The Other Road home chap 11

He rose with a story to tell her the next night, a happy story to help them both feel better.

Tonight I will tell you of Eric’s first solo flight. It’s a story he told me many years later, after he had gotten over his own humiliation.

He had only been flying a few weeks at this point and I hadn’t let him go off by himself, just in case he got into trouble.

He defied me and took off one night while I was out tending to business.

It seems my eldest child had taken off into the night, wanting to explore an area we hadn’t been to yet and he knew that if he flew there and back he could make it home before dawn.

I could feel he was nowhere near but I didn’t think of his going off into the unexplored alone at the time for I would have paid good money to see this. I remember it happening to me as a young vampire and I know how it made me feel, especially since my own Maker was witness to it.

It seems Eric had flown, unerringly, into a flock of birds going in the opposite direction! They pecked and clawed at him since he was an unknown entity in their air space! He said he was covered head to toe in their shit.

When he returned he looked like he had been up to something, and he was soaked head to toe. When asked what he had been doing he told me exploring and left it at that.

When I found out what had really happened I was angry he had defied me but my laughter won out. I could just picture him with beak and claw marks every where, covered in bird feces.

She rose to his laughter. A welcome sound considering the previous night.

She smiled at him, “I can’t quite picture it because I didn’t know him well enough but I am glad it brought laughter for me as I rose.

Thank you Godric, I know you’re doing your best in a difficult situation. It can’t be easy trying to grieve for someone you’ve known for so long while trying to take care of a new vampire.”

“Actually your presence is helping me. I’m able to tell the stories, relive those years in my memory as I tell them. Helping you through the early days is helping me to focus on something other than my own grief.”

“I’m glad then. If you had turned me for no other reason than that I’m glad.

I wish I had had you to help me through my grief when Gran was killed. I will tell you about her sometime.

Right now I can hear someone coming up the front walk and I need blood.”

“You stay here. There is blood in the cooler.”

He arrived at the door just as the doorbell sounded.

Pam was standing on the other side. She stalked in as if she owned the place, “where is the little bitch?”

“Who are you talking about Pamela. You will show me respect or the punishment you will receive will render your Maker’s punishments to look like child’s play!”

She turned to her Grand Sire angrily, “the bitch my Maker was smitten over, that’s who!”

“I still don’t know who you are talking about Pamela. A name would be helpful!”

“Sookie Stackhouse!”

“She is my child now. You will not touch her, you will not touch her brother or friends. Am I clear?”

“It’s too late. I already tortured the bitch’s brother for information. He would only tell me she had died in the bombing. That her remains were being cremated since she was so severely damaged.

I want her head Godric! She got my Maker killed!”

“She did no such thing! It was his own foolishness which got him killed! He sent her in there during the day to try to get information and rescue me. It was her that needed rescuing, which I did.

She deserves our praise and respect, not condemnation!

You will show her respect or you will remove yourself from my sight.”

She left, stomping down the walkway, her heels echoing in the stillness of the night and sounding like a gun shot with each stomp: She was still just as angry as she had been when she arrived.

Godric went back down to their day chamber only to find Sookie crumpled on the floor of the shower, crying.

He climbed in with her and held her while she cried: rocking and crooning to her, letting her know he was there for her when she was ready.

Finally she was cried out but she was ravenous! She was all over the place physically and emotionally. She just couldn’t settle down.

He knew she was too hungry to go hunting and the cooler was nearly empty before she fed earlier. He made a phone call.

Fifteen minutes later the doorbell sounded again.

She was still on the floor of the shower when he returned with two humans in tow. Neither was glamoured and both knew they were going to die. Just looking at the feral vampire on the floor of the shower stall would have told them that if they hadn’t already been informed.

She attacked in a rush of fangs and wind, quickly draining both of the men in her need to refill her own severely depleted blood stores.

She looked at Godric when both men lay on the floor at her feet, dead, tears in her eyes again.

“Don’t cry over the loss of their lives my child. I have an arrangement with the local penitentiary. When I require more blood than is available they will send as many as I require. They have life sentences and have signed waivers absolving us of any wrongdoing in their deaths. They preferred this over spending the rest of their lives in jail with no hope of parole.”

“They knew they were going to die?”

“They did.”

“They committed crimes so horrible they would never get out of jail again?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then but I’m still hungry!”

“Can you control yourself enough to hunt or go to the bar?”

“I can,” she said confidently as she looked down at the floor at the dead men lying there, “What about them?”

“We will take them back upstairs to the men who delivered them. They will be pronounced dead and their bodies handed over to their families for burial.”

He picked one of them up and hoisted him over his shoulder and she followed suit. They deposited the corpses at the feet of their caretakers and went on their way.

Sookie did feel a little bit of guilt over draining the men and how she had gone about attacking them with absolutely no provocation.

“Godric, would you have tried to stop me from draining them if they had just been people on the street instead of lifetime inmates?”

“I would not.”

“Why not if we’re supposed to preserve human life so they can keep providing for us?”

“Sookie, when a vampire, especially one as young as you, is as feral as you were it is pointless to try to stop them when they’re feeding. The pain it would have caused you to stop would have been relentless on both of us. There is a time and a place for killing humans and this was one of those times.

If I had replenished the blood supply in our day chamber I would have fed you that but I didn’t. I am sorry for that.”

“Why didn’t you try to give me bottled?”

“The bottled is only good as a stopgap. It will do nothing when a vampire is as you were.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.

Since you are still hungry we will go to the bar and you may try a bottle but you will still require two or three humans once you are finished it.”

“It’s like a snack to tide you over until meal time?”

“I suppose so.

Why were you crying anyway?”

“Pam.”

“You heard our conversation then.”

“I did. She tortured my brother Godric! Is he still alive even?

You’ve explained to me about it not being my fault but I still feel guilty over it.

Hey, we never did finish that conversation!”

“I’m sure Jason is still alive. She wouldn’t have ended him just yet, not until she has you anyway.”

“Why does she want me finally dead?”

“She thinks you are the reason Eric met his true death. Once she has calmed we will tell the story but she will not be receptive until then.

Meanwhile I will have your brother removed from her care as quickly as possible. We do have a little time. It will take her a couple of hours to get back to Shreveport no matter how she travels.

Do you remember my story about his love of arguing?”

“I do.”

He didn’t say anything while he let her think about what he had said, “you’re saying he was arguing with me because he felt he could? He felt comfortable enough around me, even though it hadn’t even been very long, to let me close enough to argue?”

“Yes. He may not have realized it but he was falling in love with you.”

She snorted, a very unladylike sound if she ever heard one, “I find that hard to believe.”

He looked at her, concern in his eyes, “that anyone could love you or that Eric could love you?”

“That anyone could love me. Only my Gran ever has, really.”

“Your parents?”

“Were scared of me. My brother? The last few times we saw each other were really the first times he’s ever said or showed it.

My friends? One’s too angry at the world to love anybody, even herself. One just wants to get into my pants. Now that I’m a vampire neither one will want anything to do with me. The only one remaining is Lafayette and he might have, in a sisterly type of way.”

“Why is it you feel you are so unlovable?”

“Telepath, remember? Things happened too fast for us to discuss it and we’ve been kind of busy the last few nights.

In a nutshell telepathy is a pain in my posterior. I can never, ever, turn it off completely. Something always gets through. Touching someone is even worse because then their thoughts come through loud and clear. Some people come in fuzzy, like a staticy radio station, others come in like it does when you’re standing there talking to them.

That’s why I liked being with vampires so much, they were the only ones I had ever found that I couldn’t hear that way. Just a nice, big, silent void!”

“Can you still hear humans?”

That question stilled her, “I haven’t heard anything since I rose! I never had to try before, it was just there. Is it gone? Can I finally be normal? Are my shields just stronger now so I can choose who to listen to?”

“We will test it at the bar tonight then.”

She nodded as they walked in the door. The music was jamming, the humans were…well…human, the vampires were looking their deadliest and the bar was busy, in other words it was business as usual at the Bat’s Wing.

He let her go to the bar herself to get her first bottle of synthetic blood then took her back into the office with him so he could complete any outstanding paperwork so that when they left for Shreveport there would be nothing left for the next Sheriff to tend to.

One swig, just one, was all she could handle of the bottled blood. She had never tasted anything so vile! “How do you drink this stuff on a regular basis? It’s absolutely awful!”

“I do not drink it for the taste Sookie.”

“Why drink it at all? I would rather do without for a couple of hours than try to

drink this swill!”

“I drink it for penitence.”

“Penitence?”

“Yes. I have done many awful things in my life and I wish to atone for them.”

“You wish to make yourself ill in order to repent?”

“It will not make me ill.”

“Godric, I may be just a few nights old but I can see the difference in you from before you drained me and now. You look healthier and you somehow seem stronger. If a human could see that you were weak imagine how the vampires see you.”

“Sookie, I did not wish to tell you this but I find I must.

I had handed myself over to the Fellowship hoping to both let them see we could live harmoniously and to let them end me.

I had grown tired of my existence. Every night seemed to be the same with maybe a new player once in awhile. Then you came along and taught me differently. There is still plenty left to see in this world, things even I haven’t seen yet. I find I wish to see them with you. I have a feeling that even the things I have seen will seem different when seen through your eyes.”

“You were going to let them end you? Godric, you don’t need to do penitence in order to be forgiven. All you have to do is believe in God and ask for his forgiveness and it will be given to you, free of charge. He sent his son to this earth, and let him be killed, in order to take our sins upon himself so we could be washed clean of them.

God knew, right from the very beginning, that we would not be able to live up to his expectations. He knew Eve would lead Adam astray, that they would eat the forbidden fruit, he knew the evil that would come to be yet he still gave us free will so we could make our own choices: we could choose to walk the path of God or we could choose to walk the path of the devil but even if we chose evil we could still change our minds. Godric, all you have to do is ask him, on bended knee, for forgiveness and it’s yours.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about doing yourself harm in order to gain forgiveness. There is fasting but that’s for a set period of time when you don’t eat at all or only proscribed things. Please, no more of this starving yourself.

If you would like I will go to a church with you and you can ask for his forgiveness.”

“How did one so young become so smart?” Tears were staining his cheeks yet he was smiling at her. She had given him hope that someday, when his end should come, he could be forgiven.

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