Having so much with this Fic. It has a different feel than any of the others. It's moving slower but don't you guys worry. You know I'm good for the action factor.

If you are loving the minimal to nonexistent grammatical errors and such, remember that it wouldn't be possible without my Beta rebecca.t. . wrecker, She's an absolute wiz!

Chapter Eleven

"Speak." I barked into the mouthpiece.

"Eric," the tone was calm and cool and the voice recognizable.

Stan, the king of Texas was calling me. I got the completely irrational urge to throw the phone, break and shatter it into a million pieces so he couldn't confirm my fear. There was only one reason why he would be doing so himself and not tasking it to one of his many underlings.

"Godric has gone missing" he continued unaware of my panic "I wanted to know if…" He let his words hang in the air not wanting to say what I knew he meant. He wanted to know if my maker was finally dead.

"I do not understand," I finally told him.

I mean I did, intellectually, but I was so dumfounded that that was the only response I could muster. I was forming a million little scenarios in my head where my maker simply lost his phone or went on vacation and no one got the memo or maybe he...In the deeper part of my mind I knew I was partaking in denial, which was useless of course. I needed details and facts to help me get a grip. "How long?" I asked.

"Two nights. He went out with a few other vampires from the nest to a popular club and when they were ready to leave he was nowhere to be found. They shut the club down and searched until close to dawn but they found nothing. His car was there and there had been no signs of a struggle,"

A vampire of Godric's stature does not simply go missing. Shit, no one ever just vanishes into thin air. Someone somewhere knew something. An attack was my first thought; a power play by an underling close to Godric looking to rise in ranks by taking him out. If that was the case there was no way he hadn't succeeded in taking a few people with him. Such a thing would have been impossible to contain in a public place. There had to be more to this.

"Humans are suspected because there were only five vampires there that night. All were with him." That had been my second thought and it chilled me to have Stan speak those words.

In the two weeks that had passed since the drainer network had been brought to my attention I'd realized just how misguided we vampires were in our confidence as the baddest things in the night. After all we were at the top of the food chain, super human senses and physical strength, never mind immortality, just to name a few advantages. We were no one's prey. The drainers had played to our arrogance and it has served them well.

Somehow the knowledge of the division of the vampire territories, Amun, Naranaya, Zeus and Moshup and all the states within them were known to Steve Newlin. That was how they had been hunting us so systematically. It wasn't a coincidence that within a major city in one of the four territories there was a major FoTS church. It was where the drainers-actually the term bounty hunters would be more apropos, it was where they operated from. They had what Sookie dubbed a 'Bingo book'. It had pictures and names of just about every vampire king and queen in the nation. It had their guards and everyone under those guards. It also listed the prices on all their head. I was worth two hundred thousand. The bounty on my maker was double that.

According to Sookie Louisiana was a distribution state because any vampire that went missing here would be noticed, the area was too small. The Rattrays had gotten greedy in taking down Mickey. That couple from hell normally got their supply from New Orleans and then peddled it to two bit dealers throughout the surrounding areas.

So in reality Steven Newlin was nothing but a drug lord cornering the market on supply. On Sundays he was busy in church renouncing vampires and blaming us for all the things that were wrong with the world. He then turned around to hunt us and peddle our blood to humans. How hypocritical and fucked up was that? I had to admit no vampire I knew could think this shit up. That was saying something.

No human that a vampire had could be trusted. Shit, we couldn't even feed safely. Hunters sent out bait that was infected with Sino-Aids. It was the only blood borne pathogen that weakened a vampire but had no effect on the human. That was just one of their many advantages in hunting us. The V network had a strict safety protocol for the bounty hunters and their distributors so as to uphold the integrity of the whole system.

A month ago I would have found the thought of Godric falling prey to anyone, least of all humans, amusing. Even knowing all that I did about the V network I didn't want to believe it. My maker was the first person I'd warned when I got the information from Sookie. Godric was well over two thousand years old. His power in terms of physical strength was second to none of all vampires in the new world. He would have been careful. He was always so very careful. There had to be something else. Denial wasn't useful but the small dose that I was holding onto was helping me save my sanity.

"What else has been done?" I asked Stan.

"At the moment not much," he admitted. "I am away and have taken many of my people with me." I wanted to growl but it would serve no purpose and Stan was not being callous just calculating. Just because Godric meant the world to me didn't mean Stan had to give a shit.

"If you permit I will come," I didn't want it to sound like an order because Stan could very well refuse. He was king and I was a sheriff of another monarch. He did not have to grant me permission to join the search. The fact that he called me told me that he intended me to do just what I offered.

"When can you arrive?"

"Before dawn."

"Go to the Hotel Camilla. There Isabelle will meet you," he replied.

I shook aside the building rage and tried to focus. Godric still lived. I would be the first to know if he was no more, but yet he felt…absent. It didn't matter, once I focused more I would use our bond to locate him. My emotions were so forceful that it brought Pam into my office.

"What has happened?"

My eyes closed and my body trembled as grief threatened to choke me. There was no more denial. It was very possible that bounty hunters had not only overpowered him but managed to keep him prisoner. Rage continued brimming in my skull. I didn't know what he might be suffering and that tormented me most. I wanted to both kill something with my bare hands and curl in a ball and weep at what I was in danger of losing. I indulged in neither. Falling apart or going on a rampage would serve no purpose. It wouldn't save him.

"Godric," I whispered. "I think the hunters have him."

My senses shut down entirely and the last thing my physical body registered was Pam tightening her hold on me. Then my mind detached as I dug into the core of all that I was. It felt like having all the blood in my body roil and come apart one molecule at a time. They all began searching for that part of me that was Godric's. There should be a clear read on his emotions and then location would become clearer as I drew closer. That was how it should work. It didn't.

"I…" My lips refused to form the truth of this matter I felt like I was dying all over again. It wasn't a physical pain it was the feeling of being completely adrift, cut off from my center. "Pam…I can't…find him," I looked up her and I caught my horror filled expression off her cobalt gaze.

"But you feel him?" She asked.

I nodded. From what I'd learned the severing of a maker-child bond was painful. It was also instantaneous and therefore unmistakable akin to losing a limb and having it grow back all at once. I would have known if I'd lost him. Instead of there being silence and a void I got nothing from Godric but a suffocating depressive wall of smog. It was thick and mutinous. It wasn't from injury it was of sheer desolation. It made me feel as though all the worlds' misery was weighing upon my very soul. I retreated before I came into full contact with it. That wouldn't help me find him but it told me he was still very much undead.

"What is Stan doing?"

I shook my head. "Not much. There aren't a lot of available hands. He called me to see if Godric's called out to me."

Now that my mind was clearer I was confused as to why Godric hadn't called out to me. He would not have had to call me to him were he in danger. All he would had to was release the block that prevented me from feeling his emotions. I would have known he was in need and I would have come. In the unlikely event that wasn't possible he would have used an edict to summon me to him if he was in need. Why did he not call me?

"I need you to finish up the meeting," I told Pam.

"I will come with you"

"No" I said taking her face in my hands. "No luv you will stay here and oversee our affairs" I stroked her cheeks as the edict I decreed settled into her body. I wasn't exactly sure what it felt like but I knew it wasn't pleasant. "I'm sorry. I know that does't feel good but I didn't trust you to obey on faith alone"

She folded her arms across her chest and sighed. "I wouldn't have"

There was no telling what kind of trouble I would find where I was going. It was not somewhere I would take Pam. She was strong and skilled but she was young. This was one of those instances where Thalia would be useful but she was still AWOL. I needed Pam to hold down the fort because no one else could. For all her drab, bored and often impatient demeanor, Pam operated at genius level intellect when she applied herself, most times she couldn't be bothered but right now it was what I needed. We'd both already been briefed by Sookie…speaking of which where was she?

I listened and heard the thumping of her heart. It wasn't frantic but it wasn't steady. She was under some kind of duress with André in the building that was more than fucking likely. Damn it. Taking the time to school my features I exited my office. I found Sookie and André in entrance into the back section of the club. They weren't within sight or sound of the sheriffs in the main bar nor could I have heard them from my office. Her back was against the wall and André had his braced on either side of here, looming and keeping her where she was.

"André," I called. My tone was sharper than I intended but it was the best I could do at the moment. "Regretfully we must leave you sooner than planned." He hadn't looked up at his name but he did then.

"Something is amiss?"

"Yes." The expression on my face told him his unspoken question would go unanswered. "Pam will conclude the meeting."

"It is the telepath's presentation," André said brushing an imaginary piece of lint from Sookie's sweater. "She will see it through to the end."

Sookie stiffened momentarily but otherwise made no other outward reactions. It was the best thing she could have done. As I mentioned André was a dick and I didn't like him. He wasn't unaware of it as I didn't try to hide it very much. However, I followed orders and was loyal to my Queen. That was all he should care about as her lieutenant. It wasn't.

He liked to find mental and emotional sore spots and pick them raw. That was all this was. Neither Sookie nor I was going to give him what he was looking for. I knew André was trying to rattle her and goad me. He was assuming Sookie meant something to me. She didn't. I knew from personal experience that she was bold. Given the night she'd had it should have lessened if not completely diminished but it hadn't, she barely flinched under his touch.

"That would be ideal but is no longer feasible," I was out of patience and that wasn't a request and it showed in my tone and he responded to the challenge in it. "We are leaving." I needed to get to Dallas. Bobby had found me a red eye and I had less than two hours to get to the airport. I wasn't going to waste another second arguing with André. "Sookie," I held my hand out, "Come here, now please" If the order bothered her she didn't show it.

She complied immediately. She ducked out from under André's arms slowly as if waiting for him to stop her. He didn't. He continued to glare at me. His eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. I was being fully insubordinate but I didn't care. I knew he would remember this and wouldn't let it go without consequence but I didn't care about that either.

"Thanks for leaving me in a room full of big bad vampires," She said once we got outside.

"Something has come up," I said ushering her towards my car. "We need to go to Dallas."

She dug her heels in to prevent me from pulling her farther.

"Dallas?" She almost screeched "I can't go to Dallas!"

"We have an agreement do we not? I expect you to honor it" She was most likely thinking about her job with the shifter and it only made me angrier. She was wasting my time with that meager position. "Your employment with the shifter does not grant you a pardon."

She could hate me as I threw the truth in her face but I didn't care. None of laughs we've shared had changed that accord. The fact that she would resent me didn't matter. Getting her on the flight to Dallas did, Godric did. Her eyes were sharp as glass and I felt fury roll off her. In my state of mind, her anger, her defiance, and her stubbornness were nothing compared to the worry I was battling and the pressure it put me under. I was going to get my way. All that she could control was how it came about.

"Are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?" I prompted.

We were descending into Dallas and Sookie still had not spoken to me. We had left the club and headed straight for the airport. She was dressed in the same clothes but I already had her essentials waiting at the hotel. While I relayed all this to her she remained quiet.

"How long will you be angry this time?" I knew she wouldn't harbor a grudge against me. Her temper flared and burned out pretty quickly. Her response was to cut me a look that could chill ice. I sighed internally. I was looking for her to distract me but clearly that was not going to happen. It was a good time to debrief her.

"A friend of mine went missing two days ago," I told her. "Bounty hunters are presumed to be behind it." She did not show any inclination that she heard but I continued regardless, knowing her ears worked perfectly. "He was last seen in a night club. We will know more once we meet with a vampire of his." Again there was no response.

We were sharing a hotel suite. Two separate bedrooms with common living areas. I thought she would comment on the sleeping arrangements but she did not. She said nothing. I went left and she went right. Her anger I could ignore and deflect with ease but her silence and indifference was a whole other thing. Perhaps it was unwise to speak to her that harshly then expect to do her best on this job. I would offer another incentive. I went to her room and knocked.

"I'm leaving your check for this job on the kitchen table. Half now and then the other half when the assignment is completed" There was no response but I knew she was not asleep. I let it go. There were other more pressing matters on my mind than a woman that thought I was rude. She could get in line with the thousand others.

I know there are a lot of you that want to beat Eric like rented mule but bare with him...But review, review and tell me all about it.