Chapter 9 –Broken But Beating Hearts

We walked in silence the rest of the way back to Fangtasia, and it was an awfully long walk for silence. A few times I thought Eric was going to say something, and a few times I tried to say something to him. But I guess we both knew there was nothing we could possibly say to make things better.

"I hope Pam keeps the extra key in the same place as always," Eric finally remarked as he moved a few rocks at the edge of the woods before digging up a key. I dragged myself over to the main door of Fangtasia and leaned against it while I waited for Eric let us in. He fumbled with the key for a few minutes before finally pushing the door open. I was about to walk in behind him when he suddenly stopped moving, blocking the doorway and my view of the inside.

"What the hell Pamela?" he asked a moment later. I released the breath I hadn't known I was holding when he said her name. Finally able to peer past him, I saw Pam holding a gun on him. "Since it's not quite dusk I guess this means you're human too?" she queried as she slowly put the gun down. She looked uptight and on edge, but overall relieved to see us. However her relief was short lived.

"What the hell happened?" she shouted as she ushered us into Fangtasia.

Eric did not say anything. I wished at that moment Finnley was here to explain. She had a way of filling in awkward silences and just diving into the heart of things. It probably came from so much mind reading. I thought about trying to read Pam's thoughts, but she wasn't very much of a broadcaster and I had enough to deal with going through my own thoughts.

"Pam, it's been a long day, and we're not up to explaining things right now. Let's just deal with the fact that it seems that we're human." He said it as if being human was his worst nightmare and I felt the urge to defend humanity when a troubled look passed over Eric's face. "Karin is probably also human if my change affected you," he stated looking at Pam.

Pam nodded. "It's a possibility. I could call her but maybe we should go check on her in case someone overhears the call. I'm sure we have enough enemies who would take advantage of this. Besides, Bill keeps food for human company and I'm starving."

Eric looked at Pam strangely. "I thought you were joking when I got your message that Karin and Bill got married." Pam shook her head. "I felt the same way about them at first. But the weird thing is, they are actually perfect for each other."

Pam went on to make some sarcastically loving remarks about the couple, but when neither Eric or I smiled she got the message that neither of us was in a joking mood and led us out to her car.

A few minutes later the three of us were driving in Pam's car towards Bon Temps. Her vehicle reminded me of the Barbie convertible I had as a child, only her seats were tan leather instead of pink molded plastic. "Neither of you feel like explaining anything?" asked Pam after we had driven for about 10 minutes in silence. Eric and I were sitting in the back seat looking out our respective windows while she drove. We just kept looking out our windows, ignoring her. "Now that I'm human I don't have forever to wait around until you two are mentally stable enough to talk about it. So how about one of you tell me if I should be worried about Freyda coming for my head when dusk falls. "

Again silence answered her, and Pam looked progressively more concerned. Finally I took pity on her. "Pam, you don't have to worry about Freyda. Finnley took her head off so you don't have to worry about yours. At least not from Freyda herself, and if it makes you feel better, she killed Felipe too."

I caught Pam's gaze in the driver's mirror. She smiled, looking impressed with Finnley. She only met my eyes for a moment but I think it was long enough for her to sense my pain because her smile died and her eyes quickly left mine. Or maybe she's just become a nervous driver now that she's human.

"What happened to Finnley?" she asked softly, and for the first time I heard real compassion and worry in her voice. I did not want to talk about it, but having another person who cared about her, even just a little bit was nice. "Eric was being tortured and denied blood by Freyda. When Finnley freed him he fed from her, and…"

"I killed her," cut in Eric abruptly before I could find the right way of phrasing it. I was almost relieved by Eric's interruption, as there was no way to make it sound better.

"Then Sookie asked me to make her a vampire to save her," he continued in a low voice.

"And then I may have sent her to the final death by digging her up too early," I added in a whisper. Pam did not hear me in the front seat, but Eric was sitting next to me and finally turned from his window to look at me. "Sookie, you heard movement, and thought she was buried alive. Of course you were going to dig her up. Besides, weren't you were lying right beside her in the grave? I've seen vampires burn up. You would not have slept soundly beside a combusting vampire. You are innocent in this."

"But where did the ashes come from?" I counter argued. Eric only shook his head. We had effectively rendered Pam speechless so that the rest of the drive was even more silent than the beginning. Thankfully we were almost there, and a few minutes later we were pulling into the old Compton Homestead just as dusk was falling.

Bill answered the door, and from the look on his face I'm guessing we were not the people he was expecting to see.

"Eric, Pam," he greeted and then he looked at me as if expecting them to introduce me. When no one did he gestured for us to follow him into the house anyway. I don't blame Bill for not recognizing me. After all I still had the stupid outfit Pam had put me into, my hair still dyed cheap red and my face still twenty years younger than he expected it to be but aged with sadness and weariness. He probably assumed I was Eric and Pam's dinner.

"Bill is Karin here?" Eric asked, getting quickly to the point of our visit, while I took a seat on the love seat in Bill's living room. I realized it was the same love seat he had owned over twenty years ago and probably had been in this house for decades before that. Then I realized we once made love on this couch and I wished I had picked somewhere else to sit.

"I'm here," Karin stated as she walked down the staircase into the room. She moved gracefully, and looked more like a Disney princess than a slaughtering vampire.

"Thank god," greeted Eric, as he pulled her into a hug. She stood rigid for a moment, before returning the hug. Obviously whatever bad blood ran between them was history now that Eric showed her he cared. Intellectually I was happy that Pam and Karin were okay. Inside I felt irrationally jealous. Jealous that he was rejoicing in the fact that his vampire family was alive when his own daughter was not. When they finally broke the hug, everyone studied everyone else for a moment before joining me in sitting down in the living room. They just plopped down into their seats, Eric, Pam and Karin sitting together on the couch and Bill in the rocking chair across from them. My love seat was off to the side. For once I missed the faery custom of carefully arranging their chairs. It was useful when you wanted to put off a painful conversation.

"So both of you are human too then?" asked Karin as she took her vampire father's and sister's hands in hers. She rubbed them to feel the warmth against her skin.

"Karin and I woke up this morning and were quite shocked," cut in Bill before Pam and Eric could reply.

"You mean he's human too?" Eric asked Karin in amazement. Then he got up off the chair, walked over and actually put his hand on Bill's cheek.

"Yes, and as far as I can tell, all the vampires I know are human," replied Bill with a funny smile on his face while Eric just looked at him in wander. "Facebook and Twitter accounts have been buzzing with cryptic updates all day. I have been trying to contact as many vampires as possible. Many who went to ground last night may have suffocated. Karin and I have spent all day trying to track down Bubba and have not been able too. We have been asking everyone we contacted if they know what has happened but no one seems to have the slightest clue."

"Sookie you are probably in the best place to explain things if anyone can," stated Eric, looking at me as if he was sorry to put me on the spot after everything we had just been through. Bill looked visibly shaken when Eric said my name and looked towards me in shock.

"Sookie?" he asked, and I was not sure if he was more shocked at my appearance or at the fact that I might be able to explain the vampire cure.

I nodded at both Bill and Eric. I might as well get through the story than sit here dreading having to go through everything. "I'll tell you all the entire story, but it will have to be the Coles Note's version because it's a really long and messed up. And it's hard for me to tell."

Everyone nodded in agreement to that. They had no idea.

"So, I guess the story really starts with the first vampire. His name was Gareth, and he was a normal human guy until he fell in love with a faery named Gwendolyn."

"This is the Cole's Notes version?" asked Karin. Pam glared at her. I took a deep breath and then kept going. I had to get it all out as quick as possible before someone else interrupted me, and I couldn't finish.

"They were happy until Gareth died and Gwendolyn used a powerful fae token called a cluviel dor to wish he would live forever. Unfortunately faery magic is pretty crappy because it turned him into a vampire and Gwendolyn was his first victim. The fae banished him to our realm thinking the sun would kill him. Fast forward and another faery uses another cluviel dor to wish that vampires didn't exist. In the style of crappy magic all that faery got was a prophecy that said the child of a halfling faery and a vampire would get rid of the vampires. My great grandfather Niall got tired of waiting for the child so he orchestrated Eric and I meeting to push things along. So about twenty years ago I'm at a werewolf trial watching my friend Sam die at the hands of a psycho bitch. And part of me wants to use my cluviel dor to save his life, and the other half wants to have a life with my vampire husband. So continuing in the style of crappy magic I got split into two people. My grandfather sees all this, figures that I'm probably carrying the prophetic child and takes me back to fae. He basically lies to keep me there until I get deathly sick giving birth and end up in a coma for nineteen years. In the meantime he teaches mine and Eric's daughter to kill vampires. When I finally wake up he lets us come back to Earth so she can fulfill the prophecy of getting rid of you all. Only she's a telepath and wasn't taken in by all of Niall's bullshit. She really just wanted to see Earth and to meet her father…."

I had held up really well until that point, but emotion snuck into my monotone story when I remembered how excited Finnley had been to meet Eric. All the questions she had asked me at the royal compound. The way her eyes smiled when I told her how Eric had tricked me into marrying him. I felt the tears threatening to overwhelm me when Pam got up from the couch and sat down beside me on the loveseat. She tentatively offered me her hand before reconsidering. Vampires didn't shake hands, I thought to myself. But then she pulled me into a hug and the tears came unashamed. Karin and Bill were looking relatively shocked and puzzled by everything. Eric was looking at the ground.

"I think I can fill in the next part of the story," Pam offered, and I nodded through my tears for her to tell them what she knew. "The other day Sookie and her daughter Finnley show up at Fangtasia wanting to see Eric. The girl was amazing, she put me in my place anyway. We decided she would be able to save Eric from Freyda, so I set it up for Finnley and Sookie to go to the palace as donor blood. That's why she's dressed like that," she added. Leave it to Pam to explain away a bad wardrobe choice at a time like this.

I smiled at Pam in gratitude and she patted my hand while I took another deep breath to compose myself and finish the story. "Finnley was amazing when she killed Freyda and Felipe," I began. But I didn't have to speak long before I was cut off.

"Felipe? Where were you?" asked Bill, looking at Eric in confusion.

He looked embarrassed but he answered Bill. "I was conscientiously refusing to participate in a threesome with Freyda and Felipe."

For a moment my anger at Freyda pushed my grief to the corner of my mind. That she would lower someone of the caliber of Eric to such humiliation. She tried to control him like Appius had. She had turned my confident husband into an ashamed child stuck in the corner…..

"Eric was silvered and denied blood because he wouldn't lower himself to their level," I retorted to Bill. "He stood up against them even though Finnley said his thoughts didn't make sense, and that he was delirious."

Eric looked at me with irritation, "Don't make excuses for me."

"I'm not making excuses for you Eric, I'm making them for me. Because I can hate Freyda, and I can hate Niall, but damn it Eric if you make me hate you…." I was shaking now and Pam was physically holding me down on the couch. We both glared up at Eric who had walked over to the loveseat.

"I have Sookie," he replied, looking down into my eyes. The pain in his echoed the pain in mine. "I have made you hate me. Maybe you think you don't want to hate me. But, the other you, the one that had no problem hating me and just walked way. She didn't have to see her daughter die. She got to have a happily ever after."

"Damn it Eric, I never asked for a happily ever after. I knew there was no happily ever after for us. I just thought maybe we be happy a bit longer."

Bill chose that moment to break the tension in the room by offering us all tea. We all nodded in acceptance, mostly out of the absurdity of the offer, and the idea of us all sipping tea together.

"Sookie, I'm a bit rusty on making tea, so why don't you help me in the kitchen?"

Before I could reply Bill shuffled me away to help him make tea, and I soon find myself in the kitchen running water into a tea pot instead of in the living room bearing my heart out.

"That is an interesting story you told us. I studied vampire origins and had heard the name of Gareth, but never the story on how he became a vampire. I guess that explains why vampires are so taken with faeries."

I nodded as I turned up the heat on the burner to make things go faster.

"I take it that Finnley must have fulfilled the prophecy since the vampire race seems to be non-existent. What exactly happened?"

I looked away from the stove to look at Bill. "Eric drained her when she released him from his silver. I asked him to turn her, and in the morning he was human and Finnley was ashes," I stated matter of factly.

Bill nodded. 'She was irresistible..'

I quickly put my shields back up. I had forgot I could hear them. And right now I did not want to further damage myself by overhearing things I did not want too.

"Sookie, why Eric?"

I looked at Bill for a few moments, not comprehending what he was asking. He could not seriously be asking me why I had chosen Eric over him after all this time.

"Why did Niall want you to be with Eric?" he clarified seeing the stunned look on my face.

I knew that he meant why did Niall want Eric to be my baby's daddy and not him. "In the prophecy it says it has to be a vampire of the eldest line. I guess Eric is an eldest child of the eldest child going all the way back to Gareth."

Bill nodded. I braced for more questions, but the the kettle whistled and I quickly placed the two tea bags into the pot. I was about to carry it into the room to escape Bill's questioning when he reached out to stop me.

"Sookie, what exactly did the prophecy say?"

End Chapter 9

A/N: Thanks for all the reviews from last chapter! I know, I know it was cruel. But it's always darkest before the dawn right? Anyway, the tea is a shout out to the episode of Buffy where Angel becomes human, and Cordelia assumes they are off having sex somewhere celebrating when they are just sitting in her kitchen sipping tea. But who remembers what happens after tea? ... Okay, probably not going to happen here. But hope is eternal.