Swimming to the Light (Southern Vampire Mystery)

Chapter 12 - Red Sky in Morning

Jackson:

Sookie leaned over to pick up the extra pair of slippers from the floor. Almost everything was in the new suitcase that had shown up in her room that morning: All the bed clothes and personal toiletries; the hairbrush and paperbacks. She wondered whether the cost to repay her hosts would be more than she could bear.

It ran against everything she believed in to be taking charity. When the kings had come to see her the previous evening, she had a hard time not breaking into tears. "I don't want to look ungrateful. I'm grateful for everything – the clothes, the room... everything. I can't thank you enough for everything you've done. I'll pay you back if it's the last thing I do. Every single cent."

Bartlett and Russell had been gracious. They had assured her that there was no repayment necessary. Lydia had been smiling and assured her that this was the case. But Sookie knew that in this world it was rare; okay, pretty much non-existent to receive random acts of kindness. Someone would be paying something sometime and no one could convince her otherwise.

Earlier that evening she had met the Queen of Minnesota. If Lydia reminded her of her Gran, Maude was something entirely different. She had been bawdy and snarky. At one point Sookie had found herself laughing; really laughing like she hadn't in a long, long time. When she realized it, she broke into tears again. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so good. Probably not since Eric; since the time before.

That was how she was starting to think of her marriage to Sam. The Time and the Time Before.

Maude had told her some stories about Pam during the time she spent in Minnesota. Sookie had shared some stories about things they'd done together in Shreveport. Before she even realized it, Sookie found herself telling the story of how she and Pam had killed Corinna and Bruno. She wanted to stop, but her mouth just kept running and running. She told how it had been raining that night. She told how frightened she had been. She told how she had staked Bruno in the mud and how Pam had hidden the car. She told how they had to warn Eric off, but how all she wanted was to have him there to hold her and let her know she was safe. "Boy, I'm nothing but a big old bawl baby!" she had told them as she bit her lip and wiped her eyes.

She told them how she just felt numb both during and after the killing. She remembered how later she had stopped thinking of vampires as real; that somehow killing them was less terrible than killing a human. She wondered if that made her a bad person.

'Sookie, you are not alone. Others have had this experience. When we get to Sanctum we are going to talk about this, and all the other experiences you've had that felt like it." Lydia squeezed her hand. "You know that it's okay to feel bad about it. And we can talk about it as long as you like."

Sookie looked first at Lydia and then at Maude. "Are you sure?" Lydia looked so surprised that Sookie added, "No one ever wanted to really talk about it. They just shrugged it off. Or they celebrated like it was a good thing."

"Vampires?" Maude asked. Sookie nodded. "Well," Maude continued, "I can understand why they had that reaction. When you are as old as me you've been through this kind of thing so much you just start accepting it. I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that after the 100th time it gets a little old." Maude looked down, breaking eye contact with the younger woman. "Things will change for us, Sookie. And that change will not be easy. It will be especially hard for those of us who are older." Maude settled back. "Think about how old we are. When I was first made the frontier was Albany, New York. We were a colony of England. Human lives were short and brutal. If they didn't die of disease they were the exception. Even humans were pretty callous about death then. As a young woman, you were lucky if one in three of your babies made it out of infancy. If your baby was born in the winter and it survived, it was a miracle. Now think about living as a vampire. If you were caught you were staked or worse. You had to hide in the dirt and keep moving. We couldn't form any relationships with creatures other than our makers. To become attached was to risk everything. There was a time that if you were traveling with a companion and that vampire showed signs of being close to a human you were obligated to end the threat."