A/N: Following the books, somewhat, but AU. This isn't the Sookie you know and love.
Reckless
Chapter 1
They didn't start selling blood in Bon Temps until November; a good eight months after the word "vampire" became a part of household conversation. I'd never met a vampire before. Everything I knew about them came from television and movies. And you know how accurate those things are, right? I mean, the same could be said about Southern girls, right? We're all supposed to be the same. We're simple and pretty, easily knocked up with low personal expectations. We have big families and eat lots of fried food. Well, stereotypes will only take you so far.
My parents named me Sookie. It's one of those "American" names that don't mean anything. I looked it up once in a book. I guess they thought it sounded bright or cheerful. I can't ask them. They died during a flash flood when I was seven years old. My grandmother, Adele, raised me and my older brother, Jason. She passed away last year, at the age of eighty. Jason is my only living relative and honestly, I could probably get by just fine without him. My brother is a Moron, capital M. He's completely useless to me, cute and stupid and a big hit with the ladies. He goes through girlfriends like candy bars. He manages the Bon Temps road crew, a job that allows him to sit on his ass all day and flex his muscles when high school girls stroll by. We don't speak much. I don't miss his company.
On top of my various family issues, I have a little secret. I can read minds. Don't go getting all excited now. Believe me, mind-reading is the last gift you want to wish on anybody. When you can read your friend's private thoughts, you know they think your prom dress is too short on the thigh and too low on the chest. When you can hear your crush's thoughts, you know he's wondering if you stuff your bra with Kleenex tissues, or if your curtains match your carpet. Mostly, they just piss me off. I've gotten into a lot of fights over the years. I've quit a few jobs. I've been fired from a few more. You ever see that movie, X-Men, where the girl can't touch people? She's sort of cut off from everybody else because she can't get close to anyone without hurting them. Well, mostly, I'm like her but more aggressive.
I saw my first bottle of synthetic blood when Sam Merlotte, my boss, pulled it out of a box of liquor deliveries. Sam set it down on the bar and I picked it up immediately. My co-worker and semi-regular friend, Maudette, looked over my shoulder at it. She was wondering if it smelled like and tasted like real blood. I put up my mental wall to block out her mind. Maudette was as easy to read as a See Jane Run book. Keeping her out of my head was a chore, but she knew how to have a good time. In a small town like Bon Temps, that sort of skill is pretty valuable.
"Is it flavored?" Maudette asked.
"What, like grape flavor or tomato flavor?" I raised an eyebrow at her. "It says AB positive. Is that a flavor?"
"It's just going to go bad," Sam sighed. He took the bottle from me and put it in the fridge with the beer.
"Maybe we'll get lucky, get ourselves a real life vampire in Bon Temps." I smirked. Nobody ever came here if they could help it. I can't tell you how many times I've thought about packing up and leaving, but I've spent my whole life in this stupid little town. Maudette had expanded my knowledge of vampires by trekking out to Shreveport to do a little investigating. I'd seen more than a few episodes of intercourse with vampires in her mind, like movies on an old film reel. She'd replay them in her mind when she was bored at work or minding her tables or eating her supper. I'm not going to lie and tell you the thoughts didn't interest me. Think of it as free porn without need for the internet. I've never actually had the pleasure of sex. It's not like I don't want to or like I haven't tried. It's just very off putting when you can read your partner's thoughts and you know he's thinking about how ugly you look naked, or about putting gas in his car, or about how long he'll have to hold you after the fucking is over. You may think I'm crazy, but I swear to you, nine times out of ten he isn't thinking about what you expect him to be thinking about. You are the furthest thing from his mind. Still, if Maudette's memory is any indication, it might just be worth it to fuck a vampire.
A month after Sam bought our first case of synthetic blood, a day after we dumped every single expired bottle in the place, we had our first vampire visitor. He sat down in my section and I just knew. He had pale skin and sunken cheeks, brown hair that fell sloppily across his forehead, and almost black brown eyes. He sat down in a booth in my section, right behind the Rats. The Rats were Mack and Denise Rattray, a couple from the scummier part of Bon Temps. They lived close to the swamp in a run-down old trailer. They noticed the vampire same as I did, and crawled into his booth like vermin about to scavenge a fresh kill. I walked up to their table as Denise leaned over the vampire, touching her throat with her fingertips, brushing her hair back from her neck. Mack sat across from them, practically licking his lips. My stomach lurched.
"Drink?" I asked. I tucked my pencil into my hair and cocked out my hip so I could lean my hand on it.
"Do you have any True Blood?" The vampire asked coolly. His voice was gravely and low. Denise giggled like a lusting school girl.
"We're out," I grunted, looking past the vampire to Mack Rattray. He was clearly staring right at my breasts. Asshole. If I took down the barrier that kept out his thoughts, I'd probably be able to hear him think about whether or not I'd gotten implants. I was blessed in the breast department. I'd punched out at least five men for thinking I'd gotten them done.
"Just some red wine then," the vampire frowned. He was looking at Denise's neck, barely registering my presence at all.
"Yeah, sure," I nodded. I walked back to the bar to find my boss grabbing his baseball bat.
"Breathe, Sam," I muttered. "Hand me a glass of red wine."
"Right," Sam floundered. He dug around behind bottles of liquor for a dusty bottle of red wine. It was a fairly uncommon choice at Merlotte's. Most of our customers stuck to whiskey or Budweiser. I took the wind back to the table. The vampire had returned his attention to me, away from the Rat woman. He followed me across the room, his dark eyes focused on my face. If the Rats weren't sitting with him, I'd have been tempted to lower the mental walls, to dig around in his brain. But I wasn't curious enough. I didn't want to hear Mack and Denise, no matter how curious I was about the vampire patron.
"What's your name?" The vampire asked, his eyes staring so hard at me that I thought about smacking him in the eye just to cut him off.
"That's Sookie Stackhouse," Mack answered for me. "She's the fuckin' craziest bitch in Bon Temps." I narrowed my eyes at him, balled my hands into tight fists.
"You really want to fuck with me tonight, Mack?" I snarled at him. Sam was coming up behind me. I could smell his aftershave. That man was good at keeping me out of trouble.
"Sook, your order is up," Sam murmured near my ear.
"Yeah," I hissed under my breath. "Right." I had to force my legs to walk away from the table. I could feel the vampire's eyes on me, drilling holes into my back.
At mid-shift, I went out back for a cigarette and a Coke. I leaned on the hood of my car and blew a cloud of gray smoke into the chilly December air. I let down the barriers. They were hard to keep up, like a constant migraine that throbbed between my temples all night. Anyway, there was nothing to block outside in the dark. Or at least, that's what I thought when I took another long drag and listened to the crackle of burning paper and smoldering tobacco. That's when I heard them, the Rattrays.
I'm not some sort of super hero. I don't go around reading thoughts and rescuing people in distress. That's not really my style. I don't spend a lot of time with people and I have my own shit to deal with, but, well, I have some sense of ethics. You can't hear someone obviously torturing someone else and just ignore them. I mean, I'm not completely cut off from the world. Just mostly. I threw my cigarette into the gravel and snubbed out the embers with the toe of my boot. I left my Coke can on the car hood and walked through the lot. My shadow stretched across the circular beam of the yellow security lamp. Sam's truck sat outside his trailer. Out of the bed, I grabbed a length of chain, probably used to attach things to the hitch of the truck. I walked as quietly as I could over the gravel, fingering the cool links with the pad of my thumb. It isn't that the thoughts grew louder, but that they seemed closer. I found them in the dirt beside the back road leading out of the parking lot.
Denise knelt on the ground beside the vampire. Even from several feet away, I could see her fillings vials of blood from the vampire's arm, like some sort of desperate nursing student. The vampire seemed to be restrained somehow, though I couldn't actually see anything holding him still. Mack stood over them, his back hunched like his neck was tied to the ground. His mind raced. He was dying for a fix of "V," the street name for vampire blood. I'd heard that "V" was a profitable black market commodity. I'd never done it, mostly because when I was into the drug scene, "V" didn't yet exist. Watching Mack bounce around like a jittery heroin addict made me want to swear off "V" forever.
The vampire's head turned to me as I snuck through the darkness. A silver chain around his throat caught the faint light of the security lamp and glinted. Okay, chalk that up to a new thing I could learn about vampires. Funny, I thought silver was used to kill werewolves. Oh well. Whatever. I looked at him for several silent seconds, watching his eyes, gazing as the tips of his pointed teeth. It took me awhile to notice that I couldn't hear him thinking. He had to be thinking, right? I mean, who isn't thinking while they're being tortured, drained? But if he was thinking, I couldn't hear him. I strained to get some sense of his mind, mostly because I wasn't used to being kept in the dark. I heard nothing. In fact, it was almost the absence of something, not the nothing of not thinking. Instead of not thinking, he was a void, a lack of anything.
I didn't have much more time to think about it. Mack turned and made to come at me. I threw the chain from the truck bed, catching him around the throat. Maliciousness screwed with my features, turning down my eyebrows, narrowing my eyes, baring my teeth. The chain continued to twist and contort around his neck, cutting off his air supply. Mack dropped to his knees. The knife he'd been holding, a huge Bowie with a bright blade, clattered to the ground. I took a step forward and threw up my knee, catching him in the nose and mouth. His blood splattered, staining my pants. It was worth it.
"You need to go," I hissed at Denise. She was crouching, halfway up, one vial still clutched in her hand, half-full. Her wide eyes were daggers, focused on me and ready to fight back. I balled my hands into fists, fully ready to kick her to the curb, so to speak. She thought about coming after me, then slowly remembered my record for fighting and decided against it. She knelt to grab the vials of blood instead.
"Leave them," I growled at her, taking a step toward her. Her hands fell from the vials and they clattered onto the grass. She grabbed Mack by the arm and dragged him to his feet. He was tugging at the chain still, ignoring the blood oozing from his broken nose. They stumbled away together.
I knelt down beside the vampire, sinking my knees into the dirt and damp grass. The chain seemed like it was burning through his skin, and little wisps of smoke rose up from it in a rather disturbing way. I picked up the chain and unwound it from his wrists and ankles. He sat up slowly, gazing at me. His eyes were as dark as his thoughtless mind. I dropped the chain onto the grass and pulled another cigarette out of the package.
"You okay?" I asked him. I lit the cigarette, enjoyed the familiar crackling sound. I sucked in smoke and nicotine. After a second, I got to my feet.
"I will be," he replied in a shaky voice.
"Great, because I have to get back to work," I said. I stuck my thumb back in the direction of the bar and stepped down onto the road. I heard him stir behind me.
"Wait," he croaked. I turned around to look at him. His pale face glowed white. He'd lost a lot of blood. Could he replenish it by drinking the vials? Oh gross, Sookie!
"Look, I really have to get back." Gotta admit, though, it was fascinating standing there, not hearing anything.
"Thank you," he said softly.
"Yeah, sure," I shrugged. "No problem."
"Allow me to offer you my thanks. Take the blood. I understand it to be valuable among humans, like an elixir."
"I'll stick to pot, thanks," I shuddered, thinking about Mack and his kill or be killed desire for "V."
"Sell it then," he offered. "It is worth a great deal."
"Do I look like the kind of girl that sells drugs?" I raised an eyebrow at him. I mean, sheesh. I had a real job.
"I apologize. I've offended you."
"If you'd really offended me, I would've kicked your ass by now. I just don't sell drugs, okay? I have a job."
"Please, accept my apology." He bowed his head.
"Yeah, sure, whatever." I frowned, feeling uncomfortable. "Look. I really gotta go. My break's been over awhile now. Come back into the bar sometime. We'll have blood."
I was walking away when I realized I hadn't gotten his name. I turned around to look back at him, and noticed he was picking up each vial and putting it into his pocket.
"You got a name?" I yelled.
"Bill," he replied simply.
Interesting name for a vampire. I shrugged and grabbed my Coke off the car hood and went back inside.