A/N -- Just when you thought it was all over...

This is like the story that just won't die! (pun intended) I kept thinking I needed closure, and if I needed closure I thought maybe someone else might, too, so here it is. A couple months ago I just cranked out a little song-inspired one-shot, and now this bitch has escalated to my own personal version of War and Peace. Thanks for taking this journey with me. Heartfelt thanks for all the reviews and PMs -- I try to answer them all, but some do slip through the cracks. But I do read and appreciate each and every one.

I'm posting this sans beta, as I just finished it and wanted to post it before I leave on vacation tomorrow. Shout out to ebonyeyez1 -- my critic, my advisor, my cheerleader. She knows I'm batshit crazy but somehow manages to put up with me anyway!

Disclaimer: Ms. Harris lays claim to the characters in this story, but I can say with utmost certainty she wouldn't claim the bizarre crap I lead them through!

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Victor Madden sat in the leather chair behind the desk in Eric's office at Fangtasia. Clancy and Felicia had summoned him when they had been unable to contact Eric or Pam after they had failed to show up at the bar for the third night in a row. He had covered the distance between New Orleans and Shreveport, some 350 miles, in just over three hours.

The visit to Eric's house had been a horrendous nightmare...

Victor and Clancy arrived to find the garage door wide open, with Pam's Lexus parked along side Sookie's BMW and Eric's Corvette. Both vampires turned to look each other, faces somber and eyes filled with dread. This was not a good sign.

Upon entering the garage they encountered a pile of ashes in front of Eric's car, the telltale wooden stake laying guilty in its midst. Noticing a glint of metal in the powdery remains, Clancy bent down and retrieved a gold locket. After dusting it off, his face turned ten shades whiter than un-dead and there was a catch in his throat as he whispered to Victor, "This is Pam's. Eric and Sookie brought it to her from their trip to France a couple of years ago."

Faces grim, Victor and Clancy regarded each other with waryeyes. Inspecting the house was next; if anyone had asked, both vampires would have chosen to re-grow severed limbs rather than face the grisly task at hand.

They entered the kitchen and immediately noticed the gaping hole in the far wall and the bits of drywall scattered all over the floor. Clancy raised a questioning eyebrow at Victor, who returned his look with a frown. Something had most definitely gone on here.

"Northman? Sookie?" Victor called out as they started through the kitchen. Both vampires listened carefully for any sort of sound coming from the rest of the house, but their keen hearing picked up nothing.

Their senses now on overdrive, the vampires continued their search of the house, checking the living room, Eric's office, and the guest rooms on the first floor, calling out for Eric and Sookie as they searched, but...nothing. When they finally made their way to the den at the back of the house, the scene they encountered stopped them in their tracks.

Three piles of ash, one large one and two smaller ones, lay in the middle of the floor. The sword on the floor prompted Victor to scan the display on the far wall – yes, there was one missing. He glanced at Clancy, who was scowling as he studied the piles of ash. "This looks to be two vampires, one of them cut in two by the sword," he observed.

"What do you think happened?" Clancy whispered.

Victor squatted down next to the larger pile of ashes and studied it carefully. A gnarled piece of wood was in the center of the pile. Closer to the edge of the pile was a gold Thor's hammer on a chain. He recognized it as Eric's pendant and his eyes closed in disgust. He had known Eric for almost two hundred years. How in the hell had someone been able to get close enough to Eric to stake him? It would be next to, if not completely, impossible. Eric was too old, too cautious, too powerful. To think that someone could get the drop on him, especially in his own home, was ludicrous.

"I cannot be sure what went on here," Victor finally answered Clancy. "But I can tell you for sure this is Eric. I recognize his pendant. He told me once he's had it for almost three hundred years." He paused for a moment before continuing. Way too many questions were surfacing, questions that Victor wasn't able to answer, and that made him very uneasy.

"I don't know how anyone could get close enough to Eric to stake him in his own home. It just doesn't make sense. And the other ashes...it appears this vampire was rendered in two by the sword. But who is it, and did they finally die before or after Eric? And where does Pam fit into the picture?" Victor's brain was buzzing as the list of unanswered questions kept growing. He knew they needed to figure out who the third vampire was if they were going to even come close to solving this mystery.

Clancy knelt down beside Victor, joining him in the search for any clue that might help them figure out what had happened. As their eyes scanned the powdery remains, Victor picked up on a twinkling from the far side of the pile. He reached across and sifted through the ash carefully, retrieving a woman's ring. Consternation clouded his face as he attempted to fit this piece into the puzzle.

"Let me see that," Clancy said, reaching for the ring. As he blew the ashes off, his eyes went wide, then immediately narrowed to dark slits. "This is Sookie's engagement ring," he said softly, as if talking to himself. He looked up to see Victor frowning at him.

"I remember when Eric gave this to her," Clancy explained. "She was so excited...she flaunted it around the bar, showing it to anyone who would stand still to look. I remember thinking it was the biggest fucking diamond I had ever seen." His shoulders slumped a little as he took another close look at the ring. "But what I don't understand is why it would be here, by this pile of ashes..." his growing confusion causing his voice to trail off.

"Yes, who was this pile of ashes?" Victor wondered aloud. "And where is Sookie?"

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The long list of unanswered questions continued to plague Victor after he and Clancy left Eric's house and returned to Fangtasia. Of one thing he was certain: Eric and Pam were both finally dead. The who and the how were still a mystery, as were the ashy remains of the third vampire.

'What a fucking mess,' Victor thought to himself as he rested his elbows on Eric's desk and put his head in his hands. Eric Northman, Sheriff of Area 5, finally dead. How in the hell was he going to break the news to Felipe? Area 5 was the most profitable area of Louisiana. In spite of the billions of dollars spent on restoration and reconstruction, post-Katrina New Orleans just wasn't what it used to be. What Area 1 lacked in revenue earnings for the de Castro regime, Area 5 more than made up for. Although they had their fair share of differences, Victor knew Eric would be sorely missed.

His head still in his hands, Victor looked down at the top of Eric's desk and noticed the invoices stacked neatly in the corner of the desk blotter. A hard scowl painted his face as he thought about the daunting task of overseeing the finalization of Eric's affairs. As the king's second, he knew Felipe would assign this duty to him. He would need to consult with Eric's attorneys to determine the final disposition of Eric's property. Fangtasia was a huge money-maker, as were Eric's numerous other business ventures, and their yearly tribute added significantly to the kingdom's coffers.

Victor picked up the stack of invoices and shuffled through them: a $1200 utility bill from Southwestern Electric: a $250 invoice from Aramark for bar rags, mop heads, and miscellaneous other linens; a receipt for $37,000 from Pelican Distributing, the local supplier of consumable blood products.

Victor's brows shot up as he took a second look at the invoice for the blood. From previous audits of Fangtasia's accounts, he knew the monthly bill for TrueBlood should be nowhere close to this amount. As he scanned the detailed list of items, he noticed a charge for a dozen cases of Royalty, plus a $1,000 surcharge for expedited delivery.

"What in the hell did Eric need with a dozen cases of Royalty?" he wondered aloud. He wouldn't...unless he was planning on hosting a party. A party with lots of vampire dignitaries. That couldn't be possible, or Victor would have known about it already.

"Damn," Victor muttered out loud. He was growing more agitated by the minute at this mystery, and even more agitated with himself that he couldn't piece the puzzle together. He buzzed the intercom at Eric's desk and Felicia answered from behind the bar. "Yes, Mr. Madden?"

"Felicia, I need to see you and Clancy at once," Victor barked at her.

Almost instantly, Felicia and Clancy were standing in front of Eric's desk. Victor looked up at them and asked, "Do you have any idea why Eric would order a dozen cases of Royalty? Even if he were planning a party, a dozen cases would seem extreme."

Clancy's face was blank, but Felicia looked uneasy as she spoke up. She had never trusted Victor, and the fact that he was investigating Eric and Pam's final deaths and overseeing their affairs galled her to no end. "Pam ordered the Royalty almost a week ago and had it delivered to Eric's house. That's all I know," she finished quietly.

'Great, another clueless clue,' Victor thought to himself. Were he human, he was sure he would have a migraine right now. "That will be all," he dismissed Clancy and Felicia with a wave of his hand.

Victor leaned back in the leather chair and propped his feet on Eric's desk. His peripheral vision took in the computer setting to the side of the desk. He noticed the screen saver moving randomly around the screen and realized the computer's power was still turned on. He wiggled the mouse and the screen saver disappeared, revealing the desktop. Noticing Internet Explorer was minimized on the taskbar, Victor clicked to open the program and was completely taken aback by what he saw.

A Yahoo e-mail account appeared on the screen in front of him and Victor's eyes crinkled with amusement when he saw the name – bloodsuckingbitch. 'Must be Pam's,' he chuckled to himself. He read further and discovered the last e-mail, dated six nights before, was from Eric.

Victor's curiosity was beyond piqued as he read Eric's e-mail to Pam:

WHY AREN'T YOU ANSWERING YOUR FUCKING PHONE?! There will be serious repercussions for you forcing me to resort to e-mail, Pamela. Call me as soon as you get this. I need for you to order twelve cases of Royalty at once and have them shipped overnight delivery. Not going into details here, other than to tell you Sookie finally said yes. CALL ME IMMEDIATELY! E.

Victor was once again puzzled by the fact that Pam had left her e-mail account open for three days before her final departure from Fangtasia. Careless lack of attention to detail was not her style. However, her security faux pas did shed some faint light on the happenings of three nights past.

Sookie finally said yes. Victor knew the "yes" wasn't to an offer of marriage. The entire vampire population from New York to L.A. knew of the celebrated engagement of the infamous Viking Sheriff from Louisiana and the small-town telepath of Rhodes fame. No, it was something different...

Victor's eyes flew wide as the realization struck him. "Said yes," plus a dozen cases of Royalty...he turned her. Bloody christ, he turned her.

Victor paused for a moment to let this thought sink in. So Sookie must have been the third vampire. One piece of the puzzle was finally put into place. Now the big questions were who did it, and why.

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The next evening, Victor was back in Eric's office with Eric's attorney, Michael Jamison. Jamison had been Eric's attorney for more than fifteen years, and Victor felt him to be competent (for a human) and on top of what needed to be done to close Eric's estate. Victor knew Jamison from previous meetings with Eric, and he had contacted the counselor as soon as he found Eric's remains. Vampires had learned long ago that the expeditious settling of unsavory Supe affairs often prevented unsolicited and unnecessary intervention by too-curious humans.

"Mr. Northman instructed me to give this packet to you, Mr. Madden, in the event of his...ah...final demise," Jamison said as he handed a big manila envelope across the desk to Victor. "I have no idea what the envelope contains. Mr. Northman chose not share that information with me."

Victor regarded the envelope with veiled curiosity and then set it aside as if it were of no consequence. He would look at it later, once the human was gone.

Jamison stood up and turned toward the door. "Miss Stackhouse was named the primary beneficiary of Mr. Northman's estate. Since she is now deceased, the bulk of the holdings, aside from that designated to a few minor recipients, will be transferred to de Castro's kingdom. If that is all, Mr. Madden, I will contact you once the final disposition of Mr. Northman's properties has been made."

"Very well then," Victor nodded his dismissal to Jamison.

Alone again, Victor opened the manila envelope. Inside were three smaller envelopes, the name of the intended recipient for each envelope was scribed in Eric's bold handwriting: one for Pamela Ravenscroft, one for Sam Merlotte, and one for Victor Madden.

Victor studied the envelope marked for Pam. Eric had sealed it, securing the contents from prying eyes. Victor grabbed the corner as if to tear it open, but stopped before ripping the paper. 'I may be ruthless, even shifty at times, but I do have character,' Victor thought to himself as he reached underneath the credenza and fed the envelope into the paper shredder sitting on the floor. Eric's final thoughts to Pam would die with him.

Victor opened the envelope with his own name on the outside. He removed the single piece of paper and read Eric's message.

Victor,

If this letter finds its way to you, then Pam and I are finally dead.
Michael Jamison, my attorney, has instructions for the disposition of
my holdings. He has been instructed to contact you once finalizations
have been made.

The bulk of my estate goes to Sookie. Even though she is human and we
were unable to be legally married, I expect her to receive the respect and
deference due her as my bonded . After all, she is still under the protection
of the de Castro regime.

E. Northman

Victor smiled to himself. Eric had the final word, even in death.

The third envelope, addressed to Sam Merlotte, lay unopened on the desk. Victor sighed at the thought of making the trip to Bon Temps to deliver the letter. Victor's vampire snobbishness afforded the shifter no more regard than he would receive from any other vampire, but Sam had been important to Sookie, and Sookie had been everything to Eric. As the unofficial administrator of Eric's vampire affairs, Victor knew he had no choice in the matter.

Bon Temps. Sookie's home town. The first time Victor met Sookie, he recalled, was at her house in Bon Temps, on the night of Felipe's takeover of Louisiana and Arkansas. Northman and Compton had been there with her, as had the Tiger's crazy sister. And Sookie's friend...what was her name...Amelia something-or-other...the witch. Witch.

Victor's brain started buzzing. If Sookie's friend was a witch, maybe she could help with some type of spell to help determine the cause of the vampires' deaths. He had heard of such proceedings – ectoplasmic reconstructions, they were called. He had never seen one, but he understood them to be a useful tool in solving difficult crimes in the supe world.

Victor looked at his watch – 8:30 p.m. If he left now, he could make it to Bon Temps and visit the witch at a somewhat respectable time of evening. He would deliver the letter to the shifter afterwards.

Victor buzzed the intercom a second time. "Yes, Mr. Madden?" Felicia answered.

"I am leaving for Bon Temps," Victor informed her. "I shall return before closing. Call my cell should you need me."

"Yes, Mr. Madden," Felicia replied dutifully. Victor thought he heard a sigh of exasperation on the other end before the line went dead. 'If nothing else, Eric's minions were certainly loyal to him,' he thought to himself.

Heading out the back door, there was a spring in Victor's step as he moved toward his car. It wasn't often he had the chance to play the sleuth, and as he sped through the night toward Bon Temps, he thought the Sherlock Holmes hat was beginning to fit him just fine.

TBC