IV.

I quickly gathered the reason that Victor had taken me to the casino. The flood of voices made it harder to attend to just what was going on with Eric. Any sense I had through the bond was attenuated simply because of so many other things going on around me. Nonetheless, I tried to filter out everything around me and stay connected to that slender thread that connected me to Eric, somewhere upstairs. As long as I felt him, it was okay. And I was okay.

I walked the floor of the casino with Victor, who continued much of the time to hold my arm in one fashion or another. I drew the line when he tried to hold my hand while his arm was linked with mine.

"I don't feel comfortable with that. And you're not honoring Eric's wishes at all, Victor." My jaw was set firmly.

After my rebuff, Victor scowled at me, but made no reply. And he didn't let go of me either.

Victor seemed to have made something of a study of me, as I soon detected when he ordered me a gin and tonic, without my having asked for one. How did he know what I liked to drink, I wondered? I was liking this less and less. He was walking me around as if showing me off and looking at me from time to time as if I was his future meal. In the interest of 'staying sharp' I put my unfinished drink on a passing server's tray. Every once in a while, I'd catch a glimpse of Thalia and feel reassured.

We walked by the blackjack tables and I fastened my attention on the little Asian man who was the dealer at the far table. He glanced up and then looked nervous when he recognized me from the previous night. I was positive that he could tell I could read him, yet he wasn't a telepath. It was odd. He cast his eyes down and continued his work, but he clearly did not want to meet my eyes. I sensed a deep well of guilt from him. He felt terrible about things. While I stood there at the table, Victor received some sort of text message on his cell phone. After a few moments he took my arm and led me toward the elevators.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Just upstairs, to the mezzanine," he said lightly.

As we exited the elevators two floors up, I had one of those rare flashes that I get every once in a while into the vampire mind. A slithery, echoing concept… Trap. We were headed into a trap. But it wasn't a trap for me. It was a trap for Eric. I tried to take in my surroundings. I had seen Thalia shadowing me out on the casino floor, keeping track of our movements. Would she be able to keep up with us on taking the elevator to the Mezzanine? Was the trip upstairs indicative of Victor's attempt to lose her? I hadn't seen Bill. Was he watching us, too?

I glanced around and became aware of the fact that there were three men who appeared to vaguely acknowledge that Victor had gotten out of the elevator with me. I noticed one had on what looked like leather gloves. So odd, I thought, here inside, and it's not cold outside... We headed off toward a series of smaller meeting rooms off the main ballroom, which was being prepared for the night's festivities. As we pressed further away from the ballroom, and from the many people milling around, I got balky.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked, coming to a full stop.

"Just come with me," he grabbed onto my arm with a very firm grip, enough so that I was sure I'd be bruised.

I didn't budge. "I'm won't. I'm not going with you. I don't know what you're up to, but I won't go."

He leaned close to me and hissed, "Yes, you will."

"No, I'm not." I said through clenched teeth. "I want to go back downstairs, where you told Eric to meet us."

My heart was pounding. Eric would know that I was upset and perhaps afraid. That must be what he wanted, I suddenly realized. I realized that the message that Victor had gotten downstairs must have been from someone alerting him to the fact that Eric was on the move, had left Felipe. If he made me upset, Eric would certainly come. I understood in a flash that he was baiting Eric into attacking him. Sure enough, within moments I had the sense that Eric was coming closer, and was agitated, as if feeding off of my agitation. Victor was now standing close to me, was practically on top of me, and had his hands on me with the clear intent to pull me further out of the main area of the mezzanine. Even if Eric had quit as Sheriff, if he attacked Victor, Felipe's lieutenant in Louisiana, it would give Felipe a way to get rid of Eric justifiably. If I hadn't been harmed, Eric would be attacking him for an even weaker reason than Victor having hurt his human. I tried to still my mind and think. I was under Felipe's order of protection. If anyone harmed me, it would violate that order. So there was basically only one thing I could do.

I hit him in the face as hard as I could, but with his back to the area where people were milling about, so it was harder for anyone behind him to see that I did it. Victor snarled at me and his eyes glowed red with anger. He slapped me in the face with his free hand. I was so keyed up that I hardly reacted. With my lip bleeding, I could sense I was one step closer to getting him to where I needed to be. I hit him again and now he grabbed me with his both arms, pulling me closer to him, almost as if in an embrace, his face almost touching mine. We were so close in height but he was impossibly strong. I turned, trying to pull away but he jerked me toward him tightly, raising me slightly off the floor as if to pick me up. As I twisted to keep from facing him, his fang caught my bare shoulder as we struggled. He grazed my shoulder and a trail of blood started running down my arm and onto his jacket. He set me down and I saw his eyes just glowing. Bloodlust, and really, lust in general, was all over him. I could see it in his eyes. With low growl he raised his hand pushing my head to the side and sank his teeth into my neck. I cried out in pain and then some sort of wave of energy projected through the fabric of my dress from my locket, startling Victor, seeming to shock him into pulling away and releasing me. I gasped, breathing hard. He looked at me oddly, his mouth wet with my blood. My neck throbbed. I put pressure on the bite to try to stop it from bleeding and tried to calm myself.

Eric had arrived on the mezzanine, bounding up the stairs, and found his way to us. Although I had tried to calm myself, I must have looked a real mess. He took in the blood on my neck, my shoulder and that I'd been hit in the face. In an instant he was on Victor, clawing at his face and throat, snarling like a lion. The three men I had seen before, jumped onto them and pulled Eric off Victor, and quickly restrained him with some silver chain that they apparently just happened to have handy. The gloves… the leather gloves… to protect them from the silver. I was seeing stars from dizziness and simultaneously felt Eric's discomfort at the silver rope chain, which burned him even through the silk shirt. It didn't look as thick as the one Sigebert had had, but it clearly hurt. People stood staring in the mezzanine lobby area. There were at least twenty witnesses, including I saw, Bill and Thalia, who I guess had been trailing us even after we'd come upstairs.

Victor, now bleeding himself, stood and stared at me in angry disbelief. I was bleeding at my lip, my shoulder and from my neck, and blood had stained his jacket and my dress. If his plan was to make it look as if Eric attacked him for no reason, it had been foiled. I was almost breathless from the stinging pain of the bite on my neck. But seeing the way Victor looked at me, I knew I'd won.

"What is that around your neck?" he asked angrily. "What are you wearing around your neck?" He pointed to my chest.

"A locket. Just a locket," I said weakly, with my hand on my neck. A locket that just about saved me, I thought to myself. My neck just throbbed and I also felt some sense of the pain of the silver on Eric. It was much stronger than when Sigebert had lassoed him that night at Merlotte's, even though this chain was much thinner. I was dazed but wondered if it was because the bond between us had grown so much stronger that now I could really feel it.

Roberto Garcia, Felipe's second, calmly walked into the fray, looked at Victor, at me, then at Eric, and back at the gallery of faces staring at all of us. He motioned that we were to head to the elevator and then got on his cell phone, speaking in hushed but guttural Spanish. He waved off the crowd.

Eric looked down at me, at my neck, which was still bleeding, He bent as if to lick my neck to coagulate the blood but Roberto waved to stop him and pushed him back.

"She is not getting into the elevator bleeding like that, Roberto…" insisted Eric gruffly. Roberto sniffed at me and then nodded. Thalia and Bill were nearby, and Roberto motioned to Thalia to tend to me. I was surprised that he knew she worked for Eric, since she was not to have traveled with us. She came over to me and was surprisingly gentle looking at my injuries. They held the elevator as I bent and she licked my neck, my shoulder and then licked her finger and applied it gently to my lip. It's a good thing I'm not all that squeamish because it felt really gross to be licked by someone I didn't know all that well, in public no less. She stroked my cheek and nodded to me with an odd look in her eyes. I had the feeling that even if Victor's crew hadn't seen it, that Thalia knew exactly what I'd done. She and Bill looked very grave as I got into the elevator and turned back to see their faces.

The moment the elevator doors closed, Roberto wheeled around and confronted Victor.

"What the fuck were you thinking? And in such a public place? Look at her!"

"She hit me. I was walking with her and she refused to move. She hit me, Roberto."

Roberto, who was about six feet two inches, dark eyed and had bleached blonde hair that was styled so that it stood up into scrunched spikes, looked at Victor eye to eye with unguarded displeasure.

"And the reason she's covered with blood is what? That," he said pointing at my neck, "wasn't from hitting her back, Victor. Stupid. Very stupid. Breaking the law in the hotel? At least twenty witnesses? I seem to remember protection was conferred on this human because she is valuable. And this has happened on Felipe's own property?"

"She was being recalcitrant. She's my state's asset, Roberto and I'll do as I please and you won't question me," Victor growled.

I couldn't resist. "So you're actually suggesting that I got into a fight with you and made you bite me? I started a fight with a vampire? That's your defense?" I said sarcastically.

Victor Madden glared at me with eyes practically glowing like hot coals. He snarled and started to move toward me and Roberto, with a single hand, slammed him back against the wall of the elevator, jolting it and leaving a dent in the polished metal wall. I moved closer to Eric, even though he wasn't in much shape to help me with Victor's men surrounding him.

Roberto stepped in between me and Victor and looked at him and shook his head. "You're done," he hissed in a low voice.

I looked up to see Eric glare at me as we headed into a hallway filled with what could only be guards, toward Felipe's office suite. He trailed immediately behind me and hissed down at me, "Shut up and let me do the talking." Eric was so angry. Was he angry at me, too? For what I said in the elevator? It had to be that he was angry at Victor. Well, at least now Victor was going to be delivered into Felipe's office as a snarling vampire. What could they come up with to claim this was Eric's fault, I wondered?

Felipe rose from a dark wood desk in a poshly decorated office and walked around it to approach me. Just as when I'd met him once before, he was debonair, wore a cape and seemed somehow much larger than he actually was because he had such presence.

He walked over to me and tipped my chin up with his index finger and turned my head to look at my neck and then at my shoulder, then turned my face back to meet his and he eyed my lip. Then he turned to Victor.

"Pendejo…" he hissed at him in Spanish. "Get out of here." Victor looked at him wide-eyed but promptly left with his three men.

He looked at Eric and said, "Northman, what is the meaning of attacking Madden? I believe according to Roberto, he had already stopped harming her. You should have trusted to us to take care of the situation." Here he stroked his hand down my arm, and I couldn't stop myself from shrinking from his touch. "He will be disciplined, so no worries. You can go on your way and we will take good care of Miss Stackhouse. She is under my protection. Of course, we will keep her very safe."

I felt a chill across the bond as Eric looked down to meet Felipe's eyes. "She will travel back with me, Your Majesty."

"I think not, Northman. She is a valuable asset of Louisiana. She is ours."

The expression on Eric's face hardly changed but I felt his being completely taken aback, uncertain as to which way to take things. Actually, I felt something well beyond what I had felt that time with Sigebert outside of Merlotte's. A whisper of internal panic, quickly put aside. Okay, if Eric was freaking out, even a little, this was officially bad. My heart started pounding. I opened my mouth but felt Eric send me this wave of energy that was telling me to squelch it. I focused on what Pam had told me. Don't argue with Eric. I remembered his dealing with Andre, his dealing with just about everything everywhere. A thousand plus years of experience, I told myself. The man could probably talk his way out of anything.

"She is bound to me, Your Majesty. Formally bound. By ceremonial knife."

This appeared to capture Felipe's attention slightly more. I didn't quite get what the point of the knife was, but it appeared to have some meaning to him.

"And who witnessed this?" he asked suspiciously.

I closed my eyes and tried not to shake my head. Great. Just great…

"Sophie-Anne's second, Andre and John Quinn," said Eric firmly.

"Both of whom are dead and unavailable. Most unfortunate." He picked up my hands and examined my wrists and then looked at my throat. "She has no scars of such a formal tie, Northman."

Eric looked at him and said firmly, "I do not wish to leave her with scars. Look at her." Just an edge of his anger showing there…

Felipe instead glanced at him in evident disbelief. Evidently leaving scars was no biggie in his book. Humans are food and sometimes food has blemishes? That's the picture I was getting…

"Well, she belongs to the state. That is my decree. She is my asset and you will be leaving her."

Eric looked over at me steadily and then looked back at Felipe and said resolutely, "I cannot do that." He was almost scary polite as he said it. I felt a chill run down my spine.

"Well, then, you leave me little choice," Felipe said with a sardonic smile.

He gestured, to the two guards who had taken over from Victor's men, and they took hold of Eric. Gloves, I noticed. They also had the gloves. This whole thing was a set up but were they trying to get rid of Eric or keep me? Both?

My heart was pounding as Felipe turned away and said simply, with an idle wave of his hand,

"Kill him."