The trip home was blank to me. I couldn't tell you how exactly Eric had gotten me home if my un-life depended on it, but only minutes before dawn he lay me down on my bed like he had before he turned me, and with one of his arms under my neck and his other wrist at his mouth, he tore open his wrist and pressed it to my lips. His blood dripping down my throat was like warm velvet oozing down, and I felt stronger every second for it. "Eric," I tried without my lips leaving his wrist and the beautiful blood that flowed from it.
"Don't speak, my love. You're safe again." Whether I was truly safe or not, I believed Eric. I always did.
The next evening was like nothing had ever happened. I woke up on my own side of the bed, with Eric's shape still lingering in the sheets beside me, and I could hear him downstairs moving around. I heard another voice I recognized, and leapt out of bed immediately. "Chow and I searched within a 3 hour area of this house, and we found nothing. Well, that's not entirely true, but nothing that could have led us in the right direction. No scent, no tracks, no"
"Pam!" I was half a second away from jumping on my friend with a big bear-hug, but her "touch this outfit and I will kill you" look stopped me dead in my tracks. She scanned my own outfit, the jean and t-shirt set I was wearing when I was abducted from the house, now with blood and mud stains and heaven knows what else. In short, I reeked. I started backwards up the stairs immediately, "you're right, I'll just go shower real fast and I'll be down in a few. I'm sure you and Eric have lots to talk about." I saw Eric reach his long arm in my direction holding a glass of warm blood, and I grabbed at it before I retreated upstairs to the kingdom of my bathroom. Mmm…real blood this time.
The blood was gone before I got to the top of the stairs, and by the time I had closed the bedroom door behind and pulled my t-shirt up over my head and into the dirty clothes hamper, a little pink had found its way into my cheeks. I turned on the shower and tore off my Chuck Taylors and jeans and kicked them off to the side before stepping in to the warm shower, letting the past few days days of dirt, dust and grime work itself out of my hair and spiral down the drain. When I felt sufficiently clean and scrubbed, and was pretty sure that someone was sitting on the bed waiting for me, I wrapped the towel around loosely myself and threw the door open, releasing a room full of steam into what used to be Adele Stackhouse's bedroom. I gave my wet hair a flip that had intended to be seductive but turned out sloppy and... "well hello Sookie. Somehow I don't think that was intended for me."
"Pam!" I grabbed the towel around me and tried to turn the small rectangle in to something the size of a tent. Or a parachute. "What are you doing in my room?!"
"Oh please, Sookie. It's not like I've never seen a naked woman before." Pam was true to her usual form and incredibly cool about her near-seduction. "Eric sent me up here to ask if you needed anything. He's gone out for the night." Of course he had. I had a million and one questions for him and he chose tonight of all nights to duck out when I was in the shower. Oh well. He had to come home sometime.
"No, I think I'll be fine, Pam. If you could just have Eric call me when he gets a chance so I know what's going on…I'm still a little shaken up from the past few nights." And with that, Pam gracefully stood up, turned on a satin pink pump, and left. I returned to the bathroom with the towel wrapped around me so tight I'd suffocate if I were still breathing, and started to dry my hair, hoping the hum of the hairdryer would keep my mind from wandering. It didn't, and I put on one of the little black nightgowns Eric had bought for me during my three nights underground, and headed downstairs for another drink. I expected to find the chairs scattered around the kitchen and perhaps an empty bottle of True Blood or two, which is the usual after a surprise visit from Pam, but Eric had the decency to clean up before he dashed, and I found a corked bottle of Burgundy Royale in the refrigerator. I poured myself a big tumbler and set it in the microwave for a minute, re-corking the bottle and putting it back in the fridge. For the first time since my new life had started, I felt tired. I leaned against the counter next to the microwave and waited for the blood to warm up, and then leaned my head to the side and rested it against the fridge. My head was spinning with everything from this convention I knew nothing about to the thoughts that were going through the agents' heads, to the beeping that went on in Malia's mind. What beeps when it thinks? She surely wasn't a robot…was she? My brain made the jump from Malia to Austin Power's fem-bots with machine gun breasts, and I gave a little snort at the direction my thoughts had taken me. The microwave chimed and saved me from my thoughts, and I collapsed into a chair with the drink in my hand. The first glass of blood of the evening had mostly satisfied me, and I was able to just sip at this second glass while I stared blankly ahead. I hadn't even noticed the back door creaking open and a short brunette with ringlets walking in and peeking into the kitchen.
"Earth to Sookmonster!" Amelia beamed, and I jumped a little in my seat. "Oh seriously?" She laughed, "did I just SCARE a vampire?" She put her Gucci bag on the stairs and then pranced over to my chair and gave me a big hug. Amelia was a little too brave for her own good, especially when she stuck her jugular this close to a new vampire's mouth. As long as she only did it with me though, she'd probably be just fine. She then pulled out the chair next to me and plopped herself down and began to wiggle off her high heels. "So you're okay, right?" She adopted a much more serious tone as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. "I didn't even know you were in trouble until Pam came over two nights ago with Chow. She didn't really know what was going on, but Eric told me tonight before you were awake. I'm so sorry I didn't help."
"Amelia, it's fine. We both made it home and once I talk to Eric and figure out how the hell he got us out of there, all will be fine again." She didn't seem convinced, and I saw her thought process as she tried to add up all of the clues while pouring herself a glass of merlot to match my glass of blood. "Did anything happen here while I was gone?" I tried to change the subject before her thoughts wandered too far.
She shrugged, her back to me as she re-corked the bottle. "A few calls. I wrote them down for you. Mostly just Sam and this one little kid named," she paused, trying to remember.
"Hunter."
"Yep. That's the one. And a couple of Eric's guys tried him here when he wasn't answering his cell phone. But not a whole lot." I was halfway expecting Amelia to dash over to her room after relaying the messages on to me, but she didn't. We hadn't had a proper girl-talk since I had turned, and I guess she was in the talking mood tonight. And after a few minutes, it turned out that I was too. Over the next few hours we covered everything from work (boring), Dawson (is doing something different with his hair), Merlottes (is having a hard time with the waitress they hired to replace me) and just about everything else that there was to be talked about in Bon Temps. It also turns out that Amelia had been talking to some old friends in New Orleans, and her old apartment building would be done any day now, which meant that she would be moving home soon. I loved Amelia dearly, and loved her compulsive cleaning, but it hadn't been the same since Eric became a full-time thing. That, and me no longer being able to be awake before the sun went down.
After her fourth glass of wine, Amelia gave way to a big yarn and then glanced over to the clock beside the refrigerator. "Oh snap- it's after one!" She exclaimed, jumping up and collecting her shoes from the floor. "I've got to be at work tomorrow at 8:30! G'night Sookie!" She bounced over to her room behind the living room (she had moved downstairs after Octavia had vacated her room in efforts to get away from the all-night noisy vampire sex) and shut the door behind her. I heard the sink running a minute later, and I decided the rest of the night would best be spent curled up in bed with my book, which I had barely touched since I had turned. Turns out that reading doesn't apply as one of those things you can suddenly do super-fast once you turn vampire. I curled up under the satin sheets with Montenegro and his quivering member and got about three pages in before hurling it across the room and leaving a sizable dent in the wall. I wanted Eric. I wanted him now. I wanted him to tell me everything that he's been trying so hard to avoid telling me, and I want everything to really truly be okay. My head started pounding and I threw myself face-first into my pillow and started to cry.