XI.
March 2015
I still didn't understand why we were meeting at Hunter's house. Hunter had just turned 14 and in recent months I had been trying to help him work on reading vampire minds, in addition to offering general moral support. He was much better at reading vampires, or at least me, than I had been as a human. But maybe part of it was that Hunter was already very locked on reading me and so he just sort of had to pick up my signature in it's new wavelength. We'd talked about that idea quite a bit. But in any case, here it was at 1 am in the morning and we were in Hunter's room. Niall was already there, chatting with Hunter when I popped in. They got along pretty well it seemed. Even though Hunter's room was no better than it had been last fall, Niall seemed as if he really enjoyed Hunter and I knew that he had visited him fairly regularly.
After saying hello to me, Niall literally seemed to have frozen time, and Hunter, for that matter, so the two of us could discuss his plan. Once I understood what he was proposing, I flat out refused. When he asked me to bind Hunter, I thought he was crazy. First, drawing the blood of a child, even a teenager, seemed repugnant to me. Second, and really more importantly, it was illegal, which considering my proud status as a lawyer, made it out of the question. Third, as I pointed out, what was the point of a six month old vampire binding anyone? My blood could be superseded by just about any vampire's blood.
If he was seriously worried that someone would try to take control over Hunter, we should ask Eric, I told him. Eric didn't know, at least I didn't think he knew, that Hunter was a telepath. There were very few things that I wouldn't share with Eric but Hunter was strictly a 'need to know' issue with me. I hadn't even been too thrilled with Niall knowing. I wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of Hunter having a blood bond at all, really. But if Niall really thought one was needed, Eric was clearly a better option than I was. I'd explain to Eric about Hunter's gift and I was sure that Eric knew me well enough to know why I'd kind of kept the information under wraps for all this time. Niall would have none of it. That was when he mentioned the other part of his plan.
"It will work fine if you exchange blood with me first. Then it will supersede any possible vampire bond."
I looked at him with frank suspicion. Exchange blood with a fairy? Why? An exchange, a formal exchange? It roused my suspicions about what Niall's plan really entailed. And besides, vampires had been having fae blood for centuries and none of them ever gained anything other than intoxication and a really bad hangover, at least if Pam was to be believed. What was the point here?
"Grandfather, if there was something to be gained by having fae blood, why is it that vampires never get more than a temporary effect from fairy blood? What you propose doesn't even make sense to me. If you worry about Hunter, you need a lasting solution. That would be Eric, not me."
"You do not understand the difference between blood taken and blood conferred. This would be a gift. A gift of magic. It would enhance your blood and be designed to give your blood a potency that perhaps even one as old as Eric does not have."
"Yeah, well, that doesn't sound like something that I'm going to do without talking to Eric first, Grandfather. It's definitely not happening today, and I don't know that it's going to happen at all. I still don't want any of us breaking the law. Hunter is under the age of consent for anything."
Niall looked at me and said, "This is a moral issue and deals with the need to safeguard Hadley's son. It is not about human law. There are higher laws, yes?"
"Then we should still ask Eric to do it. I'm sure if we explain it to Eric, he'll have a way to do it that is both legally acceptable to me and likely to be more binding than anything I could offer Hunter. And you're still not telling why he needs to be safeguarded. From what? If he needs to be protected, then Eric is the best bet."
"We don't need to involve Eric."
"Grandfather, I can definitely tell you I'm not doing anything without more information as to why we'd need to bind Hunter, your methods and especially I'm not doing anything without talking to Eric about it. Whatever I do affects Eric. I'm not making any such decision without his being fully availed of what the plan is, and without his agreeing with it."
"So he really is your sire? You need his permission, then?" He looked at me with an eyebrow raised.
Oh, if he was trying to bait me, bait me with my pride and independence, there was something seriously wrong, I told myself. Did he actually think I would fall for that line? He was hard to read just then. But I was sure, absolutely 100% sure that he was covering something up. How could that be? The Fae can't lie. This was something very layered and twisted into what was pretty much a lie to me but still truth to him.
"No, it has nothing to do with his being my sire, Grandfather. He's really my partner, my lover. I won't contemplate doing anything with blood that doesn't involve his knowledge."
Niall looked down at me with narrowed eyes. "You still share blood? I thought that was unhealthy among your kind?"
"Let's say what we do is none of your business, okay? You're always so intrusive into my private life. Now release Hunter and I'll talk to Eric about what you propose, assuming you can give me more information about all of what you want to do, beyond just the obvious. You can come to talk to us both tomorrow night, okay? Now for heaven's sake would you let Hunter go so he can go to bed? He has school in the morning."
In the six months since I'd been turned I had adapted to life as a vampire fairly well. I was still having some tactile hypersensitivity issues at times and I still didn't liked to be touched by most people. I was very used to Eric, Pam, Rico and Claudine, but somewhat less so to others I counted as friends. Humans were a bit less of a problem. Weres, weres and the like were also not quite as intense as the vampires and Fae could be. Highly magical people were a challenge for me. Touching magical people enhanced reading them, and I thought that part of the intense sensation came from just that fact. But still, I thought I was pretty much okay. I had overcome a lot of my auditory hypersensitivity as well, and those were the two things that had really bothered me most. The keen sense of smell and sharp vision were actually pleasant, as was the greater strength. It was easy to see why vampires felt so superior. I tried not to get carried away with that idea, though. It would be counterproductive to my work, which was based on a more egalitarian view of the world that didn't quite complement the vampire worldview. But I thought I had adapted fairly well.
Looking at my adaptation to life as a vampire from Eric's perspective, however, the real problem was still the hunger issue. I was still basically living on True Blood, which had Eric very annoyed. Whenever we argued, it was always about when, how or even if I chose to get blood. And there were many, many arguments. Pam had tried to forge a solution by hiring a phlebotomist to draw blood from donors. I was amazed that she even had a line up of people who wanted to donate to me. Eric was not amused. His philosophy was that I needed to get over it already and be a vampire. The question in my mind was whether I would ever be the sort of vampire that Eric or anyone else expected me to be. I was… different. I played by my own rules and I was rather troubled by the fact that Eric didn't seem able to accept that. I often felt that I had to tread carefully with him. It made me feel like I had to be very reserved and I didn't like that.
In November, Stan had visited New Orleans and spent time talking to me. Stan had an odd fondness for me. I remember when I used to be really scared of Stan. But I guess I had earned his respect from all the way back in days when I went to Dallas with Bill. He always said I had moxie and still called me the Firebrand. While he might have been envious that I'd been able to keep and even expand my 'gift' he instead seemed really pleased. I think he was still hoping that Barry might agree to be turned eventually. It seemed that the slow and steady consumption of vampire blood was the key thing in Stan's mind as to how Eric had managed to help me preserve my telepathic ability. Barry was not, however interested in vampire blood or being turned. He worked for the FBI much of the time of late. Stan mentioned to me that Eric seemed rather worried that I mostly got by on True Blood. I was more than willing to admit I didn't want to bite people. I didn't even really like touching most people still, so why would I want do something as personal as bite them? Stan was later polite enough to tell Eric that I was just really neurotic about the whole business out of my earshot. However, his discussion with Eric incited an argument between Eric and me. Stan had to go and point out that what really mattered was that I could actually do it when needed, as I had when I'd 'gotten shot in Tulsa'. I had not considered carefully enough that Cameron, the King of Oklahoma, and Stan were on such cordial terms as to discuss... goings on.
As Eric came stamping down the hallway to my office with Stan traipsing behind him, I seriously considered just popping out of my office. I could feel the anger preceding him. Suddenly, I got this really clearly focused apology beaming my way from Stan.
It simply never occurred to me that he didn't know you got shot in Tulsa, Sookie! He seems… rather disturbed. How did you manage to omit that little detail?
Well, just wonderful. I was in the middle of writing to Russell's husband Bart about a legal matter on which he wanted a second opinion and I really didn't want to leave my office. Besides, Eric would know I'd just been there and skedaddled because he was mad. And that would just make it worse.
It wasn't really as bad as it sounded. Okay, maybe it was as bad as it sounded, but it had turned out fine so it didn't really matter. I gotten shot protecting Jerome Lewis, the Oklahoma Were, who was going to testify in a vampire court convened by the King of Oklahoma to investigate claims that the Area 2 Sheriff in Tulsa was extorting services from him. Lewis owned a BMW car dealership and a vampire, Thomas Porter, was taking leased cars in his Sheriff's name, not paying for them and often returning them wrecked or damaged. He'd taken three already in the past six months and was trying to get a fourth to replace one he claimed Reynolds had just crashed. While all vampires loved to drive fast, not all were good drivers it seemed. I'd gone to Tulsa not long after I'd been turned to try to push the investigation of the Were's claims, which were originally made against the Area 2 Sheriff, Bobby Reynolds. Thomas Porter was the second to the Bobby Reynolds and had been for all of about nine months. From collecting information from several sources, I had come to suspect that Porter was also extorting money from other people in Area 2, and it was really an ugly mess because everyone blamed Bobby Reynolds. To me, it seemed obvious that Bobby was not the problem, since he'd been Sheriff for more than fifteen years and nothing like these incidents had ever happened in Tulsa. Jerome Lewis was the only person brave enough to step forward and complain directly to the Alliance. Cameron, the King of Oklahoma was forced to open an investigation of Bobby under the terms of the Alliance and his investigators reported not just to him, but to me as well. I didn't think Cameron thought it was Bobby either.
When I was talking to Jerome one night outside his dealership I had one of those little flashes that I guess you just get, plus I had that super acute hearing. I heard the crack of a rifle and just knew. I teleported right in front of Jerome and even though he was a bit bigger than I am, the bullet, intended for him, hit me. In the chest. I can officially say that being shot when you're a vampire hurts every bit as much as being shot when you're a human. The bullet working its way out is no fun either. As we lay flat on the ground, with me bleeding quite a bit, it really gave me pause for thought when I recalled all the times that Eric had gotten shot or otherwise injured protecting me when I was human. But anyway, I got shot, Jerome didn't. I lost a fair amount of blood and Jerome insisted that since I protected him, he wanted to give me blood. Considering how dizzy and weak I felt, I took him up on it. I actually bit him. Briefly. I was apprehensive not just because I'd never bitten anyone other than Eric, but because I was afraid I would start and not be able to stop. I should have known better. I'm an utter control freak. I took enough to be polite, stopped and said I could make do with True Blood for the rest later. Then I tracked down the rat bastard who shot at him and discerned that he was hired by one Thomas Porter who was the only one Jerome had ever dealt with on those BMW 7 Series cars that were getting ruined. I considered it a really successful liaison investigation that proved Bobby Reynolds innocent of any wrong-doing. Still, I knew the central point in Eric's mind would be that I had gone to Oklahoma, on my own, refusing his suggestion to take someone else with me, stubbornly insisting I was fine on my own as a two weeks old vampire, and that I'd gotten myself shot. On purpose, since I chose to take the bullet for a Were I hardly knew. And I'd 'neglected' to mention it to him. This would not be a happy revelation. Maybe I could spin it by telling him that I'd fed off the Were? Not likely. About the best I could say was that the guy who shot me was either too cheap or too dumb to be using silver bullets, a point I'd reflected on while watching the blood oozing out of my chest wound. It was, frankly, a good night to be a vampire since I'd have been killed if I'd had the same thing happen as a human. Not that I'd have gone jumping in front of the Were before I'd been turned, but now things were slightly different and the man had trusted me to try to protect him and his family so justice could prevail. Jerome was really brave and deserved protection.
Eric was already not in good humor during Stan's visit because Stan was also trying to smooth over problems between Eric and Roberto. Things had not been friendly between them for more than a month after I had been turned and shown up in Vegas. Whatever words they'd had within Pam's earshot must have been sweet talk in comparison to whatever was said right before I'd left for home back in early October. I hadn't wanted to delve too deeply into their disaffection. I hit the tip of the iceberg when I caught a brief thought from Roberto later on that night I awoke in Eric's arms. Roberto didn't know right away that Eric and I were definitely still together. When he first saw me a bit later in the evening, at a slight distance, I caught a forceful wisp of a thought about how 'invaluable' I was as an asset. Then he caught Eric's scent all over me. A fait accompli, as they say. I immediately picked up on his disappointment. In combination with the whole elevator business, it made it very clear to me that in spite of the fact that Eric couldn't really know Roberto's exact mind on the subject of me, he had been able to guess enough to be very, very angry. I still couldn't think badly of Roberto. He was thinking like a guy, and like a vampire King, and really one couldn't blame him because that's exactly what he was. Eric wasn't quite so charitable.
Eric didn't discuss any of it with me but then he always thought I was very naïve. Really, I didn't want to get into it with him. After all, I could only confirm all his worst thoughts about how Roberto perceived me. When I went back to finish in late October, Eric sent Pam with me, even thought I'd just been in Tulsa on my own. Pam stuck to me like glue. I thought for a time that maybe Eric did know about my getting shot, but in the end it was obvious to me that Pam was just with me because I was in Vegas. Roberto was always very warm and pleasant to me, and even reasonably pleasant to Pam. It was easy for me to read his very evident distaste whenever Eric's name was mentioned. Liesel acted confused about what was going on though she clearly knew they had argued. She said Stan would fix it and shrugged the whole thing off. But if they had started arguing because of me, I had the definite feeling that they had moved on to arguing about other things as well. When Stan arrived in NOLA in mid-November, he chided me playfully, saying I was such a lot of trouble. Roberto had told him quite honestly from his perspective that Eric had started the whole thing and that it stemmed from jealousy. He left out the part about how Eric's jealousy was, in fact, well grounded from the standpoint of how Roberto regarded me. Stan had somehow managed to grasp the truth, nonetheless. Stan was always quick to assess things and I guess he knew both Roberto and Eric, pretty well. But, although the focus of Stan's visit was really smoothing out tensions, along the way he'd succeeded in getting Eric really riled over my little investigation in Tulsa.
The door to my office swung open without so much as a knock and the doorknob left a lovely impression in the drywall when it impacted it. Six feet five inches of not very happy Viking filled the doorway.
"Can you tell me what the fuck happened to you in Tulsa?"
"Language? Manners?" I said, narrowing my eyes and shaking my head. I really was not a fan of people storming into my office cursing at me and leaving dents in my walls. "I solved a problem before it got messy and saved Bobby Reynolds a lot of trouble with Cameron. The Were thing, remember? The Were who was being victimized by the Sheriff's second? I found out about it and it was all fixed?"
"I was thinking about something more personal? Something which I had to learn about from someone else? Like maybe a scenario in which in which you were harmed? Something you were not up for because you're never going to be up for anything if you're too squeamish to properly sustain yourself?" Arms crossed, expression even crosser.
"I was fine in Tulsa, Eric. I did what I needed to do to take care of the situation. There were no serious problems."
"Being shot isn't a serious problem? Interesting perspective. I seem to recall when I've been shot feeling more than a little peaked. I remember usually bleeding quite a bit. But evidently, you don't seem to feel that's an issue."
"I was fine. I didn't see the need to alarm you over it." Meanwhile I was practically trembling in my chair thinking the jig was up on this one.
He looked at me darkly and said, "Oh, really? Really, you didn't? Sometimes you piss me off so much I just don't even know what to say to you, Sookie." He was practically spitting he was so mad.
"Okay, I got shot. It's true. The Were gave me some of his blood. And then I was fine, Eric. Really."
"I am already tired of the fucking brave routine in combination with the I won't feed routine. Somehow, the two are just at cross purposes in my mind. I wonder why?"
I could sense Stan outside the door, out of my sight line. How embarrassing. Stan really wanted to go back to Dallas right now. Who could blame him? I'd like to go to Dallas too, or just about any place that would remove me from the blazing gaze of Eric's eyes. I tried to regroup.
"Do we really have to have this argument with Stan here? Eric, it happened a month ago. It's done. I'm clearly fine. Bobby took care of the shooter and the culprit who hired him with Cameron's blessing after a trial. There's simply no point in making a fuss about any of it. It's done."
"Why did they shoot at you? Or did they shoot at the Were and you got in the way?"
Hmmm. A question I couldn't answer without making things worse. Eric just knew me so well… And if I admitted to him I took the bullet for a Were I didn't even know, he'd be absolutely furious. And what if he asked me where I was hit? Even worse.
"Look, I'm sorry you're upset but I'm not discussing this further. There's no point. I'm fine. You need to give me the space to do my job. I was just trying to liaise with the Weres involved and Bobby's people. And someone for Porter, the guilty party, went after the Were who made the complaint. It's really simple. This stuff happens all the time and you know it."
He glowered at me. "Simple? Simple? Ever think of the fact that if they were shooting at a Were they might want to use silver bullets? If they didn't, they were hacks and you were very lucky. You're not up to being shot with silver. And I'm not up to losing you because of some fucking Were. I never should have let you go without a bodyguard. And I won't ever again."
I heard Stan shifting around outside and thinking that he really had no interest in being in the middle of this situation and that he came to deal with the strain between Eric and Roberto. I was the one thing that Stan had seen that could make Eric lose his implacable cool. This was so embarrassing. To me and to Stan. It was a good time to know when to totally back down.
"I'm sorry you're so upset." Really I was. It was precisely the reason why I hadn't told him- I didn't want to upset Eric or worry him. "The next time you can definitely send someone with me. I promise. Okay?"
"You fed from the Were? You bit him." He looked at me intently on this point. I considered how badly my answer might go astray. I'd fed from a male Were. He knew I liked Were blood. It was tasty. Sometimes I had donated blood from Emily, our housekeeper. In a glass. I didn't feed from humans or Weres directly. But if I started, the deal was that I was supposed to feed from women because I was attracted to men. It was a reciprocity thing for his having only male donors. Of course, there was the emergency aspect of it, but really Eric was so incredibly jealous at times. It was hard to know whether he'd just be happy that I'd bitten someone, or if he'd be dismayed that it was a man and a Were on top of it. I didn't want the fact I fed from a male Were to get him going. Alright, I might as well come totally clean, since I knew it would be revisited again in private and there was no way he was going to let it drop without getting every detail. There was no way there would be much more drama than this in front of Stan. So he might as well hear it all.
"I did. From his wrist. He insisted. But not a lot. Then, I went after the shooter. Carefully, of course." I steeled myself, knowing what was coming.
He leaned forward onto my desk and looked directly into my eyes. His voice was even lower as he replied,
"You went after a shooter who still had a gun? By yourself, after you'd been shot and lost what precious little blood you had on board in your two week old form? Fantastic. I'm so impressed with your judgment on these ventures. What if it had been a trap? And don't give me the all-knowing telepathy crap. You are not setting foot out of this fucking compound without someone guarding you. Period. End of story. It's either that or you will quit the liaison shit. Really, you so infuriate me at times, Sookie." He looked infuriated, too. He practically shook as he spoke and loomed toward me as if straining not to be much more emphatic. But no mean sire voice, no touching me roughly because he was angry. Eric's word was as good as gold. He frankly looked like he was struggling to keep his word. It wasn't lost on me that I'd thought of all of his points after I'd done all that stuff. Which was… a little late. Eric hated my 'where angels fear to tread' behavior with a passion. He had for years and he was still so worried about my getting hurt, or running out of fuel because I didn't want to feed and being vulnerable to harm.
I bit my lip and just nodded. He stomped back to his offices with Stan, who was relieved not to be caught in the midst of a domestic dispute any longer. I felt like mentally shouting at him that he had started it. But I didn't.
Several hours later, after Stan was out in the Quarter, Eric came back and asked about the Were again. The wrist. Not a lot. Then he asked where I took the bullet. That ended all consideration of whether I'd bitten anyone of any sex, any race or anything. The look he gave me made me wince. That was how I ended up with Rico as my permanent bodyguard. Then he laid into me on the fact that if I'd finally fed directly from the Were, why couldn't I do it every day? I sighed heavily and thought about visiting Banff just for old times sake. I could leave flowers again on Madeleine's grave. Have a drink in the bar at the Banff Springs Hotel. Relax. Not be in so much trouble.
The battle over how I fed was endless. Eric considered me delicate and frangible. I thought I was just fine. I just had complete control over my hunger. I never woke ravenous. I only had real blood from Pam's supply of donors if I was going to go do something where I might need an extra boost. And I was free from all the risks a new vampire might normally pose to friends and family. I went for 'drinks' with Claudine (me True Blood, Claudine invariably something sweet like hot chocolate). I'd even visited Claude and Claudine at their home in Monroe. I played with Amelia and Tray's children. I shored up Hunter when he got frustrated with being a teenager gifted with too much insight into his peers' minds. I never thought about any of them as food. Food came in a bottle or a bag, or arrived in a glass. It was not in corporeal form unless there was no other possible choice. Eric did not approve. He didn't get it. He didn't want to get it. It made me feel like I was a really lousy vampire at times.
In my mind, the only reason to be a vampire was to stay with Eric. All of the rest of it, maybe with the exception of being able to extend my telepathic net wider than ever and not getting killed in a situation like the one in Tulsa, was just something for me to set aside. Take what is useful and ignore the rest was my attitude. The hunger, the anger, the rampant sexuality, the violence. I just wasn't interested. I had found a way to turn down the volume of it all, to tune it out. While Eric seemed frustrated with my disconnect, the one who watched with seemingly endless fascination was Niall. He seemed intrigued by the fact that I could somehow exert control over what I guess was the primal drive for being a vampire- the lust for blood. He had remarked that I seemed like a much, much older vampire in that sense. But then of course, Niall had always had his own agenda and I was sure that on some level he thought it was immensely convenient to have a vampire relation who wouldn't go after any of them. But Niall didn't really understand me either. Everyone always took the simplistic approach.
There were things I just felt I couldn't share with anyone. Lately, I often felt that Eric just didn't get me anymore. It made me sad and frustrated. After a decade of feeling that he really understood me, we were at a sort of impasse. It was ironic that in becoming vampire, I had become harder for him to comprehend. I just wasn't Eric's style of vampire at all. I wasn't really anyone's.
I was different from any vampire I knew or had read about. I had a different set of skills. Very different.