Barry POV:

I had just gotten home from my weekly court attendance for King Davis and it was a doozy. Usually I wouldn't be required to attend sessions of court where punishment was meted out, but this night was different. An idiot baby vamp had made the mistake of laying a hand on me and I was supposed to choose from a list of painful penalties. When I started working with vampires about a year ago, I made the mistake of imagining them all as humans, but they don't think like humans. When I buy a car, I think that it's awesome if it lasts ten years. That's a tenth of my life, but it's a blink of an eye to a vamp. Thus, infractions perpetrated by vampires have to result in indelible punishments, the lesser of which start with fifty years and work up to two hundred.

I was still feeling a bit nauseous after witnessing the punishment. I chugged some pepto and started digging around my enormous Kenmore refrigerator for some ginger ale or Sprite. I would need to add that to the list of things for Kelly to pick up. Stan had been very generous in making a personal assistant part of my contract. She was a demon so I couldn't read her thoughts, and I'm fairly certain that she reports to Stan about my comings and goings.

Damn it. No ginger ale for Barry. I was surprised when there was a loud pounding at the door. My duties should have already been done for the day. I was looking forward to playing with my new Wii. I was god awful at dancing and I didn't get the chance to go out to nightclubs unless it was for business. I didn't get to dance, drink or flirt with girls when I was busy sniffing out threats. I thought if I got the Just Dance 3, I could pretend I was clubbing, you know, without all the oppressive noise from peoples minds.

So, with a sigh, I opened up the front door and looked up... way up at this man built as big as a barn. I could tell he was a vamp from his lack of thoughts and the way he just barely glowed. Shit, he looked real pissed off.

"Your name is Barry?"

Something was way off, but my nearest stake was in a drawer in the kitchen. "Uh, yeah. Who are you?"

He didn't respond, but quickly picked me up like a sack of potatoes and started to run vamp speed. Well that sure didn't help with my nausea. Though we were moving pretty fast, I could see that there were flaking corpses of vamps in the hallway. Instead of going downstairs past the vamps in the lobby he literally flew upstairs and before I could wonder where the hell he could go from the roof, he took off.

It doesn't matter how much posturing you may do as a man. When you find yourself hundreds of feet up in the air, it's difficult not to scream like a little girl and that's exactly what I did.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhh h! Letmedownletmedownletmedown."

"Will you please be quiet? I only need your assistance for a moment."

" My services have to be negotiated through King Davis!"

"I don't need your services. Just your body."

Oh my god. He was planning on killing me for some political play. "Oh god please don't kill me."

"I promised Sookie no harm would come to you. You are too valuable to damage anyway." How did he know Sookie? Anyway, you would think that if he wanted to keep me safe I wouldn't be soaring over Texas, hundreds of feet in the air.

"King Davis will seek retribution!"

He started chuckling like it was actually funny that a monarch would be looking to tan his hide. "Oh, I'm counting on it."

A/N: So I know this is a tiny little update, but I'm pretty proud I've met my self appointed deadline. Yay me. It gives you an idea of what's going on in Eric's head. I'm still accepting ideas of where Sookie should go. She doesn't know so neither do I. Thank you for reading and reviewing.

Love,

PIP