Disclaimer: The characters belong to Charlaine Harris, i'm just playing around.

AN: Bold text is quoted directly from the book, i think it is pages 131 through 133 in Definitely Dead, so if you have not read that, i'll just give youa heads up that this is about The Queen of Lousiana. :d if you know what i am talking about, you have probably linked a few thoughts together, so enjoy!

Thanks for reviewing: Chryssalynn (you'll like this chapter, she is still digesting the whole Sam thing), Maggie79 (eric comes later... clara is more important right now), ErinCullen and sillyshalie

Ch.5

Be curious, not fearsome.

Unfortunately, we tend to fear what we don't understand. Mamma said that to Dad one time too many, it got stuck on me. And she said that she thought it to be a human condition, referring to how she could not understand why Dad even with his distinctive qualities was sometimes fearsome when there was no place to be. That is how she raised us. I am not afraid of Bill, well, I dislike him and the fact that mom introduced him as her ex fiancée. But I am curious, more curious even now with the sparse things that she managed to tell me last night.

I wake up at some point in the night and write down a few names and things I want an explanation for: Quinn, Sophie-Anne, Pam, Eric, Bubba, not knowing about my half sister (that Dad did not consider her a daughter is not enough), why she cut connections with the vampires (or did she not?), why we always stay put when either of them leaves (they never leave us completely alone, but both of them had left for prolonged spaces of time. I know Mamma is originally from Bon Temps, Louisiana and that she had never traveled much except when her and Dad decided to move here. Or is that also half truths? The pen slips from my grasp as I consider different scenarios and drift off to sleep, it is around three in the morning anyways.

I wake up again and watch my clock. It is nearly ten, Delia is probably in her room now trying to rest. She is probably thinking how it will feel and be like to change without Dad, it is quite something when they stand (stood, damn it) together. They usually did camping trips or other things so she could hunt when he was in town. But not me, they did take me once out when it was not full moon. They explain that they are dangerous, and until Delia could control herself it was safer this way. I notice that there is saliva and tears on my pillow. I ignore them and get up to take a bath.

Mamma has cooked corncakes, pancakes and eggs that smell delicious when I arrive at the breakfast table.

"Where's the vampire?" I ask inconsiderately. She gives me a glance.

"Sorry, where is your ex fiancée?" I ask again, trying to not make it sound insulting. She huffs but answers me anyways.

"I have a hidey hole where he is spending the day" she explains.

"Hidey hole?" I repeat.

"A light tight space where he will be safe from the sun" she says. I want to ask if it is in the basement or not, but refrain from doing so.

"Oh" I say. "Breakfast looks good," I comment, serving myself some eggs readily and eating a pancake without butter or syrup with my other hand. She makes them from scratch, and I have a suspicion she uses honey instead of sugar in the mix, that way making it sweeter alone.

"We need to talk" she says in her business tone. I nod. "First off, I am sorry you had to see Bill and me acting like randy teenagers last night…." She says, I immediately tense up. But it's been such a long time since I had seen him.

"Okay!" I interrupt. "Get on with it before I start getting mental images" I beckon, she laughs.

"Anyways, we have to find Clara" she says it as if it is a life and death situation. "She is a danger to herself and others"

"What can we do?" I ask.

"We are telepaths, and you are family. You have no idea how powerful that kind of blood bond is" I glare at her. "We are the best chance she has to get back to normal, as normal as she can be. But with us, she can relax and be calm, because we can help her."

"And she and Delia would probably connect" I realize. Mom nods slowly.

"Clara is more like Dad, she can transform into any animal, whereas since Adele is a half blood, she can only transform near the full moon and only into one animal. We are all different. Amongst their people, while your father is considered a shape shifter, your sister is considered a were-lioness. Clara is a shifter too" she explains. I eat and listen carefully.

"Okay, so we will drop out of school and go globetrotting after her. Then what?" I assume and ask.

"No, summer is near and you two have tests coming up. We will stay here and make a plan with Bill meanwhile." She explains.

"Bill, Bill, Bill, why is he here all of a sudden?" I ask, I found his presence irritating, and did not bother to hide it. She can read it in my mind if she wants to anyways.

"I understand that is difficult to consider me having any relationships prior to your father because you never knew about them. But since I was twenty five, I had a fair share of boyfriends before settling down." She smile to herself, and I block her before something I did not want to know my mother doing fills my head too.

"To the point" I ask.

"You had asked me about Quinn. Quinn is an ex boyfriend, similar to your father actually. He is a were tiger. He was very good to me, but he had a mother and sister that relied entirely on him and I could not compete with that. I did not tell him to chose between us, I just saw that I did not need him like they did. His sister actually came to see me pissed that I had left him. But she would not understand. I could not… be with him when I felt guilty about him not being able to be with them" she told me.

"You asked about Pam too" I nod. "Well, Pam is a girl, so, no she is not an ex boyfriend." I raise an eyebrow. "Nor an ex girlfriend, I do not swing that way!" she says it as if the thought disgusts her. I shrugged. Anything is okay with me. She does not have to sound all scandalous about it.

"And Bubba?" I ask.

"He's just a friend. He likes cats" she says and I see her face as she remembers something, and smiles as if keeping a joke to herself. I nod slowly. Wait, did she say that he likes cats? As in…

"He is a vampire too, though, not quite a vampire, he likes to drink cat blood instead of animal blood" she rectified.

"I'll never let Delia near him" I say jokingly. Delia could probably stand up to him, being such a big cat and all. Mamma laugh.

"There is still one you mentioned that you have not told me about yet" I offer. She nods. She is considering what to say, how to explain such a complex relationship.

"He is Bill's superior, and he wanted me. But he could not have me unless I willingly left Bill and went to him. He tried everything to get to me. He even forced a blood bond between us." I raise a questioning hand.

"Aren't blood bonds only the family kind?" I ask hoping the answer is yet because I do not want to know how the other one works. She shakes her head.

"I drank his blood" she says softly. I nearly choke on my current bite of pancake.

"Disgusting!" I emphasize.

"Not quite, and given the circumstances" I raise another hand.

"Do it fast" I beg.

"He made me suck out a bullet that got him in the shoulder after he stopped me from being hit, then I realized by another bullet that it would simply pop out. Later I willingly took some to be healthy for a life and death situation. Lastly, I took his blood instead of Andre's, Sophie-Anne's right hand man. After that, it was really confusing between us because I could feel how he felt about me, and that got in the way of me acting correctly around him. He wanted me, and wanted me for himself, so he rather enjoyed that. However, me not so much" she continues. "Eric Northman" she says, whether she is saying the name with disdain or unease is lost to me. "He caused half of my fights with Bill"

"Will you tell me more about Sophie-Anne?" I ask.

"I did not really know her much, all I know is that I kinda helped her save her marriage that was anyways doomed" she says cryptically. I keep my mouth shut and start downing a glass of orange juice.

"Morning" It is almost twelve, I notice, and Delia is just waking up. Mamma has been talking for quite a while.

"Whose marriage was doomed? Yours?" she asks. I always get the feeling that she shares so much with Dad in those camping trips, so much that I would kill to know, well, I cannot be jealous of that any longer. We both glare at her. "So… not funny"

"No, I was talking about a vampire marriage, which usually tend not to last very long. In this case, they were marrying over wealth, not love, but it was a necessary annexation. The Queen of Louisiana, named Sophie-Anne Leclerq, and the King of Arkansas has recently announced their marriage and were celebrating in kind. But they both had plans against the other, hoping for the others wealth. Their wedding contract was about three hundred pages long and was revised five times" she says, a story that is not forgotten easily.

"Sophie-Anne had had a fling with my cousin Hadley before the marriage and had lost a special piece of jewelry, an engagement gift, before Hadley passed. She kinda really, really needed it, she was certain that her husband would use her loss of it to start a war. It occurred anyways. But she got leverage in the trail after it"

"Why do I get the feeling you are keeping something from me?" I ask.

"She looked your age" she told me. "She was turned when she was very young. Actually, she told me in confidence a small part of her beginnings, it is a bit fuzzy for me… but it was something along the lines of a vampire taking her in after her village was destroyed in France, and how he abused her, and then she got her revenge after he turned her…" she stops talking.

"I began my life in what became northern France, about … one thousand, one hundred years ago. I didn't know where I was, of course, but I think it was Lotharingia. In the last century I tried to find the place I spent my first twelve years, but I couldn't, even if my life depended on it." She gave a barking laugh at the turn of phrase. "My mother was the wife of the wealthiest man in the town, which meant he had two more pigs than anyone else."

-ñ-

"When I was about ten or twelve, I think, a peddler came to us from down the road. We hadn't seen a new face in six months. We were excited." She looked as if she did not remember the feeling of that excitement, only the fact of it. "He carried an illness that had never come to us before. I think now that it was some form of influenza. Within two weeks of his stay in our town, everyone in it was dead, excepting me and a boy somewhat older, Clovis. That first night alone, and the weeks afterwards, he raped me. He made a living for himself by selling me for food and money."

-ñ-

"The vampire was very hungry and started on Clovis first, because he was bigger, but when he was through with Clovis, he could take a minute to look at me and think it might be nice to have a companion. His name was Alain.

-ñ-

"Alain promised and promised to bring me over, because of course I wanted to be as he was. I wanted the strength." I could understand that.

"But when he needed money, for clothes and food for me, he would do the same thing with me that Clovis had, sell me for money. He knew the men would notice if I was cold, and he knew I would bite them if he brought me over. I grew tired of his failing in his promise. Then one night we came into a village where the head-man knew Alain for what he was. Stupid Alain had forgotten he had passed through before and drained the headman's wife! So the villagers bound him with a silver chain, which was amazing to find in a small village, I can tell you … and they threw him into a hut, planning to keep him until the village priest returned from a trip. Then they meant to put him in the sun with some church ceremony. It was a poor village, but on top of him they piled all the bits of silver and all the garlic the people possessed, in an effort to keep him subdued. They knew I was a human, and they knew he had abused me," she said. "So they didn't tie me up. The headman's family discussed taking me as a slave, since they had lost a woman to the vampire. I knew what that would be like." The expression on her face was both heartbreaking and absolutely chilling. I held very still. "That night, I pulled out some weak planks from the rear of the hut and crawled in. I told Alain that when he'd brought me over, I'd free him. We bargained for quite a time, and then he agreed. But the priest returned before three days were up. By the time I clawed my way out of the dirt, Alain was blackened ash in the wind. It was the priest's hut they'd stored Alain in. The old priest was the one who told me what had happened."

"I guess the priest was your first meal." I smiled brightly.

"Oh, no," said Sophie-Anne. "I told him I was the angel of death, and that I was passing him over since he had been so virtuous."

-ñ-

"My name then was Judith." She spoke, and the truthtfullness of that revelation, along with the uncomfortable fact that she and Hadley had definitely had some sort of pillow talk about me, I never forgot.

"Wow" is the only thing I can think back. A very genuine imprint of a pale girl around my age but with the poise and decorum of a noblewoman stays in my mind. And I am named after her.

"You named me after a vampire?" I ask after she finishes projecting her memories into our minds, Delia saw it somewhat fuzzier, but I guess it is mostly our blood bond that allows us to communicate like this.

"Wow, and I thought your name had no significance like mine" Adele points out. I roll my eyes.

"I chose both your names very carefully." She tells us sternly. "After two of the most amazing women I have ever met." She shares to us.

"What about Pam? Would that have been your third girls name?" I ask.

"Oh, no!" she says quickly. "Pam's amazing, but we disagree on too many things. Plus, I personally don't think she'd like that. She'd probably say something along the lines that only if Eric allows her, which then would mean I'd have to make him godfather or something, or promise him for my first boy to be named after him, which Sam would not even consider. Nor would I" she said, she was dealing with Dad's death quite well, a bit too well in my opinion.

"So, you'll have to catch me up with all of this" Delia says thumping her empty glass back on the table. I start telling her, in a summarized version. And since I have gotten a good sleep, I forget all about addressing Bill with contempt.

"So… you nearly got married to someone else? Before Dad?" she asks after hearing the whole story. She nods.

"We love each other a lot" she explains. "Even though we have both done pretty ugly things to each other, he has always stuck by me and helped me. And, I did a lot of things for him too" she shares.

"How about you tell us a happy story about you and Dad before you got married?" I ask I am tired of replaying my own memories of him.

"He did something very brave and went with me to a were battle is Shreveport, an outsider had come and kidnapped the women of their pack, trying to put them against each other. Until I realized that we needed a peace talk, and he came along with me. That was the first time I saw him morph into his lion shape. It was so powerful, and so big besides all the other wolves." She says, not dreamily, but happy. "That same night Alcide was made packmaster" she tells us. "Sam was really scared for me and fought bravely." She reminisced us. I got a slight image of her seeing a lot of hurt weres turn back to human, and stark naked. I close my eyes and toughen my barriers.

"You both have to work on control," she tells us. "Especially you, Delia, because we no longer have your father to help us. I could always call Quinn though…" she considers it for a few seconds.

"I think I can do it, I have been getting better on being on my own in the last couple of months, Dad has not been here for the last five full moons." She says to her. My sister is nearing seventeen next November, and my birthday is a few weeks after. She has been changing since she was eleven. Funnily, she started changing a month before her first period.

"Okay, good, because I know for a fact that Quinn and Bill are not on the same page with each other." She says with a sigh of relief. "Go get your school work done because tonight we have a lot to do" she says to us. It is three in the afternoon, we have been talking for quite a while.

"I have another question." She looks curiously at me.

"Why did you never tell us about your past with vampires?"

Hi, i asked about longer chapter and since i only got one vote in favor, i went with that. Hope y'all like it!

And please review! I work faster when you do.