SERIOUSLY, ALWAYS YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL Chapter 14
A bonus post because we are going on vacation soon and not sure when I can post again. Lot of plot development here. BWHAAA! ADULTS ONLY!
Seriously
Chapter 14
ERIC’S POV:
We return to my house before dawn. I decide to sleep, not in the coffin concealed in the hidden room under the stairs, but in bed with Brian. I rely on the blackout shades to keep out the sun. I want to feel his skin next to mine, feel his warmth. We’re both sexed out, exhausted, but not quite ready to release the connection we feel. Before we sleep, he asks, “If that mutant vampire who lives here decided to disobey you and come after me, are you strong enough to fend him off? Even if the others here are on his side?”
I smile at his naivete. “He would never defy me.”
“But if he did…”
“If he did I would squash him and his family like small bugs before they touched a hair on your head. I was a warrior before I became a vampire, and I’m still a warrior. And I am also hundreds of years older than any of them. In our world, with age comes strength. The opposite of yours, where age saps strength.”
“How nice for you.”
“There’s no reason to fear anyone in this house, Brian. No one will harm you.”
“I’m not afraid, not really.”
I smile at his macho little lie. He’d be a fool if he had no fear in a house of vampires. But I let him have that. He does have a brave spirit. I like that about him. By now, I should be bored with him. I normally would either have killed him or shunned him. I have no interest in killing him, and shunning him is becoming difficult to imagine. I don’t like that. I don’t like being fascinated by any human. My fascination for Sookie Stackhouse is an annoyance. And now Brian Kinney? He’s not even a fairy, like Sookie, at least not the fey kind of fairy. I told myself her fairy blood with its tantalizing properties is what drew me to her and kept me interested. Not so with Brian. He’s also nothing like Godric, my vampire fascination. Godric is spiritual and inward and full of grace. That’s not Brian. I would gladly die for my maker, Godric. Would I die for Brian? Probably not. Not yet. At least the fascination is not that far gone. Typical vampire, I think of love in terms of death. Love? Where did that word come from? There is no love in my world. There is only fascination.
Brian is sleeping. I get up and go into the bathroom, staring at my image in the mirror. I can see signs of stress and pain and hunger in my face. My hair looks flat and dry. I need blood. Instead, I open the cabinet and take out a pair of scissors. I grab a handful of hair and chop it off. I keep chopping, leaving hunks of pale blond on the sink and on the floor. I then even it up and look at myself, less the Viking god and more a man approaching thirty with a haircut that allows me to blend more easily. I put my hands on my face and pull back slightly, smoothing my skin as I make it tighter. Am I aging? Am I losing the beauty that sets me apart from others? Does it matter?
I sink down on the cold floor tiles, naked, suddenly despondent. It’s Russell’s fault. I can’t get the massacre out of my head. My mother, her new baby, my dying father’s words to me, the images all come back in crystal clarity. The loneliness they left in my life, a loneliness that can never be filled is still a burning wound. The last words I exchanged with my father before the attack were angry, expressing my frustration with being required to follow in his steps like a dog. I want to take them back. I want to make him proud of me. But how can I? How could any father be proud of a vampire son? A ruthless killer? An abomination?
“What are you doing?” Brian walks in on me, filling the doorway with his beautiful naked form. Blood drips from my face to hit the tiles and I realize these are my vampire tears. The sight of them alarms him. “You’re bleeding. You cut off all your hair. What the fuck, Eric?”
He squats beside me and I reach out and grasp his shoulders tightly. “This is how a vampire cries. Like everything else about us, it’s all consumed in blood. I cry for my family. I cry for my failures. I cry for lonely.”
He looks uneasy, uncertain of what to say. He stands up and grabs a robe from a hook on the door and puts it over my shoulders. “You’re so cold.” He wets a washcloth with warm water and passes it over my cheeks; crimson on white terry cloth. “Let’s go to bed.”
“I’m so hungry,” I whisper and he offers to retrieve a Tru Blood from the kitchen for me. I shake my head. “It won’t help. Nothing will quench this hunger. Nothing.”
He hesitates, but then holds out his wrist to me. “Go on. Do it.”
I see the veins, so blue beneath his perfect, golden skin. Throbbing with life. Throbbing with blood. “No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t be able to stop.”
“I trust you.”
“Never trust a vampire, Brian. Especially not with your blood.”
He flattens his palm on my cheek and whispers, “Let me trust you.”
His gesture brings new bloody tears and he wipes them away. I stand up with his help. I shake the loose hair from my scalp, and comb what remains with my fingers. “I’m a killer, don’t you get that by now? I’ve killed so many of your kind and I’ll kill again. And again.”
“I can’t reconcile that in my head, Eric. When I think of killers, I think of the creepy serial killer types or the spree killers or just someone who hates the ones he kills. I can’t think of you that way. I guess it’s like soldiers who kill. It’s not personal.”
I smile. “It’s very personal. And it’s not a war, there’s no pretty excuse to make it smell better. It’s just killing. It’s what I do. I’m never more alive than when I suck the life out of a human.”
“Come to bed, Eric. I know this is all about that Russell guy. He set something off in you. You need sleep. You need to turn off your brain for a few hours.”
I let him lead me to the bed. I shrug off the robe and climb in beside him. I let him throw a leg and an arm over me, as if to keep me there. As if he could. Soon, I hear his breathing become the slow rhythm of sleep. His phone suddenly lights up on the bedside table and vibrates. I pick it up and climb out of bed with his phone in hand. Speaking in a low voice to avoid waking him, I say, “Yes?”
“Brian?”
I look at the name on the phone. Justin. The artist. “No.”
He pauses. He sounds like a child. His voice is so young. “Uh, are you the vampire?” He seems almost hopeful.
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
I smile at his wonder. “Do you love him?”
He hesitates. “I - I don’t know. Uh, yeah, maybe. I think so.”
“Then you better come get him. If you don’t, I intend to make him mine. Forever.”
I end the call and return to the bed, and finally to sleep.
JUSTIN’S POV:
Why does Daphne have to make everything so complicated? All I asked her to do was drive me to the airport and keep her mouth shut. I cashed in all my Christmas and birthday money to buy this ticket to Louisiana. The only information I have on where Brian is came from his secretary. He’s in Shreveport, working on an ad campaign, and that’s as much as she was willing to say.
But I know the bar is called “Fangtasia” and I imagine it won’t be too hard to find.
“You’re so gullible, Justin,” Daphne insists as we near the airport. “Brian is obviously playing a joke on you and you fell for it.”
“What if he did? So what? If so, he wants me to come down there. And if it’s not a joke, then what? I could be saving his life!”
“How? Are you some fearless vampire hunter now?”
“No, but the vampire said to come get him or else.”
“It all sounds fishy to me and if your parents ever found out where you really went rather than some bogus camp out with friends, you’d be grounded for a century!”
“They won’t find out and I’ll be back before school on Monday, as promised. With Brian. Well, not with Brian at school but you know what I mean,”
“If you live that long.”
“Don’t be a drama queen.”
“This is just crazy.”
She pulls up to the curb and I jump out with my duffel. “Thanks, see you Sunday night.”
“Justin, please call me and wear that cross I gave you.”
“Yeah, sure,” I wave goodbye and run inside the terminal, cutting it close for wheels up. Luckily I make it and although it’s not a really long flight, it feels like forever. When we land in Shreveport, I first notice how hot and clammy it is. There are no more messages on my phone. I get into a cab and ask to be taken to Fangtasia. The driver looks at me like I’m a lunatic.
“What the hell is that?”
“A bar? A club? A vampire club?”
“Of for shit’s sake, sonny. I don’t keep up with no vampire haunts and you’re too young to get in anyway.”
“Leave that to me. Can you call your dispatcher and get the address?”
He reluctantly does so and we’re on our way to some suburb or satellite town near Shreveport, although he’s still complaining about it. I try calling Brian, but there’s no answer. When I get to the club and pay my gi-normous cab fare, I find the door is locked. Even though it just turned dark outside, the club isn’t yet open. Shit. I sit down on the ground, my back to the wall and try calling Brian. Still nothing. Time crawls by, no one’s arriving. But then the door opens and a tall, beautiful but scary woman dressed in black leather gives me a withering look.
“What do you think you’re doing, little boy? We aren’t open yet and when we are, you aren’t getting in. You’re too young.”
I stand and give her a defiant look, which is hard since she’s taller than me in her platform boots. “I came all the way from Pittsburgh to come here.”
“I don’t care if you came from Hong Kong…wait a minute. Pittsburgh?”
I nod.
“Are you here because of Brian Kinney?”
I nod again.
“Are you his kid or something?”
I smile. Wouldn’t Brian love to hear that? “No. Is he here?”
“Come in, you bothersome little puke.”
I follow her into the club that is dark with touches of red and very scary looking. Only now does it strike me that she's a vampire. Her pale skin, her extreme look, she has to be. She leads me through the club where others are setting things up for the night and into an office. She closes the door and slams me into a chair with such speed and strength, that I can only stare at her. She sits behind the desk and says, “What’s your name, chicken little?”
“Justin.”
“And what brings you here besides Brian Kinney? Did he ask you to come?”
“No. The vampire did.”
“The vampire? What vampire?”
“Eric Northman.” I remember his text name. I can see her attitude shift.
“How do you know Eric Northman?”
“How do you know him?”
In a flash, she’s across the desk, has me by the throat and slams me up against the wall, my feet dangling in mid-air. “Don’t spar with me, chickadee, you don’t have the feathers for it. Now answer my question before I rip off your head and drink you like a pint sized cherry Slurpee.”
She puts me back on my feet and I rub my throat and clench my gut to keep from peeing. This is real. This is fucking real and I’m scared. “I don’t know him but he told me to come get Brian or he’d make him his forever.”
“Bullshit.”
“He did. Well, I called Brian and he answered Brian’s phone and said that to me.”
“That he would make him his forever?”
I nod. She returns to the chair behind the desk and her expression is now more hurt than mad. “That stupid fucking Swede. I knew it!” She takes a post it note from a desk drawer and writes out an address before handing it to me. “If I know Eric, and I do, you’ll find them here, in New Orleans. Word of advice, don’t go in that house unless you see your Brian there. Wait for him somewhere else. If you go in and he isn’t there, you’re not coming out alive.”
I wince. Daphne was right. I am so far over my head here. “How do I get to New Orleans?”
“In a car, I would assume.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Fuck,” she opens a lizard purse and throws me a key. “Take mine. It’s the black SUV parked behind the club. I’m not going anywhere. But I want it back, or I will hunt you down like vermin.”
I nod again. I guess I still look lost because she adds, “Just plug the address into the Navi system. It will tell you how to go.”
I leave the club to find the SUV, find New Orleans, find Brian, and find what else may wait for me there. I’m scared but also excited. This may just be the most fun I’ve ever had, or maybe the last fun.
PAM’S POV:
I watch him leave and the words “dead man walking” occur to me. He’s as green as a grasshopper and equally defenseless. What the hell is Eric up to now? If he thinks I’ll stand by and let him make Brian Kinney into his second child, he’s crazy. Call it jealousy, call it sibling rivalry, I don’t care what you call it, I am not sharing Eric with any man.
I call his cell phone. Not surprisingly, he fails to answer. I leave a pointed message. “Eric, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I just sent a kid to your house in New Orleans. He said you told him to come here and get Brian or you would make him yours forever. That’s the crazy talking, Eric. You aren’t going to make another child, I know you better than that. One is more than enough, you’ve told me that a thousand times. So fuck this infatuation and come home before something bad happens. Oh, and that kid? He won’t last one minute with those mutants who take care of your house in New Orleans. So if you aren’t there now, you better be soon, or its moot.”
Before I can hang up, he answers, “What have you done?”
“Me? He said you told him to come there and save his precious Brian.”
“Shit, I wasn’t myself last night.”
“Obviously. So you didn’t mean it about making Brian?”
He pauses. He pauses for too long. “Back off, Pam.”
“Fuck you, Eric.”
“No, fuck you. Do not interfere in my life.” He hangs up and now I’m really mad. I dig through his desk and find a book where he keeps a few contacts. I locate the one I want. Even though he does everything in code, I know how it works. I start to dial Godric’s number. I stop myself and return the book to his desk drawer. There are some things Eric would never forgive. Contacting his maker to complain about him is one. I decide to let fate play this one out. I have confidence that someone is going to do something they will later regret. I just hope it isn’t me.
Seriously
Chapter 14
ERIC’S POV:
We return to my house before dawn. I decide to sleep, not in the coffin concealed in the hidden room under the stairs, but in bed with Brian. I rely on the blackout shades to keep out the sun. I want to feel his skin next to mine, feel his warmth. We’re both sexed out, exhausted, but not quite ready to release the connection we feel. Before we sleep, he asks, “If that mutant vampire who lives here decided to disobey you and come after me, are you strong enough to fend him off? Even if the others here are on his side?”
I smile at his naivete. “He would never defy me.”
“But if he did…”
“If he did I would squash him and his family like small bugs before they touched a hair on your head. I was a warrior before I became a vampire, and I’m still a warrior. And I am also hundreds of years older than any of them. In our world, with age comes strength. The opposite of yours, where age saps strength.”
“How nice for you.”
“There’s no reason to fear anyone in this house, Brian. No one will harm you.”
“I’m not afraid, not really.”
I smile at his macho little lie. He’d be a fool if he had no fear in a house of vampires. But I let him have that. He does have a brave spirit. I like that about him. By now, I should be bored with him. I normally would either have killed him or shunned him. I have no interest in killing him, and shunning him is becoming difficult to imagine. I don’t like that. I don’t like being fascinated by any human. My fascination for Sookie Stackhouse is an annoyance. And now Brian Kinney? He’s not even a fairy, like Sookie, at least not the fey kind of fairy. I told myself her fairy blood with its tantalizing properties is what drew me to her and kept me interested. Not so with Brian. He’s also nothing like Godric, my vampire fascination. Godric is spiritual and inward and full of grace. That’s not Brian. I would gladly die for my maker, Godric. Would I die for Brian? Probably not. Not yet. At least the fascination is not that far gone. Typical vampire, I think of love in terms of death. Love? Where did that word come from? There is no love in my world. There is only fascination.
Brian is sleeping. I get up and go into the bathroom, staring at my image in the mirror. I can see signs of stress and pain and hunger in my face. My hair looks flat and dry. I need blood. Instead, I open the cabinet and take out a pair of scissors. I grab a handful of hair and chop it off. I keep chopping, leaving hunks of pale blond on the sink and on the floor. I then even it up and look at myself, less the Viking god and more a man approaching thirty with a haircut that allows me to blend more easily. I put my hands on my face and pull back slightly, smoothing my skin as I make it tighter. Am I aging? Am I losing the beauty that sets me apart from others? Does it matter?
I sink down on the cold floor tiles, naked, suddenly despondent. It’s Russell’s fault. I can’t get the massacre out of my head. My mother, her new baby, my dying father’s words to me, the images all come back in crystal clarity. The loneliness they left in my life, a loneliness that can never be filled is still a burning wound. The last words I exchanged with my father before the attack were angry, expressing my frustration with being required to follow in his steps like a dog. I want to take them back. I want to make him proud of me. But how can I? How could any father be proud of a vampire son? A ruthless killer? An abomination?
“What are you doing?” Brian walks in on me, filling the doorway with his beautiful naked form. Blood drips from my face to hit the tiles and I realize these are my vampire tears. The sight of them alarms him. “You’re bleeding. You cut off all your hair. What the fuck, Eric?”
He squats beside me and I reach out and grasp his shoulders tightly. “This is how a vampire cries. Like everything else about us, it’s all consumed in blood. I cry for my family. I cry for my failures. I cry for lonely.”
He looks uneasy, uncertain of what to say. He stands up and grabs a robe from a hook on the door and puts it over my shoulders. “You’re so cold.” He wets a washcloth with warm water and passes it over my cheeks; crimson on white terry cloth. “Let’s go to bed.”
“I’m so hungry,” I whisper and he offers to retrieve a Tru Blood from the kitchen for me. I shake my head. “It won’t help. Nothing will quench this hunger. Nothing.”
He hesitates, but then holds out his wrist to me. “Go on. Do it.”
I see the veins, so blue beneath his perfect, golden skin. Throbbing with life. Throbbing with blood. “No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t be able to stop.”
“I trust you.”
“Never trust a vampire, Brian. Especially not with your blood.”
He flattens his palm on my cheek and whispers, “Let me trust you.”
His gesture brings new bloody tears and he wipes them away. I stand up with his help. I shake the loose hair from my scalp, and comb what remains with my fingers. “I’m a killer, don’t you get that by now? I’ve killed so many of your kind and I’ll kill again. And again.”
“I can’t reconcile that in my head, Eric. When I think of killers, I think of the creepy serial killer types or the spree killers or just someone who hates the ones he kills. I can’t think of you that way. I guess it’s like soldiers who kill. It’s not personal.”
I smile. “It’s very personal. And it’s not a war, there’s no pretty excuse to make it smell better. It’s just killing. It’s what I do. I’m never more alive than when I suck the life out of a human.”
“Come to bed, Eric. I know this is all about that Russell guy. He set something off in you. You need sleep. You need to turn off your brain for a few hours.”
I let him lead me to the bed. I shrug off the robe and climb in beside him. I let him throw a leg and an arm over me, as if to keep me there. As if he could. Soon, I hear his breathing become the slow rhythm of sleep. His phone suddenly lights up on the bedside table and vibrates. I pick it up and climb out of bed with his phone in hand. Speaking in a low voice to avoid waking him, I say, “Yes?”
“Brian?”
I look at the name on the phone. Justin. The artist. “No.”
He pauses. He sounds like a child. His voice is so young. “Uh, are you the vampire?” He seems almost hopeful.
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
I smile at his wonder. “Do you love him?”
He hesitates. “I - I don’t know. Uh, yeah, maybe. I think so.”
“Then you better come get him. If you don’t, I intend to make him mine. Forever.”
I end the call and return to the bed, and finally to sleep.
JUSTIN’S POV:
Why does Daphne have to make everything so complicated? All I asked her to do was drive me to the airport and keep her mouth shut. I cashed in all my Christmas and birthday money to buy this ticket to Louisiana. The only information I have on where Brian is came from his secretary. He’s in Shreveport, working on an ad campaign, and that’s as much as she was willing to say.
But I know the bar is called “Fangtasia” and I imagine it won’t be too hard to find.
“You’re so gullible, Justin,” Daphne insists as we near the airport. “Brian is obviously playing a joke on you and you fell for it.”
“What if he did? So what? If so, he wants me to come down there. And if it’s not a joke, then what? I could be saving his life!”
“How? Are you some fearless vampire hunter now?”
“No, but the vampire said to come get him or else.”
“It all sounds fishy to me and if your parents ever found out where you really went rather than some bogus camp out with friends, you’d be grounded for a century!”
“They won’t find out and I’ll be back before school on Monday, as promised. With Brian. Well, not with Brian at school but you know what I mean,”
“If you live that long.”
“Don’t be a drama queen.”
“This is just crazy.”
She pulls up to the curb and I jump out with my duffel. “Thanks, see you Sunday night.”
“Justin, please call me and wear that cross I gave you.”
“Yeah, sure,” I wave goodbye and run inside the terminal, cutting it close for wheels up. Luckily I make it and although it’s not a really long flight, it feels like forever. When we land in Shreveport, I first notice how hot and clammy it is. There are no more messages on my phone. I get into a cab and ask to be taken to Fangtasia. The driver looks at me like I’m a lunatic.
“What the hell is that?”
“A bar? A club? A vampire club?”
“Of for shit’s sake, sonny. I don’t keep up with no vampire haunts and you’re too young to get in anyway.”
“Leave that to me. Can you call your dispatcher and get the address?”
He reluctantly does so and we’re on our way to some suburb or satellite town near Shreveport, although he’s still complaining about it. I try calling Brian, but there’s no answer. When I get to the club and pay my gi-normous cab fare, I find the door is locked. Even though it just turned dark outside, the club isn’t yet open. Shit. I sit down on the ground, my back to the wall and try calling Brian. Still nothing. Time crawls by, no one’s arriving. But then the door opens and a tall, beautiful but scary woman dressed in black leather gives me a withering look.
“What do you think you’re doing, little boy? We aren’t open yet and when we are, you aren’t getting in. You’re too young.”
I stand and give her a defiant look, which is hard since she’s taller than me in her platform boots. “I came all the way from Pittsburgh to come here.”
“I don’t care if you came from Hong Kong…wait a minute. Pittsburgh?”
I nod.
“Are you here because of Brian Kinney?”
I nod again.
“Are you his kid or something?”
I smile. Wouldn’t Brian love to hear that? “No. Is he here?”
“Come in, you bothersome little puke.”
I follow her into the club that is dark with touches of red and very scary looking. Only now does it strike me that she's a vampire. Her pale skin, her extreme look, she has to be. She leads me through the club where others are setting things up for the night and into an office. She closes the door and slams me into a chair with such speed and strength, that I can only stare at her. She sits behind the desk and says, “What’s your name, chicken little?”
“Justin.”
“And what brings you here besides Brian Kinney? Did he ask you to come?”
“No. The vampire did.”
“The vampire? What vampire?”
“Eric Northman.” I remember his text name. I can see her attitude shift.
“How do you know Eric Northman?”
“How do you know him?”
In a flash, she’s across the desk, has me by the throat and slams me up against the wall, my feet dangling in mid-air. “Don’t spar with me, chickadee, you don’t have the feathers for it. Now answer my question before I rip off your head and drink you like a pint sized cherry Slurpee.”
She puts me back on my feet and I rub my throat and clench my gut to keep from peeing. This is real. This is fucking real and I’m scared. “I don’t know him but he told me to come get Brian or he’d make him his forever.”
“Bullshit.”
“He did. Well, I called Brian and he answered Brian’s phone and said that to me.”
“That he would make him his forever?”
I nod. She returns to the chair behind the desk and her expression is now more hurt than mad. “That stupid fucking Swede. I knew it!” She takes a post it note from a desk drawer and writes out an address before handing it to me. “If I know Eric, and I do, you’ll find them here, in New Orleans. Word of advice, don’t go in that house unless you see your Brian there. Wait for him somewhere else. If you go in and he isn’t there, you’re not coming out alive.”
I wince. Daphne was right. I am so far over my head here. “How do I get to New Orleans?”
“In a car, I would assume.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Fuck,” she opens a lizard purse and throws me a key. “Take mine. It’s the black SUV parked behind the club. I’m not going anywhere. But I want it back, or I will hunt you down like vermin.”
I nod again. I guess I still look lost because she adds, “Just plug the address into the Navi system. It will tell you how to go.”
I leave the club to find the SUV, find New Orleans, find Brian, and find what else may wait for me there. I’m scared but also excited. This may just be the most fun I’ve ever had, or maybe the last fun.
PAM’S POV:
I watch him leave and the words “dead man walking” occur to me. He’s as green as a grasshopper and equally defenseless. What the hell is Eric up to now? If he thinks I’ll stand by and let him make Brian Kinney into his second child, he’s crazy. Call it jealousy, call it sibling rivalry, I don’t care what you call it, I am not sharing Eric with any man.
I call his cell phone. Not surprisingly, he fails to answer. I leave a pointed message. “Eric, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I just sent a kid to your house in New Orleans. He said you told him to come here and get Brian or you would make him yours forever. That’s the crazy talking, Eric. You aren’t going to make another child, I know you better than that. One is more than enough, you’ve told me that a thousand times. So fuck this infatuation and come home before something bad happens. Oh, and that kid? He won’t last one minute with those mutants who take care of your house in New Orleans. So if you aren’t there now, you better be soon, or its moot.”
Before I can hang up, he answers, “What have you done?”
“Me? He said you told him to come there and save his precious Brian.”
“Shit, I wasn’t myself last night.”
“Obviously. So you didn’t mean it about making Brian?”
He pauses. He pauses for too long. “Back off, Pam.”
“Fuck you, Eric.”
“No, fuck you. Do not interfere in my life.” He hangs up and now I’m really mad. I dig through his desk and find a book where he keeps a few contacts. I locate the one I want. Even though he does everything in code, I know how it works. I start to dial Godric’s number. I stop myself and return the book to his desk drawer. There are some things Eric would never forgive. Contacting his maker to complain about him is one. I decide to let fate play this one out. I have confidence that someone is going to do something they will later regret. I just hope it isn’t me.