Chapter 14: The Secret
Raven didn't have to look twice at the faces of her coven - or Tara - to know they wanted to protect Sookie from the Authority. Without a word she walked straight into the study and started to look for the small yellow object, she knew had somewhere. Her coven followed her into the room, confused.
"What are you doing? What are you looking for?"
"The Sookie pawn I made for Eric," she explained, her gaze going through each shelf carefully. It was a small yellow crystal. Cone-shaped? Where did she put it?
"The what?" Jesus asked.
"That's how I met Eric," Raven went on. "When Sookie disappeared last year, he went looking for her and ended up finding me, and - Ah!" She stretched her arm, went up on her tippy toes and caught the crystal she was looking for, hiding between a jar of desert knotgrass and Boreal felt lichens.
The pawn radiated warmth and felt much heavier in her hand than she remembered. She waved her hand, summoning a specific map in mind - the detailed Louisiana one - which came floating out of a cupboard and unrolled itself on top of the table. Raven performed the quick spell and the cone moved on the paper.
"Das not her house," Lafayette mentioned, studying the map.
"No.. That's a field on MacNab's farm. What the hell is she doing there?" Holly asked. "Do you think it's a trap? Do you think they already got her?!"
Raven looked up and saw Eric standing by the door with Pam.
"Only one way to find out," He told her with a nod.
And then, with no goodbye, he left.
Eric left the Blackwood house to go find Sookie before Compton or one of his little birds found her first, and hopefully, this wasn't a trap. There was no telling him no when it came to Sookie. She was the reason why she met Eric in the first place and Raven was well aware of how far he would go for her. A little piece of her heart ached because of it, and she tried to convince herself not to hurt. Raven told herself that what they had was just sex out of convenience. The deep attraction that pulled them together was just physical. She remembered the way his arms held her close to his hard body. The way his tongue explored her mouth and traced her skin. How his fingertips combed her hair. They were the simplest touches, but the way it made her feel, it was more like an explosion. She never had sex like that. She never felt anything like it with anyone she had ever been. Just being near him filled a hole in her chest. Maybe it was because they bonded through some shared trauma? Or he was just good at sex because he was a very old, very hot vampire? Yeah, no, it was fine. She was going to be fine. He means
Eric means noth
God I can't even say it in my head.
Raven felt her face blush. Anyway, back to Sookie Stackhouse - just the mention of the blonde's stupid name annoyed her - and apparently she wasn't alone in the sentiment.
Tara ran her mouth on the fairy while she sat on Raven's bed watching her at the sewing machine. Nothing she picked out of Eric's closet fit her short and beautifully muscular frame. It was all too long on the hips, too loose on the chest and tight on the arms. They were Pam's clothes so naturally, they wouldn't fit. Raven was making adjustments to a black blouse Tara picked out of the bunch. Raven offered Tara one of her own satin dresses - she had an armoire full of them! But the vampire turned it down in an instant. Her loss, satin slip dresses were very comfortable. Outside, it thundered and it made the windows lightly shake. She liked the sound of rain, but it hadn't started raining yet. Soon, she hoped.
Downstairs she could hear Pam (very loudly) discovering the lack of Wi-Fi. That was an addition to the house Raven had been putting off for years, but she just never got around to. I guess I'm about to regret that now.
"Wait til Sookie gets here," Tara muttered, rolling her eyes.
"Can't wait."
"Lord give me patience," she went on. "Cause if you give me strength Imma kill her."
Raven couldn't help but laugh. She changed the bobbin to match the thread colour on the blouse. She adjusted the tension on the top thread since this fabric was thicker than the satin from her own dresses.
"How did you learn all that?" Tara asked, trying to change subjects.
"What, how to sew?" Raven laughed "I've been a seamstress since before the sewing machine was invented. I like it though, it makes the process go much faster. And I have always made my own clothes,"
"If you can sew that well, then why the fuck do you always wear the same shit?!" Tara asked.
"Fashion changes too quickly now, I'm tired of making a whole new wardrobe every couple years. Little black dresses have been in fashion for some decades now, so I stuck with it."
"Little on the nose, don't you think? Witch wearin' a black dress?"
"I've been living by myself for a long time now. There's no one around to impress unless you count my chickens."
"You have chickens?"
"Had. The alligators in the backyard ate them," which reminded her, there would be no eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Maybe Pam will blow up the place before sunrise, so it wouldn't be a problem anyway.
Raven continued, opening the stitches on the blouse's arm. Designers nowadays left no seam allowance and it greatly annoyed her.
Thinking of the devil, Pam appeared on the doorway. "Also, that top is Alexander McQueen so if you ruin it I'll have to kill you," Pam warned her, raising her perfectly sculpted brow and glaring with her cold icy blue eyes.
"In a killing mood, are you Pam?" Raven teased.
"Nah, that's just her personality," Tara explained, and Raven couldn't help but laugh again.
Raven hadn't laughed in a while, let alone with other women in her bedroom. It felt… Familiar.
"If I could go back in time and warn myself I'd be stuck in the backcountry with a bunch of witches, no internet and fuckin' Sookie Stackhouse I woulda true deathed myself right then and there,"
"You would have died, yes. Time travel is forbidden." Raven explained, not realizing Pam wasn't serious. The blonde vampire just blinked at her twice, so Raven continued. "It's in the Book of Shadows if anyone ever successfully performs a forbidden spell, the Circle of Mages takes you to court at the next witching hour, and I have yet to witness anyone be found not guilty at any trial."
"Ugh, what's the fuckin' point of having power if you can't even use it? It sounds a whole lot like the Authority and the stupid-ass Vampire Ministry," Pam rolled her eyes. "What else can't you do?"
Lafayette appeared in the doorway, keeping a respectful distance from Pam. "Necromancy, fuckin' with the seasons, lunar cycles, creating new creatures, yadda yadda yadda -" Lafayette explained before adding. "Eric and Sook are back."
Eric flew over through the clouds headed to a random field to fetch his second favourite blonde. But something caught his eye - lightning. But it wasn't quite normal lightning. It had different shades of violet and yellow and it was coming from… The ground? He flew faster, not even realizing it was coming to the place he was going anyway. Eric landed in the middle of an empty field, and lo and behold who did he ever find in the middle of tall golden grass.
"Sookie!" He called out.
But the petite woman cried and yelled angrily at the sky, waving her arms above her head, throwing balls of light at the clouds. Surely this would attract the attention of anyone looking for her.
"Sookie, stop!" He told her, rushing to her and grabbing her wrists.
"Let go of me, Eric!" She shouted at him amidst tears.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"I'm getting rid of this!" She yelled. "I am getting rid of this fuckin' power that never brought me any good! It just ruins everything!"
She cried again, this time in his chest. This was not the Sookie Stackhouse he usually knew. This was more like a faded memory of a different time when Sookie had feelings for him. Or some version of him, at least. She crumbled in his arms, hugging him tight and he just held her. Eric didn't really do… Comforting. Not like this anyway.
"I only left for like… Five minutes," he joked. "You don't have to fall apart like this."
"Fuck you, Eric!" She cried again. "Don't pretend you don't have a hand in my life falling apart!"
He pushed her away so he could look at her big brown eyes. "What happened to you?"
She blurted out a long story that Eric could only care for about 15 seconds. Sookie's powers, due to her only being part fairy, were limited. Meaning one day they would be gone and she would be a normal human. Eric's first instincts were to tell her to stop throwing her power away, mostly because that would make her blood normal. It would make her lovely scent of honey and wheat and sunshine, disappear. It would make her uninteresting and just annoying. Still very hot, but annoying. But actually, he couldn't be bothered to tell her. She was no longer his problem and he learned to like it that way.
"...And now all of my friends hate me, Sam won't return my calls, Jason is busy doin' God knows what and I have a ghost in my bathroom and Lafayette won't help me unless I pay him, but I have no money and-"
Eric put his cold finger on her lips, shushing her. "Sookie, I was being polite. I don't actually care, I just came here to fetch you."
"Fetch me?!"
"You, as always, got your nose in something you shouldn't. The Authority is looking for Raven and I, and they will use you as bait."
"The Authority? Just ask Bill for help, he's the King, isn't he?"
Eric chuckled. "Yeah, he's the one after me."
"How do you know they'll use me as bait?"
"Because it's what I would do."
"Oh. Well, if you don't actually care," she mocked him. "And Raven doesn't even know me, it wouldn't even work. Unless," she paused, crossing her arms. "You do care."
Eric blinked for a second. As much as he would like to think Sookie was not his, that he did not love her, and she was no longer his problem... If push came to shove, gun to Sookie's head, would he actually fall for it?
"Maybe. But you are wrong. Your friends do care about you, and they are also bunkered down with Raven and I," He was halfway down, ready to pick her up and fly away and she skipped back.
"Friends?" She asked.
"From Raven's coven. Jesus, Lafayette, some blonde lady and Tara. I'm sure Pam will be ecstatic to see you, too." He added, sarcastically.
"Didn't you hear a word I said? They hate me. Tara won't even look at me. I ain't coming."
"Yeah, this is not up for debate." He picked her up and she let out a loud scream and started kicking and slapping him. Or trying to slap him? She wasn't very strong.
"They don't want to see me, not even painted in gold!"
"Yeah, whatever." He jumped high in the sky, and Sookie instantly stopped hitting him and hugged him instead.
"Wait. You aren't locking me in the basement at Fangtasia, are you?"
"No Sookie," he told her annoyed. Apparently his days of doing that were over.
A wave of dread just washed over him. He was about to be quarantined with humans, witches and his nest in a magic house for an undetermined amount of time. Sookie and Raven were about to be under the same roof. Fuck. A threesome maybe? No. He didn't like sharing. He landed in front of the empty-looking lot, 20 feet or so of where he remembered the house was. If he missed, he would end up flying into the invisible building and that would surely piss off Raven. Once firm on the ground, he dropped Sookie like a sack of flour, making a big thump.
"Eric!" She complained.
"Get up," he ordered.
"Where are we?"
"Follow me,"
"There's nothin' here." She cried, cleaning her shorts off dirt and getting up.
Eric walked towards the lake and at one point he felt the veil on his skin. The invisibility spell was like a giant curtain you could walkthrough if you got too close to the house. The black victorian home still sat by the lake, majestically. The yellow lights from the inside shone brightly like a lighthouse. It was surreal that he could see right through it, just a few steps back.
"Eric? Where did you go!?" Sookie called out. The blonde hadn't taken a single step. She is really slow today, God fucking dammit.
"Just walk forward," he called out, and that's when it happened.
A blur had come from somewhere in the woods and swept Sookie in a headlock, she let out a howling scream.
"Hello my darling, oh, but how I've missed you!" Russell Edgington laughed sniffing her hair in a deep inhale. His fangs came out and grazed Sookie's neck while she flailed, trying to pull away. "I have dreamed of your lovely scent for so long!"
"Eric!" Raven called out from the front door. "Don't move, he can't see you."
He felt in battle mode. His muscles tense and ready, every bone in his body was awake. His whole human life flashed through his eyes. He remembered how his baby brother died in his arms. The cold frightened stare his mother died with. His father's crownless head, covered in blood. The cold maniacal laugh that echoed through the woods right after the slaughter.
He burned so hot with rage, he could just explode right then and there. The bitter taste of revenge he had during the past year knowing Edgington was dying the slowest of deaths, trapped in silver and cement did not satisfy the hunger for death he had felt his whole life. Had he killed him a year ago, the Authority would have never hauled him, Bill and Raven to New Orleans. He would have been in this house, sure, but alone. Alone with her. He looked at the pale woman just a few steps away from him. The moonlight made her skin glow, and her hair was never darker than just now. She didn't want him to go, she wanted him safe with her, under the veil of her magic. In another life, this would have been everything I could ever want.
But in this one there would be no more half measures. It had to end. Russell had to die, or Eric had to die trying.
She knew he was going to run towards Russell before he even did it. She begged with her eyes, but it was in vain. Eric appeared right in front of Russell in the next second. The three of them stood in the field right by the clearing, the almost full moon shining bright in the clear sky. Her whole coven watched from the porch, Tara held Pam with all her strength. Pam quietly cried, moaning her maker's name.
"Eric! What a surprise!" Russell laughed.
"Let her go!" Eric roared, in a voice so filled with rage it chilled her.
"You know what? I'm sick of you Northman," he spat. "Sookie, my dear," he spun the petite fairy so she faced him. "Don't go anywhere."
Then he raised Sookie off the ground and slammed the woman on the ground. Her scream cut through the night like a sharp knife, muffling the sounds of her shin bones breaking. She collapsed on the ground. Holly and Lafayette gasped loudly.
"Raven you gotta do something!"
"I am not risking all of you for her!" She barked.
"If you don't, I will!" Lafayette threatened her.
She glared at him: he was not joking. "Pam, you can run with your vampire speed and fetch Sookie-"
"Fuck her!" Pam hissed. "Eric is about to die right in front of y'all and you want me to save Sookie fuckin' Stackhouse?"
"Can't you use your levitation spell to drag her here?!" Jesus yelled.
"Levitation magic doesn't work on living beings!" She explained.
Fuck. Eric and Russell circled each other, waiting for the next one to make the first move. Raven had another idea, she could teleport there and back quickly. She had teleported 2 people at once just the night before. She would go in, grab Sookie, but... She would have to land back blindly as the house was invisible from where Sookie was. Well, she's done blind landings the night before too. As she drew the words in her mouth, the vampires spoke.
Eric and Russell circled each other, waiting for the next one to make the first move.
"I will fuckin' bathe in your blood when I'm done with you," Eric spat through his teeth.
"Bold of you to assume you are walking out of this. I should have killed you 1100 years ago, along with your pathetic little family," Russell said cooly.
Raven's heart sank at those words and she froze. That was why Eric buried Russell alive and didn't kill him a year ago. Making Russell suffer wasn't one of his sadistic games, it was personal. Raven remembered the killing spree she went through after losing her own family. In the middle of the night, she visited all three judges in their big fancy houses and crushed their throats with her own hands. She buried the Warden alive in a shallow grave and listened to him scream underground until she didn't hear him anymore. The Selectmen who raided her house - she butchered them alive in her basement. And then, there was Damien Williams. She dragged him to the woods and burned him in a pyre, slowly - just his feet and legs. Then she let him rot alive for two days, while he slowly died of infection. His screams were music to her ears. She was consumed by blind rage after she lost her family. To this day, she didn't regret any of it. She promised Godric she would make the men suffer, and she did. Those days were the darkest place she had ever been and hadn't she killed the men responsible for the death of her coven, she probably would still be there.
She then understood Eric's darkness. He never got his revenge. He never avenged anyone he loved and lost. That's why he was so possessive of anyone that ever got close to him. He doesn't have room for any more darkness. In a blink of an eye, Eric and Russell were in a deadly fight. They were so fast she could barely understand what was happening. Sookie sobbed and crawled on her elbows through the grass, while the two vampires tore pieces off each other. The field was getting coated in red.
Her feet were moving before she even acknowledged what was happening. She stepped off the porch towards the field. She knew what she was going to do. Eric would hate her, but hopefully, he would understand.
She felt the veil brush her skin. Sookie looked up at her and crawled faster.
"Oh thank God! Raven!" Sookie called, her small hand reaching for the witch, but Raven walked right past her. "No! NO! Raven Please help me!"
"Nunc somnum," Raven muttered and Sookie passed out right in the grass.
This caught Russell's attention. "This is perfect!" He exclaimed. "Two tasty treats! And they will taste so much better knowing I took them from you!"
Eric's eyes darkened and he lunged at Russell, who threw him ten feet over. Eric was about to lunge again when Raven took a deep breath and held her amulet.
"Russell Edgington!" She called out.
A wave of green light pulsed from her chest and swallowed the whole field for a second, like a ripple in the water. Russell's face softened for a second while he glared at her.
"Kneel," she ordered.
The man obeyed with no questions. The amulet shined bright green between her fingers. Eric stood still, watching. His clothes were torn and the gashes on his chest and arms healed, leaving dark blood on his pale skin.
Eric looked at her chest and then at Russell. He approached slowly and circled around him before glaring at Raven again. She nodded at him
"Kill the man who killed your family, Eric," she told him softly. "There is no high road when it comes to this. I only found peace when I killed everyone who killed my family."
"HA!" Russell let out a cold laugh that echoed in the woods that confused her for a moment. "You didn't tell her?!" Russell exploded with a certain twinkle in his eye.
He leaned forward and grabbed Russell's jaw with his whole hand.
"You're done," Eric told him.
His other hand flew right into Russell's chest, and out it came with his heart. Russell's body started to grey and shrivel. Then, he turned into a red thick liquid all at once.
The amulet's light ceased. It now sat on her chest as a light jade colour, not nearly as green as it was before. Controlling Russell for those few seconds took a lot of magic, but there was still some left. Hopefully, this stunt didn't curse her forever.
However, Russell's last words still lingered heavily in the air. "Tell me what, Eric?"
A.N: The secret that Eric is hiding from her can be found in Chapter 11 (if you need to jog your memory)
Writer's block has been officially conquered! Hurray! The next 3 chapters are done!
I'll try my best to post more often in the next upcoming weeks, I think everyone can agree that fanfiction has always been a good escape from reality, and it is needed now more than ever. However, I am a healthcare worker and I'm working like crazy with the pandemic. So I hope to have time/energy to continue posting at least weekly like I used to (simpler times they were).
Stay inside, stay safe, stay healthy.
