#avblod

THEY SAY MONSTERS ARENT BORN, THEYRE CREATED. perhaps they could follow bread crumbs of trauma, pointing them in the right direction so they could sleep easy at night. perhaps it was a false sense of security, believing in the innate good in others. the truth was harder to swallow. it was a scary bitter pill, one that promised disillusion before salvation. she hated the taste.

raw, unhindered power flowed through her like an electrical current. it ignited her blood, turned her heart into a war drum until all she could hear was the echo of its battle hymn in her ears. death hummed under her skin, alive and vibrating under the shine of the full moon. summers in shreveport beckoned the bugs and vermin into the muggy hot air yet the night was almost quiet. except for the crunching and slurping, flesh and fabric ripping. the screams had died out in minutes.

people gave up much faster than animals.

but she didnt hear him— she felt him. centuries of power trapped inside a case of muscle and bone. she didnt know if vampires had souls but they had stars in their chests, burning brighter with every decade that they survived being put back into the ground. her tongue ran along her bottom lip, deaths hunger roaring back to life in his presence. touch him. touch him. taste him. eat him. stop it. the last thing she needed was northman fucking with her already terrible night. god damn it.

" for the record, they started it, " the marshal mumbled. 'they' being the two bodies of very old vampires being ripped apart like southern barbecue on the fourth of july. the small hoard of undead on their hands and knees at her feet, unaware of anything other than the meat in their mouths. a sacrifice in the name of survival. one that tore at the humanity she held so close to her chest. there was right and wrong. there was cruelty and necessity. she was not like them. she was not like him.

" if you give me some vampire politics bullshit, @avblod, ill shoot you, " she growled. it was half hearted, lacking teeth in the middle of the morality crisis happening in her head. hell, she didnt even have a gun. she knew she was banged up, bleeding into the fabric of her clothes, dripping into the soil like a broken faucet — and she felt nothing. pain numbed by power. yipee. " i used the only weapon i had. "

❛ let me walk the world with you , mr. northman. or watch me die. ❜

those were the last words to leave her lips , as the blood heavily spilled from her freshly opened arms. did pamela want to die ? not at all. there was so much the courtesan wished to do in her life before finally meeting the end. there had to be more than this ── more than opening her legs to every top - dollar paying man , more than waiting to die , old and alone , probably of some kind of sexually transmitted disease. eric northman held the cure to her miserable complacency within his undead veins. how ironic , to be alive but feel so dead inside that death is the only way to feel alive. if eric turned her tonight , she silently swore the rest of her eternity to him.

there’s only darkness. it’s pitch black , but she can feel the weight of something on top of her. surrounding her. there was nothing , and now suddenly there’s panic as she tries to breathe with lungs that no longer need air. she sucks in dirt , and she can barely even choke. frantic and feeling claustrophobic , supernaturally strong muscles come to life , and pamela manages to claw her way through the heavy dirt that surrounds her.

and all of her synapses are firing on all cylinders , she feels everything all at once ── things she can’t possibly describe. and she feels movement with hers , a stirring beside her beneath the dirt as her head finally breaks through the surface , throwing piles of loose dirt to the side as she gasps for air and coughs up gravel and dust. it’s in her eyes , it’s in her lungs , it’s in her fucking cleavage. instantly , she is overstimulated by the impossibly new sensations as the mound of dirt beside her begins to shift further. pam feels anxiety in the depths of her stomach , twisting and turning , until mr. northman emerges.

and everything ties itself together in her mind in an instant. she has been turned. he actually did it. he didn’t watch her die , he brought her to life. the cool evening air on her skin feels like she’s being caressed by velvet , it sends a pleasant shiver down her spine. the air itself even looks like a shimmering veil before her very eyes , as if she could touch it and it would react.

There is a noise at her front door.

Astoria has been expecting this; one doesn't ignore a summons like that without consequence. It's the severity of the consequence that intrigues her. She's a relatively new arrival to Louisiana, and she doubts she'll be here long. While she is here, though, she's enjoying the space. The house is stunning, well worth the money she put into obtaining it, and when she inevitably leaves in a year or two, she'll be sorry to leave it behind. Historic, beautiful deeply haunted.

And more than three hundred miles from Fangtasia. Honestly, what did Eric Northman expect she would do? Cancel her plans, drive five hours to stand in a bar she's been to a few times while driving around the state, and then turn around and come back home? She assumed he'd be displeased, and that he'd make this displeasure known, and she's not surprised that he hopped the gate to get to her door.

"Traveled a long way," she mutters to herself, standing, but she takes her sweet time answering the knock, pulling a hoodie on over her tank top, sticking her feet in a pair of slippers, taking the mug of ice cream with her. When she opens the door she lounges comfortably against the door frame, and she lifts her spoon to her mouth, takes a bite of the ice cream in silence as she looks at him. They've met a few times at Fangtasia, and true to form, he's draped himself across the chair near her front door with all the lazy elegance of a king.