Here's the next chapter - sorry for taking so long, but I couldn't make up my mind about which direction to take the story. I've finally decided though, so here it is. The next chapter will be from someone else's POV. I'm not sure yet whether I should post several shorter chapters from his POV or post the whole thing in one, so the next chapter might take a while too, sorry! Thank you so much for your reviews! I will try to get better at the formatting.

There is nothing in the world that could have prepared me for what I saw when I stepped into the kitchen. Gran was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, her body splayed out and lifeless. The moment my brain registered what my eyes were seeing, my legs gave out under me. If it hadn't been for Godric catching me and holding me up, I would have collapsed on the floor next to Gran.

I blacked out and woke up on the couch, with my head on Godric's lap and his hands gently stroking my hair. There were other voices in the house, I noted, but I focused on Godric as he looked intently into my eyes. If it was just him and me in the whole world, then nothing bad could have had happened. Then my Gran wasn't lying dead in the kitchen and I didn't have to think about the fact that she was gone and I was alone in the world.

"Sookie, can you hear me?" Godric asked me and I nodded.

"She is awake" he told whoever else was in the room and Sheriff Dearborn came into view. He bent down next to the couch to get closer to me and I could see that his face was streaked by tears. Gran and him had known each other since they were kids, and they were both active members of the Descendants of the Glorious Dead. The way Gran had talked about him, she saw him as a little brother, and loved him more than her own brother Bartlett.

"I'm so sorry, Sookie" he said.

I just nodded, the tears in my eyes welling up. The next hour was the longest of my life, with people coming and going in and out of the house, asking questions, reminding me that Gran was dead. I stayed in the living room while they worked in the kitchen. My shield was in complete shambles and people's thoughts were constantly intruding into my brain. Whenever someone looked at Gran's body, what they saw flashed into my mind. I focused as hard as I could on Godric and his blissfully silent mind, while he held me and comforted me. It was nearing dawn when the Sheriff and the coroner finally left and Godric had to go as well. I thanked him for staying with me and assured him that I would be fine.

I went upstairs to my bedroom and locked the door and blocked it with a chair as an extra precaution. I had Gran's shotgun with me and wedged it into the narrow space between my bed and the bedside table. Whoever had killed Gran, might be coming for me next. I put my cell phone on the small table, ready to call the Sheriff the moment I heard the slightest noise. Then I lay down on my bed and cried myself to sleep. I woke up late the next morning, feeling even worse than I had when I'd gone to bed.

I went down to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee. Thankfully some kind soul had cleaned up, so there was no trace of what had happened here last night. I fixed myself breakfast and took it into the living room. There was no way I could stay in the kitchen a moment more than was necessary. I ate my breakfast slowly. The house was so quiet without Gran. I had never felt so alone in my life. Gran was dead and Jason was in jail. I had no other family. My parents had been killed in a flash flood when I was 8 and my aunt Linda had died of cancer a couple of years later. My cousin Hadley had run off years ago and I had no idea how to find her. Uncle Bartlett was the only one left and no way in hell was I going to get back in touch with him.

Mike Spencer, the funeral director at Spencer and Sons, called to make arrangements for Gran's funeral. Sam called to check up on me and I told him I was fine. What else was I gonna tell him? That my world had just imploded and I had no idea what to do. That I wished that I had been killed instead of Gran? That I thought that it was my fault that she was dead? I had thought about this all morning and I was convinced that I was the intended victim, not Gran. If I'd learned anything from watching CSI, it was that very few murders were random and serial killers almost always followed a pattern and chose victims that had certain things in common. Maudette and Dawn were both young women and they both had been in contact with vampires. Gran didn't fit into that picture, but I sure did. I had been to Fangtasia with Dawn the night she was murdered. If whoever had killed Dawn had known that she had been there, they were bound to know that I had been with her.

I was deep in thought and having my second cup of coffee when I heard a car driving up towards the house. I looked out the window and I saw a road-crew truck coming up the driveway. They had let Jason out of jail? Of course they had. It made sense that Sheriff Dearborn had let him go. The man who had killed Dawn and Maudette must be the same man who killed Gran and since Jason had been in jail, it obviously couldn't be him.

I was so happy to see my brother that I ran to the front door and opened it without thinking. The man coming up to the house was definitely not my brother. It was Arlene's boyfriend Rene Lenier, who worked with Jason. I wondered what he was doing here. I liked Rene just fine, but we weren't exactly best friends. He had been over at the house a couple of times with Jason, but never alone.

I wasn't sure why, but seeing him now made me nervous. He came up to the house and said hello and though I had a bad feeling about him being here, I invited him in. I tried to peek into his head, but he was singing the same lines of a song over and over. Jason did that when he wanted to keep me out of his head, but he was one of the few people who knew about my telepathy. Rene didn't know, or at least he shouldn't, unless Jason had told him. Considering what a big mouth my brother had, that might not be completely unlikely.

I asked Rene if he wanted a soda and he said yes, so I went into the kitchen to get it while he stayed in the living room. I don't know how he figured my telepathy works, but the moment I left the room, the singing in his head stopped. Instead he started thinking about last night and how it shouldn't have been Gran, but me. Oh my god, Rene had killed Gran. And now he was here for me. I put the soda down on the counter and walked as quietly as I could towards the back door.

The moment I was out of the house I started running and headed towards the cemetery. I knew Rene was running after me, getting closer and closer. I was getting flashes of his thoughts. I could see myself through his eyes, running in front of him as he closed in on me. Then he was thinking about what he would do to me when he caught me, how he would strangle me with his bare hands until I stopped breathing. There was no way I could control my shield anymore and I was getting one horrific image after another. I saw Rene strangling a girl I didn't recognize, then Maudette and Dawn. Seeing their faces in the last moments of their lives was chilling and I knew that once he caught up with me he would do the same to me.

Rene had gotten real close to me and suddenly he jumped on me and I fell down. I was slumped against a gravestone and he was hitting me all over; on my face, my stomach, my sides. Suddenly a dog came running towards us, a border collie I had seen around Merlotte's several times, a sweetheart of a dog that I had named Dean. Dean jumped on Rene and bit him, but Rene grabbed a rock and knocked him out.

That was my last hope, I thought. There was no way I could fight Rene in the state I was in. I was exhausted from running and my body was aching all over from Rene hitting me. This is it, I thought. I'm going to die at the hands of this horrible man, the same man who killed Gran. I remembered the images that I had seen in Rene's head in the kitchen, when he had thought back to killing Gran, the way he stabbed her mercilessly until she stopped moving.

Rene had his hands around my throat and I was gasping for breath. This horrible, hateful man had killed my Gran who had been nothing but kind to him. She hadn't deserved to die and neither had any of the other women he had killed. What the hell gave him the right to take the lives of innocent women because of his twisted beliefs? I was getting weak and light-headed and I felt a slight tingling across my skin. This must be what it feels like when there is no air left in your lungs, I thought, when your body starts shutting down because there is no oxygen left to sustain it.

Strangely enough, even though I knew I was going to die I didn't feel scared, I just felt angry. I was going to die at the hands of this monster? The tingling kept getting stronger, it flew across my skin and through my body, the way I imagine electricity would. It seemed to all be rushing towards my hands which were starting to feel like they were on fire.

I used all the strength I had left to lift my right arm up and hit Rene on the side of his head. I knew it wouldn't be enough to get him off me, but at least I would go down fighting. The moment my hand touched Rene's face he screamed and let go of my throat. I sucked in a few shallow breaths, filled with relief that I could breathe again, desperately trying to fill my lungs back up.

I saw Rene lunge at me and held up my hands to defend myself. This time I didn't even have to touch him, the heat in my hands turned into sparks that hit him like lightning. He fell to the ground and was writhing in pain while I struggled to get to my feet. I looked down on the ground a few feet away from Rene and laying there naked and unconscious was Sam. Ok, I would really have to think about that one. Suddenly Rene grabbed my ankle and without thinking I held my hands over him and the sparks hit him over and over again. I just watched, stunned, as he convulsed on the ground. I knew I had to stop, but I had no idea how.

I could sense someone come up behind me and heard Sam's familiar mind.

"Oh my god, what is she?"

Yeah, I'd like to know that too.

I felt Sam's hands on my arms, as he carefully guided them down to my sides so the sparks were hitting the ground instead of Rene, who was lying motionless in front of us. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity while I tried to catch my breath and wrap my head around what had just happened. Sam finally let go of me and bent down to check Rene's pulse.

"He's dead" I heard him say and I just stared at my hands.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur. Sam took me back to the house and called the police. I know at some point he must have gotten dressed, because he sure wasn't naked when Andy Bellefleur and Sheriff Dearborne showed up. Before we left the cemetery, Sam had checked Rene's body for burn marks and then hit him over the head with a rock. It was pretty awful to watch, but he was already dead so it wasn't like it would hurt him. Sam said that there were no visible burn marks and we would say that he hit Rene with a rock to get him off me.

I really appreciated Sam helping me like that, but I couldn't let him risk being accused of murder. After all, I had killed Rene even if it wasn't with a rock. I couldn't tell the police the whole truth, what with the sparks and all, but I was going to stick to it as closely as possible. I was praying they wouldn't do an autopsy because if they did I'd be toast.

So I told them that Rene had attacked me and I had hit him with the rock in self-defense. I also told them that he had admitted to me that he had killed Gran and the others. Again, it wasn't exactly the truth but close enough. This was the best I could do, considering that telepathy and shooting deadly sparks out of my hands wouldn't really stand up in court.