The speedometer on the red porche increased with speed as Moira drove away from Eric. She couldn't get away from him fast enough. Even the eight-five miles an hour she drove wouldn't be enough. Ninety. One hundred and five. A sharp corner forced her to slow down a little but she was soon speeding up again when the road straightened.
It was all so fucked up. Everything. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. No one was supposed to get killed when they raided Fangtasia. Not any of her men nor Pam either. But the fact was, thirty men were just too many too keep under her spell at once. Some of them broke free in the chaos of the raid and panicked. It had only gone downhill from there. With humans, these things always went very smoothly. It didn't take nearly so many men to capture a human and it was very easy to get information from them once they were captive. Most of the time capture wasn't even necessary. She could just walk in and take what she wanted. Unfortunately, her only power over vampires was to play off of their sense of shame and guilt. She wasn't sure if it was even an actual power or maybe just a ploy that tended to work with vampire kind. And it didn't work at all on Eric Northman. To make matters worse, she'd started to have feelings for him.
She had been telling him the truth when she told him that no one had ever willingly held her before. She'd been telling him the truth about how she fought her nature. In fact most of what she had told him about her past and about dryads had been the truth. Even her initial fear of him had been genuine. The only real lie had been in her status as a prisoner. And the lies she had told herself about how it would all end.
Moira brushed away her tears with her left hand. She couldn't afford to have tears in her eyes while driving at such high speeds. A car crash would only slow down her escape.
It hardly mattered, even if she could manage to escape Eric, even if he didn't know how to kill her, she would die soon enough anyway. It would have taken twenty-three million dollars to reroute the highway and save her trees. So far all of her endeavors (a combination of theft and investments and legitimate business) had brought in eleven million. Timon had contributed nearly three hundred thousand. The ordinance allowing the highway had been passed six years earlier and she had fought it by every legal means she could. Lawmakers had not agreed to a reroute because it would take an additional twenty-three million in tax dollars. She would have to raise the money herself if she hoped to survive. It was that or expose the existence of dryads to humanity and hope they would be merciful. Of course they wouldn't be merciful. She couldn't do that to all the others of her kind. It wasn't her call to make. And she had run out of time. The project was due to begin at the end of the month. Two weeks left to live. Moira pulled the car over, unable to see for all the tears, and just sobbed.
Eric was just starting to regain his strength when he felt her sadness. The depth of it was unexpected. He had expected her to feel fear or panic given the threat he had just made and he had intended to let her wallow in the fear for a long time, never knowing when he might arrive. This was nothing like panic. It was despair. He had felt it before when someone bonded with him was nearing death. He disliked the feeling.
Forcing himself to move, Eric began to search the apartment. He knew very little about Moira, not even her last name. There should be something here about who she was or about the truth of her past. Anything that would help him know dryad weaknesses would help at this point.
There were letters in the mailbox addressed to Moira Woodbury. There were a lot of papers in the file cabinet having to do with the building of a highway, a truly excessive amount. Eric had no idea why Moira would be so interested in this highway. A little reading through the papers informed him that she was trying to convince lawmakers to reroute their planned road, but why?
Moira was moving again. The despair she had been projecting had changed into something closer to determination. She was moving towards him rather than away. If she planned to stake him while he was still weak, she was in for a surprise. He was feeling much stronger, certainly strong enough to fight a little tree bitch like her.
An hour passed, he heard her car long before it pulled into the drive. He stood stoically in the center of the living room, staring at the front door as it opened.
"You're either very brave or very stupid." Eric said as she closed the door behind her. She looked as terrified as she had when they first met and he could feel her fear. Good.
"Both, I suppose. I came to apologize." She said, shaken.
Her hands were in her pockets, otherwise Eric would have sped over to her and grabbed her by the throat. She could have a stake in there. She could be faster than he had originally thought, He didn't know enough about dryads to act just yet. He took one step towards her anyway for effect.
"Wait!" She held out her hand as if to stop him. "I know you're angry with me, and you should be given everything that's happened between us...You weren't what I expected you to be. You were much kinder than I thought vampires were capable of… no one was supposed to die… not Pam… not any of those men… and not you either…" Her voice was breaking with emotion. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I fucked up. I can never fix it. And I'm sorry." She took a step back and put her other hand on the doorknob as if to leave.
Seeing that she was unarmed, Eric was on her in a flash, he had a firm grip on her arms and let out a snarl on catching her so easily. He could feel her fighting her own terror, trying to remain calm and only barely succeeding. In a flash, he sat her in a kitchen chair and tied her up firmly.
"What are you going to to do?" She asked as he watched her, arms crossed.
"I haven't decided yet. I can't kill you, but I'm sure I can think of something fitting."
"I'm sure you can." She said, biting her shaking lip.
"Why did you really come back?"
"Why haven't you hurt me yet?"
"Because I want answers, and since I can't bargain with your life, we can at least bargain on much pain you'll be receiving." He said angrily. "So answer the question! Why did you come back?"
"I had a new plan. Granted, it was a very stupid and risky plan but I don't have anything left to lose, so I thought 'what the hell, it's worth a shot." Moira confessed.
"And what is this plan of yours?" He didn't trace any deceit in her current emotions so that helped.
"I thought that if I appealed to your sense of compassion I might be able to convince you to help me."
"Why the fuck would I help you now?" Eric stated, a little blown away by her unusual strategy.
"You're right, you wouldn't. Like I said, it was a very stupid plan." Moira went silent and stiff but Eric could sense that there was more she wasn't telling him. He almost didn't care to know whatever her secret was but he knew from experience that sometimes the wrong people got hurt if he didn't have the right information.
"Fine, Then you can have some time to think about it." Eric carried Moira in her chair down the stairs and locked her into the cell they had shared. He could feel her terror as he walked away. What was she so afraid of?
He found the coffin that he had been transported in (and probably Timon before him) and used it to sleep for the day. He awoke to Moira's nightmares around midday. So the dreams she suffered from had been real. It was difficult to resume sleep with all the fear she was giving off but the room was full of daylight making it impossible for him to go shut her up or pretend to comfort her or whatever it might take.
He couldn't help but think about the way she had clung to him when he had woken her from her nightmare before. She had seemed so genuine. Her body against his had made him hungry in more than one way, Her blood had tasted amazing…. but he had to stop thinking about this. It had been too long since he had truly fed. When night fell he would feed and then he would deal with the Dryad.