Chapter Twenty Five

The Morning Before

The night owl had stopped screaming. The air seemed to get colder and the wind that touched the curtain brought the smell of wet earth.

The morning was coming.

Godric could feel it and so did I.

The advantage of working in a bar, which closes around midnight, is you can tell when the morning is closing in. The air is getting colder, some night animals are going to bed as some day animals start awakening. The earth is wet from the dew that fell and the sky will slowly get brighter.

Now on my bed, watching Godric playing with the curtain on my window, I couldn't stop wondering how he could keep his face calm and straight. Was it because it had happened long time ago or was it because he somehow had managed to control his emotions in such a level that no human would be able to read them on his face.

"So, it's all planned, eh?" I said, breaking the silence between us. "The Roman Senator had given you to her specifically to discredit her."

"Yes, I believe it was." To my surprise, I didn't catch any hatred or anger. "Therefore, I thanked him. If he hadn't planned it, I wouldn't have met her."

"Did she know it?"

He nodded.

"Why didn't she send you away? It seems to me that she had wanted you to leave."

"She loved me," there was something in those gray eyes; a glint, a sudden awaking memory, something, I wasn't sure what.

"How was it...your first days of being a vampire?"

"Like any other first days. I was confused, excited, sad and angry. But I was mostly impatient. I wanted to go to Senator Maximus' house to get her back. My maker said it would be better for everybody if I didn't show myself, at least not too soon."

Then he turned his face around. I couldn't tell how he looked, but somehow I could understand what he felt. I got down from the bed and hugged him from behind. Softly, I kissed his back where his red tattoo was. Strange, he didn't pull himself away. "Thank you," I said. "For trusting me with the stories of your life."

He held my hands. "Thank you for listening."

I put my head on his back. "What will you do tomorrow?"

"I will go to her place and observe what she's doing."

I sighed. "We won't see each other again?"

"No, we won't."

Then silence.

"Promise me you'll be careful," I said.

He turned around. Again, his eyes glinted. "I am two thousand years old, just in case you forgot. I wouldn't reach this age, if I weren't careful."

"You're seventeen years and some months old to me."

He smiled. "You have a big mouth."

"Just noticed, eh?"

Silence again.

"I love your big mouth," he said. "It's sweet and juicy."

"If you love it, you have to make sure that you'll get out of this mess, alive."

"That's the problem, Darling. I am dead." He caressed my lips with his thumbs.

"So, this is it, then. Are we saying goodbye, now?" I forced myself not to tremble or cry, but he seemed to know it or feel it. His thumbs were now beside my nose. His face was getting closer, so close that our noses touched each other, but then, he stopped. His mouth was open. It was clear that he tried to control himself not to kiss me.

"Yes. If you ask me whether I want it to be different, yes, I would love that," he said. "I would like to have a hot sex that you probably will not be able to ever forget and torture your men after me because you will compare them with me and they will be mad at me and want to kill me, but I think it's safer this way."

"You've definitely been hanging around with Eric too long. You sound just like him or what I imagine he sounds like."

He grinned. "Or it's the other way around."

"Yeah, right." I held him. My body shuddered from the feelings that seemed to get stronger and stronger. I didn't know how long I could keep them inside.

"No time for being sentimental now, Darling. You're a strong woman and you will get out of this mess alive and intact. Cry, if you want to cry; if that strengthens you and makes you feel better, but make a promise to yourself, you will do whatever you have to do to survive. I will be the last person to judge your decision."

Why did he sound as if I wanted to turn my back on him and joined Callisto? Had he thought of that?

Our eyes met. He released my hug and said. "I won't judge you." He moved backward. "Remember that." Then, he walked away. "Until the day, Tara."

Before I could answer, he was already gone.

Xxxxx

Somewhere in a distance, a church bell rang. Today was Sunday. Twelve o'clock, to be exact. It must have been a church in St. Angel Parish outside Bon Temps. I wondered, whether there was somebody in that church in this very hour that prayed. And if there were, I wondered what. I also wondered if they could tell me because my head was empty and I couldn't find anything, a word or a thing to calm down my fears. A little pray wouldn't harm, I supposed.

Sookie came with sleepy eyes and twisted eyebrows. Whatever she had seen last night must have bothered her a great deal. I had seen orgy scenes once or twice on porn movies that I watched (and mostly I had switched off before it finished). It wasn't something I would recommend to anybody to watch and certainly I wasn't going to even remotely advise anybody to participate, but to actually see it must have been a hell of experience for Sookie.

"You don't look great yourself," she said. "What happened?"

"Nothing much," I said. "Godric told me about his turning."

"Ah," she said, "and how was it?"

"Kinda sad, actually. He couldn't wait to be eighteen years old, to have some children with his Queen – I know, it's weird that he wanted children in such a young age, but he is from a different time and I guess, eighteen was already pretty old at that time. He was dying, you know, when his maker asked him and his Queen had been kidnapped by a Roman Senator. I think, if he hadn't been dying and his Queen had been all right, he would have fought until the last drop of blood and chose to die rather than to live forever."

Sookie took a deep breath. "It must have been frightening to live like that. Everybody sees you as a teenager and being treated as such. And the puberty..."

"I don't think that he'd ever reached his puberty; I mean not the way we had it. He became a slave when he was around thirteen and then being traded from one hand to another until when he met his Queen. Even then, he was only a chess figure. The Roman senator wanted the people of Meröe to think that their Queen was under the influence of a Roman slave so that it would be easier for the Roman Army to attack Meröe. You know, divide et impera. So, he might have had puberty but surely he hadn't had time to express it or go wild because of it."

"That's sad."

I nodded. "But she loved him and he loved her. Even time and space can't change that."

"What about you? Do you love him?"

"I don't know." And that was an honest answer. I liked being with him. He's not like anybody I knew. He's smart, loyal, incredibly good in bed (one could expect it, since he had two thousand years of experience) and patient. There were not so many people who could handle my loose mouth and he was definitely one of them.

But he is a vampire and I am a human. There is world between us that I am not sure I will be able to accept right away.

"What is your plan for today?"

I thanked Sookie for not asking me more questions about Godric and me. "I want to see my mother," I said. "I want to ask her – straight to her face, why she did what she did to me. I want her to hear from me that I am dying. Because if she survives from all of this mess, I want her to know that she's the one who killed me. Not a vampire or Callisto, but her."

"You scare me, Tara. You are so determined about it. It is as if you know that you will die."

"I am dying, Sookie."

"I know, but Godric and Eric are here. They will protect us. You will survive too and before you know it, you'll be screaming at the top of your lungs to some drunkards at Merlotte's."

"You trust them, don't you?"

"Not as much as I trust you, but yeah, I trust them. I trust Eric to keep his words and he trusts Godric. I can trust Godric as well, I guess."

"But you said Eric was a smart-ass manipulative bastard."

"He is, but he never lets me down and he's there when I need him.,"

"Or when you don't."

Sookie smiled. "Or when I don't, makes me have some kind of a feeling that he's my shadow, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"So," Sookie clapped her hands, as if the subject had been settled. "We should go to the hotel now, before it's too late."

"Too late for what?"

"You don't expect Lettie-Mae to sit around the whole day doing nothing, do you? If she was drunk last night, at least we still could 'catch her' before … you know?"

"Prancing for booze, yeah...," I looked at her. "I wish I had a mother like yours."

"You don't mean that," she stared back at me. "You wouldn't want to have a mother who freaked out every time you looked at her too long, or jumped when you touched her. And when you wanted to hug her, she always had excuses to stay away from you."

"My mother never talks nice to me, or if she did, then it was because she wanted to have something from me."

"At least she talked to you."

I took her hand and squeezed it. "Sorry."

Sookie smiled. Clearly she tried to hide her own pain. "We will get through it, Tara. When everything is over, we'll send her to a rehab clinic. I will borrow money from Eric if I have to. But one thing for sure, she and you can't go on like this."

"If we get through this..."

"We will."

I admired her spirit. Even at a time like this, she still believed we would be able to do what we wanted to do and successfully. In some ways, she reminded me of Godric.

Knock, knock, knock!

"Are you expecting somebody?" she asked.

"No."

We looked at each other. She put her finger on her mouth and then she went to the door, put her head on the door and closed her eyes. Her face was pale when she opened her eyes.

"We have to go, now!" she said.

Before I could move, the door was opened with force.

Standing at the door was Lafayette. He smiled, but his eyes were as black as the night. Behind him were Kevin, Hoyt and some men.

"Hi, girlfriends," he said. "Going somewhere?"

xxxxx