Sookie

Twenty-Seven

I'd only invited Eric out because I felt sorry for him. Watching someone, even someone like him be so bereaved caused a moment of...not weakness but deep confusion within me. It had been doubly confusing because I should have taken pleasure from his pain. I wanted to but even the mere thought of doing so had left me feeling hollow.

The truth was, I'd found something I had in common with him despite myself. I didn't want to empathize or feel anything other than cold hard calculation or mind numbing pleasure but that kind of total loss was a rare and harrowing thing. I knew all about it. When my parents had died, it had left me feeling like the last leaf on a dying tree in an abandoned forest. Sometimes after school I would linger and watch as mothers and fathers picked up their little girls and greeted them with hugs and kisses. I would dip into the minds of my classmates and want and wish so badly for what they had, what they took for granted.

When I'd begun down this road to end Eric, I'd expected seeing his tears to be more fulfilling. It hadn't been. It had been sad and it was made worse by the fact that, despite her association with Eric I liked Illeta. She had always been kind to me. Wanting Eric gone did nothing to negate the fact that she'd taken her own life. I couldn't ever image wanting to end pain so badly that the uncertainty of death was a relief.

Now that I was including him in the only part of my life that was mine alone, I had to wonder why. I could have lied and done something else with him, something meaningless. We could have stayed in bed all night long like we often did. That would have been a distraction for him. It would have taken his mind off Illeta but…I didn't feel the sense of victory I often experienced when we had sex. That earlier encounter had come dangerously close to being more than just physical. I couldn't continue to offer him comfort with my body so taking him out was the next best thing.

Hand in hand, Eric and I took the back stairs that led from the kitchen into the edge of the garden. He looked around and pulled in scents to pin point where the guards were.

"There's no need for all that," I said. "I got this,"

"This should be interesting," he commented with a shake of his head, which pretty much equate to, 'We aren't getting far without my superior vampire senses'. Hah, little did he know. I did this all the time.

I stuck my tongue out at him and fanned out my sixth sense. In three seconds flat I'd accounted for all the guards.

"They're over there," I pointed straight ahead, "There," immediately to the left "And continue to space out evenly." I pointed all around us.

They pretty much formed a loose circle all around. But for the most part they only patrolled the outer perimeter of the house. This made sneaking out easy but getting in was impossible. I got caught by Hellion the first time and every time there after. He always turned a blindeye to me. I would be forever grateful to him because of it. It kept me sane during my house arrest.

"Okay, I'm impressed." He admitted.

I smirked. "Some of us get by just fine without super senses," I boasted. "Cypher," I called sticking to the shadows.

He appeared looking like a waif in the dimly lit area. "Ashai," he said with a nod.

"Hi," I greeted. I waited for him to say hello but we hadn't gotten that far in communication yet. I sighed internally, one day though. "Could you please go up to the gate and shadow the guard?"

He nodded and left. This was how I always got out of the house concealed. He would go do his foggy shadow thing around the main post and I would walk right out the front door. It was then it occurred to me that Eric had seen all of that. He might get angry that I was using my guards to come and go undetected. He might take them away.

"Figures," he huffed, taking my hand. "Your affinity for finding loopholes is uncanny."

I took it as a compliment and kissed his chin. He pulled me into his arms and kissed me properly. He was giving off a different air, as if the clothes were affecting his personality. That couldn't be. He was just off his game and so was I. I was lost in the feel of his lips. I didn't notice when my feet left the ground below but when I looked down I was hovering above the house.

It took a few blinks of my disbelieving eyes to accept what I was seeing. I was flying. Holy shit! I was flying. I clutched at Eric's shirt for dear life and would have screamed if he didn't clap his hand over my mouth. There was big grin on his face. Apparently, he could fly. I punched him which only made him laugh as he flew us undetected over the front gate. We didn't go far, just to the French Quarter.

As we walked I realized if I had to put a label on this, it would be our first real date. There was no emotional significance. If anything I was lost in the alien and eerie ease to which we browsed through the many shops. No one was staring or photographing us aggressively. Our guards didn't have to part a sea of protesters or admirers. Even when I dipped into the minds of people around us, they found Eric attractive and thought he resembled 'The Vampire' but that was it. No one actually thought he was him.

I kept stealing furtive glances at Eric. I'd picked out the clothes, I'd watched him dress but I still couldn't acclimate the two personas. The jeans; the boots and his hair, so enticingly mussed from his fingers and mine, all of it looked nothing like the man that had graced the cover of Time Magazine. He looked rugged, approachable, and normal. When he displayed those human mannerisms, like tucking his hair behind his ear or putting his hands in his pockets they blended as well as his clothes. I shook the thought aside and focused. That night I got a clearer glimpse of my enemy.

As we walked I shared with him places I frequented, one of which was a book store. Eric came and he seemed interested but he had no preference in anything. I never noticed it before because he always let me choose, but for someone that had so much power and money, he didn't do anything. He didn't know what music or movies he liked because he never took the time. It was that, and I think his unwillingness to want to distinguish one time period from another. What was the point if it would all be gone in a blink?

~ooooo~

That first date was the first of many and I took Eric opening up to me for the victory it was. Spending time with him outside the bedroom allowed me to learn about him. With every outing we had, I found out a little something. It all got me one step closer to where I wanted to be.

Ultimately, my goal was to get him to let me sleep beside him during the day, no Britlingens, just him, the sun, and me. There was nothing that would change that course. It was to the point where I felt like I had to do it. I'd come too far. I'd sacrificed too much.

"Aren't you hungry?" Eric asked, gently squeezing my hand and pulling me from my thoughts.

I idled and looked back. We had just walked past a restaurant that was fast becoming my favorite. The food was out of my thigh's worst nightmares. It was Cajun cooking at its finest. He didn't seem to care that some of the venues I went to had nothing to offer him though.

"No," I said leaning closer into him. "At least not for food."

These little subtle gestures of affection and enticing comments no longer took work or thought on my part. It just happened. My body sang like a finely tuned instrument whenever he touched me, and when we had sex I went up in flames with a predictable chemistry like fire on paper.

"I won't keep you waiting," he said. The look in his eyes promised me all the decadence I could handle. No, I hadn't forgotten the monster. I never would but I enjoyed the pleasure it gave me.

Eric let go of my hand so he could wrap his arm around my waist. We ascended and I couldn't help but hold onto him just a bit tighter. It was more from a delighted thrill of flying than fear. This was our way home. We walked around the French quarter. After we got past the sights and people, he would fly to the car.

I was looking down at the night life in the distance from St. Louis Cathedral. It was all lights, and I couldn't help but feel rejuvenated. Despite having lived in Louisiana all my life, I'd never traveled to New Orleans before moving here. Here I was walking the roof tops of the heart of the French Quarter.

I always knew more about the south than Eric due to my love of reading. Being a general know-it–all, he asked all kinds of questions. I had answers. It was a nice reprieve. I was telling him about the Treaty of Fontainebleau when his grip on my hand suddenly tightened. I stilled and looked up at him.

First, he cocked his head slightly left and then his features turned to stone. That was the last thing I saw before he launched us off the roof. I didn't see much because my face was in his chest and he was barreling through the air at break neck speeds, not the leisurely pace that was normal for Air Eric. There were loud popping noises mixed in with the wind whizzing around me. But he was maneuvering like a pro. The moves were for evasion and they were complete with twists and loops that made me glad I hadn't eaten.

Something happened. Eric shuddered and let out a hiss. And with one last twist, I felt the impact of a rough landing. When I opened my eyes his were staring up at me. He looked worse for the wear, but I felt fine. He had broken the fall.

"Are you alright?" he asked stroking my cheek.

Maybe his ability to fly malfunctioned? Given his track record, I didn't think that was at all the case. To begin with, his voice was calm and it unsettled me. It took me a second to realize why. That aloof tone was not one I'd heard since we started having sex and dating. This was the vampire who was known to the rest of the world, and not the one I'd been getting to know.

"Yeah, you?" I asked.

"I'm annoyed." He said, pulling us up. "Someone shot me."

It was then that I caught all the void minds that surrounded us. There were a lot of black holes. Eric didn't seem as concerned as he should be about it. He'd been shot, but that didn't seem to concern him either. He was brushing his hands over my clothes to get them clean. My eyes were fixed as the circle began to close in around us.

"You got sloppy," a voice called sounding almost disappointed. "I knew you would if given enough time, leaving home without guards, and walking the same routes. For fuck's sake man, you didn't even catch the ambush until you were beyond the main traffic area. Frankly, I think they over paid for this job. You're fucking pathetic."

"Language," Eric gently chided.

He might have been a teacher addressing a rambunctious student. He caressed my back as if the vulgarity had been a wound. Would I prefer not to hear the f-bomb from a would-be-assassin? Certainly, I wouldn't. Was that my biggest concern at the moment? Fuck no! I saw no way out of this, but Eric didn't act like we were any danger. For all the concern her showed someone had simply cut him off in traffic.

Where were Cypher and Lynx? I wondered. I was in trouble, but I looked around. No one was close to my shadow but Eric, and they weren't worried about him. "I'll call…"

He placed his fingers over my lips. It calmed the panic and served the intended purpose of getting me to be quiet."Hush, I need you to trust me when I say that would be very bad," he instructed in a softer tone.

I nodded.

"Hands around my waist, my love." His thumb stroked my cheek. "No matter what happens: Don't. Let. Go."

I did as he said, but from my peripheral vision I saw I wasn't the only one to stare at him dubiously. He kept me where I was, with my face against his chest. One of his hands wound behind his back and his fingers intertwined with mine. The feel of his arms around me helped me feel safer but that was an individual thing. The two dozen vampires would rip that security away in no time at all.

The air grew cooler and damp with the threat of rain as the night got darker. Even the man holding me seemed to grow more electric. I thought he was trembling, but I had no idea why that would be. It might be fear clouding my mind. It had to be.

"By the spray and pray gunfire routine, I'm going to assume you do not know who I am." Eric said.

"Horseman of Apocalypse blah," the same voice taunted. "Vampire Boogey Man, double blah. I'm not impressed."

"Pity, let's see if I can change your mind," Eric said in an eerily calm voice. "Shall we?"

Then all hell broke loose, or more precisely the sky looked ready to implode in on itself and the heavens threatened to rain down over our heads.

I've seen lightening as it lit the sky. I thought it a beautiful thing even with the definitive clap of thunder. There was nothing beautiful about what I saw. It was nothing but an uncontainable force of nature being unleashed with pinpoint precision. The lot we were in was as bright as day one second, and I saw all the people that were to the right of Eric.

They were being burned to ash from the inside out it seemed. Their faces were contorted in pain as their limbs were fried to ash and blew in the powerful gusts of wind. The scene was so horrible that I couldn't look away. All their mouths were open as if they were screaming but I heard none of it. Consecutive peals of thunder made me deaf to the sounds of them dying. Darkness returned and with it was a silence as profound as that of the grave.

Eric was still trembling and his grip on my hand constricted. I squeezed his back as much as I could to get him to let go but it was useless. "We need to go," I said. "Eric, we have to get out of here!"

"Can't...calm down," he groaned out as if he was in pain. "Help,"

I had no idea what he had done. I couldn't even begin to guess at it, but it had taken a toll. A I was familiar with a calm Eric. I wasn't used to having to calm him, but that was what I did now. I took deep breaths forcing my heart beat to steadily even out though I very much wanted to freak out.

My free hand stroked his back. I ignored the wetness I felt on my fingertips knowing it was blood. Forcing the thought aside, I leaned more of my weight into him and held him tight. I felt the difference after a minute. He'd thawed, not by much, it was noticeable. It no longer felt like I was against a quaking brick wall.

"Talk or sing, your voice helps." he ground out.

Deciding he would get a kick out of my terrible singing voice, I went for it. By my third flat note he had eased his grip on my hand. I didn't even get to the end of the popular 'Beyoncé' ballad. By the way he was taking deep breaths at inappropriate times I knew he was laughing at me.

"If I didn't already know I couldn't carry a tune I might be hurt." I said.

He finally gave up hiding his amusement and laughed outright. From the first time I heard it, the sound of him laughing was like being in on a secret joke. I knew it was an elusive thing that few witnessed.

"In what world does what you just did qualify as singing?" he asked in all seriousness. I stuck my tongue out at him.

"Bite my ass you big bad," I retorted.

He chuckled, but pain furrowed his brow. It took me longer than it should to realize that he was leaning heavily on me and easing off his left foot. I wasn't sure if he was just putting on a macho front, or if the wounds he had suffered were as insignificant as he let on. Now would be a good time to try my hand at taking him out. I didn't need good odds, I needed a guarantee. I had to wait.

"You okay?" I asked trying to shoulder more of his weight.

"Yes," he said, and he began limping to a nearby tree. I followed. "It's going to rain," he continued, leaning back. "We'll wait. Batanya will be here—"

"Right about now," the muscle-bound daemon said, skidding to a halt amidst the scene. She was out of breath as if she'd run a mile in a minute. She was also wearing green sweats and a t-shirt instead of her uniform, which was an absolute first. Frankly I thought she slept in that formfitting black getup.

"What the shit?" she said, coming to wrap her arm around Eric's waist, and taking him from me. "You said you were going to bed." Then she stopped and looked around and as if confused. "You don't need me," and she sounded stunned.

I frowned. Well what the fuck did her comment mean? She was always closer than his shadow but he didn't need her at night obviously.

"There is a bullet in my leg," Eric said.

"That's not what I get paid for," she said, continuing to help him walk.

Despite being several inches shorter and lighter, she pretty much carried him. I realized that I didn't like her and that I never really had. It was different than the dislike I had for Nancy. That had been petty, this wasn't. Eric seemed to prefer her help to mine. I wasn't jealous. I just…I didn't know what I was. It didn't matter. I saw Batanya as what she was, the biggest threat to my end goal.

A/N: I know a lot of you are eager for the Quinn great reveal but be careful what you wish for is all I'm going to say.