Love Me Dead
Warning: This is a 'what if' story that goes off the idea of what might have happened if Bill had drained Sookie in Jackson during Club Dead. If the infamous trunk scene was too much for you in the book, you might want to skip Bill's middle section in this chapter.
Chapter One: A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains
Bill POV
Hunger.
At our core that's what vampires are.
We're shells needing to be filled. Corpses animated by magic and borrowed life.
Our cold touches and pointed smiles give us the flair of the exotic, a hint of danger, but we still look so much like you, so human, that it is hard to imagine we could harbor a nature so different and contrary. We wear the vestiges of our former selves like a sheepskin, dead men playing at being alive.
We make it easy to forget that we are all starving monsters and those who keep our company long enough end up like us:
Dead and hungry.
***
In that car trunk in Jackson, there was no thinking, no conscious decision on my part, only the smell of prey. It permeated the entire space, that warm fragrance pressing down like a blanket. It called to me before my body could move, before my fingers could start twitching.
I could feel the heat radiating off of the form next to me, hear the thrumming promise of fresh sustenance pounding in my ears. As soon as the sun loosened its hold, I latched on to it.
My fangs tore through giving flesh and hot liquid filled my mouth. In that moment, there was only the blood and the hunger. My jaw gnawed at the wound for more, my arms gripped the vessel and each heartbeat pushed a wave of pleasure into my body.
But blood isn't the only hunger and a second appetite stirred lower in me. My hands ripped off the fabric in my way and I buried myself in the heat. At first I pumped along with the pounding pulse but it began to slow and our rhythms diverged. By the time I reached my release, I was having to suck hard to draw out the blood, but the urgency had lessened and my frenzied gulps had become languid swallows. The damage to my body had healed. I was drinking for the taste, for the feel of it in my mouth now that the driving need was gone.
That's when I returned to myself, like a light bulb switching on. The scent—her scent—surrounded me. It is a smell that I will remember until my final death and for a brief second, I was relieved because I was with her.
I stopped my sucking, my fangs still sunk in her, my lips pressed to her neck. She wasn't moving. She wasn't moving at all. I let go and pulled away.
"Sookie," I said, shaking her. "Sookie!"
Her limp body flopped in my arms, her head lolled. I listened to her lungs, barely a whisper in the air, while her heartbeat sounded like the shuffling of feet in a distant room. I could still taste her sweet tang on my tongue, between my teeth, coating my mouth. I had taken too much.
She was dying. I killed her.
Her spark was hovering on the edge and I could not let it go. Not now. Not like this. She could hate me. She would hate me, but not more than I would myself. All that mattered was that she would still walk this earth. I could exist with that.
I bit my wrist and brought it to her lips.
***
Eric POV
With the quantity of my blood that Sookie had taken the night before, it was not hard to track her to the Were's parking garage. As soon as I woke at Eddington's, I checked my connection with Sookie and was put at ease by the fact that she was alive and not in the mansion. Could it be that my little bullet sucker had pulled her plan off? I smiled to myself. She was always so surprising.
I flew towards her through the winter night skies, wind whipping my hair, a smirk on my face upon imagining all the things I would do with Sookie once she was free of Compton. The small taste of her from last night was not nearly enough. I remembered the feel of Sookie hot and tight around my fingers, her warm panting breaths against my lips, the gentle exploration of her hands moving over my skin as her body arched toward mine. There was no holding back now. I would have all of her soon. Very soon.
A growing uneasiness pulled me from my revelry. Even though I was approaching Sookie's location, the hum of her in my mind was dimming and by the time I spotted the white Lincoln, it was almost entirely gone. Something was wrong. I ripped the trunk open.
Bill looked up at me, his face rosy, his bleeding wrist poised above her mouth. In that brief moment there was silence. Complete silence. My eyes widened and my nostrils flared from the scents of sex and her blood.
"Sookie," I breathed.
Her name had barely passed my lips before I snatched Compton from the trunk and smashed his head against the garage floor.
***
A/N: So did Eric get there in time? Do people want Option Eric or Option Bill? On a separate point, both the story and chapter titles are songs (as I imagine all the chapter titles will be). My recommended playlist for the chapter. Love Me Dead is by Ludo and A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains is MewithoutYou. If anyone has other song suggestions for chapters I'd love to hear them. I'd love to hear anything you have to tell me, honestly. This is my first serialized narrative, so let me know how I'm doing.
~AHA