So, this will sorta be a mash-up of SVM and True Blood - I've read so much fanfiction, I no longer remember what's canon and what's not. The events and changes will be fairly obvious and if it's not mentioned - it's either not important, or will be explained later in the story.
Thanks for reading!
Creatures of Death
Chapter one
The warm fog that had clung to the forest floor for the last several hours finally began to clear. Sophia had spent the better half of the last month in these backlands, wandering, not really searching, just feeling her way through. She hadn't encountered a living soul the entire time she'd been there. But perhaps that was just as well. When she had fled to these parts, it was in order to get away from the drama of other living creatures - humans and supernaturals alike.
But now, something was pulling her in this direction. Something of a slow, sinuous curling deep within her. She had long since learned to listen to that tugging sensation. It wasn't as though she knew where she was headed - and it rarely led her anywhere desirable - but it always got her somewhere she needed to be.
Tonight, she knew, would be no different.
The thick foliage gave way under her as she moved through the Louisiana marsh. The stars shone bright in the moonless sky which was unpolluted from the harsh lights of civilization. She was too far away for the effects of electricity and the sounds of the bustle of cities to reach this place. It was gloriously quiet and calm.
And while it was against her nature - the calm - she found solace in it. The last couple decades had been trying - the previous few years more so than most. Chaos and destruction, subterfuge and deceit were what drove her. But this place, this quiet, was a relief in so many ways.
When it came, it was both sudden and strong - the tidal wave of emotions that threatened to overtake her. Whipping her head around, she tried to locate the person that was projecting these emotions out to her - but the night was still, just as it had been the entire time she'd wandered about.
Perhaps, she thought in retrospect, too still.
At first it was alarm, then a nauseating spike of fear. Determination and desperation set in at once. She could tell whoever it was, they were moving - running from something. Her legs carried her faster and further into the dense trees. Never, in all her years had she experienced someone else's emotions as intensely as she did then. The person seemed to fall, painfully. Glancing down at her own body, there were no marks, but she felt the tearing of skin on her hands, knees and shoulder as though she had been the one shoved to the ground.
The emotions became jumbled and nearly overwhelming. Panic, and horrific regret set in. Her fingers tingled as though she were clawing at something, and a suffocating pressure wrapped around her throat. Despite that, Sophia could still feel the pull. Her legs carried her frantically through the trees, branches swung out of her way as she dashed madly forward.
She came to a halt at the abrupt edge of a ravine, but below her, several hundred yards out, she could see who it was that had been calling out to her. A woman, small and blonde lay on her stomach, arched impossibly back as a vampire latched onto her neck, carelessly biting through her skin, spraying bright red everywhere.
The pain ripped through Sophia, but it appeared as though the woman wasn't done fighting. Reckless abandon swept through them both as the woman twisted further back, and managed to burn the vampire with the silver jewelry dangling from her wrist.
Never having experienced an emotional connection like this one - Sophia could only hope it wasn't one-sided. Pushing as much strength and resilience through, she looked around for a way to reach the bottom - knowing even as she did she wouldn't be able to help the human. Not in the form she was in.
Pain as the vampire retaliated ripped through Sophia. Skidding down the side of the ravine, she reached the girl, just as the vampire reclaimed her. Pulling her down into the same position as before, the vampire straddled the girl and set about finishing what it had started.
The vampire must have been young, to not even sense her approach. Most were often spooked by her presence, knowing instinctively that she was a threat. But perhaps this one was simply distracted by the meal before him.
As she kneeled beside the young woman who continued to struggle, even through the blood loss, Sophia pushed comfort through to her. Unable to touch her, she still set her hand over the woman's hoping to provide some sort of comfort to her. Her pale, translucent fingers sank right through the bloodied fist of the dying girl.
Perhaps it was the fact that she was so close, leaned over the girl the way she was, which allowed her to pick up her scent. Even in her diminished state, she could tell that the woman wasn't entirely human. Fairy. Diluted, but it was there nonetheless.
Bolstered by this revelation, Sophia considered her options, knowing she had to make a decision quick - but then the decision was taken from her. The fairy-human's life force was slipping away.
She gasped out, even as she lay dying, one word, filled with so much regret and anguish. "Eric."
Sophia could literally feel the moment it happened, the girl's eyes, which had been screwed up tightly in pain, fluttered open, and seemingly focused on her, and then she was gone. Nothingness filled her. Not lingering pain or suffering. Just, nothing.
The girl's lips were split, blood pooled beneath her, and the vampire, having finally gotten his fill, let her body collapse onto the ground.
Sophia finally looked at him, studied him closely, cataloging his features, his scent. A plan was already half forming in the back of her mind without her even being conscious of it. Perhaps not even a plan, but an intention. She snarled as the vampire seemed to be digging in his clothes. It was not uncommon to violate the body of a drained victim.
Fury coursed through her as he pulled himself from his pants and stroked himself. Only instead of using the girl, he brought himself to a quick climax standing, straddling her body.
His urge taken care of, he didn't bother to clean her up as he sifted through his belongings and pulled a thermos from a bag that had been strapped to his back.
Watching, confused, Sophia's eyes widened as he flipped the girl over, whose body had already begun to cool, and tipped the thermos filled with deep red to her mouth. There seemed to be an air of nervousness about him which was unusual for a vampire. His eyes darted around as he hastily emptied the blood into the girl. Perhaps it was her presence that was making the young vamp edgy. Somehow, she knew that was not the case. He almost seemed as though he thought someone might chance upon them.
They were literally in the middle of nowhere. Her eyes narrowed. Who exactly was he so anxious about discovering him? Unless the girl belonged to another vampire.
Eric, perhaps? Her rescuer who failed to show up? She had thought this vampire was the Eric she spoke of - but perhaps not.
Cocking her head to the side, she watched as he picked the girl up and carried her back through the woods. Only a couple hundred feet away he stopped, a grave already freshly dug.
She suspected already that the girl had been fed vampire blood and would rise undead in three days time. But the question blazing through her mind now - who was the girl's maker? Surely not the vampire in front of her - the thermos of blood would have been unnecessary. He simply would have opened a vein and forced it down her throat. Stepping closer to the dirt edge, she got perhaps a bit too near to the vampire as he turned his head in her direction, but his eyes passed straight through her.
Seemingly satisfied that he was alone, he proceeded to toss the girl's limp body into the hole, using his vamp speed to cover her with dirt.
He was gone within minutes.
It's hard to tell how long she sat there beneath that enormous fig tree, her feet nudging the mound of fresh dirt that marked the fairy-human's fresh grave. But she would swear she felt him before he arrived. It felt heavy - and angry. Or maybe that was just her projecting her still simmering fury.
When he did arrive, you would think he was expecting an audience - someone to impress with the way he literally dropped from the sky, his hair wind-blown and clothes slightly rumpled.
His eyes, cold blue and narrowed, scanned the area immediately around him. He paused for a moment, resting on the spot where she sat, her jaw slightly dropped at his sudden appearance.
She knew who he was. She had shadowed him at his bar very recently, actually. He was the oldest thing within several hundred miles. The very reason she had considered him as her next target. But she was loath to involve herself in local politics - and he had a childe. Pamela. Someone she had known quite intimately at one point and another. Her code was to take the life someone unworthy - someone whose absence from this plane of existence would either go unnoticed - or celebrated.
Eric Northman, she had determined, was not that man.
But as she watched him now - she realized that perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps he was worthy of the type of death she could bestow upon him. Her eyes narrowed as his gaze finally settled on the grave before him.
Of course he was the Eric the dying fairy hybrid spoke of - it was far too much of a coincidence for Sophia's liking.
That she would be drawn to the death of a woman - a fairy specifically - that would be murdered in the woods she had been wandering in for months now after not encountering another living soul. And that Eric Northman would somehow be involved with the girl . . .
She didn't know that she believed in coincidences like that.
She watched, perplexed, as the vampire knelt and began to slowly unearth the woman's body. The fact that he worked so slowly, almost hesitantly, had her wondering what exactly he intended to do with her once she was uncovered. His vampire senses would be able to detect that her heart was not beating. He must know that she was dead.
Rising to her knees, she watched as Northman finally swept aside the dirt from the woman's face. He paused, before leaning forward and audibly sniffing along her jawline and neck and mouth. A shudder racked through him before he grabbed the girl under her arms, and carried her from the hole. Glancing around the area, he took off in the sky.
The faintest glow of dawn touched the sky in the east. Knowing that he couldn't go far, she followed his path in the air as well as possible and began to run across the field, chasing after him.
Hours later, after a frustrating search through the forest, she found the new grave that Northman dug. It was far larger than the first and not as neatly packed since he had had to climb in there himself.
The sun now fully in the sky, she knelt on top of the grave, the plan that she had concocted during her search more-or-less figured out.
She didn't know if it would work - but she was willing to give it a shot. She would avenge the fairy-hybrid and learn for herself who the vampire who killed her was - and if Eric Northman had any hand in the girl's death in any way - if he was her mystery maker - she would destroy him. Her fondness of Pamela aside.
Reaching out, she sank her hands into the soft, damp dirt, allowing herself to sink in mid-way to her elbows. She didn't have to search very hard to locate the girl's soul - it was what called her to Northman's newly dug grave in the first place. She might have never found it by nightfall if there wasn't the odd connection between her and the girl.
Soul's linger. This one was no different. Usually the rise of the moon the following day would call the soul away, but sometimes for whatever reason, they stay longer.
She had never tried inhabiting a mortal's dead body, so she couldn't say what would happen with this girl once she fully took her over. It was unorthodox and unprecedented.
But it will be worth it, she thought, as she latched onto the energy of the girl's soul. A grim smile tugged at her lips as she fell forward, through the dirt and into the body of the young human-fairy hybrid.