17 - Sookie Stackhouse and Eric Northman Look to the Future - Part Two

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Chapter Seventeen

My ability to control myself when feeding was dependent on the amount of donor blood I had before I left the safe haven of our apartment. We fine tuned my feedings over the next few weeks making sure I got the amount right before venturing forth to find live prey.

I continued my glamour experiments but didn't find the limits of my ability to glamour groups of people. We made a quick trip to Shreveport where I glamoured everyone in Independence Stadium on a relatively busy night. The place held as many as 50,000 people but that night there were only about half that.

I got them to get them to sing the second line in the National Anthem twice. Most people went along with it though many looked baffled. Was that because they weren't glamoured and felt compelled to do something they didn't understand or were they baffled because they weren't glamoured but went along with the ones who were while wondering at the strange turn the song had taken?

Without reading individual minds it would be hard to tell why they appeared confused. There were just too many brains all working at once to let my telepathic guard down. I figured my experiment wouldn't result in any harm to anyone, that was my main concern. I could work on understanding the extent of my influence when I had more time.

Eric was more excited about my special powers than I was. I was still in love with the night, the immensity, the glow, the lure. The silver moonlight trickling down the bark of the trees and pooling on the ground, my ability to focus, entering deeper and deeper into the radiant heart of each molecule, these things distracted me away from the more practical matters I would need to face as a newly Turned vampire.

Eric's blood, while no longer sending me over the moon on a high, still made me giddy and a little tipsy. I could have as much as I wanted and not get wasted.

The whole experience was wonderful, our closeness absolute. I could be by his side and keep up with him in the bedroom and out of it. In some ways I excelled his abilities like my ability to glamour whole groups of people.

Losing consciousness at dawn and waking the next night was exactly like blinking slowly. My eyes shut briefly and then it was another night. If my stomach didn't churn with hunger upon awakening I wouldn't know a whole day had passed. It felt to me as if I never slept. I was continuously energetic and wide awake.

Eric was always up before me by at least an hour. That would get better in time. Maybe a lot of time. The more ancient a vampire was the earlier they rose. Eric didn't need to wait for full dark to rise, though he usually did wait before he left the safety of our apartment.

Like most vampires he didn't miss the sun, he didn't want to see the rosy glow of sunset. He feared and disliked the sun, an instrument of agonizing death for him and all vampires.

I never gave the sun a thought for those first weeks. When I finally did think about it I could feel the presence of it like a roaring ball, a huge blast furnace just on the other side of something. I felt the cool night protecting me from the melting searing heat and I was glad for it. I wrapped the night around me like a cloak and danced with happiness.

Finally I was ready to return to my home and my past life. Some things were going to be different. I was going to sleep in the safe room with Eric during the day. He had moved a larger bed into the safe room so we could be together all the time, day and night.

I say "sleep" but it was nothing like human sleep. It was a seeming half second of complete and utter nothing, then wide awake and ready to enjoy life. No time seemed to pass, it was a seamless transition, an endless night.

I thought about the lonely days without Eric in the past, how time seemed to drag sometimes waiting for him to rise. His experience was completely different, a split second and then there I was again waiting for him with open arms. As long as we could stay safe I preferred things the way they were now.

Eric had planned to whisk me away to Europe before I returned home to finish my education in restraint and vampire skills but I had learned so fast and done so well he decided I could return home for a few days before the next semester in vampire school.

When I arrived home the elderly Sheila didn't seem to notice anything different about me but her niece Penelope and her dog King were both frightened of me. Penelope had to lock King in the guest bedroom to keep him away from me. The attack potential of the dog was not uppermost in my mind, however. It was the smell!

I took a small sip of air and just about threw up. It was like having a wet filthy dog stuffed into each nostril. I blew out all the air I could but still the stench lingered in my sinuses making my eyes water pink tears.

"That's worse than a skunk's armpit!" I told Eric when I could finally speak. We had to go outside to the porch so I could draw a breath and talk.

He laughed, his white teeth reflecting the moonlight. "That is why we do not like dogs or wolves, the smell is so offensive," he told me.

"How did you stand it all those years with Roscoe and Gordon?" I asked, feeling guilty I had tortured him with their foul odors.

"As with other sensory input, you will adjust, though I must admit the learning curve is a little steep in the dog smell department."

He wasn't kidding. It was weeks before I was able to behave normally in the presence of an animal or the smell of meat.

That night Sheila opened all the windows in the house. After that, she, her niece, and their vile smelling dog left. Eric and I stayed in the garage and used the safe room in the garage basement. The next day a cleaning crew catering to the needs of vampires would come and thoroughly clean and destinkify the house.

I looked at my old reconstructed Bon Temps bedroom and experienced it in a whole new way. I could smell Gran and Tina my cat, Tara and Bill. I could smell Quinn and everyone and everything that had gone on there over the years. I even knew that the plumber that had installed the bathroom decades ago had been sick with a liver disease.

I had stopped asking Eric how he stood the stink. He always said the same thing, I would get used to it and adjust. I thought about all the good I could do in helping to diagnose illnesses with my super powers but as with telepathy, helping mankind would take over all my life,the line for help would be eternal and endless, the stories heart wrenching and haunting.

My life would become a nightmare of listening to other people's misery and need. It would crush me under the weight of it and rob me of any kind of life with my family.

It pained me to realize I was not willing to give up my life to do good works. Painful or not, that was the truth of it, the truth of me. Know thyself was good advice even when it meant facing my limitations.

Eric had another plan for us to rid the world of some evils, one I was ready, willing and able to do.


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more to come .....(Cheers and blessings to all of you, my best best wishes for your health and happiness beam out to each and every one of you. You are precious to me. See you Wednesday the 28th as long as things are up and running around here. Happy happy, joy joy!)

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