A/N: I won't make excuses. I'm only here to apologize for being such a shitty fanfic writer and making you wait months for this chapter. I truly am sorry. Forgive me?

Warning: the end of this chapter is really, really, really, disgusting. I almost threw up writing it.

Chapter 16

The weeks following that first interview were a blur. We spent the first two weeks taping interviews with the local stations and their affiliates at Gran's. Her age meant traveling to anywhere further than a three hour car ride simply wasn't feasible and, since we weren't going to them, they decided to come to us. Another factor in our decision to stay close to home was our desire to keep Hunter a secret until each and every i was dotted and t was crossed just in case one of those anti-vampire hate groups decided to make a stink about our "damned to the deepest depths of hell" family officially adopting a toddler. I was also afraid (though Pam would tell you I was just being paranoid and insisted it was perfectly safe) that some lunatic would stake them when they were dead to the world and unattended in their hotel room during the day.

However, by the third week it became obvious that the requests for us to do the late night talk show rounds and the morning news would only increase and intensify (they were relentless) until we made at least a few appearances. Gran opted to stay home with Hunter while daddy, Pam and I spent another week and a half traveling to New York - his Yankees rivalry be damned- and Los Angeles doing the late night talk show circuits. At my insistence (and let's be honest, I guilt tripped the hell out of daddy about not wanting to lose him again after only just finding him), they hired a Were guard by the name of Tray Dawson. From what I got out of the Were's mind, he was a lone wolf who hated the complexities and politics of being in a pack. While he wasn't too happy about being two vampire's coffin sitter, I also gleamed from his thoughts that he wouldn't let it affect his duties of guarding their room when I had to be away doing morning interviews and appearances. I wasn't thrilled about doing so many by myself but there were no other options - Gran and daddy were in this mess because of me. The least I could do was put my big girl panties on and do my part to charm America as best as I could, or keep them interested long enough to give Sophie Ann second thoughts about procuring me. God, the word alone gave me the creeps.

By the time the dust had settled, it was two weeks later. As Pam had predicted, the paparazzi had indeed followed us back to Bon Temps. They were really aggressive the first week but by the second, it became obvious that we were just as boring a family as any and interest in us began to wane. I hadn't seen Eric in the weeks I'd been back but I did talk and text him on occasion. He seemed preoccupied and more secretive than usual but I didn't bother asking him why; he would've told me if he wanted to and asking him would either put him on the spot and strain things between us or make him lie and completely destroy whatever it was we'd managed to build so far. That said, I really didn't like that niggling doubt in the back of my head telling me he'd found someone else to occupy his time with.

So I called him.

"Hello, lover," he all but purred over the line.

I smiled to myself. It was amazing how one simple word was enough to turn my night around. Readjusting the earpiece with my left hand, I continued steering the car with my right.

"Hi, Eric."

I heard some paper shuffling in the background, then a chair squeaking as he said regretfully, "I'm afraid I won't have time to chat tonight. Is it anything important?"

My heart dropped. I knew he'd have felt my disappointment, but I couldn't help it.

"No. I mean, yes. Do I still work for you? At Fangtasia?" I asked, chewing my bottom lip.

Eric took a breath he didn't need and slowly, carefully, replied, "Sookie, I know I've been.. distracted lately and haven't been more available to you. Something has been brought to my attention and I-"

I cut him off before he got to continue any further with his non answer, "Listen, Eric, I'm not calling to nag you or anything. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, I just wanted to see if I still had a job. Because if not, I need to start looking for another one." And if so, I added to myself, I'd get to at least see you at work.

"You do. Work for me, that is. Sookie, I-" he was interrupted by a knock on the door, which he promptly ignored. "We have many things to discuss, but not here and not now. Will you be free Saturday night?"

I had snickerdoodles, lemon cookies and lemon bars to bake on top of the bag of pretzels I needed to dip in chocolate for the church bake sale on Sunday morning. Let's see, get an extra three hours of sleep or see Eric? That was a no brainer.

"Yup, see you in a few nights." I said distractedly, slowing down on Hummingbird Lane.

I didn't even notice when he'd hung up. There was a Mercedes sedan next to Gran and Daddy's cars in our driveway and a black limousine blocking the paved road to Gran's house. I didn't know we were having visitors. We had a sudden outpouring of distant relatives and friends coming out of the woodwork now that we were sort of famous who were all after the same thing. Even though my family received money for our appearances on tv, Gran created a foundation for orphaned and single parented children and we put every penny we made into it. Entitled fucks that they were, when we informed our long lost relatives and grade school classmates of this fact though, they all looked at us like we were either morons or hoarding the money and lying to them.

By the looks of the two cars though, I had a feeling they didn't need "ten grand for a school that teaches dogs how to getcha a cold one" or "help with Chardonnay's singing, acting and modeling career". The fact that the dog waitering school geniuses had arrest records a mile long and were on their local ASPCA's shit list for already being in the doggy exploitation business as dog fight breeders, and the fact that Chardonnay was somehow even more tone deaf than I was was apparently beyond them.

Out of everyone who visited us, only one family walked away with our money and that was because the husband was disabled and the wife was struggling to support their family of six with her two minimum wage jobs. They were also the only ones who didn't want to ask for our help but did so because otherwise, their house was going to be foreclosed. Since our appearance fees went to charity, Gran and I only had whatever she had leftover from her retirement benefits and the little I'd saved from working at Merlotte's to offer. Unfortunately, it was only five hundred dollars, combined - not even enough to cover their mortgage. Thankfully, the checks Eric wrote me for last month's wages and the bonus check for my help with Longshadow had cleared weeks ago so Gran and I were able to give significantly more than that.

I parked a ways back near the woods and stayed in the car.

Since I kept my shields up when driving otherwise I'd go batshit crazy from all the thoughts I drove by, I lowered my shields and focused on the two new brain signatures inside the house. There was another one in the driver's seat of the limo, but he was a glamoured human and harmless as far as I could tell. The two inside Gran's house, on the hand, were an entirely different matter.

One was a vampire -extremely young, judging by the small black dot of its mind- and the other was something I'd never met before. Complete static. When I focused on it and tried to dig deeper, parceling out the static noise, i met resistance and felt like I was bounced off a reflexive glass.

Well that was uncomfortable. Not wanting to walk into the situation blind in case I needed to call for help, I read the minds of Gran and Hunter.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when two unwelcome developments happened at the same time.

Just as I gleamed from their minds that the vampire visiting us was Hadley and the other person was her demon lawyer, of all people, the vampire sent to procure me for the Queen of Louisiana appeared by my door. I knew because I recognized his brain signature - it was hard to forget the first vampire mind you read.

I weighed my options: do I stay in the car and see what he wants or do I get out and confront him? The first gave me a shield in the form of my car door and time to react if he decided to yank it away from my car but I would be in a disadvantage position to fight. The second left me vulnerable to his attacks but at least I'd be able to strike back, that's if he didn't snap my neck on my way out of the car to begin with.

He saved me the trouble of deciding when he tapped on my window.

I lowered it two inches -enough to fool my mind into feeling safe even though it knew that no glass on earth could stop a vampire- and looked at him expectedly.

"I'm sorry to have frightened you, Miss, but I heard a car out in the woods and thought I'd see if I'd possibly be of some assistance." he said with an exaggerated, completely over the top drawl.

I had a split second to decide how to play this. Was I the sweet, gullible southern girl he expected or was I, well me? I chose the former, just for shits and giggles and hopefully a story to tell my family later.

I didn't bother denying that I was scared. Any woman would've been by a strange man in her woods at night, nonetheless a fucking piece of shit vampire who planned to sell her to his sadistic child queen by way of seduction. He either had an ego bigger than Eric's dick (thanks for the memories, Dawn) or thought I was a naive (and blind) idiot for thinking I'd ever fall for his bullshit genteel act.

Placing a hand over my heart, I gasped and widened my eyes in fear. "Cheese and rice! You scared the bejesus out of me, mister!"

"My sincerest apologies, Miss..." the slimy toadstool trailed off as if he didn't know everything about me already.

"Stackhouse, and you are?"

He looked a little irritated at the omission of my first name but made a gesture to open my door. After I nodded in thanks, he pulled it open and offered me his hand. I slung my purse over my shoulder and took his hand, all the while thanking God for inventing hand sanitizer.

"William Compton, but you may call me Bill. Lovely to make your acquaintance, Miss Stackhouse. Are you per chance a descendant of Jonas Stackhouse?" he said while helping me out of the car then shutting the door.

I took a few steps back to put some much needed distance between us. A universe wouldn't have been distant enough as far as I was concerned, but a couple of feet was enough for now.

He looked embarrassed for a second and explained unnecessarily, "I should have given you due warning instead of allowing you to be surprised by the coolness of my hand. I'm a vampire; our body temperature runs quite a bit lower than humans."

My mouth formed an, "Oh."

Silence fell between us and I could hear the crickets chirping. He seemed to be waiting for something but I just wanted to get back home and slap the shit out of Hadley.

"Jonas Stackhouse?" he prompted.

Good God, he was still on that? "Oh! Why yes, yes I am. Jonas was my great-great-great -" I gave him a self deprecating smile and shook my head, "you know what, he was my ancestor and let's just leave it at that." I paused and gave him my head tilt that made me look like an adorable ditz, "Not to sound ungrateful or anything but why exactly were you close enough to hear my car in the woods?"

He looked at me curiously. "I decided to move back to my ancestral home after the last inhabitant, my descendant Jesse Compton, died. My attempts at hiring a contractor and a handyman to renovate the house have thus far been unsuccessful. It appears the people of this town do not want to avail themselves to the business of someone of my ilk."

Fuck my life, I really didn't want to make small talk with him and I sure as fuck didn't want to help him find someone to make his stay in Bon Temps while he stalked me any more comfortable than it had to be. Not only did he not answer my original question about what the hell he was doing creeping around Gran's property, he seemed to be trying to set things up so I'd have to see him again. Watching paint dry would've been more appealing so after nodding and murmuring my condolences and agreeing that some people were just rude, I checked the time on my cellphone and said, "Oh shoot. I need to be getting home, my family's probably worried sick."

He stiffened.

Not wanting to turn my back on him, I waited for him to leave first. He seemed to have taken that as an invitation to walk me home.

I stayed right where I was and said, "Good night, Mr. Compton. It was nice meeting you."

"Call me Bill, please. I'll escort you home."

"I'll be fine, Mr. Compton. Good night."

"This is not the time nor place for a lady to be out and about on her own. I insist."

"No, really, I'll be fine. The house is right there," Eyes never leaving his face for a second, I pointed over my shoulder to the house less than two hundred feet behind me."

Mr. Bland-as-Plain-Oatmeal then had the audacity to try to glamour me.

"You will obey me."

I fucking deadened my eyes and nodded because what else was I supposed to do? "Yes,"

"You are attracted to me, love me more than life itself and desperately want to please me."

I nearly barfed. "Yes,"

"You will go home and pretend nothing happened. You will then wait until everyone is asleep then write a letter addressed to your family. You will tell them that you've fallen in love with a wonderful man and will be cohabiting with your beau in New Orleans. You will then quietly make your way over to the Compton estate and you will not make a sound until I either give you leave to do so or we arrive at the palace in New Orleans, whichever happens first."

"Yes,"

His gaze turned lecherous. "But first, you will follow me into the forest and pleasure me."

Then he turned and began walking further into the woods with me shuffling along, two paces behind him.

I thanked God and all that was holy that Pam had prepared me for this moment. Reaching into the side pocket of my purse, I discretely pulled the silver encased sliver of wood out and slid it up my sleeve.

He stopped next to a tree stump, about three hundred feet or so away from Gran's, and turned to face me.

"Get on your knees and call me Master Bill."

I flexed my wrist and felt the blunt end of the stake hit my opened palm. Then with almost vampire-like reflexes (thank you, Eric), I swung my arm forwards with all of my considerable strength (once again, thank you, Eric) and embedded almost the entire stake into his cold, black heart.

I've only seen one other vampire die his final death before, and that was Longshadow after Eric staked him. Now, according to Pam, the stake Eric used was one made from a six hundred year old yew tree - perfect for a warrior or someone who gets into frequent "to the final death" type of fights since yew is the wood of death and once staked, final death comes fairly quickly. It was why seconds after my brain recognized that Longshadow's face and hair were melting like hot wax off of his skull, he exploded. Pam, sadistic psychopath that she was, decided that five seconds from staking to true and final death was too light a punishment for anyone who tried to hurt me. So she commissioned a custom made stake made of Hawthorn wood (the fae apparently consider Hawthorns sacred) then had it encased in wax and dipped in silver melted from a blessed medallion. She wouldn't tell me what happened to vampires staked by a Pam Original, only that I could thank her by remembering to take pictures.

Which was why the second my stake was firmly embedded in the side-burned jackass's heart, I had my cellphone in my hand, record function on, aimed at the grisly sight before me. Fucking Pam.

Apparently the silver set his heart on fire and caused him to suffer in agony for long, long moments. The silver poisoned his heart and pumped directly into the rest of his body, turning his veins an ungodly black that looked even more creepy against his chalk white skin. It also rendered him mute and paralyzed, the effect of which had him lying on his back with his feet and hands in the air like a dying rat. Jerking violently every now and then, with bleeding eyes staring blindly into the treetops. That lasted for a good twenty seconds or so until I guessed his chest cavity was finally hot enough to melt the silver off the stake.

That was when the fun truly began.

The second the liquid silver hit his blood stream, each and every hole on his body began leaking fluids. Then his skin did something awful yet fascinating at the same time. You know how when you're cooking omelets or pancakes, you're supposed to wait until it bubbles before flipping it because that's when you know that the bottom layer is cooked through? Well, douche-canoe over on the floor was cooked through because his skin did that bubbling thing a couple of times before deflating completely and melting into the sinewy muscle and fat beneath it.

Gross, I know, but it didn't end there.

What happened next would be something that I'd never, not in a thousand years, forget.

Because he no longer had any skin left, I watched in horror as each exposed layer layer of flesh melted and blended into the one beneath it. Muscle, fat, tendon, things I didn't know the names of, disappeared. But the part that truly horrified me were his screams as each layer tried futilely to heal itself over and over again. This part took the longest. It was almost an entire minute before his body simply gave up, leaving literally a shell of a man comprised of bones, goop, and his stubborn heart that probably due to a vampire's biology or last ditch effort at self preservation, refused to melt.

Luckily for him, it was around this time that the silver and wax were completely sloughed off. This I actually saw with my own eyes because all that was left of his chest cavity was his heart with the silver stake pierced snugly through it. The second the wood became visible, whatever little that remained of Bill Compton exploded.

a/n: ding dong, the dick is dead! Sorry this was a filler, I had an actual plot planned for months that would carry the current storyline into the major arc (prophesies, epidemics and lost brothers, oh my!) but the chapter took on a life of its own and I couldn't resist ending beel.