Chapter 6

For the next two nights, Sookie withdrew. When Pam insisted, Sookie rose just long enough to drink, and then she went back to bed. Ostensibly to rest and heal, but Pam suspected that it was just as much to escape any more conversation. And reality.

It was fine with Pam. It gave her time to think. She ordered clothes for Sookie that she hoped would fit, at least enough to afford her some sense of dignity. She ordered some for herself, too, because she felt like it. She read and watched trashy television and exchanged some risque texts with a couple of pets and even chatted a bit with Maude, the Queen of Minnesota.

After her conversation with Sookie, she'd called Eric and filled him in. He had been pestering Pam ever since, calling and texting and being a complete nuisance. Now that he knew that Sookie was a telepath - had been one since before she'd been turned, even - he was even more consumed than he'd been before. And she knew it was driving him crazy that she was staying at his house with Sookie, and he had to stay at Pam's house with Chow.

Pam was watching an old movie and painting her toenails a pale mauve. It was nearing sunrise, and Pam knew that Eric would be calling very soon. He was expecting to hear from Ludwig, and was going to call Pam right after.

Sookie walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Pam was surprised to see her up without any prodding. Pleased. Sookie had a bit of a scowl on her face, but she was really looking so much better. She had even started to fill out a little bit.

Pam heard the microwave ding, and a couple of minutes later, Sookie set a mug of blood down on the coffee table next to the bottle of nail polish. She curled up on the other end of the couch holding a mug of her own.

"Pretty."

"Do you want me to do yours?"

Sookie looked wistfully at Pam's toes for a minute, and then looked down at her own feet. She winced and then pulled them up and tucked them under herself self-consciously. She shook her head. "No, thank you."

"Thanks for the blood. How do you feel?"

Sookie shrugged. Pam didn't think that she was going to get more of an answer, but a couple of minutes later, Sookie said, "Tired. Weak. Numb." After a long pause, she continued. "I still can't believe that I'm…"

"You're free, Sookie."

Sookie shrugged again. "Well, I can hardly believe that I'm sitting here just having a regular old conversation with someone else." Clean. Wearing clothes (or at least an oversized shirt). Sitting on real furniture. Drinking warm blood. In control of herself. Like a real fucking person. Sort of.

Pam took a sip of blood and started on her second coat. She hoped that if she stayed relatively quiet, Sookie might start to open up again. She glanced over and Sookie was watching her very intently, playing idly with the hem of her shirt.

"I ordered you some clothes that I think might work. I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not. Thank you."

When Pam finished her toes, she started on her fingernails, just to try to extend the moment and give Sookie space to talk. She was just finishing up the first coat on her left hand when Sookie said, "I guess this must be kind of what normal feels like."

Pam smiled. "Yes, I suppose so."

"Not really different from regular people at all. Aside from the blood."

"Humans, you mean?" Pam shrugged. "Well, we're more alike than different. After all, we were all human once."

Sookie snorted. "Until we became the chosen ones. Lucky us. My life was shit when I was human, but most days I was glad to be alive, at least."

When Pam didn't reply, Sookie sighed. "Don't worry. I came to terms with this existence a long time ago." Much of the bitterness had left her voice. It had been replaced with defeat.

"Being Vampire can be wonderful, Sookie. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. Soon, when you're well…"

Sookie put her hand up and set her mug down on the coffee table. It was still more than half full. She swallowed and then stood up. "I'm sorry, Pam. I'm really tired. I…" Her eyes were rimmed with red. She shook her head a bit, changing her mind, and quickly left the room.

Pam didn't know how that had gotten away from her so quickly. In a way, she was glad - Sookie was going to need that anger to have any hope of surviving this. She hoped that Sookie would open up to her again soon, though.

She finished her nails and her blood (and Sookie's. Waste not, want not), and was rinsing out the mugs in the kitchen sink when Eric called. It was less than half an hour before dawn.

"Eric."

"How is she?"

Pam leaned against the counter. "She came out on her own a little while ago. She looks good. Well, better. Much better, actually. She sat down, and we talked a little."

"Did you learn anything new?"

Pam sighed. "She hinted that she wished for the final death. But that's no big surprise. I'm sure her maker commanded her not to harm herself. Underneath it all, she is very angry."

"Good. She'll need it."

"I agree. We need to keep him away from her, Eric."

Eric's voice was cold. "Yes. Whoever he is, he will find out that he picked the wrong area to fuck around in."

"Did you hear from Ludwig?"

"She will arrive sometime after midnight. I will arrive around eleven."

Pam rolled her eyes, but it wasn't like she was surprised. He would use any excuse to appease his curiosity. But she supposed that Sookie being in the same building with him was the same whether it was at Fangtasia or at his house. And here it would just be Eric.

"Fine. I will warn her. And I'll see you then."

Eric hung up the phone. He hadn't mentioned that "sometime after midnight" was actually three or three-thirty. He leaned back in his chair and thought about what they had discussed.

Pam set her phone on the counter and shook her head. She loved and respected her maker deeply. But sometimes he got on her fucking nerves.

Pam went down to the bedroom, and Sookie had gotten a shower and changed into another one of Eric's shirts. She was in bed with her eyes closed. She was still, and Pam didn't know if she was at rest again, or just pretending. It didn't matter. Dawn was very close. Pam lay down and closed her eyes, too, and waited for the sun to take her away.

The next evening, Pam got Sookie up long enough to drink two pints of blood. She didn't speak and went straight back to bed after she'd finished. Withdrawing again. Pam decided to leave her be for a time, but she would wake Sookie again shortly before eleven. She wanted to make sure that she gave Sookie time to centre herself before Eric arrived, but she didn't want to warn her too early in case it triggered Sookie's anxiety. And the rest would do her good.

Pam was going stir crazy, but she needed to see this through to the end. She and Eric would keep Sookie safe. She hoped that Sookie would relax enough to leave isolation soon, though. With her at rest most of the time, this was all incredibly boring. And she missed her pets. Well, she missed having sex with her pets.

At ten-thirty, she went into the bedroom and touched Sookie's shoulder. "Eric will be here in half an hour, and the doctor sometime later. Why don't you have a little more blood?"

Sookie got up slowly and made her way into the kitchen rather than waiting for Pam to bring the blood to her. When it was ready, she took it back into the living room and sat down on the couch.

She should be happy. Hell, she should be dancing in the fucking streets. Instead, she was miserable. Well, most of her was. She was grateful to Eric and Pam for rescuing her, but she wished that they had just put her out of her misery instead. Or that Long Shadow had, no matter how terrified she'd been at the time. She was so tired. Tired of the physical pain and the emotional pain and the existential pain. Tired of existing. And yet she was doomed to an eternity of it, or at least a very very long time. She couldn't kill herself. She couldn't ask someone else to kill her. If someone offered, she would have to decline. She couldn't even let someone do it without putting up a fight. As far as she could tell, her maker had thought of everything. To keep her trapped and compliant and from her final death. To do whatever he pleased with her whenever he wanted. And to her.

She was incredibly conflicted. She'd spent a month shut up in her room, almost too weak to move, slowly starving, always hurting, and completely alone. She'd had nothing to do but lie on the floor or in her cubby and think. As miserable as that had been, it was a welcome relief from the drainings that had broken up the monotony before. And yet, part of her had looked forward to her mother's visits. At least a little bit. It was her only link to the outside. She'd even kind of missed her mother when she wasn't there. Far more than she cared to admit. And she'd loved her, at least as much as she'd hated her, right up until the very end. For ten years, Mama had been the only company she'd had, except for her maker. And she never looked forward to his visits. Except for the first couple of times after she'd been turned, when sex had been a compulsion she couldn't control. And every time she thought about that, she wanted to puke.

Miserable or not, she was going to enjoy this respite from hell as much as she could for as long as it lasted. But she knew that this was temporary. Her maker would never let her go. And she was sure that she would be punished terribly for leaving her room, and for the nearly eight weeks' worth of income from the sale of her blood that he'd lost. Even if it wasn't her fault. And he was very good at inflicting pain. And humiliation.

Pam came in and sat down on Eric's club chair, her own mug of blood in hand. She smiled at Sookie. "It's good to see you up and around again tonight. And you almost have cheeks now! At least the ones on your face."

Sookie almost smiled. "Yeah. It's going to be a while before I have much of an ass to speak of."

Even her breasts were gone, other than some extra skin, and lord knows they weren't small to begin with.

Pam had thought that Sookie might have been beautiful before she'd been next door to mummified, but now she was almost certain. Sookie could almost pass for human now, albeit one who was starving to death.

They heard the garage door open, and a minute later, Eric walked into the living room. Sookie tensed up, but then let a little of the tension go. She was still very wary, but she was kind of getting used to him. And Eric's scent clinging to everything in the house had maybe acclimated her to him a little bit.

Eric sat down on the other end of the couch, and Sookie barely flinched. He looked at her intently for a moment and then nodded. "Very impressive. It's been a few days, though. You should really have more of my blood." He grinned at her and patted his lap, waggling his eyebrows. "The invitation is still open. Come here and have a little taste."

Pam could have killed him. He was taking a hell of a risk, especially considering Sookie's past and her obvious fear of men. Well, at least of male vampires. But the corner of her mouth definitely turned up. She looked over and met his eye for a second before she dropped her gaze.

He got up and walked to the kitchen. A short time later, he came back with a glass of his blood. He offered it to her and she stiffened, and even pulled away from him, but then tentatively took the glass from his hand.

"My way would have been much more fun."

That time, he could feel her amusement. The blood tie was very weak, despite the large amount of his blood that she'd had, but that was how it was for vampires whose blood sharing only went one way.

Sookie was kind of surprised that she wasn't offended by his teasing, but it felt like she was kind of in on the joke. There was no malice there, and she certainly knew that she was not even close to desirable. But it made her feel like she wasn't such a freak.

She had been pretty once. She'd heard it all the time in other people's thoughts. But mostly it had been followed with 'too bad she's so crazy'. Of course, she would never have dated anyone, anyway. Her master would have killed anyone who'd touched her. And she was sure that he'd know. He'd known other things he shouldn't have. At first she hadn't been able to figure out how, but then she'd started seeing holes in people's thoughts - her English teacher, kids in her classes, the school janitor… Even Barbara Beck, the town librarian. And, of course, he'd already been glamouring her mother.

And he'd already punished her so much. She hadn't needed him to go completely crazy. He was always rough, and that was bad enough, but the punishments were so much worse. He didn't just use his fists. And he did it for just about anything. Or sometimes, when he just felt like it, he would make up transgressions. At least he'd mostly stayed away from her face when she was still human. Well, away from bruising it, anyway. But sometimes he'd get too carried away and would have to give her blood to keep the worst of the abuse secret. She couldn't even imagine how angry he would be if she had been with anyone else.

Pam and Eric were talking about the bar and other vampires in the area while Sookie sipped the human blood and then Eric's. She wondered if drinking his blood had made her trust him a little bit, too. She was already so much more comfortable with him. But it certainly hadn't worked that way with her maker.

Eric kept glancing over at her. Of course, she knew because she kept glancing at him, too. To keep an eye on him. She pulled her knees up to her chest and pulled her shirt down over her legs.

"Sookie, what can you tell me about your life before you were turned?"

She'd shrunk in on herself, and her shrug was barely perceptible. Her voice was clear, if very quiet. "It was pretty awful, growing up as a telepath."

He hadn't thought about it before, but of course it would have been terrible, knowing things that no child should have to know. And, from what Pam had told him, some things she'd known first-hand, and far too young. He would have killed the great-uncle himself had her maker not already taken care of it. It was, as far as Eric could tell, the only decent thing her maker had done. Other than to save her after he'd beaten her to death. Although Eric doubted that Sookie considered that a positive.

"Yes, I'm sure it was. Did anyone other than you and your mother know your maker? Did he take her out on dates?"

Sookie shook her head. "He glamoured people I knew to keep tabs on me, but he made them all forget about him after. He was scared to death of getting caught, especially since I…" She supposed it didn't matter any longer. The really important cat was already out of the bag. "I couldn't be glamoured. He was really careful not to be seen." She looked up and met Eric's eyes for a moment. She dropped them quickly, but the corner of her mouth turned up a bit again. "He only ever showed up after dark."

That startled a laugh out of him. It was kind of amazing that she had retained any of her sense of humour at all, let alone regained it so quickly.

She continued, "I heard him mention you before. Or I guess it was you. He said that he really didn't want the sheriff to find out. About me, and then about the business, of course. I didn't figure he'd meant Bud Dearborn. He's the sheriff of Renard Parish. Or at least he was a few years ago. He came to the door once a couple-few years after I was turned. I just hid in my cubby."

"You couldn't alert him to your presence? Glamour him to help you?"

"No answering the door. No making noise. No being seen. No glamouring. Ever."

"Did nobody come looking for you? After you were turned?"

Sookie picked at a piece of lint on her shirt. She wouldn't meet his eyes again. "He made me write a suicide note. I was supposed to have thrown myself off of the bridge that my daddy's car washed off of when I was little. He, my big brother, and my grandmother all died. Mama threw the clothes I'd been wearing the night I was turned over the side, and some kid who was fishing found my shirt washed up on the riverbank a mile or two downstream. Mama identified it. It was torn and bloodstained and they all decided that a gator must have got hold of my body." She shrugged again. "Killing myself wouldn't have been a stretch. I was unhappy. My home life was awful. People thought I was crazy. I had no close friends, or any real friends at all. There was nobody to miss me."

Legally dead, and with nobody to look for her, she had long since given up hope. But now it kept bubbling up at random times, and she hated it. It was so seductive. She wanted so badly to believe its lies. But she knew that the crash would hurt far more if she fell for it.

"And then after you were turned, your mother started selling your blood?"

She shrugged again. "It was my maker's idea. He told her how to do it, who to meet with, what to charge, everything."

He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. A vampire was involved in the ring. In his area. For years. "And you can't tell me anything about him? Anything at all?"

She finally raised her eyes again, but she still wouldn't quite meet his gaze. Her voice was barely a whisper. "He's a monster."