A/N: Howdy! I was going to leave this until Sunday or Monday because I have nothing else written, but I decided to be nice. :P But I need to get my arse in gear. I have updated at least once per calendar week since the first of the year (I think? ) and don't want to break the streak. :D And, when I was in Doc Manager to upload this, my old (ungood) one shot that started all of this had one day left before it disappeared. So, I wrote it one year ago tomorrow. I didn't really get going until the end of December, when I picked AM back up, but that's where it started. AM was sort of inspired by the TV show Chuck (it's great. You should watch it) but, after the first chapter, I stalled. I got the idea for IBDFC while cooking Thanksgiving dinner (the US version. We're a mixed nationality household), and that really got the ball rolling. In the past year, I have written more than 305,000 words and have 126 docs (one shots, chapters, and epilogues) on Doc Manager. Writing has kind of helped me keep my sanity. It was super meaningful discovering at 47 that, dammit, I really am the creative person I'd always thought myself to be. And writing has brought me a couple of really amazingly great friends.

*Ahem.* Sorry to blahg. Just know that you reading my stuff has meant really a whole lot, and thanks very much for doing it. :P

Chapter 17

"I was in my mistress's casino last night with a few friends. Imagine my surprise when Eric Northman pushed his way through our group, his clothes absolutely drenched in your scent. It was all over them. Now tell me, my Sookie." He shook her, and blood ran down her neck from the puncture wounds. "Why would that be?"

Her tears ran into the blood on her throat so it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Her mind tried to go away to protect herself, but he would never let that happen. He shook her again, whipping her body back and forth. "Sookie, you know you won't like it if I have to command you. Come on back to me, love. There you go. Now, what were you doing with Northman?"

There was no point in lying. He would find out either way. "I... I kissed him."

His face softened. "That's Mickey's good girl." He pulled her to him so her face was only inches from his. Her hair was stuck in the blood on her face and neck, and he gently picked out the strands and smoothed them back. "But, Sookie… Who do you belong to?"

"Y-y-you, Master. Always you."

"That's right, Sookie. You're mine." He pulled her closer and lightly kissed her lips, and then slowly licked the blood from her cheeks. "So sweet and delicious."

His face hardened, and he looked like the monster he was. "And yet you gave yourself to someone else. And you drank. His. Blood!" He slammed her into the wall three times for emphasis.

He bit her cheek and spat out the chunk of flesh in his mouth. "But don't worry, baby girl." He licked his lips and then wiped her blood off of his face and chin with his hand and then licked it clean. His eyes closed, savoring the flavour. "I'll make sure you never forget who you belong to again. And, just in case, I'll remove the temptation the first time I get a chance. It will be my pleasure."

…

Eric landed in his back yard about forty-five minutes after he'd left Dallas. Everything seemed very quiet. He crept around the outside of the house looking for Felicia, and found what was left of her - a pile of ash under the kitchen window. He quietly entered the house.

He knew right away that she was gone. The broken mug and blood spilled on the floor. The smeared marks that he thought were knee prints. The large hole in the living room wall. Only one set of bloody footprints, much bigger than hers, headed towards the door. And he couldn't feel her. She was too far away. He saw something in the puddle, and he bent down to pick it up. It took him a moment to puzzle out what it was. A piece of her cheek. Eric roared.

…

Pam needed to get back to Shreveport as quickly as she could. Eric was losing his mind. She could feel it. And she had never felt anything like it from him before. She tried to call over and over again, but she didn't get an answer. All she could do was hope that she didn't get pulled over, and that she got there before he did something that would get him into trouble. She looked at the speedometer and pushed the Corvette a little faster. If the police wanted to pull her over, they would have to catch her first.

…

Sookie was bound in silver in a wooden box under the back seat of her maker's van. He had almost drained her and replaced her blood with his. Trying to get rid of as much of Eric's as possible. He had beaten her badly and bitten her over and over. He had done… other things. She was trying to detach herself. To hide. But the pain from the silver burning her skin was making it almost impossible. And she knew that this was only the beginning. He had punished her worse than this for much less. But that didn't take away from how bad it felt now. And also how much more it hurt having something to lose.

She had no idea where they were or where they were going, or even how long they'd been traveling, but they were almost certainly going somewhere with plenty of privacy. Away from prying eyes. Or ears. She knew that he would make her scream.

She wondered if it would have been worth it to not have had those few days. If she hadn't been found and her maker had just come and gotten her when he'd gotten around to it. After the smoke had cleared. He would have been awful, of course, but he wouldn't be jealous. Not vengeful, either. Not much, at least. . And she wouldn't be grieving on top of everything else.

At the same time, even as scary and awful and uncomfortable as those two weeks or so had been sometimes, she didn't think that she would go back and do it differently. Being treated kindly and compassionately and having real connections with others had been wonderful. Feeling something that wasn't awful, even for a short time, was worth all of the hurt and loss she was feeling right now. Something real and tangible that she could think about and remember when things were especially bad. Back when she had a true friend and a man who let her choose. Who found her attractive, but didn't want to hurt her. At least she hoped that he'd felt that way. The silver didn't hurt as much as her chest did. Her unbeating heart.

They turned onto a rougher road, and then, a little while later, onto a bumpy dirt track. They were out in the middle of nowhere. She curled in on herself as much as she could in such a confined space, and tried not to think about what came next.

…

Eric was pacing the floor when Pam arrived. His hair was wild from running his fingers through it. He was going to be of no use as long as he continued to be so… unhinged.

"Eric, let's sit down and discuss this. We'll try to put together what we know and see if we can get any leads."

His voice was close to a snarl. "And what will happen to her while we sit and chat?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "The same things that will happen if we pace the floor and growl, but at least we'll be doing something useful."

He stopped and glared at her, but then sat down in his chair. Pam sat across from him and leaned forward. "I can't really make out any scent but hers. Certainly nothing I recognize. What do we know?"

"We know nothing!" He slammed his fist on the arm of the chair.

God, he frustrated the hell out of her sometimes. "Bullshit. We know that her maker is male. We know that his maker is not. We know that he was staying near here, off and on, for more than fifteen years. We know that he knows you. Or at least knows of you. We know that he's a sadist. He does things that the rest of us won't, especially now that the vampire is out of the bag. We know that he likes to bite. We know that he has no loyalty to his kind. He sold blood and gave a human complete control of his child. We know that he beat Sookie to death and then made her write a suicide note. We know that he killed her great uncle."

Pam could feel him get calmer as he channeled his rage and nervous energy into strategy. He sat back and steepled his fingers. "That might be something we could use." Pam's shoulders sagged in relief. Finally.

"The uncle's murder? It might be worth a shot."

Eric nodded. "I will glamour the neighbours to see if anyone saw anything. You break into the library and see if you can find anything about her death and her great uncle's. We will meet back at Fangtasia later. We need to gather everyone together and tell them about Felicia. If they know anything about her final death, they know something that will point us towards Sookie's maker."

...

At the library, Pam looked through the Shreveport Times archives and grabbed the microfilm for 1996. She loaded it onto the microform reader and flipped to the last week of December. Sookie's alleged suicide was barely a blurb, buried on the fourth page on December 29th. She loaded up 1997 and checked through mid-February, but there was no obituary.

Looking for information on Sookie's uncle's death was more difficult, as she didn't have an exact time. She thought that it was likely during the summer of 1990, right after Sookie turned twelve. But, without a name or an address, she had nothing to go on. She made note of any suspicious deaths, fires, disappearances, or homicides during that summer and fall. They would have to go from there. She read through the obituaries but, again, nothing.

…

Eric spoke to the neighbours on either side of his house and the ones directly across the street, and nobody had seen anything suspicious. At the house across the road and to the right, he smelled blood and decay. And, when he broke down the door, there was no magic keeping him out. He went in, making sure not to touch anything with his hands. A man and a woman were in the living room. She was lying on the couch and he was sitting on a chair, facing her. They were both naked and dead. Eric looked out the window, and there was a perfect view of his front yard where he, Pam, and Felicia had met earlier that evening. And where his Corvette was parked. From the outside, he would be mostly concealed in the shadows. The house smelled like vampire, but Eric had no idea which one.

Sookie's maker would have been able to find her anywhere, of course. These humans had been killed more than twenty-four hours before, by the smell of things. Her maker had followed Sookie's blood, slaughtered these people, and then lain in wait.

He would have Stan check Bill's phone and put the screws to him a little, but he didn't expect there to be a connection. He didn't think that Bill would invite trouble like that. And his gut was telling him that Sookie's maker had just been waiting for the right moment to make his move. And they'd offered him the perfect opportunity. Because Eric had been certain that he'd known who her maker was, and assumed that she'd be safe. His pride had led to her capture.

He checked with the remaining neighbours and with the guards at the gate, but nobody had any information to add. All the way to Fangtasia, he thought about what he would do to the evil fuck when he got his hands on him.

…

It was a hunting cabin, or something like it. It was all one room with wood walls and a wood ceiling and floor. There was a silver chain hanging from a hook in the centre roof beam. Sookie was chained to a bed in the corner. She was on her back, staring straight up, trying so hard to find pictures in the wood grain and knot holes. She was putting everything she had into it, but no matter how hard she looked, she just couldn't get her eyes to focus. Her brain, either. And she could hardly see through the blood. And through her tears.