Considering the morass of hell I had waded through already tonight, it would be safe to assume that I had mucked and sludged my way through the worst of it. But everyone knows what assuming makes out of otherwise fine folk. I trailed behind our excessively large escort group—Eric must have kicked serious tail—back to the cemetery, stepping precisely where they instructed, thinking about what I would do to come out of this mess, if not on top, than at least not six feet under. They hadn't bothered on handcuffing me. I guess the threat of bombs and death to all my family seemed more elegant to the coven witch.
Eric was as silent as his heart on our brief trek. He had dressed again, which made avoiding admiring his backside a very little easier. Remembering how much bloodshed he'd been involved with tonight, his shift wasn't that disgusting. He'd had centuries of practice to keep clean in a fight. I guess his demeanor would revert to the mum's the word behavior it had been before. I was still unclear if his mind had ever been spelled, or if he had been quiet for other reasons during what I would call "Act I." This seemed like important intel.
"Eric?"
No answer.
"Eric?"
Same deal.
"Er—"
"This isn't the best time to talk, Sookie."
"I just need to know—did you lose your mind ever, I mean in the tent, was your mind your own?"
"At all times with the exception of during an actual command. "
My mouth opened to ask a follow-up, when he filled the void with his own words, that rang with such finality, pursuing a longer conversation was pointless.
"No more questions, Sookie."
The tent constructed of strands of fairy lights looked just as kooky and out of place as it had before, the stupid chiffon shifts as uncomfortably revealing, and the hum of the minds as mellow and meshed as at the very first of this never-ending evening party. So they had taken their little anti-telepath potion again. The wall of witches, with the depleted number of vampires interspersed, encircled the boundary of the tent, as did a line of powdery lemon grass and blossoms (not daffodil). My entire body burned briefly as I stepped over the lemony threshold.
The gauzy, golden wall of people divided so that Eric and I could enter the middle. Something wavered over me, like the feeling of a vampire attempting to futilely glamour me. I caught the eye of the Bill-obsessed Stephanie, and wondered at her expression. She almost looked sorry. Coming to know Lune, it wasn't a leap to figure she hadn't been entirely forthcoming with even her most loyal worshippers. Maybe the TV spokesperson hadn't understood the extent of violence involved, or maybe she was experiencing major buyer's remorse. Because anyone who chose to dress in these god-awful outfits without the threat of death and blood, had bought into something. Seeing her, however, had given me the beginning of a plan.
Steeling myself, I followed Eric into the circle, heading to the middle of the tent, marked by the headstone of Sam's grave and that eternal pearly blaze. My eyes sought the faces of my son and granddaughter first as I strode toward them across the grass. Wearing her bloody shift a la Jackson Pollack, Grace seemed like she was about to fall over or simply fall asleep standing up. Neal looked like a new human being—a filthy, matted-hair, two black-eyed new human being. I touched both their hands briefly as I passed, sensing their relief as they realized I was human, and rested against Sam's headstone for comfort.
A quick check to the Herveaux men made my heart skip a beat. Bloodied clothes, bruised faces, and completely gorgeous in their rugged bad-assery. They each examined me, trying to figure out the status of my humanity. Something was off. My friends and family's minds, I finally caught on, had been deafened to me. That must have been the reason for their early arrivals. Maybe I'd get a flute of champagne too. I could use a drink of water. Or more of that wine.
The ghostly vampires stood on the petal points across the way. Eric supported Alex, who was slouching oddly against his Maker, like a Pinocchio pre-Blue Fairy, and no Giuseppe to hold up his strings. Or an inadequate Giuseppe. Maybe I'd discovered the one thing Eric Northman couldn't do well (apart from sweeping and being honest)—puppetry. Come to think of it, Eric had the air of a wooden boy too. He must be spelled already, glued to his little circle. I recalled that glamour-like weight over my mind and no longer wondered at what it had meant.
"It is a relief to see you looking so well—and breathing so necessarily, cher," that sultry voice whispered in my ear. From my peripheral, I saw her hand attempt to brush my hair, and with my accelerated reflexes from Eric's blood, I clapped my fingers over her wrist and shoved her away.
Lune stumbled back but did not fall, strong and graceful in her recovery. Of course, she'd drank Eric's blood too.
"It is painful to see you," I said. "Period."
Smiling, the witch suddenly chanted in that unknown tongue. Faster than I could have guessed, some trusty iron handcuffs flew through the air and braced my arms behind my back.
"No Sookie, cher," the witch said as she petted me and the bands poisoned me. "Now it is painful to see me."
At least she was honest. The sting was worse than I remembered. My knees faltered and my stomach heaved a dry retch. Someone clapped in the audience and my family and were friends yelled their objections. "You have a short memory," Neal seethed at the witch.
Glaring, I stood up, my son helping. I would not let her see me cry, nor bend, nor break. "Let Eric heal Alex."
The witch titled her head to the side, as if deciding between rye or wheat bread for a deli sandwich. "You ask for mercy for them? Why not for yourself? Or why not show true charity?Why don't you offer to heal him with your blood?"
"They're re-bonded. Eric can help more. You've let him suffer like this for over an hour."
"He only has a crushed spine."
"Would you like to have a crushed spine?"
"Would you be the one to break my back and if so, how? It may change my answer." I think I'd gotten her hooked on me. She actually ran her finger slowly down her lip like she was in some weird, seductive perfume commercial.
And that's when I remembered my plan. Damn. I think I'd already ruined it. My pain—because evidently I had been wrong, threatening my family and booby-trapping me wasn't sufficient evil for Act II—and Alex's injuries had clipped it from my mind. How to pretend like Mother Nature? Especially after breaking character? While handcuffed and in agony? I'd need some acting lessons pronto.
As if on cue—no pun intended—I heard the drawl voice and debonair accent of the King of Mississippi and his star son behind me, welcoming me back to the festivities, expressing their mutual delight at being freed from their previous, oppressive curtain wings. "And darling, we do forgive you for burning us, and murdering three of us," Joe purred. "And eagerly look forward to your repayment plan," added the King. I ignored the royal and Hollywood hecklers. My mind was fresh out of ideas on implementing my operation "hoodwink a witch into thinking I'm a deity," however, and so I returned to something more within the realm of reality—shining like the sun while politely pleading. I'd just had a lightbulb idea. Literally.
That surge of warmth, of sunlight coming through a favorite window at home, of crackling fires surrounded with friends and loved ones, radiated out from me. When I focused my gaze back onto the witch, she was watching me with longing. That had been the aim. "Good, is she going to fry her?" Grace thought about her priestess. Interesting. I could now hear my family. Pushing my influence out, I caught the colorful minds of the weres as well.
"Let Eric heal him, Harriet, please," I asked.
Astonishingly, she listened. My fire dwindled; my control was improving. And I sensed that my light was changing—or that I understood it better. With a wave of her hand, Lune motioned for Eric to feed his son. No poem. No fanfare. No fire. It was quick and easy as a damn lemon squeezy—which I wouldn't be touching for the rest of my natural life. Too easy. The witch had wanted me to ask. She had wanted to appear magnanimous. My suspicion became certainty while Alex gripped on his Maker's arm, until he no longer needed the additional support. The progeny stood tall; the Master depleted. Weaken the strongest of the threats. Done.
Expectantly, I turned to Lune, but she was not the one who spoke next. Whistling, stopping only to sniff at the weres, Edgington strolled into the strange circle of creatures and stepped right in front of Eric. The King shook his pointer finger and tisked at him. "The witch told me I had to wait, and then there was the misfortune of my meltdown—little word play—so many delays, until now, at last, no more! You have been a thorn in my side, Viking for too long—ever since that damn coup thirty years ago! Freyda sees the writing on the wall—saw it then too! I manned up, and made my husband see reason. Do you know I had to make overtures to Bill Compton last year? Just to try and stay solvent—and all because you won't give up the territory you stole when you put down that fool of a cartel that tried to claim Oklahoma for their own, when they already had Arkansas and Louisiana!"
If this exchange made sense to anyone, I would have welcomed an explanation. As it was, I tried to put the pieces together myself. Eric had claimed the territory of three states? Claimed them after defeating a cartel? Claimed them how? My brain began to buzz, my blood to whir, and my wrists to throb in the same dizzying speed.
Eric hadn't turned his gaze from his son during the King's speech, and Edgington started craning his neck around asking, "What the doggon hell is so fascinating about your progeny?"
"I wondered if it was you behind the witch, your hand stuck up her ass, your highness," Eric said finally, switching his steely gaze to the King, "but I had dismissed the idea, because I had overestimated your intelligence and believed your tastes lay elsewhere."
Edgington whistled again, low and long, his drawl slower than molasses in a bygone January. "Now, why would I pass up a perfectly pleasant opportunity to see some witchcraft, avail myself of some of your blood to sale—which as I reckon it, you owe me for sitting on prime real estate and letting the ground go fallow, keeping the flow of product in three states so scare it's difficult for an honest royal like me, who contracts in one of those states, to turn a profit."
"You are a disgrace to the title King," Eric said.
"And you are a disgrace to the title Kingpin," Edgington replied.
I didn't say it, but Grace thought it, "Sweet, Almighty Mother! Gran's ex is an OG Sinatra." Well, in her own words, she thought the same thing as I did—Sinatra was the kids' new word for gangster. And she was right. There was a reason Eric had been impossible to pin down. Why his relationship to his wife was so complex. Why he'd been evasive about his blood. Why he knew so much about cartels. He was the head of one. Add to the titles of Viking and Royal Consort, the newest edition, as of thirty years ago, Heisenberg—or Escobar—or any other damn title for a criminal. Maybe Godfather.
I heard the word, the thought, in every were's and human's mind who hadn't been spelled. Alcide's gruff inner voice reached out to me: "Damn fanger business, Sookie. Always a damn mess."
No hide nor hair from the prison wall of people or the few of us within the floral coffin formation moved, including the coven witch. The urgency of the completion of the mystic ceremony relegated to an intermission, as the powerbrokers who determined the stakes finally played their hands.
"How about we make a deal?" Edgington asked, after Eric and he had finished a minute-long fangs-out stare-off. "I return your blood—and what's left of your progeny's blood and we split the state of Louisiana even steven."
"Where's Freyda?"
"She's fine. Getting a mani-pedi last I checked." Russel examined his own nails. I might have seen a touch of soot on them. "Well, what of my deal?"
"I have a better deal."
"You're not really in a position to negotiate, Northman. My witch told me you'd be standing on the potency of her powers alone at this stage in the ritual."
"You don't wish to hear my deal?"
"Fine. Lay it on me like hot sauce on a hemophiliac."
"You leave here, never to return without invitation from the King, with your life, your pride, and your progeny—and your product, excepting my or my progeny's blood."
"And the witch?"
"The witch dies."
Edgington tapped his upper lip. "Interesting. Interesting. And what about the telepath—or whatever remains of her, and most importantly, her blood, after tonight? My witch assured me I could have her as a reward for my protection and help, in addition to the payments in the form of drainings done to you and your kin, naturally."
Still Eric did not look at me. "My marriage edict protects—"
"Should I care about such things? I do somehow. Call it my sentimentality. But you should find comfort that I would not be in defiance of your precious edict. Not from me, your Excellency. You see, I tasted the delectable Miss Sookie Stackhouse, years and years ago." Edgington's grin made it certain that for the King of Mississippi, Christmas had come early—four days early, to be precise.
Eric's face hardened, those cool eyes now crystals. "My terms have been expressed. You should thank me for the opportunity to retain your dignity, your Majesty."
"Ah. I don't know. Just one more minor hiccup."
"Which is?"
"I don't want to do any of those things." Eric's fangs extended and he lurched at the King, but that was as far as he could go. The warrior vampire was trapped in a radius the size of his own body. The witch's grounding spell. Edgington clapped his hands and roared with laughter. "Oh sweet lord! I do so love magic." He spun on his heel, waved his hand in that fancy way, and advised Madame Lune to proceed.
There are moments in life when during the very event, perspective shifts outside of our narrow viewpoint. We become airborne, beholding the scene from above, and then the moment passes and we are slammed back into our fields of vision. And we have lost our bearings. Where do I go from here? Where do we? It all seemed so silly now. Oh, ha-ha. Remember when we thought our little lives mattered, and our squabbles were battles, and our cares somehow valid? I actually turned to the witch, to laugh about our petty problems while vampire drug lords argued in front of us and discussed our futures as their own bargaining chips.
Harriet Lune would not be smiling any time soon, though, the muscles in her neck as rigid as steel poles. The witch's labyrinth mind remained shut to me but I saw the hate in her eyes, hate for the vampires who she used and who used her in return. Perhaps we were not so different—in circumstance—in character, we were nothing alike. The witch wanted vengeance for the interruptions by the creatures she despised. And vengeance she would take.
"The son will come, and be undone!" She yelled at the blue blaze, her insane voice cracking. No preamble now. "The circle break the bed! Beside the flame, humans come. To rise or rip the dead!"
Alex shot across the grass as if on an invisible skateboard to Sam's grave, as Alcide and Gile raced at it too. The ground beneath me began to rumble, the dirt and rocks plowing up at my feet. Grace and Neal knocked me over as they jumped at something, my balance unsteady from the upheaval of my husband's grave. Soil blasted into my eyes, nose and mouth when I hit the ground. I gagged and wiped my face against my shoulder, my eyes blinded. Next I heard a terrible, ripping sound followed by an inhuman cry of torment, the ripping and tormented noises colliding into a concert of the damned. The minds around me were dark as if asleep. A thunder of movement and then all was silent. Warm hands plucked me from the ground and the fine grain of chiffon rubbed against my eyes. Slowly I blinked open my eyes.
My heart stuttered with revulsion. What the hell had I been thinking? Pretend to already be Mother Nature? I was doing local theater. This witch was the damn studio system. I trailed my wary gaze from my son to the body that lay on the fresh mound of grass and dirt. My husband's body. And beside the desiccated corpse of my husband, a mess of muscle and flesh and bones that I could hardly believe had a head attached to it or a head with blue eyes which tracked me as I bent down.
"Alex," I managed to whisper, swallowing down the bile. Stunned, I turned to the Maker of the mutilated mass by my feet. Eric stood in his place with a blank expression.
This was not vengeance. This was a war crime. None of this had been in what the witch had shown me earlier. The minds of the many spectators had watched, watched still, mesmerized and musical, with an eerie, haunting melody. Right then, it was a relief not to share in their thoughts. The minds of my kin and friends were enough, aching with shock and sadness. My bands smarted against my tender flesh. Act II was shaking out to be a tragedy.
With fresh horror, I surveyed the children and creatures around me, each returned to their previous spot in the floral spiral, dazed and slowly breathing for the humans and weres, their blood-drenched shifts, the glimmering gold a solid red, their faces painted in the red, their hair dripping with it. Eric wasn't so bad after all—shift splattered and torn, pristine compared to the others. But how could one body produce so much blood?
"So many sacrifices," the witch said, beside me again. Untouched by the crime she'd committed.
"You made my..." I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of completing the thought.
Maybe because I had recently seen him, but I found it easier to ask about her disgraceful excavation. It was only his body. Nothing more.
"What is Sam's body doing above ground?"
"All part of the ceremony."
I sucked in a breath. "What do I have to do this time so that Alex is healed?"
She smirked, her grey eyes slanted. "Nothing untoward, cher. Nothing you don't want anyway. I need you to make the Ancient One human."
My stomach dropped. "What? I can't do that. It was just a bad idea."
"It was a brilliant idea. Bring the Ancient One to life, and then maybe you can bring your Shifter to life—and have them both at once! Menage a Sookie!"
I looked briefly at the body of Sam and the body of Alex. There had to be another way. My very stomach revolted at the idea; a spiritual repulsion like the agony caused in my skin by the iron. The witch started laughing then, slapping me playfully on the arm.
"I'm only teasing Sookie," she laughed and pawed at me again. Oh apparently she could smile. Things did amuse her. The Mississippi party actually whooped and whistled at the joke. "Some people have no sense of humor," she said to the King. More laughter from pockets in the mindless crowd.
"What do you really need me to do?"
"Have sex with your husband—oops, that was a slip of the tongue. What I meant to say was, have sex with your ex-husband."
This was more what I had expected. Was this doable? I flicked my eye to Eric. Obviously he was doable. In the future she'd revealed before our tussle, I have sex with Eric and then I die, by Alex draining me. I'd basically done the dying part tonight (and almost the sex part, too). I needed more time to think.
"When?"
"Oh. I thought you would fight me more. Eager are we?"
"When?"
"In a minute."
Less doable. I nodded.
"In the ashes of the fire."
Weird but doable—as long as we were alone. I shrugged.
"After burning Samuel's heart in the fire."
"Not doable," I said.
I got a fistful of lemongrass powder in my face for my comment, and fell down. Again. Heedless, Lune turned to the flame to do her favorite thing—show off her poetry.
"Into the flame, shifter's heart shell, blood of the son, the fire to quell ."
Swearing on my knees, I watched Sam's heart and drops of Alex's blood rise into the air, as if in a zero-gravity tank, and fall into the mystical flame. I screamed as my eyes beheld the withered heart of my husband consumed by the fire in a single burst, and then the fire consumed itself, snuffing out in a whimper. Grace and Neal's cries echoed mine. I looked to them, the tears on their faces reflected in my own misty eyes.
It was just an organ, I reminded myself. Just a dead organ.
I sighed and finally looked fully at the vampire, at the Viking. His eyes were downcast. Who knew what he was thinking? Who knew who he was? I sure as hell didn't. According to psycho witch, Eric and I weren't supposed to just have sex, but to rebuild—or to unmute—our bond as well. Then, from her little freak peek show of my future she'd revealed, Alex would kill me and Eric would revive me and this crazy madwoman thought I would come back as Mother Nature. According to Sam (or sense), that wasn't going to happen.
My gaze fell on Sam's body, at what this woman and all her rage and resentment had done, of how trapped I was by the threats she had laid at my feet, threats against the generations of my family, of my own blood. She had ripped my heart out, just as she had ripped my husband's dead heart out, more than once, and on and on, every time she had spelled or maimed or deceived those that I loved, she had torn my heart from its home. I wasn't Mother Nature, but I was by nature a mother. And hell hath no fury like a mother torn.
That inner inferno roiled through my body. This was the kind that consumed. This was the light of fury and lust and of creation, at the stage of elemental dust. I didn't have to kill her to stop her. Chaos fueled my fire, and I crouched to my feet to pounce on the witch. Lune was already calling out a final incantation: "Ancient's son come and taste, not a precious drop to waste."
Aflame with newfound control, I leapt at her—eager to attack her but not to be attacked. My fire would only consume her this time. But she was quicker. I somersaulted and my cheek cut on the edge of an unearthed rock. How much of Eric's blood had she drank? And how could she resist from touching me? I could see the answer flicker in her mind. A spell from my own spilled blood. I dove for her again. She pirouetted away and resumed her rant, as we danced a waltz of parry and feint.
"On the grave of earth's child, she will die for the wild. But first to feed her, on ash to bed her." Parry. Feint. "Bonded then, he did wed her." Parry. Feint. "Let the song play again, when the lovers no more be twain."
Distracted by her fancy foot work to avoid my tackles, I failed to see Eric until he had tackled me around the waist, our bodies falling onto the warm, violet ash of the fire. Gile, Alcide and Neal's outrage trembled on the floor and in their minds. I was losing control of my expanding, furious flame. Shouts and screams, a frenetic storm of bodies—humans and shifters and weres and vampires—shaking the cemetery in chaos. Eric was in spell-mode, his movements quick and efficient. My flame was not burning him. It was warming him—he had too much of my blood in him, and I had too much of his. My hands were still cuffed behind my back, I was less than a threat to him. This was not how it was supposed to happen.
Eric straddled me across my abdomen, biting into his wrist, when from the corner of my eye, I saw Sam's corpse. And for a moment, my Sam looked just as he had in that place of spirits—real and whole and full of life. Somehow for a moment I had brought him to life. That phrase stuck on me. It's what Lune had said in her vicious joke. "Bring the Ancient One to life." Eric shoved his bleeding wrist over my mouth. Bleed, and then bed. That's what the spell had dictated.
I closed my lips and my eyes, and called up my fire, but by a another name. This was a name that required more effort to command. Sunshine and moonlight raced through my limbs, from my heart to my fingertips, and I thought of home and hearth and friends and family. Collecting the pieces of my heart that were far removed from me, especially Sam. His odd words and impersonal warmth during our visit. But that was not all. I thought of Eric—of the Eric I had fallen in love with, so many years ago. The one who was so full of the joy of living it filled the void of his still, cold heart, who tamed a wild passion of body and soul, the one who had reappeared from time to time since his return and my renewal, the one I wanted for myself.
This was the flame of the living. I could bring Eric to life, to my life. I could bring him home to me. My warmth wrapped around us, and I opened to him the life I had lived without him for the past fifty years, the sunny days and early mornings, the stillness of a summer's afternoon and the quiet of dreaming children. A life I could never have lived with him but at the end of it all, when given a new chance at love, I wanted to share with him, the real him, stripped of all titles, especially that last one I had learned tonight, to live in the ocean warmed by the sun and lit by the moon. No one could touch us there.
He spoke my name and I looked up at him, his blue eyes clear as the Decembers of yesteryear, when we first knew each other. I licked his blood from my lips. He licked my blood from the cut on my cheek. And he didn't need to tell me what he was feeling, because I could feel it, too. Awe and sorrow and joy and peace and a gratitude for experiencing the sun after a thousand years of night.
"I guess we're not twain anymore," I said, scooting up.
"Not quite yet," he replied. Because he was still a vampire. And he wanted things. Craved them.
But there was a battle going on around us. I had done it again—shattered the spells, driven the crowds wild, literally, and birthed bedlam. The vampires, many sporting burns, had turned on their witches. Gile and Grace cowered behind a headstone a few feet away. Two gigantic, white wolves leapt through the fighting horde of chiffon and blood. I thought I saw something red and scaly slither through the mass of limbs, but I could've been imagining it. The coven leader was nowhere to be seen.
At that moment, more players entered the game. "Mom, we're coming," I heard Jennings' voice above the gravelly din of violence. But the first people I saw weren't my children. They weren't even human. Bill stormed in and at his side Freyda, along with a dozen vampires behind them, the royal entourage charging into the madness, calling for the King of Mississippi.
"Feed Alex," Eric said, breaking the iron from my wrists as he flew off me to happily join the fray.
Ducking my head from a severed arm wobbling through the air, I army-crawled to Alex, whose wounds had begun to heal but also to char.
"You burned me a little," he croaked, "and then healed me a little, when your light went from yellow to white."
"Well, I'll heal you all the way now." I gave him the crook of my elbow and he bit, that rush of heat and desire, and now added to it, a dash of home, a pure sprinkle of me. I had chosen to give myself. (Maybe that was a stretch...)
The battle warred on. Eric was nothing but a gold and red streak of death and destruction. No one approached Alex and me, and it wasn't hard to figure out why—a huge scorch mark encircled Sam's grave. It acted almost as a ward to deflect intruders.
Jennings arrived with his sisters as Alex was hopping up from the ground, as bouncy and jittery as he had been the first time he'd drank my blood. How could Eric play it so cool? Quickly I hugged my kids, scolding them for coming and crying for joy that they were safe. Each one had their own tale to tell of the first vampires they had staked. Like mother, like killer kids? I saw their stories flash in my mind, oddly pleased and equally dismayed.
"Go get Neal and Grace," I told Jennings, then turned to Alex. "Kill Vincent. He's at my son's house."
"I'm not a warrior, Sookie. I have failed in every attempt."
"You won't fail tonight," I said, as his Maker's ancient battle cry sounded in the night. "You have my blood and are bonded with your Master. The slimy bastard doesn't stand a chance." For a final coach pep talk effect, I smacked his tukus. "Now git," I ordered and he did.
Adele had gone with her brothers and Alex, but Julianne refused to leave my side. "You look like hell. I'm not going anywhere." Her stubbornness was as legendary as her list of lovers. My eyes scanned the dwindling battle. The white wolves had cornered a fox and a bull. Shifter witches. Eric battled Edgington, while Bill battled Joe. Only a few witches and vampires continued to wrestle amidst the moaning wounded or voiceless fallen. Most were subdued, by choice, fatigue, or chains of silver. I had no idea where Freyda was and still no sign of the priestess. And then I saw that red, skinless thing again, crawling out toward the forest. It wasn't a snake. It wasn't anything I had ever seen before. But I had heard it before. I'd recognize that dark, twisted mind now for the remainder of my life.
And I bolted after it. Julianne followed, her strawberry blonde hair whipping against my shoulder. I didn't have the will to shoo her away. The thick awning of the pines and sycamores blocked out the moon and starlight. I moved carefully through the brush, my sight and hearing heightened beyond human capability, knowing a blast could come at any second, whispering to my daughter of the dangers in this corner of the forest. We almost stepped on a bear trap once and missed setting off a cooker twice, but knowing the cloaking spell had been removed lifted my courage. My fear of something more sinister than metal kept me from asking my daughter to leave my side.
When I heard the growl beside my ear, I thought for sure I was already a goner. The strange grey eyes of the creature glistened in the near dark. The dark that should have been desolate to my gaze. Then something else moved in the shadows, a void of nothing. And that's when the bombs went off.
The blood of a warrior singing in my veins saved me—my hand grabbed the cuff of my daughter and yanked her down, throwing my body over hers and into a tangle of bushes. Droplets of lemon stung across my flesh, a piece of iron jabbed into my leg. More would have come if Julianne hadn't rolled us both over and taken the last burst of lemon for me.
The smell of burnt hair and flesh, and all-purpose cleaner, prickled in my nose. Julianne dug the iron shard out of my thigh, took off her jacket and wiped the lemon from my skin with her sweatshirt sleeve. "What did she get herself into? Damn mama."
"Tell me about it."
We stood up and brushed the bits of leaves and twigs from each other, then looked to the smoking mound. Creeping forward, I pushed my daughter behind me and stopped up short.
There were two bodies. Both female. One dead. One dying.
And finally. No questions. No ambiguity. No forcing meaning into what was not there.
I choose to walk away right now. I choose me. I choose myself.
And I choose for Eric.
Note: Duh-duh-duh. I feel like three foreboding notes are necessary. Okay. I realize there are more questions but I hope many others have been answered. Next chapter ties up probably more loose ends than all put together. Thanks for the well-wishes. Benefit of nausea and bad melon, the spouse lets me chill in bed and write. Costs? The littles think its a five monkeys jumping on a bed day-long revival. (or in my case 3 monkeys)... Cheers and Happy Weekend. Thanks for the reviews. I want to know your thoughts.