Chapter 6: A/N: This chapter will again be written from dual POVs (Sookie/Pam/Sookie) to help with continuity. I hope you all enjoyed the previous chapter despite the fact that it was really long. This one also is a bit longer due to the dual POVs, but I think the next few should move a bit more quickly and from the Pam POV.
As always, sole copyright belongs to Charlaine Harris.
Sookie
Sam's face crinkled with concern and he rose, moving to stand by her. He placed a warm and comforting hand on her shoulder. She resisted the urge to push him away. She had to admit that it felt nice—not being alone—but she felt like she needed space to think. Still, she didn't want Sam to feel like she was blowing him off.
"Why?" She asked, but her voice barely croaked out. "Why are they going through my stuff? I mean, I understand the bricks and all of that, but why through my stuff?" Sam and Eric exchanged sideways glances. "Wait a minute," she thought out loud, "okay, it sucks about my stuff, but there's something more here."
She closed her eyes as if to concentrate harder. Sam and Eric were silent. "Every supernatural person I know was attacked tonight . . . so far," she reasoned. "I need to call Alcide and Calvin! Oh my goodness, I need to make sure everyone is okay."
"Sookie," it was Eric's turn to be soothing and calm, "we'll figure that all out tomorrow. What we need to do right now is figure out what they took from you."
All she could do was nod in response. She suddenly felt very tired and very vulnerable. Her head felt like a lead weight on a toothpick, and her knees felt a little wobbly. "I'm taking her to her home, Shifter, and I'll be back tomorrow night to discuss this situation with you further. I think we may be able to assist each other." Sookie could sense Sam's displeasure and was glad he didn't say anything.
Instead, he just nodded to her. "Call me if you need anything, Sook."
"Thanks Sam," she responded. Her voice was thin and weak. She really wasn't in the mood for this tonight. She especially wasn't in the mood to spend time alone with Eric.
She went to grab her keys from her cubby, but Eric beat her to it. "I'll drive," he said. "I need you to tell me about what happened here tonight. . . . And, you look like you could use a little rest."
She couldn't say she was thrilled with the idea of riding alone with Eric back to her home, but she was tired and appreciated the chance to relax as a passenger. Well, relax as much as she could as Eric punched the gas and sent her aging car into rattling fits. She cast him an irritated glance out of the corner of her eye. He just shrugged and said, "If it breaks, I'll fix it. You know that." She shook her head and let out a sigh.
"So," she broke the silence, "some cars skidded up to the Merlotte's parking lot. Apparently, some people got out and hurled a bunch of bricks in through the windows. Each brick had some paper rubber-banded to it with a slur or threat written on it. Sam gave some of the papers to the police, but for obvious reasons, kept some of the papers secret. No one saw anything about the people who did it."
Eric slowly nodded, but said nothing. She could not tell if he was concentrating or if he just did not care. He had never been a fan of Sam's, and he certainly couldn't care less about Sam's bar. She was sure he just didn't care—he was a vampire, of course. Damn vampire, she thought.
"People were hurt, Eric." Her voice was close to a whisper now. "People were hurt because of me." She could feel the tears building behind her eyes. She couldn't figure out why, but she felt that somehow she was the target of these attacks. She couldn't shake the feeling that the injured customers, Sam's bar, Pam, and Bill's house were casualties of a vendetta against her.
"I don't know Sookie." She could sense Eric's skepticism through the bond, his tone of voice, and the expression on his face.
"Well, how can you explain the fact that everyone who was attacked is connected to me in some way?"
He just rolled his eyes. "Sookie, you're up to your eyeballs in supes. You're connected to practically every supernatural in Louisiana, Mississippi, and hell, half a dozen other states. It could be coincidence. We won't know until we figure out how many other supes were targeted." He was quiet for a moment, and she could tell that he was thinking. She just waited. "Sookie, was Sam able to smell anything?"
She tried to recall whether or not she had asked Sam that question. "I don't know. I honestly think I was so shocked by everything that I didn't ask. I called you almost right away, and then spoke with the police, cleaned up a bit, went back to serving to help calm the customers, and then . . . well, you were there."
They were parked behind her house by the end of the conversation. She was glad to be home away from the chaos of the bar, but was not looking forward to dealing with the chaos she was sure to find here as well. She was walking blindly toward the door when she felt Eric stiffen beside her. She stopped walking midstride and felt her heart race. She moved to hide behind Eric. She was in no mood to be attacked tonight. Whoever it was would just have to go through the big Viking to get to her.
Eric laughed when he realized what she was doing. "You're safe, Sookie. It's just your old friend Mr. Compton." His words were flat and dripped with disdain as he said Bill's name. She glared up at him. Well, she was just glaring really, but he was the only one there. She was annoyed at having to face her ex, and at having to walk in to see him with Eric at her side. She was certain the tension would roll through the small house, filling it like fog rolling over the San Francisco bay.
. . . .
Pam
Pam leaned her head over the small ceramic sink in Fangtasia's bathroom. The water she splashed over her face was cool and soothing. It helped her mind focus after her recent feeding. She knew she had crossed a line with the Fellowship man. She knew that crossing that line had meant overstepping her boundaries—at least in her Master's eyes. Somehow, she could not find it in herself to care.
She closed her eyes as she rinsed her face with the refreshing liquid and then opened them and watched the water run in pink trails down into the drain. She felt a surge of bloodlust as the last remnants of the Fellowship man's blood disappeared into the invisible piping below the buildings. She had not killed him. No, that was a line her Master had drawn which she would not cross. Oh, but she had made him pay.
She could recall with striking clarity the exact expression on his pathetic face and the exact cadence of his screaming curses as she sunk her fangs deep into his jugular before drawing out the sweet, coppery liquid. It was heavenly, and in that moment of sweet revenge, all her fears and insecurities had been lost to her primal emotions of self-preservation and hunger.
Her private celebration of her victory . . . her revenge . . . would be short-lived, she knew. In the next few days, she would need to work hard to obtain information for her Master. She would need to find out where the Fellowship man had obtained such a blade—the specific type of blade used was extremely rare, especially among humans—and she would need to find out details about the Bon Temps attacks, of that she could be sure. Where Sookie Stackhouse was threatened, she knew there would be much work to do.
When she returned to her Master's office, she found an unexpected guest. Yes, tonight will be very interesting, she thought to herself. "Bill," she gave him a toothy grin, aware that he was privy to the details of the Sookie Stackhouse drama, but probably would not share, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" She made no effort to check the sarcasm in her voice.
"Eric says that you and I are to stay with him for the next few days." His words were rife with displeasure. She really wished that Bill would learn to hide his opinions a bit better. It would really help them all in the long run. Perhaps his staying with her and her Master would give her a chance to explain this.
"Lovely." This was the only response she would give him. She had no desire to know why he would be invading her Master's safe place. It was bad enough that apparently she would have to stay there for an extended period of time. She knew her Master was not inclined to extend the invitation to Bill . . . or anyone, really . . . without some great need, so she knew better than to question this decision. She was in enough hot water as it was.
. . . .
Sookie
Whatever Sookie's worries might have been about Bill's presence in her home, they were misplaced. He had gotten word about Eric's presence in Bon Temps and had turned up to tell Eric that he was going to ground in a safe place because his house had been raised by the fire.
Eric had instructed him to take refuge at his own home and told him to meet up with Pam at Fangtasia. He'd nodded to Eric in gratitude and then given her a curt nod for formality's sake before he disappeared through the front door. Well, that could have gone worse, she thought with a sigh as she drifted toward her bedroom door.
She hesitated in the threshold. She really did not want to see what was behind there. It was bad enough that there was glass all over the living room and kitchen and spray-painted slurs all over the walls. It was all personal, but the idea of someone going through her clothes and touching her bed was almost too much to bear. She braced herself and pushed open the door.
What she saw knocked the wind right out of her. She felt completely exposed, as if her entire life had been gutted and laid bare for all to see. Drawers were removed from her dressers, and clothes were flung this way and that. Photo albums and other mementos had been shredded or crushed. Pain clawed at her chest, and tears stung at her eyes.
"Who did this Eric?" she whispered. "Why would someone do this?" She looked around at her walls and the crude red spray-painted words that covered them: "Fangbanger whore." "Die, vamp-loving bitch!" "See you in Hell, Lover."
Her eyes had passed over each insult in a glazed way, with only a loose understanding of what she was reading. But something stuck out to her, drawing her eyes back to a specific insult. "See you in Hell, Lover." The scrawl was sloppy except for the word "Lover," which appeared to be written in strong, fine script. "Oh. My. Eric. Look at this." She walked toward the offending phrase, pointing a shaky finger.
"Sookie, we need to figure out if anything is missing and then we need to leave." He was poking through a pile of mementos the vandals had dumped from a small wooden box on her dresser. "You know you cannot stay here. You should come with me and stay at my house. Pam and Bill also will be staying there. It's really not safe for any of us to be alone." She could practically hear the wheels turning in his brain.
"Eric, I'm not going to stay with you. I'm not going to leave Amelia, or Octavia. I have to stay here and get my home back to livable condition." She glanced around at the carnage that was her bedroom. She wondered if she really could stay in her own house. Her mattress and pillows had been slashed to ribbons, as had her towels.
"You should listen to him, Sookie," she heard Amelia's voice from the doorway. She had been so preoccupied with her own nightmarish thoughts that she hadn't heard her roommate approach. "Whoever did this breached our wards. That's powerful magic. I'm leaving to spend the night with Tray. Octavia has already gone to stay with her family."
"Oh. Okay, so Tray's okay then?" She wasn't sure she really wanted to know. She had no desire to hear more bad news and was getting to a point of overload.
Amelia cast a sideways glance at Eric, who just shrugged, and then looked back in Sookie's direction. Sookie could sense she had something to say, but was afraid to say it. "Well, Tray is okay, but . . . ."
"But . . . ." Sookie parroted. She could feel her eyes widening and her impatience growing. She changed her mind. She wanted to hear the rest of the bad news. She needed all of it, right now, and all at the same time so she could go into overload, shut down, and then slowly recover. She wanted to eliminate the possibility of bad news trickling in slowly over the course of the next few days like a stream of misery.
She dropped her shields and Amelia's thoughts poured in like a monsoon of images, words, and truncated incomplete phrases. She heard Amelia on the phone with Tray who was telling her that his shop had been burned to the ground, along with Alcide's business. There was mumbled talk of problems in Hotshot and with the Jackson Weres. No one knew who was behind the attacks or how many others supes had been affected. The Fellowship was the first name to enter anyone's head, but it didn't fit.
"How could the Fellowship know about Alcide and Sam and Tray? Is that possible? I mean, the Weres and shifters haven't even come out yet . . . ." She was thinking out loud, and she barely registered the partially irritated, partially sympathetic expression on her roommate's face.
"No one knows, Sookie." Amelia chimed in, for once speaking rather than assaulting Sookie with her powerful broadcasting. "Tray thinks it might be rival vamps or Weres or something like that. He said everyone is scattering and finding safe places right now."
"Well, isn't anyone even going to try and fix this mess?" She was starting to lose her cool. She seemed to be the only one concerned with answers. Why was she the only one who seemed to understand that if they didn't find the culprit soon, things would only get worse? "So much can happen in a day! Whomever these people . . . or creatures . . . or whatever they are . . . could attack again tomorrow! Maybe you all aren't going to do anything, but I sure am." What am I going to do? She wondered to herself.
"Yes." Eric chimed in for the first time since Amelia had arrived. "You are going to do something; you, Dear One, are going to look around to see if anything is missing. Then, you're going to find a few days worth of salvageable clothes," he looked doubtfully around the room at all of the slashed and shredded garments, "and then you are going to come to my secure home where we can decide the best course of action."
Sookie considered this. What else was she going to do really? She didn't appreciate Eric's nonchalant and authoritative tone as if it had already been decided, but she thought it might be convenient to stay with them until they figured out what was going on. She couldn't very well stay anywhere by herself. Oh hell, she thought, the last thing I need is to be cooped up in a house with a bunch of vampires. She frowned. Eric shook his head, but a small, satisfied smile played around the edges of his lips. He knew she was about to concede the match.
"Well, it sounds like it's settled then. I'll talk to you tomorrow, Sook." Amelia cast a knowing glance in her direction, which made her want to retract her concession, before bouncing out the front door with an extremely large suitcase in tow. How long is she planning on staying there? she wondered.
She spent about fifteen minutes rifling through her scattered (and tattered) personal belongings before settling on a couple of things. She bent down to pick up one of her favorite pairs of underwear and noticed they were not lying flat as if on the floor. Instead, she noticed, they were peaked in the center, as if covering a three-dimensional object. She knew exactly what object she would find: a small wooden box where she kept some of her most prized possessions.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and her fingers shook as she reached to remove the underwear. It was clear that the lid of the box was ajar, but she could only make out a few of the objects that were supposed to be there. She looked harder, moving the underwear, box, and trinkets. There was definitely something missing.
She tried not to panic when she realized what was missing. It could have rolled anywhere, she rationalized, this place is such a mess it could be trapped under anything. She started shifting things with greater urgency. She was throwing things over her shoulder now, and moving about her floor in a kneeling position.
"What is it, Sookie?" He was incredulous. He could sense her panic, and knew something was wrong, but he had no clue how wrong things really were.
"The bullet," she whispered. "Eric, the bullet . . . I kept it here. It's gone."
She sensed his confusion. "What bullet, Sookie? Do you keep bullets to your gun? In there?" He eyed the small box doubtfully, as if there were no possible way the shotgun shells could have fit in the box.
"No!" She yelled. She was getting frustrated at having to spell it out for him. "The bullet I sucked from your neck you thick vampire! I kept it . . . after Dallas . . . as a souvenir or a rite of passage, or something . . . ." She raked her hands through her thick, disheveled hair. Why would they even want that? Who would know what it was?
"Sookie, I think we've spent enough time here. It's time for us to go." There was an edge in his voice. She knew it wasn't fear, but it was definitely not the typical arrogance he exuded. This time she agreed with him. She grabbed a bag, shoved her clothes (if you could even call them that) into it, and got the Hell out of Dodge.
TBC . . . .