A/N: Sorry I couldn't reply to all the reviews. RL was hectic as hell this week, and I had so little time to work out this chapter I figured it'd be better if I spent it writing rather than reviewing =/

But I did appreciate every one! Especially this one from 384soa: "Had another funny thought- What if Franklin considers this foreplay with Tara! Now that would seem true to form for him & I would LMAO!" Here's hoping, LOL.

Thanks to my beta chiisai-kitty; I sent her two different chapters for two different stories in two days, and she still likes me! Any lingering mistakes are mine, as always.

And thanks to CH too. I took some bits and pieces from SVM lore (I'm sure you'll be able to pick 'em out) and the characters are hers too.

…

I finally managed to drag myself away from Eric's kisses and went back to my own car, where I started following Eric out of the parking lot. Which was fine, until he took the turn to go to my house. Yesterday we had agreed I would go to Fangtasia to read the accountant and try and find the thief, so why the heck were we going to my house? Wanting to safely talk to Eric, I pulled over and put my emergency lights on, and Eric soon did the same, stepping out to vampire-speed over to me.

"What is it?" he asked, looking concerned.

"What are you doing?" I asked simply.

He stared at me quizzically. "Taking you home."

"But I thought tonight's the night I was supposed to, like, read the accountant and see who took the forty-five thousand dollars."

"It was," he replied slowly.

"But I still want to do it! I want to help you find the thief!" I cried.

"You will. Just not tonight." He sighed and shook his head. "Sookie, from what I've heard, you have had a terrible day. You found the dead body of a girl you knew, you had to work a double-shift without any breaks, and you had to hear people talking shit about your brother. Surely you do not want to go to Fangtasia and read the dirty thoughts of even more people?"

"But I do." I crossed my arms. "I said I'd do it tonight, so I'm doing it tonight. It's just a thing for me—I always keep my word. It's fine. C'mon, turn around."

"No. You should take the night off and relax."

"No. I should do what I planned on doing and just read people for you. I mean, at least this time I'll be sitting down!" I pleaded. "Just let me do this. It's what I want." And just for kicks, I gave him my best puppy-dog eyes.

Eric's jaw stuck in place. He kept his eyes on the road, but I could see he wasn't the happiest guy on the planet. "At least go home and take a long, hot shower first," he said finally, looking up at me.

"Deal."

We were quiet after that, so quiet even the crickets didn't feel like helping out, which made the noise of my stomach growling seem that much louder.

"When was the last time you ate?" Eric asked curiously.

I had to think about it. "Um, like, three-something? I had a handful of bar nuts."

"So you haven't eaten dinner then?"

I shook my head. "No. I'm starving."

Eric shook his head, but he didn't say anything.

"I had a really busy day, Eric. You know that. I had to put everyone else's needs above mine," I said, trying to make him understand.

"And did they do the same for you?" he asked.

I didn't say anything. Eric was choosing the wrong time to start acting like my father. Not like there was a good time for that, but whatever.

He told me he'd take care of dinner, and that once we got to the house I would go straight upstairs and not worry about anything but my skin pruning during my long, hot, relaxing shower. I didn't give in and tell him this, but a shower sounded soooo good right now.

We got back into our respective cars and drove to my house, where I actually did go right upstairs to the bathroom and Eric did whatever downstairs. I had a sneaking feeling he'd call takeout or something, and I kinda wished he would. I was in the mood for something hot and greasy. I'd worked off enough calories today to earn it, and like he pointed out, I hadn't really eaten anything. Plus, there was leftover salad and some fruit in the fridge, so it'd balance all out.

I was too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to appreciate the fact that I was naked in the shower while Eric was in the house. When I felt like today's fears and worries and annoyances and bar stink was down the drain, I got out of the shower and changed into a plaid pair of flannel pajamas and the biggest, oldest, and softest sweatshirt I owned. I even put on fuzzy slippers.

I padded downstairs and saw Eric had set the table for one, and there was a big pizza box on the kitchen table; he must have called Bon Temp's only pizzeria and I had been too busy showering to hear the door ring.

"I ordered you a cheese pizza, because you made that cheese pizza bagel that one time," Eric said, gesturing to the box that was to the right of where he was sitting down, in his special seat. "And I ordered a large because that way you will have food to eat tomorrow."

I smiled at his thoughtfulness. "Thanks Eric. How much was it?"

"I've got this one," he said. When he saw I opened my mouth to reply he quickly added, "You can get the next. I promise."

Shrugging, I replied, "Eh, fair enough. Want a True Blood?"

"Sure." As I looked over my shoulder, I saw that he was wearing the biggest shit-eating grin of all time. It was so big it probably would have broken the face of a regular human.

"What?" I asked, trying to see if I sat down on anything that would have given me a stain on my ass, but from my view everything looked clean.

"Nothing," he replied in a tone that sounded like there definitely was something.

I turned and walked back over until I was standing right in front of him. "Come on. What?"

Raising his eyes to mine, he began to get ready to say something, and in that second I connected the dots and exclaimed, "Oh, I get it, you're smiling because I compromised and let you buy me dinner without arguing too much about it."

To his credit, Eric smirked and held his hands up innocently as he replied, "I wasn't going to say anything."

"Yeah, but you were memorizing everything so you could go home and write in down in your journal, right?" Sniggering, I added in a sing-songy voice, 'Dear Diary, today Sookie Stackhouse let me buy her a pizza." I paused. "It was glorious."

I was giggling so much I had to pause in between words, but Eric didn't crack a smile. "Well, I am over a thousand years old … there's a lot I want to remember."

"Wait, seriously?" I asked, all the giggles shocked out of my system. I was only kidding about the diary part. I wondered how many diaries he'd written in over a thousand years.

"Of course not. I'm a vampire. I have perfect memory," he cracked. Now it was Eric's turn to throw his head back and laugh as I crossed my arms across my chest.

Rolling my eyes, I retorted, "Ha, ha. Very funny." And even as I went to get his drink, I could still hear him chuckling behind me.

He had sobered by the time I reentered the room. "You keep a rifle in your front hall closet?" he asked me, steepling his hands on the table.

I set his heated-up True Blood in front of him and shot him a quizzical look as I walked over to my chair. "Uh, yeah, Mister Random. How'd you know that?"

"I got bored waiting for the pizza delivery man," he shrugged. "Do you know how to use it?"

"The rifle? Yeah. I always played with Jason's BB gun when he was little, and once it became just Gran and me she made sure I knew how to shoot. Why?"

Eric took a sip from the bottle and airily replied, "Just checking. But perhaps you should keep it in a more accessible place?"

"What d'you mean? The front hall closet's a great hiding place. Gran's the one who stashed it there so she could shoot lawn snakes," I replied, still standing with a hand resting on the back of my chair instead of actually sitting down in it.

"Well, you have your own deadlier, bigger snake to shoot, if you know what I mean. And you spend so much time in your kitchen, and you even come into your house through the kitchen. Perhaps you should, ah, stash it somewhere in this room?"

I thought about it. Eric was making an awful lot of sense. I really did spend most of my time in this kitchen, and it kind if seemed like it'd be a hassle to run to the hall closet to get my rifle. "Alright. I'll go get it," I said, walking over to the front of the house.

He didn't say anything when I left, and he didn't say anything when I returned, but he was always watching me. When I entered the room, I stopped in front of him as I asked, "So, where do you think I should put it?"

Eric looked around. "Maybe the oven?"

I shook my head. "That'd be such a hassle every time I baked or cooked … having to remember to take the rifle out before I turned the oven or stove on."

Just then my stomach rumbled loudly, again, and I walked over to the counter and set the rifle on it. "Whatever, I'm hungry. We can think about this later."

Eric nodded, and I sat down and ate. After everything was cleaned up, I went upstairs and put on jeans and an old green zip-up hoodie with a white cami underneath, and just like that I was ready to go to Fangtasia. We took Eric's car over, because, as he good-naturedly teased, there was less of a chance of getting in an accident in his car, not just because it was less faulty but because people would drive more carefully around someone in a Corvette.

He laughed when I responded by saying the only reason why people drove more carefully around his Corvette was because he drove like a maniac in it.

I think I dozed for a little bit, or was just on the verge of dozing, when we got on the highway. Eric was thinking about something, that much I could tell through my half-lidded peripheral vision, but about what, I didn't know. I figured he'd tell me eventually, so I quit worrying about it and just relaxed. Or, at least, as much as I could with Eric's maniac driving.

After a while, we were at Fangtasia and Eric was getting out of his car and opening my door all before I could wipe the sleep out of my eyes. We walked into the building holding hands, something Pam's eyes zeroed in on as soon as we walked through the front entrance (it was nice out, and both Eric and I had been cooped up inside all day, though for very different reasons, and I wanted to experience it). As we had walked around the corner, I had commented on the lack of cars in the parking lot, and Eric told me they closed down for the night, so we could have as much privacy as possible when I read through the employees.

Now that I was actually in the building, I could only see one, besides Pam and Long Shadow: there was a fat, balding, and extremely nervous middle-aged man—Bruce, I gathered from his thoughts—who was sitting down in a chair in front of a table that had a chair facing Bruce, which I took to be mine.

Pam gestured to the seat, and I thanked her as I sat down in it. I smiled at her and said it was good to see her again, but she just tensely nodded back at me and fixed the hemline of her pink v-neck sweater. I couldn't tell if it was a vampire thing or a Pam thing, so I just let it go. I said hello to Long Shadow, and he bowed his head. He was wearing a ripped jeans vest and leather pants, of all things.

"Sookie, this is Bruce. He's our accountant," Eric explained, rather unnecessarily. He was standing next to me, and I nodded to show I understood. "We'd like you to read him first."

"And what will happen to the thief, once I found out who stole the money?" I asked, looking over to where Eric was standing on my right.

"If we can produce proof of the crime, we'll turn the culprit over to the police. You are doing us a favor by reading the employees, so we will do you a favor and yield to your wishes. This is to your liking, am I correct?" he replied.

It was exactly to my liking. "Good enough for me." I turned to look at Bruce, who was gaping at me. I guess his business interactions with Eric were a tad different than mine. I smiled charmingly, trying to ease his fears, and said, "Hi Bruce. My name is Sookie Stackhouse."

He smiled at me, or at least I think that's what he tried to do; it kinda looked more like a grimace, but he was really, really nervous. I leaned over and took a sweaty, cold hand in mine, so I could get a better reading on his thoughts.

'I didn't take the money, you'd have to have a death wish to steal from a vampire, 'specially a vampire like Eric Northman … If he doesn't kill the sucker that actually did steal this money, I will for endangering me like this … I don't even know what Lillian do if they kill me, probably take Bobby and Heather up north to her mom's and then my kids will be goddamn vegetarians and liberals, since Joyce hates red meat … I wish I didn't work for vampires anyway, I just needed the money real bad to pay for that stupid private school Lillian wanted, I don't care if it's the number one school in the state, it's fucking expensive … I swear to God I'll never work for these things again, how can this crazy woman find out who took the fucking money? Why doesn't she let go of me? What is she? She can't be a vampire, her hand is too warm and soft. Never seen her before … I should have found out earlier that the money was missing and found out who took it before I even said anything to Eric; just because I called him the very night he caught the error doesn't mean I took the money!'

"Bruce, did you take the money?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

"No," Bruce groaned, sweat running down his face.

I looked at Eric, then back at Bruce. "Do you know who did?"

"I wish," Bruce said shakingly.

I stood, turned to Eric, and shook my head. "Not this guy," I said. Pam escorted poor Bruce out, and Eric took his suit jacket off and hung it on the back of a chair. By the time he was done Pam had brought in the next interrogee. Ginger.

"Hi Miss Stackhouse! Haven't seen you in a while," she said foolishly, grinning.

"Hi Ginger," I said sweetly. She sat down in Bruce's chair and looked expectantly at me. "I'm gonna need to hold your hand for a couple minutes, okay?"

She looked at Eric, who nodded at her, and when he did she waved a careless hand at me, as if to say, "Begin, fellow vampire server."

My fingers circled her wrist. "Did you take the money?" I asked, staring into Ginger's flat brown eyes.

She screamed, then, and began to curse me, loudly and uninhibitedly. And, I might add, very creatively. I listened to the chaos in the girl's tiny brain; it was like trying to walk over a bombed site. She had been glamoured so many times I was surprised she was as lucid as she was. I got the sense there was a male vampire, one with a low voice and a shadowy face.

"She knows who did," I said to Eric. Ginger fell silent then, though she was sobbing. "She can't say the name. He's bitten her." I leaned over and touched the scars on Ginger's neck, like the vampires couldn't see them plainly as day.

"It's some kind of compulsion," I reported, after I'd tried again. "She can't even picture him. He glamoured her."

"Hypnosis," Pam commented. Her proximity to the frightened girl had made Pam's fangs run out. "A strong vampire."

"Bring in Belinda," I suggested. Ginger was shaking like a leaf by then with thoughts she was compelled not to think pressing her from their locked closet.

"Should she stay, or go?" Pam asked me directly.

I didn't hesitate, though I was flabbergasted Pam was asking me what to do. "She should go. It'll only scare someone else."

Pam escorted a sobbing, shaking Ginger out. It was just me and Eric and Long Shadow, who had been standing close to where Ginger, and earlier Bruce, had been sitting. He had not said a single word this whole time, nor had he actually moved.

The doors swung open and Pam led Belinda over to the interrogation chair. After exchanging the expected pleasantries with Belinda, I got right to the point and asked her what vampire Ginger had been seeing.

"Anyone that would have her," Belinda said frankly, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Eric smirk. I was pretty sure Pam was smirking too; she was standing behind me, so I couldn't see.

Then all of a sudden Long Shadow's face popped up in Belinda's mind, and I looked directly at him with my mouth open ready to accuse him.

But before I even took a breath he had sprung across the table and was right in front of me. I was bowled over backward, my chair breaking underneath me and my head hitting the floor; my upflung arms were the only things between my throat and his teeth, so he bit my forearm savagely, harder and much more painful than Eric had ever bitten me. I screamed, or I tried to, but with so little air left from the impact it was more like an alarmed choking noise.

I was only conscious of the heavy figure on top of me and the pain of my arm, my own fear. I hadn't thought I was going to die when I met Bill or was at the witch war, but now I knew that I had to keep Long Shadow as far away from me as possible if I wanted to be alive. My heart was pounding so hard it was all I could hear, that and some weird fuzzy noise that I thought was the sound of me losing my consciousness.

Then Long Shadow's body pressed violently against me, almost smothering me with the extra weight, and I had no idea why. I'd been able to see his eyes over the top of my arm. They were wide, brown, crazed, icy. Suddenly they dulled and seemed to almost flatten.

Blood gushed out of Long Shadow's mouth, and I gagged. His teeth relaxed, and his face fell in on itself. It began to wrinkle. His eyes turned into gelatinous pools. Handfuls of his thick black hair fell on my face.

I was shocked beyond moving.

Hands gripped my shoulder and began pulling me out from under the decaying corpse. I pushed with my feet to scrabble back faster. There wasn't an odor, but there was gross gunk that was black and hot and, I quickly realized, all that was left of Long Shadow.

There was a stake sticking out of his back. Or, what used to be his back. Now it was sticking out of what looked like a big hunk of steaming black tar.

I looked around wildly and saw Eric standing calmly behind me, a mallet in his hand. He was watching Long Shadow decay with an unreadable expression on his face.

I looked around some more and saw Pam standing by the door, her hand gripping Belinda's arm. The waitress looked as rocky as I must have.

Even the gunk began to vanish in smoke. We all stood frozen until the last wisp was gone. The carpet had a kind of scorched mark on it.

I looked up at Eric, who was staring at me as much as I was staring at him. "You'll have to get you an area rug," I finally said, completely out of the blue. I got to my feet and looked up at Eric.

"Your mouth is bloody," Eric said. He and Pam had fully extended fangs. They'd gotten pretty excited.

"He bled onto me," I said, shocked. I brought my fingers to my lips and felt the wet liquid.

"Did any go down your throat?" Eric had dropped the mallet, and he was looking me up and down.

"Probably," I replied, watching every step he took.

"Intriguing," Pam said. Her voice was dark and husky. She was eyeing Belinda in a way that would have made me distinctly nervous, but Belinda seemed to be preening, incredibly.

Eric was looking at me with interest, the same kind of interest that Pam had in Belinda. Suddenly he was a lot closer to me, so much closer that I couldn't see what Pam was doing with Belinda, but I could hear enough moans and groans to get an idea or a word-picture. Then all of a sudden it stopped, and I heard the door close.

"Where did they go?" I nervously asked Eric.

"Away," he said, not sounding very concerned. His eyes were looking up and down at my lips and cleavage, both of which were covered in blood. He licked his own lips and looked at me, eyes crackling with a blue intensity in a way I had never seen before.

"Your mouth is bloody," he repeated, and then he swooped down and was kissing me, pressing himself up against me, and backing me up against the door that was only a few feet behind me. I was still reeling from Long Shadow's attack and wasn't quite up to speed—Eric was kissing me? Eric was, incredibly, turned on by all of this? Eric was kissing the blood off of my lips and my cheeks and my jaw and … oh, my neck. That felt terrific.

Eric quickly unzipped my hoodie and yanked it off my, his lips never leaving mine. Once I was exposed in my cami, my formerly-white cami now forever stained in red, he stopped and pulled back a little to admire me. The lusty gaze in his eyes was borderline orgasm-inducing.

He went back to attacking my lips rougher and harder, but I was more than capable—and willing—to keep up with him. Once again, he made his way across my cheekbones, on my jaw line, down my neck, and into the little crevice of my collarbone, licking and sucking every inch of my skin and then some. His hands made their way to my breasts, cupping them and stroking too softly, too quickly.

His big, cool hands traveled down south, and he brought my cami over my head; I forced my hands to stop fisting his hair for the few seconds needed for him to leave me in just my bra. A few seconds later, and they were covered by Eric's hands, as he stroked them through the thin lace fabric. I closed my eyes and reveled in the sensations Eric was evoking.

He groaned and looked up at me as he hoarsely asked, "Do you know how long I've been waiting to do that?"

"Lick Long Shadow's blood?" I asked stupidly. Hey, I was running low on oxygen, with the kisses Eric had been bestowing onto me.

Thankfully, Eric didn't comment on my comment. Instead, he distractedly replied, "Lick you. Lick whatever's on you. I don't care."

He pressed his face in between my breasts and continued, "Do you know how long I've been waiting to do this?"

"Or this?" he asked, bending down so he could kiss his way down my stomach.

His fingers grazed the top button on my jeans, and he quickly undid it but still left the jeans where they were. "Or this?"

The look in his eye made me very aware of the fact that I was practically naked and he was fully clothed. And the look in his eyes, oddly enough, made me realize he was a vampire, and he was really acting like one now. His gaze was predatory, not caressing as it had been the last time he saw me naked, all those weeks ago. He was Eric hopped up on bloodlust or something, not the Eric I knew—well, either of them, I guess.

This was the first time we moved on from making out like horny teenagers—which we had only just started to do, too—and I didn't want it to be because I had blood on my boobs. This felt weird, and not in a good way.

Eric and I had just started our relationship again and it only now began to slightly, slightly resemble the one I had with Amnesiac Eric. Now? I felt like a fangbanger thrown at Eric to curb his bloodlust. Would he have kissed me like that, would he have taken my shirt off like that, if I didn't have blood all over me? No, I didn't think so. If Long Shadow hadn't attacked me, and Eric hadn't attacked him, then there wouldn't be all this blood to excite Eric, and we probably would have gone back to my house or sat around talking about what just happened. Instead, Eric was barely managing sentences with more than five words in them, and he was eyeing me like a starving dog eyes a juicy steak, which was the best comparison I could come up with.

Incredibly, I pushed his head away from where he was unzipping my zipper with his teeth. He looked up at me, the epitome of confused.

"Eric, snap out of it," I said nervously.

He just stared at me.

"Come on, go back to normal," I urged. "I don't want it to be like this."

"You don't want what to be like what?" he asked carefully, leaning back on his haunches. His fangs still hadn't popped down, and his pupils were still dilated.

"When we move on in our relationship … fuck, I'll just come out and say it, when we have sex or do anything that can be considered any type of sex, I want it to be because we both want it so we can be closer to the other person, not because I have blood splattered all over my body and you haven't fed from a human in a long amount of time," I explained, keeping my eyes on him the whole time.

With a huge effort, Eric reined himself in. "When you smell and look like that," he said, "I just want to fuck you and bite you and rub myself all over you."

That was pretty comprehensive, and I won't say I didn't have a second (split evenly between lust and fear) of picturing such activity.

He closed his eyes in deep concentration, and after a couple seconds his fangs popped back in his mouth. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you," I whispered.

Eric stood up and took a couple steps back, putting some distance between us. But he didn't say anything, and we just stared across at each other for a couple seconds.

"Follow me," he murmured, and he started to walk over to the door that led to the employee-only section. I stood still for a couple seconds, mulling it over, before I daintily put my cami back on and followed him. I trusted Eric.

He didn't say anything the whole time, and he walked a little in front of me. He led me to a new room, one that I hadn't been in before; it was past his office, and it was closest to the employee bathroom.

He opened the door for me. "I imagine you want to take a shower," he said, finally looking at me. I smiled and nodded gratefully. "Want" didn't even begin to cover it. "This is the employee shower. It's small and basic, but it will do the job. I'll find you a towel and some spare clothes."

"Thank you, Eric," I replied. "And I'm sorry about before."

He looked me evenly in the eyes, that crazy spark gone. "Everything you said was correct," he said hoarsely, "and you made some good points. I didn't mean to frighten you or push you to do something you didn't want to do."

"It's not that I didn't want it, it's that I didn't want it like that, under those circumstances," I explained.

"I understand." He paused. "I'll leave you to your shower."

He turned on his heel and walked away, and once I heard the door click behind him I started to undress. My clothes were disgusting, completely un-wearable. There was no hope of cleaning them. I was just glad I played it low-key tonight, and didn't wear a fancy Fangtasia dress.

Even though there was only a bar of soap and barely enough room for me to walk around in a circle, it was the best shower I ever had.

Once I was cleaned up as best as I could be, I hesitantly stuck my head out from behind the shower curtain and saw that Eric must have visited again. Or at least, I hoped it was Eric. Someone had pulled over a plastic chair and placed a towel, a big white t-shirt with the Fangtasia label splashed across it, and a pair of black shorts that I was used to the waitresses at Fangtasia wearing. I gratefully toweled myself off and put the clothes on; the shirt was so huge it covered the booty shorts entirely, but I didn't mind at all.

I wrapped the towel around my hair, kind of like a turban, and gingerly picked up my bloodied clothing. I'd probably just have to throw them out in the nearest trash can. I almost wanted to give them to Eric as a memento, but I thought that was weird.

I opened the door and looked around; Eric, or anyone else, was nowhere to be seen. Sighing, I decided I'd just go and see if Eric was in his office.

He was, lying down on the couch with one hand on his chest and the other folded behind his head; he had changed into a black tank top and olive green track pants. Once I closed the door and walked up to him, Eric sat up so there'd be room next to him.

"Where should I put these?" I asked, holding up my bloody clothes that I had smushed into a ball.

"I'll take them," he said, swiftly getting up and walking over to a closet to take out a laundry bag. "I'll just throw them in my dry-cleaning; I go to a vampire-operated place, so it'll be fine." He opened it and held it open for me, and I hesitantly dropped my clothes in.

"Thanks," I replied.

He waved a hand in the air. "I owe it to you, at the very least."

I didn't respond back to that. Instead, I cleared my throat and changed topics. "Can we go home now? I'm done for the night."

He nodded. "Of course," he said, and started walking over to the secret door.

Once we were outside I asked, "Won't Pam worry about where we went?"

"She's a smart girl. She'll figure it out."

"Oh. Um, are you going to get in trouble for killing Long Shadow?"

He shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I'll probably just have to pay a fine, but it's worth it."

"Okay. No more questions."

Eric laughed, but we both remained quiet for the rest of the way back to Bon Temps. I just stared out the window, unable to stop replaying Long Shadow's attacking and later death. Sometimes I caught Eric looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't say anything about it and he didn't either.

I didn't exactly feel like talking. I was pooped out to the nth degree. My day had sucked, and my night wasn't any better. I was exhausted—mentally, physically, emotionally—and I just wanted to go home and take another shower and put on my comfiest jammies and go to sleep. I felt like I'd cry if I had to do anything else.

As soon as Eric parked in my driveway I opened my door and got out of the car. Eric quickly exited too, but he was as quiet as a shadow as he walked behind me to the back porch. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, my hand reaching for the switch to turn on the light in the kitchen. I stilled when I felt a slightly warm liquid on the switch. That wasn't right.

Eric started to say something, but I didn't hear it because I screamed as soon as I turned the light on. There was blood everywhere in my kitchen, and I wildly looked around to try and find the source. I looked up and finally found what caused it—Tina, my poor cat Tina, the only other person living in the house, was where all the blood was coming from.

Her mangled body was wrapped on one of the wings of the ceiling fan, and blood was coming down from her like her body was a lawn sprinkler. I was hit across the face with my cat's blood, and I shrieked at the top of my lungs.

…

Just a heads up … if you have me on author alert, then you've already seen that I wrote a o/s for the weekly challenge over on the Sookieverse thread; the prompt was to give Sookie your life or job, and I wrote about Record Store Sookie (and by association, Record Store Eric).

It's called Behind The Music and you should read it! I'd put the link here, but with the copying and pasting and spaces, it's probably just easier to go to my profile. Like, NAO. :D

Enjoy True Blood tonight! You know I'll have my fingers crossed for Franklin Mott.