The sky was bruised, heavy with summer heat and a coming storm. Amanda stood in the clearing behind the warehouse, barefoot, skin flushed with sweat. Her heartbeat was steady, but her nerves were frayed to wire.
Lucan hadn't spoken in over five minutes. He simply stood near the tree line, unmoving, eyes distant.
She tried to break the silence.
"What are we waiting for?"
Lucan turned toward her.
His eyes weren't cold.
They weren't even hard.
They were removed, like he'd stepped into some older version of himself and hadn't decided if he was coming back.
"You're ready," he said. "So we're not hiding it anymore."
Before Amanda could ask what that meant, Lucan raised a hand. Not dramatically. Just enough. A subtle shift in the air followed, like the pressure before a thunderclap.
Then everything dropped silent.
The trees.
The bugs.
Even the wind.
And Amanda felt it: the tether pulling, not to a body nearby, but to a place inside Lucan.
She staggered. Then collapsed to her knees as her vision dimmed. And just like that, she was no longer in the clearing.
She stood in a long corridor carved of stone. The air stank of blood, fire, and discipline. Screams echoed from far-off chambers, some in languages she didn't recognize. Others she did, and wished she didn't.
She wasn't alone.
Lucan walked ahead of her, clad in leather and dirt. Younger, but not young. His hair shorter, jaw sharp. No mercy in his face, just purpose. He dragged someone behind him. Human. Still alive.
Not a stranger, but someone important. A traitor.
Amanda tried to move, but she couldn't. She wasn't watching the memory.
She was inside it.
Feeling the weight of Lucan's fury like it sat behind her ribs. She heard his thoughts like echoes behind her own.
"You do not touch what is mine."
"You do not take from me and expect to remain whole."
He didn't revel in the pain. He didn't speak during the punishment. He just acted.
Clean. Controlled. Final.
When it was over, Amanda blinked and found herself on the forest floor, gasping like she'd surfaced from drowning.
Lucan knelt beside her. His expression unreadable.
She choked on her breath. "What the hell was that?"
"A lesson," he said. "About who I am."
She sat up, shaking.
"I felt you. I was inside you. That was your memory."
Lucan nodded.
"You're not just a tether anymore," he said. "You're a mirror."
Amanda looked at her trembling hands.
"That wasn't just history."
"No," Lucan said. "It was a warning."
-----
The body was still there. Not rotting. Not decomposing.
Preserved.
Like it had been drained, frozen in time just long enough to make people uncomfortable. Eric stood over it for the second time, arms folded, expression unreadable.
Beside him, a man in a pressed Authority suit knelt down, adjusting black gloves and tilting his head like he was examining a museum piece.
His name was Marlon Veil. Low clearance. Middle rung. Too clever to stay there long.
Eric didn't like him, but he respected his silence.
"Same corpse," Veil said quietly. "Same posture. Same sigil."
Eric nodded. "Different feel."
Veil raised an eyebrow. "How so?"
Eric stepped back and let the air settle.
"The first time I came here, it felt like the end of something."
"And now?"
Eric's eyes flicked toward the treeline.
"Now it feels like the beginning."
Veil stood and circled the corpse slowly. He pulled a small scanner from his pocket. Authority tech designed to read energy signatures through biological decay.
The reading pulsed once. Twice. Then flatlined. No heat or power, but that didn't make sense.
"No residual psychic trace," Veil muttered. "Not even decay markers. That shouldn't be possible."
Eric crouched beside the body now, brushing away the moss that had started creeping toward the ribcage.
That's when he saw it. Or didn't.
"The heart's missing."
Veil blinked. "What?"
Eric stood again, sharper now.
"There's no cut. No visible trauma. But the heart is gone."
Veil leaned in, checked again, more thorough.
Confirmed it.
The sternum was perfect. No break. No bruise. No blade. Only… absence.
"What does that mean?" Veil asked.
Eric's voice was quiet.
"It means someone didn't want him dead. They wanted him used."
A gust of wind swept through the clearing. Veil looked up, uneasy now.
"Used by who?"
Eric stepped back. His voice lowered.
"There are old stories. Things whispered in certain circles about death that lingers. About vampire bodies that don't collapse because something deeper is being held in place."
He glanced down at the preserved corpse.
"No beings should be able to do this. But according to the old stories, there was one with the power."
"And which being was that?" Veil asked.
Eric let his gaze wander south.
"Nobody knows."
-----
Nora stood beneath a rusted awning across from Amanda Hayes' house.
The air in Bon Temps was thick with heat and leftover storm. She could smell old rain and cheap beer. She could also smell blood memory.
Not from Amanda.
From everything around her.
This place had been soaked in death recently. Not war, but sacrifice.
Amanda sat on her porch, elbows on her knees, a cigarette burning between two fingers she didn't seem to notice. She looked exhausted, but not fragile. More like something partway through molting.
Nora tilted her head slightly. She'd expected more flash. More power. Something theatrical.
But this? This was subtle.
Unstable.
Becoming.
Nora didn't move or hide. Lucan would know she was there. If not now, soon. This wasn't a sneak. It was a signal.
Amanda lifted her head suddenly and locked eyes with Nora across the street. She didn't flinch. Didn't reach for the phone or step inside.
She just watched.
And nodded once. Like she knew what Nora was. Maybe even why she was here.
Nora didn't wave.
Didn't approach. Just stood in silence as the heat rolled around them.
She whispered to herself, barely audible.
"You're the reason he stayed."
Nora had read every file and every rumor. She dissected the myth.
Lucan didn't linger, but he was still here. Which meant Amanda Hayes wasn't just some tether. She was a pivot.
And now Nora had to know why.