Hey all! Thanks for the continued reviews/love. I adore them and love reading your ideas. Also am trying to work them in with the writing as well (Erin1705 I got you on the blood bond thing; coming soon!) Another special thanks to Lady Hlin for sticking with me and Twitter Pimping =) I hope you guys like this one! I know I was off by about an hour and a half but I had to do some YouTubing of ASkars and AHyde after tonights episode hehe. Charlaine Harris and Allan Ball own all this stuff.

"Why whatever do you mean?" I asked innocently, batting my lashes and placing my hand over my heart.

"What I mean is, you apparently have the power to manipulate time and earlier this evening, you were speaking my thoughts. I know you're something more than what you claim, but I don't know exactly what that is," he responded. I could barely resist rolling my eyes.

"I know, I was just kidding. I'll tell you everything I know but I think it would be best if I told you and Godric together, don't you?" I reasoned. He nodded curtly.

"That is likely the best idea," he agreed. "We must get back to our lair, the night is drawing to a close," he looked surreptitiously up at the sky. I glanced up as well, startled by the clarity of the moon and the stars. I noticed that the velvety darkness was beginning to recede as well, and wondered where their 'lair' was. I also thought it was pretty effin' funny that he referred to it as a 'lair' but I decided to let it slide. Until I was able to school him in appreciating the fine art of sarcasm, it wasn't going to be fun to use it against him.

He walked back into the ballroom and nodded to Godric, who was standing near Anne and Henry. He nodded back and apparently said his goodbyes because he started walking through the crowd a moment later. We met him just outside of the room, in the large hall. Luckily, we didn't get caught in any conversation as we made our way out of the castle. I was starting to feel the tug of sleep now that I had realized the night was ending. It wasn't like I was a narcoleptic or anything, but forcing myself to stay awake would result in the bleeds and the bleeds were fuck-awful. I had only gotten them once, when I stubbornly tried to prove to Eric that he wasn't any better than me and I could stay awake as long as I wanted. Turned out that he actually was a little better than me and all I ended up with was blood everywhere, a nasty headache, and a gloating Viking. None of which I'd been very fond of.

I tried to pay attention to where we were going once we left the castle but I have to say, most of the streets looked alike. I was able to differentiate a bit more as we started reaching the outskirts of the city. The streets were a little less crowded and the filth was greatly reduced. We made our way to the edge of the forest again and I realized dimly that they must live in the woods. That would explain why they'd been there in the first place. I hoped like hell they had an actual house, or lair, because they were sadly mistaken if they thought I was gonna crawl my happy ass back in the dirt again tonight. Luckily, I noticed a cottage after a bit more walking through the woods and realized this must be their place. I was slightly confused when we walked past it but realized soon enough why.

They had a little tunnel dug about 10 yards behind the structure. It was covered with a random stone, totally hidden from the casual eye. Eric moved it to the side with the toe of his boot and looked up at me, grinning.

"Don't worry, we have living quarters. Godric had this commissioned some years back. The tunnel leads to our lair. He feels safer knowing that humans are physically incapable of exposing us during the day," he explained. I nodded slowly, trying to figure out what he meant by 'physically incapable'. I wasn't too keen on tight spaces and was starting to get a little uncomfortable, wondering exactly what was down there.

"Don't you?" Godric asked me seriously. I thought for a moment. In my time, I lived with Eric in a gated community that was heavily secured. The house we shared was also secure and guarded with alarms and a state of the art light tight system. Most humans wouldn't be able to figure out how to expose us before nightfall and even if they could, they wouldn't make it into the house in the first place. Now, however, I could understand and appreciate Godric's precautions.

"Of course," I agreed, deciding I would just trust Godric's judgement on basically everything I could. You didn't get to be old as dirt by being careless and I quickly calculated that he was somewhere around 1,500 years old at this time. He nodded at me, pleased with my acquiesce.

"I'm afraid getting in is a bit uncomfortable, but once inside it's quite spacious," he told me, relieving my fears of sleeping in a cubby hole. "Eric, why don't you lead the way? Sookie can follow and I'll enter last, closing up behind us."

Eric immediately got to his knees, opening an iron latch on the ground and sliding what appeared to be a trap door to the side. I raised my eyebrows, impressed by the craftsmanship. He slid his feet down in and a moment later, disappeared altogether. I stared down the hole after him, then looked up at Godric, slightly freaked out. He smiled at me and I was again taken with how charming his face was. His teeth were adorably imperfect; a tiny gap between his front teeth, his canines noticeably longer than the rest. He had these lovely smile lines that framed his mouth and looking at him gave me a serious warm fuzzy at that moment. I felt myself smiling back at him.

"I promise, you'll be perfectly safe," he told me. His voice sounded very sincere but I reminded myself in the back of my mind that he was ruthless. I remembered stories that Eric had told me of them decimating entire villages, coldblooded murders they'd committed, how they'd turned it into a game at times. I couldn't act like I was above them; I understood the instinct now. It really was our nature to treat humans as food and nothing more. Obviously that's not all we did, or else humans would've been extinct. However, I could see how in a more primal time, that instinct might overpower any lingering human nature. What I needed to remember was this: the only things that were important to Godric were himself and Eric.

I nodded at him and slowly lowered myself into the hole.

I was surprised to see that there was a rude sort of ladder inserted along the side of the tunnel. Every few feet there were iron semicircles for hand or footholds. I carefully made my way down about eight feet before I found the floor. I looked around, realizing I would have to flatten myself and crawl through another portion of tunnel. There was another trap door partitioning this section off as well. Eric had already opened it, and I noticed as I shimmied down that there were locks on the inside of it. I realized that's what they'd meant about humans not being able to expose them. No one could easily get through this tunnel once we were retired for the day. If they did, they would have made sufficient noise that Godric, at his age, would be roused by the time they got through and then they'd wish to hell they hadn't. I realized I actually did feel much safer knowing that. I could do without crawling through the dirt but I would live.

The last section was only about eight feet long as well and when I crawled out, I noticed Eric had lit some lamps in the main room. It was much larger than I had expected, and it even had furniture in it. There was an ornate wooden table with chairs, two padded parlor chairs in the corners, and a thick carpet n the ground. I looked around, taking this all in, then looked at Eric questioningly. He chuckled.

"The cottage is directly above us. We dug this lair out under it, leaving a large portion open so that we could bring these items down easily. The foundation of the cottage is our ceiling. We built it once everything was to our liking here," he explained. I raised my eyebrows, impressed at the planning that had gone into this. "There is a sleeping chamber through here," he said, turning through the only doorway in the room. I followed him into the room, noticing that the walls were finished, and not packed dirt as I'd expected. The bedchamber was another surprise, thick carpets on the floor in there as well, along with a huge bed made of sturdy, polished wood, and covered in ornate tapestry-like coverings. The colors were mainly golds and rusty looking reds and oranges. There were two ornate wardrobes, one on each side of the room, made from the same wood as the bed.

Against the wall opposite the bed, there was a dressing table, complete with a washbasin and pitcher. Where the water came from was anybody's guess, but it was full. There was a mirror hanging on the wall above the stand, and I thought this must be where they got ready before leaving. I realized with a sick twist that there would be no hot showers or baths and had the strangest urge to cry at that. Of course. I get hurtled back in time for no apparent reason, where I am without my family, loved ones, clothes, car, smart phone (Apple had come out with a vamp-friendly iPhone only a couple of months ago and I finally decided to stop being a super-douche and join the twenty-first century, so I got one), and any of the other countless amenities of my time. Plus, I was at the mercy of a huge, menacing Viking vampire and his smaller, more heinous and ancient maker, and the thing that threatens tears is a bubble bath? I seriously needed to get my priorities straight.

I heard Godric in the main room as I continued to look around in the bedroom. It took me a minute, but I finally realized that there was only one bed. I didn't think that was weird in the least. I knew that Eric and Godric had been very close, and I also knew that families in this time (or somewhere around this time) typically slept everyone in the same bed. What I did wonder about was where exactly I was going to sleep. After a moment, I realized they probably assumed I'd sleep with them and I decided that was fine with me. I was not going to be weird about this. I'd spent enough of my human life agonizing over irrelevant details, whining about stupid shit, and creating awkward situations that were not called for out of my own stupidity, that once I was turned I had decided to pull my big girl panties up and stop sweating the small stuff. If I had to sleep in a bed with two smoking hot vampires, well, I would just have to take one for the team.

"This is a really nice home," I complimented Eric. He smiled at me and I again wanted to throw myself at him. It was just too weird that he was not my Eric, but I'd have to get used it.

"Thank you," he said in a genuine tone. Godric walked into the room at that point.

"It is small, but we enjoy having a place where we can be relaxed. I'm afraid that we only have one bed, but you are more than welcome to sleep with us, if you desire," he told me, unbuttoning his shirt as walked toward the wardrobe on the right side of the room.

'Oh, I desire.' I thought wickedly before mentally slapping myself back to my senses. What the hell? That was Eric's maker! I wasn't going to sweat the small stuff but I needed to reign in the hormones here. I could only imagine if there was some sort of All Human Alternate Universe out there somewhere; Me being attracted to Eric's maker would be sort of like having the hots for my own granddaddy and definitely land us all on a Jerry Springer episode. Of course, that would also mean that Eric was my daddy, and I didn't want to touch that thought with a ten foot pole. I shook myself out of it.

"Sure, that's fine with me," I said to the room at large, realizing that they were both disrobing in front of their respective wardrobes. I almost went into a mental meltdown, at first trying not to look at either one of them, then trying to look at Eric but being discreet about it, then trying to peel my eyes off of Godric, and finally just flitting into the main room to sit my perv-ass down at the table until they got into whatever they wore as pajamas. I sat there for about two minutes, trying to calm myself down, before curiosity got the better of me and I leaned carefully back in my chair, wanting one last glimpse of Eric.

I tilted back until I could finally see him, totally shirtless, leaning forward into the wardrobe. His beautiful abs were contracted and I was torn between staring at them them or the arm porn on clear display as he reached inside of the cabinet. He pulled something out and straightened up, then started unbuckling his pants. I couldn't help the drool at the corner of my mouth; Eric is a hot son of a bitch, regardless of what century he's in. I thought briefly about him calling that hooker 'lover' earlier tonight and the weird vibe I'd gotten with Anne, but decided I honestly couldn't hold that against him. It was 500 years before he'd meet me and I knew without the shadow of a doubt that he'd gotten around in his time. Hell, I'd been thankful on more than one occasion for the centuries of experience he'd had. I decided that I could try to be objective about it. Which was a lot easier to say when he wasn't actively groping another woman.

He bent down, pulling the pants down as he went. When he stood back up, I leaned out a tad further, trying to see a little bit more. He looked directly at me a second later, raising an eyebrow and giving me a sexy smirk. I panicked, which resulted in tipping the chair all the way over and squealing like a stuck hog as I landed on my back in the middle of the floor. I almost wished a piece of the chair would have broken, turned into a makeshift stake, and flown directly into my heart, effectively killing my simpleton ass so that I wouldn't have to die of embarrassment. Because surely, that's what I was about to do. I stayed still for a second, staring at the ceiling, soaking in the fact that I really just did that, before I hoisted myself up. I brushed out my skirts, hoping like hell they would pretend not to have noticed, though of course they both obviously would have heard that. It had made a pretty loud commotion and since there were only the three of us there, I couldn't really blame it on anybody else. Not to mention the fact that Eric, at least, had seen it with his own eyes.

When I looked up, they were both standing in the doorway to the bedroom, shirtless, staring at me. It was clear that they were having a hard time fighting back laughter, which only flustered me more. I pointed at the chair, really trying to muster something up about faulty craftsmanship, or uneven floors, before I busted out laughing. I mean seriously, what the fuck was I gonna say about this that wouldn't just add to my idiocy? After about two seconds, they joined me, laughing their asses off. I'd of course seen Eric laugh before, but I was taken aback seeing Godric cracking up like that. After a few minutes, we sobered up a bit, and I had to wipe bloody tears out of my eyes.

"If we could just not ever mention that, like, for the rest of eternity, I would be grateful," I told them, still trying to fight the laughter back. "Because I really feel like a total douche."

"What's a douche?" Eric asked, laughter lacing his words. Duh.

"Uh, it's a word we use in the future to describe a fool," I said, figuring that was a good enough explanation. They both nodded their understanding. I noticed Eric take a breath and his face suddenly became very serious. I got a sick feeling in my stomach, realizing he'd smelled my blood. It had changed when I'd turned and thankfully it was no longer irresistible or intoxicating to my kind, but it was definitely different. Godric, too, was standing very still. I could see by his face that he had an idea of what I was, though Eric hadn't made the connection.

"Smell me, huh?" I asked sheepishly. When neither of them moved, I decided to bite the bullet. "Do either of you know Niall Brigant?" I knew damn well Eric had known him for centuries when I'd first met him, but I didn't know how many, exactly.

"Yes," Godric answered in a low tone. I took a breath.

"He's my great grandfather," I told them quietly, really hoping they had a good relationship. Eric slowly turned his head to look down at Godric, who significantly looked back at him.

Well, shit.

A/N Ok so the next chapter ends this night, I promise! And I didn't forget about the lemons (Oh Lord, how could I ever forget those?) so stay tuned for 'em. Anybody else love drunk Eric on tonight's new episode? Or get pre-teen excited by the clip of Godric for next week? Gahh… Hope you liked this chapter and continue to soldier on with me!