Hey! I know it's been a while but I'm a huge procrastinator so welcome to my life. Anyway, I really hope you like this chapter and if you do - well, ya'll are smart as fuck. You don't need me to tell you.


Chapter Ten: You'll be the Death of Me

Perhaps if I was younger, seeing my brother behind the Bon Temp Police Station's bars would have been a bit more traumatizing than it was. Maybe if I hadn't one time walked in on Jason eating out a policewoman that had just the day before pulled him over for speeding, I would have been less mentally unstable. Maybe if I hadn't killed a kid before I had even known that wearing a padded restraining device on my boobs would be an essential part of life, seeing by doe-eyed little brother all mopey for killing the girl that had got him hooked on V would have been more… Just more.

"You better move the fuck out of the way before I shove your balls into your intestines, peaches," I said sweetly, patting Kevin Ellis on the cheek roughly as my sister scurried on past to reach through the bars and give Jason a hug.

His cheeks reddened as I whirled, putting an obvious barricade between my siblings and the flustered police officer. "Imma gonna go tell the Sheriff, Runa." His eyes gave me a final plead. "He's only allowed one visitor at a time."

"Are you gonna throw us in there with him?" Sookie challenged from behind me, her shoulders squaring as she glared daggers at Kevin who visibly wilted.

Everyone was used to me being a bitch at this point. It was a very different story for my sister. Kevin was no match, throwing up his hands as he rushed from the holding area and over to tell the Sheriff.

Sighing, I finally joined my sister, reaching a hand through the bars to clasp Jason's. Sometimes it surprised me how rough they were, how the callouses felt like granite beneath my fingertips, scraping into my softer skin. It surprised me that my brother would have to perform manual labor for a living to get by - that he had to pay bills and work like the rest of us did. He was so handsome that I'm sure any older lady would have scooped him up and taken him off to some big city. In high school, the teachers and counselors and businesswomen were always the ones that he had gone after first. Now, older and without a taste for women in their sixties, he seemed to almost be lost - running through the same old brods and getting into the same old trouble.

Sometimes, I wondered if he got bored.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, his eyes cloudy and his face tear stained as he leaned his forehead against the bars. Sookie's hands shook as they reached out to smooth down Jason's dirty blonde waves. "I'm so sorry."

That was the moment that I knew that he actually thought that he was the one who had killed all those girls.

"You're a fucking idiot," I blurted out, not avoiding his eyes as they widened. "You're a fuckin' idiot if you think my brother - the same brother that glued his dick to a fucking study guide because his teammates said that the answers would seep into his fucking dick and make him get an A. They would have caught you the first night."

"You always were a raging bitch, Runa," Sookie grumbled, petting our shell-shocked brother like he was a wounded animal.

I shrugged, trying not to roll my eyes as I straightened my sea-blue sundress. Sookie had this rule that she had gotten from Gram - the only people you needed to look good for were God and a judge. I could sacrifice my tank and jeans for today if it would get her off my back.

"Better to be a bitch than some ninny with daddy issues." I stared up at my brother, narrowing my eyes. "What did you say to the police, Jason?"

Confusion made his eyes seem murky, darker than they usually were. "I - I - I had to do it right? I don't remember it but everyone-"

"Fuck what everyone thinks," I hissed, feeling murderous. Sookie's hands visibly tightened around Jason's.

"I just know I did, Runa," Jason whispered and the helplessness in his eyes made me flinch away. It reminded me of when we were kids - when people would call him dumb. When I would catch him staring down at his homework or watching Sookie and me when Gram's used to put our test scores on the fridge.

Sookie's voice lowered, her hand going to clasp the back of his neck to pull him closer. "Jason, you need to shut up, okay? 'Cause I'm real close to finding out who the real killer is."

I gasped as I clutched at the bars, feeling my knees go weak for a moment as my stomach twisted painfully. Someone was afraid. Someone was real scared. I blinked a couple of times, trying to shake off that sudden burst of pure terror that had just exploded through my system.

Sookie had sat down on a bench near the cell, her eyes flicking worriedly to me as she continued to talk to Jason. Briefly, I felt the caress of her mind tapping against the walls of mine. You okay? I took a deep breath, my nose flaring as I tried to catch that scent again - the tang of rot and blood that signaled someone's fear. Sookie's eyes widened for a moment. Your eyes, Runa. Quickly, I turned my eyes to the ground, trying to calm myself as well as hide the abnormal, saveage glow that had more than likely lit there.

It was just here. I had sensed it. I had felt it. But now… now that fear had disappeared. Just...gone. I resisted the urge to snarl. Fears weren't like that. They weren't fleeting. They stayed with people.

"So you can't really be sure he's the killer." I snapped around. Rene was here. I blinked. How had I not even realized that he was here? I always knew when people were near me. Sookie had learned how to shut all those voices out years ago but I had never been able to. It had always been too stong. And more than that - I think a sick, sad part of me - the side that hadn't been touched by Gram or Sookie - liked other peoples nightmares.

Sookie paused, seeming uncertain as her eyes flicked to meet mine. "I've seen what's in his head."

She had explained to me what she had found while I had been trapped with Eric. Unbelievably, she had tracked down a man who was named Drew Marshall with the help of Sam. Or more specifically, she had tracked down his ghost. Although he had lived in a town near our own, he had long since disappeared, leaving behind an open investigation for the murder of his sister who was an open fangbanger.

"Sookie, I know you wanna help me but that's only 'cause you can't accept the truth." I took everything I had not to roll my eyes. "I'm a murderer. And I'm going to hell. Plain and simple."

"You aren't hearing me! I think I know who the killer is!" Jason ripped his hands away from Sookie's, his mouth tight. "And all we gotta do is find-"

"ANDY!" Jason screamed, stalking as far as he could in his little cell to reach the door that led to the main station area. "ANDY!"

"Don't be stupid!" Sookie exclaimed and I let out a snarl as Andy came springing in.

"What's your problem?" Andy yelled, his face grumpy as ever.

"Get them out of here!" Jason growled, turning away from us.

"Jason, just listen-" Sookie tried again, reaching through the bars. I tugged at her arm, keeping my eyes on Andy as he gestured for the door.

"Let's get out of here, Sook," I said. I turned slightly toward Jason. "I understand how much you want this little fantasy to be true but it's not. If you don't get your head out of your ass, people are gonna prosecute not only you but Sook and me as well."

Jason whirled toward me, his eyes wild. "You don't know-"

"I know more than you think, Jason Stackhouse," I whispered, pushing my sister gently toward the door. My eyes wandered toward Rene who looked oddly smug. "Sook isn't the only freak in this family."

An odd, sinister glint filled Rene's deep eyes, his head tipped down but those eyes stared pointedly at me.

"Just get them out of here," Jason pleaded and Andy chuckled, reaching out to grab hold of me.

"Listen, Andy," I snapped, tearing my eyes from Rene to snarl up at him. "You may think that you can lay your hands on anything you fucking want but I can promise you that if your meaty little sausage fingers touch me, I will rip them off and feed them to my dog."

"You don't have a dog," he said uncertainty but his hand was withdrawing, letting me lead Sookie to the door on my own.

"By the good lord, Andy; you're right!" I exclaimed, glancing back at him as we neared the door. "But I did have a cat. A cat that was killed by the same murderer that killed my Gram. Who has broken into my house twice. How is that case going?"

His chest puffed up for a moment and I wanted to deflate his little balloon fast enough to send him flying into the solar system.

"And as of this moment, my brother hasn't admitted to that at all." Quickly, Andy's face fell, his attitude going from cocky to defensive in 2 seconds.

"I HAVEN'T!" Jason yelped, his eyes flicking from Andy to me, his hands clutching the bars as he pressed his face closer.

"It's still-" Andy started.

"Still under investigation," I finished for him, opening the door. "You're going 0 for 2 right now as a detective, Andy Bellefleur. If you don't shape up soon then my sister will have this solved and take your position as a detective."

"Have you gotten the fax from Bunkie police department about Drew Marshal, the man who's probably the real killer?" Sookie finally burst out, trying to shove her way back into the police cell area as I guarded the door. One Stackhouse was already behind bars and I didn't particularly like the odds of running around Bon Temp all by my lonesome trying to play detective.

Andy's face got redder than a tomato as he huffed, clutching at his belt like he was about to yank it off and try to whip us out of the room.

"Never heard of no fax from no Bunkie P.D. or Drew Whoever," he said gruffly and I noticed Rene as he turned his face away, his lips curling a bit. "But I'll tell you one thing: the real killer is right there, where he belongs."

A low hiss was all the warning that I had before Sookie went lunging for Andy, his eyes rabid. "You are one hell of a sorry excuse for a cop and a human being, Andy Bellefleur and it's just a matter of time before everyone knows it."

Ah, the charms of the Stackhouses on full display. Without Gram, we were nothing but a bunch of animals - shagging vampires and drug dealers alike.

I plastered on a bright smile, turning around so that I could try and force her out of the room with sheer force. "You have a wonderful day, detective."


When I was little, I used to call it the fairy garden. The Stackhouse house was surrounded by the woods. Most houses in the Bon Temp area were like that though, except for maybe the trailers that were closer to town. But here, all the trees were big and the forest was dense and muggy. And although I was more inclined toward colder weather, I had grown used to the white moss that tangled in the branches and the loudness of the forest as it settled and lived.

Gram always used to get the neighborhood women to come out and search for me when I ran away, sprinting into the depth of the forest with some food and a flashlight. If I had really wanted to, I could have gone far, far away from here. I could have hitched a ride with some of the spare change that I had dug out of my Grams wallet. All I had to do is wait until I was eighteen - then I could have gotten that nice, big check from my parents. But instead, I always stopped in the fairy garden. Like someone was telling me that this was as far as I should go.

And eventually, Gram had stopped calling people. She had stopped even looking.

"My Runa's a fairy-child," Gram would chortle, setting down a tray of pancakes and eggs in front of me, dirty and smelly from a night or two in the forest. "All she needs is a little dirt under her nails and the smell of forest on her skin and she's as new and bright as a butterfly."

I tried to shove that away, looking around at the small enclosure of trees. It was too painful to think about Gram - to think about how fucked up we were without her. I turned it away, shoveling over it like the gravediggers that had piled all that dirt over her had done. Instead, I focused on the trees.

The oaks in Louisiana were fertile in their beauty. The old plantations had them along the gravel roads leading up to their elegant entrances, all of the oaks bending toward each other in an arch - like the lithe form of ballerina's reaching for each other in some kind of fancy play. Moss feathered out, blanketing the branches and hanging down in elegant curtains. In the distance, I could hear the quiet splash of the bayou which seemed to be behind every old house in Louisiana. In the evening, I could walk from here and sit on the docks that led out there and see the clouds reflected back in that murky water.

I came here when I was little to get away from all the darkness that I felt at home. In all honesty, it hadn't helped much since I could still feel all of that. I let out a breath, circling the meadow. When I was little, there was some kind of darkness inside of me. I was violent and destructive and I wanted - something. That was why I had tried to run away so many times.

I had never gone far, always setting down my pack of clothes and food in this exact spot before my mind could catch up to me. I was waiting. Always. Like my body knew something that it couldn't tell me just yet. I grew up like that. Gram's little fairy child who was stuck waiting. Always standing still while all these people - all these ignorant humans continued on like they were doing something with their lives when all they were really doing was chasing their own tails.

Somehow, it seemed like I wasn't waiting anymore. Like I had found something.

I took a deep breath, circling back to the middle of the area where the grass and wildflowers were worn down to dirt. Bird-foot violets bloomed in clumps around the trees along with the common dandelions and chickweed. At first, the fairy garden had been a place to escape to but over the years it had become more of a centering place. Usually, my powers were wild, running and sprouting up in random, violent bursts.

But here, in the quiet of the bayou, I could finally breathe.

My powers had always been a bit... unsettling. I threw up a lot when I got too near that darkness - the human side of me - the good side of me - recoiling at all the darkness that was outside of my door. That's how I liked to view it. A doorway that all the nightmares and heartache couldn't get through with me on the clean side, sitting there. Normally, it was all muffled. But that wasn't an exact science. Just like any other doorway, you couldn't seal it completely. You could still get a burst of air through the cracks, hear the rumble of thunder outside. But there was a little bit of protection and for that, I was grateful.

But I had a problem. My powers, when used offensively only worked through raw emotional bursts. I couldn't hone it, use it in situations where I was calm. But searching was completely different. While using my powers in compact bursts made me feel like I was trying to shoot through that wonderful, closed-door without trying to disintegrate it, searching for one specific person was like flinging the door completely open so that I could let every vile, disgusting emotion come pouring in.

It hurt and mentally draining like trying to stand your ground against a tsunami. I took another breath, reaching toward that door.

Across town, a young girl was scared of her father getting home.

"He'll know that I fed the dog cat litter," her mind whispered desperately. Unwanted, I dove deeper, flinching. Worse, she was afraid that she was a bad person. She wanted to be mean. She liked hitting the dog, watching him cower. Was she evil? Did she want to be?

I yanked back on that cord that tethered me to the well of darkness that pooled somewhere deep inside of me. Somehow, it tugged back, dragging me north - north all the way to Sourir road, where it curved around a bend and stopped, lingering at the door of Fangtasia. Eric wasn't there, I registered almost immediately. But others were. In the basement. In the dark and damp, living in filth and fear. I took a deep, quivering breath.

They wanted out. They didn't know why they were here - not yet but a mountain had come and taken them one by one. And the screams - sometimes the screams were so bad that they couldn't sleep.

I retched, shaking as I yanked myself away from that place, running away from that deep, dark pit. It was painful opening myself up to Bon Temp like this. I found out too much. I found out things that made it hard to sleep at night.

Desperately, I struggled to keep that tether strong as every instinct screamed for me to draw back. I needed to find one specific person. I needed to find Rene. Something inside of me had registered that fear from the police station. Like my mind was keeping a mental log of every fear that had ever seeped through me. I had tasted it before. When I had touched Rene, I had tasted that darkness. It was tinged with an odd kind of… joy. Like he liked the fear. Like he wanted it to keep him company.

Right now, he was… I whirled around, gasping. He was in my house. He was in my house alone with Sookie.

"What do you think you're doing?" I stumbled, slamming to my knees as I went blind for a moment. All I could see was Sookie, her hands trembling as she picked up the old shotgun that Gram used to keep by the fireplace. And Rene was stalking toward her like she was holding a teddy bear.

I had gone too deep. I had exerted my powers to the extent that I couldn't close the door. I couldn't even find the goddamn thing. I jerked desperately, trying to dig myself out of the hole that I had sunk into.

"STAY AWAY!" I let out a shriek, shivering as Sookie's mind went off, her fear spiking through me so violently, I gagged again, bile burning the back of my throat. RUNA! It was like she was beside me, screaming in my ear.

Something inside of me sparked and lit, burning in my chest. I threw all of my strength into crawling away from my power, dragging back the net that I had cast. Sweat licked down my spine, drenching my tank.

Rene was at my house. And he had caught on. Because we were foolish enough to brag in front of him. Because he finally got Sookie alone and he wasn't going to chance his secret getting out. He would figure out how to frame someone else later. For now, he was on the hunt.

Branches tore at my cheeks and clothes as I sprinted across the narrow pathway that I had created over the years. I could feel Sookie's fear and adrenaline bursting through me, forcing me to work my legs to go faster and faster. Sweat rolled down my neck, the tang of metal coating my tongue as I burst from the tree line, skidding to a halt as I stared at the beat-up truck in our drive and the door that was flung open.

My hands zinged painfully as I forced a surge of pure power to well up there, my fingers crackling with purple light.

"What are you doing? Get away from me!"

"Aw, fuck," I hissed, leaning over to heave out this mornings eggs and bacon before I could get any closer to the front lawn. I clutched at the tailgate of Rene's truck, trying to force away the panic and the pale blue eyes of Rene's sister. I could feel her. Not his fear. He didn't feel any. Even now, as I could feel him sprint farther and farther away, his head open and spilling blood, he still wasn't afraid. He was - he was enjoying this. I could feel her fear, the tang of it like candy on my tongue. "Not some dead bitch too." I moaned, sending out a desperate prayer to the universe as I forced myself to keep moving. "Why are you remembering this right now, you psychotic bitch?"

How could the ghost of fear still hang around Rene like this? Like he was killing his sister all over again? Better yet, why hadn't I noticed it sooner?

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I snarled, rounding the side of the house at a sprint and continuing on toward the old graveyard that the town barely used anymore. Sometimes they would plop old, dead people into the ground but mainly they kept the plots to all the Confederates that had died in the war.

I was too far away. I could feel Rene and Sookie converging, dancing around each other. They were almost right on top of each other. Tears sprang to my eyes as I forced more speed into my aching legs, drawing in harder gulps of air as my lungs burned in retaliation. I wasn't going to make it in time.

BILL, GET YOUR SORRY ASS UP! I shrieked mentally, throwing all of that blind rage across the land and blasting it into that big old mansion of his. I didn't have time to think - I was rounding the corner - I was -

"Sookie! Seriously, I was just kidding." I dove behind the nearest headstone, clasping a hand over my mouth as I tried to quiet my breathing. Desperately, I reached out my mind to my sister, forcing her to stay down. Stay down, stay down, stay down. Stay hidden.

Tentatively, her voice reached out for mine just as the crunch of boots drew closer. No. I think he's gone. I think he's-

"NO!" I lurched from my hiding space, tripping as my legs mewled from over-exertion.

"Mind-reading, vampire-fucking, freak-bitch!" I snarled, lunging toward where Rene had my sister. For a moment, our eyes met, a dazed sort of wonder lighting there. I could see blood seeping down the stone that she had been tossed into, her head lying against it at an odd angle.

"GET YOUR MOTHERFUCKING HANDS OFF MY SISTER!" I screamed, tackling him with all of the forces and weight that I could muster. He went down hard beneath me, dirt and grass flying up as he let out a sharp gasp. Quickly, I scrambled back, letting my fists fly as I took a cheap shot at his jaw. My knuckles cracked under the force, pain bursting through my hand as I took another swing.

Desperately, I tried to call up my powers. Nothing. A dull spark and then a sizzle like water on a match. I was done. Too much exertion.

Without my magic - well, I was just a girl sitting on top of a man who was pushing 230 and could probably bench my weight.

"Fuck!" Rene snarled, rolling so quickly that I didn't have time to do anything but eat some dirt on my way down. His full weight slammed the air out of me, one hand coming to dig into my neck as the other - I flicked my eyes to the side just in time to see those meaty fingers close around the cement bust of the Virgin Mary.

Stars. I blinked, forcing my eyes open - or were they closed. I wanted them open. My brain felt like a sledgehammer had just decimated it. The salty tang of blood filled my lips. The side of my head felt wet.

"She's still breathing." Was that Sam? I could hear him but it was like I was underwater, floating along while everyone else was trapped on the surface.

"But-but her head-" a voice sobbed - Sookie. Something probed the side of my head and I heard a resulting yelp.

"We need to get Bill inside."

No, I thought desperately as real darkness crept up, muting the voices above into near-silence. I can't pass out. I just passed out a couple days ago. It was getting harder to think. God, I'm such a little bitch.


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