The Viking's Heart
Disclaimer:I don't own True Blood or the Charlaine Harris series.
Author:Egyptian Kiss
Pairing:Eric/OC
Rating:MA
Summary:Cassandra "Cassie" Mason has always been special. Her ability to astral project as well as her ability to project her desires have always been gifts that plague her life- conscious and unconscious. When she travels to the small town of Bon Temps to help one of her psychic charges, her world turns inside out- leaving her job as an editor behind when she strikes a deal with the sexy vampire viking, Eric Northman. And what will happen when her gifts do not go unnoticed by the Queen of Louisiana and more than a small time vampire club needs her psychic services.
Chapter Ten
Pam's red lacquered nails clicked in the same methodic rhythm against the bar as it had when Eric first disappeared into his office for "important strategical planning" and had put her on Cassie babysitting duty. In Cassie's defense, she had been righteously indignant about the notion, but when Eric laid those baby blues on you and said "Lover, I care only for your safety" it was hard to keep your knees locked and your dander up- as far as Cassie was concerned anyway.
It was a little after four-thirty in the morning and Fangtasia had been empty for at least a half an hour. Cassie had been sitting at the bar with Pam until it closed, and the opportunity arose to get away from Mistress Crabapple who kept insisting Cassie allow Pam to "take just one sip" from her neck. Chow, one of the main staff who also happen to be the Asian vampire who sketched her likeness, stood behind the bar counting out the till while Pam watched. Apparently there had been some financial issues with a previous partner and Pam was playing watch dog to make sure that newbie was on the straight-and-narrow.
Cassie stared at her golden tanned legs in the low lighting of the club, now that the bells and whistles of Fangtasia night life had been turned off, as they swished up and down over the side of Eric's throne while she bit her lip and contemplated what her next step should be. She already had a pot of coffee brewing behind the bar. So check to "need more caffeine" which had been first on the list once Eric went into his man cave. Number two should probably be how to save her job. I should probably just write that one off as a loss, Cassie thought, sighing and leaning her head to rest against the back support of the chair. New number two, Cassie thought, should be finding an apartment. Her realtor for selling her beachfront condo had come through in record time and the deal was already in its final stages. A few signatures, a walk through, and some movers- and Cassie was officially homeless.
Thinking about her beautiful ocean view condo kind of saddened Cassie, it made a reality out of the last few months of her life, and she wasn't sure if she liked the outlook. She couldn't even go back to New Jersey to pack any of her things, let alone purchase a new place to live there if some tyrannical, vampire was hot on her heels for her gifts (which she had yet to fully master). It struck her that she could move down here, to the South. It was almost laughable at first and Cassie sat with an amused smile on her face for a second, but then it hit her. Why not? Sure she had never lived, for any true length of time, outside of the Northern U.S. states, but that didn't mean it was unthinkable. She'd toured Europe back when she was 18 for a few years, staying in France, Italy, Scotland, Greece, the Netherlands, China, and parts of Japan- anywhere exotic that filled her hunger for travel and her desperate desire to be away from her parents' control. But she'd never given a thought to moving anywhere but good old Jersey.
Remembering Bon Temps, Cassie smiled at the charm, but a little town like that was too public. Everyone knew everything about everybody in Bon Temps, according to Sookie. Cassie liked the beach, which wasn't impossible to find in Louisiana, but it was a ways from Shreveport. A big city at least, Cassie could do. Shreveport seemed big- or at least big enough not to make Cassie claustrophobic. A small part of her brain told Cassie she was only considering Shreveport because Eric lived here, and he was definitely an attraction. And he could keep her safe, Cassie thought- but only as a hindsight tack on to make her feel less guy obsessed. I can't just move here because I like a guy, Cassie argued with herself, especially someone who clearly doesn't do monogamy.
"Hey Pam?" Cassie called, swiveling her head to see the stunning blond in full boredom-stare-mode.
"What?" Pam said in her least interested voice.
"Is there a Starbucks in Shreveport?" Hope coated every word and Cassie prayed for a yes.
"I do not care. I do not drink coffee," Pam told her with a half-lidded glance. "But if you are on the menu-"
"I'm not," Cassie shot back, cutting off one of her lewd comments with a smile and a roll of her eyes.
"There's one on 74 Ave and Jilt St., off Davis," said a feminine voice from behind her. Cassie turned at the waist to see one of the dancers with milk and honey skin and waist length red hair coming out onto main stage in a pair of powder blue sweats with a black backpack slung over one shoulder. She had pretty green eyes and a big mouth that smiled widely when in front of a full crowd.
"Thanks. I'm Cassie," Cassie said as the girl came to stand at her side, hand held out to her for a gentle shake.
"Delilah Pierring," the dancer said stepping down off the stage and heading for Pam. Apparently conversation was not her forte.
Cassie closed her eyes and leaned back against the chair and relaxed. Maybe Shreveport could be a temporary-trial-run. She could purchase an apartment or condo, and if it panned out it did and if it didn't well, Cassie would figure that out later. She was a chameleon in that sense, mutable to her surroundings. Maybe Eric was being dramatic and this whole thing wouldn't turn in to all out political war, maybe she could go back to sunbathing on the beach and beachfront condos in a couple of days.
"Sugar," Pam called to her and Cassie felt too tired and content to open her eyes.
"Yes?" Cassie responded, eyes closed and world drifting around her.
"I'm taking my entertainment for the evening home. Be a dear and tell Eric to babysit you himself," Pam said as the sound of the front door clanging open and closed finished her statement.
Cassie "um-hmmed" Pam as sleep caught her and everything became peaceful.
I'm dying, Cassie thought, taking a deep, searing lungful of hot smoke. She dropped to her knees, the plumes of thick, dense, black air mushrooming toward the ceiling and streaming out a window beside her.
Fire. The room she was in was on fire and Cassie struggled to regain her calm. She'd never been projected somewhere that was on fire, or that had put her in immediate physical danger.
Pressing herself flat to the floor in an attempt to breathe, Cassie saw her. A tiny little girl, arms wrapped around her drawn up knees, tears running down her face, rocking back and forth.
"Hey," Cassie called to her, voice roughened and straining from the mouthful of smoke she had inhaled.
The girl's head lulled back at the sound of Cassie's voice, and striking blue eyes stared at her from the face of a living china doll. Her features were delicate, Asian, and Cassie placed her at five or six years of age.
"Crawl to me," Cassie said, holding out her arms despite the flames licking up the red and pink floral patterned wall paper, and the wood floor beneath her was getting hotter and hotter – a whole of fire already burned through the far left corner beside the only door in the room. It was an art studio, Cassie thought, watching as buckets of turpentine exploded – turning her face away from the blast – and canvas and paints littered the decaying floor.
"I can't. My hands hurt," the little girl shouted, holding up her hands. There was a burn mark the size and shape of a door handle on both palms. She'd tried to get out, Cassie thought, and the fire had heated the brass of the handle.
Looking around for an out, any out, Cassie started crawling on her stomach and hands to where the little girl was curled up against the wall, smoke becoming so thick in the air that it was hard to see anything a few feet above their heads. She felt and heard the explosion of the other window, two lined the back wall Cassie had appeared beside, and she struggled harder for physical stamina.
Reaching the girl, Cassie scooped her up in her arms and looked back at the devastation of the room. She could hear the whine of fire engines and cop car sirens drifting in from the windows, and Cassie also knew that the windows being smashed meant that the fire would spread faster, more oxygen to feed it. Her skin felt like a livewire of heat and pain, nerves flashing the big EMERGENCY signals in her brain.
"I need you to hold on to my neck, arms tight, okay? Put your face in my neck and breathe as little as possible," Cassie told the girl, wrapping her arms around her neck and bringing her legs around her waist. The white and blue summer dress the girl wore bunched at Cassie's midsection, and the puffs of breath against Cassie's neck made her feel secure enough to move.
Coughing violently first, Cassie allowed her eyes to water in alarm and then blinked back the hysteria so she could move. She crawled, little girl in tow, toward the windows. Cassie wished she knew how to use her powers better, how to make things happen exactly when she needed them too, and maybe this little life experience was the kick-in-the-pants she needed to practice outside of emergency situations.
A burning rag fell from the ceiling and landed on Cassie's hand when they were a foot from the window. Crying out, Cassie jerked her hand back and she and the little girl clinging to her tipped over backwards. A flaming support beam from overhead crashed with a horrifying sound from above into the space they had just been crawling, the floor in front of them continued going up in flames, blocking their path, and Cassie cried out, crushing the little girl to her body to protect her from the backlash.
The hole left behind from the beam crashing was jagged and Cassie was leery about approaching it. She crawled back, putting some space between her and her plan A for escape. Turning for the other window, Cassie crawled harder and faster, the girl weighing her down jiggling with the effort and crying into her hair.
Maybe it was just good luck but the second window had no impediments, and Cassie promised to do something really nice for herself if she survived this experience.
Peering out the window, Cassie saw the fire escape and she would have cried out in victory if she didn't think she'd startle her young charge.
"I'm going to put you up and out on the fire escape first okay? You stay there until I come out and we'll get down. Okay? Say okay." Cassie said, pulling the girl's arms from around her neck and pointing at the window as the ceiling started creaking ominously from overhead.
"My mommy," the girl whispered, pointing toward the door. "Where is she?"
Cassie glanced back at the door which was barely visible through the clouds of smoke and burst of fire.
"The firefighters will help her," Cassie said and she really hoped she was right.
"But she was drinking tonight," the little girl whispered, scared and teary-eyed.
Please don't ask me to go get her, Cassie thought as she stared into this little girl's eyes. Could she really live with herself if someone died and she had been in a position to try and help? No, Cassie thought angrily, and then grabbed the girl by her shoulders and hoisted her out the window and into relative safety.
"I'll go help your mom. You are going to be very brave and climb down this ladder," Cassie instructed, climbing out the window to shouts of excitement below and the sight of flames licking out other windows on various floors of a beat up brick apartment building, rescue workers shouting from below. Figuring out the mechanism for the fire escape, Cassie helped the girl on to the ladder and showed her how to climb down hand over hand.
"Hey, you up there!" someone below shouted and Cassie had only a second to duck back into the apartment.
The room was getting worse by the second and Cassie fumbled on her hands and knees back toward the door. Once she was staring at the knob she tried to center herself for the rush of power. She saw the door swinging open, the latching giving way, the fire moving back, the smoke rising up – and then the wood bowed out toward the other room and exploded into dust and smoke and Cassie's eyes widened as she saw the inferno of a large wood, chrome, and leather living room going up in flames.
"Hello," Cassie shouted, coughing as black wisps of smoke filled her nose and blurred her eyes.
"Help me!" someone screamed shrilly from behind the black, leather couch shaped like an L in the middle of the room.
Belly crawling, Cassie came to the side of the couch and saw a waif-like Chinese woman, her hair in a frayed bun, her long grey dress ripped and her face dripping tears.
"Let's go. There's a fire escape," Cassie told her, grabbing her arm and forcing her to bend in the same crawl.
They made it back to the burning art studio as the ceiling in the living room caved in and Cassie threw herself, along with the woman whose arm linked hers, into the art room. They shimmied to the open window and Cassie shoved the woman out onto the escape. She hoisted herself up onto the windows ledge and she pulled one leg through, but as she jerked her other leg over the ledge, the ceiling in the art studio gave out and Cassie was thrown from the force of the fiery explosion up and over the side of the escape. She screamed, smoke and fire clouding around her and she saw the Chinese woman making her descent as her body did a free fall for the pavement. Just as the impact came, Cassie disappeared.
"Ahhh!" Cassie screamed and her body hit Fangtasia's stage, face down, stomach flat against the floor.
"Cassie," Eric said and Cassie wheezed when he pulled her up from the floor to face him. Her feet dangled above the stage floor, Eric's hands gripping her shoulders so that she was suspended eye level with him. His iron grip was vice-like and painful.
"You're hurting my shoulders," Cassie said, coughing, and a wisp of smoke came from her lips.
"What happened?" Eric asked and Cassie closed her eyes to picture of the pavement coming at her a million miles an hour, it was terrifying.
"I was helping someone in a burning building," Cassie explained when he set her in his lap, his warmth made her less shivery and her exhausted muscles relaxed against the hardness of his chest.
"A burning building?" Eric murmured and Cassie rubbed her head against his strong chest, she felt exhausted.
"Mhm. Some little girl and her mom," Cassie mumbled.
"You are injured. Drink," Eric said abruptly.
Cassie tilted her head back to stare at his pale skin and pale blue eyes. He looked like a god as he stared down at her. He held his bleeding wrist above her mouth and Cassie took what he offered, eyes never leaving his as she sucked greedily from him. Cassie could never forget this taste; she had no doubt in her head that her body was on fire in a very different way. Electricity zinged through her veins and power suffused her lungs and the soreness in her hand, the one that had a burning rag fall on it, faded into nothingness.
"Mm, maybe I'll have you drink from me every night," Eric whispered, his voice husky and dripping with sexual invitation.
Thighs clenching together, liquid desire igniting in her core, Cassie moaned into his wrist, biting harder, and she trailed a hand up his shirt front, feeling the flexing of his muscles beneath her palm. This whole experience was empowering, enlivening, and erotic. Cassie sighed and released his wrist when he tugged it from her mouth forcefully.
"Better?" he asked amusedly and Cassie licked her lips in a slow, seductive slide.
"Much," Cassie said. She leaned up and kissed him because she was unable to stop herself.
Eric's mouth was warm and wet and wanton. He sucked at her tongue, drew her into his mouth before dominating hers, and when her hands were both under his shirt and teasing his nipples, he bit her tongue. Spicy and sweet and dark, that was Cassie's taste and when he sucked greedily on her mouth, Cassie felt the feeding curling up from her toes. The kiss was hungry and raw – nothing like her usual kisses, but Cassie gloried in the overwhelming power of it. It was a testament to his age that Eric could make Cassie weak-kneed and exhilarated with a kiss.
"I'm out boss," shouted Chow from behind the bar, and Cassie pulled back.
"Dawn is coming, Lover. There is a bed prepared for your stay in my office. I will rise at sunset. Do not go anywhere," Eric told her.
"Um, I'm going to need Starbucks so I have to leave," Cassie replied, hands retracting from under his shirt and looping around his neck.
Standing, Eric lifted her bridal style into his arms and headed in the direction of his office.
"You will do as I say. You may send Ginger, my day staff, to fetch your Starbucks," Eric said with mid-amusement and mid-distain. Cassie licked at his neck, where his pulse should have been, and bit playfully. "Do not start something we cannot finish, Cassie."
The way he said her nickname gave her shivers and Cassie thought about pushing him, but now was not the time.
"I have to look for a place to stay tomorrow. And call someone about packing my things up in Jersey. I can't just sit around and wait for you to wake up," Cassie argued when he put her down on a cot in the middle of his office, his desk having been pushed back toward the wall, and the navy blue comforter and matching pillows cushioned her.
"You may use my office as a means to make your arrangements. Do not leave this building. I have many enemies and they are now your enemies. The Fellowship of the Sun is not hindered by daylight. Do not be foolish," he told her and Cassie would have rebuffed him if he hadn't caught her in another of those delicious lip locks.
"Goodnight Lover," he whispered and then he did that vampire super-speed trick that left Cassie in his wake. Men, she thought, and sighed as she snuggled down into the cot. It smelled like him and as Cassie fell back into a deep sleep, she couldn't deny the attraction of having someone care about her – for what felt like the first time.
A/N: Thanks for all the encouraging reviews. I'm sorry it took so long for me to get this out, but I hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know what you think. Next chapter, we meet the queen. EK!