Dead Debate

Dead Debate

“Listen though Bill, the Book of Lilith completely ignores the second story of Cain, the story where Cain and Lilith come upon the murder of Abel, this is a pivotal story in the religion of the Vampires,” I said.
“But these are human influenced translations of corrupt scriptures,” said Bill.
“This translation is done by a bunch of scholarly Vampires from Oxford. Besides, it is the Book of Lilith that excludes the books and prophesies the Blood Bible contains. And nowhere in the Book of Lilith does it say that fairies are an abomination. It says that the inordinate worship of fairies by mortals and immortals alike is an abomination because the fae are no more or better than the other children of the creator,” I said.
“It simply is beyond you to understand the blessings of the mother because you are not Vampire,” said Bill.
“Don’t. I have a master’s degree, I was reading before I was walking. I was reading the Bible for myself since I was a little girl. I think I feel fairly confident I can work out the gist of your Bible,” I said. Bill smiled his smug smile. I darted him a hard look.

“Okay, Aslinn, okay, then what do you say to the passage where it says in Thelicitudes that Vampires were meant to drink blood,” said Bill.
“Okay, but look, biology was going to dictate that anyhow, you have to drink blood, but there is a passage in the Book of Endowment that says to be worthy of the blood, Vampire must work for it, they must care for, nurture and love the humans they feed from, for to starve and beat and betray your mortal brothers and sisters is to betray yourself and foster self loathing. Now you and Lorena were going after people like they were an all you can eat buffet and you cared nothing for them. You hated yourself, because even though you knew next to nothing about the Vampire Bible, or the Book of Lilith, you were being set upon by the words of your scriptures, given the punishment it assures will come to Vampires who don’t respect their brothers and sisters,” I pointed out. “And it comes from your own book.” Bill looked away. I glanced at Eric and he nodded minutely. “And look here, in the Book of Blessings, it says in the third chapter: For the Creator loved Lilith because she was his own great creation and meant for great things and the greatest thing she was to be was the mother of the Children of the Night and to be the protector of the Children of the Day for from them we are nourished and from them we come, for there cannot be vampire without human though there can be human without vampire for from them we spring and siblings we are and we are the keepers of one another’s lives and hopes and dreaming in daylight and darkness.”

“There is even the love story,” said Jessica. “The Vampire Lucius fell in love with the fisherman’s daughter, and they lived together for many years till the moment when she decided she was ready to become Vampire and the Blood Bible said they were blessed by both Lilith and God because they truly loved each other and defended them from the people who were afraid of the Vampire. Lucius loved the human girl and lived with her as her husband till she became Vampire. If God or Lilith thought it was wrong to love humans, they would have said it straight out…Thou Shalt Not Love Humans.”

“But it is wrong to love humans,” said Bill. “Look at all the misery you have experienced because of humans.”
“No Bill, my first taste of real misery was when I first became Vampire,” said Jessica. “In the Book of Lilith is says the maker is to be devoted to the child and forsake all others to rear the youngling to become a strong Vampire. If it hadn’t been for Eric and Pam and the humans here, even Sookie, I would have been a puddle a long time ago. You were disobeying Lilith.”

“I had no understanding of Lilith’s design,” said Bill.
“Therefore there is no ignorance for your understanding is simple and in the blood that animates you that if you by virtue of your kiss bestow upon a mortal immortality and abandon them, you yourself will find yourself being abandoned when your essence stands before Lilith in your true death for this is wisdom from the bone and the marrow,” said Jessica. “It even says that a Vampire who would abandon his progeny should be given the true death to their body and then the true death for their soul for they are bastards and unworthy of the blessings of Lilith.” Bill glowered at Jessica. “I forget the chapter and verse.”

“Bill, you can’t go in for the bits that attract you and then ignore the bits that don’t mean anything to you. Church is not a social club, that is what people don’t understand, Vampires or human. If you can’t agree with the way it is, you have to either reconcile it to your heart or you find somewhere else to be and move on. You are doing neither, you are just choosing the pieces that allow you to not feel anything. You beat Jessica. In the Book of the Progenitor, it says that is wrong, a sin and evil for an elder Vampire to force his progeny to submit to physical punishment for this is does not teach love, but fosters fear and hatred and you subject her soul to the possibility of Sin for to hate one’s maker is to hate God and Lilith. Besides, slapping Jessica around was a sign you had run out of ideas, that you were treating Jessica the way her human father treated her, and you know how close to killing her human father Jessica came,” I said. “Bill…Lilith expects more from you than screwing Salome and arranging for the murder of Roman and getting all those Vampires and Humans killed by bombing the Tru:Blood factories. Please you have to see this…that what we are saying is right.” Bill pressed his lips together into a straight line and shot out of his chair and went like a blur to the magik room. I slumped over and Jessica put her arm around me.

“You did good Aslinn,” she said.
“Yes, she did, she almost had me believing that horse shit,” said Pam.
“Pam,” said Eric. “You have really read the two books, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, you can’t bull shit your way through and argument with a fanatic,” I said.
“So what do we do now?” asked Nora. She had said nothing, but she had been listening and she nodded when we made certain points.
“We let him think this over,” I said.
“Why was I able to let go and Bill can’t. I was Sanguinista for years,” she said.
“I think it is because you have Eric and you both have Godric in some form or other,” said Renee. “Bill doesn’t have anyone but us, we humans and his child. Bill wants only a few things out of his existence, but the one he wants the most but really can’t have, is a family. There will always be some limit to the sort of family he can create.”
“How much longer?” asked Minnie.
“I don’t know, you have to do this slow or they will just give up hope altogether and they can decide to greet the sun or just wander off, we want to break him, but only to a certain extent, then build him back up again,” I said. “I just don’t want to break him all the way.”
“We can’t wait forever though Aslinn,” said Eric. “I need Bill to be up and ready to hit this case. If we don’t find out about these murders, we will be in real trouble. It could compromise what I have managed to do thus far to diffuse the problem with the Sanguinistas.”

Bill was quiet for a while. He still got up at dark and he began to talk to us a little at a time and even asked about his database and asked if it was up to date. Aolani and Renee and I had been entering the information, keeping it up to date, and he watched the news and talked to Eric about the case they had been looking into before the summer’s adventures. He seemed to be troubled by the case. He even got up to watch Minnie and Pam sewing on the new quilt she was making and Pam was embellishing it with some embroidery as she went along, her project long finished and gracing our supper table. He watched Jessica working with us on her witch studies and watched as we invested Jessica with her first degree initiation and Renee’s second degree. He watched me as I did research on mediumship and put together some books for Lafayette. Then he would go and enclose himself in the magik room to meditate.

I don’t know what it was that prompted him to have something of an epiphany, but I was on the couch, reading, listening to the rain and he came and sat on the edge of the big coffee table. I put my book down and he looked at me. “I don’t know what to say.”
“The truth Bill is never the wrong thing to say,” I said. Renee sat up and listened.
“I don’t know how I feel about this and about myself, but I want you to know, I heard everything you have said, all of you, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I know that I do still care about you, despite all of this that I thought I believed, might still believe to an extent,” he said.
“So a definite maybe…maybe not?” I said. He nodded.
“I want to…rediscover what I have lost,” he said.
“That is good,” I said.
“I want to have time alone with you and Renee again,” he said.
“Well, I think that would be good,” I said. “I think it would be healthy.”
“I don’t know if I can trust myself,” he said.
“Bill, I have never feared you, feared for you, but never feared you,” I said. “Just…let it happen naturally.” He nodded and leaned over and kissed my lips. It was a firm kiss, but chaste. “See, not so bad, your lips didn’t fall off.” He smiled.
“I am going to go to ground. Renee, will you come with me and say good night?” she nodded and took his hand they went to bed. Eric stood up from the computer and came over.

“Think that is a good idea Aslinn?” he asked.
“He won’t hurt her,” I said. “And maybe it will wake him up a little.”
“True,” he said. He leaned over and kissed my cheek.
“You Vampires are kissing fools,” I said. “Going hunting tonight?”
“No,” he said. “I am fine. Dr. Ludwig says there is nothing inherently different in the blood. Bill is still chemically the same Vampire.”
“So whatever mystical transformation that occurred is all in Bill’s head, not in his physiology,” I said. He nodded. “Well, then we will have to work with his head.”
“You are very stubborn Aslinn,” he said.
“So is the rest of us,” I said.
“Where is Barrister?” he asked.
“He took Jessica to Baton Rouge for the night,” I said.
“So you are all alone?” he asked, that smirk on his face.
“Nah, I still have this vamp porn book Pam was reading. Fifty Shades of Red? Original title.”
“Well it is what it is,” he said, grinning. “Wanna read me a bedtime story?”
“You never change, I thought an injection of religion would clean up your dirty mind,” I said.
“Me? Never, I like my mind just the way it is, nice and filthy,” he said.
“Go play somewhere else Eric,” I said. “I’m busy.”
“Let me borrow that book after you are finished with it, might learn something,” he said.
“I doubt it, it would not surprise me at all to discover you wrote this book,” I said. He laughed and went in search of another like mind to share his dirty thoughts with.

Wake Up....Wake Up Dead Man

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Wake Up…Wake Up Dead Man

One Week Later

Bill was finally released from his silver bonds. He said very little and drank the Tru:Blood without complaint. We tried to treat Bill normally, but that was sometimes hard to do. We were often at a loss for words and he would usually squelch some conversation by mentioning something about Lilith. Though we had seen his death, transformation and regeneration, he did not stalk around the House and rage about being “god”. If anything, his lack of doing just that was unnerving.

He spent much of his time reading the Blood Bible. He was often found in a quiet corner reading and not saying much. Jessica was resuming her magikal training. Nora, Eric’s sister, didn’t think much of it and often voiced her opinion. Eric would shrug at her or take her outside to discuss (read quarrel) with her that would end with Eric telling her to mind her own affairs and keep her opinions to herself. Bill watched us teaching his progeny but he said nothing.

All the while we were watching VNN, keeping up with the news. It was bad but truthfully, there were not that many sanguinistas and there were only a few out there making Vampires so the attacks were lessening though there were also a lot of Vampire deaths.

Finally Bill closed the Blood Bible with a snap. Renee looked at him warily. She had tried to talk to him about how happy she was he had not met the true death and his response was more or less: “Of course you would be happy, I am Vampire and you are only human.” It didn’t help he had given me the same answers, it still stung. Whenever he said that, Renee had moved to leave the room and Eric stood up and reached out to her and pulled her to him and held her as he told Bill to stop being an ass.

Late at night, after Bill had gone to day rest, Eric would meet with us in the secure magik room. Bill, I suspected, was leaving before dawn to escape our surreptitious observations of him. Eric was upset and he was at loose ends about what to do with Bill.

“Just give him more time,” said Aolani. “He just finished the Blood Bible, let him digest it, compare and contrast it.”
“I’m afraid,” said Eric. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to give him the true death. I’ve done all the damage control I can. I’ve had Desmond disseminate the news that Russell Edgington and Steve Newlin did the planning to blow up the Tru:Blood factories.”
“Are they buying it?” I asked.
“I keep waiting to hear of it in the news, but nothing has come up yet,” said Eric. “There is a chance they don’t believe it.”
“Who else knows what really happened?” asked Aolani. “I mean between you and Nora and Jason Stackhouse and the rest when they finally got freed, you killed most of the Vampires who were at the AVL.”
“Most, not all,” said Eric. “What I am counting on is there may only be one of two left who will lay low because they don’t have the back up of the AVL and the Chancellors and they will just clam up. Self preservation.”

“Be patient with Bill,” said Aolani. She looked thoughtful. “Aslinn you have read those two books haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Enough to have theological discussions with him?” she asked. I shrugged. “I have an idea, I think we should give Bill a place to pray.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Eric. “Aren’t you throwing gas on the flames?”
“It might work. It says faithful followers are supposed to worship at least three times a night: At rising, at midnight and before dawn. I haven’t noticed Bill doing a lot of praying,” I said. “It would show we aren’t totally against Bill believing in something so long as he didn’t use it as a reason to hate and despise us.”
“And what is that supposed to do?” asked Eric.
“Open up a dialogue with him. He will know it is to try and get him to argue with us of we just come out with it. If we tell him we are clearing a place for him to pray, then maybe we will be able to approach him with innocent questions and then ask him even bigger questions, debate with him,” I said.

“I don’t know Aslinn. I would worry about your safety,” he said. “And Nora..she misses her old routines, her old prejudices. She doesn’t understand why I would make Pam a Vampire or care about Bill and why I care about you, the group.”
“Do you think she and Bill will sort of feed on one another metaphorically speaking?” I asked. He shrugged.
“This has to be killing you, Aslinn, you and Renee,” said Eric.
“It hurts,” I admitted. “But I’m not through with caring about him just yet. I love Bill and I will not abandon him.”

“I hesitate to mention this, there is something going on in New Orleans, something to do with those Christian Vampires. You have read about them?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Something about some murders. I think it is very likely the Fellowship.”
“Bill and I were investigating them before,” he said.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Aolani. “You aren’t telling me that we are going to have hustle this version of Bill into another vampire church thing are we? In the state he is in, he will never get well enough to clear his own head.” Eric looked at Aolani. He wasn’t necessarily looking worried but he was a little concerned.
“Well, we can always use this situation to our advantage too. If they are weird and fanatical, we can show him extremes in any ism is a dangerous thing,” I said. I reached up and pecked Eric on the cheek. “Have a good rest Eric, I am going to bed.”