Chapter 05: Nightmares

Eric sat in his study and pondered over the email from his contact in Shreveport PD. It was a list of details on all seventy six humans rescued from Fangtasia on the night of the explosion. There was a Jim Sanders in there who was the member of the Fellowship of the Sun and who absolutely had no business in a vampire bar. He smiled at himself and gave a mental tick mark to his already strong suspicion.

Pam barged in at the same instant, catching on her master’s mood.

“Well, isn’t someone smug this evening?”

“Did the sale deed come through Pam?”

She held up a legal sized manila envelope containing paperwork on sales of a few properties in Shreveport including a large plot of land housing Shreveport’s FOTS headquarters, and raised an eyebrow. Eric relaxed back on his chair and brought his feet on the table, a slight smirk building on his usually expressionless face.

“We had a guest from FOTS that night.”

At this little bit of information, Pam raised both her eyebrows and gave her master an appreciative nod. Eric quickly signed the papers and faxed them to his attorney, before turning again to Pam.

“Send a text to all present minions in town to meet in two hours. We have a new confessional.” Pam smiled widely, understanding exactly which new address had to be texted and Eric’s smirk became an evil grin as he again turned to his email.

~~

The dreams started just like they did every day since the last few days, sometimes more than once a day… Loud explosion, smoke, hate, dust, mangled bodies and blood. Sookie started to scream and run.

The nurse on duty jumped on seeing the monitors and dialed the intercom, “Doctor I think she is having a seizure!” She ended the call and in the same breath called Eric Northman.

Sookie desperately tried to run away from the devastation. If only she could fly! It seemed to go on for hours. She ran but the smell of burning flesh didn’t leave her, the smoke blinded her and she fell right into a pool of someone’s blood…

Desperation grew.

Someone was calling.

Sookie stilled and tried to listen. Surely, a voice came through as though from afar.

“Sookie… Can you hear me?”

He was calling Sookie, gently, urgently. She recognized the lovely deep resonating voice, with a slight foreign accent maybe. He was holding her hand and caressing her cheek. The three fingertips on her face were cool and felt heavenly. She breathed in relief.

There were no cries of pain now. No disaster to be averted. No compelling need to get up and do something. There was just the awareness of the voice and the feel of the hands. She reveled in the sensation of that voice that cradled her whole being.

Suddenly, the hands left her and she had a feeling of being blind and stranded in the dark. She could not shake off her sudden need for that voice again.

No. No. No. I want you back. Where are you? She silently called to the stranger.

Then she heard someone else speak over her head. “She is alright now. Her vitals are getting back to normal as we speak. I think she will be fine. Thank you for coming Mr. Northman.”

The beloved voice spoke again, “Believe me, it is my pleasure!”

No one spoke for a very long time after that. The dull throb of ailing, anguished depressed thoughts assailed her again, from all around her. She struggled to keep afloat, trying to hold onto her personal talisman of Eric’s voice, waiting patiently to hear from him again. Sookie waited endlessly for him to say anything to cut out the murk surrounding her, something else to hold on to in his absence. Eventually she felt drained and bone tired. He has abandoned me again. Why doesn’t he ever stay. With the last thought of his lingering touch on her face, she let go and fell again to deep sleep.

~~

Eric sat down on Sookie’s bed and ignored the disapproving grumble coming vaguely from Bill’s direction. He also ignored the polite words of thanks coming from Sookie’s grandmother; just as he turned a deaf ear to Sookie’s mumbling brother.

He had become used to these reactions and didn’t have to pay attention to respond to anything they said. In the two weeks since the bombing and the one and a half week since the doctor discovered that when a fit overtook her, Sookie stabilized remarkably when Eric talked to her, he had been called six times to help out with Sookie’s comatose condition. She was in this unconscious, unresponsive state where she obstinately didn’t respond to any treatment or stimuli all kinds of specialist doctors tried out on her. Sookie was in a very fragile state. Six times she had gone into a kind of seizure when the brain probes attached to her showed abnormal stress and frenzied activity in her frontal and temporal lobes. The doctors surmised that she might be going through severe post-traumatic stress after the incident at the bar and might be having bad nightmares from it, but they had no idea what to do.

On Eric’s orders, a team of specialists was working on her case, for three straight days and nights, but they had only drawn blanks. Finally, she responded with a slight ghost of a smile when Eric visited her on the fourth night after the incident and the neurologist present pounced on the small break they had had with the strange case. Of all the plethora of sound, scent and touch stimuli tried on her, Sookie responded to the voice of a thousand year old vampire she didn’t know at all. Go figure!

Settling beside her, Eric took a discrete whiff of Sookie’s scent and felt his annoyance to the audience in the room, slowly slip away. Next to go, was his worry for Sookie that had been growing since the abrupt call he got from her doctor an hour back. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, going back to this secret place in his mind, specially reserved for his evenings with his beautiful sleeping enigma. Talk to me min kära…What are you?

 ~~ 

Another hour passed and according to the monitors, Sookie slowly went back to deep sleep. Eric sat very still at her side, relaxed and having some well-deserved downtime after a draining but dry evening. Her gran came in to check on Sookie and Eric stood up, to get to his vampire business.