And Here's Another Way It Could Happen . . .
(note: I own nothing and only play with toys Alan Ball owns. My aim in these stories is to provide an alternative to Batshit Franklin, so bear in mind that what you've got here is all Original Franklin, all the time. That means I diverge wildly from the show for the most part altho I will sneak back to steal a few things every now and then. My earlier stand-alone story, From Parking Lot to Cheap Motel, can be considered a prelude to this story.)
Chapter One: from Bon Temps to Jackson
A short knock at the door brought her quickly, the dismayed look on her face assured me I wasn't who she'd been hoping for. Who was the lucky bastard?, I wondered. If I'd been staying in this swamp of a town, I'd settle things by eating my competition, but I had nearly everything I needed to complete my investigation and expected to be gone tonight. Damn shame, I thought, eyeing the view in the doorway. Still, no reason not to have some fun.
"Good evening . . . Tara."
"Who told you my name?" Like I couldn't have gotten it in half a dozen places in a town this size.
"I met a delightful baby vampire . . . "
And we were off. As entertaining as our bantering was, though, I had a job to do and I needed to put my girl under soon. There are two ways to glamour: the easiest and most used (overused, in my opinion) is with the eyes. If a vampire has any ability to glamour at all, that'll work. The other is the voice, though it takes longer and requires a finer touch. I started out using my voice, since that was my specialty, but either I'm getting weak in my old age or she was much stronger willed than the average human because she resisted me for several minutes.
If I weren't on a schedule, I would have been delighted to continue the contest - it was clear she could feel my influence, but still she was giving me sass! 'That girl from Bon Temps', indeed. I had to rely on the old stand-by of my piercing eyes coupled with my voice to get her to let me in and, although it went well at first, as soon as I began to question her she was struggling to break my hold. It was truly remarkable.
I tried to calm her with a little flirtation, but she was having none of it, and as soon as my concentration flickered for an instant she broke free and ran for the door. I spared a split second for amused appreciation (most humans could only dream of having a will that strong) before cutting off her escape.
More blah, blah, blah about her friend Sookie, the same friend who'd left her in a house surrounded by hunting werewolves (oh yeah, I knew about that and even if I hadn't I'd have smelled them all around the place) without a single word of warning, leaving Tara perfectly positioned to become another of life's innocent bystanders. That was when I decided to take her with me when I left and, since it was clear listening to reason from a vampire wasn't on Tara's agenda, I did what I had to do to get her out of there.
I bit her. It would mark her as "mine" with any other vampires we happened to meet, and by feeding on her just enough I could both knock her out for awhile and get my first decent meal after several nights of making do with that vile fake blood drink. I grinned as I hoisted her inert body over my shoulder and thought of how I'd be hearing about all my transgressions as soon as she regained consciousness. I looked forward to it.
Tara shook herself awake in the car, stared at me, then at the dark road with a sign reading "Jackson, 150 miles" before putting a hand to the raw bite wounds on her neck.
"You bastard," she said coldly.
"Now, now," I answered, "no call to be unpleasant, I have my reasons for everything."
"You don't consider biting someone and kidnapping them a 'call' to be unpleasant? You turn this car around and take me home right now, you motherfucker, or so help me I will stake you the first chance I get!"
"This isn't kidnapping . . . well, technically it is, but like I said I have my reasons. Give me 10 minutes to explain and, if you still want to go back to the swamp, I'll turn the car around. Otherwise, you get a road trip to Mississippi for the weekend, a stay at my apartment, and a chance to spend the day sneaking around looking for your friend Sookie before I take you home. Or rent you a car or buy you a bus ticket, whichever you prefer."
"I'm not giving you anything! Asshole! You glamoured me and don't lie about it because I can remember it. I hate that. You glamoured me, and used me, and bit me and now you're kidnapping me! How dare you? How dare you treat me this way?"
I shrugged, and said the wrong thing. "I like your company."
I had no idea humans could move that fast. Her fist nearly connected with my face before I caught it, and I had to pull the car over to avoid crashing as she lunged at me across the front seat, apparently intending to tear my head off. Not for the first time I considered what an excellent vampire she'd make.
Then I realized, in the midst of all the flailing and high-pitched obscenities, that she was crying. She couldn't have possibly done anything that shocked me more. I got my arms around her, not without difficulty, and held on while she struggled and yelled incoherently about what an asshole son of a bitch I was, her bitch mother and somebody named Maryanne. Finally, she stopped struggling and then stopped crying and slowly the story came out as we sat there parked on the side of the road with traffic speeding by.
It's just as well I'll probably never meet her mother - however bad their relationship, I doubt Tara would thank me for ripping Lettie Mae's lungs out. The Maryanne story called for some thought, but I could see where Tara's intense reaction to being glamoured came from. Between her mother and the maenad, she'd been stripped of her free will enough for several lifetimes without my adding to it.
Giving silent thanks that no other vampire was around to hear this, I promised never to glamour her again, no matter how much easier it made things for me. And I told her about the werewolves around the Stackhouse place, and yes, I could have taken her to another friend's house but I really did like her company and in my high-handed vampire way I decided to take her with me until the wolves were called off. I explained how my bite mark on her neck would discourage other vampires, and a few werewolves as well, from getting fangy with her. And that my offer to take her back now, or send her back later on her own, still stood.
She thought silently for awhile. "How can I trust you?" she asked me, a serious question.
"Listen, Tara," I told her, "I'm not a good guy, in fact most of the time I'm a right bastard. But I like you and I've never lied to you, even about the glamouring, and I like to think that counts for something."
"I need my fucking head examined," Tara sighed. "But you seem only slightly more than half bad, for a vampire, and besides, I don't have any other friends I can go to. Or at least, only a few and they have problems of their own. And Sookie's in Jackson and god knows what new trouble she needs help getting out of so I'll take a chance with you. Just leave me alone for awhile, OK?"
I pulled back onto the road and drove silently; in about 15 minutes Tara's breathing told me she'd fallen asleep, worn out by a hard night and a crying jag. We'd lost some time on her melt down and I'd have to break a few traffic laws to make it home before dawn. At least I was spared finding out if Tara was a back seat driver until a better night, and I had the quiet to consider what I knew about maenads.
According to Russell, who knew more than a little about the supernatural universe, maenads only technically qualified as supernatural beings - they were humans who became more than human by sheer force of will. They were impossible to control and so hard to kill that it was just as well to avoid them entirely.
Their now rare and demented followers could devote years of group effort and complicated, ritual acts of sex and violence without being able to call a maenad to them, but Tara had called one to her all by herself, without even trying. That was beyond impressive, and there was no way that maenad turned up in Bon Temps just to make Tara another zombie slave.
No one could ask Maryanne now, but I had no doubt at all that the strength of will that had so dazzled me had made Maryanne come to claim Tara for a protégé, not a slave. She had meant to break Tara down only so she would recognize Maryanne as a master who would then make Tara a master as well. Tara had been on her first steps to becoming a maenad, and had no idea. Would she, I wondered, have come to accept her new life as preferable to the narrow, frustrating one she now led? And I had to wonder again, should she be turned? The raw power of her will, the potential of it, would always draw super-naturals to her, eager to put it to their own uses, unless she was taught to harness and use it for herself.
Next, Chapter Two: Jackson