A/N: Hello everyone! I'd like to apologize for the time it took to upload this chapter. I had it finished about a week after the last one, but I was sure I had already posted this one and didn't have a lot of time to check it these past few weeks. I had a big project that was a bit last minute and my schedule was all over the place. But here it is and I'm fairly advanced on the next chapter too, so I'll probably post it soon. Well, here it finally is. I hope you enjoy it. And I'll make sure to answer your reviews before posting the new chapter too. Promise!

Eric felt his body heavy, but his head was light. Out of everything he expected to hear from the vampire in front of him, this was not it. He didn't know how to react. A part of him rebelled and was convinced she should be terminated immediately. It was horrifying, it was against the law. And had it been anyone else, he would have. He would've reached across the table and tore her in half as soon as the words finished forming from her lips.

But another part of him took her stance. She had closed her eyes before speaking. There was acceptance on her face. She knew what his reaction would be, and she still confessed her crime, trusting him. She didn't want to die but she wouldn't fight him if he decided to finish her.

The knowledge she had was dangerous. Vampires would capture and try to torture it out of her, and the Authority would likely destroy her in the worst possible as a warning to all vampires of the consequences of breaking such a law. She, herself, was dangerous. She was a new, practically a baby vampire, who managed to subdue and kill her maker. An Ancient. One who was older than himself. She was a liability, a danger to their kind and to every other. He should destroy her immediately.

Eric would never deny he was selfish. He was egotistical, uncaring, and mercurial a lot of the time. He didn't have patience for most people, and they tended to bore him to tears. But he wasn't heartless. He did have empathy; it was just harder to find than in most creatures. Somehow, the vampiress in front of him managed to touch that hidden part of him. So, he knew he should kill her.

Yet, he couldn't.

Not when she knew exactly what might happen to her and had trusted him anyway. Not when he knew, even if second-hand, a little about what Godric went through. Godric had the advantage of a mostly undiscovered world though. He fled to the North, away from where most vampires gravitated to escape punishment for his crime. Katherine didn't have that possibility. There was hardly anywhere she could hide nowadays where she couldn't be found.

"Is there evidence against you?" Pam surprised both of them with her question. Eric dove into their bond and examined her feelings for a moment. His child was incredibly selfish and egocentric, it was one of the reasons they got along so well. She would kill anyone who threatened their bloodline. The Viking couldn't understand her motivation at that moment. She wasn't feeling duplicitous or malicious towards the other woman, in any way. "Is there any way to connect you to his death?"

"I-I don't think so…" Katherine stuttered out, after a few moments, looking shocked and dazed. Her eyes went from Pam to Eric quickly, taking in their postures.

"How come no one has been informed of Castro's demise yet?" Pam frowned, after checking her phone for any information coming from Nevada.

"Well?" Eric pressed when she didn't answer.

"He had two different nests. There was one in the city, so he could conduct business and be available for the vampires in the area. The other one was smaller, kinda in the middle of the desert. It was hard to find unless you knew where to go. When he went to the second one, he tended to clear out his schedule and leave a stand-in order for the amount of time he was unavailable for. It's been almost a week, which is the time he would usually take off, so, someone is going to check on him and find out soon enough."

"Does anyone else know?"

"Yes. There was a vampire with me to pick up the car. But he booked it as soon as he realized no one else in the nest survived. He went South and told me to disappear and not tell anyone where I was from or what happened."

"And he won't tell anyone?"

"He went south. He has family in Central America, in Guatemala or Nicaragua, I think. He only took the car that was with him and the cash he had on him. Everything else, he tossed into the flames that were still going." She frowned as if she was trying to remember anything more.

"We can use that to our advantage to curry favor with the authority." Pam looked at Eric, raising her brow. "We can make a play for Louisiana and cut our loses with the Cunty Queen."

"I need to consult Godric first. But you are right, of course. It would be the best way to figure out exactly what's at play here and keep her safe." The Viking looked back at the young vampire. "How good are you at lying?"

"I might get a Bafta for my acting skills."

"Not an Oscar?" Pam rose a brow.

"I don't have the connections… Or the money…"

"I have another question for you before we can get to planning. Are you like Sookie?"

"Like Sookie?" Eric was sorry to see Katherine's face closing off again after he interrupted their little moment.

"You trusted both of us rather quickly for both vampire nature and your introduction into our undead lives. You were closed off and hesitant in the beginning, but you grew more comfortable, and you told us things I'd imagine no one else knows about you. You seemed to struggle before answering some of the questions and you would always study us for something before answering. So, are you a telepath like your cousin and if so, can you read our minds?"

He had lied to Sookie about killing her if she could. The reason he had asked was because if she did, they would need to tread carefully and make sure no one else knew because it would make her a bigger target. But her gift was too valuable to waste like that. He figured if the answer had been positive, he would learn how to avoid her reading his mind.

"Fucking hell… Can no one in this fucking family keep their fucking mouth shut?" She glared something fierce towards the ceiling and Eric saw Pam fighting back against a grin. He was glad his child was having so many positive feelings towards Katherine and hoped they got along better than she and Nora did. Then again, if they felt indifferent to each other it would be a more positive relationship than his child and his sister. "I'm somewhat like Sookie. I can't read minds like she can. I can get glimpses sometimes, but I have to touch someone to do it and it's generally very jarring and it hurts. I can control it, or at least, I could control it well enough as a human. As a vampire is more powerful and I haven't got the hang of it yet, it depends on my emotions, but I hadn't had the opportunity to really test it and train like I did before. I can't do it with vampires, thank the moon and the stars. I'd have found a way to kill myself already if I had to see what was on the king or his little associates' minds."

There was a lot of aggression in her speech, but her body language just spelt tired. Eric felt a little remorse at making her go through all of her secrets and traumas in such a short period of time, but he knew it was necessary. They needed all the information they could get, and they needed to act quickly. It was close to midnight, they had about five hours before sunrise, and it felt like they didn't have any time at all.

"And I don't trust you. I don't think I'll be able to trust anyone for a long time… But I don't distrust you." She sighed before continuing. "I'm an empath. I can read, in a way, what you are feeling. I can even try and manipulate others to an extent but it's hard and it leaves me very hungry and moody." Eric nodded in acceptance of the new information. She was forthcoming because she sensed their lack of aggression, and their willingness to help her. She knew their reactions and reacted accordingly. He hadn't realized how right he was at his earlier assessment that she was taking her cues from them. But it wasn't their behavior, it was their feelings.

"Does your lose-lip sister know about that?" Pam asked, her eyebrows moving in a slight frown.

"She knows something, but not the extension of it. She knows I could convince people to do things I wanted to. She knows mom usually felt better when I was around her but that it made me feel sick being around her for too long. But she doesn't know the extension of it because apparently, I'm the only person in the family with a sense of self-preservation. With fucking common sense…" She seemed frustrated with her kin and Eric could certainly understand her point of view.

"Are you sure?"

"Listen, Sookie is stupid and made a point of letting every single person in her life know what she could do. I took one look at how everybody treated her and made a point of not calling attention to me. On top of that, unlike behaving like a spoiled five-year-old or the annoying protagonist in an angsty teen romance novel who 'just wants to be like everyone else' I actually have a personality and I reveled in the fact that I was different. Sookie rejects it with every cell in her body what she is. I didn't advertise it, but I love that part of myself, I love that I could do things no one else could." She seemed a little incensed at how Sookie saw herself and her telepathy. To her, it was a punishment. To Katherine, it was a gift. And that told Eric so much about both of them and how they thought. It seemed he had just now met the more interesting member of the Stackhouse Family.