"Hello, lover."

The unexpected sound of her voice caught him by surprise and Eric turned around. If he still had a beating heart in his chest, he was pretty sure it would have stopped dead at the sight of her. She was wearing a short robe that left very little to the imagination and a wicked smile that revealed she fully expected to be admired.

Sookie. His Sookie. In front of him again after all this time.

He wanted to rush over, touch her, hold her, immerse himself in her because it had been so long and he missed her, but something deep inside him compelled him not to move.

He peered closely at Sookie, his eyes hungrily taking her in, studying every inch of her form and committing it to his memory.

But his vampire instincts told him something wasn't right.

His Sookie was a study in contradiction, capable of extreme kindness yet also filled with fire and rage, tiny in stature but somehow larger than life. She was braver than most, often stupidly so. She was nowhere near perfect – far from it. She had a tendency to irritate him, frustrate him beyond belief, provoke his temper in a way very few could. However, she was also the first person who had actually managed to surprise him in a very long time, to make him feel the kind of intense emotions he thought he had outgrown after a thousand years. A part of him initially hated her for it, and he fought against the changes in him as hard as possible. Eventually, he realised it was useless to fight the inevitable.

But by the time he was willing to accept the truth, it was already too late.

The woman standing in front of him was a perfect replicate of his Sookie, down to every nerve and cell, but she didn't feel like the woman he loved.

He couldn't explain it. It made no sense at all. Which meant this was very possibly a dream.

Fuck.

"What's the matter, cowboy? Cat got your tongue?" she asked, tilting her head to the right. Rays of sunlight beaming behind her reflected against the golden strands of her hair causing a bright glare across the room. He found himself covering his eyes with the back of his hand to protect himself from the brilliance of it all.

When he opened his eyes next, they were back in her house, the very same spot they had shared their last conversation before he had walked out on her.

Sookie was here with him, but she was no longer in that robe. No, she was wearing her Merlotte's uniform, her hair tied up in a ponytail, and there was a huge festering wound on the side of her head that was slowly bleeding down her face and body and soaking into her white t-shirt until it had turned into a deep, dark red.

The smell of Sookie's blood had been ingrained into his senses from the very first time he had tasted her, thrilling him, taunting him. And now the sight of it was torturing him as she sat slowly bleeding in front of him.

The colour of her skin, the very opposite of the golden tan he remembered, now had a dull pale pallor to it. She was staring off into empty space, her gaze filled with a hollowness he was unaccustomed to from her vibrant self. Kneeling before her, he held her face in his hands. "Sookie," he urged softly. "Tell me where you are."

She didn't answer. She didn't even meet his gaze. And no matter how many times he tried to get through to her, nothing seemed to work. Out of frustration, he started shaking her shoulders violently. "Sookie!" he growled. "Look at me."

She finally did.

And for a moment, he felt her, he sensed the fear, the desperation, the sheer hopelessness that had completely enveloped her. Holding on to her tightly, he kissed her temple. "Tell me where you are."

She was beginning to grow numb again, become the empty shell she was a few seconds go, but he wasn't having any of it. He shook her once more, resorting to slapping her when she still refused to respond to him.

"What is it with you vampires?"

He whirled around to find his earlier vision of a robe-clad Sookie resting with her legs crossed behind him, taunting with him a sneer. She exhaled a sigh of boredom as she leaned closer to pick up a red, juicy apple that was sitting at the center of the table. She polished it with her hands before looking up at him again.

"I used to think y'all were smarter than humans but that's not really true, is it? I mean, do you seriously think intimidation and violence is going to bring a dead girl back to life?"

"She's not dead," he bit out.

The Sookie in front of him laughed before drawing his attention to the Sookie behind him, and he turned to find her bleeding body quickly rotting into a corpse and then disintegrating into ashes.

"Oh yeah, she's just full of life that one," Sookie laughed.

His predatory instincts took over. Using his vamp speed, he rushed over to the Sookie that still remained and grabbed her by the throat, slowly tightening his grip around her neck. "Where. Is. She?"

The sound of her laughter echoed around him as she suddenly disappeared into thin air. A second later she reappeared, this time several feet away from him.

"Give it up, Eric. She's gone, dead, rotting six feet under by now."

"I don't believe you."

She turned her back to him and swayed out of the kitchen and into the living room. Stifling the urge to attack her from behind, he simply followed her.

"Keep fucking those blonde fangbangers that look like her, Eric, because that is as close as you're going to get to your precious Sookie ever again."

Guilt surged through him but he refused to give into it, to reveal his vulnerabilities in front of this fucking bitch who was parading around as Sookie. "You don't know anything."

A smug smile curved across her face as she took a seat on the couch. "I know Sookie is never coming back."

"You're nothing more than a fucking nightmare," he growled, expecting her to be afraid of him. Instead, her smile only grew wider.

"When all else fails, bring out the fangs? How predictable."

He moved quickly to stand in front of her. "Tell me who you are. Or I'll start ripping you apart. Very slowly," he threatened calmly as he glared down at her.

"Funny, that's exactly what Russell did. He started with the pinky finger."

A sudden feeling of dread came over him, starting in the cavity in his chest where his heart once resided, and swiftly surging through him until he felt it so keenly and powerfully he was almost paralysed by it.

"But he didn't just stop there."

The pain was so intense he wanted to wretch but he fought it with everything he had, refusing to give the bitch the satisfaction of seeing him keel over.

"She cried, and she begged, and she pleaded. But you know Russell..."

"Stop!"

"A girl can only take so much," she sighed exaggeratedly, shrugging her shoulders.

"She has powers-"

"That only kick in when she's drunk ancient vampire blood. You can't possibly think Russell is that stupid, do you?" She propped her legs up on the coffee table, and the sound of her heels smashing against the glass surface was excruciatingly sharp. Despite the glass shards piercing into her skin and blood gushing out, Sookie stared up at him with a smile. "Face it, Viking. Five years may be nothing to you but it's a long time for a human to be a mad vamp's hostage."

Eric woke up with a start.

Even though over the past five years his connection with Sookie had faded, he had been able to sense a faint glimmer of her emotions once in a while. But not anymore. Now, there was nothing.

And he had to face the fact she was truly dead.