Chapter 112 not rated

Since Bill had some work to do on his report for Eric, I had gone out on my own to feed; he’d promised to handle my registration forms as well—what a sweetie! Seems there might be things to love about a computer geek, workaholic boyfriend after all.

I had to admit, I needed some time to myself, too. I wandered aimlessly around the cemetery, putting off going back to Bill’s. I felt rosy with blood and happier than I’d been in months, but in the past few years, everything had changed for me—and I do mean everything. It was all a bit hard to accept.

I knelt down by Gran’s grave marker. Ever since my parents died when I was little, Gran had been parent, teacher, counselor, and friend to me. Losing her had brought Bill to me, that first time, which seemed like ages ago.

I leaned against Gran’s marker—it was cool and smooth. The night was calm and close, and there was a buzz of cicadas up in the old trees. I didn’t feel the weight of sadness that had been overpowering me, and I wondered if my turning was already having an effect on my emotions. When I was human, I had certainly been aware—and infuriated sometimes—by a general lack of caring in vamps. Maybe if I had hundreds of years of thoughts and feelings accumulated, I’d start closing myself off from others too. Maybe vamps stayed so aloof because time made it easier to be hurt, rather than harder. I wondered if this was something I could get Bill to talk about. He had certainly done more talking since he’d brought me over, more than I’d ever experienced with him before—although it was pretty obvious that I was the chatty one in our relationship.

My mind drifted back through the past couple of years. I’d seen people die; I had killed a few myself. I had even sought the death of a couple of them. I’d lost so many that I had known—Dawn, Quinn, Arlene, Lafayette, Sophie-Anne, my cousin Hadley, Sam, Niall—if not to death, then to a form of relationship divorce. Jason had been bitten by a were and now changed every full moon. I’d learned to use my telepathy to help others. I’d made a baby with a fae man and had it stolen by my fairy grandfather. And I was no longer human. It was all so strange. It had only been a few years since humans had to accept the presence of vampires among them, and now I was one too.

Tonight I had fed off a human being, rather than taking something out of the freezer to eat (I was going to have to clean out the refrigerator sometime soon… ). It didn’t seem that different to me, but I’m not one to do a lot of pondering. I had once told Eric that vamps were like lions and he countered that lions don’t caress or protect their meals, so vamps were pretty different that way. I can’t say I was enjoying the hunting, but I definitely liked the blood. And I was sensing an urge in me to talk with my victims, and I also sensed that would be a mistake.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, but I could feel the moist night air seeping into my bones. I was feeling low as dirt, and if I sat there any longer, I just might turn into it. It was odd to contemplate an infinite future: what would I do with my time? Would I find a new sort of work? Most pressing of all, would I be able to stay with my vampire? At least for now, yes. When I had talked with Pam about her being turned by Eric, she had admitted that she had stayed with him for years, and that she cared for him greatly; my staying with Bill wasn’t entirely doomed. I got up and headed toward the lights in Bill’s windows.

I let myself into the house. As soon as I stepped through the door, I was bowled over by the smell of perfume. I walked into the main room, and felt my eyes open wide. “Bill!” I whooped in surprise, “What is all this?”

The room was filled with roses. There were deep red roses in vases on the center table and along the mantle. There were snow white roses in bowls lining the walls. Dark pink roses were woven in and around the sconces. Even the carpet and the upholstery was strewn with roses petals—there must have been hundreds of flowers blooming in that room.

In the midst of it all, gleaming faintly in the candlelight, stood my vampire. He was staring at me like I was the most delicious thing on a buffet table, and he was holding an immense bunch of yellow roses. As he held them out to me, I stepped up and took them, burying my face in them to inhale their heady fragrance and hide my delight and confusion.

Bill pressed his mouth against my hair, and moved his face down to rub along my long golden plaits (he had braided my hair for me before I went out to feed; that kept it from getting bloody, plus he just loved to mess around with my hair.). “You are intoxicating,” Bill murmured into my neck.

Since I was so taken aback and didn’t know what to expect, I was feeling nervous, so I gave him a little bump with my shoulder. “That’s just the fresh blood in me speaking to you.” He grabbed my gaze with his eyes, telling me through that blood that it was me and me alone who dazzled him, and I felt his look down to my toes. I gently shook the roses at him and asked, “What’s the occasion?”

Bill steered me to the couch, and we sat knee to knee. Bill caressed the yellow blossoms, and I watched those long pale fingers that I loved so much, that stirred so many wonderful feelings in me—I felt a tad jealous of the blooms.

Because I took some of Bill’s blood, and he some of mine, every day that I’d been a vamp, we could read each other’s emotions; Bill smiled just a little bit and said, “Jealous? You are jealous of the flowers?”

“Mmmm. Well, you are touching them and looking at them… “

Bill didn’t answer me directly, but he looked in my eyes. His own dark brown eyes moved down to my mouth and his lips parted ever so slightly—my fangs ran out a bit at that—then returned to lock onto my eyes again. “So blue,” he almost whispered, “I could drown in your blue eyes.”

Then he remarked seemingly out of nowhere: “Did you know that during my human life, there was a language of flowers?” I shook my head, puzzled. He continued, “Each type and color of blossom had a meaning, so when a man gave flowers to a woman, he was also sending complex messages.” Bill paused and seemed to go deep inside himself. As if talking to himself, he began fingering the roses again, “Red roses mean a love of great passion. White roses mean purity and virginal love. Pink roses are for the mystery of undiscovered love. Yellow roses do in fact represent jealousy (I gasped at that) …or unfaithful love.”

I trembled so violently that the roses shook in my hands. Bill’s eyes sought mine, and all I could feel from him was a wash of pure, utterly true love. I could feel my confusion suffuse my face as Bill said, “All these roses are our history together. All that has happened between us is told by these flowers.”

I looked round the room, then. I could see that there were huge numbers of red roses, more than I could easily count. I looked back to the bouquet in my hands—it was comparatively small (a little piece of me wondered if the relative size of yellow to red was Bill’s accounting of our past or what he thought was my own assessment… ).

“Bill, it is all beautiful. I am stunned by all this. But… I’m sorry… I still don’t understand.”

“I love you, “Bill said in that simple and maddening way he had. “There are not enough flowers in the world to deliver that message to you. But I wanted to try.”

“Sweetheart,” I could feel tears pressing on my eyelids. “You don’t have to try. I get it. And we have all of time to keep showing each other.”

Bill stroked my braids, unraveling them a bit. “You are more beautiful than all these roses. You are more beautiful than the sunsets I remember from boyhood. You are more beautiful than moonlight. You put diamonds to shame.”

“Oh Bill,” I ducked my head, suddenly shy. “I’m not… I don’t think… diamonds?”

Bill slid off the couch onto one knee and drew from his pocket a small blue velvet box; he flipped it open. “Certainly more beautiful than this one,” he said, holding the box out to me. I stared. Was this actually happening? For a long moment, I looked at Bill through the pink haze of my vampire tears.

Bill took from the box a magnificent diamond ring in an old fashioned, almost Victorian setting, and clasping my left hand, he slid it on my finger. “I don’t know what the future holds for us. I know you well enough to foresee adventure and even danger,” said my wonderful vampire in his dark voice. “All I know is that I want you with me for all time. My darling Sookie, will you marry me?”

I flung my arms around my vampire, pushing him down on the carpet with an audible UMPH like air whooshing out of a cushion. I covered his face with kisses, and lying there on top of him, while he tightened his arms around me, I held the diamond up to watch it sparkle in the candlelight.

“You want me to be your wife?” I murmured.

“Yes. Please,” was Bill’s equally quiet response.

“Well, alrighty then,” I grinned.