Charlaine Harris owns the rights to all of this.

A/N: This is the fifth story in my series. Please enjoy Thoughts in the Night, Taking Action, Eric's Story, and One Year Later before starting Pam's Take on Things. Enjoy!

Pam

I know that my master still lives. I suspect that there is one other being who knows this as well, and I also suspect that she is with him right now. I smile to myself because I have spent a week at that house on the beach that Eric bought for Sookie, and it really is a beautiful place. When he first discovered it, he would call me from there and I could tell that he wanted to live there with her just by the way he talked about the house and the beach. I worried at the time whether that was such a good idea. I had seen how he had once become a ruthless monster after the loss of another human woman that he loved. I just never thought it was a good idea to become attached to a human that had no desire to be turned. It's funny, because in some ways Eric is the most practical vampire I know, and yet he is also a romantic sap, or at least has been twice that I know of in my undead lifetime. He is interesting if nothing else.

After I became his child, we were together for a very long time. I was an innocent as a human, but as a vampire my maker was also my lover. We both enjoyed sex with the humans we fed from, but also had a sexual connection with each other that was completely separate. He was kind and fair to me, taught me to be a stealth hunter of human prey and I embraced my new existence. I don't think that I could really use the word love to describe what he was to me. It's not something a human can really comprehend. He was my everything, my maker, my master. Over time, he most likely saw that I preferred human women for sex and feeding, although I dutifully submitted to him at his every request naturally. It never occurred to me that I had a choice, and I accepted that. So when he released me, you can't imagine how shocked I was and then how thrilled. I loved being a vampire and the prospect of being one and also not being beholden to another being sounded like heaven on earth to me. I traveled back to England where I felt comfortable, and then as I became more brazen, I traveled by ship to France and then made my way into Italy. I eventually settled into a small village by Lake Orta and remained there for a number of years. It was a beautiful place, and I found a nest of four vampires that I became acquainted with. From them I learned more about my kind and other beings. There was a pack of Weres that lived nearby, and we were natural enemies of course. I realized that Eric had kept a great deal from me and I suppose that he was protecting me in a way, but now when I think of how naïve I was when he released me, it's a wonder that I survived at all. My new vampire acquaintances told me that a war had broken out with the Fae, and they planned to go to battle. I wanted no part of that, and so I traveled south and settled near a medieval city called San Gimignano. I found the human population in the city to be bountiful, and I remained there for many years. I traveled to other parts of Italy as well and met many of our kind. I loved Venice, of course (who doesn't love Venice?), but found it difficult to relax there. I was always watching the sky, because there is no last minute going to ground in Venice. It was risky and thrilling, but no place for a vampire to live. (Of course, now there are five star vampire hotels there. It's a whole new world.)

When I was back in San Gimignano one night, I felt the call from my master. I had never experienced such a feeling, and you can't imagine the strength of the pull towards him. I began traveling south until the night I found him outside the ruins of Pompeii. I knelt before him, and I could sense a darker nature in him than I had known. Our years apart had rendered him more of a monster and I was afraid. I wondered how I had changed in his eyes. We stayed together there, feeding from the humans in nearby villages and enjoying the deserted grounds of Pompeii, finding shelter under the ancient buildings during the day. He told me that the war with the Fae required our presence, and he had called me to teach me to fight in battle. We became teacher and pupil once again, but this time there were no demands for sex. We both met our sexual needs with the humans we chose as our meals, and I was pleased with the new arrangement.

It was during this time that Eric and I were discussing human literature one night. Humans had always told tales of our kind, but never with any kind of accuracy. We were just one kind of devil that they imagined in the darkness, and we never felt threatened by such fairy tales. But one book was popular at the time by a man named Bram Stoker, and his depiction of vampires was uncanny and true. I assumed that he had made many enemies of our kind, and I told Eric that if someone hadn't already done so, that we should drain him ourselves for revealing so much. Eric stood over me and his eyes turned to ice as he raised his hand to strike me. I knelt and begged his forgiveness and waited to meet my final death, but then he stopped and simply walked away. I didn't see him for many nights, and when he did return, we never spoke of his anger.

When my training was complete, we traveled to Rome where outside the city the fighting was heavy in the war between vampires and Fae. Eric and I fought side by side in many battles and his grace was a sight to behold. One night we were sitting in the forest just the two of us after a long battle, and we were both quite intoxicated after drinking the blood of our enemies. Out of the blue, Eric told me that he had lived for decades with a human woman and she was the writer of the Bram Stoker novel that I had mentioned that had angered him so. I sat silently in shock as he told me their story, and I could hear pride in his voice when he spoke of her talent as a writer. And then I saw it. It was the briefest instant, in an unguarded drunken moment, but I saw it in his face. He had loved her.

I asked why she was not fighting by our sides. I assumed that he had turned her, for I couldn't imagine how else such a pairing could work. He became the dark and monstrous Eric that I had seen at our first reunion, and once again, I feared him. He said in a cold quiet voice that was more menacing than a voice raised in anger, "She is dead in the ground with all other human scum." And at those words, he rose and staggered off into the forest.

I didn't see or hear of Eric for many years after that. I was grateful that he had trained me and chosen not to strike me down for my drunken insolence on that final night in the forest.