Evenin', thanks for the reviews! Still setting up the story really, so there's not much dialogue in this one until the end. Enjoy!
PRIORITIES – Chapter 2
She didn't know how long she'd been running, but eventually she began to tire about eighty miles from New Orleans. Eric's constant commands were horrendous to ignore, clawing at her insides, trying to drag her back to him. Every shiver that ran through her made her all the more indignant, and determined to continue. Stopping abruptly in the middle of fucking nowhere, Pam glanced up at the sky and saw the reason for her sudden fatigue. Dawn was approaching - maybe a few hours away at best - and running any further would be like a regular human trying to run a marathon at the end of a forty eight hour day.
She eyed the damp ground around her, and then her shoes. They'd cost her eight hundred dollars, and she was not about to dig them into the earth. Figuring the cluster of lights in the distance was her best bet at a windowless bed for the day, she ignored the gnawing feeling of desperate regret in the pit of her stomach and turned West.
He covered the whole city, all of Shreveport and most of the surrounding area, calling her name until his throat tore, to no avail. She was gone.
How could she even refuse him? Laws of Vampire nature aside, this was PAM. A hundred years together, and she'd never done anything so insolent. Never done anything to hurt him, to hurt them. Eric sighed as her recent words came back to haunt him, and turned, dejected, back to Fangtasia.
The bar had never seemed so silent, as he crunched his way across the glass strewn floor, to his office.
'Fuck,' he muttered, sitting down at his desk with his head in his hands. He hadn't slept for days, and it was catching up with him. Of course Pam wouldn't dig up Russell - what could have possessed him to even think such a thing? Sure, she was malicious, prone to vengeance at times, but she wasn't stupid. She was the smartest woman he'd ever known - his equal, in so many ways, and his superior in so many more, though he never let her know that. He'd never let her know how proud he'd been that she'd taken over Area 5 and kept the bar going while he'd been gone. He'd never even let her know how sorry he was for what she'd had to go through for him. He'd been so pre-occupied with Sookie, that he'd not even given it a second thought because he knew, deep down, Pam would still be there later, when he would eventually show his appreciation in some subtle way or other. Except she wasn't, and he was an idiot.
He slumped back into his chair, reaching to pull a soft obstruction out from behind him as he did so - Pam's sweater. Lilac cashmere; she must have been wearing it when she'd arrived earlier, before she'd changed into her usual stereotypically gothic evening wear. Eric held the expensive fabric carefully in his hands, cursing when a dark red tear escaped his eyes and landed on the sleeve. Deciding it was ruined now anyway, he gathered it to his face, breathing in the lingering scent of Chanel no. 5, until all his days of missed sleep caught up with him and he drifted into dreams of werewolves and fairy wings.
About an hour before dawn, Pam had sought out the best excuse for a 4 star hotel on the edge of Baton Rouge, and paid in cash for their biggest room - black out curtains and inbuilt coffin as standard, of course, and decided to entertain herself in the bar until the absolute last moments of night. She really didn't fancy lying down in an unfamiliar coffin any sooner than she needed to - if she timed it right she'd literally close the lid and surrender to sleep against her will. That was one way to avoid thinking about Eric anyway.
His call hadn't stopped since she'd started running, but it had dulled, into a kind of consistent ache, thrumming away at her insides and settling at the pit of her stomach. She ignored it, and settled herself on a stool in the bar, deciding it might be wise to keep a low profile and force down a bottle of Tru Blood rather than risk being caught sucking the bartender dry and alerting her maker to her location.
'Rough night?' Her first choice of supper asked, clearly unaware of the danger and taking her red stained cheeks to mean she was harmless, and in need of a kind word.
'Shut the fuck up and fetch me one of those disgusting bottles of fake blood, before I help myself to yours,' Pam spat back, a quirked eyebrow and a flash of fang enough to get her point across. The bartender's eyes widened in fear and he stumbled over himself to the backbar to open the little used refrigerator.
She snatched the bottle from his hand with Vampire speed, and threw more than enough notes over the bar to keep him quiet. The bartender grabbed what he could, and made himself scarce. Pam popped the lid and took a tentative sip, shuddering at the plastic taste. Good god it tasted horrible.
'Vile, isn't it?' A voice said over her shoulder. A voice that caused the barely touched bottle to slip from her grasp and shatter, coating the floor of the bar crimson. She didn't need to turn around to see his face, it was imprinted on the back of her eyelids, and she'd see it forever. Alive and manic, just as he had been when he'd lopped off the Magister's head, just as he had been when he'd followed Eric out into the sun, just as he was now when he grabbed the back of her stool and spun her around to face him.
'Russell,' she gasped, unable to hide the tremor in her voice.
'In the flesh – so to speak,' the three thousand year old psychopath said with a broad grin. 'And may I say, you look ravishing this evening Ms Pamela. If I swung that way, I'd almost regret having to do this…' His black eyes flashed and Pam leapt from her stool – but her hundred year old Vampire speed was no match for his ancient superior strength. He grabbed her wrists in an iron grip, and suddenly everything went black – very painfully black – and against all better judgement, she let rip a blood curdling scream.
Back in Shreveport, the shock of his progeny's pain shook Eric from his slumber. He could almost hear her scream echoing through the silent club, and it felt like someone was stabbing his heart with a silver stake, over and over. He still held her cashmere sweater tightly his hand when he ran through the club, prepared to follow that stab of pain as long as it took to find her. Unfortunately, he hadn't factored in the approaching dawn, and the moment he wrenched the club's doors open, he had to slam them shut again to avoid burning up.
'Damnit Pam,' he muttered. 'Where the hell are you?'