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The Virtue Of Sin	By : camp30 Category: S through Z > Southern Vampire Views: 9864 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not have any right to the Southern Vampire novels, nor doI do not have any right to the character created by Charliane Harris and I make absloutly no money from this fiction

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
A wild wind began moaning through the trees, it hissed between the statues and branches. Sookie awoke and sat up next to an open grave. It was as if she’d always been beside it. There was a sense of destiny to it. Since the moment he entered her life, she had dreamed deep inside of this horror.
She felt his arms lift her and the drop as he settled her down in the earth. She peered up at him “Why do this?” she asked softly. He remained on one knee beside her, tears shimmered like rain drops in the dark blue sky of his eyes.
“You have ruined me,” he answered in a husk rising to his feet. He leaped out of the somewhat shallow grave and his body cast a long shadow across her face. He crouched at the edge. The moonlight captured two tears trailing down his face. “You see love is the only truly evil thing in the world and until I eradicate you I will be diseased and tainted,” he lifted a handful of earth and dropped it on her.
“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust my love,” he intoned while heartbreak raged across his face.
Her tears fell a light dew upon her pearly cheeks “Eric please don’t, I’m afraid of the dark,” she cried.
Eric’s hands went to his hair tufting it in five directions which made her heart beat strangely. It raced as the first clod hit her. “I’m in love with you,” he screamed falling to his knees.
He began shoving dirt in rapidly with his hands. Swiftly her little body was being devoured by the hungry earth. Above a cold sleeting rain started to fall, turning the dirt to mud.
Sookie knew in that moment if she didn’t come to terms with how she felt about him that he would bury her alive. “I dream of you Your Grace,” she called out. His tear lined face peered over the edge, his massive body in a crouch.
“You do?” each word was wrenched from him like a sword being drawn from a wound. His shoulder throbbed and he realized what had escaped him before: he was in the grips of fever madness.
Sookie stood and clawed at the sides “Yes I do. Thoughts of you torment me,” she cried.
It was true; he had haunted her since the very beginning. His beauty burned behind her eyes whenever they closed. She heard a thud in the darkness next to her. She felt his hands wrap tightly about her throat “You lie,” he snarled.
Sookie opened her eyes “No I don’t,” she insisted.
His lips so full and beautiful crushed against hers. He kissed as if all the oxygen in the world was contained in her mouth. It was filled with desperation. And she felt herself yielding and knew that to deny him would lead to her death here in this grave that he’d made for her.
The vicious evil man who had stolen her soul pushed her to the ground and tore the many dresses from her. She lay naked and dirt streaked as he entered her. She screamed and went still below him. Slowly that old treacherous longing built inside her. She grew wet.
Eric’s eyes narrowed “It’s true,” he sighed out as his lips met hers once more. He kissed her brutally and she could feel the rain sliding off his back onto her. Her hand went unwillingly to his face and caressed it gently. He groaned and thrust deeper until her whole body seemed as if it had always existed for this primal penetration.
The rain became colder still where only mere feet away Eric’s first love lay with coins in the bony hollows of her eyes and the ghost of his kiss upon her lipless mouth.
He drove into her again and again “You are mine, say it,” his voice was savage and she felt fear and love warring in her breast.
“Yes I am yours,” she agreed. He struck her and her head rocked to the side.
Eric leaned down and licked the blood from her mouth and gave an animal sound of pain. “I hate you! How I wish I could destroy you,” he was all the anguish in the world as he came deep inside her. His eyes so blue surrounded by black lashes went wide.
“Dear God, what have I done?” he reared his head to the heavens and a scream was torn from his throat.
Sookie cradled him as best as her tiny arms could “Shhh, Eric be at peace,” she cooed. “Take me from here and keep me close.”
He glowered down at her and his big hand curled into a fist. She recoiled “Please Eric don’t!”
Eric’s face was flushed with fever and the madness that had been eating at him for decades. He scowled and picked her up throwing her over his shoulder. Like Hades with Persephone he leaped into the sodden night air.
He crossed the long grounds back to the rear door. She was naked and trembling when he laid her before the fire. She was fragile as a cloud or a porcelain doll atop the slain tiger that he’d skinned in his youth.
Eric built the fire to its peak and turned to her “There is only one option if I can’t kill you,” he told her standing and reaching for his glass.
She rose to her elbows “And that is?”
He slung back his glass “You will marry me of course. It’s possible that my seed grows in your womb even now.” He sounded bleak and weary, his hand went to his shoulder and he swayed.
Sookie stood and grabbed a cloak from the floor. She wrapped it about herself and touched the raised area below his shirt. “You are wounded Your Grace,” she said softly.
Eric nodded tightly “Yes I got shot when I was reclaiming you,” she noted that he didn’t use the word rescue.
She reached for his hem and drew the shirt part of the way over his head before her arm’s length stopped her. “Take off your shirt, I will clean the wound,” she was insistent.
Eric frowned and drew his filth stained shirt over his head. It dropped to the floor beside all his other forgotten belongings. A line of worry marred her face as she lifted the green bandages from the wound. “This is most troubling Your Grace,” she murmured.
She moved from his side and pulled the cord beside the bed. Sookie waited beside the door and when to her surprise Mrs. Maple appeared she directed her to get her boiling hot water, bandages and lye soap which contained no fragrance. The nuns had taught her a little of medicine.
Mrs. Maple’s eyes went wide and she looked past Sookie to Eric “What has happened to my boy?” she cried as her hand went to her mouth. Eric gave her a long look “Do not worry Barbra it’s a flesh wound,” he reassured her.
Mrs. Maple nodded and it was clear that she loved her employer deeply. With a heart rending sob she bustled off to get the ingredients.
At Sookie questionable face Eric sighed “She was my wet nurse and nanny,” he explained.
Sookie smiled absently and waited. Minutes later the supplies arrived. She directed him to lie back on his bed. She painstakingly washed his wound. He watched her face “You care for me,” it was a statement.
She nodded with a dim frown “Yes even though not even an hour past you meant to bury me alive.”
Slowly she wrapped the cloth lightly but tightly over his ragged wound. “You will marry me,” the question was there but he refused to voice it. She nodded tiredly.
He seemed mollified by that by a tiny fraction. “I told myself that I would never marry. I’ve made a liar of myself and have desecrated the vow I took.”
Sookie sat on the edge of the bed “There are things that live in the darkness--- she drifted off.
Eric propped himself up “What are you talking about?”
She shook her head and her long damp hair clung to her tiny form “I don’t know of what I speak. I am weary My Lord.” She crawled over him and fell fast asleep.
The Duke was awake for a long time after that. He was going to marry the most beautiful girl in all of England. He suspected that she returned his feelings. She was in love with him. His black heart wrought in darkness beat wildly at the thought of owning her completely in the eyes of the law.
A sudden unbidden image grew in his mind. Sookie swelling with his child. Standing beside her cradling a new born son. What would it be like to have a family?
Would I treat them the same way that father treated me? Would I haunt my children the way he does me? Can I be good to her and them or can I bring only darkness and destruction upon them? These thoughts swirled in his brain like poison.
His mind turned to his brother and a stark vision of his brother lying on the floor of his studio with his brains seeping out came to his mind. Eric’s hands went to his face and he scrubbed his hand over his mouth. He opened the door and went down the flights of stairs until he reached his study. He sat down at his desk and retrieved parchment and quill and dipped it into a thick pot of black ink.
“Dearest Brother,”
“I write this to you with despair and joy warring in my heart. The girl I wrote you of is going to become my wife. We will be married on fifteenth of March. The day that mother died. I hope as I write this that you are alive still and well. Also it is my earnest wish that you attend the ceremony. Please make haste.
Your loving brother, eternally devoted Eric. “
Written in the year of our lord 1801 January 2^nd.
   Eric awoke James and told him to deliver the note as quickly as possible. The night outside was valiantly fighting dawn. He opened the back door and walked slowly toward the grave. The rain had lessened but it still fell on his head and down his cheeks.
His mother had believed near the end of her life that rain was the weeping of angels. He sat with a thud beside the empty grave. That he could not bury her seemed at once a tragedy and a blessing. To know that there was at least one person he was incapable of murdering.
For a long time he sat there getting soaked. Then he stood and began filling in the hole. The dirt was mud and it took so long that he gave up and decided that he would have the grounds keeper finish the job.
Weary beyond belief he entered his chambers as the moon wept on its death bed. Into sleep that cruel mistress he fell. Dreams came as they always did.
Beside her lay his heart made into a girl and she too dreamt dreams.
She and Eric were in a cemetery. Near a stone throne with a handsome cruel man’s likeness sitting atop it. She was dressed in black as was he. Her belly swelled with child.
A priest with dark robes stood before them. A cowl was drawn over his head; obscuring his features. His hands were bone that clutched a velvet bible. “Do you take this man who has murdered hundreds to be your lawful husband?” his voice was the rasp of dead leaves and the scraping of life as it ebbed away.
Sookie looked over at her beloved and saw blood staining his hands. She felt a smile creep across her lips as she took one into hers. “Yes I do”
Suddenly two red infernos ignited from the darkness of the priest’s face “And do you forgive him all his transgressions and will you plead for him on the day of judgment?”
Sookie began to tremble and she felt his arms grip her tightly “I don’t know,” she murmured. Eric’s whisper rattled through her soul “Sookie you must, I will burn.”
Slowly the bony hands dropped the bible and he lifted the cowl from his face. Her father looked back at her and she screamed.
The next day nearly passed into night before the two awoke. Eric cradled his love near him.
He sat up just as her eyes opened. They turned their heads. Gazes met. Neither smiled but such a paltry gesture wasn’t needed.
Eric ordered breakfast; which consisted of crab legs and veal with cheese wrapped in bacon for himself and porridge for her.
They ate in silence as the shadows grew long on the floor boards.
Afterwards he put the trays in the hallway and came back in. Eric had a tiny bit of opium left and he packed his dragon coiled bowl and sat down. A flame came from his flintlock lighter and ignited the substance. Heady smoke filled the air and perhaps a bit of sorrow as well.
She wanted to ask him in that moment why it was that he loved her. Then she realized that it would be foolish to do so. Because she couldn’t have answered the same question if it had been put to her.
He was evil incarnate. A poisonous bloom growing under her skin, that had bled its magic into her being. His profile vanished as he turned his head to her. “Sookie,” he said.
She rose from the bed and knelt before him and Eric was struck by how much she resembled his mother in her youth and the pose that she’d been carved in upon his parent’s tomb.
His hand went gently to the crown of her honeyed head and tremors passed from her to him. Their love was twisted and sick maybe even depraved but both were helpless before it.
Preparations for the coming nuptials commenced. She wrote her father of the event and asked for him to be in attendance. Two weeks passed rather pleasantly; they made love and she came to realize that she needed his complexity, she in fact craved his insanity.
Eric adjusted his tie in the mirror of his study and stared at himself “You were wrong Julian. She loves me just as mother loved you. She knows all my sins and forgives them,” he whispered to the room.
A rattling shook the windows and two green eyes burned in the reflection for an instant “There’s a first time for everything I suppose,” his voice sighed out.
The seventeenth Duke of Ravenheart departed his study that had once belonged to his father. He was absolutely sober for the first time in years. The sky above was a polished blue reminding her of a blue jay’s wings. Their carriage was gilded and had been made for this day.
They came to Westminster Abby where they were to be married. Eric looked over at her “You look so radiant,” he said quietly.
She was dressed in a long heavy cloak so that he couldn’t see the gown that she wore. It was only when the slow march up the aisle began that she handed a boy her cloak.
The dress was ivory with long sleeves that came to a point at her delicate wrists. Of silk and lace had it been crafted. The skirts were full with a hoop underneath and the train trailed for yards behind her.
Eric felt his heart constrict as she came towards him. She took his hand and together they faced the priest. The cathedral sparkled with sunlight as it broke through the faces of the long dead saints. The door was being closed just as his brother arrived.
Eric could feel Seth somewhere behind him. He turned and waved slightly. Seth waved back and tried to smile for his brother. He was dressed in black with a withered white rose in his chest pocket.
They came to the part where they said their vows. Eric reached inside his coat and retrieved a slip of parchment. “I am not an eloquent man but here are some things I wanted to say,” he said in a whisper.
He said his vows near her ear so that only the priest could hear “I am not a good man, I don’t think I ever have been. But with you I believe that I could be better than this. Should you ever leave me I will hunt you to the ends of the earth.” He stepped back and he saw she was nearly smiling and crying at the same time.
She came to her knees before him and the crowd tittered in confusion “You are My Lord and I pledge to obey you in all things and to kneel with you before God on judgment day so that we may walk together into the gold mist that stands at the end of time,” she came to her feet and reached for his hand and kissed it sweetly.
Then it was time to say “I do”. They kissed then for an endless time. The king clapped the hardest from his place of honor in the front. The queen beside him scowled; she had tried for years to start an affair with the Duke only to be rebuffed.
The couple made their way to the royal pair and stood before them. The king looked her over keenly “So this is the magnificent bloom of which the whole of England has been aflame with?”
Sookie blushed prettily and curtsied deeply “I am honored Your Majesty,” she murmured.
When his ringed hand came out she kissed it. “You have a made an honest man of my cousin, now go enjoy your party,” the king said gruffly.
They held the reception in the ballroom of his manor that hadn’t seen any dancing since before his mother’s passing. Seth came to them when they were seated and bowed deeply to Sookie. He was emaciated slightly but still an immensely big man. His green eyes were filled with a melancholy that tugged at her heart. Without guile she spoke “What has made you so sad?”
Seth seemed taken aback “The world with me in it,” he replied sitting next to his brother.
Sookie sighed like spring coming “I loved your book, I especially enjoyed the chapter on boredom.”
Seth laughed hollowly “So you’re the other one that read it.”
Eric put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and his mouth near his ear “I’m glad you could make it.”
Seth smirked “It’s been a long winter; thank god it’s almost over.” The two men were silent for a long while.
Sookie rose and looked to Eric “I will leave you to catch up my lord husband,” she smiled at them and turned towards their guests.
Once she was gone Seth said “She is as lovely as mother before she began to waste away.”
Eric nodded “Indeed.”
A great stirring occurred at the front of the room. A black haired beauty stormed through the crowd. He saw her stop before Sookie and throw champagne in her face.
Eric scowled and stalked to where the two girls were. He snagged Madeline’s arm “If you’ll excuse me I have to attend to a matter,” he said to the guests that thronged.
Sookie followed them from the room. They came to his study and Eric flung his mistress into the room. Sookie closed the door. Madeline rounded on her “Do you realize that I am his mistress? That he has fucked me over and over?” she snarled her pale blue eyes aflame.
Sookie blanched “No I didn’t know,” she said softly. Eric moved quickly and backhanded Madeline.
His mistress rose “I will ruin you for this Eric! I will tell everyone every little secret that I’ve learned,” she screamed. He sighed and stepped towards and his hands went to her throat.
Sookie tried to stop him but he knocked her gently back “Stay out of this,” he grated. Sunlight spilled across the lovely woman’s corpse and Sookie ran for the door.
Eric reached for her and whirled her around to face him. “Don’t let this whore come between us. It’s you that I come home to, it’s you in my dreams.” Eric realized as he said those words that it had been precisely what his father had said to his mother that fateful night so many years ago.
He kissed her desperately and his heart lifted when she returned it. “How can I love even when I know that you kill as naturally as breathing?” she asked looking down at his Mistress.
Eric lifted her face to his “Say it,” he commanded.
She sighed “I love you more than my life, my love,” Eric had told her that his mother had always said to his father and she had remembered the words perfectly.
Eric had James get rid of the body and once a few key people were disposed of the matter was settled. She’d had little family and since Eric’s decree that she would no longer entertain her friends they had drifted away.
The ball ended and their guest filtered out. Eric stood by Seth near the exit. “Stay even if it’s only for a week,” he urged.
Seth shook his head wearily “No Eric, I told you years ago that I would never sleep a night under this roof. Can you feel his shade near us?”
Eric frowned “ I suppose the bastard is lurking somewhere, but we are alive and he is dead.”
Seth laughed “Are we? Or have we already passed from this world and we are only dreaming in our graves?”
Eric embraced his brother tightly “Goodbye Seth and please do be careful around guns,” which made Seth laugh as he got into his carriage.
Sookie came to his side in the driveway and put her little hand to his arm. “Come husband.”
They walked arm and arm inside and the great door closed behind them with a thud. And the birds sang as their footsteps led up the grand staircase.
Two weeks later she began to be ill in the mornings. Eric came into their room and found her bent over the chamber pot. His heart caught in his throat. “Sookie are you with child?”
She nodded with a queasy expression “I believe so Your Grace.”
He picked her up and gently lay her on the bed “You will rest from now until my son is born,” he ordered. So that how her pregnancy passed. She lay day after day and read all the books in his library; some of them twice.
When autumn came so did their son. They name him Seth after his brother who had died shortly after the wedding but not by the working of himself. He’d taken ill from cholera. Eric had been beside himself with grief and only the love of Sookie had saved him from total despair.
The room was lit with many candles that burned like stars as Eric held his son. “You will be a good man,” he said softly to him holding him close. Sookie looked on with a tired expression of joy. “We will give him everything we never had,” she said softly.
Years past and their son grew into a devastatingly handsome man and a sister joined the family. The son had inherited his mother’s eyes and to the girl passed the blue of her father’s.
The girl was named Gabrielle in honor of his mother.
Eric still had affairs but his heart was never in them and it was her that he came home to each night. He continued to be an assassin well into middle age before retiring.
One night when he they were both faded and old and ready for the comfort of a long sleep; Eric made them a strong brew of nightshade and they fell into death in each other’s arms.
A grand tomb had been erected near his parents. Eric stood above Sookie with a pistol in one hand and his other upon her head. She knelt at his feet with flowers clutched in her stony hands.
The two were buried without coffins so that they could hold each other even in death. The skeletons were kept warm under the earth. Whispering sweet nothings to each other. The groundskeeper once thought he heard them “What is my husband?” a woman’s voice said.
A rattling followed like bones clacking together “Only a dream of death my love.”
The groundskeeper put it down to old age and the wind.
~The End~

AN: I realize that some of you may be dissatisfied with it and feel that it was unrealistic. But this is my fairy tale, admittedly gothic and evil. I did the best I could, I hope at least a few of you will enjoy it. It was time to end it I feel. When a story is dying I hold its hand and guide it to the grave.
It’s been wonderful writing this and I hope that most of you will tune in for my next story. Thanks go to all my wonderful fans and readers for all the support you’ve given this story.   Special thanks go to my Beta for this story Colleen Kay from New Zealand who even though she’s a day behind me and several hours has always been there to guide me.
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The Virtue Of Sin