Chapter Two- There Goes the Way of Secrets
When I woke I was alone, and my internal alarm clock was screaming early a.m., pre-sunrise; a glance at the clock confirmed it. Four a.m. Hardly any time had even passed at all, to my shock. Eric wasn't in the bedroom, and I was naked, which was an even stranger turn of events. Usually if I was in bed, and naked, he was wrapped around me, and as equally naked. I could feel him in the house via the blood bond, but I didn't immediately search him out. I wanted to check something first, to see just how much damage the wicked maenad had done...
I headed to the adjoining bathroom to Eric's and my bedroom, and twisted around in the mirror to catch sight of my back, searching for sight of the slices that would surely still be there. My flesh was clean, though, bare of all scars. Pure, white flesh, untouched, as if I had never lain on the side of the road, had never been poisoned, never nearly died yet again. Vampires. Lordy lordy.
I sighed and twisted back around, pressing my palms flat against the countertop, staring down at the tops of my hands. It was the luminosity of my skin that caught me then. For a few seconds it didn't quite sink in, the sheer unnatural beauty of my mere skin, and then I had an epiphany moment and my head shot up like a bullet out a twelve gauge.
I stared at myself in the mirror for a long moment, and for the first time since meeting the vampires realized that I might have gone beyond secret keeping. There was no way I was going to be able to write off the changes in the mirror as good "vitamins" anymore. My flesh was unnaturally radiant, a pure, creamy lusciousness that looked as if it had been painted on canvas rather than born of any mortal. My blond hair was like spun gold floating around my head, teasing the air with a wealth of rich silk until it hit the middle of my back. My eyes glowed, two bright oceanic orbs no man could surely call a color to name.
"I am in so much trouble," I watched the strange, beautiful woman say.
I raced out of the bathroom in search of Eric, practically screaming his name as I flung my naked body down the stairs. I collided with him mid-living room mid-panic, wrapping my arms around him in a desperate attempt to stem off the vision I had seen in the mirror.
"Eric," I sobbed. "Eric, it's just plain awful!"
"What is, dear heart?" he said gently, running his large palm in calming circles around my naked spine. I could feel him sending waves of calm through the blood bond, trying to take me off the edge.
For once, it didn't stop my panic.
"My face!"
He pulled back from me then, and stared down into my eyes, and I saw the hunger flare in him, the flash-fire rush that shot through our blood bond and into me.
"No, Eric!" I ordered. "Don't you even think about it! This is serious business! Look at me, really look at me, and tell me what I'm supposed to do!"
He made one more move to come in for me and I shoved him away with more than a little vamp strength, my naked breasts swaying between us. I could feel his eyes following them greedily, and nearly slapped him for it.
"I'm damned serious, now! Focus! What am I supposed to do, Eric? I can't just hide away in my house. I mean, how long does it take for this to wear off?"
He seemed to hear me that time, and his eyes rose to meet mine. He searched my face over, and I felt the swell of pride tinged with regret running through our blood bond. It seemed someone else wasn't too sure about it, either, and it reassured me that Eric was going to miss my original face just as much as I was.
"It doesn't ever really wear off. Not... completely," he said cautiously, eyes still skimming over my skin.
"So what... I'm like, super knockout beautiful for the rest of my life? That's real inconvenient, Eric!"
"If anyone asks, tell them I had you fly out to Hollywood for the works."
I folded my arms over my heaving chest and glared at him.
"The works?" I drawled dryly.
"People will believe just about anything you tell them, my Sookie, before believing in magick. Soon enough, they will forget you ever looked anyway but the way you look now. But this may cause... other problems."
"What kind of other problems?" I demanded.
"Other vampires will be more attracted to you now. I knew it was a possibility when we transfused you, but I could not risk your life over the inconvenience. I can control the vampires in my area, but as my human, and as my asset, we may not always be in my area. I can only hope the immediate effect wears off before I am called to use your services outside Area Five."
"You've told others about me?" I was both flattered and outraged at the idea.
"Word spreads, my Sookie. You are a valuable commodity. The werewolves know. Longshadow knew. There are younger vamps who know who have allegiances in other areas as well, to their makers. Vampire politics are complicated and multifaceted."
"So I'm beginning to understand," I muttered mulishly.
I shivered then, and Eric immediately noticed and tugged me flush to his body. He was wearing only a pair of jeans, and his pale bare chest was tinged pink off my blood, I assumed. He was slightly warmer than the room, and I let myself be sheltered by his form. From past experience I knew that his assurances that he would care for me were more than just boasts. I was still wired up like a Christmas tree, but I knew, deep in my heart, that Eric would never let anything happen to me, and that was more than enough.
"I will protect you, my heart. Not to worry."
Without a doubt, I believed him. He was my vampire Viking, my gallant killer, my nighttime hero. What harm could come to me with him at my side?
"I am sorry, my Sookie," he murmured then, running his fingers down my cheek until he could cup my chin in his oversized palm. "I should never have let you get out of the Jeep."
"Eric honey," I said gently, covering his hand with mine and staring up into his fallen angel face. "You and yours just saved my life. Again."
"But if it were not for our argument-"
"She would have found a way to get to me one way or another, anyhow. And weren't you the one who told me she 'Brings the madness?' I'm real certain she was the reason we were fighting to begin with."
I felt a strong wave of guilt through our blood bond, and his eyes dropped from mine.
"I am... jealous of the shifter," he admitted reluctantly.
"Hey now," I said, threading my fingers through his. "Look at me." When his too blue eyes met mine I gave him a warm and gentle smile.
"You wouldn't be male if you weren't, but there's nothing there, I promise you that. I'm yours, remember?"
"As I am yours," he murmured back to me, before ducking down for a soft kiss.
His warm lips were full and patient on mine, and I sighed into them as I stretched up on my tippie-toes to make time with his delicious mouth. I could feel him growing hard and aroused through the blood bond again, and it didn't take much influence to grow aroused back. His fingers slid down my back, past the crack of my bottom, working a gentle rhythm as he slid two fingers into me. I came almost instantly, but it was gentle, as if my body was working me up to the hard stuff. Eric pulled his fingers out and I pulled back to stare up at him. His wicked tongue came out and licked first one, then the other finger clean.
"Mr. Northman," I said almost shyly, sliding my hand down between our bodies to slide his zipper down. "I feel a pressing urge to be pressed against this wall."
"Which wall?" he all but growled, backing me up across the living room until my back hit the wall.
"This wall?"
"This very one," I said on a naughty nod and he nearly ripped his pants down around his thighs.
With one arm he lifted me up and spun me around so that my breasts were pressed flush to the wall, his other hand spreading me and holding me open so he could slide inside, and suddenly I wasn't feeling so gentle anymore. He was warm, and I was wet, and his lips were pressed to my ear hard enough that I could feel his fangs. He began pounding into me and I nearly wept for it. His words were dark like chocolate kisses as he beat into me, promises of wicked things that he would do to me in darker hours than these.
"You know, Miss Stackhouse, what I fantasize about doing to this virgin bottom of yours?"
My heart rate sped up, because I had a very good idea, and considering all the other dark and bloody things we had done in the night, that was one thing we had not yet done, and I, too, had thought about doing. My breathing hitched, and I know he could feel my jump in arousal through the blood bond.
"Oh, you would like that, would you, dear heart? Shall I promise you then, one of these nights, when you least expect it, to moisten you up, and take you in that final way? So that then I shall have had you in every way."
With every word his thrusts grew harder, and his fangs slid down the side of my neck, nicking my flesh until I felt the trickle of my blood trailing down my shoulder.
"Answer me," he demanded, on a particularly brutal thrust.
"Yes," I hissed back at him.
"Yes what?" he demanded again.
"Yes I want you to!"
He bit me then, and I came on the pleasure of it, the rush of my blood pulsing out of my heart onto the velvet softness of his tongue, the last pounding thrusts of his dick into my aching body, and then his mouth tore free and I came again as he saturated himself into my weeping body.
We ended up in bed after a shower, and the bites on my neck had already healed themselves. Score one for excess vamp juice. Eric was feeling the press of daylight by this point, and I had about two hours of sleep available to me before I had to be at Merlotte's for my morning shift at nine. I'd done it on V-Juice before, and I knew it wouldn't be any trouble at all; if anything, I'd be raring to go all day. But I was terrified of what was waiting for me, and I told Eric so.
"Eric," I said, tightening my grip on his slowly cooling body. "I'm scared."
"I know you are, dear heart," he said sleepily. "But I will be here for you. Until the end of my forever nights."
And on that note, and I felt him will me to sleep through the blood bond, a trick I was totally going to punish him for tomorrow.
If he didn't punish me first.
I woke at 7:30, early enough to brush my hair and dress in my uniform, with plenty enough time to get to work. I wasn't feeling very hungry, an aftereffect of the V-juice, so I skipped breakfast asides for taking my multivitamin and iron supplement for the day with a bit of orange juice. I did, however, stare at myself extra long in the mirror, still in shock over what I saw there, but there was no changing it. I was stuck with what was, and truth be told I should just be glad I was alive. And I was.
I just wish the cost hadn't been quite so high.
I got to work with plenty of time to unlock the front with the key that Sam had leant me for just such mornings. Andy's car was still parked where it had been last night, and I figured on him picking it up sometime later today, after the Jim Bean wore off. I had expected Lafayette Reynold, Merlotte's flamboyant cook, to be there waiting outside, smoking one of his thin Black and Mild cigars, but he wasn't yet. Truth be told I was rather grateful, as it gave me a few more minutes reprieve before the questions would start, so I shrugged it off and went in and flipped on all the lights. Then I headed back to the cooler and pulled out the lemons and the limes to slice up for the morning shift.
Arlene was in not ten minutes later, and she stopped dead in her tracks on seeing me, apron dropped half mast in her hand, purse slack in her other.
"Sookie, what in god's name done and happened to you?" she blurted out in a long rush.
I sighed and kept slicing lemons, thinking hard on how all the v-juice flowing through my veins was for life saving purposes. From that thought to the next, the lemon I had just started on was sliced to a finish, and I realized I had another problem: vamp speed.
This was so not gonna be my day.
"I had a spa day," I lied sweetly as I picked up the next lemon.
My voice seemed to jar Arlene into action, and she came cautiously behind the bar as I carefully sliced the lemon with extra slow hands. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she tucked her purse under the register next to mine, tying on her apron as she gave me the big hairy eyeball.
"A spa day, you say?"
"The works," I murmured as I tucked the lemon slices into the bar dish with a deliberately slow hand. "Eric flew this specialist in from Hollywood as a surprise present."
My heart was racing, my body was shaking. I could feel Arlene staring at me, searching my face and body for some clue as to whether I was lying or not. Could I pull this off, hiding my secrets like this for the sake of my vampire loves?
Damn right I could.
I fluffed my golden hair on pretended affront, doing my best to look pained.
"You... You don't like it?" I asked softly, doing my best to play it up. I had best learn this lie fast, because I was going to be telling it all day.
"No no!" she assured me hastily. "You look real real pretty! Beautiful!"
I gave her a bright smile, and could see her blink. Maybe I had a little glamour of my own. I decided to give it a try.
"They told me they could only really approve a little on what was already there, and I agree. I've always looked pretty much like this. Don'tcha say?"
"Yes," she murmured, seeming a little dazed. "You've always looked pretty much like this."
I was starting to scare myself a little, but there wasn't much I wouldn't do for Eric and his ilk.
Sam came in then, took one look at me, and dropped the box he'd been carrying. I heard the crash of barware and sighed silently to myself. So much for certain people not noticing much. I saw his mouth drop open and I glanced deliberately to Arlene, begging him not to say anything. He jerked his head back to his office and I nodded.
"Now Sam Merlotte!" Arlene shooed. "Look what you've gone and done!"
"Looks like I'm all thumbs this morning," he said, eyes glued on my face. I rushed past him, listening to Arlene fussing over the broken glass as she went to the storage closet to get a broom.
"Sook and I are just going to go have a talk about her schedule, alright?" I heard him say clear as a bell from the back of the restaurant.
"Sure thing, then," came her just as clear reply.
Sam didn't waste any time getting to his office, and I stood awkwardly staring at him, waiting for what I knew was coming. I offered him the keys to Merlotte's, and he took them. Then he stared back at me for a few moments, just taking me in, and that's when the yelling started.
"Just what the hell are you thinking, Sook, drinking enough V to get yourself looking like this?! I know it's none of my business, but people are gonna notice! Have you even looked at yourself in a mirror?"
"Of course I have! And it wasn't like I had any choice in it, Sam! I was attacked, and I was dying! My blood was poisoned, and the vamps had to drain me and transfuse me! I was changing colors, and so was the damn room!"
He rolled back on his heels at that, seeming to consider it, and calming considerably. He studied my face like it was a Madonna, eyes sliding over my hair, to my skin, to my eyes, and I ducked my own head at his perusal.
Damn it, I couldn't even feel good about using my Word of the Day.
"What did this to you?" he asked finally.
I raised my head and threw up my hands in frustration.
"Would you believe it? A maenad! Right here in Bon Temps! Said I was a message for Eric, of all the things. That vamp gets me in more trouble, I swear..."
I trailed off as I noticed Sam's face. It was turning near on fuchsia.
"Sam?" I asked softly.
"She clawed you?" he asked in a strangled voice.
"Right across the back," I agreed angrily.
"But she was with me last night. I thought-"
"Wait, Sam. What do you mean, 'she was with me, last night?'"
I was starting to get pissed, and by pissed, I mean royally pissed. Jane Bodehouse puking on my best pair of sneakers pissed. Sam...
Well, Sam was looking as uncomfortable as I'd ever seen him.
"We've been... together," he said finally, wringing his fingers through his wild mess of gold red hair. "In the wild. These past few nights."
My hands shot to my hips and I gave him my best kooky smile. I wondered on a passing note what it looked like on my new face, then passed the thought off for sheer rage.
"Well now, Sam, I'm not seeing how that's possible seeing as she spent part of last night nigh on flaying me alive!"
I was shouting and finding it hard to care.
"Well damn it, Sook, I didn't know she'd go and do that! Maenads are a little mad, you know! I'm sure she didn't mean to kill you! She had to know Eric could fix you!"
I nearly slapped him, and I had a feeling if I'd done it, supe DNA or not he'd have been on the floor after the transfusion I'd had the night before.
"Could she now, Sam? Could she really? You said it yourself, she's a little mad!"
"And besides all that, this is your solution? Honestly? Getting yourself juiced on V? You know if you die right now you'll come back as one of them? Is that really what you want?"
I didn't even hesitate before I snapped back.
"What I want is to be with Eric, Sam! Whatever the costs!"
Sam reeled back like I'd actually slapped him.
"You can't mean that."
"Oh I mean it, just as I say it," I said plain, loud and clear. "I'll be staying with Eric Northman for good, one way or the next."
"Sook, you're twenty-five! You've been with him four months! How can you even say a thing like that?"
Was there any explaining to this stubborn man the wills of my determined heart? The gentleness my predator lover showed me, or the tenderness he demonstrated to the disregard of everyone else? The only thing I felt having to defend that love, yet again, after all Eric had done for me and my Gran, was furious. Especially towards shapeshifter Sam, who knew more than most what it was like having to hide one's true nature.
"Don't you go doubting my resolve on this, Sam Merlotte! You know better than most that'd be the wrong way to go about keeping me happy!"
He softened, his blue eyes going gentle. He didn't say it out loud, but I heard it loud and clear all the same.
And we both know keeping you happy is more than a little important to me.
The thought went a long ways to settling me down.
"I'm sorry about Callisto," he said gruffly.
"Oh, she has a name, does she?" I smarted savagely.
Sam looked pained, and I tried to care over what I was gonna suffer today for my new face.
"Well you go on and tell her it'd mean more coming from her," I said (a touch) less savagely.
"I'll do that," he said stiffly, and I decided as the silence turned awkward that I'd had enough of the conversation.
I shoved past Sam and out into the restaurant proper. Arlene was looking curious about whatever we'd been arguing about, and I rudely dropped into her thoughts to see if she'd overheard anything we'd been shouting at each other. It wouldn't do for her to know about my V-juice transfusion after I'd gone to all the trouble to lie about it and glamour her into believing the lie.
Must have been fighting about that vampire again. Seems a nice enough fellow, saving her life and all, but honestly... Don't know if I could go on fucking a corpse night after night.
"You missed some glass on the floor over there Arlene," I said spitefully, using my new hypnotic powers, and watched as she scurried about searching the floor for it.
Then I made the mistake of glancing out the window and noticed that Andy Bellefluer's rear door on his old Buick was cracked open. And that wasn't right, was it? I mused. Surely his battery would run down and he wouldn't be able to start her up. I made a decision then to just go on out and shut it. I almost left Arlene searching for the make-believe glass, but decided that was a little too cruel.
"I think I must have been mistaken, Arlene. You got it all," I said, releasing her from whatever magick I'd weaved over her.
She shot up off the floor almost immediately.
"Shoo! If that don't beat all! I could have sworn I'd seen more of it down here!"
"Must have been the lights reflecting," I said aloud.
Must have been your cruel as Lucifer mind, I added silently.
"Andy Bellefluer left his door open on his Buick," I said then, pushing towards the front door. "I'm going to just go on out and shut it."
"Let me go on out with you. Grab a smoke afore we open."
Arlene had been pregnant, but she'd lost the baby two months back, and she'd taken up smoking with a vengeance again after. She'd taken the miscarriage with more than a little joy I knew, and it was with a mixed heart that I took the news myself. The father of said baby had been Rene Lenier, who had straight up tried to murder me, and damned near succeeded. If not for a well-aimed shot by my super-Gran, he might very well have gotten the job done.
Still, I felt guilty for having messed with Arlene's mind, despite all her nasty thoughts about Eric and I. The only excuse I could come up for doing such a thing was that I was feeling a little less than human this morning.
"Sure thing," I said, a little more kindly, and we walked out together.
Crossing the parking lot should've taken no more than a minute, but I slowed myself to give Arlene a chance to light up her smoke. She was going on about something Coby had said to rile up Lisa the night before, but truth be told I wasn't listening real closely. I was still stuck in my own head, worrying about what was going to happen when other people starting showing up at Merlotte's. Just how many times today was I going to have to do the 'Eric paid for the works' mantra, anyhow, and how many people were likely to believe it? Would this new glamouring trick of mine work on a group of people, or just one at a time? I was more than a little terrified to experiment lest someone notice what I was doing and call me out on it. Then again, most folks already considered me crazy Sookie, so maybe it would just slide right on by them.
I was so busy with my thoughts that when I finally made it to Andy's old Buick and started to shut the door, I barely noticed that it was stuck ajar. It wasn't until the fourth or fifth shove that I clued into Arlene staring at me and the car.
"Sook, honey, I think there's something stuck in it," she said real gentle like. I guess this was one of those days when she figured I was off my rocker. It wasn't far from the truth.
"I guess so," I said on a nervous laugh, and this time pulled the door towards myself instead. A stench that could only be described as foul smacked at the air, and both of us recoiled back from it as one. There was a motion and a leg rolled out, and I took a glance inside the car to see the rest of a thin brown corpse, naked and apparently already in a heavy state of decomposition.
I didn't need to take a second glance, because there was no mistaking the brown and crimson toed manicured foot sticking out of Andy Bellefluer's car: it belonged to Merlotte's cook, Lafayette Reynold.
As if on some delay, Arlene let loose a scream then loud enough, if I didn't know any better, to wake the dead. I might have screamed myself if it had been my first corpse, but it wasn't, and it probably wasn't gonna be my last. Instead, I felt my heart sink deep in my chest, and felt ashamed that I had even been worrying about my newly beautified face when Lafayette had been laying defiled like this just outside.
Arlene was still screaming, and Sam must have heard, because he came running out of the bar with a baseball bat and a fierce expression. His supe senses caught up with the stench coming from the car quicker than either Arlene or I had, and he dropped down from red alert and settled the bat at his side. He reached out his hand and gently curled his palm around Arlene's shoulder, and she jumped near high to the sky.
"Arlene," he said softly on shaking her, then louder and harder until she snapped out of her screaming.
"Arlene," he repeated, "you go on in the bar with Sookie while she calls the cops. Tell 'em what we've got," he said, making eyes at me, and I nodded sadly.
"Come on now, sweetie," I said on leading her towards the bar. Her cigarette had long since dropped from her lax fingers.
Poor Lafayette, I thought as I glanced back at Sam standing at Andy's Buick, staring into it with the bat settled at his side. And then I had one last selfish, and very grateful, thought.
Looked like my new face wasn't going to be the talk of the town today after all.