Disclaimer: I've been out of the game for quite a while. Please don't welcome me back with a law suit. I own none of these characters. There, I said it.

Note: To everyone who hasn't quite given up reading my stories, this one's a bit different. Try it on for size.

Same Old Story

The house was burned to the ground and tell-tale crosses stuck into the yard like stakes into the heart of earth. Symbols that they were no longer safe, that they would never be safe, the they would always be found. Sure enough a black SUV lurked at the edge of the dirt road that led through the woods to the state road. Neither police nor fire department, Sookie knew that they didn't come to the houses of Vampires or Vampire allies. Not for 30 years, now.

She recognized the two people in the truck as the couple who waved Eric and her down on the road, needing a jump for their broken down station wagon. Eric saw nothing strange about them, but Sookie thought they both seemed out of place. Vacationers down on their luck. Few people vacationed in this area, and especially during the early winter months, when the sky would turn gun metal until May. That is why they chose the place — a secluded house where they wouldn't be bothered, a refuge where they wouldn't be found, a home to live and not merely survive. Sookie didn't want to stop, but Eric did. "It's been almost 12 years," he said. "We can let our guard down for a bit and help a few strangers." Eric thought they had forgotten him or they were too well hidden. Sookie never stopped feeling exposed.

And here they were, in a different car this time, watching the ruins of Sookie and Eric's life together smolder against a dimming sky, waiting for them to return. Theirs was a life that had been rebuilt from ashes before, and one that would have to be built again, somewhere else, some place still further away. Sookie watched them through a pair of binoculars. Most likely Weres. She stood next to an ATV — one of two that they owned — on the other side of the 3 acres their property sat on. The property of Matilda Rainmark — a women who had been dead for untold years — to be more precise. Sookie wiped away tears, started the ATV and turned back into the trees. Eric wasn't there and wouldn't be returning. She didn't know where he was, only that he had escaped and was safe. They would meet in the place they had agreed to meet should they ever be discovered again. Somehow they would both have to get to New York, the place where all this madness began.

Sookie could move around more easily than could Eric. Werewolves posted at the airports, train stations, and gas stations could not tell that she was an Ally, let alone that she was in love with a Vampire. But Eric's journey would be much more difficult. The worry of his being discovered weighed on Sookie despite her mental protests that it should not. She dreamt of wooden corsses dotting a burnt out landscape like trees, and on the horizon everything burned. She woke up covered in a film of sweat. A woman in the seat next to her looked on her with concern.

"Are you alright?" she asked. "Are you feeling ill?"

She held out an airsickness bag to Sookie.

"A little," Sookie answered and took the bag with a smile. Her face reminded Sookie of a woman she once knew, a vampire — now dead. Many were dead, but still many alive, in hiding, waiting. Her own son, maybe.

There was a safe house in Jersey City, Sookie knew of. She would check there first for word of Eric, before she slipped into New York. It would take him longer to travel there; he would need to be shuttled from ally to ally, without being detected. Traveling only by day at great risk to himself and his helpers. Werewolves were placed everywhere, and there would be security checks, road blocks. It would be the same as their escape to Pacific, into the wilderness, only then it seemed there were so many more of them. But year by year vampires and allies alike were found and then arrested, disappeared or murdered. Every year the world got quieter.

Sookie's taxi pulled up in front of a church in Jersey City. It was a handsome building, a simple stone construction with a large doorway, two grand stained glass windows, and a soaring spire. Sookie was surprised to see a Popeye's chicken next door to it and across the street a bail bondsmen's office was flanked by the "4-Finger Lounge" and a food mart where checks could be "cashed" according to a green neon sign. Every other building on the block seemed to be apartments. Sookie looked at their windows and wondered who lived inside.

The front door to the church was locked. Sookie went around to the side alley, passing two teenagers smoking a joint who looked her up and down appraisingly, but didn't bother her. Sookie looked at the walls of the alley, passing her hands over old scuffs and bits of faded graffiti. She went to the end of the alley and found it blocked by a new cement wall that went up about 15 feet - too tall for her to jump. This unsettled her. Like someone blocking an escape route. She checked along the walls one more time, looking for a sign, and finally she found something; though it was one she dreaded finding.

"Danger."

This safe-house had been found out. She felt completely alone then, like a person who is out just past the shore one moment and then looks back to realize they can no longer see land — one adrift, with no idea which direction home lies. She turned to look back up at the road where two boys had been standing, they were gone. The air felt too still. Sookie took a deep breath and did her best to quell the terror rising in her chest. She looked along the ground and found a shard of glass, which she picked up and concealed in her hand. In the street there was no one.

The crisp, blue sky looked frozen. She gripped the hard glass shard in her hand and turned left down the sidewalk with hopes of finding another cab or a cafe to hole up in for a while to reevaluate her position. Even when a safe house was found and raided, allies would come back to the spot and leave something as a marker of where shelter could be sought — a reappropriated drifter's mark like the one Sookie found, graffiti, or even a person. She passed the food mart and saw there were two small tables in the back; she ducked in. The store too seemed empty. No one stood behind the cheap looking counter on the right. The space was split into two aisles by metal shelving which held bags of chips, cookies, and magazines. Behind the shelving there were two circular tables and a few plastic chairs. There was also another counter with a drip coffee maker and a microwave. Next to that stood a doorway with a dark room beyond it. Sookie put her bag on one of the chairs and looked around the store for someone. She saw nobody.

"Hello?" she called out. She paused to listen. Then she heard a rustling in the dark beyond the doorway, and a few moments later a brown and white spotted cat emerged. It stretched and yawned as if Sookie's calling had awoken it. It rubbed against her legs on its way to a bed in the corner, a simple shallow box with blankets in it. The cat turned counter-clockwise in the bed, laid down, and then inspected Sookie with large gray eyes.

"You're cute," Sookie said. "What's your name?"

The cat opened up its mouth and spoke.

"Mephistopheles."

Sookie gasped and turned around. There was an old man behind the counter where before there had been no one. Sookie relaxed a bit when she saw he seemed to mean her no harm. But her heart still beat forcefully. He wore a kind expression, if not one of slight perplexity. The skin of his face was folded and wrinkled as a gourd. His eyes were set far back in his head. Something about his gaze disturbed Sookie. He stared straight through her, or more accurately he seemed to stare inward.

"You're blind," Sookie whispered, unsure of why she did so.

"On the nose," the man said while tapping his swollen nose with an index finger.

Lord in heaven, forgive me. "I'm so sorry. I meant —" Sookie took a breath. "You startled me. I didn't think anybody was in here."

"That's okay, I didn't think anybody was coming," he said, smiling. "You probably couldn't see me because I was napping under the counter here."

"You sleep under the counter?" Sookie asked.

"I prefer it now. You're amusement isn't out of place. There was a day when I would slept in that bed," the man pointed toward the cat's bed. "But Mephistopheles insists on his comfort. I've grown to appreciate my space under the counter. I can bear it and smile. Unlike some."

Sookie thought she heard the cat snort behind her.

"You don't seem like you're from around here," the man said.

"Same to you."

"Ah, that makes two of us then. You can relax, I'm no Were. But the two boys you passed outside, you'll want to avoid them. I imagine they've already marked you, snooping around the church the way you did. Mephistopheles was keeping his eye on you - and them."

Mephistopheles was at the door looking out of the glass pane. The two teenagers were back at the alley. Sookie couldn't see their faces. She turned back to the man and scrutinized his face. It remained serene and, Sookie thought, empathetic.

"Do you have something for me? Something that could help me?" she asked.

The man stood silent for a moment, and then sat on a stool behind him. Mephistopheles mewed, rubbed against Sookie's legs and padded toward the doorway in the back. He paused and looked back at Sookie expectantly.

"You seem like a kind woman, a good person. You are the first human I've seen in your situation in a long while. And I've been here for, oh, forty years or so. Not always the man behind the counter, but here nonetheless. Before that? I'll keep to myself. My advice to you is to get out, to leave, disappear. You have a way out. You can blend in again, start over. Whoever you are trying to find will only ever be found, eventually. And you'll be found with him. It's the inevitable end that began with their Revelation. They gave away their greatest gift: they're unknowability," said the man.

"That is not true. The virus took everything away. The Revelation gave them freedom. The virus and fear stole freedom back from us," Sookie said.

"A virus from within. TrueBlood turned tainted blood; and you gotta eat. You gotta eat," the man said and nodded.

"That was a vicious rumor spread by bigots and fearmongers," said Sookie. "Only a few attacked humans. It wasn't what they made it."

Her eyes were filling with tears now.

"But here we are," said the man. Before Sookie could speak again he pointed towards the doorway. "Follow Mephistopheles through the door. He'll lead you to a safe place."

Sookie grabbed her bag and Mephistopheles disappeared into the dim room.

She turned to thank the man, but where the old man was there was now only a gray cat on the counter with its back to her. The cat was watching the door, through which Sookie could see the two teenagers walking towards them.

She rushed through the doorway after the cat and slammed the door behind her.