Part Four

Part Four

Before we left last night, Aolani worked the charm on us to shield us from Sookie. I was quite sure the telepath would be able to feel the magik around us, blocking her from reading our thoughts, but I didn’t care. I did like Sookie, really I did, but she didn’t have to know everything. Westexan, Scarlett and I were the only ones in the parlor when Sam and Sookie came in.

Sam was very cute in real life. His strawberry blond hair was streaked with a little grey at the temples and he was warm and friendly. He shook hands with all of us and smiled at us. Sookie was just as I imagined her to be, sweet as a beignet in powdered sugar and very pretty, her hair in a ponytail. I could see one of Bill’s fang marks on her neck and I sighed a little.

“I see you date a Vampire too,” she said, pointing at my little love note.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I think all of us date Vampires here except for Chris, Renee’s daughter.”
“Doesn’t Renee like Vampires?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. (She likes your Vampire, I thought. No reaction, the spell must be working) “But Chris is a little young and she wants her to date human boys before she gets all wrapped up with a Vampire.”
“I don’t blame her,” said Sookie. “What a lovely table.”
We had made various and sundry sweets and cookies and sandwiches.
“Are you guys hungry?” I asked. “You have some time, you could have a treat.”

“Sure,” said Sam. My phone was ringing so I stepped away. “What do you think Sookie?”
“I get a whiff of magik in the room,” she said. “And I can’t get a read on any of them, their minds are blank.”
“Are they supes?” asked Sam, looking at us.
“No, but they are carefully shielded from me,” she said. “They must know things Eric doesn’t want me to know.”
“Probably for the best then,” said Sam. Sookie didn’t look so sure.

I turned back to them. “That was God Speed, he is on his way,” I informed them.
“What time are our friends supposed to be here?” asked Sam
“Noon, so sit, relax, we have time to relax,” I said. They followed me back to the couches and we sat down. I sipped my coffee. Sam was looking at the basket.
“It’s a coffin,” I said. “They sometimes get caught out far from home and they have to go to their rest here.”
“Has Bill ever slept here?” she asked.
“No, but Eric has a couple of times and Pam has. This room is light tight when you close the shutters,” I explained. “They haven’t used the coffin yet.” Fairy came into the room. She looked at Sam and Sookie.

“Fairy, this is Sam Merlotte and Sookie Stackhouse,” I said by way of introduction. She smiled and shook hands with them.
“You aren’t a real Fairy,” said Sookie.
“No,” she said. “That is just my forum name.”
“I have to know, why are you all blocked from me?” she asked. “I can’t read you all at all.”
“It’s a spell, we know stuff you shouldn’t know,” I said. “Eric thought it would better if we were shielded.”

“How well, do you know Eric? And Bill?” she asked.
“We know them pretty well,” said Scarlett. “They have been our counselors for a long time now.”
“Oh yes, Bill told me about the meetings,” she said. “A kind of pro-Vampire support group?”
“Yeah, you know how it is, society is still so closed minded about Vampire/human relationships,” I said.
“That is so true,” said Sookie.
“Do you know any shifters?” asked Sam.
“Not yet,” I said carefully. “Except for meeting you , we have only been reading about your community.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Sam. “But you like shifters?”
“Oh yeah, we don’t harbor a bit of prejudice,” I said. (Though I know one werewolf Eric would love to skin and wear his hide like a cape, I thought) “We figure that we should find out the deal with these Fellowship people. They will be trouble for your kind as well.”
“Yeah, that is my thought too,” he said.
“How do you plan to deal with them?” asked Sookie.
“We are going to listen and then we are going to basically accuse them of being Nazi’s,” I said. “I imagine there will be a loud confrontation and then a hurried retreat.”

God Speed came in shortly afterwards with Jen in tow. They made their introductions and GS went to work setting up the TV and getting it ready. Jen chatted with Sookie and Sam and snacked on the stuff at the table. I finished setting up the rest of the goodies and Sookie helped me set up the big coffee pot.
Soon other members began to file in. Lina and Linzy in Fangtasia teeshirts. Aloani and Sweet and Wild. A few minutes later, Sugar and Tiff and Imagine came in. Val and Belle and Night Rose came in with Renee and Chris, who had battled with her mom to be here. I walked up to Renee.

“She wouldn’t stay home but she promised to keep quiet no matter what they said,” she said.
“Well, I just hope her guardian angel has big hands so she can cover my mouth too,” I said. She laughed at my candor. She knew I was liable to be a big mouth.

Dude and Sal came in and sat down, watching everything. Sam and Sookie took their positions near the snack table and the bar. We suspected there was going to be a lot of coffee with Irish Nevermind being served.

All of us were there, waiting, when the Fellowship arrived.

They were just as we imagined. They all looked like advertisements for wholesome living and good health. They were dressed up like they were getting ready to go to Sunday school. They looked around at the room. The man, who introduced himself as Jerry asked if we could open the shutters.

“Let a little cleansing sunlight into the room,” he said.
“Sure,” said GS. He went over and opened the heavy sun proof shutters. One of the members, a lady named Lucy was looking at our library.
“I don’t see a copy of the Good Book here,” she said.
“We keep the Bible on the coffee table,” I said.
“Really? And what do your demonic friends say to that?” she asked, showing me a smile that I had often seen on Vampires. You know, that smile shows you all their teeth, that insincere smile of barely checked dislike.
“You should have been here when Eric read from the Song of Solomon,” I said. He had too. He loved the romantic imagery.
“Eric is one of your Vampire friends?” she asked.
“Yes, he is a very good friend of ours,” I said, casually. (I knew him very well to my chagrin, I added ruefully in my head)
“Well, even the Devil can quote scripture to his own advantage,” she said.
“Ah, so true,” I agreed. (And you do it all the time, don’t you lady? I thought)

A big guy named Jack came over. “So tell me sister, do you have any faith?” he asked me.
(Call me sister one more time and I have faith I will choke the living shit out of you.) “Yes, I do, I am a Christian,” I said.
“Well, that is good to hear, maybe we have some friends in this room after all,” he said. “I want to give you one these tracts.” He reached in his pockets and gave me a small tract. It was one of those Jack Chick tracts. I took it.



“Any relation to Jack Chick?” I asked.
“No, I hate to say, I am not,” he said. “But he tells little nuggets of truth with these books.” I looked at the tract. There was a gruesome devilish picture of a Vampire and the title said ‘Hell Bound’.
“I am familiar with Jack Chick’s work,” I said.

If you have ever been to a fundamentalist church or to a teen lock in or church camp, you have seen a Jack Chick tract. These little books, about the size of a pack of cigarettes were about twenty pages long. Subjects included Why Catholics are Pagans, Hell, Satanism, Drugs, and anti-Homosexual leaflets. They had gory and gruesome pictures and they were full of hate and misinformation. It did not surprise me that Vampires had been included on the list of Chick topics.

“It is such a shame that such a wholesome girl like yourself has those nasty little bite marks on your neck,” he said, almost leering at me. There was something of the leach in him. But I touched the marks and remembered the lovely Tuesday night I had spent in Bill’s arms and his sharp little kiss.
“If you will excuse me,” I said. “I have to check on the food.” I strolled by Aolani and pressed the tract into her hand. She looked at it and laughed. I walked over to Sookie.

“Do you get anything out of them?” I asked.
“Jack wants to shag the devil right out of you,” she said quietly. “The girl knows who Eric is, or at least that he is a big Vampire Honcho. She is wondering why he is connected to you guys.”
“And the other guy?” I asked.
“He is new to the cause, very fervent, mainly because a woman left him to be with a Vampire lover,” she said. “He just thought that he would like to burn this place down with all of you and our Vampires in it.”

It was funny that she would say “Our Vampires”. Of course they were, but still, there was share and share alike, to a point in Sookie’s mind. “How can you stand to be around them?” she asked.
“I can’t, but I would do anything for our Vampires,” I said.
“Shall we begin our presentation?” asked Jerry. GS got up and shut the shutters again so we could see the screen. There he was, Mr. Fellowship of the Sun himself, Steve Newlin. I knew peacock pastors like him, all smiles but a mouth full of hate. He began his spiel about the dark world of Vampires and their evil, souless condition. He talked about how their blood was addictive and they hypnotized people and they killed people.

I was not ignorant. Vampires did kill people and they still do. But they were outlaws then. And we had all been glamoured by our Vampires, but that was when we were cloaked from who they are. They were out in the open with us and we hadn’t been glamoured since…..well, I honestly couldn’t say. We could remember most of everything after the last adventure. And souless? I think we covered that in the last meeting.

We sat quietly through the hour and a half long video where there were even testimonials from former “Blood Slaves” as the Fellowship liked to call them. These were wretched people who had unfortunately fallen victim to backward thinking Vampires or just assholes with fangs. Hey there’s an asshole in every crowd!! Fanged or fangless, human or otherwise, the truth was, there was always an asshole in the crowd. And I was looking at three assholes right here, looking smug and righteous.

“So, as you can see by our little presentation, the world of the Vampire is a dark world of blood and greed and sexual perversion and the distortion of all that is wholesome,” said Lucy in her little girl at Sunday School voice.

“You know, you may be right,” said Dude. We all looked at Dude for clarification. “I mean look at us, we spend every waking hour here, talking about them, reading about them, writing about them, dating them.”

“And we have been guilty of sins of the flesh with them,” said Fairy, looking less like a confessor and more like someone bragging.

“And they are very rich,” observed God Speed. “They have taken us on expensive trips and bought us all expensive things and they did create this parlor we are occupying.”

“They do suck our blood,” I said…I looked at Renee and I nodded. “Yeah, they do do that. But I can tell you what they don’t do: They don’t judge us.”

“They like us all for who we are,” said Scarlett.

“They don’t expect anything from us,” said Kid.

“But, how can you enjoy the company of creatures who would gladly suck the blood out of your children?” said Jerry.

“That is a damned lie,” said Westexan. “I brought my baby, just new born to a meeting and Eric ignored us the whole time practically to hold him and play with him. He even had my baby’s fingers in his mouth and he didn’t even so much as break the skin on his little finger. He could have, but he didn’t.”

“And I am pregnant,” said Butter. “And they do nothing but treat me with absolute care.”

I picked up the big book of lies and opened to a page I had marked. I began to read aloud.
“Their blood is infectious, they desire nothing more than to destroy good Christian people, they are like fleas, feeding from the very souls of the righteous. They accumulate wealth and horde it for their own designs to turn us into slaves. They are damned by God, lost to salvation. They crave even the flesh and blood of our children for satanic ritual. They are not even human,” I read.
“And you have that sort of wisdom lying around and you still have these creatures in your midst?” asked Jack.
“Hey, Jack, do you know who wrote this?” I asked.
“No, but they had the right idea,” he said.
“A crazy man wrote it. His name was Adolph Hitler and he killed 6 million people, Jews, and another five million for just disagreeing with him. This is the man you think is on the right track. This is the man who you say is wise. Get out, I don’t want you stinking up our parlor another second,” I said. I felt a presence at my back. Sookie and Sam were standing behind the couch. I looked up at Sam who smiled a little at me.

“Wretched fangbangers,” said Jerry.
“And take your shit with you,” said Chris. She grabbed the neat stack of brochures and threw them in Lucy’s face.
“God will never forgive you,” she said.
“She won’t forgive you either lady,” said Aolani.
“Pagans and witches and perverts and Vampire lovers,” muttered Jack. They slammed the door of our parlor.
“Oh my,” said God Speed in mock horror.

Sookie came and sat down. We all looked at her. Her face told us she was relieved she could not hear our heads. She rubbed her forehead. Sam put his hand on her shoulder. We let her relax a minute with her eyes closed.

“So, what did you find out?” asked GS.
“They were so confident that when they showed you the film that you would be willing to turn your backs on the Vampires. They were so full of hate,” she said. “They have done this before. They travel from place to place and stir up dissent.”
“Eric suspected something like that,” said Renee.
“There was something else, something about revenge for Dallas,” said Sookie. We nodded. We all know what happened in Dallas. And we knew what was likely to happen this summer. “They hated all of you, but they really hated you Aslinn, when you read that stuff to them.”
“I don’t care, I have been hated before,” I said.
“I am so glad I can’t read your minds, I don’t think I could stand it,” she said.
“Why don’t you just try to relax,” I suggested. “They will be here at dark.”
“No, we have to get back to Bon Temps, it is Lafayette’s day off and Terry is doing the lunch crowd,” explained Sam.
“Thanks for the offer though,” she said.
We chatted for a minute and as they began to leave, Sookie turned to me.
“Is Bill okay?” she asked.
“Sure, he’s okay,” I said, perplexed. Then it dawned on me….he was gone in her world. “He’ll be just fine Sookie, we won’t let anything happen to him.”
“I absolutely believe that,” she said.

We ate some of the snack food and cleaned up. I stretched out on the couch opposite Renee. Vi was curled up in one of the big leather chairs, asleep. “That was rough,” said Renee.
I lit a cigarette and turned on my side, pulling the heavy Connemara marble ash tray to me. “It was rough,” I agreed. “Sookie hasn’t seen Bill since the end of the adventure.”
“He has been away from Bon Temps?” she asked.
“Apparently,” I said. “She asked me if Bill was okay.”
“What did you tell her?” she asked.
“I said that we would do what we could to keep him safe,” I answered.

Later, the Vampires came in to see us. Pam was the first one there. She listened to our account of the meeting carefully and asked questions.
“Have you not spoken to Sookie?” asked Nicky.
“Eric is meeting with her now,” she said. “He will be here as soon as he is finished.” Jessica came in and sat down at the table. She watched Pam chatting with us. Whether she realized it or not, Jessica was changing into a fledged Vampire. She was learning when to listen and when to speak, there was a subtle sort of dignity about her that was the hallmark of most Vampires. Of course when she saw Chris, she was more animated, but even that was changing. Mastering her Vampire nature was now a part of her. The little girl human was nearly gone.

Bill came in and sat down at the table as well. “Eric is on his way, so I will hold my questions until he has arrived,” he said. “I am sure that he has talked with Sookie and will be able to tell us what she knows as well.”
“Are you hungry?” asked Vi.
“I could have a bottle of Tru:Blood,” he said. Vi got up to warm him one.
“I see you are all in one piece,” said Eric by way of announcing his arrival. Vi held up a bottle of blood and he nodded. He pulled out a chair at the end of the table and stretched his legs out before him. “Tell me about your lunch.” He looked at us.

“Well, they started out really nice and friendly, like I suppose they all do. They looked around the place, asked for the shutters to be opened, eyeballed the set up,” began God Speed. “I don’t think they had anything to eat or drink.”
“Sam gave that Lucy person a bottled water,” said Linzy. “But I don’t think they ate any of the buffet.”
“They were afraid you had contaminated it with Vampire blood,” said Eric lazily. “Who was there?”
“Two men and a woman. The two men were Jack and Jerry, and as Linzy said, the woman’s name was Lucy,” said Fairy. Vi brought around the Bloods, giving Bill his first and Eric’s second.
“What was their presentation like?” asked Eric.
“They left the disk in the DVD player,” said GS. “I have it if you want to take a look at it.”
“Thank you God Speed,” he said.
“And one of them gave Aslinn this tract,” said Aolani, giving him the little book.
“What is this supposed to do?” he asked, picking up the little book.
“Well, it warns you about the evils of Vampires and then it has a spot in there where they tell you how to get saved and a place to sign your name,” said Aolani.
“Like a contract?” asked Eric, his left eyebrow raised.
“Yeah,” I said. “The little story is supposed to inspire you to be a Christian, but if this is what inspires you to be a Christian, I worry about what kind of Christian you turn out to be.”

“And after the presentation, how did you respond,” asked Eric.
“Well, we started as if we were convinced. I said something like, ‘Well, we know that is the way they are, that we are obsessed with your kind,’” said Dude.
“And then we said something about how we were all having relations with Vampires,” said Fairy. Eric smiled at her.
“I said that it was true you guys were very rich, that you spent a lot of money on us and even provided us with this little room and all the things in it,” said God Speed.
“And I mentioned that you all sucked our blood,” I said. “And you all do.”

“But then we said that you all don’t judge us and you all accept us for who we are,” said Scarlett.
“And then they said the most hateful thing,” said Westexan.
“What did they say?” asked Bill.
“That you guys would eat our children,” she said. Bill looked at Eric and Eric suddenly broke out in laughter.
“And what did you say dearest, to that remark?” asked Eric.
“I told them about bringing the baby to his first meeting and how you were with him,” she said. “I would not have let you have my baby if I thought you would hurt him.”
‘I would never harm a child,” said Eric. “Many of us had children before we became Vampire.”
“And I pointed out that I was pregnant and you all were very nice to me,” said Butter.
“And then Aslinn read them something that really pissed them off,” said Renee. I got up and got the book and turned to the passage and gave Eric the book. He read the bit aloud.

“And what was their reaction?” asked Eric.
“Well they were flabbergasted that we had such “truth” in our midst and we were still friends with you,” I said.
“And then she told them who said that quote,” said Sal. “You should have seen their faces.”
“I am sure they were shocked,” said Bill.

“What did they do after that?” asked Eric.
“We didn’t give them much of a chance to say anything because we ran them off and threw their shit at them,” said the Kid.
“Yes, Sookie said you threw their propaganda in their faces,” said Eric, a bit proudly.
“What I found that was interesting,” said Minnie, the quietest of our group, “was that Sookie confirmed your suspicions, they are going from forum to forum.”
Eric looked at Pam, a satisfied ‘I told you so’ look on his face.

“So what do we do now?” asked Sweet and Wild.
“We wait and see what happens next,” said Eric.