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That's Not My Name	By : marksandspence Category: S through Z > True Blood Views: 6314 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I have not created the True Blood (credit to Charlaine Harris & Alan Ball) or BtVS universes (credit to Joss Whedon) and do not have any claim on the characters other than the ones I have added. I make no money off of these stories.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
[Quick author’s note: Sorry for the delay. Busy over the holidays. I apologize in advance if there are more typos than usual. Life is crazy sometimes!]
Chapter 6
After learning about Eric’s ownership of Sookie’s house, Spike and Peia decide against staying there, as it would not offer them any additional protection from Gillian. Instead, for convenience and privacy, they find a hotel in Shreveport. Peia returns to the bar before dark and begins the process of finding the colony of nesting bats she is sure must be lurking somewhere in the attic spaces of the building. She brings a “bat detector” – a device that allows you to hear the echolocation calls of bats by adjusting the frequency to an appropriate range for human ears. Of course, as the bats are most likely inactive during the day, she explores the building, narrowing down the possibilities so that with the arrival of dusk, she will have an idea where to bring the detector. With little help from Ginger, she has trouble finding access points to some of the most likely spaces and ends up going outside to see if she can at least detect a stream of bats as they leave to forage. Just as she is attempting to trace back the origin of the stream, Eric arrives abruptly and startles her, causing her to drop the detector.
“Fuck,” she curses as she reaches down to inspect the piece of equipment.
“Have you found them yet?” Eric inquires without any hint of apology.
“I was about to, before you broke my detector.”
“I did not break it. You startle easily.”
“I don’t, actually. I was just concentrating. Do you have to move so freakin’ abruptly?”
“I do not. But it is more fun.” After a pause, he adds, “I will pay to have the device fixed if you require it.”
She just shakes her head and pulls out her phone.
“Luckily, there is an app for that.”
She touches the screen a few times and holds it up. After a few seconds, some clicks can be heard.
“Is that the bats?”
“No, it’s the wrong frequency. And it’s meandering, so likely a different species than the one I was tracking before.” She pauses a moment and then puts her phone back in her pocket. She continues
“Can you or Pam help me find access to some attic rooms that are sealed off? I can tell where there are some likely open spaces, but couldn’t get to them earlier.”
“Pam will not return until the bats are gone. She hates bats.”
“I kinda got that last night.”
“Birds, too. Something about them getting caught up in her hair.”
“It’s a thing for some people.”
“In any case, I will assist you as needed.”
They enter and Eric retrieves the building plans for her. She indicates where the likely places are and they inspect them. Finally, they enter a room with a small, square attic access point in the ceiling. She asks for a ladder and as they set it up under the square, she pauses to have a drink of water. Eric leans against the wall, watching her with his usual dispassionate expression. He and Pam decided to keep the club closed tonight, so he does not have much to do. He will just meet Pam back at the house in a while to discuss some Sheriff business. He wonders if she has found out anything more about Spike’s situation. He has a mild interest in Spike, only because of Pam. And perhaps a mild interest in Peia because she is with Spike and does not seem to be a typical “fangbanger” as the humans say.
“Where is Spike?” It occurs to him to ask.
“Oh, he’s off getting a bite to eat.” A slightly goofy smirk spreads across her face as she realizes her unintentional pun, “so to speak.”
Isn’t that what you are for? Eric wonders to himself.
“A bit obvious.” He responds, referring to her turn of phrase.
“This from someone who opened a Goth, S&M vampire bar. Kind of shows a lack of imagination, don’t you think?” She has no idea why she just blurted that out so casually.
“There is something to be said for giving people what they expect.”
“Black clothes, make-up and leather?” She suggests, still a bit incredulous.
“Do not forget whips and chains.” He adds wryly. “It is what they imagine us to be.”
She feels suddenly self-conscious, realizing that the two of them are on opposite sides of that phrase.
“So you let them continue to believe that?” I am one of them, why didn’t I say ‘us’?
“I do not see what advantage there is to shattering their expectations.”
“I guess,” she relents, unsure of how to respond. She jokes, “Maybe a Hip Hop theme would have blown their minds.”
“How long have you been with Spike?” He senses that she has not had much experience with vampires. He wonders what her expectations were.
She thinks for a minute – it has been such a whirlwind.
“A few months. Five or six.” Really? Is that all?
“And before him?”
She frowns, confused about what he is asking. When she gets it, she replies a bit flustered.
“No, I, er, Spike is the first vampire I’ve dated.”
“Dated?” Eric cannot hold back a smile as he repeats this.
Instantly, Peia feels out of her element. Honestly, she knows nothing about vampires outside of her little world. Including what other vampires do with other humans. Spike and Gillian were the first vampires she had ever met – and for the first month or so, she wasn’t even sure they were vampires. Nothing was made explicit. In the town she was living in, it was either not talked about, not done, or she was blissfully unaware of vampire/human interactions. The fact that the vampire standing in front of her was so incredulous about the term ‘dated’ used in that context made her feel uncomfortably unknowledgeable. A feeling she avoids desperately. Time to get back to something she knows….
She puts her empty glass down and starts climbing the ladder. Eric holds the base as she nears the top. With some effort, she dislodges the cover and immediately Eric lets out a disgusted grunt and covers his nose with his arm.
“Guano,” Peia explains. “Guess we found it.”
She examines the space with a flashlight, with just her head through the square entrance.
“It’s a decent sized colony in here. I mean, empty now because they are all out foraging, but probably a few hundred bats at least, judging by the amount of guano.”
“What kind are they?”
Why does he want to know that?
“Well, they’re not vampire bats, if that is what you are wondering. Probably big brown bats.”
“Big brown bats? Is that a technical description, because I could have told you that last night.”
“Eptesicus fuscus, the Big Brown Bat” She responds, irritated to be questioned.
“What now?”
“Well, I don’t see an obvious entry point to seal up, so we’ll have to wait until they start coming back. Once we know that, we wait for them to leave and seal up the entrance.”
“That is another day. Cannot we just seal it up and let them starve? Or poison them?”
She comes back down the ladder, frowning.
“I like bats. Besides, they’ll smell to high-heaven if you let them die in here.”
“Good point.”
“So we wait. Could be close to dawn before they come back.”
“Will you require my assistance? I would prefer to not spend the rest of the night in this room.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, no problem. I’ll just text Spike and he can wait with me.”
Instead of leaving, Eric finds himself standing there, watching her fiddle with her phone.
“How do you know so much about bats?” He is surprised to hear himself ask this, as he really does not care.
“I used to be a scientist. Back in the mists of time. Not bats, particularly, but…”
As she says this, he looks at her directly for the first time. Her hair is pulled back into two discrete pigtails toward the back of her head, the blue-tinted bangs hanging angled over her forehead. She has a tiny gold hoop through her right eyebrow and a number of currently empty piercing holes along her earlobes. If anyone asked, he would have guessed she was Sookie’s age, maybe a few years older. He is hardly good at guessing human ages, but still, hard to imagine this woman in front of him as a “once scientist.”
She continues, “I saw an ad for someone to look after a colony of vampire bats in a private residence. Turns out it was a vampire named Gillian, who must have thought it incredibly kitchy for a vampire to keep vampire bats. So she hired me to look after them, with the agreement that I could study their behavior as I wished. Was there over a year, so learned a lot about bats.”
“Gillian. Spike mentioned her.” She is the one who he thinks is his Maker.
“That’s how I met Spike. He lived in the house with Gillian.”
“You are afraid of her. I can tell by how you say her name.”
“She didn’t like it when Spike left. When we both left.”
Eric smirks and raises an eyebrow.
“So you ran away with a vampire’s boyfriend? That was brave.” The way he says ‘brave’ makes it clear that he really means idiotic. “Hell hath no fury like a vampire scorned. I speak from experience.”
“I didn’t know she was his girlfriend,” she responds defensively, almost in a pleading tone. “It was confusing. They referred to each other as “family” and I never saw any overt affection, so I assumed they were brother and sister. I only found out the day we left.”
**Flashback two months earlier**
Peia/Jen is coming down the stairs of her apartment building, exhausted from her recent trip. She had just arrived back in town after the six-hour drive up north. She hated driving. Always took the train or flew when possible. But this trip was impromptu and she did not have time to make arrangements. So she popped her anxiety pills, along with ridiculous amounts of strong coffee and set off. It took twice as long as it should have, but she got there. She put in her duty, barely holding herself together with the help of various drugs and meditation. But she survived it and was now home. Emotionally and physically drained, she was desperate to get to her bed tonight. Once she had some sleep, she could calm her brain, which was fragmented to the point of complete chaos. All she had left to do was unload the car. As she pushed through the outer door, her sight set on the little Honda hatchback parked on the street, she heard her name.
“Jen?”
Recognizing the voice, she could not help but smile as she turned toward it. She had not had time to tell Spike in person why she had to go. She had left him a note, given to Gillian, explaining things as best she could. Things had been so crazy and muddled that she had not had time to even contemplate how she was going to apologize. Everything had been going so well. She feels the stress of the trip melting away in that second, anticipating the sight of him.
But what she sees drains the blood from her face. He is steadying himself against a tree, looking disheveled and lost. His clothes look wet. His face and neck are covered in blood. She moves toward him quickly, worried, but stops a few feet away when he holds up his hand.
“Are you hurt?”
The dark tone of his voice when he replies sends a chill down her spine.
“No.”
She looks more closely and sees the traces of blood on his teeth, around his mouth. She can see no cuts, no gashes on his body, no tears in his shirt. Even her muddled brain can guess at the scenario that would result in this display before her. Despite herself, she feels frightened. Up to now, she had managed to bury that part of him that she did not care to understand. She never asked how he nourished himself. People did not turn up dead regularly in their town, so she assumed he was either discrete, or had another way of getting blood. She asked few questions. She should have cared more.
“Where were you?” He asks, his tone plaintive.
“Didn’t you get my note?” As soon as she speaks these words, she realizes how pathetic they sound.
He shakes his head. “You’ve been gone more than a fortnight. Almost two. I didn’t know what happened.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t contact you from….”
She stops in midsentence, arrested by the desperate look on his face. She steps forward and wraps her arms around him. He puts his hands on her cheeks and kisses her. She can taste & smell and feel the blood. He breaks away and shakes his head as if he is trying to shake clear his mind.
“You feel warm. What’s happened?” He did feel warm. For the first time she can remember.
“Something’s wrong. Sick, maybe?” He tries desperately to remember what sickness feels like.
He shakes his head again, unsteady on his feet.
“Come inside. Let me clean you up.”
“I have to go. It isn’t safe.”
She sent me to kill her. I can’t. I can’t go back.
She does this every few years, Gillian. Drives him nuts. The minute they get settled. The minute things start to look up, she decides its time to move on. “We need a clean slate,” she’d say. Then they would kill all their employees – the housekeepers, gardeners, whoever else was on staff and they would move somewhere else.
“Are you in trouble?” Peia’s mind races. He must have killed someone. Many people, maybe and the police are after him. Or someone else who cares about a vampire out of control.
Spike looks up at her, pained. Things were going so well. Something real for the first time in ages. He winces as he plays back Gillian’s voice from an hour ago. “You are going to find your little human toy and you are going to dispose of her. You had your fun, which I don’t begrudge you—that’s what they’re for, but all things come to an end except for you and me. We need a clean slate.”
“Come with me.” He hears himself say.
Yes, that could work.
She grimaces, unintentionally. She couldn’t just leave, could she? A thousand thoughts leap into her head —things left behind, people who would wonder, arrangements necessary — all for someone she just starting seeing. A vampire who_kills_people. The cacophony of thoughts crescendos and then stops, abruptly, as if forcibly ejected, replaced by a warm stillness. She meets his inquiring gaze.
“How long do we have?”
A fleeting smile crosses his face as he takes in the implication of her question.
In truth, Peia did not learn the details of what had happened between Spike and Gillian for another 24 hours. Including the fact that they had been a couple and not brother and sister. Because in the frantic minutes that followed their decision to leave, his physical and mental state deteriorated to the point that he was practically unconscious when she loaded him into the darkened hatch of her car and drove off. Until he pulled out if it, she continued under the assumption that those after him were the police and covered their tracks accordingly.
**Back to the Present**
Eric laughs and shakes his head.
“Brother and sister. That must have been an enlightening conversation. [pause] Yes, I find it quite amusing.”
Peia just shakes her head at the ridiculousness of it.
“Let me ask you this. Would it have made any difference?”
“I’d like to say yes, but I honestly don’t know.” I wouldn’t have given Gillian the note, that’s for sure. “They had a strange relationship.”
“Strange by what measure? Human?” He replies dismissively.
“She poisoned him so he couldn’t leave her. She messed with his memory so he doesn’t even know who he is. I think that’s fucked up from any perspective.”
“Perhaps.” He shrugs. “Rationalization can be useful in situations such as these.”
“Once he gets his memory back, we’ll know the truth.” She responds, almost more to herself than in response to Eric’s accusation.
“And you will help him get it back.”
“Yeah. Somehow.” Her expression belies her uncertainty.
“Are you not afraid the memories returned to him might change his commitment to you?”
Her lips thin as she contemplates this. She shakes her head.
“It doesn’t matter. I have to help him.”
“Why?”
“Because I love him.”
“Does he love you?”
“He says he does.”
“You do not know for sure?” His curiosity surprises him. Why is he still there??
“You never really know, do you? But I have no reason to doubt him.”
Fascinating.
“I would think that should result in the opposite approach. Keep him as he is now, content with you.”
“You don’t understand love.”
“The subject holds little interest to me,” Eric replies dispassionately. This is a lie.
“She found us once, you know. Spike explained everything…”
“I am sure she was relieved to know it was true love.” He interrupts, sarcastically.
“It was ugly.” Understatement. But it was as good a time as any to find out I might be immortal. “We haven’t seen her since, so I think she may have gotten the message.”
Suddenly a series of clicks can be heard coming from Peia’s phone. She frowns in confusion.
“How long have we been talking?”
“Not long. Why?” And yet, too long. Eric feels the intense ache of hunger sweep over him.
“The bats are coming back. They should be out until close to dawn.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Eric sees the far-off dim glow of the approaching sunrise. A familiar mild panic rises in him.
“The sun will rise soon.”
“That’s not possible. It was dusk less than an hour ago.”
She blinks hard. Her eyes feel dry like they have been open too long. She has trouble focusing on the glow of her phone. She blinks a few more times, straining to focus. Her eyes widen as she holds the phone up for Eric to see.
“It’s 5:15.”
“I do not understand. How can this be?”
There is a brief pause as Peia’s mind races. She feels the blood rush up into her face, her heart start to flutter as she realizes what must have happened.
“Gillian. She must have…Oh God, where’s Spike?”
***
- 5
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- 7
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That's Not My Name