Hi! So - I have some news! I hope you all remember of You Want Blood Awards. Yes, it's time!

You should know that right now the wild card vote is open - please, check it out at .com You can vote for many stories, including 'Forget me not', there (whoever nominated me - THANK YOU!). Remember, your vote counts. Before the main vote begins, you can decide who's going to get to the finals.

'Forget me not' is avaiable for voiting in three categories right now: Roller Coaster Award: Best Drama Wild Card, The Charlaine Harris Award: Best Rewrite of SVM Wild Card and Tissue/Kleenex Award: Best Angst Wild Card.

You'll also find my other story, 'With Benefits' under The Charlaine Harris Award: Best Rewrite of SVM Wild Card cathegory.

That being said, let's get back to the story...


This chapter is unbetead.

Disclaimer: Sorry. Still Nothing.


Previously:

"Sookie," Eric said, clearly unnerved himself. He leaned forward toward me. "I'm not a nice guy. I've never been. You know that. But I've never wished you harm nor have I ever meant to hurt you, and after everything I've done – many times – to get you out of trouble, I think you should realise that by now."

"Did you notice that usually I wouldn't even be in trouble in the first place if it wasn't for y…"

But I've never finished that sentence. I was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass and before I could wrap my head around what was going on, I saw Eric's body going limp and hitting the ground, face down.


"Eric!," I screamed horrified.

He didn't respond. Dark blood saturated his hair and spilled on the floor in silence. There was an open wound on his head. I shot a nervous glance toward the empty, broken window – it was where the stone that had hit Eric had come from. The strength and precision of the blow could not be an accident: I shuddered knowing that only a serious injury would knock Eric out.

With panic threatening to overwhelm me, I reached out with my mind and felt a vampire void outside. I turned away from the window and slid down to the floor, hiding myself behind the armchair from the attacker's sight. Cold, wet wind blew inside the house.

"Eric," I said again, this time quietly.

Only a moment ago I had been angry at him and then next second he was lying there with a hole in his head and I desperately wanted him to wake up. I rolled him over not without some effort and lifted his heavy head to place it on my lap.

"Come on," I whispered smoothing back his hair to look into his face. "Wake up."

His eyes were closed. I have to admit, seeing him unconscious shook me pretty badly. Eric is very strong, he might very well be the strongest person I've ever met, but when he was lying there like that, pale, with no pulse, smeared with his own blood, there was nothing in his appearance that would make it possible to point the difference between his lifeless body and real corpse.

Of course I knew that he wasn't truly dead (it's not that easy to kill a vampire), but the very image was disturbing enough. I'd never seen an unconscious vampire before, at least not during nighttime.

"Invite me in," said the voice I had hoped to never hear again.

I peeked out from behind the armchair cautiously. I saw Mickey's face at the window.

"I'm certainly not going to do that," I replied.

In that moment Eric's eyelids twitched and then opened a crack, just enough for me to catch the blue spark behind them and I felt relief crashing down on me. Not only was I feeling a little guilty that he was hurt (after all, I was the reason why he even got involved), but also because it meant that I wasn't alone in that mess.

Eric didn't move a muscle, but he opened his eyes, looked at me lucidly and blinked. I took it as a sign that he was aware what was going on and healing. Mickey couldn't see his face from his spot, so he didn't know Eric was coming around. I knew that Eric needed time. He might be conscious, but the nasty wound on his head was still open. It was clear that he was in no condition to fight yet, even with vampire regeneration ability.

"If you don't, I'll kill her," Mickey threatened.

It was then I saw that he had Tara. My heart sank. He was clutching her arm with brutal force. I saw her face in the fleeting glow of the lightening. She was beaten to a pulp. There was blood in the corner of her mouth. She was still conscious, but so pale that she looked like a vampire herself. Mickey grinned showing me all his teeth.

He had me cornered. I knew that if I let him in, he would most probably kill us all, but if I didn't, he would murder Tara before my very eyes. I needed to do something to level my chances and fast.

Without letting myself to overthink it I placed my wrist against Eric's mouth. This was the only idea I came up with.

"Let her go!" I yelled at Mickey trying to buy us some time.

I felt the hardness of Eric's fangs touching my skin the second they descended, but even though he waited for a moment before he bit, I didn't pull away. I only braced myself. I knew what I was doing.

My eyes watered when his fangs pierced my skin. It was in no way a pleasant sensation – but it wasn't the pain that shocked me.

My heart was ramming against my ribcage pumping adrenaline into my veins. When Eric took the first mouthful, something happened. Something snapped between us, like electrical bolt momentarily jump-starting a lock-mechanism opening a secret passage but lasting too short for it to stay open, instead shutting down as soon the moment is gone; a spark illuminating a dark chamber for a fleeting moment before it dies away.

For a second, maybe two, Eric's mind opened to me and I was thrown into it. A plethora of jumbled words and images whizzed into my head like a tornado and then, as abruptly as they opened, the door closed again and disappeared without a trace. I sat shocked, for a moment forgetting where I was.

I was lucky that everything else happening around me at the time was dramatic enough to explain my chaotic emotions, because I'm sure that otherwise Eric would have noticed that something was off.

"I'll let her go if you let me inside!" Mickey yelled back. I heard him as if from a great distance and I snapped out of my trance. "How is your tamed vampire doing?"

I forced myself to put aside dwelling onto that unexpected telepathic glimpse and stuff it somewhere in the back of my head for later. I said a quick inward prayer thanking God that Mickey turned out to be a chatterbox.

"He's not moving," I whined. "And he's not opening his eyes. I think you cracked his skull."

Eric was looking right at me, his blue eyes blazing. He sucked on my wrist like a hungry child. His wound was closing before my eyes. It was an amazing thing to watch.

I heard Tara chocking and looked away from Eric. My frazzled nerves couldn't take much more. I felt everything slipping through my fingers. I couldn't watch Mickey closing his hand around Tara's throat.

"Not yet," Eric whispered, but it was too late.

"You can come in," I said to Mickey at the same moment.

He wasted no time in jumping through the window, dragging Tara behind him. He threw her on the floor like a sack of potatoes. Eric was working on closing the bite-mark on my wrist hurriedly. I had a terrible feeling that he wasn't quite ready for a fight just yet. I decided the best I could do was to try buying him a few more seconds to recover. I pushed his head from my lap and laid it down as if he was still unconscious.

"What do you want?" I asked pretending that I didn't know the answer.

I stood up clumsily. I was a little lightheaded from the blood loss.

"Your head, bitch," Mickey hissed.

His fangs flashed in the light of the lamp.

It looked like he had already heard from Salome and he didn't like her orders. Clearly he had forced Tara to tell him who she had asked for help and he knew that I was behind the whole thing.

"On your knees!"

Before I had a chance to react, he was at my side in two strides and he hit me so hard that the force of the blow literally threw me across the small room where I landed on the coach. I lost my breath and I couldn't catch it for almost a minute. When I finally recovered Mickey was on me. His intentions were pretty obvious, especially when he reached to open his fly.

"That's the only thing you're good for," he said with contempt.

My blood boiled and I was ready to put up a fight.

At the same moment Mickey looked up sharply – Eric grabbed his ankles and pulled hard, moving him off me. Mickey turned around quickly and in the next second they were rolling around on the floor full of the glass shards.

My fury managed to clear my mind.

"Eric, let him go!" I yelled and then without waiting for him to fulfill my strange command I tossed into Mickey's direction: "I rescind your invitation!"

The second I uttered that sentence, Eric stopped fighting and jumped away, loosening his hold on Mickey so that the younger vampire wouldn't pull him outside too.

Watching a vampire being forced to leave the house by magic was something that would probably never cease to entertain me, but this time I felt a special kind of triumph. The look on Mickey's face was particularly idiotic and his pants were down. He tried to grab onto Eric on his way, but the Viking avoided his searching hand easily. It seemed that he was regaining his strength with every passing second.

I looked in daze as Eric stood up and shut the door behind Mickey, who howled in helpless rage and disappeared into the night.

"Well done, Sookie," Eric praised me. "Most people wouldn't be able to think so clearly in a moment like that. Are you okay?"

He walked closer to me and helped me to get up.

"I'm a little dizzy," I admitted. "What's going to happen with Mickey?"

He seated me on the coach and took his phone without a word. I guessed he was calling Salome again.

"Is Salome going to get him?" I asked once his call was finished.

He nodded.

"He has to come when she summons him. He answers to her. I suspect she's going to make him regret that he caused trouble. She can be very… creative. And Mickey is hers."

"Pam is yours, isn't she?" I asked softly.

"She is," he said, pride clear in his voice..

I scanned the room to locate Tara. I found her quickly and kneeled beside her. She groaned when I gently touched her bruised face.

"Wake up," I said. "I'm calling the ambulance." And then I looked accusingly at Eric and told him: "Can you see what I meant now? I should have never let her step out of this house! None of this would have happened if Mickey had not caught her!"

"No," Tara protested firmly. "No ambulance."

I had enough drama for one night.

"You're hurt," I reasoned using a stern voice.

"I can't go to the hospital. If I do, everyone's going to find out."

Her mind told me something else too, something that stunned me and directed part of the anger I had felt toward Eric to her – her desire to hide a shameful secret was so strong that it had also caused her to go with Mickey without as much as a loud protest when he had showed up earlier that night. After her departure Tara had gone to Merlotte's in hope that a public place would give her safety. Mickey had found her easily and when he had approached her table and ordered her to leave with him, she had followed him without any fight, just to avoid making a scene.

Jesus. I loved Tara like a sister, but in that moment I really wanted to smack some sense into her.

"Everyone who as much as looks at you will know," I said brusquely. "Do you really think you can just go back to work tomorrow? You need to see a doctor."

"I could give her some blood," Eric offered with absolutely zero enthusiasm in his voice.

"I'd rather die!" – her passionate declaration shocked me, especially since I knew she meant it.

The thought of drinking vampire blood was inconceivable to her. Not that I was a big fan of the procedure myself, but I had much more practical attitude to the whole thing.

"Are you sure? Because if you refuse to see a doctor as well, you might very well really end up dead. I have no idea if you don't have any internal injuries."

I knew Tara was ashamed that everybody would find out about her situation with Mickey and how she had ended up like this in the first place, because she realised that she was partly responsible for how things had gone down. I understood that, but it was hard to believe that her own hubris could blind her to the point where she would be willing to sacrifice her life for it and that was what she was saying.

"Tara, listen to me," Eric interjected unexpectedly. It looked like his patience was growing thin too. "Your greed and self-centeredness had put my Sookie in danger. You say you are her friend, but friends don't act like that."

I blinked gobsmacked. I was stunned, for more than one reason – had it not been Tara who had lent me clothes and even a car? Had she not been the one to help me in need? On the other hand – was it really Eric Northman standing in front of me and giving someone a lecture on friendship?

The forbidden knowledge screamed at me from its dark corner in the back of my head where I had previously hurriedly pushed it in my panic. I felt my blood pressure starting to ring in my ears.

"I'll get some ice," I said.

I didn't want to listen to Eric yelling at Tara and I had to leave the room quickly. My thoughts were starting to overwhelm me. I needed a moment alone to catch a breath.

I rested my forehead against the fridge.

It had happened before. I had been in Eric's mind once before – and once only. It had been the only time I had had a flash from a vampire mind. I remember thinking that it felt like walking into a serpent's nest back then – a brush of cold, deadly effective deviousness, capable of focusing on multiple targets at the same time.

In many ways my experience from that night was similar to the first one. This time too Eric's mind seemed like a dangerous place to be. Even when he was injured, Eric's thoughts were sharp and fast, his brain working like a well-oiled machine, sorting through every possible curse of action he could take in lightening speed.

Only this time I stumbled across something completely unexpected for me.

Somewhere there, in the dark abyss of that spinning labyrinth, among the traps and shadows – I saw my own image.

I was stunning.


Please, let me know what you think!

Next time: the aftermath, of course.