EJL, you know who you are, put this thought in my head and now that I've wrapped up all my other FanFic stories I have time to play with it.

Firstly, the disclaimer, I own nothing related to the Southern Vampire Series (cause I would have spelled it Vampyre), True Blood: HBO or comics, or any of these characters except the tale I am dropping them into.

Those of you who have read the books will recognize what episode Eric is talking about below, if you don't please pick up the books, give CH her royalties for crafting an awesome plotline. The reason I use it? I have a sneaking suspicion that we are going to see all or part of it in the next season of True Blood. Let's see if I'm right.

Please enjoy, and send your reviews.

Merick

I hate witches: let me perfectly clear about that. I hate fucking witches. There are better epithets I could use here, but they don't translate so well. My father had used them frequently and they mostly involved sons of unwed mothers whose fathers were demons, or sometimes horses as I recall, either way I think you get the idea. I really hate witches.

Bad enough they don't play fair when they negotiate; booby-trapping someone with a curse? Reasonable people don't need to do things like that. Of course, reasonable people actually negotiate; they don't just come into your Area with a list of demands plucked out their own fantasies. That was how I first met the witches of Louisiana; an experience I would like to say I could forget, but sadly, I hardly remember any of it at all. Not knowing what I was up to, hell, even who I was for so many weeks makes me angry. Pam's told me a bit about what she knows of what happened, and I did get back my memories of myself before the damned curse, but there is still a blank space of time in my head.

Sookie knows what happened. She's the one who found me, running mostly naked down some country road, completely unaware of who or where I was. She kept me safe at her place, with Pam's approval, and something happened between us; some kind of intimacy that she won't talk about. I don't know if we had sex, or if I turned into some kind of blithering idiot around her; I'm hoping for the former because my ego couldn't take the latter. I intended to get the truth out of her eventually; because I know I'm not going to be able to let it go, but before that could happen the godless, bastard witches stepped in to ruin everything for me again. Well, they messed up Sookie too, which pisses me off. They really had no idea who they were screwing around with in Eric Northman. But they would soon find out.

Let me get to the story here. It was a regular night, things humming along at Fangtasia. Yes, I was still brooding over the aforementioned 'lost time' in my head, but I was getting a plan together to get the information out of Sookie. Eventually she was going to ask me for another favor, it was inevitable given her track record, I knew it was my bargaining chip, so I wasn't letting it eat away at me completely. I was staring out over the crowd as I usually did, looking every bit the mysterious, dangerous Vampire when Pam came up to my side, touched me gently on the arm and whispered that there was something in the office that required my attention. Being as that wasn't wholly unusual I got up and followed her back there. I should have paid more attention to the way she was wearing her shoulders; tense, and up around her ears but I didn't. As we got to my door, her words gave me the first clue that all was not well.

"Now don't panic Eric." What a ridiculous thing to say; telling someone not to panic simply puts them in the mindset to do just that; not that I generally panic about much of anything, which should also have clued me in that something was really wrong, Pam warning me off it and all. I pushed open the door to see a form, wrapped in a tablecloth, laid on my couch. The scent caught in my throat before my eyes discerned who it was: Sookie.

"What the hell Pam?" I flashed over to her, she was quite unconscious, which likely explained why I hadn't felt her presence, or her fear, assuming she'd felt any before she'd been knocked out.

"Arthur found her sprawled out over the hood of your car." Arthur, I should mention, was our new Bartender, I'd lost count how many we'd had in the past year; they didn't last long around here. I didn't have high hopes for Arthur. I brushed my fingertips over her face, as good as a cool compress I figured, hoping the cold might wake her up. It didn't.

"Why is she wrapped in a tablecloth Pam?"

"Because she was naked when he found her." He matter of fact way of speaking was normally something I appreciated. I suppose I didn't appreciate it so much when she was talking about Sookie. I knew Sookie wouldn't appreciate the fact that Arthur had found her naked, well, that anyone had found her naked, but of more importance than that thought just then, was sorting out what had happened to her.

"He called me as soon as he saw her Eric, I went out to retrieve her." Pam having seen her naked was also not likely to make Sookie happy.

"Has she been injured?"

"I could see no visible wounds on her body."

I couldn't smell any blood on her; and her blood was very sweet. I would have put money on it that if she had been injured in such a manner as to draw it that Arthur would have helped himself before calling anyone. He didn't have the self-control that Pam and I did. I listened closely to her body for a few minutes, hearing her heartbeat, steady and relaxed as if she were asleep, and her breathing was much the same. I leaned in to speak to her, to try to wake her up.

"Sookie?"

Her eyes fluttered and she let out a very soft moan. That was good I thought.

"Sookie?" I asked again. Her eyes opened wider, she looked at Pam and I, then clutched the fabric around her chest and screamed.

I clamped a hand down over her mouth quickly so that no one in the bar would hear her and send the police. Not that we were doing anything wrong, but explaining this to human police would be pretty challenging.

"Sookie, it's all right, you're safe, you're here at Fangtasia with Pam and I." Perhaps Pam's leering rouged lipstick smile over my shoulder wasn't the most comforting thing she needed to see just then, because she continued to try to scream.

"Sookie! It's Eric, you know you're safe here." Her eyes got very wide, but the screaming stopped and so I dropped my hand. She looked at us both, tears pooling in her eyes, lips trembling, skin gone ashen white, which looked very odd against her normal tan.

"Sookie? Do you know who I am?" Reality dawned on me just then. She shook her head without saying a word.

"Do you know who you are?" Again she shook her head.

Goddamned, fucking witches!

Reviews are love, and I am not above begging.