Chapter 8
AN- If I may take just a moment to once again thank my long suffering beta for
the constancy of her help and support, even through me somehow managing to
disable my spell check, thus multiplying her workload. She has the patience of a Saint
and I am ever grateful for her. Thank you, Northman Maille.
- Ramon -
Sookie opened the door to the sunroom and the three of them stepped inside. As the door clicked shut behind them, the walls and ceiling lit up with their idyllic hillside scenery.
"Dearest," Eric said with a slight hesitation in his voice, "are you quite certain you see no doors in Ermessen's head?"
"I've wondered about that, myself," she replied. "But if she has any, I can't see them."
"Very well then. The passage you were looking for the last time you were here should be easy to find now." Eric took several steps into the room, taking in everything he saw. It was all very calming and picturesque. On the rare occasions he found himself dredging up memories of daylight, they were never scenes like this. Though he supposed he must have similar remembrances. After all, his homeland was a famously beautiful place.
Sookie trailed after him, her curiosity on high alert. "Why should the door be any easier to find now?"
"Because it is very likely open now," he answered bluntly. "Ermessen left her office moments ago, in a rush to go to the aid of the man-boy, who in all likelihood is her son. Where were the ducks?"
"In the back corner. There's a pretend pond back there." Sookie took his hand and led the way to the back end of the room, with Oliver following warily behind them.
The far corner was painted and equipped to resemble a small pond, complete with potted cattails and tall grass, as well as rubberized, molded chairs that looked sort of like rocks, if you didn't look too closely.
Sure enough, a section of the mirrored flooring representing the water was now open, exposing a stairway leading down.
Sookie started toward the stairs, but was stopped by Eric's arm.
"Before we go down, look around," he said. Aside from the opening, what is different from when you were here last?"
She looked around. "The ducks aren't here."
"They likely went down to go to the real water. Oliver?"
"The pail," Oliver responded, pointing to a shiny bucket half filled with grain and sitting on the floor near one of the seats. "It was hanging on the fence before."
"Put it back where it was," Eric instructed.
Oliver hung the bucket from a hook on the fence. The hook notched downward only about an inch before there was a metallic click, followed immediately by a low hydraulic hum sounding something like a garage door opener. They all watched as the missing piece of flooring reappeared from beneath the piece beside it and slid neatly into its place.
"So elaborate," Sookie murmured.
"She has had a very long time to plan it," Eric said. "It would not speak very highly of her if it had been a simple thing to discover. Oliver, open it up again."
Oliver took the pail back off the hook and they all watched again in reverse.
Eric stepped down onto the first stair and turned back to face Sookie. Taking her hands in his, he said, "Sookie, I must have your word your own safety will be your primary consideration during our little expedition."
"Of course," she said. "And yours."
"No," he corrected. "For the remainder of the evening, you are our primary concern. Mine, Oliver's and yours. I must insist on this point. Oliver, if at any point you detect the scent of faeries, call a warning and immediately remove Sookie back to our room."
Oliver nodded his assurance and Eric returned his attention to Sookie. "Being of their blood, I know their scent does not attract you as it does others of our kind, or I would not willingly risk you coming at all. In addition to the man you have seen, I believe the faerie portal will also be found in this hidden section of the villa."
Sookie squeezed Eric's hand to reassure him. "Eric, their scent may not make me go loopy, but I know them when I see them and sometimes I can even tell when they're near. I can definitely tell how many non-vampire supes are near. I'm not as helpless as you think and I might even be able to sense them before you or Oliver do. If there are any down there, which right now there are not. Two vampires and a dozen or so very overly glamoured humans, that's all the company we have for now."
Eric gave her a brief smile and they descended the stairs.
The stairs led to a cave like passageway. On closer inspection, it was actually a clear plastic or acrylic arch shaped tube, surrounded by the hillside.
"Anyone else feel like we're in an ant farm?" Sookie asked. She got two confused looks for her trouble. "Never mind."
Eric started to take a right, but Sookie said Ermessen and the other vampire were to the left. They soon came to a glass door. Sookie could see the saloon doors on the other side of a small room.
The three of them entered the room slowly. It was a small, very sterile looking kitchen. The two human men in the room weren't fazed at all by having three strange vampires casually walk in, during what was apparently their meal break. They were sitting on barstools at a counter, eating sandwiches. They both turned and smiled. One asked if he could help them with anything.
Their minds were the oddest things Sookie had ever encountered. "They've been glamoured completely clean. The only thing in their heads is Ramon; Ramon's feeding schedule, his favorite toys, his favorite games and videos, and music. Everything they need to know to take care of him along with reminders for when they are to eat, drink and sleep themselves. They're almost like zombies."
"Belllllla dama!" Ramon squealed from the other side of the saloon doors. He'd recognized Sookie's presence.
"Shall we introduce ourselves to your newest admirer, my love?" Eric asked as he walked to the doors and held one aside for Sookie to enter before him.
Ermessen was sitting in the floor hugging Ramon close. Her cheeks were streaked with red. She looked directly at Eric with pleading eyes.
"Bellllla, bella, bella, bella dama!" Ramon said excitedly as he tried to wriggle free of Ermessen's embrace.
"Hello, Ramon," Sookie said with a smile. She walked over and sat on the floor beside them.
The boy really was a man. He had to have been at least fifty when he was turned. The dark hair was flecked with grey and the big brown eyes had crow's feet and little bags beneath, but they were same eyes she'd seen in the face of the little boy. When his mind reached the age of four or five, it had simply stopped there and despite growing older physically, he was still only a little boy. He was at least twice Ermessen's size, which gave her protective posture a preposterous appearance.
"It's alright, Ermessen," Sookie said softly.
"Hola Ramon," Eric boomed, startling everyone in the room and causing both Ermessen and Ramon to jump. "La bella dama és Sookie Senyora. Ella és la teva amiga. Sóc Eric i ell és Oliver."
"Eric!" Sookie scolded. "Not so loud. You'll scare him to death."
"Unlikely," he replied. "However it is distinctly possible his mother may crush him."
"Belllla dama," Ramon called again, ignoring the fact Eric had given him her name.
"You're talking too fast," Ermessen added to the fray, though she sounded as if she didn't expect anything she said to matter. Her arms dropped away from him, leaving him free to scoot over next to Sookie and stare at her expectantly. "You must speak slowly, or he will not understand. And you are correct. He only understands Catalan.
"I'm sorry, but I don't speak Catalan," Sookie said.
"He likes you," Ermessen said, attempting, but failing, to offer a smile. "It won't matter what you say. He will think you are telling him a joke. Catalan is very like Spanish. Many words are spoken the same. So if you know any Spanish, he may know what you are saying."
For the first time, Sookie didn't merely wish she'd paid more attention in her high school Spanish class, she was actually embarrassed she hadn't. "Sorry. No Spanish either, only English."
"If I may, Mistress," Oliver offered, "If His Majesty will be speaking with The Queen of Spain, perhaps I could be of assistance to you. I know enough Spanish to say most basic things."
"Thank you, Oliver. Please, sit with us." Sookie patted the floor to her left. Ramon had moved around from her right side to where he was facing her.
"The water, Ermessen. Where is it?" Eric didn't raise his voice, but he was very clearly making a demand, not a request.
Ermessen's hand went to her chest and her entire body seemed to waver. Tears were welling in her eyes again. "Eric, I beg you not to take him from me. If you tell anyone about him, they will kill him. You know they will. I couldn't bear it."
He touched her shoulder and she grabbed his hand in both of hers and stood in front of him. She was about to continue her plea, when he spoke. "Do you know me to be a liar?" He tugged at his hand, but she had no intention of releasing it.
"Never," she said at once.
"I told you upstairs. I have no interest in your son. Unless you think he has knowledge of Mina's whereabouts, which seems doubtful."
"No," Ermessen replied. "I don't see how he could, but I'll ask him, if you like. You'll want to see the spring first." She cast a worried glance at Oliver and back at Eric.
"He is quite safe. Sookie would never allow Oliver to harm him."
That got Sookie's attention.
She leaned forward and locked a protective arm around Ramon's shoulders as she looked suspiciously at Oliver. "Why would Oliver want to harm him?" she demanded.
Ermessen seemed to wilt, as if an unbearable weight had just been removed from her shoulders. She sank to the floor beside Ramon and facing Sookie now. "I will never forget your kindness and generosity."
Sookie wasn't sure how she was supposed to react to this. When in doubt, go with a hug, she decided. She wrapped Ermessen in her arms and held her tight. "We would never let anyone hurt Ramon. And don't worry. We won't tell anyone about him either. He's safe and we don't want to do anything to risk his safety. You go on with Eric now and show him the spring so we can find where the faeries are getting in here."
Ermessen managed a weak smile as she got up. She looked back at Ramon several times as she and Eric left the room. She looked to Sookie as if she thought each glance might be her last.
Sookie looked around the room. It was very similar to the way she'd see it in her visits into Ramon's head, with significantly fewer doors. There were the television and the toys. The mirror where she'd first realized he was not actually a little boy, was hanging on the wall behind her.
The most striking thing was the size. She'd expected it to be much smaller than it actually was. It probably seems small to him, she thought. He live an enormous part of his life in this room. After a while it would begin to feel small, no matter how big it was.
With Oliver's help, she introduced herself again and Ramon said her name. Well, he got really close, anyway.
"Soo-soo-soo-sookie, belllla Soooookie," he sang.
Close enough. "That's right," she said aloud.
"Eso es correcto," Oliver said, translating Sookie's words into Spanish.
"Eso es correcto," Sookie repeated slowly.
Ramon gave them a huge toothy smile and clapped his approval.
Sookie wondered if he was so excited because he got her name right, or because he thought it was funny for her to be parroting Oliver. It didn't matter, she decided. He was charming either way. Oliver was even smiling at him now.
That was about as far as they'd gotten when Ermessen returned. She said Eric wanted her to stay with Ramon and Sookie, and to send Oliver to him. After giving Oliver the simple directions to the duck grotto, she started to take a seat in one of several overstuffed chairs in the room, but Ramon had other plans. He patted the floor beside him, and held out both hands to her.
"How can I resist such an invitation?" she said with an adoring smile. "No puc resistir-me a la seva invitació," she said to Ramon as she sat on the floor beside him and took him into her arms.
Ramon nestled into Ermessen's loving embrace and laid his head on her thin shoulder.
Sookie watched the vampire mother behave the same as a mother of nearly any other species. This was so much more than even the bond between Maker and progeny. The smile on Ermessen's face as she cuddled this little boy who lived in the body of a man, was lovely. The tender way she squeezed him tighter as she tilted her face to kiss him gently on the forehead was mesmerizing.
With a man this size cirled up in her lap, her position couldn't possibly be comfortable, yet she didn't seem to notice. She appeared so serene. These moments were what kept the ballerina dancing, Sookie realized. This is what drove her to achieve her position of power, where she could not be ordered around and subjected to the whims of other.
"Who is his father?" Sookie asked without thinking. It was a perfectly innocent question, but she immediately realized it might be considered awkward or rude, so she hastened to back away from it. "If you don't mind me asking. I mean, it really doesn't matter. I – I didn't mean anything by it."
Ermessen pried her eyes away from Ramon and gave a short laugh. "It is natural to be curious, my friend. You are seeing something you are never likely to see duplicated in all the world, no matter how long you live."
She kissed Ramon's forehead again and began to rock slowly and stroke his hair, to keep him settled as she spoke. "Like his mother, his father was no one important. Just a boy from the village. Neither of us had yet reached twenty and we believed ourselves possessed by the greatest love in the history of human existance. There are no greater fools, than fools in love."
Ermessen paused with a distant look in her eyes as she remembered faces and lives, time had long since forgotten. Sookie felt as though she was intruding on something intensely private, but she couldn't look away.
The moment passed and Ermessen returned to her story. "It was a time of near constant turmoil throughout Europe. Kings and petty tyrants amused themselves by making war on one another, bankrupting nations and ordering thousands of men and boys to their deaths for the sake of one more hillside, one more village or the right to marry a propertied princess.
Our King was embattled with his brother-in-law. The King's army was sweeping the countryside taking horses and healthy young men to do the fighting. They took my father's horses and my young man. We never saw any of them again. Since the day he left to die in the mud when our new King won his kingdom, I have not spoken his name, for fear the very sound of it would break my heart anew.
But to my eternal joy, he left me something to fill the emptiness he'd left inside me. He left me Ramon."
Ermessen's smile lit up her face as she laughed and gave Ramon another tight hug. Sookie joined her laughing and barely even noticed as one of the zombie nannies placed a True Blood on the floor beside each of the ladies and a large sippie cup for Ramon.
"Hahahahahaha-da!" Ramon added to their cheerful laughs.
"When it became clear I was with child, my father was, of course, very angry. I was confined to our small house until Ramon arrived. Papi tried to find someone to take me to wife, but none in the village would have me. It was two years before a merchant from three vilages away, saw me cleaning clothes at the river. We were married the following week.
I had a new life. My husband had more money than my father, so in one respect, my life was more comfortable, but I was beginning to notice that Ramon did not do all the things other children his age were capable of doing. He walked and ran and laughed, but he didn't speak or sing. When he tried to play with others, he never seemed to understand the games and he wasn't so graceful as other children. When he ran, he stumbled and fell more often.
I had another son, Miguel. He was strong and loud. His father was very proud. Miguel quickly surpassed his brother in all things, but my love. I gave my husband three more sons, but the fourth, our youngest, Sanzo, was very small when he came. He was not so strong as his brothers. He was born in winter and was gone before the summer arrived.
Soon after, they were all gone. My husband blamed me for Sanzo's death. He said it was my fault the boy came early. He said I was a curse to my sons and all the men in my life. He took me and Ramon to Madrid and left us there, in the center of the marketplace, with the advice I find something to sell."
"Oh, Ermessen," Sookie almost cried, "what a creep. What did you do?"
"I had a child who needed to be fed and housed. I was among strangers. I took his advice. When your needs are basic, decisions become quite simple. If you are choosing between presenting yourself to be touched or allowing your child to know hunger, the choice requires no thought at all.
I asked directions to the pleasure houses and before sundown I was practicing a trade and Ramon's belly was full."
"I'm so sorry," Sookie said softly.
"Why?" Ermessen asked, sincerity evident in her tone. "I'm told you recently offered yourself to a man you know to be a monster in an effort to spare your husband from doing something he may not prefer doing, but it would not be life threatening or even unfamiliar to him.
Would you have me do less to spare my child from being homeless and starving in a strange city?"
"Of course not. I didn't mean-" As embarassing as it was, Sookie had no idea what to say next, and she couldn't unsay what she'd already spoken.
Ermessen offered her an understanding smile. "I know what you meant. Rules and lines which seem crystal clear when we apply them to others, often become more blurred as they come closer to applying to us. I feel no shame for what I did. I would do it again.
You can see my son. Even as a vampire he is as helpless as a suckling babe. Imagine him as a ten year old human boy. I had to be able to meet his needs then and secure his future, since he would never be able to secure his own.
At the turn of the fourteenth century, for a woman not born to wealth, there were limited ways to generate the kind of money I needed to acquire. One was a fortuitous marriage, but I had already failed there.
Lacking the advantage of being a great beauty, I dedicated myself to developing the skills necessary to make my services popular and much in demand.
Five years later, I owned a small home, two streets away, for Ramon, and I was able to keep two servants to live with him and take care of him. I started keeping coins aside for the time when I was no longer able to ply my trade. The ravages of harsh living and disease had already begun to claim other women I knew. Mine was a profession which offered no assurance of long life or good health.
Then I met Pepito. He was handsome and strong and he smiled more than any man I had ever known."
She absently reached into her hair and ran her fingers through the streak of dark brown near her face. "He used to say the stripe marked me as an exceptional woman, destined to greatness." She laughed pleasantly at the memory. "and most importantly of all, he was generous. He always paid with a gold coin."
I didn't know he was a vampire until the night he turned me, and he didn't know about Ramon. He would never have changed me if he'd known, but I never spoke of Ramon, to anyone, especially my clients. I was not ashamed of him, you understand, but it was a time when people who were different were feared, and Ramon was very different.
I was grateful for the advantages being a vampire afforded. When you can glamour a rich man into bestowing gifts of gold and jewels and believing you have done things you have not, caring for another becomes much less of a burden to the mind."
She touched Ramon's cheek and smiled as she continued her slow, rhythmic rocking.
His head remained on her shoulder with his hand in the center of her chest, patting out a rhythm all his own. "Mare, mare, meu mare."
"Sí, estimat fill. Jo sóc la teva mare," she whispered to him, before continuing with her story.
"Soon I was able to move Ramon to a larger house, in a better area, but the price was high. Ramon loves the sun. Like all boys, he loves to run and look under rocks and play in the dirt; all things I could no longer do with him.
Pepito allowed me to pay for Ramon's care, but my time was no longer my own. I was permitted visits less and less often. Sometimes it would be weeks between them. Once it was a year. I was desolate without him. Pepito couldn't understand my refusal to give up my attachment to my son. He lavished me with gifts and expensive things, but he would not accept Ramon. As I'm sure you realize by now, perfection is the prize most valued by a vampire. We don't want a mere jewel. We want the jewel which draws eyes away from other jewels.
I passed four decades with my Maker. I saw Ramon less and less, and each time he was older, yet still the same. He was my anchor; the one thing I knew would not change. Yet he was changing. He was aging; so quickly it seemed. Every time I saw him, I was more aware this visit may be the last.
I tried to prepare myself for the inevitable, but I could not. My mind's eye could not fathom any future without Ramon. When I tried to imagine what my life would be like, there was only emptiness in the dark. I pleaded with Pepito to permit me to turn Ramon, so I would not face such a grim destiny. He refused, repeatedly.
Then one night, Pepito went out, as he always did. I had a series of meetings. I had just received Pepito's tailor when I was struck with a terrible pain. It began in my head and traveled downward until I was consumed in agony. It lasted only seconds, and then it was gone as quickly as it had come. My Maker was dead. I knew it as surely as I knew my name."
"What happened to him?" Sookie asked. She'd wondered what happened when the bond between Maker and progeny was broken.
"I don't know. He was there one minute, and the next, he wasn't. Knowing why would not have changed anything. I was free. I returned to Madrid that very night."
"And that's when you turned Ramon," Sookie said.
"No," Ermessen answered. "Pepito had convinced me it was far too dangerous. He would never be safe from others of our kind. Making a child unable to see to its own feeding and care is not tolerated. If we cannot achieve actual perfection, the illusion of it suffices. The illusion must be upheld.
Two years later, plague began its procession across Europe, decimating villages and cities alike. When Ramon fell victim, I was near madness with grief and worry. I cursed the sun every morning for driving me away from his side. He was so ill, so near death many times, but after almost three weeks he began to improve.
My relief was beyond description. It was then I knew I would not have survived his passing. I waited for him to fully recuperate. Six months later, when he fully regained his strength and was quite himself again, I made him vampire. That was six and a half centuries ago."
"Your love for him has survived so much," Sookie said wistfully. "I can't imagine it."
"A mother's love does not need to stuggle or survive or be protected, it simply is." Ermessen's body finally demanded a more comfortable position and she shifted in an effort to accommodate it. "It extends beyond a beating heart. When the pulse is stopped, the love remains, in every drop of her blood, from birth, to death, and through all the countless centuries to follow."
"Hahahahahaha-da"
"Aviat, Ramon."
Sookie smiled as she watched Ermessen with Ramon. The imbalanced sight of them was odd, yet captivating. The young man who brought them True Blood before was back to take the empty bottles away. "His laugh is so cute."
"Hahahahaha –da"
Sookie laughed along.
"En un moment, Ramon." Ermessen looked confused. "Oh, he is not laughing. He wants to watch Peter Pan. He likes to watch Tin-"
Everyone reacted at once.
Sookie had been so fascinated by Ermessen's story, she hadn't been paying any attention to anyone around her. There were three zombie nannies in the room and one supe. The supe was thinking, 'oh shit.' The man who brought and took the True Blood.
Ramon really did laugh now, as he pointed at the man. "Té les orelles punxegudes."
Ermessen's eyes blazed as she tackled the faerie and sent his tray of half empty True Blood bottles skittering across the floor. "Sookie! Call Eric!" she shouted as she pinned him to the ground and bared her fangs.
Sookie screamed Eric's name and started toward Ermessen and the faerie on the ground. She stopped when she noticed Ramon standing with his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut. She ran to him and touched his arm. "It's alright, she said in as soothing a tone as she could manage, knowing he wouldn't understand her words."
She was hopeful she had helped when he opened his eyes, but he didn't look at her. He looked toward his mother. Sookie looked too. Ermessen had let go of the faerie and was staring at him in a very peculiar manner. Over her shoulder she heard Ramon sniffing.
Eric and Oliver crashed through the saloon doors, but didn't make it all the way to Ermessen before they too were dreamy eyed.
"What are you doing, you idiot?" Sookie screamed at the faerie. "Don't drop the masking! They'll tear you to pieces!" She ran, snatched him up, and threw him into a corner. "Mask your scent, damn it!" she screamed, placing herself between him and the other vampires in the room, who were all converging on them.
"You're Sookie," the faerie whispered.
"And you're dead if you don't mask yourself," she growled back. "Eric! No! Stay back! We have to question him!"
With him so close to her, she smelled the difference when he masked his scent again.
"Sorry. I had to confuse them long enough to get to you. Good thing you were down here. I was worried my little stunt wouldn't work, but Niall said you wouldn't be distracted by faerie blood the same as other vamps, since you started out being part fae."
"Where is she?!" Oliver roared. "Where is Mina?"
"Oliver, stop!" Sookie ordered and he stood down at once, though his eyes could not conceal his rage.
Eric closed in on them and Sookie pushed back, crushing the faerie even further into the corner. "Eric, calm down a minute. He says he knows Niall. Let's see what he has to say."
"I am perfectly calm, my love," he said evenly. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. "Now if you will excuse me for a moment. I would speak with our guest." He tightened his grip on Sookie's hand and pulled her to the side.
"Oliver," he said as smoothly as if he might be going to make some innocuous remark about the wall color. "Escort your mistress to a chair."
Sookie's hand exchanged keepers. "If you would come with me, Your Majesty," Oliver said with a respectful nod and an ever so slight tug.
"I will not," Sookie snapped. She jerked her hand from his grasp. "I'm not a child to be sent away while the grown ups talk."
""Hahahahaha-da!"
"If you are wise," Eric said to the faerie, "you will keep your mask in place. There has been quite enough chaos in this room and our hostess is surely reaching the limits of her hospitality."
"How did you get in here?" Ermessen demanded from behind gritted teeth.
"You-," the faerie began, but was cut short.
"Hahahahaha-da!"
Sookie turned to Ramon and then to Ermessen. "What's he saying, if he isn't laughing?"
Eric answered her. "He is saying 'hada', Dearest. It is a Spanish word for faerie."
"His humans are all instructed to speak Catalan," Ermessen explained, "but because so many speak both languages, some words from one often end up interspersed with the other. He has been infatuated with Tinkerbell for decades."
"You're the one they call the Norseman," the faerie said in a low voice. To his credit, he wasn't quaking, but there was an inescapable tinge of fear in his tone.
"I am," Eric replied with a sardonic grin as he returned his attention to the faerie he still had pinned in the corner. "I had almost forgotten about you. What are you called, when you are not trespassing in places where you are unknown?"
The faerie straightened his shoulders as much as he could in his confined space, and brought himself to his full height; which was probably about five feet and ten or so inches. "I am Gawain Brigant, nephew to Niall and distant cousin to Sookie, the vampire Queen of Louisiana. I have been sent to help you, if I can."