AN: I hate to say it but you guys should prep for some delays. I'm trying to keep my time table but I care more quality than speed so...you just have to hang in there. I'm putting it up here for those of you that might want to stave off reading just one chapter at a time. Everyone else you ave been warned.

Sookie

Chapter XIII

After he talked at me for five minutes I watched Eric walk out of my room. For the first time in months I took a breath. That feeling of having survived my very personal doomsday gave me a sense of strength. The worse had happened but I was still here. I wasn't dead. I'd gone through the wedding ceremony with a numbness that helped me survive it. I had to be honest with myself and say it could have been worse.

I didn't have to drink blood or kiss the groom. I just had to sign my life away in a roomful of the undead. What I was dreading was what came after. I thought Eric would want what he paid for but he hadn't. He didn't want sex. He didn't want to keep me prisoner at least in the conventional sense. He wanted me to lie to the world about my life with him.

Considering the things I'd been afraid of and memories I got from the mind of human that belonged to vampires, that had been nothing. It was a small price to pay especially after I'd called Jason and he had been home. He sounded alright and broke the bad news to me that he and Sienna had split. I listened all the same even though nothing about that was real. It had just been a relief to hear his voice and hear him complain. It made this day less like hell and more like a bad dream.

I'd never left home and I had no idea where I would be tomorrow. So I'd gone out with my hulking but silent body guards and rode the trains and took pictures and just soaked in the brightly lit downtown Chicago area. I figured that was really good use of my time. Plus I refused to have a pity party. I came back to the hotel after three in the morning mentally and physically exhausted, only to be dragged out before my head warmed the pillow.

"You need to get dressed," Damascus said. "We need to move, now."

I didn't ask not that he gave me chance to. He was trying to slip my arms into my shirt and rouse me from bed. I got dressed half asleep then I half walked and was half carried to the sitting area of the hotel suite by Hellion. To my immense horror I was the only human amongst three vampires, with my shirt mis buttoned. It was was like the bad dream where you go to school in your undies but slightly worse.

"What's the situation?" Eric asked not looking up from his stack of papers.

That's what I'd like to know. I was freaking exhausted.

"Bomb in the hotel," the female Britlingen answered

That shit woke me right up. I rubbed my eyes and tried to make sure I wasn't having some kind of wigged out dream brought on by stress. I saw the protestors and read the hateful thoughts in their mind but a bomb seemed extreme.

"Timed to detonate at dawn," the daemon continued. "But there is a remote trigger. Clovache can disarm it."

"Recommendations?" Eric asked.

"Discreet evac, we shouldn't get our fingerprints on this train wreck."

He finally looked up. "Make it so."

"We move in five," she said easing out of the room.

When she left, my hulking silent shadows, Damascus and Hellion went with her. I guess their job was to protect me from anyone but the selected few in the room. If I could I would seriously contest that point but I had bigger problems. Oh like say, a bomb. I seemed to be the only one that was bothered by that which made it crazier if you know what I mean.

No one was panicking. Pam was calmly flipping through her magazine. Illeta entered the room and was seated like a willowy statue come to life by her side. Eric was working on his laptop. They all looked as easy as Sunday morning. Meanwhile I was fighting the urge to run around screaming in a panic. We should be calling the police. We should be doing something other than sitting here as if this wasn't happening.

Claudine said never to undermine him in front of other vampires and that wasn't what I was doing. Technically I was undermining the very muscular demon. I seriously hoped that made a difference in his eyes.

"Shouldn't we call the police?" I asked. I spoke and three pairs of eyes glanced my way. All three were wearing different shades of indifferent. I kept my eyes focused on nothing in general. I knew better than to look a vampire in the eye.

"This won't be the first or the last time." Pam chimed in. "You should get used to people trying to kill you but only succeeding in ruining your fun."

The extremists that were targeting vampires wouldn't have chosen this place if not for the vampires gathering in masses. It also wasn't worth mentioning that I wouldn't be here if not for a certain vampire insisting to marry me.

"What she means is that your security staff routinely and vigilantly screens for threats and they are prepared to respond to any eventuality." Illeta explained. It might have been to make me feel better but I preferred Pam's version. It was painted a very bleak picture of my life from now on but it was honest.

"What about everyone else?" I asked. "The ones that didn't choose to be here and the ones that have no guards?"

"I do not make a habit of carrying the weight of world on my shoulders; fragile as yours are, neither should you."

"But you can help," I insisted.

His eyes found mine despite my best efforts and I got the incredible feeling that I was playing chicken with a freight train. "I will say no more on this matter."

There was a ring of finality to his voice that told me that there was no arguing with him, not that I would. It was one of the things Claudine had told me not to do. I didn't have to wonder why. His own kind watched themselves around him. He would leave and leave everyone else here to die. This bomb wouldn't claim nearly as many vampire lives as it would human. A vampire could regrow limbs. They could survive so much more than any human. I knew they knew that. I just couldn't make them care.

The procession was headed discreetly toward the exit and I was trying to think of something to do. I didn't want to leave with the knowledge that these people were in danger and I'd done nothing. Controlling Eric was not something I could do. All I had control of were my actions. I saw it as I approached and I knew I would do it.

We were on the back stairwell that led into the service entrance of the hotel. Carefully as not to call attention to myself I leaned to the side and pulled the fire alarm. The blaring filled the stairway and was rebounding through the hotel. I thought I'd been quick depressing the lever but before I got a chance to take my hand off it, all eyes were on me.

I folded my arm across my chest and looked right back at them unrepentantly. If it put their perfectly pressed routine in a twist, they could just get the fuck over it. I wasn't about to leave an entire hotel full of people to die. Eric leveled me with a look that conveyed several different things. I couldn't say what it was but I knew it wasn't good. Then he tilted his head to the side and waved Pam to his side. The bodyguards didn't miss a beat. They shifted seamlessly like blades on a fan and continued escorting her out.

"I have her," Illeta said coming over to take my hand.

"Sookie," Eric called and that one word was loaded. "You will go with Illeta until I send for you. Do you think you can handle that?"

I hadn't lost my indignation at his callous regard for human life. It was just that the feeling was accompanied by self-preservation. I didn't say anything, not that he gave me a chance to. He turned and followed behind Pam.

"This way," Illeta said wrapping her arm around my waist.

We took an emergency exit that set off more alarms in the building. I could hear frantic thoughts and the steady stampede of feet as people evacuated. Outside the parking lot was full of activity. The street was filling with people and emergency response vehicles. The only ones that were sticking around to watch were humans. From the shadows all the vampires were ghosting off to secure locations. I heard their unique signatures fleeing quickly.

I didn't notice much after I got into Illeta's sleek sports car. My mind was wrapped around the last words he'd said to me, 'Go with Illeta until I send for you, do you think you can handle that?' The nerve. In my head I was calling Eric all the bad names I knew and mixing them with every swear word I ever heard of.

It was like I was some misbehaving child. Not even a child, as if I was a dog. Heaven forbid I wasn't comfortable with just letting countless people die. Who did he think he was? That internal question was rhetorical even to myself. I knew exactly what he thought of himself. He had more money than God. He was a walking Adonis, not to mention he was a vampire. Of course he thought he could talk down at me. What infuriated me was that I had to let him.

Still I was convinced I'd done the right thing by pulling the fire alarm so Eric's words shouldn't infuriate me but they did. He would always treat me like this and I would always have to let him. I mean I didn't even know where I was going. I didn't know where the house we were supposed to share was located. I didn't know anything. I just had to follow behind him and jump when he said.

God! What the hell had my life turned into? I just married a vampire in a room full of countless others not three hours ago. Now I was riding in a car with a vampire I didn't know so I could get away from terrorists.

"Can you see a sign for Murry St.?" I looked beside me.

Illeta was lovely in an otherworldly way like I found all vampires were but she was stunning. From her long dark hair to the perfect flare of her hips and her tiny feet, she was a looker. It figured. I swear hanging around all these picture perfect supes was going to give me a complex.

"Are we lost?" I asked looking around in vain.

This was the first time I'd been away from home. I couldn't find this Murry Street in the day time with a flashlight, never mind in the dead of night through a car with tinted windows.

"No," she said sounding confident.

I kind of doubted that. I was almost sure we'd circled this coffee shop more than once. When we cruised past it a third time I knew we were lost. It really had to be my luck. I was with the only vampire in the world that had a poor sense of direction. I looked and picked through the minds of people in the area to get a better lay of the land and I found it. We pulled into a single family home at the end of the street in question. It was so incredibly normal looking; the white picket fence, the flower bushes and even the two car garage. It just happened to be used by vampires as a bolt hole. Seriously, what was my life turning into?

Illeta was nice enough, more so than anyone else I'd encountered thus far in my new life. It has been all business with Eric and the body guards. Pam had hit on me but she struck me as harmless—at least as much as a vampire could be. Illeta made small talk and offered made an effort to let me know what was going on. We watched the news together as news of the attempted bombing at the hotel unfolded. After she saw me to my room and came to check on me just before dawn. A part of me wanted to ignore her knock but I knew from experience it didn't get rid of supes. I opened the door to find that she was holding a tray with all the fixings to make tea.

"Can I interest you?" she asked.

"No thank you," I said politely.

"Don't worry. I'm sure he will send for you soon," she said in what was supposed to be a reassuring tone. She nodded, smiled kindly and walked away.

Ugh, that tears it! The instant the sun rose I left. Eric could send for me whenever he wanted but I wasn't going to be here waiting on him.

~ooooo~

I'd been gone from home two days and I didn't recognize my small town when I returned. It was crawling with reporters for two very different reasons. The serious ones were covering the murders of two women, one of whom was my friend and former coworker. Dawn Green. She and another woman Maudette Perkins had been raped and strangled. On the other hand there were the idiot tabloid writers who had come to get a scoop. Apparently the cat was out of the coffin.

No one was showing an ounce of mourning for the tragedy and unsolved murders. The townspeople were all excited and trying to get their five minutes of fame. I was disgusted. The vultures were circling my house and actually camping in my woods. I couldn't even go home. I had to call Sam and he held me up in one of his vacant apartments on the outskirts of Bon Temps. He had also been watching Tina for me and I was dying to hold something familiar in my arms.

"This is crazy," I told him when he came to bring me a burger basket that night.

"Well those vultures gotta eat sometime," he chimed in. "I get a thrill from denying them service."

I laughed. Sam didn't stay very long but the little bit of time that he could spend with me was treasured. It made me feel like less of a spectacle and more like a human being. I was asleep and I heard a funny scratching noise. Tina was probably picking through what was left of my dinner. This wasn't home and I was willing to bet she could get into the trash can here.

I rolled back over and threw the pillow over my head. It didn't keep me from hearing a heavy thud. I shot up in my bed. It sounded like footsteps but no one knew I was here and Sam was still at the bar. Quietly as I could I got out of bed and headed for the closet where my bags were. The new phone Eric gave me was at the bottom of my bag. It was shiny and bright and could do everything under the sun I just hoped calling 9-1-1 was one of them. was there. I could call for help. The closet was the closest but at least it came with a very sturdy iron to use as a weapon. I plugged it in with my hand tightly covering the red light. I huddled in and began rummaging for it but the footsteps only grew closer.

'What the hell are you doing?' I asked myself.

I was a telepath I didn't have to sit and wait for my attacker to make his move. I could pick them out in his head as he thought them. It would give me a fighting chance. Cautiously I dipped into his mind. That brief glimpse showed me images of barbarism so vile. I gagged. I gagged and I gave myself away. The closet door was ripped open and I saw the outline of a man. It didn't matter that I couldn't see his face this time. I'd seen it so many other times before.

Rene Lenier. He had been such a sweet gentle shy guy. He was engaged to Arlene. He helped raise her children. He was also a psychopath. He grabbed me by my shoulder and I grabbed the first thing I could and swung for the fences. I kicked him somewhere in the vicinity of his genital and ran. I wasn't even by the front door when I felt his breath on my neck. His fingers fisted in my hair and he used the hold to throw me to the floor.

The instant his skin touched me I was screaming. My cries were meant to call help forward but I was screaming because it was all too much, the terror of his prior victims, their desolate deaths, and his sick thrill with all of it. It was too much. The plan he had for me was there, tangled in the noxious cloud.

I fought him hard but my fight only excited him further, made him more vicious. He stopped throwing punches and began bashing my head off the floor in an attempt to knock me out. My vision began fading but I didn't care what happened to me. I just needed him to stop touching me. I needed to stop the poison of his mind from tainting me.

One second I felt his hands tearing at the waistband of my sweats and darkness began creeping in. The next thing, I felt him get flung away from me.

"I got you," a voice called.

I couldn't see but I recognized the change in mental signatures and the gentleness of his touch. A Britlingen had found me which was great timing. I was going to pass out and judging by the unnatural numbing I felt creeping into my body I knew it would be for a while.