Chapter 24 – Baby

 

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“When your tie with Talbot faded,” Eric probed carefully. “How did it feel?”

 

A deep sigh was emitted before the ancient vampire replied, “Like a light dimming, from everything into nothingness.-“

 

“But a remnant of the electrical current is still there,” Godric finished up after taking possession of the phone. “Gone-“

 

“But not forgotten,” Russell confirmed with a hint of excitement. “You have experienced the same? With Cecily?”

 

“No,” Godric clarified to the man he only knew by reputation. “This was different, a human I was tied to. You sensed no physical pain in the process?”

 

“No,” Russell replied in an equally soft tone. “It took me some time to pick up on the curiosity of that. When did this occur?”

 

“Hours ago, I think.”

 

“You lost track of time,” Russell noted with recognition. “Give me your location, I wish to trace the scents.”

 

“You think it the same as with Talbot?” Godric enquired after informing Russell of their whereabouts.

 

“I am all but certain,” he responded. “You two haven’t exactly been playing footsie with the Authority, now have you?”

 

“You think he is alive?” Godric tested carefully, tasting the hope he didn’t dare hold out for Tara’s faith hours before. The cotton onesie that held his tears was suddenly held with reverence as he tucked into a pocket close to his heart.

 

“No,” Russell replied. “I no longer think, I know now.”

 

The line went dead instantly, the King of Miscopy already scurrying out the door while Pam trailed behind him. “Pamela, darling. Not a word of this to anyone. You’re holding down the fort,” he instructed. “My crown better be here when I get back and don’t think I won’t fucking smell it if you fuck that Were on my throne!”

 

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“The scents?” Godric asked carefully while traipsing behind Russell. “They are familiar to you? From the past?”

 

He held up his finger momentarily while continuing to carefully inhale the lingering tracks of the vampire who had come to knock on the door. “Yes and no,” he replied before taking to flight to track the scent along a path of curious humans hiding in the safety of their homes far from the threshold of the door which soon closed whenever one of the ancient creatures came near.

 

“You know a telepath would be useful in situations like these,” Russell noted dryly causing Eric to growl and only more doors to close with fear. “Don’t worry, Bottom, Pammy-whammy told me she’s yours. I’d like to meet the little nugget that trapped you like no other some day.”

 

“Some day,” Eric replied testily before Russell gasped.

 

“Puppy, say it isn’t so,” he whispered with disappointment when reaching the approximate location of the car that had taken Tara away who, by her scent, had come along without the stench of panic or fear. “You were supposed to be a good little puppy.”

 

“Herveaux,” Eric growled, recognising the scent of the Were as effectively as Russell before launching himself in the air in pursuit of the other two ancient vampires that had set off in the direction of the trail.

 

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“My God, Jason, it’s like you have two sets of hands sometimes,” Sarah sighed in contentment.

 

“You have no idea,” he chuckled while Cecily snuggled in at his side while glaring at the bottled blonde snuggling in to his other half. She was seriously reconsidering her stance on her lack of objections to sharing Jason with her while digging deep into the Fellowship. Cecily hadn’t quite taken into consideration how annoying the woman was.

 

“That thing you did with your mouth, it was amazing Jason,” she swooned.

 

“Can I gag her again?” Cecily questioned hopefully. “She’s either screaming like a banshee or she won’t shut the fuck up.”

 

Jason shook his head only to watch the redhead’s bottom lip jut out in a pout. “You know I can’t say no when you pout,” he sighed.

 

“You like it when I pout, baby?” Sarah smiled while tracing a line down Jason’s bare chest at which Cecily growled with heated fury, wishing she could just drain the perky blonde in front of her dry.

 

“Eh, sure,” he shrugged before glancing apologetically at his fiery Faery.

 

“Is there something wrong with your eyes?” Sarah questioned sitting up to regard them carefully while hiding her naked body under a sheet. “You keep looking away, baby.”

 

“BABY!” Cecily fumed staring the woman down, millimetres from her face, while Jason looked on with trepidation to the unseen hostility directed at Sarah Newlin. “Who refers to someone as a regurgitating infant that can only drool?”

 

As Jason’s eyes continued to shift back and forth, fallen mute by the indecision of whether this was the hottest thing he’d ever witnessed or the most frightening.

 

“Jason, are you okay?” Sarah whispered while leaning her body over his to take in his oscillating eyes as she remained unaware of the third person in the bed who looked ready to rip her throat out. “You’re-”

 

“Dead!” Cecily snarled before the lifeless form fell onto Jason with a thud. Cecily didn’t hesitate to strike into Jason’s artery sucking the necessary life giving blood and popping him away moments before the next shot was fired their way.

 

Naked and drenched with Sarah’s blood they crashed into Sookie’s hospital room, Jason panting with shock and waking Sookie with a startle.

 

“What in the hell?” she yelled, her hands suddenly erupting with cackles of electricity lighting up the room momentarily before draining her of the little restorative energy she had regained. They barely registered it when in full attack mode with glistening fangs the assigned bodyguard fell on an already startled and haemorrhaging Jason ready to suck the life out of the sudden intruder.

 

“NO!” Sookie and Cecily screamed in sync before the current in her fingers was unleashed onto the vampire slathering Jason in more blood causing him to splutter with the sudden inhalation of it while gasping.  Sookie scrambled out of the bed, attached tubes ripped painfully out of her body in her effort to get to her seemingly injured brother as fast as possible causing the machines to protest with noise.

 

“I’m ok!” he croaked to another set of two worried women’s eyes regarded him with scrutiny after coughing up the excess blood.

 

“Oh Jason,” Cecily whispered in a soft tone petting the reddened locks of hair away from his forehead before kissing the lids of his startled eyes while trying to make sense of what happened and his new location.

 

The door burst open again as Hugo struggled in with an IV drip still attached, “We have to get out of here!” he spoke weakly, seeming in worse shape than when Sookie had last seen him when he was still unconscious.

 

“Who?” Cecily demanded, worrying Sookie as for the first time since meeting her she actually seemed concerned and frightened. She instantly lurched for the card that came with the flowers and the cell phone by her bed before helping Hugo stand upright.

 

“Claudine.”

 

“NO!” Cecily objected. “Not Ms Goody Two Shoes and her high and mighty horses!”

 

“I don’t see another choice,” Hugo wheezed. “Danger is coming. Sookie, you have to call on her.”

 

“What? I don’t know how.”

 

“Just think of a self-righteous cunt who’s too tall with brown hair,” Cecily complained before adding, “with wings!”

 

Despite the strangeness of the description, it worked as in the moment red target dots started to rain in on the room Claudine engulfed the room in a bright white light. “Get us out of here!” was uttered in panic before another barrage of bullets was shot into another room that night.

 

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“They purposefully led us here,” Godric denied as they stood a few hundred yards from Northern Louisiana’s chapter of the Fellowship of the Sun.

 

“Never disregard an enemy on assumptions,” Eric reminded his Maker of his own teachings.

 

“No,” Godric denied. “The Newlins are our friends, Eric.”

 

“The Newlins are not our friends,” Russell announced with a slight twitch of disgust. “Religion is never our friend, little Gaul. We’ll always be demons, monsters, and abominations. Never will we be equal in the eyes of man. Let’s face it; we’re not.”

 

Godric wanted to protest, but Eric wisely interrupted the theological argument before it could ensue. “Here,” he said showing the video footage downloaded from his secure cloud displaying his home as the Newlins greedily started accruing anything of value and having the appraiser note the value of each item while Sarah diligently photographed it all. “This is how your friends behaved in my home.”

 

“No,” Godric denied again, despite the evidence in front of him. “This must be a mistake.”

 

“A stake through the back is more like it,” Russell noted with amusement while watching doubt genuinely take hold of the small vampire beside him. “We do not have friends young Gaul; we’re too lethal to keep the ones around us alive.”

 

“This cannot be,” he repeated in a whisper to himself.

 

“What would Tara say if she saw this?” Eric posed having quickly assessed the influence her opinion had on his Maker. He was glad it was congruent with his, he had reflected it would be a shame to have to kill Sookie’s friend, but he would if it came to that.

 

“Good for nothing, rat-thieving bastards!” Godric’s hands covered his mouth in shock with the sentence that escaped his own mouth where he tested out the anger that spoke of Tara in her strongest, understanding it so much better in her absence. He had, however, limited time to contemplate that small outburst as the second explosion in twenty-four hours singed the fine hairs on their faces before being thrust backwards with the impact, eradicating the scented tracks they were following with gunpowder invading their nostrils.

 

Eric’s own startle moved in tandem with Sookie over the distance as panic surged through the bond at the same time, only causing them to elevate their unnerved states to greater heights.

 

“Is she still there?” Russell asked with observation wondering if Eric was the next victim to a stolen Bonded one.

 

“Yes,” Eric spoke with certainty before snatching the ringing phone a distance away. “Are you ok?” they spoke simultaneously when answering the phone.

 

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“Here,” he offered to the wary-looking Tara while setting down the glass of water beside her. “Will you keep calm if I take your gag off?”

 

She nodded meekly before he carefully undid the tight knots his predecessor placed, however, Tara’s promise stood for little when released, screaming out for help and flaying around as much as possible as Alcide tried to keep her still.

 

“There’s no one here!” he growled, the flaring of his irises startling her momentarily. This didn’t terrify Tara, however, it was the involuntary spasm that she detested in herself that made her calm with his tightened hold.

 

“I’m pregnant,” she whimpered, his pressing hands released her abdomen instantly.

 

“Shit!” he shouted his arms reaching for air in a symbol of surrender. He stared at his hands like true culprits with disdain, the preternatural strength always present, whether he wanted it there or not. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”

 

Tara did something that she rarely allowed, she cried earnestly with the situation she found herself in. The brusquely muscular man seemed responsive to her plight as a victim, and she ascertained it was her best chance of getting out of there, any sign of help seemed ignorant of her previous cries for help.

 

“Please untie my hands,” she whispered through thick and wet lashes. “I want… I’d like to just feel that everything’s alright with my baby.”

 

He eyed her sceptically, hesitating in his stance while he regarded her carefully.

 

“Listen, we can make this easy or hard on us both,” Tara offered in a stance meeker than she was. “I’m sure you brought me somewhere I can never be found, so there’s no point in me making a run for it. You would have been on damage control if my shouting would actually have achieved something. I’ll behave, I have more than myself to look after. I know that now.”

 

“I’m trusting you,” he sighed wondering again at the actions that brought him to this place. She kept her word while he continued to untie her. “How long?” he asked curiously, gesturing to where her hands had instantly flocked to in protection.

 

“Not sure,” she shrugged. “Never made it to the doctors’, couple of weeks I guess. Are you here against your will too?”

 

He shook his head, her mouth formed an ‘o’ but the accompanying sound never came out. Bristled with irritation, he took to the door leaving her behind with the loud bang of the door. Alcide paced the corridor like a caged animal, the magic of this place only aggravating that further. He reached for his phone that stared uselessly at him demanding a signal. He had no one to call anymore, he simply wanted to find the pictures hidden in the gallery; the girl who brought him here, with adoring eyes yet wild at the same time.

 

“Debbie,” he whispered to himself while a finger dragged over her cheek on a digital screen, remembering the last sight of her where her eyes had been as cold and lifeless as the rest of her body. She’d smelt of many things, the soil of a grave yard, gunpowder, another corpse, that salty musk of the ancient Viking, the sweet scent of the telepath, and, finally, of the magic of this place. Though that scent was unknown to him then, his initial hesitation that brought him here turned to regret.

 

Debbie hadn’t smelt of him, and that was the most disturbing part of all. The one meant for him as arranged by fate it seemed or so she’d always like to say when pressuring him to have a child. He had always put it down to her being the prettiest of the Pack girls, like any teenage boy would sniff out an attractive accessible female and count his lucky stars when she agreed to be his.

 

He only came to understand her lofty desires when she was dead, when confronted with her cold and deceased body. Alcide wanted every part of her then and in that, he did something that had always disgusted him, one of the many arguments he upheld for loathing what he was and not wishing that existence on innocent life if he could help it. In his desperation to keep her with him the wolf in him cleaned her body of all flesh, crushing his jaw down hard till there was nothing left but a pile of pale bones, absorbing the last of her inside, not caring that the meat was spoilt.

 

The man in him wished that he had just given in, for a remnant of them to be left behind, a child always unwanted by him before who was theirs and innocent of burdens. He had wept for days till the taste of her dissipated from his mouth and all that was left behind was that strange magical smell he was now surrounded in and in the forefront the distinct characteristics that made up Eric Northman and Sookie Stackhouse. When the dark-haired vampire approached him offering blood in exchange for information on the King of Mississippi while touching the signature fang marks in his neck, he declined gruffly, but didn’t send her away.

 

He had sipped languidly on his beer staring at everything and nothing in the seedy bar while the vampiress joined him in his silence. She knew what she was doing, seduction was her currency; three words and he had simply nodded. Come with me.

 

Alcide wanted to succumb to darkness and figured a vamp was as good as any that night with the moon absent from the sky, a bit of final pleasure with his pain. She preyed on that darkness, the shade that surrounded them and now inhabited him. Part beast, part man. They fucked, if one could even describe something as volatile as such, touching into moments of pleasure to eradicate any sense of grief. It was a futile effort, her fangs never came out to play to put him out of his mortal misery and the moment he spent himself completely, the pain returned along with the jealous eyes of his mate boring into his soul. He could admit that now, she was his mate and he felt lost without her and the taste of her wasn’t there anymore.

 

“Who hurt you so?” she had whispered huskily in his ear while fondling his cock back to life again.

 

Alcide had growled ferociously at her display of tenderness, he felt unworthy of it. Flipped her over and dug her face into a pillow not wishing to see any more sign of sympathy he shouldn’t elicit. She smirked with delight, tossing him off with ease to the hard floor. Straddling him and holding his angered face in her iron grasp forcing him to look at her.

 

“Who hurt you so?” she demanded again.

 

“The Viking,” he snarled with the full force of his anger and pain. “And his stupid pet telepath!”

 

The grin that painted her full red lips was frightening to him, more frightening than the crisp white fangs that descended down between them. She purred while her inner muscles strangled him to near completion. Pain flittered in his eyes for fear of being held in this eternal hold where her upper body folded over his, face hovering over his.

 

“I knew you were the right man for the job,” she spoke softly against his lips before sucking them into her mouth and sending him into a sensation of sweet release. He wanted to howl as if the moon hung heavy in the sky when he jerked inside her, but his breath was absorbed by her, muting him and depriving him of the necessary oxygen till his eyes rolled to the back of his head. So close to death, but not yet.

 

A few drops of her blood fell into his mouth but he never registered it from inside the dark abyss where he had fallen. She rested on his chest listening to the erratic heartbeat settle itself and carefully the lids of his eyes tested their movements to find her hypnotic gaze awaiting him in question. “I’ll do it,” he had said. “Whatever the cost.”

 

He should have known death came at the cost of life, Alcide had simply assumed it would be his.

 

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A/N: Thanks to msbuffy this chapter was all nice and spiffy again!

 

Yes, you should always be wary when you don’t hear from a certain character for a while… like Alcide… I always had a difficult time understanding the driving force between him and Debbie but they did appear to suit each other in better times and in this tale Debbie and he had simply been arguing about a child and time wise she had yet to succumb to the addicting power of V. Her death (on account of assumed jealousy towards Sookie luring away her mate when he was simply doing a job) could be pinned on Cecily even though she simply offered the beaten body to the portal, which when Eric and Sookie came across it spit out Debbie’s dead body leaving their scents on when they disposed of it.  

 

You’ll have to wait and see what’s happening with the Fellowship next but I don’t think anybody is mourning Sarah… especially Cecily, well maybe she’ll grumble that she didn’t get to do the deed on account of her semi-corporal state… Whether Tara appears to care for the baby inside is real or just a way to work on her jailor’s sympathies will all be revealed as the story continues… and perhaps Godric will finally see the light on those rat-thieving bastards… or not… Who knows? Oh right me…  I know I’m evil but this story just happens to fluctuate in exciting times for the moment… see you next time and thoughts welcome as always!

 

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