Trade in the Sun

Hum

Dirazen watched the last lock of hair fall in the garbage can. He could hear the twins replaying the past few weeks of events upstairs. He was hyper aware of the slow drip coming from the bathroom sink. When he looked in the mirror he saw a stranger. A man with a freshly shaved but gaunt face, with bite mark scars littering his entire torso. He wondered if this was a trick, if his own mind was protecting him using the old djinn powers of wish fulfillment. He might believe that he was back in Shreveport but his body could be wasting away in that demented zoo, being fed on by Russell, Talbot, and Axle.

He rubbed his eyes so hard he started to see stars. Upstairs, the twins started arguing about something innocuous. When their fight started to get heated he waiting with baited breath for Lydia's sharp yet gentle reproach. Of course it never came, his wife was peacefully resting in the city cemetery, gone long before the twins were teenagers. If this were an illusion, Lydia would have been here. She was always in his wish world. This was real. Lydia was dead and he had two scared teenagers upstairs and a sister out there somewhere who needed him.

The sink continued to drip and Dirazen made a mental note to stop at the hardware store to get something to fix that. He took one more run over his hair with his comb and put on a long sleeved shirt with a sigh. He was rescued, but there was still a fight ahead of him and the only way to start was to find out where Aya was. The twins had filled him in on the long bus ride from Mississippi (Aiden guiltily told him he had lost the car).

The doorbell rang and Dirazen stiffened. There would be repercussions for killing Axle and he was sure the vampire equivalent of a police force was waiting on the other side of his front door.

"Don't open that!" He yelled out just in time to watch Laura open the front door.

Dirazen looked on in shock when the door opened to a bored looking Pam. She was a vampire he had met on a few occasions at Fangtasia, Eric's second in command. If she was here to collect on the debt he owed Eric there would be trouble. He didn't have the money, he had nothing to show for the months of work he had put in to finding the treasure. Instead, he had been captured by Axle, who he thought he could trust, and fed on for months.

"I don't have Eric's money." Dirazen stood directly in front of Pam, trying to shield the twins from her.

"Relax," Pam's drawled out. "I'm supposed to pick y'all up and take you to Bon Temps."

"Why would we go to that shithole?" Dirazen turned to Aiden and glared at him for his sudden outburst.

Much to his surprise, Pam laughed. "I like you kid. Unfortunately your aunt is in that shithole."

Dirazen agreed to go and lost a battle with the twins when he tried to make them stay put. They piled into Pam's Cadillac and Dirazen silently watched the world fly by as they accelerated down the highway.

______

Godric stood outside Sookie's house with a heavy heart. He had awoken that evening in Mississippi to a text message from Eric to go straight to the Stackhouse home. A wound inside his chest had been gnawing at him, growing until he looked down in shock that it had left no physical marks on his body. He expected to see his chest torn open, a black void where his heart should be. The origin of that wound was just inside the house, all he had to do was go up to the door and be invited in. He hesitated though, paralyzed in fear of what lay on the other side.

"Godric," Sookie opened her front door and leaned against the door frame. "Please come inside."

Something was definitely wrong. Sookie's trademark smile was missing, the inflection of her voice was all wrong. Godric walked forward, each step taking him closer to the gallows. He walked in a daze inside the house and let his feet lead him to the living room where his heart was laid out on the couch dying.