Put a stake! Through my heart
And drag me into sunlight

So awake! For your greed
As you're slaying the dreamer...

The song blasted through the building, entertaining the hard core goths and druggies by the stage who were moshing quite happily to the metal. Eric, and the few vampires scattered throughout the venue, were not too pleased with the lyrics, although as Kat caught his eye, he began to wonder whether the choice of song was intentional or not. He was standing on the second floor of the club, watching the band from above; unwilling to enter the dangers of the tightly packed crowd below. Kat was looking stunning as usual. Her hair was still long and loose, shimmering in the flashing red lights of the stage as she moved in time with the heavy drum beats. She was wearing a red, silky, low cut top with a black swirling design embroidered on the fabric and sleeves that were cut vertically along her forearms so that the beautiful skin of her arms was visible, shining white in the gloom.

They finished the song to a round of applause, cat calling and wolf whistling. The wolf whistling increasing as Kat bowed, displaying more of her cleavage. Then she moved off the stage, denying Eric his view of perfection. He saw her in the corner, drinking beer and chatting with some of her 'fan club'. Evidently it was her brother's turn to take centre stage as the band picked up the pace to a more speed metal song.

Let me go, master I hate you so.

How can I sleep at night?

When my whole being cries...

Once more the lyrics seemed to be aimed at him. He couldn't help but imagining Pam saying the words. Since the view was not as perfect as it had been before and the song was starting to make him feel uncomfortable, Eric decided it was time for a casual drink. He went over to the bar and was surprised at the large range of Tru Blood bottles on offer. Clearly the folks in Camden were used to his kind. Or they just enjoyed imagining what it was like to be a vampire, he mused, as he saw a quite obviously human guy drinking some AB positive. He ordered some B neg and for once did not mind paying the ridiculous amount that the club demanded because they had mastered the art of warming it to exactly the right temperature. For the first time in a while, the prosthetic, imitation blood actually tasted close to what it was imitating. He went back over to the balcony, bottle in hand, to see that the song was ending and Kat was coming back on stage. Perfect timing.

Her brother passed her a bottle of something bright blue from which she took a few gulps of before speaking into the mic. "We're gonna do something a bit more mellow now - it's by a certain band that is one of the gods of random metal. Apocalyptica!" There were a few woops around the room and a scattered applause.

"We haven't got any cellos here but we'll do our best with what we've got!" The lights faded to almost complete darkness. Eric leaned on the bars of the balcony, reluctant to lose sight of the girl. Slowly, as the intro music began, a red spotlight came up on Kat, making her skin glow with an eerie luminescence.

Bound to your side and trapped in silence,

Just a possession.

Is it sex or only violence

That feeds your obsession?

Her crystal clear voice pierced the blackness. The lights slowly came up to show the rest of the band. Her emotion was so strong, Eric thought he could see tears shining in her eyes but was not sure whether that was just sweat or a trick of the lights.

You could give me anything but love.

Anything but love...

The song eventually ended, the atmosphere a lot darker than it had been earlier. Kat handed the mic to her brother and quickly moved off the stage, completely ignoring whoever still thought it was hilarious to wolf-whistle her (utter creeps who didn't know where their eyes should be, Eric thought), and - was she wiping those tears from her cheeks? Of course, she could have just been trying to sort her make-up out so it didn't get completely smudged from sweating under the glaring lights (Pam had given him numerous lectures in the past about the necessity of maintaining an even tone to the skin), but he was almost sure she had been crying up there towards the end of her song. Why, he didn't know. Come to think of it, he hardly knew anything about her at all - except that she was gorgeous enough to make his head threaten to explode with vivid, wild dreams, and that she was probably going to have none of everything he wanted to give her.

A bartender tapped him on the shoulder, offering to take his empty drink. Yet, in the split second it took for him to hand over the bottle and look back at the crowd, Kat was gone. He tried in vain to find her gorgeous figure among the people below yet could see no sign of her shimmering hair and elegant gait. He assumed she had gone behind the bar and beyond his line of vision, and seeing as he was an entire spiral staircase away from the bottom floor and currently trapped in a huge crowd which had begun assembling as the night wore on, he was in no position to go chasing after her. He did think about flying it, of course, but it would just cause a scene, which he was sure Kat would be most displeased about (furthermore, descending headlong into a moshpit just didn't appeal). However much he wanted to anger her, to hear her getting annoyed and tense and heated, he restrained himself when his mind snapped back to what he was certain he had just seen.

Just as he was contemplating all the reasons why she should even want to cry at something which obviously made her so happy, he became aware of a small cluster of fingers groping his butt. He spun his head over his shoulder to see a couple of giggling, obviously stoned women (pretty much the only type that hung around Camden) dressed (well, if you could call it dressed) in what appeared to be costumes crafted out of various pieces of leather and scarves. They were teetering on 6" platform heels and, when he raised an eyebrow at them, seemed to push their chests out further in his direction and point to a side door which led into a small cloakroom (where he was sure, with his vamp hearing, the sounds of a couple already occupied in there were all too clear). He tried to be demure about it, just as he was sure Kat would like, and wave them away with a smile, saying that he wasn't in the mood and so on (gosh, he wondered how she got off on being so polite), but they didn't seem to want to leave him the hell alone.

"Come on, baby," one of the sluts was practically rubbing herself up against him, and now that she was (regrettably) closer, he could make out fang marks already on her – wait, that wasn't even her neck, "we'll let you bite us. Anywhere. Don't tell me you don't want it…" To emphasise her point, she pushed her hand in front of his groin. Agitated, Eric swatted it away like a fly. If this conversation was leading anywhere, he was going to be the forerunner. He glanced over his shoulder at the area below the balcony. He could see the next band – a seven-piece headbanging power metal group – had taken to the stage, and that he had very definitely lost Kat to the shadows. Turning his eye back to the fangbangers, he noticed that the other one appeared to be mark-free. Blank canvas, he thought. Might as well go for it, might get rid of all this sexual energy I have for Kat…

He brushed the other girl aside and turned to his assumed meal. "I suppose you'll do, then." He put on his low, growly, sexual voice which often had the power to make women's clothes miraculously fall off their bodies. "Don't make me wait or you'll be sorry. In the room over there. Now." The girl giggled annoyingly and he heard her heels clacking as he moved into the secluded room in the corner. The couple who had been utilising its...facilities before appeared to have cleared off, so Eric was sure of some privacy. He grabbed the girl round her waist and twisted her around, so that she was lying in his arms as though it was the end of a tango. He grinned at the smooth, exposed neck below him, elbowing the door closed as he extended his fangs, closing them in on her skin as she let out a small moan (Eric thought this was some sort of attempt at being seductive on her part). Yet, as the door shut, in the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar red-clad girl approaching the room. Not really thinking, he pulled his fangs hastily out from the girl's neck and dropped her instantly from his grip, as though she was burning him, not even caring as she collapsed directly to the floor with a slight scream of surprise, and then started laughing uncontrollably. Eric noticed none of this as he wrenched the door back open and hurried over to Kat, who was chatting with some of her friends just outside.

He reached down to get her attention but she turned around before he touched her perfectly shaped shoulder. She saw his face, her eyes lighting up,

"Eric!" She gave him a tight hug round the middle of his chest (it was as far as she could reach), which meant she briefly pressed her head into his rock-hard pecs, wrapping her arms around his body. He smiled uneasily, although pleased with the contact, and the access it gave his nostrils to her hair (it smelt of peaches), not sure how to react to this intimate move. The way she had practically piled her body into him, coupled with the amount of time she had spent at the bar suggested to Eric that she had long before passed the safe limit for alcohol consumption. He felt her giggle against his chest and the tingling feeling she caused him when she did so. Breaking her hold, she introduced him to her friends who, though equally drunk, seemed a little more daunted than she was by the tall blond as they were pushed forward by her in turn.

"I'm so glad you came, Eric! But where's Pam? I know, she must be busy, right? Well, tell her I said hi! Nice to see you though, really nice, are you enjoying the music? I have to admit that we ended up playing for so much longer than planned because of the audience requests..." Kat continued her non-stop barrage (she really was far gone) for about three minutes, while Eric simply looked down at her, happily taking in the view of the excited, drunk, talkative, lovely girl in front of him.

"Oh Michael," She said to one of the men, a studious looking professor-type who seemed slightly out of his depth in the venue. "Eric's a physicist too! We simply must have him do a lecture at some point, don't you think?!"

Michael adjusted his glasses and smiled weakly, "Of course, Mr... errr."

"It's Eric Northman." Kat supplied. Eric was starting to like the effect the alcohol was having on the girl for she seemed quite proud to boast about her vampire friend. And then he realised the implications of the conversation - that he would have to lecture university students about a subject he had had no experience about. He wondered why he hadn't made more of an effort to come up with some clever reason why lectures weren't his thing earlier in her non-stop monologue.

Before he could answer, Kat took something out of her pocket - a small rectangular white thing- lifted Eric's arm from his side and pushed a card into his palm, closing his fingers over the top to make sure he had a good grip of it. The temptation to grab her wrists there and then and to pull her entire body right against him so her could feel her all over again was almost too much, but he instead resigned himself to inspecting the small writing on the card, pretending that it was hard to view in the dim light.

"I haven't given this to you before, have I?" Kat laughed slightly. He shook his head, looking at the card as though it was hidden treasure - another piece of contact information that would help him access even more of her life. "Well it's my card, it's got my college number on it, so you can call at any time you like and you'll be put through to my faculty. We'll arrange for you to come in whenever it's okay for you!" She smiled, drunk though obviously convinced that Eric was totally up for lecturing a group of young adults who, although being completely obnoxious, knew a hell of a lot more about particle physics than he did.

"Er...thanks, Katteryna," he had to call her by her full name, "I'll keep this and call you back very soon. I trust you have had an enjoyable night?" He didn't think it was an appropriate moment to bring up the tears incident since she seemed so elated right now.

She giggled again. "Ooooh, just lovely! We had an amazing crowd tonight and playing for them felt really good, ooh and I tried out my new songs that we'd been rehearsing. Did you recognise our Nightwish stuff?"

"Yes, I believe I did..." He couldn't give away the fact that the only interest he had taken in her music was ogling her on a computer screen. She giggled,

"I'm sure you enjoyed the lyrics! And I've got so many new bands you could play in the club! I'll probably poke my head in soon to see Pam so I expect lots of opinions from you then!" Eric noticed that her friends, by now, were getting irritated that she kept on talking to him and were edging away slightly, with her arm in tow. When Eric glared daggers at them, the geeky one, Michael, jumped suddenly and took a huge leap backwards, sending Kat flying into him. Eric in turn came straight forwards and put his huge hands around Kat's shoulders, pulling her up and holding her steady, waiting until she gave him the all clear and noting how he had managed to sandwich her between the two men, the less-attractive one of which had resumed his nervous laughing.

Kat, probably sensing this, patted Eric on the side of the arm, laughed even her intoxicated state; she clearly wasn't going to buck the trend and invite Eric out onto the balcony for a nice long 'chat', so he would have to find another way of getting to her.

Observing where she took the geek - down the staircase and round the back of the stage - gave him a sudden idea. Almost immediately after he lost her from view, he pushed past the multitude of clubbers and descended the staircase for the first time since he had entered the club. Again he pushed past the bottom floor crowd, who were now dancing heatedly to heavy trance beat booming from the DJ's onstage speakers. It took only a few seconds to glamour the 'security guard' who stood with dark glasses on guarding the entrance to the backstage area into letting him have full access to the dressing rooms and lounge. It wasn't really kitted out for rock stars, featuring sombre 'lemon meringue' walls, and flooring which seemed to have been completely torn up from having so many bottles, instruments, equipment and probably bodies thrown on it. On the left hand side as he entered, there was a small cloakroom where a mass of coats and bags had been dumped, none of which were on hooks.

He recognised Kat's bag - a plain black one with a silver clasp - from when he had seen her with Pam at the club. It was even open slightly, a tube of lipstick and other random objects that women seem to accumulate in their handbags in view. He carefully plucked the lipstick out of the bag, taking time to open the lid and imagine the contact of the tube with her perfectly sculpted lips. Yet as he imagined the lipstick being transferred to his skin in a much less homosexual way than placing it on his lips himself, a female vamp rushed into the room. He quickly hid the lipstick behind his back, thinking it would be slightly suspicious if she saw him holding a tube of lipstick. He nodded and the woman who seemed to have a double take as she realised that a ridiculously hot vampire had just acknowledged her presence. She probably wasn't used to it, he decided, seeing as she was quite a dumpy middle-aged woman who probably lived on fake blood (as, he thought, she'd never be able to get enough humans wanting to donate their blood. She paused for a moment, then picked up her coat and placed the black bag from which he had just stolen make-up from on her shoulder. Then she hurried out of the room, though not before casting a last glance at Eric, who was busying himself by slowly putting on a random black coat that he soon realised was ridiculously small.

Shit.

He was standing in the middle of a cloakroom, wearing a coat that was far too small for him, and holding a tube of lipstick that didn't even belong to Kat. If someone walked in right now, they would probably think he was part of the entertainment. He pulled the coat off as quickly as he could (it was hard to pull the sleeves off his well-formed muscles) and decided it was time for Take Two. This time he would take no chances. He saw another black bag, very similar to the one he had originally thought was Kat's, but before he stole anything, he quickly checked that there was something to confirm it was hers. He found a small pack of business cards with her name on it. He decided that, unless she has some sort of secretary who had exactly the same bag as her, he was safe to assume that he was going to be stealing from the right bag. With a triumphant flourish, he lifted her lipstick from the bag, determining to get out of there as quickly as possible rather than examining it to see if it smelt/tasted/felt like Kat's lips would...

A/N Here's the playlist:

Song 1 = Slaying the Dreamer ~ Nightwish

Song 2 = Wolf & Raven ~ Sonata Arctica

Song 3 = SOS Anything But Love ~ Apocalyptica (and Cristina Scabbia)

P.S. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!!!

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