Maryann's Sam-sacrifice goes awry after he turns into an owl and flies away, so she kills a bunny instead in and "starts" acting all insane and shit. Tara and Eggs wake up with zero memories of their frenzied orgy, just like everybody else in town and Eggs in his life as a Blair Witch castmember...
...Which is too bad because it was like the one time Tara has ever been happy in her entire life. Then Daphne gives Sam a ten minute exegesis on The Problem Of Evil In Christianity and/or Maryann (maenad, immortal consort of Dionysus, basically God, etc.) and then gets stabbed all to hell by a zombified Eggs. Meanwhile, Andy Bellefleur has convinced himself he's either surrounded by devil worshippers or trapped in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, which nobody but Sam knows are both actually true...
...And in Dallas as well, since it turns out that the vampire traitor is not a vampire at all, it's Hugo. Which Isabel doesn't know yet, but considering she sees him as "a science project," probably won't be too broken up about it. Who is broken up is the heart of Steve Newlin, into a thousand million little pieces, once Hugo tells him Sookie's last name is Stackhouse, because now he believes Jason is an infiltrator as well. And he doesn't even know about Jason sleeping with Sarah, not that he'd care. So he sends Jason off to be murdered by Gabe, who gets the shit beat out of him and runs off to rape Sookie...
...While Sarah is chasing down Jason, having lost her fucking mind in the interim, and shoots him. Who -- considering the fact that they're assuming he's a vamp-friendly spy -- has basically made her both a whore and a rape victim, so as usual you can sort of see where she's coming from*, but seeing Jason shot is still not as upsetting as seeing Sookie at the hands of creepy Gabe, until...
*(Meanwhile Joe R's all, "It's the times I think Sarah Newlin is for real that I get really scared," to which I respond, Chuck Norris just called me to say the exact same thing, because Sarah Newlin only has two settings: FOR REAL and GIRL FOR FUCKING REAL. I wish she was on the Supreme Court, I really do.)
...The following (miles-long as per usual) list of people pitch in to once again save Sookie's ass: 1) Bellboy Barry, who gets her psychic 911 and tells 2) Bill, who is too busy having more jazz baby flashbacks and getting "the bleeds" (a symptom of staying up past the dawn) with the suddenly and frighteningly sympathetic Lorena, who tells him this is all thanks to 3) Eric trying to break them up, and who chats with Isabel about her human-vamp relationship and then later cries real/gross tears about 4) Godric, who actually saves Sookie from Gabe, and is even hotter than you could possibly have imagined...
...But not as much as Hoyt and Jessica planning to lose their virginity together, to strewn rose-petals and "Bleeding Love," which is so brilliant and moving and hilarious and sexy that we'll forgive Ball returning to the Sia well with "Day Too Soon." Either way, just because they're the most beautiful love story of our time, and possibly the two most attractive people in the universe, doesn't mean they're not going to... Die terribly or be otherwise forced to suffer as brutally as everybody else on the show constantly is.
Andy is still running through the woods like a crazy person, screaming after Daphne the Pig, and eventually falls on his face screaming "PIIIIIG!" Meanwhile, all the cultists are shouting Maryann's Greek chants and touching each other. Some of them have more clothes on, most of them don't, Daphne's loving it. Eggs has Sam face-down on a sacrificial stone not unlike the one from his Blair Witch moment, and Tara leans down, black-eyed. "Just give in," she groans, smiling widely: "It feels so good!" She licks bewildered Sam, and dances off back to Maryann, who's still wearing the scary bull mask. There are naked dudes' wangers just everywhere.
Andy walks in looking crazed and dirty, and he's horrified as usual, and Maryann's coming at Sam with her nasty claws, and when Andy fires his gun into the ground everything stops. Sam punches Eggs, getting free, and takes Daphne down, and peaces. They all start screaming, lit up with Maryann's rage. Just in pain, like children. That's what she's feeling. That's the smashcake thing again, Maryann denied -- any God denied -- causes ripples. They stomp their feet. Andy is amazed, looking at everybody he knows stripped naked and crying with rage and frustration; Maryann chases Sam through the forest -- "Here, Sam! C'mere, boy!" -- voice terrifying and hilarious and low.
Sam looks up and sees an owl, hooting like a guide, and drops his shirt. She watches him shift and climb into the sky, flapping wings, and she whips off the mask like a warrior. Her hands become claws as she picks up his shirt in her hands. She stares up, breathing hard.
We're now halfway through the season. All of this shit that's happened, and we're halfway through. Awesomely, this episode was written by Raelle Tucker, who's totally amazing, but also think about that: halfway. Other things of interest: I was reading up on Ariadne this week and was fascinated and frightened to learn that there are things I don't know. To wit: Ariadne is one of the great two-parters of Greek myth. We knew about Theseus and the Labyrinth: how the princess Ariadne spun out a ball of thread so that Theseus could come back out of the Labyrinth after he'd killed her brother, the Minotaur.
What I had no idea about was Ariadne Part II, which basically goes like this: They sail away to get married, and on the way Theseus -- for one of many several suggested reasons -- abandons her pregnant ass on the beach after a party. She wakes up alone, and curses him, and it's a whole thing. (Theseus's dad-king dies as a result, so it's not a total loss.) Meanwhile, Dionysus is riding a bummer because this chick wouldn't marry him, and Eros goes, "Have I got the piece of ass for you." So Dionysus goes to this island, and sees her sleeping, and falls for her -- there's this funny line in Nonnus's epic Dionysiaca where he describes Dionysus explains his admiration "cautiously" to "the dance-weaving Bacchantes," presumably so they wouldn't just pull her head off and fuck it or drink wine out of it or whatever -- and they get married. He makes her a goddess, and sets her marriage crown in the stars: Maryadne!
What interests me about this is the link between the Labyrinth story and the Dionysus story, because of course the connection makes total sense, both for the show and generally. The Labyrinth is about diving down into the darkness, the confusing and scarier parts of ourselves, and acknowledging what we find down there. The thread of Ariadne is the way back, and it'll jerk you off your pedestal if you get stuck there, or think that the Labyrinth is the point. And then Dionysus, he's all about turning things upside down. Loss of control: the experience and integration of rage and lust and all the other things we use as excuses to hate ourselves. I think every God guards a door to the Labyrinth, just like there are a million ways to be happy and work your shit out. Just like there are a million masks for God.
Dionysus is interesting here, because the two people that energy is coming at are Tara and Sam. My theory is that Tara killing her demon, which I found so offensive last year, was the door that opened to Maryann. Repression, especially conscious and deliberate repression, is an invitation to madness, always, for the same reason we pop blisters.
Growing up with comics maybe this is easier to do, but it's a bifocal operation, like with superheroes or the Endless, or the Gods of whatever pantheon really: persona and personality. Sense and sensibility. You have the Thing that they are, and the personality wrapped around it, the viewpoint. Hera's a bitch because being married is a bitch, and you have to fight for every piece of what you won. Aphrodite acts like a slut because the heart is fickle, and beauty doesn't last. Hephaestus is lame because his beauty is internal.
"Every idea is endowed of itself with immortal life, like a human being," Baudelaire said. "All created form, even that which is created by man, is immortal." As much as Maryann is nutty and funny and scary and kind of a bitch, you have to remember always to look at her also as Madness, and Delight, and Delirium, and Hunger, and Singularity (nature, according to Baudelaire again being "nothing but the inner voice of self-interest"), and Selfishness, and Pleasure. If vampires are the gods of the American shadow, moving through the deep, then Maryann is Crossing State Lines. Some scenes she's more one, some scenes she's more the other, but they are both always true. And what calls to her, and offends her, and excites her, is repression and authority. It's why she wants Sam, on the Maryann level. But on another, Sam's repression calls Her into being.
So with Tara: You take everything scary or sad, all the pettiness and deeper shame, the fears and hatreds and thoughts you can't handle, and put them in that little girl, and then stab her? That's a straight-up evocation of, and an invocation to, Maryann. I believe that it brought her into Bon Temps, and I believe that it called her into Tara's heart. That's what we do when we're too weak to love the little black-eyed girl, or claim her as our own. When we'd rather see her dead than admit we were ever that powerless.
Whether or not it worked -- and Miss Jeanette said this more than once, if Tara could have listened -- that leaves a giant hole for Maryann to come calling. So even as Maryann's façade starts to crack in this episode, I am still really grateful to her. Because the nice thing about science fiction or fantasy, which is to say the advantage of dealing with these energies directly -- as Daphne will explain -- is that you don't have to wait around or pray for God to show up, and fuck you up. Or to pick you up again afterward. It's already happening. Tara needed this, and better to have it happen in a divine setting than just to watch her going fucking Brenda Chenowith on herself, which I guarantee you is what Maryann's saving her from.
Andy tries to keep the peace but nobody can hear him; they mill around, moaning and hurting, splitting off to go home and wake up human. He spots Terry and Arlene, touching each other's faces all tripped out again, and when he tries to get Terry's attention, his cousin breaks his arm, howling triumphantly, and Arlene laughs from her belly, and they run off, hand in hand. And for the third time in twenty minutes, Andy's face-down in the mud and screaming.
Speaking of screaming, have you met my friend Sookie Stackhouse? Because that's what she does, mostly. Like, right now she's screaming for Godric, yelling out the whole plan at the top of her lungs and begging him to come. She knows he's down there with them, somewhere, because of what Steve was thinking, but he's not yet shown up. Hugo tries to shut her up, sweating prodigiously and complaining about his terrible claustrophobia, which is all too real.
Since this has nothing to do with Sookie, she immediately picks up their scary thematic daycare boardgames: "Jesus Christ Vampire Exterminator? Silver & Stakes? Send 'Em Back To Hell?" Hugo is freaking out, plus they are going to murdered, so he doesn't have time for her I Have A Black Boyfriend bullshit, and she finally realizes he's close to cracking, so she stares him in the eye and basically tries to glamour him into shutting up so she can talk about Bill some more. The facts are these: somebody in the nest is a traitor, probably nutsack Stan. Bill should have sensed Sookie's fear, so he's zooming there -- I guess more slowly than usual -- and when he gets there, probably things will not go his way. Because the people are cross-burning lynch monsters, but also because it's Bill, and don't you know things never ever go his way.
Speaking of the one million torments, Lorena spends this episode going from awful to awesome at light speed. I love it when you think somebody is bad-acting, and it turns out they tricked you by good-acting twice as much as you thought. Like, she's so good she came around back to bad again, and it was very sneaky of her. But also, I believe everything everyone on this show says, because people rarely have their shit together enough to make a decent lie out of anything. And that threw me off too, because everything Lorena says is true and not true at the same time. Right now she's like, "Chill, baby. Sookie's just dying, it's okay." He wigs and cries and moans and looks gross, and she tells him he smells like Sookie: "Sweet... And cheap." Heh. They throw each other around the hotel room for awhile, and that's pretty fun, and there's lots of vampzooming around the room, and when he asks why she's really there, she lies and tells the truth, both at once: "I've missed you. It's been so long..." Aw, hell.
Los Angeles, 1935. Bill was greyer than the Incredible Hulk wearing a stupid smoking jacket in like a Jazz Agey bullshitty sitting room, and reading -- as though he knew in 74 years this would come up -- Gods & Monsters Of Ancient Greece and looking a ponce. Lorena appeared in a gorgeous emerald gown, even weirder than usual because her eyebrows had vanished altogether, replaced by drawn-in imposters. There's a real Buffy-ness to this episode that I don't feel like enumerating. It's a shame writerwise, because trust your instincts please, they are good, but there's a seriously gameface look resulting from Lenore's lipstick and nasty chola eyebrows.
Soon enough we see the situation for what it is: Bill had become something of a homebody, due to feeling like a fraud, which he was, and bad at being a monster, which he really is, so he stayed home and read old books while Lenore was out having fun and desperately trying to forget how badly she miscalculated him. And how could it not go wrong? She created the perfect husband from the clay, loving him for his kindness and gentility, and guess what: that's what was earning her hate now, and what she'd succeeded in getting him to hate for a little while. But as my grandmother used to say, "Breeding tells."
So Lenore put that necklace on, and went out and found herself a choirgirl just like the one that used to own it. The last time he really loved her, or made a good enough showing that she could believe she wasn't alone. She went out and found herself a choirgirl and said to herself, "This is the one that will bring him back to me." Like she read it in a magazine: "Fifty Ways To Put The Spice Back In Your Maker/Progeny Relationship, Long After It Should Have Died."
And the girl was perfect, and she brought her home. Excited, and hateful and derisive at the same time, begging him to play along. "Frances is in the chorus," she spit, grinning. "She has real talent!" She made the girl dance for him, clapped viciously as she did, with a hilarious Jenna Maroney mug, until he stopped the record. For the last time. "Don't mind him. He's in one of his moods." She was sickened by Bill's disgust as he was by her behavior, but underneath it she was just ashamed of herself: Bringing home some poor girl, into their bed, just to bring him to life again. Just so he'd wake up and bite, and feed, and love her again. The lengths we're prepared go to, just to be loved. He grabbed her away from the girl, and reiterated how he'd stopped feeding, forever. Lorena popped fang behind the glamoured girl's back, running fingers across her neck. If the lights were a little lower, she'd have been perfect. "She smells like apricots. Remember those?" He stepped forward, fangs popped of their own accord, and at her bidding he almost fed.
But Bill's innate Billness shoved him back just as he was about to bite, and he made the first choice in a long time. He squeezed at the girl's shoulder like a man drowning, for support, and told her to leave. She nodded, scared and grateful, and vanished. Left alone with him, Lorena started making fun, calling him a wet blanket and doing the whole "I don't know why I keep bothering with you" number she knew from the movies. He called her bluffs, saying he couldn't even stand the sight of her. It's was all very dramatic, and remarked upon it, but she was hurt. Every time he says or said anything remotely like that, she drops the act for a moment and immediately changes her tune to superiority. She does it so many times it's sad.
"Perhaps we should head back South. This town's a cultural desert, it's no wonder we are so depressed!" He backed away from her hands, looking hotter than usual, and tried to explain the difference between depression and clarity. And shame. She explained to him -- and at least he took this lesson with him -- that he is VAMPYRE, and to stop whining about everything. Those were and are like the two parts of his entire personality, of course, so he went, "You're the worst, I'm a monster, you're a monster, I am fortune's fool, I killed people because I was trying to be a good boyfriend, and this is bullshit."
And it's like, the nest he ends up in, between now and then, are just the same way. Diane and the gay one and the other one, they're just trying to fit in, with whatever archetype they think will work. So it's nice to know that Bill saw that, in them and himself, because it explains his kindness toward them a lot more easily than thinking he's just that dorky. Which he is, but not even Bill was as dorky as those three. "I sometimes forget how young you are," Lorena said, condescending as usual, which we've only just learned is a sign that he'd wounded her deeply. "I will never again be what you want me to be," he said, and for a moment she hated him. She threw a lamp, very fast because she was a vampire, but he caught it easily, because he was also a vampire.
Back out of the flashback, Bill's all threateny and mean about hopefully Sookie's okay, and Lorena's patronizing smile slips; for a moment she's amazed and grossed-out, and then her heart breaks a little bit -- "You're in love?" -- before going right back into fake, awful, screeching laughter, plastering it over her tears before they can fall. She is heartbreaking, this lady. I can't remember when I turned around this quick on a person. She's like the Colonel Tigh of this show.
Isabel and Eric stand on a hill looking down at two Soldiers of the Sun and thinking about how they are retarded, but also scary because they're a cult. Eric calls them "scared little boys with Bibles and crossbows," and Isabel -- instead of saying "I was in the Inquisition for fuck's sake, I'm familiar with the concept" -- just points out that they're getting more and more money and cannon fodder every day. Eric fairly rubs his tummy thinking Nom Nom Christian Soldiers, but Isabel tells him to chill out. She says that she sensed some kind of thing going down, but Hugo calmed down relatively quickly.
Which whether she's lying or Hugo is, this means the traitor isn't Stan -- which would have been dumb and never was a possibility -- but one thing I love about this actor is how smart she is, because she honestly plays this scene like she's-lying-or-is-she, so you don't know if the traitor is herself or Hugo. Because if she's being honest, and spoiler she is, then it's him, but if she's the bad guy... It's a cool moment. This episode is very good about miscommunication, interruption, misdirection; it's fun.
Eric asks what on Earth Isabel enjoys about dating a human, and she gives that old Wolfrider rant about how humans "feel much more strongly" and how everything's all "urgent" and "exciting," because of their short lifespans. Eric goes, "Yes, they certainly don't keep well." She giggles and shakes her head like he's a naughty boy, and he asks if she's not totally grossed out by the idea of Old Hugo's old balls, and she's like, A) "No, I find it curious, like a science project" and then B) with only a slight change in tone or pause, redirects to what he's really asking, and ribbing him about what's behind it: "How does Bill Compton feel about your interest in Sookie?"
Eric swears that he's not interested in Sookie ("And even less in how Bill Compton feels," heh), and she grins at the side of his face while he brings it back to Godric. "Don't look at me like that," he says, hilariously, and then asks her if she honestly thinks these idiots could have gotten ahold of Godric and held him that long. It would take a grad degree in Boy to explain, but essentially it's the reason Roger's heart attack nearly killed Don Draper: You have to fight your father, but you can't ever see him fall, or the world will end. If Godric had been King of Texas, Eric would have fought to the death to become King of Louisiana, but he's just a Sheriff, so Eric can just be a Sheriff. What he's really asking is whether it's even worth hoping. She agrees that it seems implausible, that anything could overpower him, and Eric speaks from a dark place: "Not anything human."
Up above the sanctuary, Jason's blessed out and post-coital, breathing hard and cuddling with Sarah about how wrong things so often feel right. She starts crying and he tries to be a nice boy, wiping her tears indulgently and practically doing a puppet show to cheer her up, but her eyes light up like Crazy Christmas and she breathily explains that she's not sad, she's happy. Why? Oh, because God was right and she's totally supposed to be with Jason forever and ever, because she never knew love until this moment. Pretty much Jason's biggest nightmare, even when you don't factor in the paragraph above about breaking your father. Sarah has pulled him over that line, which sucks, but not as much as her getting wild and wedding-eyed now. Jason's inability to consider the ramifications of anything is always fun to watch.
Sarah shimmies into her panties with mad laughter, talking about God's plan, and he laughs along, terrified. She says they have to tell Steve immediately! Because of her Vow of Honesty! And somehow they will work this out with God, having broken the marriage vow, but for now they have to make it right. Jason explains, heart pounding, that A) Steve has guns, and 2) There's a lockdown (he says, mimicking his sister without knowing it) tonight, where they will be locked in a church with Steve and all his guns. Sarah's like, "D'oh! Okay, after the lock-in and the crucifixion then!" She runs off all nutty and Jason visualizes getting his hot ass up out of there.
Hoyt kisses Jessica sweetly, and admits that he's never done it with a girl before. She goes, "What've you done it with?" and he blushes and says only himself. She realizes he means he's a virgin, and buries her head in his shoulder, laughing. He gets worried, but she pops up and tells him she's a virgin too. He's relieved, and she jokes: "Just because I'm a vampire, you think I'm a slut?" He shines like a star when he says of course not, and that she never could be, and that he doesn't really believe in the concept anyway. "Well, I totally would have been a slut if I could've gotten away with it! Me and my friend Laurie, we had this bet since eighth grade over who'd lose it first. I mean, she was like pregnant before I even got my first kiss, I mean, my dad was such a dickhead..."
She asks for his excuse, and he gives one that is way more common than we probably think: he was going to wait to let the right one in, and she never showed up, and then it was like this thing, and he couldn't just waste it, and then all of a sudden he was 28 and nobody was good enough, and he was good at skating away from it and not giving Jason and Rene a reason to worry, but that probably most girls thought he was "some kind of bisexual gay or something," which he is not, although that's fine if you are, and she's like, "I'm not most girls?" She pauses to consider whether she technically is a girl at all, and flees from the thought. She's learning. "But if you're okay with that, I'd be your first." He lights up twice as bright.
Jessica goes to the window and lowers the shade, dropping her robe, and he gets all excited, but she smiles and tells him it can't happen tonight: the sun's coming up, and if she doesn't rest in the daytime she gets sick. She climbs into bed with him, and they cuddle, and as she's settling into the spoon she warns him not to freak out if she looks a little dead. Of course he won't! He holds her tight, and they sleep.
Eric and the Lieutenants make their way down the Carmilla hallway; Stan thinks Hugo and Sookie probably joined the Fellowship themselves, and Isabel tells him to cool it ("He is mine," she reminds him), and they fight for awhile. Stan says that if Isabel really loved Hugo she would have stormed the church, and she counters that Stan only has one answer for anything, stupidity, and he says that's why they've been getting Godric's coffee for the last forty years: they're timid. Which is dumb of him to say in front of Eric, but not as bad as when he turns around and points out that the Fellowship has both Eric's maker and telepath, and still isn't doing anything. Which is sort of valid.
Eric zoom-grabs Stan by the neck and asks if his loyalty is being questioned, and Stan says he really does want to restore Godric to his rightful place, but Eric's so out of his mind with hypothetical grief and very real fear that he loses it, and starts accusing Stan of having already murdered Godric and letting this all play out just to be a dick and cover his ass. Stan's offended, and Isabel pulls Eric off him, but Eric promises to find proof if the non-human thing that betrayed Godric turns out to be Stan. He tells them to fuck off and fight over being Sheriff, or murder the whole Fellowship, or whatever the hell they want, because if Godric is gone, he says -- cheated out in a very soap opera fashion, talking to the camera like Sookie always does, while the people stare at him -- then nothing will bring back what he's lost anyway. One bloody tear runs down his cheek, and it's very affecting.
Tara and Eggs wake up on Gran's couch, mostly clothed, completely unaware of what went down last night. Eggs, who not only has been through this before but clearly has a vested interest in denial about the whole thing, puts her off about a dozen ways -- including blaming the joint they smoked, which even Tara isn't feeling until he points out that Maryann and her maryjane are both pretty magical -- and when she brings up their grisly campsite discovery yesterday he reacts with something like anger. He picks up his dirty shirt from last night and for a second can't even recognize it as his own.
Going off his suggestion that her blackout is from the pot, Tara gets frightened and starts talking about sobering up. Eggs kneels and lovingly puts his arms around her, promising that one lapse of consciousness doesn't make her Lettie Mae. (Because if she'd ever made her peace with the limitations of her mother, Maryann wouldn't be here, but also because of the Prom dress night that brought her here; the day she went back to carrying her mother's sobriety on her own back; the day Miss Jeanette carved out her heart and showed her that they would never be happy.) Tara's relieved and touched that he knows her so well, comparing him to mind-reading Sookie; he's kisses her, proud to know her so well in turn. Meanwhile, Sam shrugs into a t-shirt and heads to his office at Merlotte's, grabbing a gun from inside the fireplace and not the luggage he's usually grabbing and Tara should be.
Sookie's resting her head on some boxes when Steve comes into the basement, bushy-tailed as all hell and taunting them with bottled water. She informs him that they're coming for her, and he and Gabe agree that it'll be fun when they arrive. Sookie tries to warn him that he is dead meat, and he affects sympathy: "Oh, they've got you all twisted up, haven't they? With their... With their glamouring, and their empty promises, and their evil blood." Heh. She casts doubt on his version of Christianity, pointing out that Jesus would be ashamed of them, and he laughs, looking squarely at Hugo before pulling a chair up to their cage.
"Now things got a little out of hand last night, and I apologize for that," he Mayor-of-Sunnydales, and promises that they'll get breakfast and freedom once they answer a few questions. Hugo immediately starts blabbing, still sweating like whoa, about how they were sent by the vampires of Area IX to find the Sheriff, and how his name is Hugo Ayers, and hers is Sookie Stackhouse. You can actually see the moment that Steve Newlin's heart breaks, as he processes this last.
"Sookie Stackhouse? From Bon Temps? You're Jason Stackhouse's..." He swallows, sickened, and then angry: "Sister. Am I right?" Sookie, worried at the look in his eye, promises him that Jason's not a part of this, but he's already up and out the door, sighing at one more hassle today. Hugo rolls his eyes, freaking out and sick of being down there: "Hey, we sat down here all night waiting for your boyfriend to show up. You can play damsel in distress all you want, but one way or another, I'm getting us out of here." She asks him to STFU and he kicks some boxes, frustrated.
Sookie stares out through the chainlink and acts like Sookie Stackhouse to a supernatural degree: "Barry! Barry can you hear me you gotta help me I need you to go to the hotel and find Bill Compton and tell him I'm at Fellowship of the Sun Church in the basement the sheriff is here somewhere and I'm in big trouble please don't ignore me this is a life or death situation please..."
Bill's looking pretty out of it, reclining on one couch while Lorena sits on another. Apparently she's keeping him awake until Eric says the plan has changed; apparently Jessica wasn't fucking around when she says it's a bad deal to stay awake in the daytime. Her nose starts to bleed, and a thick flow pours out of Bill's ear. He begs to sleep, and she tells him she's not about to let him run out into the sunlight and kill himself for her. Because what kind of an idiot would Bill Compton have to be, right, to do something like that?
He's all, "The Bleeds have begun!" (which is totally the new "Drank before the wound closes!") and she drowsily tells him it won't last forever. He begs her to at least let him call Eric, and she laughs her ass off. Yeah, it's Eric's fault that Sookie's in danger, but it's also Eric's fault she's there. She snatches and crushes the room phone: "He wants the girl, William. Just let him have her." Bill wigs out and bleeds some more.
Jason makes it about one meter, with his luggage, before Steve and Gabe show up and grab him, with a huge knife. The tragic thing is that Jason still thinks he just has to skip town because of sleeping with Sarah and her subsequent crazy-going, he doesn't even know about the Sookie part yet, so once again it's like all he has to offer is his dick, which untruth was like the one good part about being here. No matter how many times people try to explain to Jason that he's awesome, they always end up murdering people in front of him and making him sad again.
"There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances: one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent." Baudelaire again, and Jason's the only one even close to negotiating that one, as usual, because he's the only one too stupid to play the denial games that Tara and Sam and Sookie are so good at. "Any man who does not accept the conditions of human life sells his soul," and that's where he lives.
Meanwhile, Andy's arm is in a huge silly plaster cast and he's explaining excitedly to Bud about a bull mask and giant claws, and Bud's like, "Claws, uh-huh?" And then additionally "the whole town had these big black saucer-eyes, like zombies!" Bud just sighs, because Andy's total breakdown is sort of amazing. I always kind of adored Andy, even when he was being a dick, because he's adorable and looks like a Smurf, but this whole Cassandra/Body Snatchers thing is about the best ever.
Eggs and Tara have not moved from the couch, where they are watching The Screaming Skull, a 1958 horror movie which begins with a voiceover offering free burial services to anybody who dies from how scary it is -- even pans to an empty casket marked "For You" -- but which here is interesting because it's a Rebecca redux. A woman moves into a new house and family, and finds herself haunted by strange occurrences -- are you listening, Tara? -- including a cheesy and randomly appearing skull. Maybe she's getting gaslighted by the new husband for her fortune, or the gardener who loved the wife, or maybe she's going crazy, or -- and obviously this ends up true, but all four possibilities are at least a little true -- the ghost really exists and is after her.
They laugh, because that's what you do when the danger is too much, and cuddle, and somebody with dancer's calves covered in blood, holding a slaughtered rabbit by the feet, comes into the front door holding her skirt up so it won't get dirty. Maryann smiles drunkenly and leans against the arch frame, looking adorable and crazy as hell. Even Tara's like, "Daaaang." Maryann assures them she's fine -- "I am fantastic! I slept outside last night and I communed with my animal nature!" -- and Eggs notices the dead hare in her hands. "This little fella hopped by, and I thought, Mmm, yummy. Rabbit stew!" Tara's grossed out, and Maryann says -- on autopilot, too tired and ritual too recent to wrap her truth in better words -- "Feeling sorry for things is just an excuse not to celebrate your own happiness!"
It's the first time I've had a problem with her, honestly. That's her shtick with the heart carved out. She hops onto a big chair, looking utterly insane, perfect hair all a mess, and pronounces them "glowy," speaking of happiness. Tara's like, "We fell asleep," and Eggs nods, and Maryann is satisfied. Tara asks about the party last night, and Maryann gets defensive as usual, spackling over it with talk about how Tara's such a good friend to look after the house and how could Sookie ever fault her for that, and then runs off barefoot through the house calling, like a crow: "Karl! KKKarl!" Tara sighs and mentions that Maryann is fucking weird, but Eggs just loves it. He cuddles closer, and they go back to watching the movie about the woman too stupid to realize her house was haunted and dangerous, and probably watched horror movies -- while lunatics dragged rabbit carcasses around the house -- about people who were too stupid to look terror in the eye, so they watched movies instead.
Gabe's got Jason dead to rights on a back road, knife to his neck, while Steve fairly weeps with rage about Jason's betrayal. Jason tries to apologize, to the husband of the girl who apparently just blew his cover, and Steve tries to get him to admit being involved with Area IX, and they are really frustrated in communicating for a bit. I don't think Jason ever figures out that his sister is here or that there's a war happening. So Steve goes, "You are snakier than a snake in the grass!" -- which you have to admit is fucking snaky -- and Jason begs his old buddy Steve to reconsider, but no. He closes his eyes, and intones in a holy fashion: "Say a prayer. You are going to hell. And you are going there today." It breaks Jason's heart, and he still doesn't know what the fuck is going on; Steve walks away to let his muscle do the work. And Gabe's eyes are clear, no blackness at all.
Daphne's dipping her feet in the lake, and there are some major acting issues in this scene that we don't need to discuss, but basically this scene made me less sad about her ultimate demise than I otherwise would have been. Sam cocks a gun at her head and she grins, and stands, and sighs: "Now what's that for?" Knowing he won't shoot, she gets in his face and asks if he honestly thinks she's afraid dying. He says she must be afraid of Maryann, given the link between the scars on her back and Maryann's grotesque Pan Hands, and asks if that's how she got Daphne to be her whore.
"It ain't whoring if you do it for love," she smiles, and he gets all uppity, so she explains she wasn't talking about him. She laughs and admits they had some fun, and he gets all offended and yells about how he trusted her and turned into a dog with her and was generally not a complete repressed basket case for like five seconds, like it's a bad thing, and she's like, "Okay. I was once like you: scared and stupid and weak and self-hating. Then I joined a cult!" She leans against the lightpost at the end of the pier, cheated out like in every other scene in this whole episode, and explains that she could have been killed, and probably deserved it, but instead Maryann saw something special about her, and "saved" her. Like in the Saw movie.
Which makes sense, I think: Everybody gets the Maryann they deserve, right? Tara gets a mommy and a perfect boyfriend. Eggs gets a guru. Sam gets his isolation and superiority about Bon Temps pointed right at his heart, since he didn't give in to pleasure the first time when he was a kid. And Daphne needed to be hurt, so she could be rescued: shown the limits of her animal freedom, so she knew where to delight. "Gave me a whole new life," did Maryann. "No fear, no limits. Just love."
Sam points out that killing people and cutting out there hearts does not equal love, so she tries to explain about the significance of people v. the significance of gods -- that he's a flea in the coat of the world -- but he points out that she is up his ass ten ways to Sunday, so obviously there's something significant about him. Daphne shrugs, and some serious bad looping covers up whatever she's actually saying: "Because you got away from her once. She can't control you. See those funny big black-eyes folks we were running around with acting all crazy? That's Maryann's energy inside of them, she is driving them like tiny little remote-control airplanes!"
God, this scene is embarrassing. So he painfully goes to the expository point -- "But that don't work on us? Because we're shifters?" -- and she sets up what is sure to be an important point once Bill and his Sheriff come home, my emphasis: "All supernaturals, we got a natural resistance. She can force our shifts, and other stuff with other supes, but she can't get inside us. We gotta go to her on our own free will. And she just loves a challenge!"
Which is fine for plot and fine to know a bit more about the show's mythology, but it's just so limited and Daphne-esque that I can't imagine what she's not saying. "I'm not a challenge, I'm a person!" he shouts, just like not-technically-a-girl Jessica in bed with Hoyt, and Daphne laughs affectionately, jumping back in the water ("I'm sweating like a pig!"), but Sam doesn't feel like swimming. "What the fuck is she?" he asks, when her head breaks water, and she says the truest thing so far: "She's God, dumdum!"
Hugo wigs out begging to go to the bathroom, and finally Sookie tries to shut him up with a plastic water bottle, but he's not having it, so she tries to calm him down again, and immediately opens up a bunch of memories: How he joined the Fellowship and Steve Newlin blessed him on his knees, how he offered to join the mission, how he called ahead to let them know. Sookie jumps back and gets way antsy.
"Maryann is not God," Sam sputters, and Daphne's like, "As close to God as we'll ever get." She names her -- Kali, Lilith, Isis, even Amy's Gaia -- but says ultimately she's a maenad, which the Greeks called handmaidens of Dionysus, but were actually a much bigger better deal than that. Sam crouches, head hurting: "Dionysus, the God of wine?" She smiles, because he owns a bar, so of course he would know that part. But there was another name for him: The Horned God. Sam gets super scared, because he's naïve and a superstitious idiot, and thinks Satan is a useful or worthwhile concept.
Which is, again, exactly why Maryann is in his life at all. What was it she said to Lettie Mae? "It's always something out there that gets the blame or credit, whether it be Jesus or gin." Baudelaire said the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist, but I would say the opposite is closer to true: The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing us he does. That's it not just us, pulling the strings.
He's our little black-eyed girl, culturally, and you only have to look at the shadow of a people, or a religion, or a country, to see how well they're doing. How healthy. You could get used to putting all your shit on one thing -- maybe it's women, or a given minority; maybe it's Saddam Hussein; maybe it's Sarah Palin, or Lynndie England -- and then you don't have to deal with it anymore. If there was no Devil we'd have to invent him, let him carry our burdens, just so we could sleep at night. Until those dreams began to wake us, and we realized we'd made him ever more powerful there, in the dark.
"Dionysus, Satan. It's really just a kind of energy. Wild energy, like lust. Anger, excess, violence. Basically, all the fun stuff." All the stuff in the blister, waiting to explode. "Maryann brings it out in people. She channels it, controls it. She's immortal, Sam. She never wasn't here, so there ain't no point in fighting her, you see? You'll never win!" He stands up, scared, talking to himself: "I'm not gonna just let her kill me." And she says in the voice of a true believer: "Being a part of something divine is worth dying a thousand times. You'll see."
Sam asks if that's what she's asking for, a sacrifice: if he gives himself up, will she release her hold on Bon Temps? Daphne laughs, because she's having too much fun now. "This town's full of crazies ripe for the picking!" (And never was a truer statement made, my God.) "She's like a pyro in a room full of matches," Daphne says, goggle-eyed, coming to him out of the water, putting her arms around his neck: "Just go to her, Sam. Play nice. She might even let you live." He shoves her away, hurting her feelings, and runs away into the forest; she smiles and lets it go, staring out over the water. "I used to be just like you," Hugo says in Dallas.
"Thought I was a real emancipated thinker, especially when Isabel took me to bed, and the sex was... Amazing, the best ever. Well, you know." Sookie's eyebrows go up. "It's addictive, isn't it? To be desired by something that powerful." She assures him she's no addict, and he scoffs: like she hasn't noticed herself changing to suit him. "You start missing work, can't get up in the morning, can't stand to leave them after dark?" He's right, but she's the wrong one to talk to about this: "Before you know it, you're somebody you don't even recognize." She's grossed out, and just as right as he is: "So you went to the Fellowship because you can't control yourself?"
No. First Hugo begged Isabel to turn him, but she wouldn't, which freaked him out because he decided that she couldn't allow him to be her equal, so therefore she's using him, so therefore Bill is using Sookie. Which Sookie is not hearing, around her clenched teeth, and she's certainly not about to be hearing about how her telepathy probably makes her a great trophy. He starts mooning over the Fellowship and, trying to get some of her own back, she points out that they seem to have completely dumped him. "Face it, Hugo. You're nothing but a fangbanging traitor to them." He gets worried and scared and tries to get the upper hand back, smashing on the chainlink and calling Gabe to come get him: "Gabe, she knows everything. You can let me out now!" No answer is forthcoming.
Sarah welcomes the parties to the church, family by family, gearing up for the lock-in, and when Steve approaches to talk about something serious, she smiles, girding herself. When he says Jason's name, she gets that scared, hung-over dead-eyed look in her eyes for a moment before she breathes in His light, and goes to tell her husband the honest truth. Out in the woods, Gabe's doing pretty well until he commits two horrors in a row: first by calling Sookie a whore, which is not something you should do in front of Jason, and secondly by calling Jason a sister-fucker, which is pretty much precisely how Rene turned into a serial killer, not to mention tacky, so it's not really surprising that Jason kicks the shit out of him -- in a truly bizarrely edited fight sequence -- and runs off into the many acres of Jesus.
Lafayette makes a call trying to sell V while he puts on his makeup for the day. He's wearing a cute t-shirt that says BITCH in swirly '70s sports-team letters and a big gold L around his neck. Out at the bar, Arlene comes in late and thanks "Jesus, Santa Claus and Hare Krishna" that Sam's not there (apparently Tara's under the impression that he's taken the day off to fuck Daphne, which is interesting) and pulls Tara into the bathroom, where Lafayette is finishing up. So Arlene asks why he's in the Ladies' room, and he asks why she and Tara, being skank hos, are even coming in there, and calls himself gorgeous and the rest of it, and Tara notices not only his pizzazz but also a distinct lack of limp, and before he can blink she's figured out he's back on the V (although the whole truth would probably kill her) and tells him they will talk about it later. He vacates imperiously.
Arlene is wigging out, having done something bad enough to surprise even herself, which in turn worries Tara, who knows that Arlene is disgusting and has low personal standards. So she's not fucking Terry yet -- although she's gone so far as to bring out the big guns, "my hot oils, my nasty lingerie" -- and he keeps balking, so she decided to get him drunk last night, and then they blacked out. She starts to cry, because she thinks maybe she had sex with him against his will, but Tara's stuck for a second on the "blacked out" part, since that seems to be going around." Are you telling me you date-raped Terry Bellefleur?" Yes indeed. Arlene cries and freaks out, and Tara asks again to confirm that she doesn't remember anything from last night, and leans back. Hold that thought, lady.
Lafayette comes out to the bar to get a drink, since it's the middle of the workday, and notes a surprised Eggs thusly: "Now see, that just ain't motherfucking fair. The first time in my goddamn life I ain't chasing after trouble..." He pours himself another shot: "And it just keep walking in my fucking door. Look at you. Damn. Ain't nothing good can come out of something so pretty." (Satan in a Sunday hat, Lettie Mae used to say. And Eggs's dad used to tell him, "You can't get what you want in life, so in order to get it, you're prepared not to want it." And Maryann saved them.)
Eggs recognizes Lafayette, I guess because of some arcane telltale sign that differentiates him from all the other gender-estranged drug dealers that work at Merlotte's, and Lafayette has not even enough pizzazz to grin as wolfishly as he might: "Tara's Eggs?" Lafayette ignores Eggs's outstretched hand, making it clear that he wasn't flirting, but serious; linking him to Eric, these strange beautiful men crossing his threshold when he's just trying to hide in the night. He's always been good at that, knowing bad juju when he sees it. Survival first.
Tara appears giggling, talking about "Tara's Eggs" as though it were a dish, asking why people don't just call him Ben. "Or Dict..." Lafayette says, both flirtatiously and as a message of doom. She tells him to behave, hearing only the first thing, but he shakes his head. "Satan in a Sunday hat, girl. I'm trying to tell you, Satan in a beautiful fucking Sunday hat." Tara knows he's right. She's always known. I made my peace last year with the idea of Lafayette dying, because he's the Guide: in a show about completely losing your way, and creating a new one, it's only justice that he would die. And that's certainly why Miss Jeanette died. But it occurs to me now that, as Guide, he might as well have. He's among the lost now, crawling back into the light with the rest of them. Doesn't mean he can't point out some roadsigns along the way.
Speaking of tainted, broken, abused oracles, Andy Bellefleur comes running in screaming for his cousin, who broke his arm. "I'm gonna kick your ass so hard, you'll be shitting boots!" he shouts, insensate to everybody in Merlotte's. In the midst of a collective eye-roll at the town drunk, Tara's worried: "Andy, what happened to your arm?" She jerks back as he screams, "I ain't talking to you, devil worshipper!" Sam creeps out quietly, back from his meeting with Daphne, and watches carefully. This room is as much a snakepit for him as for Andy. I wonder if that's not part of the reason he didn't come in today: not wanting to face them.
Not a problem for Andy. "I saw you last night. I saw all of you!" Tara asks, and he laughs bitterly. "Aw, go ahead, deny it. Laugh at the crazy drunk guy, but I know what I saw. Terrrrrrry!" Arlene's also worried, offering to call Terry for him (and kill two birds at the same time), and he goes, "Fuck you, zombie woman!" She's shocked, but he's not done. "Fuck all y'all devil zombies! Turning this town into a orgy from hell! I'll stop ya, I will stop ya if it's the last thing I ever do!" He runs out, as mad as when he ran in, and Sam stares after him. Arlene laughs, because she must: "Oh, my God. Did you smell him?" They laugh collectively.
As much as I love the disability thing with Sookie, my go-to explanation along with her addiction in explaining her ridiculous behavior, I love Harris's other explanation too: that in the south, it's about what you don't say as much as what you do. That to be a telepath in the south would be a terrible fate not only because of the communication issues, but because of the immense comfort in being a part of the overarching conspiracy of etiquette and polite denial. So there again, you have Bon Temps, where nobody ever says anything, and that's another blister Maryann's popping.
Eggs plays along harder than most, because he has more practice laughing these things off, and kisses Tara goodbye. He says hello to Sam, who is scared to death -- "Oh, hi! Nice to see you! Listen, about last night when I held you down to be ritually sacrificed by the Goddess who statutory-raped you as a child and has turned your whole town into orgy zombies? Sorry about that..." -- and looks at Tara, who knows something is up. Probably for just a second. And Arlene watches him, concerned again: "Sam! You look like you just saw a ghost!"
Jessica wakes up and Hoyt is scattering roses and rose petals. The room is lit with a hundred red candles, and Leona Lewis is playing, which is amazing, not only because the song kicks ass and because of the lyrics ("...Something happened/ For the very first time with you.../ I don't care what they say/ I'm in love with you/ You cut me open and I/ Keep bleeding love..."), but because the song is approximately as old as Facebook, and nobody else would know it -- not Bill, not Lorena -- and because the first time is every time, because they are inventing the world together: He is a boy, and she is a girl, and nobody else in that hotel or that whole town knows what that means. Not tonight.
She stares about herself, completely overcome, and he turns to look at her. He's wearing a robe and jeans; he took a shower before she woke, and his hair is still wet. He's so nervous. "Oh, hey. I was just, um... Decorating?" He holds up a red pillar candle: "I got these at the gift store downstairs. Blood scented. But to me, they just smelled like soup!" She can't even speak. She'd cry, if it weren't gross. Her heart pounds. "You like 'em?" he asks, and she nods. "They're perfect." His heart leaps, all over again. "That's what I was going for!" Perfect. He was going for perfect. He crouches: "Because you're perfect, and I want your first time to be as perfect as you are..." She sighs, charmed. "Hoyt, just... Take off your pants." He grins and he does and he jumps into bed with her, and they kiss, chuckling.
Jason runs through the night, with that amazing golf cart behind him lit up like the hounds of Satan, Sarah's hair twice as big, wild, flying at him like a beast. She hits the brakes, calling his name, and so does he. "Sarah! Thank God it's you, I've been running for hours! Steve and Gabe, they've gone crazy! They tried to kill me!" She comes around, out of the light and into the darkness, and aims, and fires. He says her name, softly, disappointed, and clutches at his chest as he goes down, still as confused as ever. He still thinks this is about sex, he doesn't know about Sookie; he doesn't know that he's taken the one piece of God she's known in life and made it part of the war, part of the thing she was fleeing from that sent her into his arms. Her clean new start was just the same bullshit from an even uglier angle. He doesn't know that he made her a whore last night, and ruined everything she believed in and loved, for a lie.
Daphne stands at the water's edge, under the big lamp, and feels God come near. She turns and smiles, and walks out of the light, on fire inside. "Finally! I've missed you!" She comes close, and God thanks her -- "For your service" -- before a soft and final kiss. God steps back, and black-eyed, Eggs comes forward, pushing the knife into her chest. She is sanctified by it. Blood pours from her body and her mouth. "There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite," Baudelaire said, and it's true, she sees it's true, and she is lifted, and before she can drop she looks into the eyes of God, who smiles lovingly at her while the world turns white. She smiles back, in thanks. She is bathed in love.
When Gabe unlocks their cell door, Hugo asks about his Jason-branded face before telling him Sookie knows everything, bitching: "Never would have happened if you hadn't kept me locked down with a goddamn mind reader! I hope the Reverend knows that I'm gonna need protection now..." Gabe protects his entire body, starting with his face: "You want protection, you fangbanging sack of shit? How's that for protection, huh?" Sookie, stunned, watches him protect Hugo for awhile before jumping screeching onto Gabe's back, and gets herself protected right into a shelf, hard. His pride, his desire, are all dammed up and hateful. The first thing he saw was her breasts, and how dirty they were. How they could never be his, how tainted she was. He wraps his hands around her throat and she recoils. "Your own kind not good enough for you? How about if I show you what you've been missing?"
She screams, so loud. Anything but that. Do this, take that, in the house of God, and you undo all the good works she and Bill have made together. Bill feels it, eyes popping open as Lorena's droning on, to keep herself awake -- "...and a decade or so in Miami. The beaches are gorgeous at night, and the German tourists are delicious..." -- and throws a chair at the door, zooming to it. She grabs him from behind, pressing him against it. "Open that door and I will end you."
It wouldn't be the first time. Bill has ended more times than we give him credit for, and the strength with which he did it is something we never knew. His steadfast, obsessive moaning has never meant quite so much. She screamed and cried, begging, angry: "I've given you everything. Everything! And you threw it away moaning over what you've lost. You disgust me!" Then, he begged, "Let me go." He was his, she protested, and he said the thing you don't say, that he didn't love her. "You have never tried!" she shrieked, and he got hilarious, as he is wont to do: "I have spent decades trying! I despise myself for what I did for you. God help me, I killed innocent people to prove to you that I loved you. But it was pure nihilism. I do not, I cannot, I will never love you."
Her hurt became offense and she came close: "Hurt becomes offended: Men have readily laid down their lives to spend just one night with me." He was a little sad for her, growing up suddenly in that moment, and seeing how dreadfully afraid she was. How strong she never was; how they agreed together that she was stronger than she ever could have been. "What more can I give? What is it that you want from me?" Just a choice. "Let me go." ("You'd be a fool to cling to me/ To live a lie would bring us pain/ Release me, and let me love again...") She swore without her he would be alone forever, but he wasn't afraid of that anymore. She'd killed his family, standing outside that house and telling him he could never go back. He'd become accustomed to loneliness already. "You're the one that's afraid of that. You are the saddest, loneliest creature I have ever known." He hadn't met Maryann yet; he still hasn't.
She shoved him into a table and it conveniently broke beneath him, giving him a stake, which he brandished at her. She nodded; for a moment she felt like she'd won: "You hate me that much?" He asked again, but her heart was breaking: "I cannot live without you," she said, honest as ever. He bared his chest, and her eyes widened as he held the stake to his own heart: "You'll have to." She stepped forward, involuntarily, and he watched as she tore out her own heart, slowly, crying blood: "As your maker... I release you." He breathed, for the first time in years, and felt his freedom.
"You released me!" he shouts, against the door. "There was nothing left between us. What could you possibly have to gain from this?" She holds a stake to his back, bleeding love. "You're making a fool of yourself with that girl. You have no future with her. Everyone knows it but you." He turns around, and she holds it to his heart: "Someday, you'll see this for what it is, an act of love."
I have found a new love dear
And I will always want her near
Her lips are warm, while yours are cold
Release me, my darling
Let me go
There's a knock at the door; it's Bellhop Barry, asking for Bill, so she tells him she'll pass his message. Barry rolls his eyes. "Tell him Sookie Stackhouse is in the basement of the Fellowship of the Sun Church." Eyes wide, Eric hears: "She said the Sheriff's there, and she's in some kind of trouble." Eric is flooded with hope and new life, vanishing in a breath for the Fellowship, ready for war. And just as Barry's telling Sookie this is the last time he'll help her, Bill's door opens and an arm zoom-grabs him, pulling him inside.
Texas is a chessboard, so let's review. Stan and Isabel are at the nest, presumably, and Bill and Lorena are still locked up with Barry. Jason's just been shot. Eric's headed for the church, where Sookie and Hugo are along with Steve and the congregation, to save Godric. Which means week, it'll be Eric and Sookie, and presumably Godric, in the church. And that means that Sookie must love Godric. No matter who he is, outside the light of Eric's adoration -- or what in his two thousand years he's done -- she has to have a bond with him that's stronger than her bond with Eric, or it's an easy fix. It can't be "save Sookie" part one hundred, because then Godric doesn't carry any weight, and they can save him or he can die, and it's got to be more complicated than either of those.
And setting it up this way -- with Gabe about to commit assault on her person, and having Godric save her -- is really the smartest way to do that. He's very beautiful, but then so's Eric and she's not cowed by that, so it has to be something else. It has to be Gabe, on top of her, and her panties showing, and him yelling "Show me how you scream for that big fat vampire cock," and all that deeply human evil, so that suddenly Gabe can fly through the air, and Godric can be holding him by the shirt, looking down at her loftily, and she can stare up at him, and say his name once, softly, like a prayer.