Inside the forest, a house sat on a back road that wasn't on most maps. It looked like it had grown out of the mud, covered in vines, old wood swollen and bent. The porch sagged in the middle, like it had a spine that was giving out.
Inside, it wasn't quiet.
It wasn't loud either.
It was full.
A low hum filled the air, not a sound, exactly, but a pressure. The kind you feel behind your eyes when you're about to get a migraine.
At the center of the living room a woman stood. Barefoot and smiling.
Her hair hung loose and messy, like she'd walked out of the woods and forgotten to take the leaves with her. She wasn't beautiful, not in the magazine sense, but when she looked at you, you wanted to give her something.
Anything.
Just to make her look at you again.
There were three others in the room with her, young, drunk, and shaking with something they thought was pleasure. One of them, dark-haired, bare-chested and bleeding slightly from the mouth, was crying.
The woman walked over to him and touched his face. He leaned into her hand like a beaten dog.
"You're too full," she whispered. "Let me take some of that."
She leaned in and kissed him. Not a lover's kiss and not hunger. Something older. Something that knew how to pull out pieces of people without using knives.
When she stepped back, the boy fell to the floor, eyes wide, breathing shallow.
The others didn't react. They just kept swaying.
She moved to the window and looked out at the trees. Remembering the man she met last night. Someone old.
She could taste it on the leaves. She didn't know who he was yet. But he was watching. And he was different.
She smiled wider.
"They always think they're immune," she said softly to the trees. "But everything breaks. Even the dead."
The lights in the house flickered once, then steadied.
She turned away and started humming an old song no one remembered, but everyone recognized. And the house began to sway.
After a day's sleep, Lucan stood at the edge of the woods, again. Looking back toward Bon Temps.
He didn't need to breathe, but he exhaled anyway. A habit from a life so long ago he'd stopped counting. It had been years, centuries really, since he'd come across something he didn't have a name for. But whatever he felt moving beneath the soil here, it didn't belong in any lexicon he trusted.
It wasn't vampire.
Not fae.
Not shifter.
Not witch.
And that made it dangerous. Not just because it could harm him. Because it was unpredictable.
The wind shifted, thick with the smell of damp wood. Lucan turned his head slightly.
Movement, distant, but deliberate. Voices. Laughter that didn't sound right.
He followed it. Step by step, his shoes pressing down on wet leaves, he moved toward the source. Eventually, the trees opened to a back road. Beyond it, barely visible through the brush, sat an old house, the one from last night's trail. A different angle now, but unmistakable.
Music played faintly from inside. Nothing modern. Something older, southern, slow.
Lucan crouched behind a fallen tree and watched.
There were people moving around inside. Too many for a house that size. Their silhouettes passed behind warped windows, dancing, spinning, some crawling.
One leaned against the porch post, head tilted back, eyes wide open but seeing nothing. Lucan narrowed his eyes.
'Trance state. Blood magic. Or worse.'
He scanned the yard. Another man stood barefoot in the grass, arms raised, muttering to himself. Something sticky dripped from his fingers. Lucan could smell it even from here.
Blood and fruit.
A sacrifice. But not for power. For indulgence.
Lucan rose and stepped back into the trees. He wouldn't get closer yet.
Not tonight. There was a rule he'd learned in his first century: never enter a place that's already become someone else's altar. Not until you know who the altar was built for.
He walked back toward town slowly, letting the sounds behind him fade. The deeper he got into Bon Temps, the more tension he felt, not in himself, but in the people.
They were cracking. That kind of madness wasn't subtle.
And it wasn't spreading.
It was infecting.
Lucan paused outside an abandoned gas station and leaned against the rusted wall.
'He would've wanted to help them.'
The thought came uninvited.
Godric.
Lucan clenched his jaw and closed his eyes.
'He would've tried to save this town. Talked to them. Offered mercy.'
'And died doing it.'
He looked toward the night sky, stars barely visible beyond the clouds.
'You gave up before I could call you a coward to your face.'
The anger was still there. But underneath it, the guilt had rooted deeper. Not for what he hadn't said, but for how long he'd been gone.
He turned when he heard a phone buzz. His own. A device he almost never carried. Only one person had this number. He didn't answer yet.
Just stared at the screen.
Eric.
The phone buzzed again. Lucan let it go for three more rings before answering.
He didn't say anything. Just pressed it to his ear and waited.
Eric's voice came through low and tight.
"You're in Louisiana."
Lucan didn't respond.
Eric continued, "Bon Temps. You felt it too, didn't you?"
Lucan's voice was calm, almost bored. "I felt rot."
There was a pause on the other end. Then, "It's more than rot."
Lucan stepped away from the wall of the gas station and started walking again, slow, deliberate.
"You called," he said. "That's new."
Eric's voice tensed. "I didn't call for conversation. I called because I don't know what the hell's happening here."
"And you thought I would." Lucan said somewhat amused.
"I know you would."
Lucan didn't argue. Because Eric was right.
But he didn't appreciate the assumption.
Eric spoke again, faster now. "They're dancing in the streets. Black-eyed, naked, eating raw meat like it's a church picnic."
Lucan said nothing.
"She's in Sookie's house," Eric added.
Lucan paused.
'the fae,'
"I'm afraid I have no idea who this Sookie is."
Eric grunted. "Never mind. She tried to fight her once. Got knocked halfway across the room. This woman, this thing, she's not a witch. Not a shifter. She makes people forget who they are. Makes them love it."
Lucan slowed.
That description, it lined up with what he saw. But it wasn't complete.
"She knows I'm here," he said.
"You've made contact?" Eric asked somewhat hopeful.
"No. But she looked at me like I was part of the woods."
There was another pause. Then a quieter tone from Eric.
"I'm out of my depth here."
Lucan tilted his head slightly.
That wasn't something he expected to hear from Eric Northman.
He almost respected the honesty.
"She's spreading through the town," Eric continued. "I don't know how to stop her."
Lucan kept walking, toward nothing. Toward whatever this night would give him.
"You don't," Lucan said finally.
"What?"
"You don't stop something like this," he said. "You let it reveal what it wants. Then you starve it."
Eric's voice went sharp. "So that's your wisdom? Let people tear each other apart until it's satisfied?"
Lucan's tone didn't shift. "You called for truth, not comfort."
Eric let out a low breath. "Godric would've done something by now."
Lucan stopped.
The silence between them turned hard.
Eric spoke again, slower this time. "He would've tried to save the ones he could. Even if it killed him."
Lucan stared out at the tree line.
He didn't speak for a long time.
Then: "He died trying to be something we're not."
Eric didn't reply.
Lucan continued, voice low. "And you're going the same way."
"You going to help or not?" Eric asked finally.
Lucan let the question hang in the air like smoke.
Then: "Maybe."
Eric cursed under his breath. "Always the same with you."
"You knew who you were calling."
And with that, Lucan ended the call. No goodbye. Just silence.
He looked back toward the woods. The lights from the strange house were gone now.
But he knew they hadn't gone out.
They were just waiting.
Like her.
Like him.