The Moon, Ch. 10

After a too-short nap, Sookie’s bladder decided to wake her up. She did not want to untangle herself from Eric’s arms, and in fact relaxed there longer than her body would have liked, but eventually she had to move. Eric gently helped her rise from the bed and made sure that she was steady on her feet before escorting her to the bathroom door.

He had allowed himself to slip into downtime while she slept, the new peace lulling him as near to sleep as was possible for a vampire.  Before he had let himself to fully relax, however, he had made a point of attuning his senses so closely to her body’s natural rhythms that he easily roused himself to full awareness when she woke. He could tell that she had been thinking intently about something while resting in his embrace, but he didn’t want to push her. These last few evenings had already been stressful enough as it was.

As she tended to her human needs, he went to the kitchen and poured her a glass of her beloved iced tea. A very vague memory surfaced, something about pregnant women and milk, so he poured her a glass of the rank white liquid that smelled nothing like what he remembered from his own human years. He wrinkled his nose.

Was this filthy substance actually good for her?

He decided he would ask the doctor.

He sat the glasses on the coffee table in the den, then withdrew his phone and dialed the number for the little troll. In short order he arranged for the good doctor to visit Sookie later that night after she tended to another vampire’s human companion and made her rounds.

As long as the night had felt so far, in reality it was only a little after one, so there was plenty of time for the doctor, who apparently never needed to sleep, to arrive, do her doctoring, and then leave well before daylight.

He hoped so, at any rate. The time he had with his Sookie was precious, and especially so now that he knew she had tried to reach out to him – something he had desperately needed at the time.

It outraged him that Pamela, with her “memory vault”, had purposefully failed to relay her message, and when it had occurred to him that he might have actually been there when Sookie called?

Oh, Pamela will pay.

He blamed all those wasted years on Pamela’s blatant disloyalty. He couldn’t help but want to think that maybe she had a reason – a stupid one, obviously, but a reason that might help excuse her behavior, but absolutely nothing came to mind.

Of course he would ask her why she had done it, partly to hear just how creative her excuse would be. In all honesty, however, he would ask partly in futile hope that her reasoning would make at least some sort of backward “Pamela-esque” sense, that it would give him the excuse that, as her Maker, he was desperately searching for so that even if he didn’t approve, he could least use it as a reason to go a bit easier on her.

However, there was no forgiveness in her future.

An extremely unpleasant smirk briefly twisted his lips. His beloved Child had no idea that he still had a Maker’s Command over her.   For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of planning at least half a century’s worth of painfully humiliating retribution. For every year’s separation caused by her betrayal, she would badly suffer sevenfold…and more.  A Maker knew exactly how to derive the most punishment with the last effort.

Plans in formation, Eric returned to the kitchen to prepare Sookie a snack of some sort.  He hadn’t thought she had eaten enough at dinner, and wasn’t there some saying about pregnant women eating for two?

After a quick search, he found the plates in the cabinet and sat one on the counter, then found a tin of cookies. As about half of them seemed to be missing, he correctly assumed that she liked them, so he put the remainder on the plate.

Since humans are told so often to eat “fresh green” foods, he followed his nose to the refrigerator and selected the item that had the freshest “green” smell. Thankfully it was also green in color, too, so it must be doubly healthy. He extracted the ball of what looked like small, smelly green trees connected to each other from the thin plastic bag, and proudly placed the thing on her plate with the cookies.

Eventually Sookie, freshed up and with a small smile on her face, exited the bathroom and followed Eric to the den. After gratefully plopping herself down on the soft couch, she looked at the items on the table with surprise but refrained from commenting.

“It smells vile,” the Viking stated as he indicated the milk. “But I seem to recall something about women drinking it while carrying a child, so…,” his voice dwindled as he spread his hands a bit in uncertainty.

Sookie smiled at his thoughtfulness and reached for the glass. It was not her drink of choice, but she knew she should be ingesting more of it. She downed the contents of the glass in one long series of gulps so that she could get it over with and move on to her vastly preferred tea.  She refused to comment on the odd ‘broccoli and cookie’ pairing for fear she would start giggling.

Broccoli and cookies…oh my…

After she placed the empty glass on the table with a satisfied thunk, she told Eric, “I’ve never been much of a fan of milk, but you’re right. I should probably be drinking more of it.  And yeah, it’s gross.” She reached for her tea and took a mouth-cleansing swig.

Pleased that he’d gotten it right, he nodded.

“Eric,” she began a few moments later as she ran her finger around the rim of the tea glass.  She had been thinking about this since she woke up, and wanted to go ahead and get it out in the open and had a strong feeling that Pam would be in trouble.   “I take it Pam never told you that I stopped by Fangtasia to see you about a month after I called, either.”

Sookie’s voice held a slight but painful mixture of hope and dread.

“You…what?”

The Viking Vampire was torn between rushing off to rend his beloved Child limb from limb and staying with Sookie for her doctor visit.

She had come to Fangtasia to see him?

His fangs snapped down and his blue eyes blazed.

Considering how badly Sookie hated the desperation and depravity of his bar and the danger from how her fairy allure called to vampires, that had been a huge step for her.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, his command barely softened by the tone of his voice. The need to remain with Sookie won temporarily,but his fangs and fists throbbed, begging for the freedom to rend and punish.

His Child would pay.

The intensity of his focus was slightly unnerving, and she was a little startled by the ferocity in his handsome face. The tension visible in his body belied his abrupt stillness, and the fury in his narrowed eyes was barely contained.

Sookie knew that, judging by the fierceness of Eric’s reaction, her next words might land Pam in a world of hurt, but that was Pam’s own fault.  She would have been thrilled to have been friends with the blonde vampire, but Pam had chosen otherwise and shunned her at every opportunity.

She hated knowing that the information she was about to relay would cause Eric pain because Pam was his Child after all, but if she and her Viking were going to have a real chance of being together, it had to be said.

With a deep breath, Sookie continued.  “Yeah, about a month or two after I called, I decided to stop by Fangtasia one night to see you. I didn’t know why you hadn’t called back, but I had waited… At any rate, Steve had started paying me attention and all, but I wanted to see you before I, well, started going out with him. Anyway,” she paused to clear her throat, “Pam said that you weren’t there, that you were in Italy with your favorite group of “feed and fucks” as she called them. She said that I should just waddle my fat hick ass on back to Bon fucking Temps and not to come back to Fangtasia any more unless I wanted to be somebody’s meal.”

She huffed, but Eric caught the glimmer of tears forming in her eyes. “Needless to say, I never went back.”

At vamp speed Eric rose from the couch and blurred out the door.

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**A/N:  So, what did you think?  *ducks sharp objects*  Somehow I don’t think “shopping for shoes” will be at the top of Pam’s list for a while…if ever…**

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