Hoping you enjoy this one! Thanks again! I fear this was really bad, so I'm sorry!

Chapter Six

Sookie had only just gotten halfway through the lit gravel parking lot, pausing to look around frantically, when suddenly Sam appeared, closing up his trailer. He looked at her with some surprise, focusing on the large knife in her hand. Sookie felt herself flush with heat; Running with a large knife in her hand like some crazed murderer in a badly made horror movie was definitely not a good look for her. She was acting as crazy as her reputation stated she was right now.

"Cher, what are you doing out here? And what the hell are you doing with that knife right there?"

"Oh, Sam, thank God!" She was panting heavily from her jogging session. "There's a problem. The Rattray's just took off with a vampire customer, and I heard their thoughts and they are planning to drain him so that they can sell his blood! I tried calling the police but they are so busy that there is likely to be a twenty minute delay, and I don't think he's got that long!"

"So your first instinct is to run to the vamp to help him out holding a knife, like some psycho person?" Sam sounded disapproving of her. And confused. "Look, I know you want to help out to the best of your capabilities if someone is in need- that's just you- but he's a vampire, Sookie. I'm pretty damn certain that he can take care of himself."

"I'm not so sure he can," Sookie protested desperately. "I warned him that they were bad people and did he listen? Nope. I can't just let the Rattrays do that to him, Sam. I just can't, otherwise I'll be as bad as they are, knowing their intentions and not at least trying to help!"

"Well, you leave that to me. That's the way this is supposed to work, huh? If you feel a customer isn't safe or you notice they are in trouble, you tell me, you don't just run outside and try to act like some vigilante." Sookie blinked at him, feeling her eyes starting to water. Sam hadn't gotten mad at her very often, but she could see he was now. He sighed and put a hand up in the air, "Look, first thing you did was try the police, and that's good, Cher. But I'll go take care of this, all right?"

"Okay," she agreed, trying to keep her voice steady. "Next time if there's any problems, I'll tell you first. And call the police."

"Good girl," he said, smiling at her mildly. "Now you go get inside, keep warm, and put that damn knife away, will you?"

"Okay. Sorry, Sam."

When Sookie's back was turned to her boss, she wiped her wet eyes quickly and sniffled loudly. She heard the rustling of clothes behind her and when she glanced curiously, her boss of all people was stripping out of his shirt. How stripping down and getting nude would help a vampire from the Rattrays, Sookie had no idea, but she didn't want to risk Sam getting angrier at her so she simply let him be. But all in all, Sam was right. It wasn't her business to help customers out of trouble, no matter how responsible she felt. That vampire hadn't heeded her warning anyway, and had simply looked at her as though she was nuts. Sam was right; It was so not her problem.

Without looking where she was going, she powerwalked back towards the bar, watching as she turned the sharp blade of the knife over and over in her hands. She caught something move out of the corner of her eye, a long shadowed figure, yet when she turned towards it, there was no one there. There was just tree trunks and leaves, and bushes moving slightly in the wind. As far as she could tell, no one was there. Focusing and opening up her mind, she tried to listen.

There was no thoughts being given off, no active and alert brain signaling someone's presence in the bushes, yet Sookie couldn't help but get the suspicion that someone was watching her in the bushes. Or maybe her brain was playing tricks on her?

"Er, is someone there?" she called out nervously.

She got no reply, but she did hear a twig snap and break, possibly under the sole of someone's shoe. That was pretty much all the confirmation she needed.

Someone was definitely hiding away in the bushes, probably watching her.

Really focusing again, she closed her eyes, holding her breath, listening in. Someone was definitely there; A vampire, though she couldn't hear anything that their brain was giving off, of course. She could just feel their silence. It was almost palpable in the air. Was it that vampire who was getting drained? Had he gotten free from the Rats? Or was it another vampire entirely? Something inside her, a niggling intuition, told her it was another vampire. When she reopened her eyes again, she started approaching the opening of the large trees. It was fairly dark out, and she couldn't see all that well. She could only just make out the outline of the trees, the wind shaking them.

"I can feel you," she warned the person. "Well, I mean, I can't feel you, but I can... feel your presence there, standing around. What are you hiding for? You too chicken to show your face to me?"

Suddenly she heard it. A man's low chuckle, coming from behind one of the trees. "Oh, I am no chicken, I can assure you," the man spoke in a voice just above a whisper, and Sookie swore it was familiar to her.

Where had she heard it before? It was awfully familiar, somehow. She gathered that the only way she could figure it out was to try to keep him talking, which was exactly what she did.

"Oh, I don't know. You hiding away like this screams chicken to me. Are you like the Elephant Man? You're scared of showing your face to me?" While she was talking, she stepped over a few loose branches on the ground carefully, hoping to be quiet enough to catch him off-guard in reaching around the tree to him. "Who are you? And why are you stalking me like this?"

"Oh, please. You wish I was stalking you."

"That is so not true!" she disagreed, her voice shaking with humor. "I know that some women find it sexy, a man stalking them. But I'm not one of those women! In fact, I find it a downright turn off and... creepy as hell." She rested her shoulder against the rough bark of the trunk behind her. She just needed to time it perfectly in springing around to the opposite side of the thick old tree to catch him out.

Bending down slowly, she placed the large knife in the dirt so she could use both hands to catch him, and when she stood again, he was standing there, right near her against the tree, leaning down slightly so that his face was near hers. She swallowed dryly, suppressing a gasp. She couldn't see him all that well- just the mere outline of his head and body- but somehow she knew instantly that it was that other tall six-foot-something blonde haired vampire. The same vampire she had that dream about! The one she was having difficulty getting her mind off of! No wonder his voice sounded pleasantly familiar to her.

She felt him take her chin by lifting it up with his thumb. She had no idea how he moved so quickly, but he had. And then he was making her peer into his eyes, which was not easy for her to do. It was far too dark and she wasn't quite sure where to look, but she saw the shiny roundness of them.

"What is your name, sweetheart?" he asked her, his voice deep and low. Sookie got the impression that he was doing something to her, like he was willing her with his mind to answer truthfully. She felt a strange tickling sensation around her scalp.

"Sookie," she answered quietly. His thumb was stroking her chin, and it was not an entirely unpleasant experience on her. Actually, she found she enjoyed it, oddly enough. His touching. She felt content and like a cat getting petted. "Sookie Stackhouse."

He made an odd noise at that; An incredulous moaning noise that she couldn't understand. What was his problem?

"Why?" she demanded rudely, thinking he was making fun of her name. "What's your name then?"

"Eric Northman."

There was a long moment of silence where Sookie thought that through. Eric Northman. E.N. Her birthmark? She remembered him grabbing her a couple of days ago, their first physical contact, and how that sensation overcame her. Ever since that first touch, her birthmark had seemed to stop annoying her. Was this why? Because they were soul mates, in some mysterious way she didn't quite understand? And what about her dream of him? It had happened randomly. Was it because there was something there, something greater than normal? Soul mates?

If so, Sookie thought she was strangely calm and accepting of that. Her Grandmother had told her tales all throughout her childhood, magical tales of a soul mate that would have a mark similar to the one that she had. Though she liked to think she was old and sensible enough now not to believe those stories, she was having her doubts. All she had to do now, was work out whether or not he had a matching one himself. If so, those tales her Gran had told her were more reality rather than make-believe, something she never could have imagined possible.

"Can I see the back of your neck for-"

"-I would very much like to see the back of your neck."

Sookie laughed at the sheer weirdness of them talking over each other at the same time. Then seeing as there was no harm in it, she turned, facing him with her back. A smile came across her lips as she felt him use one hand to carefully hold her hair up, and as his knuckles brushed against the nape of her neck, peeling the fabric of her shirt away from her skin, she shuddered uncontrollably as the tips of his cold, large fingers glided over her birthmark.

She felt oddly at peace with him touching her birthmark; The very thing she often tried to hide with her T-shirts covering it over the years. When she craned her neck back to look at him, a strange feeling overcame her; A feeling suddenly radiating all over her as he stroked her birthmark with his fingers a couple of times. The feeling felt as if it was trying to consume her, settling something deep inside of her ablaze. She felt fiery hot in temperature all of a sudden and her birthmark seemed to burn where he had touched it as his fingers finally left it.

Then it was his turn and he knelt slightly in front of her so Sookie could reach, yanking the neck of his shirt down so that she could see whether he had a mark like hers. She gasped in wonder when she realized he had. He had her initials too, surely enough. SS, barely raised from the pale skin in the middle of his back. It wasn't exactly in the same place as hers was; It was a bit lower and directly in the center of his back, but it looked similar enough. She could only just see it, make it out through the glow of the moon that presented the only source of light, the faint red outline of her initials.

"When did you get yours?" Sookie breathed once her mind was clear from the shock of it all.

"I remember the exact date. May 24, at around eleven thirty at night. Twenty years ago."

Sookie felt her stomach drop. May 24? That her was her birthdate. Gran had told her Sookie had arrived into the world at around eleven thirty in the evening. So his mark must have developed at the exact time and date she was born.

As Sookie traced her fingers gently over his mark, she felt the vampire gasp and shudder. The two SS's were just faint red thin outlines, finer than the finest of pen strokes. As she traced the S's with her forefinger, she drew back in wonderment when suddenly they seemed to glow, burning a light golden yellow in color, the outline of them, illuminating them up in the dark.

"Oh, my stars," Sookie mumbled in a quivering voice, her eyes widening as the letters shone brightly. "Does that hurt? Can you feel that?"

Clearly the vampire couldn't. She felt him shrug carelessly. "Feel what?" She was relieved he seemed just as shocked as she was, at the very least. They were both equally as shocked and surprised as each other, and Sookie was glad about that.

She felt a bizarre impulse to kiss the mark, to lay her lips against his back and inhale in hotly the glow of the letters, yet she battered the urge down and instead moved away, leaning against the trunk of the tree and putting an appropriate amount of distance between them. Last thing she wanted to do was to be too forward and scare him off somehow. She watched him as he fixed the back of his shirt up, and she felt as if someone had hit her over the head with a baseball bat. Did this mean what her Grandmother had often told her, with her tales while putting her into bed at night? That they were somehow, in fact, soul mates?

"Was yours troubling you all throughout the years?" She brought herself to speak softly after a couple of minutes. "Did yours itch too, like mine did?"

"It did, yes."

"And it stopped, just as you grabbed my arm that couple of nights ago when you were in at Merlotte's?" She was trying to understand, trying to make reasonable sense of it all.

"Yes, indeed it did. It had been bothering me for the past twenty years but stopped immediately after I touched you. Did you experience that zapping-like sensation over your mark as well?"

"I did." It wasn't as freaky when they were talking it over together sensibly and calmly. "You think it means we're meant to be? Like... soul mates?" Suddenly she felt embarrassed for mentioning it, but she could think of no other way to say it. "Like the marks were itching and bothering us because they were almost warning us that we had best find each other soon and be near to each other and to... to touch each other?" She felt her ears burn at the touching part. "There could be plenty of reasons for it all, I suppose. But that's the only easiest and realistic one I can think of? Besides my Gran used to tell me stories like that, of me having a soul mate with the initials E.N, like my birthmark. You think that's why we have each other's initials on our skin?"

"Soul mates?" The vampire repeated, and she could hear a tone of mocking in it. "There is no such thing as soul mates. And besides, I am a thousand year old vampire. Surely I cannot have a soul mate." Sookie got the feeling that he was almost making fun of her. It got her bristles up.

"Hey, it's just a silly suggestion," she retorted, insulted. "There's no need to make fun of me. And you're right; There's just no way someone like you could ever be my soul mate. I always believed that if I was going to have one, then he'd be... sweet and romantic and... you're none of that, are you?" She inspected what little she could see of him in the dark. He had one arm resting above her head against the trunk as he leaned near her. Sookie felt nothing but content and peace at his closeness, like it was absolutely right, the two of them being near. That didn't mean she liked him, though. "Far as I'm concerned, with what little I've seen of you, you're conceited and you think your shit don't stink. You're not exactly soul mate material, I got to say." He had her feeling defensive.

"Well, trust me. I feel the same fucking way about you," he replied, somewhat nonchalantly, yet Sookie almost thought she could hear disappointment and hurt in his tone. "I am a vampire. I do not have a human for a soul mate."

"Oh, ditto," Sookie grumbled under her breath. "Right back at you."

Another silence passed between them that felt wrought with bitterness.

Then the vampire said, out of the blue, troubled, "Every time I close my eyes, I see you now."

"Really?" she asked in surprise, folding her arms over her chest tightly.

"Yes. I don't know why." He did not sound very happy to admit that at all, and Sookie could feel as much. "It just happens for me now. Ever since we touched and got zapped."

"Well, I had a dream of you," she admitted to even out the playing field, although not without embarrassment.

"Oh, really?" She thought she caught him smile in the dark. "And what kind of dream might that be?"

"Just a rather... pleasant one," she got out under her breath. She didn't exactly feel all that comfortable with telling him just what the dream consisted of and, most of all, how hot and bothered it made her feel. "And for some reason, since that night at Merlotte's when I first saw you, I can't seem to get the thought of you outta my brain."

"Unfortunately I feel completely the same way."

Another silent moment passed between them, and Sookie became slowly aware that he was staring at her, looking her up and down with his eyes. No doubt, he had probably been doing that to her the whole time, perving away. She sure couldn't see him that good in the dark personally, herself. Then she realized she was supposed to be back inside working, and with some effort, she pushed herself off the tree and swooped away from him. Even as she did, her legs seemed to ache against it. It appeared to her that her body didn't want to leave his side, as if they were two magnets that were meant to stick together.

"Oh, shoot. I got to get back to work," Sookie told him, bending down to grab the knife from where she had sat it on the ground. "Nice talking to you, Eric Northman. Hopefully we can resume this another time?" The further she got away from him, the greater that loss inside of her chest seemed to build.

When she got back into Merlotte's, it was like she couldn't think properly. She had finally met her soul mate, and he had a matching mark with her initials on him to boot. She didn't care whether he didn't believe in soul mates or not; She did, and she knew that was what it meant. Finally, her EN had arrived. And he was a vampire.