yes."

"And that boy is...."

"Yes. He is the one I've chosen."

It's a measure of how far they've come since the beginning that she steps into his arms instead of away even though he is the one frightening her. "What if you refused?" She asks even though he hasn't implied that he'd do such a thing.

"I'd be punished by the King. It is an old tradition, breaking it would be akin to heresy in the dark ages of your Church." He strokes her hair, comforting her as he often does when she's forced to accommodate the darker aspects of his nature. "But none of that matters. All the vampires of the Area will gather for the ceremony. Appius will be there. I won't have a choice."

Sookie presses her forehead to the center of his chest. She's met his Maker before and she is not eager to witness the terrible hold he has on Eric ever again. "There was some possibility that the tradition would be abolished due to our relative safety under the Vampire Rights Amendment. But the legislation hasn't passed yet," he says.

She doesn't ask why he's told her all this, withholding would have been tantamount to lying. She doesn't have to ask why he's chosen this boy instead of choosing one from the horde of fangbangers that would have given anything for the chance. She knows he's done this deliberately, as he does all things. This boy he's chosen, Nathan, won't be cruel or monstrous, he won't slaughter innocents. Perhaps he is misplaced-- strange, different from his peers. Perhaps he is lonely. Perhaps he is like Pam and under Eric's tutelage he might become something great.

But still, Sookie feels sick. The boy has tawny, close cropped hair and his freckled cheeks are flushed from alcohol and cold. He sneaks up on an unsuspecting group of girls and sets them shrieking with a hideous snarl and then he's laughing until there are tears in his eyes.

This is the boy Eric plans to murder tomorrow night.

"Will you tell him? Before you do it, will you tell him?" A thousand protests are screaming inside her but she knows already that his is why he has been absent. He's been trying to prevent this. For her. And he's failed.

She feels him shake his head. His fingertips have wound under her sweater and he strokes the scars that ring her back, signatures of the fairy twins. They've gotten used to her scars but when he touches them like this, it is always with something like guilt. "I love you," she says, even though he can't possibly have forgotten. "And I'm coming."

He has her at arm's length faster than is humanly possible. "Sookie, there will be more than a dozen vampires feeding. It will be dangerous."

"Someone should be with that boy, a human, at the end." She smiles bravely, momentarily conquering her disgust. "Besides, none of ya'll will exactly be hungry."

The next day is Halloween and Amelia glides down the stairs in a gown of black and white. It hugs her body, flattering the witch's modest curves. This is Amelia's fourth Halloween with Sookie and soon will be her fourth Christmas. The illusion that Amelia might move out any time soon has long since dissipated and both of the women are glad to be rid of it. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for Eric's party... thing... whatever?"

"I'm ready," Sookie says, lowering her book so Amelia can get the full effect of her worn out jeans and Bon Temp's Football t-shirt.

"Sookie, you're wearing slippers," Amelia says, making no effort to hide her disgust. "Slippers that should be burnt."

"They're moccasins," Sookie says in defense of the beloved footwear.

"They're slippers that happen to have rubber soles," Amelia says in a tone that brooks no argument. "Did you and Eric have a fight?"

"No. I cleaned today and this is what I was wearing. I'm just... not changing."

"Determined to look human in a room full of vampires?" Amelia guesses more or less correctly. "I don't think they'll forget."

"Lover, you've out done yourself," Eric dead-pans later that night when Sookie enters his room in The Hemeglobe, Shreveport's only true vampire-friendly hotel. The sign outside shows the world in drop of blood being poured from a martini glass.

"I'm not here for the party, honey," she says just as flatly but the difference is, she's not joking.

If anyone were to enter the room now, he'd feel the tension that has defined so much of their relationship, the inevitable tension that arises between a woman who has fallen in love with death and a vampire who has fallen for life. Their love is a thing of contradictions, precious for its improbability. They are flint and steel, proven so wrong for one another time and again by the potential for disaster that flies from them like struck sparks.

There is something heavy about the way Eric sits on the end of his bed. Sookie can feel a sadness in him that has nothing to do with her moral qualms. She walks toward him and the gravity of his body matches her pace so that when she reaches him his head comes to rest against her stomach. "Something's wrong," she guesses because she can feel it and because she's seen him like this so few times.

He shakes his head against her abdomen. "I just don't... don't approve of this," he says. "Being a Maker shouldn't be forced. Not all of the others will be ready. Pam will do well though she will dislike the bond. Bill made a very practical choice. But some of them are so young themselves...."

Sookie runs her fingers through his hair but she doesn't press on the bond between them. She could force comfort on him but she doesn't. This disquiet is something she thinks he should feel, though for different reasons. She nearly says something condemning about vampire laws and barbarism but she's learned by now that it doesn't make sense always to hate the world in which you've chosen to live. "They'll have you to look out for them," she says quietly and it's the best comfort she can give.

"That doesn't give them nearly as great an advantage as you might think."

Sookie can both hear and feel a great depth sadness in his words and she knows there is something he's not telling her. He's lived long enough that the story of his life would take up the entirety of hers in the telling but still, she is surprised that there's something in his past that still affects hims so much.

He would have participated in this awful tradition twice, she calculates. "Something happened when you did this before," she guesses. "Something bad."

Eric nods. "My first Great Turning was only a few decades after I'd been turned. The human I chose was a remarkable young man, not as fiery or passionate as vampires usually choose but he was strong and had a formidable strength of will. Even still, I was very young and it took all my effort to keep him from killing too rashly and endangering us."

"What happened to him?" Sookie asks, she already knows the story doesn't end well.

"I was still with Appius then," Eric continues. "He turned a new child as well. My brother, Cedric," Eric says with a roll of his eyes. "As a human, Cedric was everything Appius looked for in a child-- skilled, beautiful, bloodthirsty. As a vampire he was uncontrollable. Appius loved it. One night, my child took a human woman. It was the first time he'd used a glamour effectively. But Cedric wanted the woman and picked a fight with my child. I wasn't strong enough to stop my child from fighting and Cedric killed him."

"And Appius didn't even try to stop him?" The question is rhetorical. She knows enough about Appius to answer it herself.

She feels bad pressing him further when he's aready upsetting himself with his own memories but it's getting late and there's not much time left before Halloween. "So what about your second Halloween? There would have been two, right?"

Eric looks up and, to her surprise, there is a smile on his face. Over the bond she can feel amusement but also a curious amount of annoyance. "On my second Halloween I was excused from the obligation to make a new child."

"Why?"

He grins. "You know that vampires can freeze without dying but the recovery is slow and painful?"

"I've heard this, yes," she says, noting wryly that his smiles are as infectious as the clap. Though, more pleasant. Usually.

"I was excused because I was recovering from an unfortunate week I spent frozen in a block of ice."

"What?" She exclaims and she's laughing too hard to elaborate.

Eric watches her laugh, enjoying the way her mirth feeds his own. "Well," he says, when she's recovered enough to hear him, "I was walking with Appius on a glacial field north of where my homeland had been. I'd wanted to choose a child from amongst the descendants of my people. I also wanted to leave Appius. For good. I didn't want to be forced to make another child, the loss of the first had been.... But since I had to, I wanted to be sure the child wouldn't be in danger because of my maker. Appius did not take my desire to leave very well."

"So...." Sookie says, knowing she'll never come close to truly understanding vampire minds and that this is a good thing. "He froze you."

Eric shrugs, still smiling. "Glaciers are unstable. Sometimes crevasses open without warning. One opened in front of us while we were discussing my departure and he pushed me in."

"But you can fly," she protests.

"I hit my head," he explains. "At the bottom I must have broken through to one of the spings that was feeding the glacier and making it unstable. Luckily, I was deep enough to be out of the sun but the spring water froze around me. Appius dug me out a week later. By then the Turning was only a few days off and I was too weak to participate."

"You think that's funny?"

"In retrospect," he says but she doesn't laugh so he reiterates, "Lover, I was frozen in a block of ice."

His amusement overcomes her and she laughs again. "Like a vampire popsicle," she says, giving him an experimental lick. "Lemon," she says. "My favorite flavor."

But she can still feel the doubt churning under the smile he's sharing with her. She tips his head toward her with a light touch under his chin. His thousand years of life will never show on his face but sometimes the experience of them is there in the pits of his eyes. When he catches her hand and pulls her in for a kiss it is not entirely unexpected. She leans back easily onto the bed under his weight. That his fangs descend mid-kiss and nick her lip is a measure of his inner turmoil.

He draws back and watches the bead of blood that wells up from her lip, paralyzed by the effort not to move. She realizes aloud that it's been days since he's fed from her, maybe weeks.

"We're required to fast before the ceremony," he says. "Each in proportion to his age."

It's not just the bond between them that has her baring her neck without a second thought. That he's going hungry for a ritual he despises disturbs her.

"I have more self-control than that," Eric says, his eyes, burning punctures in her neck, say otherwise.

"That's a pity," she says, "I don't." She tugs at his belt, making it abundantly clear how she'd prefer to spend the hours leading up to the Great Turning. "And that's your fault." This time when they make love, she finishes him off with her teeth in his right shoulder, drawing deeply at the wound, showing him how it's done.

Hours later, in the grand ballroom of the Hemeglobe, the vampires of Area 5 are gathered for the first (and possibly the last) Great Turning of the modern age. There's an odd vibe in the room. For most them, this is the first time they've participated in the event-- though two of them were turned on a Halloween five hundred years ago. Few of them know how to act. Though vampires put little stock in privacy, the act of Making is intensely personal, doing it in front of a crowd seems slightly pornographic. And there is a crowd, by vampire standards anyway. Eric's reputation as a good sheriff has drawn more than three dozen vampires to Area 5 and after tonight, that number will be doubled.

Most of the members of The Hemeglobe's staff are vampires but it was left to the human members of the staff to decorate for the big event and since those humans knew even less about the ceremony than their vampire counterparts, the room is decked out in pretty standard Halloween decorations. Black and orange streamers run in scallops toward the crystal chandelier which has so much crepe paper hanging from it that is looks like a confused and inverted Christmas tree. Filmy sheets of fake cobwebs cling to the corners of the room and cast odd shadows in the light. Black and orange carnations and Jack O 'Lantern candles adorn the tables. A buffet has been set with various foods (candied apples amongst them) at one end and a blood fountain at the other. The fountain was turned off early in the evening since it was nothing but a cruel torment to the fasting vampires.

The vampires themselves are presenting a less than unified front, probably since it was uncertain whether or not the Great Turning would be held until a few days ago. Many of them have come formally dressed as vampires tend to do for group functions but a few, particularly the younger ones, have come in costume. Many of the human guests are in costume too. There is one woman, more of a girl really, young with pale skin and dark features, that Sookie can't quite pin down as human or vampire. She tries to get a closer look but the dark girl always seems to be on the periphery, behind people or things and just out of reach.

Eventually Sookie tires of looking at the spectacle of the dead and sits at one of the tables, bored and anxious, while Eric continues to mingle with the vampires of his Area. Usually he sits aloof and lets those who wish it to seek him out, even amongst vampires, but tonight the situation is tenuous and he has instructions to pass.

Pam, dressed in a baby blue dress with white polka dots and matching heels, approaches Sookie, a young, red-headed woman in tow. In a long, disdaining glance, Pam takes in Sookie's old jeans and t-shirt. "What are you supposed to be? A gardener? A garbage collector?"

"A member of the Fellowship of the Sun," Sookie replies and Pam cocks her head to the side in confusion. "I'm kidding, Pam. I didn't dress up."

"Well that's obvious."

Sookie grins at the vampire's selective sense of humor. "No, I mean I'm not in costume."

"Why not?" Pam asks, aghast.

"You aren't either," Sookie points out.

Pam strikes a pose with a hand on her hip. "Of course I am. I'm Undead Barbie."

Sookie finds herself laughing more than she ever expected to laugh that night. She sobers a little when she remembers the young redhead that's accompanying Pam. "And who's this?"

"Jessica Hamby," Pam says and then grins toothily. "Soon-to-be-Undead Barbie."

"Pam."

"I know," Pam says in mock distress, "the hair color is all wrong but she reminds me so much of myself when I was alive. She'll make a wonderful vampire.

Jessica Hamby smiles beatifically through a glamour and Sookie's not laughing anymore. Most of the humans in the room are moving under the functional lobotomy of a glamour. The few that aren't fill Sookie's head with fervent thoughts that are nervous and excited like they're all about to go to undead Disney World.

The boy Eric's chosen shows up later than most of the other "guests." Sookie was hoping to talk to him before someone managed to glamour him but when she introduces herself his mind is full of a numbing buzz. He tells her his name is Nathan Sands and then says dully, "I'm so glad to be here. I've been traveling the world but I haven't met many vampires." His smile is crooked and lost and there is a glaze over his gray eyes.

"Where are you from?" Sookie asks gently.

The question takes a few minutes to penetrate the glamour but finally he says, "California."

"I hear it's really nice there," she says. "And do you have a family?"

The boy shrugs serenely then nods and Sookie chokes out her next question.

"And will they miss you when you don't come home?" There are tears in her eyes and it's all her own doing.

The boy shakes his head just as serenely and the first of Sookie's tears fall.

When it begins, Sookie notices right away that there is something strangely matrimonial about the ceremony. The feeling only grows as Eric, reminiscent of his turn as a cleric, stands before the assembly and talks about the importance of the tradition of the Great Turning, about the thought and care that went into the selection of the humans.

Before Sookie has time to really wrap her head around what's happening, it's almost over. "The Great Turning is a time of strength but also weakness for our kind," Eric says. "With so many young vampires turned at once, there is a great potential for disaster especially now that we are under the public eye. Do any among you object to one of these candidates for immortality?"

There is a faint rustling as the vampires take a last glance at the humans the others have brought.

"I object!"

Undead necks turn before she's finished the words. Several of the vampires wonder who this human is who has gone unglamored and who has now interrupted the event. Several others recognize their sheriff's woman and are simply impressed that an interruption took this long to occur.

"You object to which candidate?" Eric asks, not faltering for a moment.

"This one, Nathan Sands," Sookie says, tugging the young man in question to the center of the room. Nate doesn't fight the insistent hand on his shoulder, he lets her lead him-- like a lamb-- and now she's sure she is right.

"On what grounds do you object?"

Sookie's voice shakes and things seem to be running in slow motion or maybe underwater. She is talking out of turn in front of a room full of vampires. That's nothing new-- she faced down the Ancient Pythoness after all and went toe to toe with Appius on more than one occasion. But then, Eric had been there to back her up, now she was facing him down. "On the grounds that there's someone better."

"Who?"

"Me."

The bond between them shakes, low and deep, like a disturbance in the Earth. Eric's face can't quite fight off expression but it can't settle on anything recognizable either. From where she stands next to Nate Sands, Sookie looks across the room into Eric's eyes. She can hear the blood pounding in her ears and feel their emotions jumbling together through the bond. She focuses on her heartbeat since they only have the one between them and it's the easiest thing to pick out from the whole mess of things in her mind.

The whispers that swirl about the room are like the sonic squeaks and chirps of bats; Sookie cannot make them out but they nibble at the edges of her perception. There is an edge of panic in the thoughts of the unglamoured humans, a collective, silent scream, as if she might ruin it for all of them.

"You?" Eric asks and he's at her side faster than she can see him move, asking her, not the assembled vampires of Area 5. "You?"

Sookie nods, forcing herself to hold his eyes. "I can't be any worse at it than any of these other people. And I know too much, you know? I'm sure it'd be a big relief to a lot of people if... if I joined the other team."

"But lover," Eric says, taking her hands, "the one thing you've always asked of me is never to turn you. No matter what happens to you."

"But this is about something happening to someone else. Nate has no say in what happens to him here. I... I've never wanted to live forever... but I want you and I know, if you do this, if you kill him, I won't be able to keep you."

Eric's hunger feeds his ever-present desire for her and it's the best he can do to argue, "This will change everything, Sookie."

She laughs with as much of her heart as isn't shaking. "Change is pretty much the only thing that's been constant in my life."

"Not anymore," he replies. "From now on, it is the only thing that won't be."

Sookie nods. She thinks about asking him to stall for just a little time, just a few moments for her to take note of how it feels to breathe, to sweat, to eat a piece of chocolate. But she knows it won't be enough. If she were to say good bye to the world, she'd need time in the geological sense, the time it takes a mountain to dissolve into the ocean maybe. Then it wouldn't be dying, not really.

She smiles up through tears she can't quite hold back at her great love who is about to become her maker and murderer. Her tears trouble him but he feels the steel resolve of her will. He nods to the assembly and the air is filled with the pops of impending death.

"I object too!" The voice that cuts through the very pregnant silence of room has such an unexpectedly cold snap to it that even some of the vampires draw a breath to taste it.

Eric mutters something under his breath in his native tongue and Sookie still doesn't know much of it but the feeling she gets over the bond translates the words to something like, "Thank fuck for that."

The dissenter is the girl Sookie noticed earlier, the one she couldn't peg as human or vampire. Though Sookie hasn't had time to analyze it yet, she knows she's felt relief from Eric so she's confused when he addresses the girl icily. "And who are you to meddle in vampire affairs?"

The girl smiles, white against dark lipstick. "I am October."

"And what authority do you have here, October?" Eric says as if he's humoring a child. "I don't know of any person of consequence, mortal or immortal, by that name."

"October is not my name," she says.

"Not exactly," Nathan Sands adds.

Eric looks in disbelief at the boy he himself glamoured, the boy who is now standing clear-eyed before him. There is something different about him, beyond the lack of a glamoured haze.

"The authority I have is the storyteller's authority to change the story as I see fit," October says, as if this explains everything.

"She won the contest," Nate adds with a quick, affectionate grin. "And she really deserved it. You should have heard the way this thing ended." His gives an impressed whistle.

"What do you mean?" Sookie asks, feeling more out of her depths than she has in a long time and, for her, that's saying something.

"It was a tragedy of epic proportions. Like gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing tragic. Totally put Romeo and Juliet to shame." Nate says helpfully. "Everyone listening cried, it was a real mess. Especially when April got started."

Two bright spots of pink appear on October's cheeks. "Thank you, Nate."

"You're welcome, October."

Sookie and Eric just stare, both well and thoroughly flummoxed. "Perhaps there is power about you," Eric says finally, sniffing the air. "What do you want, creature?"

"I want you to give Nate a chance to speak."

Sookie and Eric turn to Nate Sands. "I get to change something. That's what I got since she won," Nate says, more to himself than them. "And what I want to do differently is give you a gift-- as my future parents." He puts on a cheeky grin. "I want you to turn me instead."

Sookie makes a strangled sound but October raises a silencing hand. "Sookie, you are upset that Nate wasn't given a choice about being made into a vampire but you're not giving him a choice either."

"But I already decided! You can't just--"

"I can," October cuts her off and turns away. "The dark girl speaks and fades once more to the periphery, seeming somehow to be on the edges of things, under them and behind them....

Nate, still clear-eyed turns to Sookie. "I want this," he says. "Let me do it."

"But why?" Sookie asks in a loud whisper since all eyes in the room are on them. She's already starting to forget October's intrusion.

Nate shrugs. "I grew up in foster care and as soon as I turned eighteen I joined the marines, went to war. Since I got out, I've just been traveling from place to place. I've never had anything permanent. Why not try this?"

The answer isn't good enough for Sookie, not by half, but it is Eric who raises protest. "You wish to become a vampire because you cannot think of anything better to do?"

Nate's grin is self-deprecating and Sookie can hear him think, Well he's got me there. The boy turns to Sookie and says, "You volunteered to be turned because you couldn't have my death on your conscience, right?"

Sookie shrugs and nods but the question was rhetorical anyway.

"Why would I want to have yours on mine?" He says, the exuberance he'd shown a few minutes before is nowhere to be seen. "Turning... it destroys you. Both of you," he says solemnly. And then adds for good measure, "In the rending-of-clothes and gnashing-of-teeth way, like I said before."

Eric and Sookie exchange looks full of disbelief, annoyance, humor, and a little fear.

"How do you know?" Sookie asks, suddenly conscious of all the other people in the room again.

"How do you read minds?" Nate counters.

"How do you know that?"

Nate meets her eyes, looking heartbreakingly young and earnest when he says, "Just let me do it. You're right, it's my choice to make. I promise to tell you how wrong it would have gone someday but we're out of time now." He tries out a grin that Sookie could swear was an imitation of Eric. "And you'll make a hot stepmom."

Eric grunts a protest. But his fangs are already out when he says, "I suppose it's too late for me to change my mind."

The gory details of the Great Turning are ones Sookie will take a long time forgetting but, in the end, it is over quicker than she'd anticipated. After Nate is buried Eric digs him up and moves him to a room in the hotel to wait for him to wake, much as he had done with Pam. Eric asks Sookie to stay with him, to be there when his new child wakes for the first time.

Sookie declines.

"I am part of your life," she says. "But I am not your whole life and I never will be." She smiles to take the sting out of the words. "Mortal, you know? And Nate's part of your life now too. He can meet the stepmom later."

"You are the best part of my life." Eric studies her face. "But this has changed things between us." He is a maker again and being a good maker requires time and attention.

"It has," Sookie agrees. "I'm still human, remember? Change is my one constant thing."

"And me." Eric insists in mock hurt.

"And you," Sookie laughs, kissing him. To him her kisses are like her life, infinite while he is in the midst of them and tragically short when he sees them from the outside. They are terminal kisses, each one seeming to be his first memory and his very last act.

##

There is a brief pauses where there is no sound but the pop of the fire as it hits a damp spot in the wood. Then the spell breaks and everyone begins to shift and murmur. You stretch your limbs out of old habit but your muscles haven't grown the least bit stiff from all the sitting you've just done.

"That was a wonderful story," you say politely to October as the months of the year gather up their blankets and lawn chairs.

October shrugs. "Didn't have the flair of the original. It was kind of anti-climactic. But the other one really was dreadful and at least now they're happy."

"I still don't really get it," you say, running your tongue over the points of your fangs. You haven't eaten tonight and October smells positively sinful. "I mean, I remember talking to them and waking up dead in that hotel... but I remember meeting you at a hostel and having coffee too. How can you just change all that?"

Sunrise is soon and you can here your maker calling, reminding you to keep out of the deadly light. October's siblings are heading for their cars as another Leap Day passes. October stands up on her toes to kiss your cheek. She smiles, apple cider warm and Jack O'Lantern sly. "I am October," she says. "I am the setting and the setting can change everything."

End