Chapter 31

Note: I added what I hope are some clarifying remarks by Eric in the last chapter about his current and recent feelings about Freyda. Once he saw the scope of Freyda's involvement, he had no intention of "making it work." I made sure to add him telling Sookie that Freyda would have no mercy at this point, and that Freyda was no longer his Queen. I am so used to writing Eric as cryptic that I made him more secretive there than I intended! He truly wanted Sookie to understand him (and I you-all him) in the last chapter...hence him asking Sookie to full on read his mind. So the added stuff is at the end of the last chapter. When they are in the tunnel already. If you want to read it. Although I pretty much just explained what I added to it...work in progress, amiright?

Thanks for the reviews! And all I can say is. Buckle up.

Something hard, vibrating against my thigh, woke me up. Something hard, vibrating against my thigh, and playing the classic lyrics, "I'm a sucker for you" woke me up, to be precise. Disoriented, I saw the glow of a phone in Eric's jeans pocket. Knocking the good as dead vampire onto his side, I tugged at the phone until it popped out. The caller's name was my name—well, my maiden name. Mine eyes did roll.

"Hello?" I asked, adjusting to the depthless black of the tunnel and the brightness of the phone.

"Mom!" Jennings cried. "Oh thank god. You're safe. We didn't know. I mean. I got the text from a random number that you'd be home by dawn, and then you didn't show up and the number wouldn't respond. I found your phone locked in the woodshop, realized the number was Eric's and—"

"I'm fine. Just got sleepy and pulled over so I wouldn't doze at the wheel." I glanced at the phone. It was three-thirty in the afternoon?! "I'm coming home. Where is everyone?"

"Neal is at the clinic, for observation by the doc. His family is there too—Grace included. Julianne is there also. To observe the doc for herself—which I hope is fine with you—"

"It is. Never you mind about that."

"Okie-dokie. Adele and I have been watching old videos of dad shift. God. I forgot how badass he was as a lion."

"Sure was." My stomach grumbled. "I'm starving, Jen. I'll be home in an hour."

No need to add that I hoped to be home then. I hung up and shook my head. For starters. I didn't even know how Eric's number was in my phone. I hadn't saved it. Second. Sucker by the Jonas Brothers, really? Throwback. Also. Obvious much? I flicked the flashlight from the phone on, shining the light around the tunnel. It was less a tunnel and more of an oblong cave. Hallelujah! There was a hatch that I found about twenty feet away from Eric that opened to a water silo beside the highway. My eyes burned from the brightness of the day as I heaved myself out. Squinting to my left and then right, I spied my newish truck about fifty yards away.

When I arrived at it, the doors had been shut, the engine turned off, and a note was taped to the windshield. "Recharged battery. Water and muffins inside. Keys in glove. If you are not Sookie Stackhouse and read this and eat the muffins or steal the truck, a vampire will eat you tonight and steal your teeth for his necklace. Love, Cookie."

I shook my head again but did not complain about the muffins. Eric must have outlasted me in staying awake and texted his kooky Cookie. Keeping alert like that was a definite first. Sleeping for a vampire is a biological imperative.

Munching on the muffins—delicious ooey-gooey apple cinnamon goodness—I tried to unpack all that I had learned in the past twenty-four hours. The witch had been a damaged changeling—oops, a damaged genetic anomaly were, like Gile, but nothing like Gile. Her psycho plan had gone belly up—twice, because I can shine like the sun, or glow like, well, must be the moon. My thoughts pinged to another topic, like the random firing of the silver ball in the old arcade game. The blood. So much blood. My blood and Eric's blood and a decanter of blood—where was that decanter now? Not like the witch needed it. And ping to a different topic. My kids and friends involved in the ritual wouldn't remember the worst of it—and all my kids had each killed their first vampires. My heart swelled as much as it shivered at the thought. Ping. Neal may be a new kind of genetic anomaly were. Ping again. An owl had saved me, and I'd talked to that owl, to my Sam. My mind held onto that memory the longest. No pings for some time. It was a counter to all the rest. Like how I would never wear chiffon again, or attend any more naturist BBQs. (Granted—I was sure most of them were lovely people, completely opposed to the death and attempted rebirth of an eighty-year old woman as Mother Nature).

Then ping! All the vampires involved. I needed more than water and muffins to sort them out. The King of Mississippi had wanted to eat me, ran a cartel, and was going to die soon (by convenient accident). The King of Louisiana had been duped by a witch who stalked him almost as much as he stalked me. My ex-lover's vampire son was a science genius and likely hooking up with my granddaughter. Put a pin in that, not a ping. And not to forget, Queen of Oklahoma. There wasn't any sorting out that bag of catnip crazy. Was Eric going to only divorce her and strip her of her title? He said she'd no longer be Queen. But she could still live. Recalling the red and black of that noxious nimbus cloud he'd created when he'd last thought of his wife, I'd say the weather was deadly with a chance of serious bloodshed. No mercy couldn't mean much else.

And that left no one but the Viking. What did I feel for him? Certainly I understood him better. I even admired him, in a way. I wanted him in a very physical way. Gah. The thought of him torched that fire in me like a pyro over a grill with lighter fluid. And then there were all the soft and delicate and intimate things I had shared with him in my glowing light; the moonbeams of home I had sheltered him with as we were encircled by harrows and horrors. The music that played between us—that melody that was as sweet as it was bitter, as known as it was novel. How I had told the vampire something which I had never told another soul—not even Sam—and he hadn't flinched or feared or threatened or trembled. No, he had accepted me. Tenderly, he had placed my hands on his face, and invited me into the only home a vampire calls his own—his mind, and asked for me to know him.

And I did want to know him—that Eric. The Eric I was beginning to believe was real. The Ancient One, as Sam had said, who I wanted to seek and who, as Sam had said, was possible for me to reach.

But who had also in his heavy-handed way arranged for me to go with him to Oklahoma? As "his." That was my title. "You are mine." As if that is an acceptable title. Or offer. Or arrangement. Bonded or not. I was mine. Or if I was anyone's—I was my kids. They kinda claim their moms, regardless.

I swallowed my last bite of muffin and pulled into my house. Jennings and Adele were sitting on the back porch swing. Smiling, I joined them there. Still for just a moment. The tangerine sunset swept across the yard, washing everything in orange-copper hues. I had spent most of the day underground in the sunless dark. The low rays of the sun put me whole in a way nothing else could. We started singing Christmas carols, Adele's pleasant soprano and Jennings' mild tenor drowning out my off-key but robust attempts to harmonize.

After a giggling, raunchy version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I asked Jennings if he'd noticed anything else in the shed. If the witch had put my phone in the wood-shop, then maybe she had put my purse in there too. It would have been the thoughtful thing to do, considering that in direct connection of her meddling in my life, my car had been "frisked" past its use. My purse had been in my car, along with my phone. Stood to reason, and I stood up.

The sun blipped beneath the horizon as I strolled across the yard to the shed, humming and smiling. An almost smokey, citrus scent wafted through the forest trees and I thought I heard the hoot of an owl in a nearby branch. I flipped on the switch in the shed, intaking the sight of the wood chips and half-finished furniture. I walked to the main workbench that functioned as a desk. My purse was underneath it. But that wasn't my current concern. Stacks of receipts were piled underneath a hammer. At some point, I'd need to go through the work orders and refund the money to those who had paid up front.

"Mom!" Jennings mind called out to me, before it all went blank, and as his sister's screams ripped apart the twilight calm. The smell of burnt lemon prickled in my nostrils. For a horrible minute, my mind shut down, and then it all rushed back to me—the screams, the smell, the void. The void that was right behind me. I spun around and my world ended with a final soprano scream.

Jennings hung limply in one hand, her fingers clenched around his neck, drenched in his blood. Adele swayed in the other. She had no blood to drip.

"Why?" I sobbed to the coven were-witch who shadowed the woodshop door, who was neither were nor witch anymore, but vampire. And a terrifying vampire—her eyes reddish and her hair a wild, snowy white, her body naked and scarred.

"Choose one, Sookie. The daughter who looks like you or the son who thinks like you."

I could hardly see her through the stream of my tears, my uncontrollable, wracking tears, the tears that would never stop from falling. And I fell with them to the floor, curled over into a ball, heaving in sorrow, and swaying back and forth as a rowboat in a tempest.

"The girl then." A sickly thud hit the floor. I stopped rocking and looked up, my hair a web in my face. I watched her bite into her arm and feed my daughter with her blood.

"No!" I yelled, staggering up onto my feet. My fire didn't need to be summoned. It burst over me and I ran at Harriet Lune, a trail of light behind me. She threw Adele's body down, and I leaped over my children's corpses, crashing into her. There was no pleasure for her this time. No ecstasy before the inferno. Her screams of torment were the songs of vengeance to me, the sound of an empty justice. I melded my fingers to her face, pouring all my rage and grief and agony into her horrid soul.

But the witch had come prepared, she stabbed me in the stomach with a iron shiv. The fire puffed into smoke. My eyes bulged and I gagged on the pain, clutching at my bubbling wound and faltering onto my knees. A random worry came to mind that I'd have to buy Pam a new green sweater.

Crazed and covered in smoking, charcoal burns, she pointed to my daughter and laughed. "I will be her Maker! I told you, we are a people of nature, not harm. We are creators. This was my destiny!"

"You tell yourself that," I wheezed, "but while I rest in the Summerlands with my Sam, you'll die and roast in hell."

The witch stepped in front of me, the bloody iron shiv in her hand. "Good bye, Sookie. It has been a pleasure."

"The pleasure was all yours."

An owl hooted once more and the witch raised her arms.

"No," breathed a soft voice from the shadows of the lawn.

The witch stopped, unable to move. She looked around as Eric stepped into the light flooding out from the woodshop door.

"Sookie, do you want to kill her, or would you like her to kill herself?"

I shook my head, leaning back against the door, my children's bodies stretched out before my eyes. Blood pouring out onto my lap.

"Very well. She kills herself."

The witch began to scream as she stabbed herself with a wooden branch her unintended Maker handed to her, the Maker whose blood she had stolen from my own house, drank from my own crystal. I found little justice in her wailing now, no sense of anything, as in a high-wheeling crescendo of noise she pierced her own heart and knew the true death.

Eric flew to my side. I didn't even turn away or fight him off as he fed me his blood. Afterwards, I couldn't even say if I had drank it. Dazed, in the dark, I watched him feed my children. But what was the point of that? I leaned over and closed my daughter's eyes. She would return. I knew it. And I dreaded it. And I could not stop it or bare to remember it. Then I crawled over to my Jennings and threw myself over his chest, weeping, willing myself to hear his mind again. "Come back to me, my son. Come back to me."

The owl landed on my shoulder, nipping at my cheek. "No," I moaned at it. "Why didn't you save him, Sam? Why didn't you take his spirit away?"

The owl nipped at me again.

"Sookie," Eric said. "I think the owl is trying to show you something."

I unbowed my head. Eric was kneeling in front of me, pointing over my shoulder. I followed in the direction of his finger. My Great-grandfather shimmered under the leaves of a willow tree. Gasping, I ran towards him, tripping along the way.

"Jennings is gone," I sobbed. "And Adele will wake as a vampire."

"Yes, I know my dear. A loss this deep cuts through the planes of space and time. We feel when a spark of the fae is dimmed." A gossamer tear leaked from his eye.

"Is there nothing you can do?"

"There is nothing to be done for your girl child."

"I thought this gift would keep my children safe. I thought I could keep them safe."

"They were safe, safe in your love and in your light and in your life. Safety is not the same as being free from peril. They were safe. They were not spared. Who can tell why that is?"

But I knew why it was. It was because of me. Me with this cocktail of other creature's blood—even the witch's blood who killed my children. Some glimmer had to exist. Some hope.

"Is Jennings in the Summerlands?" I asked, staring intently at the ermine beauty of my princely Fae kin.

"He has not been invited. It is a not a gift he has earned on his own."

My hopes wilted to the ground, and I along with them. My knees rested on the roots of the willow, crushing my cheek into the bark. I could almost here the sap slushing through the wood. Hear the groans of the branches as they grew.

"The sacred willow is the tree of both our realms. It is in the Summerlands and the Faery. It is on earth and with Mother Earth."

So many moments of late had happened in a loop. This was yet another cycle. Breaking to my knees. Comforted by my Great-grandfather. Mourning a bottomless loss. Craving rest. A rest in the Summerlands.

"I saw Sam," I said. "He told me I'd been to the Summerlands. How is that possible?"

My Great-grandfather rapped his cane against the tree. "Very intriguing."

"Did I go there?"

"You did not go there. You called that place to you. It lives within you. It is your invitation to reside there, now become a part of you—as all fairy lands and your own land now do. Some invitations can come and go, some rescinded, some can never be renewed or returned. Your life is tethered to the places you call home." He smiled with his lips, and I basked in even that small grace of his face. "That must be the way Mother Nature views your transformation. She takes for granted the eternal seasons of her world. Summerlands is but one season. She holds the rest in her hands, including her own land of summer."

"I'm sorry. You're talking about her as if she were a real person."

"But she is real." My Great-grandfather crouched down in front of me, at once graceful and elderly. "She is the face we see when we witness a midnight rose bloom, when we wonder at an eagle in flight, when we examine the grooves of a tree." I watched that ancient, softly-glowing hand lovingly touch the willow bark.

"Do you know willows are the healers of their kind? The protectors of the forest? That through their roots, they send nutrients and salvation out to the other trees of their woodland? Seeking the lost and needy and dying? One willow can save another from the brink of extinction. It is a tragic thing for a willow tree to live without another of its kind. Together they are greater than the sum of their equal parts. I am glad this willow is not alone." He touched my cheek. "There is hope for him still, Sookie. His spark is dimmed not extinguished, but you must choose."

"Choose what?"

"Choose what you are willing to give up for your son."

It wasn't a question. I'd give up anything for him. I said as much.

"Then be the willow in the woods."

"But which woods?"

"You already know which is required."

My Grand-father's misty eyes gazed past me. "Your test is come. For your sake, I hope you do well. You failed the last test you were given." The vampire behind me said nothing in reply.

A brush of his papery lips against my cheek and my Great-grandfather was gone. Reeling, that's how it had been the last time I had seen him, that must be how I would ever feel around him. Using the tree as support, I pulled myself up and hurried to my son. My pace quickened as I brushed past Eric.

My eyes would not stray to Adele. Jennings could have been sleeping, the wound in his neck hidden by his collar. Eric had cleaned off his blood. I wouldn't think how. My knees buckled and I crawled on all fours to him. "Be the willow in the woods," the words of a mantra I couldn't explain but whose meaning I instinctively knew. Just as I knew what else I must give. My experience with the witch, with Eric had all been practice for this.

Gently, I lay over my son again and poured all of my light into him, all the starlight and sunlight and moonlight. The precious moment of his birth, as I held him flesh against my chest, the heat of his tiny body in my arms, the sunny day as a one-year old when he had answered my thought with his mind, and I knew that for the first time in my life, I was not alone. The bright smiles of his playful boyhood days. The passion in his eyes about his work with his young patients. The fire of his love for his daughters, and his sorrow for his first broken heart. My kindred spirit with my fairy spark. This warmth came from every inch of me, and when it had passed, something left with it forever.

Before I looked, I knew, and raising my head, saw his eyes. My eyes. But that was not all I had shared with him to call his own.

"I feel different, mom. Strange."

"Yes, I imagine you do."

Nothing in his appearance would suggest it. But I recalled the feeling when it had happened for me. I was certain he could feel the same belonging. He lifted his hand, rubbing the tips of his thumb to his fingers. Suddenly his mind stirred with memory.

"The witch!" he said aloud, starting to sit up. I rested my hand on his shoulder.

"She's gone."

Jennings sighed and laid back down. "Why do I feel different?"

"Because I gave you a gift."

"Which gift?"

"My invitation to the Summerlands. It was the only place that would call you back from so far away. The only place to call you back to life, since you are also fae."

Comprehension dawned on his face and he spoke, "You won't be able to go there with dad."

My gaze drifted to the rafters of the wood-shop, where the owl silently watched. "No," I said, "it is your home now. Not mine."

A different type of sorrow streamed down my cheeks as I saw the bird fly away.