A/N: Yesterday was an I'm really frustrated day. A this is very unfair and life sucks day. A kick rocks and mope and grumble day. A that was completely ineffectual but at least it was maybe somewhat cathartic day. A grief is kind of the worst but I made it through the day day. An I'm sorry I went kinda crazy but I think I'm maybe feeling a little less crazy day.

Which are all a pretty big step in the right direction.

Chapter 11

Before Eric could react, he was ensnared in a fine silver net. His jeans were still down around his ankles and he tripped and fell to the ground. He hissed as the silver ate into his flesh. The stack of cartons Sookie was sitting on tipped over and she fell on top of him. She could see the thin wisps of smoke rising from the wounds in the faint glow of his skin, and she scrambled away to keep it from going any deeper. A few bottles rolled across the floor but only one of them broke. She tried to pull off the net but it wouldn't budge. He was all tangled up in the mesh. She screamed again and the vampire standing over them kicked her hard in the side.

"Shut your whore mouth."

She woofed out her lungful of air and it took her a minute before she could catch her breath. She saw she was bleeding from a broken piece of glass near her hand but she hadn't felt the pain. Her body was buzzing with adrenaline. She stood up, leaving a bloody handprint on the concrete floor, and faced him.

"I belong to the King of Nevada, Felipe deCastro. I am very valuable. You'll be making one hell of a big mistake if you try to take me. He will never stop until I'm found and you're dead."

"God, you got a mouth on you. I bet it will look real good wrapped around my cock."

He grinned and his fangs were long and white and deadly. His other teeth weren't so lucky. He was wearing a greasy white wife beater and long baggy shorts and had several jailhouse tattoos. He was balding with a buzz cut and a scruff of beard and his eyes looked crazy, darting back and forth. Someone had turned a tweaker. A crazy one, by the looks of things. She wondered if the drugs had somehow… carried over when he'd been turned. It didn't make much sense, but she supposed just about anything was possible in a world full of vampires and shifters and witches and telepaths.

He pulled off his gloves and pulled a stake from his back pocket and Sookie scrambled to her feet and threw herself at him, gouging at his eyes. Knowing she wouldn't be able to save Eric, but damned determined to try. After all, what did she have to lose? She would be happy to die for him. Wasn't dying what she'd wanted all along?

But then she realized she was struggling for her own life, too, and not just for Eric's. She didn't know whether to be thankful about that or pissed off but it wasn't the time to worry about it just then. She kneed the vampire in the balls and then kicked his head when he doubled over in pain.

The door crashed open and the weak light from the hallway spilled in through the gap. The music got louder and Sookie could feel the bass pulsing in her eardrums. Or maybe it was her heartbeat.

"What the fuck is going on in here?"

The vampire had quickly recovered but hesitated, like he was weighing his options. He picked Sookie up and ran past the man, down the corridor, and out through the employee exit, all at vampire speed. He had a car parked a few blocks over and he shoved her in through a rear door only a few seconds later.

There was a cage separating the back seat from the front and the doors didn't have any handles. She was in a cop car. A really old one. She pounded on the side windows and tried to signal anyone they passed but they were soon out of the city, driving through the Mojave desert. There was little traffic that time of night and it got lighter the further they got from Vegas.

She realized it was the first time she'd been out of the casino since she'd arrived a year and a half before. The only time she'd tried to run, she hadn't really tried at all. She'd had nowhere to go and she hadn't even made it out of the sprawling complex. She had dreamed about really running away from Felipe, of course, but there were cameras everywhere up and down the strip. It wasn't even worth trying.

He veered off the highway and, after a few turns several miles apart, they were speeding along a dirt track that was almost indistinguishable from the desert floor. She had no idea who he was, what he wanted, or where they were headed. Wherever it was, it was in the middle of nowhere. They hadn't seen a car or a house or anything for miles. Nothing but the silhouettes of sagebrush and greasewood and the occasional Joshua tree. The vampire could see just fine in the dark, so his headlights were turned off. There was nothing but the faint glow of his skin, the dashboard lights, and the quarter moon to cut through the darkness.

There was no point in trying to escape. No point in wasting her energy. There were a couple of bloody fist prints on the window glass from when she'd beaten on it back in the city, trying to get someone's attention. She licked her thumb and tried to clean it all off. It took her a couple of tries to get the worst of it, but it was still a smeary mess when she was through. She rubbed it with the skirt of her dress and that helped some. She could feel the dried blood on the side of her hand and she licked that, too, and then wiped it off best she could on the upholstery. She went back to staring out the window. After a while, she couldn't stand it any longer. She took a shaky breath and blew it out.

"Hey. Who are you? Where are you taking me? And why?"

"Shut the fuck up."

He turned on the radio and turned the volume up until her eardrums were thumping again. She hoped Eric was alright. She hoped Felipe wouldn't kill him for letting her get away, even though it wasn't his fault. She hoped he was following them, ready to attack, but she had been searching for his void since they'd left, hoping to find it but knowing she wouldn't. He'd been far too ensnared to get out and away in time to see them. He wasn't coming to save her. There was nobody else. She sensed nothing. Nobody, in any direction. It was just her in the back and the vampire — her latest master — in the front seat.

She had already gone from the frying pan into the fire by being taken from the Queen and moved to Nevada. What came next? Lava? What was behind curtain number three? She had a feeling it wasn't going to be a barrel of laughs.

She didn't know how much time had passed when the car stopped. She had been deep in her own thoughts. He pushed the button on the remote clipped onto his visor and a gate slowly opened and then closed behind them after he drove inside. The property was surrounded by a chain link fence with razor wire across the top. They pulled up in front of a yellow single-wide trailer surrounded by an endless sea of dirt. There were several outbuildings with solar panels on the roofs and two smiling pit bulls, their tails whipping happily back and forth, running to the car to greet them. She found it kind of ironic that this vampire got his power from the sun. And those certainly didn't look much like Hellhounds.

The vampire got out of the car and yanked the back door open and pulled her out by the arm. She struggled, but there was no use trying to fight.

"What. Are you gonna run from me? Good luck with that in a few hours. I'll be safe underground and you'll be baking in the sun. You ain't got no water. There's nothing around here for more'n forty miles in any direction."

She was already warm and knew the heat would likely rise thirty degrees or more by mid-afternoon. She had spent all of her time in the desert inside with climate control, but she'd heard the fangbangers talk about the weather a million times. There was no shade in sight. She missed tanning at home in her chaise lounge, but this was far from that.

He spat on the ground, and she found the whole thing strange. He was. Stranger than any vampire she'd ever met before, and she'd met a lot. He pulled a tin of dipping tobacco out of his pocket and tucked a pinch between his lower lip and gums. He spat again.

"Now. You gonna behave? There's a right way and a wrong way to do things here. You don't want to choose the wrong way."

She took a deep breath and blew it out. She nodded. And then she ran as fast as she could towards the trailer house. The front door was unlocked and it banged against the siding when she threw it open and burst inside. There was a hallway to the right and the first room she found was a bathroom. She slammed the door closed and locked it. She had no idea why she'd bothered, other than impulse; it would hardly hold him back for more than a second. She looked around, hoping to find something to defend herself with. She came up empty.

He laughed. It was shrill and terrifying and it made her skin crawl. He was right outside the door.

"That ain't gonna slow me down much, darlin'. Didn't you wonder how I snuck up on you two lovebirds so easy?"

After a few moments, a thick mist creeped under the door and then swirled together, like a whirlwind in slow motion, until it transformed back into the vampire. He grinned.

"Boo!"

Her stomach dropped. How could you kill someone if they could just turn to vapor whenever they pleased? Any stake or sword or anything else would go right through him. And you can't really set mist or smoke on fire, unless vampire gas was combustible. She doubted she'd be that lucky. And she didn't have a match.

But she had been able to knee him in the junk earlier. Kick him in the head, too. Maybe she'd be able to get lucky again. Exploit one of his weaknesses, if she could figure out what they might be, and end him. There was no chance of them being found in the middle of nowhere, so her only chance was driving away in the vampire meth head's car. She wondered why she'd never been microchipped, like a dog. She was glad she hadn't had to endure a blood tie with anyone. The thought of being bound to Victor turned her stomach. The only vampire blood she'd ever had was V.

When he dragged her through the house, she was able to get a look at the place for the first time. It was dusty and dirty and the furniture was old and threadbare. The trailer was a seventies' model and she thought everything in it was original. It smelled musty and there were boxes piled all over the place. They were closed, so she couldn't tell what they had inside. There was a partly dismantled motorcycle in the middle of the kitchen floor and a chainsaw on the stovetop. She was glad when he walked right past it and out the back door. He looked crazy and hungry and scary as hell, but he didn't look like he had killing on his mind. Not yet, anyway. He looked like he had some other things planned. She hated the idea of having sex with him, but she'd done it with hundreds of vampires, and some of them had been just as gross. But if that had been his current plan, why were they leaving the house instead of finding a saggy mattress that was surely inside?

They walked past a chicken coop and a metal shed so full the doors were bulging open where they were chained together. The dogs followed them to a barn that stood next to a ham radio tower and they all went inside. One wall was lined with — strangely — gardening tools and dry goods and non-perishables. Rakes and hoes and spades a small tractor parked next to shelves of jumbo-sized packages of toilet paper and peanut butter and canned peaches. There was an arsenal mounted on the opposite wall, with handguns and shotguns and rifles and machine guns and a crossbow. There were boxes upon boxes of ammo stacked on a workbench next to a dozen or more knives and stakes.

The rest of the space was mostly taken up by radio equipment and video monitors and computers and boxes of wires and circuit boards and components. There was a trap door in the corner of the floor and she knew that's where they were headed, and she was afraid if she went down there, she would never come back up. At least not alive. And she was afraid she would live down there for a long, long time.

He let her arm go and she yanked it away from him and rubbed her bicep. He'd squeezed it hard and it hurt. He closed the barn doors and barred them from the inside. She was glad when an emergency light on the ceiling turned on. She decided it was time to try to talk to him.

"Who are you and why did you bring me here? You know I belong to the King. He'll end you when he finds me. I'm sure you're on video."

He laughed. "Who, me? Ain't nobody saw a thing. I just fogged from my car and all through the casino until I found you and then picked the perfect time. After I grabbed you, I covered my face pretty well on the way back and I was running fast. And I'm off the grid, sweetheart. I killed my maker the night I rose and nobody even knows I exist."

She was so incredibly fucked. And terrified. It was amazing that, somehow, no matter how awful her life got, the bottom always got lower. And now she was going to be underground. She swallowed, even though her mouth was so dry.

"Well, what do you want with me?"

He laughed and she shuddered. It gave her goosebumps and she could feel th hair standing up on the back of her head.

"Oh, I heard all about you, darlin', with your sweet blood and your hot body. I listen in the shadows. I've heard you can suck a cock better than anyone. So I watched. I watched them take you over and over. And I smelled your sweet blood and your sweet pussy. And I knew I needed to have you. But I can't steal you away from the VIV Club. I can get in but I can't get you out. And, of course, you're never alone. I had to wait til I could catch that big a-hole with his pants down."

His fangs ran down and he picked her up and slammed her against the wall before she'd even seen him move. She was only wearing a dress and a bra with no panties on. She couldn't take the thought of being raped again. And especially not by this crazy psycho monster. He buried his face in her neck and inhaled.

"I gotta have a taste before we go any further."

He bit her neck and she screamed. He made no effort to be gentle and it hurt like a bitch. She tried to struggle but it was completely useless. And it hurt. He managed to get his belt undone without releasing her neck and his shorts fell to the floor. The keys and knife in his cargo pockets thumped on the floor.

She scrunched her eyes shut. She felt every bit as scared and miserable and alone as she had just before Bill Compton had raped her for the first time, back when she'd still been a twenty-five year old virgin barmaid, working for Sam Merlotte. She crossed her legs and squeezed them together, knowing it was useless but having to try anyway.

The crash startled the vampire enough to make him flinch and he turned to look at the source of the sound — the barn doors.

There was a loud cracking sound and the doors flew open. Eric stood in the doorway. His grin was cold and terrifying.

"Sookie is mine."

And then he attacked.