One more chapter? You tell me.

Merick

Chapter Thirty-Six

He told me very little about what was going to happen. I knew it was going to be that night, he'd given me that, and I had stayed up late to watch a last sunrise, and managed to last through for a final sunset. I think it was symbolic more than anything, it looked better on his HD TV anyways. I had a last human meal of pecan pie, and sweet potato casserole, washed down with a diet coke. I didn't feel like I had to say goodbye to anyone, because I was going to see them all again in a day or so. I have to admit, I did go to Bon Temps, just to talk to Gran again, and let her know what was going to happen, between the sunrise and sunset.

I was sitting out on the front steps of his house, in the dark, the last rays having disappeared behind the horizon a few minutes past when I heard the door open behind me, and sensed him there. He smiled at me, and held out his hand.

"The next evening you see will be with preternatural eyes, and it will be glorious my lover." I didn't know that much of anything could be more glorious than the site of him, loose fitting woven lounge pants, sitting just on his hips, bare-chested, white blonde hair, now grown long again, grazing his shoulders in the slight breeze leftover from the day. And don't get the impression that he looked like some kind of dumb Romance Novel cover, he was so much more than that.

I took his hand and he helped me stand, then he embraced me, inhaling my scent, perhaps the last of my human scent, and kissed my neck gently.

"I'm ready." I told him, loving to see the smile that lit his face. He led me back downstairs.

"If you change your mind," he began.

"I won't Eric."

"But if you do."

I nodded.

"Come." He pulled me into the bedroom. "Do you trust me?"

"With my life."

He laughed.

"Then let me have you."

He reached out to me and pulled the ponytail out of my hair. I didn't wear it that way much anymore, but I had thought I should, for Gran, just so she could see me that one last time, the way she remembered me. Long fingers combed out the strands till they fell across my neck, and down my back. I undid the buttons on my dress shirt, something else that was new to my wardrobe choices, and pulled the tails out from the waistband of my jeans. He slipped it off my arms and let it drop to the floor.

Bringing his hands to the sides of my face, he drew me towards him, and kissed me, meeting lips already parted, waiting the strength of his mouth. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and pushed my hips against him, feeling the beginnings of his arousal. Two hooks opened and fingers on the buttons of my jeans and I stood before him in nothing but the glow of the wall sconces. His eyes took in the sight of my body, as if he was trying to memorize the details of its human movement for the last time.

Strong arms swept me up and lay me down on our bed, and he came to hover over me, planting slow kisses over my eyes, my cheeks, and down my neck. Again, I expected the sting of his fangs but it did not come. The lips moved to my breasts, and then down to my belly, and insistent hands slid before them, gently parting my legs. It was hard not to cry out as he touched and tasted me with long strokes, twisting my insides into taut bundles even as I twined my fingers into his hair, pulling gently as he stole my senses. I could feel every emotion he was feeling, I could feel his own excitement building, the glow of his orgasm beginning to bud even as my own did, it was the closest we had ever been as human and vampire together: and he knew it as well. Only moments before I felt I would lose myself to his mouth and his hands he pulled his face away from me, and drove his rock hard member deeply into a body that was desperate for him. I lost myself in my climax letting the waves of it vibrate out to every fingertip and through my mind. But even with my own intensity I did still feel the bite in my neck, and the strong draw from his lips and happily, also the wash of joy across his mind, which was staggering.

His feeding from me was initially no different than it had always been, intense, accompanied by the teasing of his tongue across my skin, and the embrace of his body as he held me close to him. But what was different than before, was that it did not end in mere minutes, and also different, the wound to my neck was larger, not a simple puncture, but a tear, I could not guess how wide. He needed the blood to flow faster, the small bites clotted too quickly, he needed the artery and the pulse, and I felt his body begin to heave as he took greater and greater mouthfuls from me. And I felt myself begin to slip.

There was euphoria first, from the blood loss, and then the warm fogginess of feeling oneself ready to pass out, then a rush of accompanying panic, which was instinct more than anything else. I knew my heart was racing I felt the pounding in my chest as my body fought against its death. At the height of the terror I felt his hand grasp mine, and hold it tightly, I hesitate to say 'for dear life' because that would just be silly. That touch, that conscious action on his part helped to calm me, that and the fatigue, which was robbing me of my senses. But to know he was in control of what was happening to me, that he understood the fear and meant me to know that he was still there, it was everything to me right then. I did not feel pain really, but I saw my vision going dark as concentric black circles enclosed my field of view and my hearing became nothing but the echoing of my breathing, now labored, and my heartbeats.

"I love you Eric." I whispered, well, I think I whispered it. I didn't hear a response from him, I didn't hear anything, and then it was blackness and oblivion.

For me dying was easy. For Eric, as he recounted it to me, it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. He had loved Pam, but not in the same way as he loved me. If something had gone wrong, and the change had not come for me, he would have had to spend the rest of his days knowing that it was he who had ended my life. Pam's story was quite different; I have been led to believe. Personally, I have no memories from the moment of my human death until the warm, musty smell of earth assaulted my nostrils, and a heavy weight on my chest threw me into a panicked seizure of flailing arms and legs, held back by strength I remembered instinctually, and calmed by the sudden appearance of moonlight filtering through the soil.

"Sookie? Wake up for me my lover. Tell me that you are unharmed?" It was laced with concern, the voice I heard, but still held the force I remembered from so many days together.

I gasped for air out of sheer human need, and coughed the supposed dirt from my lungs, neither expression wholly necessary any longer. "Eric?" My voice however, was weak compared to his. I felt a blanket wrapped around my bare skin and tried to focus on the person doing it. If ever Eric had seemed to glow for me before, it was nothing compared to what I saw that night, in the moonlight. He was a god, and preternatural eyes brought in shadows and nuances of the light that I had never imagined possible.

"Sookie." Arms pulled me to his chest as he stood. I felt the rush of his body moving back towards the house, but unlike the previous trips at Vampire speed, I no longer felt the nausea that always forced me to close my eyes. In fact, I could see perfectly as he ran. We had been in the wooded ravine behind his house, and we had emerged from a deep burrow; no I don't want to call it a grave, thank you very much, where we had obviously spent the balance of the night and the following day.

"Did it work?" I whispered, almost afraid to hear the answer. He had taken me all the way back to the basement suite, I heard someone moving about upstairs, I didn't sense who, and saw the fireplace had been lit yet again.

"Look at me." He had set me down in front of the flames; I appreciated their warmth, not that I was cold though. I think I was in shock because I couldn't stop trembling. He took both my hands and held them tightly, which brought back the memory of the night before. I looked into his face and he parted his lips and dropped his fangs for me. For the first time I felt the snap of my own fangs dropping into place, in response to the sight of his. He beamed at me, the joy evident on his face, and then he kissed me, softly, barley pushing my own flesh against the new dentition.

"How do you feel?" He asked, looking into my eyes. I wondered what he was now seeing.

Despite the questions I had, I searched over my body with my mind, looking for discomfort, and pain and found only an emptiness in my gut. I looked at him quizzically.

"I'm okay I think."

'You are hungry.' I heard it, but not from his lips, from his mind, clear as if he had said it out loud.

'Yes.' I forced the thought across my mind while I looked into his blue eyes.

'As you should be.'

'How is this possible? Can you do this with Pam?' My state of concern grew, which didn't help the ache in my core.

'No. I can sense her presence, as my child, and her state of mind, as she can mine, but we have never held a conversation.' Funnily enough he did not look particularly bewildered by what was happening.

'Why then?'

'The Faerie blood perhaps? I don't know. But I am finding I enjoy it greatly.' He laughed, that was out loud. 'Now come, we will clean up and have someone to eat.'

He was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing if you ask me.