A/N: Long time coming, this one. Anything sound familiar? It should. If not you should turn back and read DP again. The one song I have to have to recomend for this chapter is I Have Loved You Wrong by The Swell Season. But if you would like a play list please refer to Chapter 12 of Dead Promises. Otherwise, be aware that Eric is experiencing a very limited array of emotions (so if you want you can pick the song you thinks best fits a homicidal rage). More will be revealed to you in time. Please enjoy and have a happy and safe Valentine's weekend.

Love

***

I rose that evening with my blood singing. It had been dead, dull since the night she left the state and her little parish town behind her. Since the night she defied the last ounce of power I possessed over her. Perhaps it was me, letting her go. I could have stopped it, but then I would be proving myself to Sookie to be the unfeeling Tyrant she had built me up as in her mind. No, I had let what little hold I had over her slip, and she had built up a strength of her own to break away. If it hadn't been for such cowardice on her part I would have been proud of my Sookie. In a play of irony she had found the courage to break away and hide.

I would bide my time. She wanted to pretend that she could forget me, and I would play along. I went about my business at the bar without hesitation. Who was Sookie to me now, but another human I had turned and eventually released? I found myself short of temper and long of appetite. But for a few waitresses leaving unexpectedly (I remember something about a tray sticking out of a wall after I had thrown it), and a slow night or two, business was running smoothly. I found time to otherwise occupy myself with an exceptional treat tonight.

Her name was Christian. How delightfully ironic. She was seated two tables across from me, with a group of young women and their effeminate male companion. They were having a rather banal conversation. Nothing noteworthy. Though the girl had been singled out, being the only one of the group not dressed like I whore looking for currency. They thought to belittle her for it. She was a young woman, twenty-five or there-abouts, with long-ish dark blond hair twisting in strands around one another. She wore a slim fitting pair of black jeans and a loosely fitted heather grey t-shirt with a pleasantly scooped neck. She smelled of opium perfume and icewine. Becoming bored of their slanderous comments she removed herself from the group.

I watched her as she walked past my table and back behind the bar, looking for the women's washroom. I was there before she had rounded the bar counter and took a step forward and reached for her elbow. She looked up and met my eyes. Lovely.

"The facilities are out of service for the evening. May I show you to the employee washroom?" I smiled my warmest smile and moved my hand from her arm to her waist.

"Thanks, but I don't really need the restroom, just somewhere to settle down," she volunteered.

"Oh, of course," I said. "Your friends are not being pleasant this evening. Are you very upset?" I sent my influence across the connection I had made as I steered her towards the back of the bar. She burst into tears. "Shh. Hush, now." I quickly ushered her into my office and locked the door behind us. I moved her in front of my desk, placed both of my hand on her waist, and gently lifted and sat her down on top. She was quietly sniffling now. "You will wait here. I am going to pour us a drink," I instructed her as I stepped back to grab a single glass and bottle from a shelf against the wall. I poured a shot of scotch into the bottom of the glass and handed it to the girl.

"But, where's yours?" She asked after the liquid in her glass was gone. I took the empty glass from her and sat it down next to the bottle on the shelf.

"I don't drink… alcohol." I said quietly while holding her gaze locked onto my eyes. I let my fangs come down and I smelled her fear begin to bubble to the surface. "Tell me about your job," I asked quietly, stroking her arm reassuringly. I did not relish the fear in her blood. Pleasure tastes so much better.

"I'm a therapist, massage therapist. I'm not working right now." She let out a long sigh and her voice took on a defensive tone. "My boyfriend, Mitchell, is a photographer and my friends think I'm living off him in exchange for sex. He doesn't want me to work cause he can support us. He says he wants me to be part of his next project. Something about exploitation. They think I'm using him, but they don't see… they don't know what he's like."

Here she broke out into genuine tears. Not sobs, just a few tears rolling slowly down each blushing cheek. Quite beautiful really. "This… Mitchell… is being exploitive?" I brushed a tear away with my thumb. "I do not exploit women. I enjoy them for what they are. And you are beautiful. I could certainly enjoy you."

She nodded meekly as I continued brushing the tears away. "Yes. You seem nice."

Not really, I thought to myself. I leaned in and gently kissed her jaw, just below her ear. I was standing quite close to her now and I felt her part her knees in front of me, allowing me a step closer. I curled one hand around her cheek, pulling her face closer to mine, and let the other search between her legs. She was wet through the fabric of her jeans. She moaned as I stroked up and down her inner thigh teasingly. I let my tongue linger around her neck and the base of her ear. My fangs extended fully and I scraped them across her carotid artery.

She sharply inhaled and held a breath. As her arousal had been growing I had loosened my influence. Now I tightened the reins once more. "Have you ever been bitten?" I whispered into her ear.

"Can't… leave marks," she was breathing heavily now. "Bad for photos."

I stopped moving my hands and pulled my head back to look into her eyes, still mesmerized. "And what if I promise not to leave any marks? Hmm? Not a single one." I made sure to slide just the softest implication of sex into my voice.

With that she slid down off the desk top, and I felt my grin spreading. I placed one hand on an ample breast beneath her shirt, and the other on her hip, pulling her backward with me toward the couch.

I sat back, lifting her into my lap, straddling me. I pulled her mouth down to mine. She tasted bittersweet, like the liqueur she had consumed. Her breath was hot and wet. As she lightly touched her tongue to one of my fangs, I heard my phone ring. I encouraged her to continue kissing me as I pulled the offending technology from my pocket. I glanced sideways at the Caller ID. Bill. I hit ignore.

With a moan from the girl I let my fingers find their way back beneath her shirt. She leaned her head back and I let my lips play lightly across her throat, listening intently to the sounds she emitted.

Once more my phone was ringing. Once more I ignored the call. As I began unbuttoning the girl's pants, eager to slide them down the soft flesh of her hips, I received a text from Bill.

Urgent. You must call me.

I let out a sound, half moan half growl and sent a quick text to Pam.

Office. Now.

In a moment, the girl was seated in the space next to where I had been, and I was unlocking the door to admit Pam. "Straighten her up and bring her back in the front. Leave her at the table of whores." I turned my head to Christian. "You will tell them that the restrooms are filthy and you want to leave. Do not drive, you are too intoxicated. Pam will call you a cab." She looked positively crushed, but that wasn't my problem.

When they were out of the room I began to dial Bill. The phone began ringing before I had hit send.

"It is urgent, Bill?" I was sure to let the last few weeks frustration seep into my tone.

"Eric." There was silence for a moment. Then Bill spoke. I could feel the atmosphere in the room begin to get heavy. There was a rushing sound in my ears, as if water or wind or blood were flowing at extraordinary speed around me. I thought I heard him speak her name.

"What did you say?" It sounded strange to me, my voice. As if all color had been drained from the world in front of me and the sounds coming out of my mouth reflected the monotony of that world. Flat. Dead.

"Eric, are you listening to me? Sookie… she… There's been a fire. Eric…"

"Where?" I cut him off. I began seeing flashes in my memory, more clearly than the physical objects in front of me. I was regaining something I had lost, or chosen to forget. So much like that January I had spent in her home. As another vampire.

"Stella's house. It's gone, Eric. She… she's…"

I hung up the phone. I refused to hear those words.

***

I met with Jason and Amelia the following evening. Bill remained in Englewood, tying up the loose ends that always seem to follow death and destruction. Three had died in the fire at the house on Stella's property. Tyler – the strange girl from the funeral – and Stella. And the telepath. The woman who wanted to mean nothing more to me than a passing thought. But she was so much, much more than that.

Both humans had been crying – the witch was red-eyed and puffy, but functional. Jason was beside himself. There was no effective way of communicating with him but through Amelia. I came to their home – Sookie's home – and little was said. There were few people left by the time I arrived. It was difficult walking through the house, seeing Sookie's room without her things in it. It wasn't much different really, just absent. Absent of her familiar feel, as though she had been gone for decades already.

I tried to make sense out of the conversation that was taking place around me. Jason was sobbing and Amelia was attempting to translate. I was standing in the kitchen with a bottle of blood in my hand, as I had many times over the last few years. Finally the phone began to ring and Amelia made Jason take the receiver after answering it herself.

"That was Calvin Norris. They still consider Jason part of their pack, and he was always… fond of Sookie." I didn't much care about Calvin Norris. I began to walk out of the kitchen, through the small living room and out the front door. I could feel Amelia following me. I stopped on the porch and she moved around me staring at me for a moment.

"I'm so sorry, Eric. You know it was always you," she whispered in my ear as she reached one arm around my shoulders. It was as though those words were echoing around my empty body for the next three days.

Bill returned the next evening, bearing Sookie's possessions with him. He left them at the bar with Pam and she delivered them promptly to my home. I would not allow her to stay, telling her she was of more use at the bar, and it was the truth. What use would she be to me? She could not bring back the dead.

I placed her possessions in the spaces they once occupied in what had become our home over the last year. The quilt, her books, they were as familiar to me as her supple warmth next to my body in bed each day. The tears I shed in our bedroom, staining the quilt and several pages of her favorite books, were the only tears I would shed over her departure from me. The finality of this was desperate and crippling.

I was a different vampire when I entered the shifter's bar the next evening. Her memorial service was held at night, at Merlotte's, as per her wishes. Each of her closest friends and family picked several songs to be played instead of a scripture reading or eulogy. Candles illuminated pictures of Sookie and her family, her friends, displayed all around the bar.

I sat a table near the exit, with my back to the wall, watching everyone. All of these people who took her for granted. Half of them had written her off as crazy. Bill and Calvin flanked Jason all night. Sam shuffled back and forth, trying to keep busy. Pam sat next to me and we were joined periodically by Tara, or Amelia, or one of the waitresses trying to offer comfort. I was unable to focus on the music, the people, the offerings of condolences. I could see only one thing clearly in my vision, and it was blood.

There was a small note in Bill's neat script tucked inside one of Sookie's books. His precise letters spelled out the word ARSON. I knew in the early moments of the dawn this morning that I had a new purpose. It was what kept me from tearing apart everything and everyone around me. The knowledge that someone would pay, and pay beyond a human reckoning, for what they had taken from me was bittersweet and burning to be realized.