Chapter 1: Shallow Grave
Dirt in my mouth.
My fingers clawed upward before my brain caught up. Packed earth, roots, something that might have been a rock. I tore through it like an animal, instinct screaming louder than thought. When my hand broke the surface, cold air hit my skin and I didn't care that I was gulping soil—I needed out.
I hauled myself from the ground in a cascade of red Louisiana clay, collapsing onto wet leaves. Night. Stars. The wrong stars. I stared up at constellations I didn't recognize, lungs heaving air I somehow knew I didn't need.
Wrong body.
I lifted my hands. Not mine. Leaner, paler, the fingernails caked with grave dirt. I touched my face—different jaw, different nose. My tongue found teeth that ended in points I didn't remember.
What the fuck.
Memories slammed into me like a freight train. Two sets. Overlapping. Contradicting.
First set: boardrooms, spreadsheets, a corner office in Seattle. Thirteen-hour days. A heart attack at thirty-four, alone in an apartment that cost more than most houses. Dying before the ambulance arrived.
Second set: Samuel Huffman, born 1831 in Virginia. Turned in 1858 by a vampire whose name flickered and faded. A hundred and fifty years of nothing—no ambition, no territory, no connections. A drifter. A nobody.
Until someone staked him and buried him in these woods.
I forced myself to sit up. The grave was shallow—maybe three feet deep, hastily dug. Whoever killed the original Sam hadn't expected him to rise again. Stakes killed vampires.
Except I was here.
My chest ached where the stake had been. I touched it—a puckered wound, healing even as I explored it. Something had pushed the stake out during... whatever the hell happened to me. Transmigration. Reincarnation. The terminology didn't matter. What mattered was that I was dead, I was undead, and I was in a world I recognized.
True Blood.
The name surfaced with absolute certainty. I knew this universe. The politics, the characters, the timeline. Sookie Stackhouse. Eric Northman. The Great Revelation had already happened—vampires were public, legal, drinking TruBlood on television. If my fragmented memories were right, it was 2008. March, maybe. Weeks before the show's first season.
My hands shook. Whether from the transmigration or the knowledge I now possessed, I couldn't tell.
Focus.
Corporate instincts kicked in. Assess the situation. Identify resources. Establish priorities.
Resource one: I was alive. Undead. Whatever.
Resource two: I had the original Sam's memories, fragmentary but present.
Resource three: I knew what was coming. Years of plot, political upheaval, supernatural apocalypses. That knowledge was worth more than any physical asset.
Liability one: I was standing in a forest covered in grave dirt with no idea where I was.
Liability two: Someone wanted the original Sam dead.
Liability three: I had no identification, no money, no haven, and sunrise would kill me.
A sound cut through my analysis. Rhythmic. Wet. Close.
Heartbeat.
The hunger hit me so hard my knees buckled. My vision sharpened until I could see individual leaves in the darkness. My fangs descended without permission, piercing my own lip. The taste of blood—my blood—made everything worse.
I followed the heartbeat.
The homeless camp was fifty yards east, hidden in a small ravine. One tent, one man, one fire burned down to embers. He was maybe sixty, wrapped in a sleeping bag, dreaming whatever dreams homeless men in Louisiana woods dreamed.
My feet stopped at the edge of his camp. The hunger screamed at me to pounce, to drain, to take everything.
No.
I'd read the source material. Draining kills. Killing brings investigation. Investigation brings sheriffs, magisters, the Authority. The original Sam had survived a century and a half by being nobody. I wouldn't throw that away in my first hour.
I approached slowly. The man's eyes opened—rheumy, confused. I met them and felt something unlock in my mind.
"You won't remember this," I said, and the words carried weight they shouldn't have. "You're dreaming. A vivid dream. When you wake, you'll feel tired but peaceful."
His pupils dilated. His body went slack.
Glamour. The vampire's mind control. I'd wondered if I could do it.
I knelt beside him, tilted his head, and bit down on his neck. The blood hit my tongue and every nerve in my body sang. Warm, rich, alive. I drank in deep pulls, counting heartbeats, forcing myself to stop at twenty.
When I pulled back, the man's heart still beat. Slower, but steady. He'd wake with a headache and strange bruises. He'd live.
I licked the wounds and watched them close. Another vampire trick the memories provided.
Standing, I wiped my mouth. My hands had stopped shaking. The terrible clarity of thirst receded enough for thought.
Now what?
The original Sam had resources—I knew that much. A storage unit somewhere. A bank account. Paranoid preparations from a paranoid vampire. If I could access them...
I looked down at myself. Ruined burial clothes. Dirt-caked pants that might have been gray once. A shirt torn by the stake. I couldn't walk into civilization like this.
The homeless man's camp yielded treasures. A jacket too large for my frame. Pants that ended three inches above my ankles. Shoes that pinched. Better than nothing.
I left two hundred imaginary dollars in his tent. A debt I'd pay when I had currency that existed.
The night air cooled my face as I emerged from the ravine. Louisiana. I was in Louisiana, in 2008, in a vampire's body, with knowledge of a fictional world that had somehow become real.
Above me, the stars burned in unfamiliar patterns. I'd meant to learn constellations in my old life. Always too busy. Too focused on quarterly earnings and shareholder value. Now I had eternity, assuming I survived until sunrise.
Highway lights glowed on the horizon. Civilization.
I started walking, one foot after another, a dead man in a borrowed body heading toward a future I'd only ever watched on a screen.
The first step was information. Date, location, timeline. The second was resources—the original Sam's cache had to be nearby. The third was shelter, before dawn turned me to ash.
Three steps. I could manage three steps.
The grave dirt crumbled from my hands as I walked. I left it behind, along with whatever remained of the man who'd occupied this body before me. Samuel Huffman was dead.
I was something else now.
Something that intended to survive.
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