AN: Whooooo boy. How much do you guys hate me? I won't waste your time with a long drawn out apology, I'll just say that I really am so sorry this took so long, I completely lost touch with not only this fic but True Blood in general - somewhere around series 5 I just completely lost interest at where all the plots were going and I just got on a downer with the whole thing, so this fic suffered majorly as a result. That said, I haven't finished series 5 or watched anything of series 6 (I think that's where the show's at, now?) so if I write something that is utterly contradicted somewhere in what I haven't watched, I'm really sorry. I am planning on watching them eventually, I just...not right now, to be honest. The other issue I'm having right now is the fact that I am desperate to go through and re-write this fic but I'm trying to resist the temptation until it's finished.
I've also been having trouble working around all the threads and sections that are happening in the show at the point when this chapter takes place, so hopefully things do make sense. The next chapter is well on its way, but I can't promise when it'll be ready because, well - I'm incredibly unreliable! But I will endeavor to have it done soon, I promise you that.
Anyway, enough with excuses! I hope there are still some readers out there - if you're still here, thank you so much for sticking with me even though I've been a shitty author. Any feedback you have is massively appreciated and I'm going to try replying to reviews for the previous chapter over the next few weeks.
The title is from Demons by Imagine Dragons.
Regaining consciousness was a quick thing. One second Elliot's head was hanging, shoulders slumped forwards against the ropes that were holding her tight against a chair, and the next she was staring around with wide eyes and fury on her lips.
"What the fuck is going on?" she demanded, blinking hard and pulling in a deep breath. Her head was throbbing at the base of her skull, sending spiderwebs of black dancing across her vision, but it was receding oddly quickly. She didn't feel even remotely concussed, which was weird but Elliot wasn't about to question it.
There was a tall woman standing in the doorway opposite her, lounging against the frame with a smug smile hanging all over her lips. "You're in my world now, sweet," she said smoothly, walking forwards and bending a little to look her captive in the eye. Elliot scowled, trying to shift backwards as the woman extended a finger, trailing it down one cheek in a mockingly gentle caress.
"Get the fuck away from me," she bit out furiously, feet skittering on the floor of what she realised was, or used to be, Sookie's living room. "What have you done? Jesus Christ." The woman had straightened abruptly, was staring at her with widened eyes and lips parted with shock. She jabbed two fingers against Elliot's forehead and Elliot pushed out with her mind, furious and tired and hurting and done.
The woman staggered backwards but she didn't fall, only gaped at Elliot with undisguised surprise for a single second before her expression had wiped clean. "Oh, wow," she breathed, coming closer again and there was a flash of something dark behind her eyes now, something Elliot really didn't want to have to deal with. "Where did you come from?"
"Town," Elliot ground out. "I want my car, and I want you to leave me the fuck alone, and I want to get the fuck out of here." She pulled in her shoulders, trying to loosen her wrists but they were knotted too tightly; the only way she was getting out of this was if she suddenly became very handy at using a knife with her backside.
"Leave you alone?" the woman repeated with a tittering of high-pitched laughter that sent Elliot's skin crawling. "A precious thing like you? Darling. No." She drifted closer but this time Elliot shoved out with energy before she got close enough to touch and the woman fell back again. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Elliot registered that it was too easy to control, too easy to grasp and push and twist the energy. She was used to blasting out with it without meaning to, was now also used to manipulating small things and guiding them with a fierce concentration, but this was far, far too easy.
Elliot blinked, turning her focus inward, checking herself over. Even in just the short time she'd been awake, her head had stopped hurting entirely. She could feel the discomfort of slowly drying blood at the back of her neck, but other than that there was no pain to tell that she'd just been knocked out cold by a hard blow to the skull. The waves of energy she'd let out hadn't tired her, either; she'd pushed out in the shop before running here and pushed twice more at the woman but there was no nagging drain at the back of her mind.
Grasping for it once again, Elliot looked sharply at the woman and shoved against her with a single-minded fury and this time she went staggering backwards, far enough to fall. It only made her laugh but Elliot still wasn't tiring and she felt...she felt almost godlike. As the final lingering effects of waking up disappeared she became slowly aware of the things around her, the strands in the ropes that bound her, the knots in the wooden legs of the chair she was sitting on. She could feel the door behind her, the windows and the flickering candles, could feel the shape of the woman as she climbed to her feet, pressing against the air with her own energy. That was bad; whatever the woman was, it wasn't normal. Elliot could feel her presence pulsating in the air around her like a mass of storm clouds, stinging with thunder and swollen with rain; blackness and insanity and pure, nothing-else-matters motive.
"How are you doing that?" the woman questioned with an eager curiosity, stalking closer again and stopping just short of arm's reach. Elliot didn't bother trying to shove her back again; while she didn't appear to be getting tired, she was sure she would eventually and the woman didn't seem in the least bothered by being thrown about. More than that, though, a sick, curling dread had awoken in her stomach, coupled with an intense sort of hurt that had her jerking forwards a little, wondering if her chest was about to collapse in on itself. She knew the feeling, knew it well; it had haunted her for a long, long time, had never really stopped; grief. More specifically, Eric's grief. He must be awake, would realise soon that Elliot was absent, would come looking her for, would find her and she wasn't ready to deal with him, didn't have the strength to demand that he leave her alone, not when she still wanted him close. Not when she wasn't really sure within herself why she was angry at him, not at the bones of it. Not when she knew that if she saw him all the hard work she'd put into running would be scattered like ashes on the wind, because she didn't want to leave him, she was just too scared to stay.
"How are you doing that?" the woman repeated, stalking closer.
"No idea," Elliot said, quite honestly dragging herself upright. Panic. Fear. Emotions that were familiar to Elliot, the most familiar, and yet they were strangers to her blood, not borne of her own self but from Eric, his blood, his emotion. It was hard to untangle them from her own, hard to make herself realise that she wasn't panicking, that her heart didn't need to start pounding painfully against her ribs - it was Eric's panic, but her body was reacting to it before she could stop it. "I guess I'm just really, really done with this fucking crazy town." Never trust a small town. Never. She should have known that it looked too innocent, too quiet, the people just too friendly to be quite normal.
"Oh no," the woman said, walking a lazy circle around the chair Elliot was bound to, trailing one manicured hand over the wooden back and her captive's shoulders as she did so. "It's in your blood. I can smell it - I can taste it, I just want to..." She cut herself off, fingers digging almost painfully into Elliot's shoulders as she heaved in a deep breath and her energy hummed malevolently.
Not waiting to see exactly what it was she was trying to do, Elliot shoved out with her own energy again, too freaked out to do anything else. The woman fell back, her hands coming away and leaving Elliot free to struggle against the ropes, more desperate than ever to get away because it sounded almost like the woman wanted to fucking eat her or something equally horrible and she was running out of time, Eric's initial spike of worry settling into something that felt more like furious determination.
"Maryann? We got the organs!"
And wasn't that a sentence that should never be uttered with that amount of cheer. A guy Elliot had seen in Merlotte's with Tara came barrelling into the room with bloodied hands, grinning in a detached sort of way, eyes shining black as he turned his head to take in the sight before him.
"Oh, fantastic!" the woman - Maryann, apparently - purred, forgetting about Elliot and moving towards the door, leading the guy back out and leaving the room empty but for the woman tied to the chair.
"I'll just wait here, then," Elliot muttered to herself, pushing her shoulders back again to try and work her wrists loose but having no more luck than she had before. She leaned as far as she could to the side to try and see where Maryann and her organ collector had gone but the hallway was empty, the open door leading out onto the porch showing her nothing but the gathering darkness outside.
Having asserted that she was alone, Elliot settled back against the chair and closed her eyes. She wasn't sure how the blood bond worked, but she tried hard to send a kind of shut the fuck up for a moment feeling towards Eric; it was hard to concentrate with him swirling around inside her. Elliot pulled in a deep breath, closed her eyes, focused. She pushed emotion away - hers and Eric's, sealed it off, thought about the ropes. Thick, wound tight, old. Probably from Sookie's shed. Not the strongest, but strong enough. Elliot sought deeper, picking the strands apart inside her head, willing them to fray and snap as she worked to peel them apart, gratified to feel that the bonds were loosening as she worked on them.
How long it took, she didn't know, but by the time Elliot's hands were free and she was looking up, the sky outside was dark enough that Eric could most certainly leave the hotel, and she felt a little dizzy from focusing so hard.
"Tara? TARA?" A screech from the hallway had her jumping so hard she banged into the chair behind her before the voice registered as familiar.
"Sookie?" Elliot burst out before she could stop herself, moving towards the door. There was a murmur of surprise, quick footsteps and then the blonde was hurrying towards her, Bill looming over the telepath's shoulder with his eyebrows slightly arched (which was about as close to fucking alarmed as he got).
"Elliot? What happened? What are you doing here?"
"We have to get out of here, there's this woman, she's fucking crazy Sook, there's a meat statue thing in your front yard and she's...I don't know what she is, she's not human," Elliot said quickly, her words almost stumbling over each other in her haste to get them all out before Maryann reappeared. Sookie was staring in dismay at the living room, shock written plainly over her features when her cell rang and she jumped.
"We need to leave," Bill said in the kind of voice that invited no argument, turning to stare imploringly at Sookie.
"Be right there," the blonde said into her phone with her eyes on the vampire, snapping it shut without another word and reaching for Elliot and Bill. "C'mon!"
"Is Tara okay?" Elliot asked as she started towards the door, stopping a second before she crashed into Bill and staggering back a step, staring wide-eyed at Maryann, suddenly very glad that they had the vampire with them. Fear lanced through her, quickly echoed by a burst of worry that she assumed was Eric's response. Elliot forced herself to calm down, willing Eric's emotions to leave her alone for a damn minute while she tried to think straight.
"What are you doing in my house?" The words were spoken with icy fury coupled with a terrifyingly calm expression that made Elliot's spine want to curl back on itself.
"This is not your house," Sookie snarled in reply, ignoring the warning touch Bill pressed against her wrist and shit did the woman want to get them all killed?
"It is now," Marayann smirked, pacing a step closer so everyone moved backwards, further into the room and away from the exit. Elliot scanned their surroundings, noting the wooden frames still in the glassless windows and wondering how easy they would be to break; they were the only other way out of the room.
Bill pushed ahead of Sookie, moving her behind him with a sweep of his arm that pushed her into Elliot's side. "I strongly suggest you remove yourself immediately," he said loudly, and though Elliot couldn't see she was sure he'd clicked his fangs into place, shoulders high and aggressive as he towered at the imposter. If it came to a fight, Elliot had no idea who would win; normally she'd place all bets on a vampire, but Maryann was an unknown entity and her energy swirled around her like a brewing storm, like nothing Elliot had ever felt before. It screamed dangerous more than fangs ever had, or could ever hope to; the only sensible option that could possibly exist in the face of such a creature was to run but the one they had was to fight.
"My, you found yourself quite the specimen," Maryann commented as she looked Bill up and down, utterly unmoved by the threat Elliot had hoped he presented to her. "Though," she added, "I daresay there's nothing stopping him from one day leaving you cold."
"You don't scare me." Sookie's words had barely left her mouth before Maryann had her by the throat and her back had hit the wall and Elliot and Bill both jumped at once. Elliot's hand was outstretched, her power half called to the surface but Bill was faster, leaping forwards and wrenching Maryann away with a grunt.
"Go now!" he ordered, bearing down and biting furiously and for one moment Elliot thought that might be it, that it would all end just like that, but then Maryann clutched at Bill's neck, pulling him closer as though they were lovers.
"Yes!" she cried out, her back arching. "Ravage me! Ravage me!"
Bill threw himself backwards, spluttering blackness and retching before he almost collapsed to his knees, Elliot and Sookie grabbing him at once. This time, the worry and the fear was entirely Elliot's; could vampires be poisoned?
"Bill?! What did you do to him?" Sookie demanded, voice high in her panic and almost drowned out by the maniacal laughter ringing through the room. Elliot fell to her knees as Bill's legs gave out, dragging her down with him as Sookie rounded on Maryann as though any of them were a match for her.
"What are you?" the woman questioned with the same delightful curiosity she had spoken to Elliot with earlier, stalking towards Sookie with an unnatural light in her eyes.
"None of your business!" Sookie yelled, throwing out her arm. A blinding flash of light cracked through the room and Maryann was tossed backwards, dazed enough to give Sookie a chance to grab Bill, she and Elliot heaving him to his feet and supporting him to the door as Maryann collapsed into hysterical laughter behind them.
Bill spewed more black blood across the gravel as they hurried to the still-running car the two had arrived in, coughing like his lungs were coming out. "Stay with him," Elliot directed, yanking open the back door and bundling him inside, Sookie climbing in after and pressing her hands gently against his neck, saying his name over and over as Elliot clambered into the front and slammed the door.
She shoved the car into reverse and twisted to look over her shoulder before racing down the driveway at breakneck speed, skidding a little as she turned roughly at the bottom and powered away. "Where to?" she asked, her voice too loud as she overcompensated for how scared she was, trying to pump her tone full of confidence instead of terror and missing the mark by enough to be obvious. Sookie didn't comment, just stared at Bill for a minute before her eyes met Elliot's in the rearview mirror.
"Lafayette's," she replied after a beat. "He has Tara there, they might know what's going on - Bill? Bill!" Sookie's calmness was washed away as the vampire leaned out the window, choking on black bile and blood, spitting it out into the road and shuddering enough that Elliot could feel it against the back of her seat.
"I'm alright," Bill said weakly, the car creaking a little as he leaned back.
"No you are not alright," Sookie snapped, and as Elliot cast a glance at Bill in the mirror she couldn't help but agree with the blonde; her vampire looked about as close to dying as something already dead could get, lips black, eyes hooded, shoulders hunched. He looked like shit. "None of this is alright, I'm calling Eric," Sookie said forcefully.
"NO!" The car swerved right into the other lane as Elliot swung around to stare wild-eyed at Sookie and she righted them hastily, heart pounding. "We can't call Eric."
"I will not turn to Eric," Bill hissed, wrenching himself upright as though he could fool them both that he was fine by doing so. He probably did need Eric; the guy had lived for a thousand years, he'd probably know what was going on, but Elliot was selfish enough to not care about that as much as she cared about not seeing the blond vampire for as long as humanly possible.
"I've got to get you to Doctor Ludwig," Sookie said helplessly, looking back and forth between Bill and Elliot as though expecting one of them to suddenly decide that yes, they wanted Eric to come and save the day. Neither of them did.
"He's probably on his way anyway," Elliot said grudgingly. She didn't think the Viking was going to let it slide that she'd run out on him, especially given the fact that her fear had undoubtedly given away the fact that something wasn't right.
Silence reigned for a moment and Bill gulped down breaths of the cool air rushing in the open window, settling back against the seat, apparently done with vomiting for the moment. "What happened back there?" he questioned instead of replying to Sookie. "What did you do to her?"
"Yeah, kinda wondering that myself," Elliot added, eyes flicking to the blonde. "What the fuck, you suddenly turned into like, Thor or something."
"I don't know, I swear," Sookie admitted, shaking her head and sounding about as worried by that fact as Elliot herself was. "It was Maryann that attacked me in the woods - even though I don't have a scar, I could feel her there on my back when she was touching me - turn right, here."
"There's something weird about her - like, beyond the whole meat shrine, vandalism shit," Elliot said, turning right without bothering to use the turn signal; the roads were so quiet it was entirely unnecessary. "I could feel her, I don't know, energy or something, like how I can feel mine, I guess? Only hers was black, it felt just wrong - she's not human, not even close. Nothing I've ever come across before."
"Nor me," Bill put in, his voice a low growl. "I will kill her."
"Good," Sookie said, unexpectedly vicious. "How?"
"Tara has been under Maryann's influence - maybe she can be of some help to us," Bill suggested, glancing out the windshield at the dark roads ahead of them, outlining in shadow the way to Lafayette's house. "Give me your wrist so I can heal."
Elliot reached out for the radio at that, not particularly wanting to listen to Bill sucking the blood out of his girlfriend because it was kind of gross but mostly because it made her think of Eric and Eric's blood and her drinking it and holy shit her escape had so not gone according to plan. She didn't know why she was surprised; nothing in her life ever did.