When we talk about the sacrifice it's not about what you lose: it's not about the scapegoat, or the blood, or the possum or the sparks between your body and mine. It's about reclaiming what we forgot; what we already, always, eternally have. The body rests inside the soul, and the soul is beautiful and without blemish. No matter what they tell you. This is war; this is an act of war.

I know God looks different for everybody, but I'm an Aries and I don't have time to sugarcoat it: we're taught, as part of being good little boys and girls, that war is bad and wrong. And if I tell you this is war, you might find that harsh. Especially if you -- and you did, and that's fine -- find it sexy, a turn-on. If it's an act of pure war then it cannot be an act of pleasure. And this is where Lafayette, and his double Jeanette, can teach us; it's what Jason keeps learning and forgetting, which is that any two absolutes can -- and must -- exist in the world, if the world is big enough. Sex can be purely war and purely pleasure, and for proof we must only look at nature: all it is, is pure war and pure pleasure. That passion is where they meet, without fear: That nature is all we have, and it is pure, like you and me.

Sookie rests in a candlelit bath, laughing and watching as he wipes steam from the mirror and looks at himself. "I thought you were supposed to be invisible in a mirror!" He admits the mirror thing, like most of the myths, is just careful PR: "If humans thought that we couldn't be seen in a mirror, it was another way for us to prove that we weren't vampires. And that way, we could stay hid." His hair is looking totally cute, for which we can apparently thank intercourse; his flat, silly ass is lovable as he climbs in with her. "So what about holy water?" Just water. "Crucifixes?" Geometry. "Garlic?" Irritating, but that's pretty much it.

Sookie laughs, woozy in the water: "I feel a little weak." Bill points out, leaning close to touch her shoulder, to touch the skin of her body with the skin of his hand. "Of course you do. I fed on your blood. You should take some vitamin B-12 to replenish." Sookie asks if that's something she needs to do every day, but the implicit promise lights his eyes: he will be feeding every day, because there is nothing like that feeling of being known and loved, in just that way. If, as Jason's learning, the V is life in a liquid because they run entirely on it -- that what animates them is not what animates us -- then to give them what they need is the same, but in reverse. V, for us, is life squared. Blood, for them, is all there is.