Godric's house was massive, modern and private; the vampires here were clearly not overkeen on mixing too much with the human populace, though Elliot would wager all she had that they bent that rule for blood whenever they felt the fancy. From what Eric had told her, these vampires were not the sort to be trifled with; they were the sort who hurt for sport and spat on the likes of TruBlood. True enough Eric disliked the stuff, but he at least saw the benefits of mainstreaming; Stan, the big guy around here in Godric's absence, did not.

Elliot had stepped up to the front door at Eric's side with more than a little tension knotting her stomach but her expression was blank; nobody, except perhaps Michael, would have been able to read her worry unless they truly cared to look for it. Eric seemed tense himself, quiet and withdrawn, while Bill made his disquiet with the situation known and Sookie trailed along trying to placate him. Elliot, at least, took some comfort from the presence of the blond vampire; since last night every shared, moment-long glance had seemed to strike against something inside her and somehow being at his side felt a lot more right than it ever had. Not that that made the vampires in here any less fearsome.

A den of snakes, Bill had called this nest and the vampires it housed. Elliot worried that he was right, but it was too late to back out now and in any case she was already sold to the cause. Stan had turned out to be a hulking giant of a vampire, thick set and muscled more than even Alcide, his hair dark, thick and coarse, his voice rough and his eyes cold. The cowboy boots, however, had thrown the image somewhat, and Elliot was at odds with her opinion of him as her gaze trailed the vampire.

Isabel was beautiful to behold and a great deal more pleasant than Stan. She'd offered a smile, though a tight one, in their direction as the small group from Louisiana stepped inside. Tall and slim, with hair dark as the night that was all the vampires knew. Her beauty, however, only enhanced the air of danger she gave off with a curl of her lips and a glance in the right direction; she, too, was not the sort to be trifled with. Despite that, Elliot found herself liking the woman where she disliked Stan; he was too loud, too brash and far too much like Michael for her to stand looking at him too long before averting her eyes. He was also angry, which reminded her all the more of the man who gave chase even after so long.

Stan's eyes were contemptuous as they passed first over Elliot, at Eric's side, and then over Sookie, who stood with Bill. His lip curled, fangs unsheathed in his anger. The blond vampire was pacing, his eyes restless though never far from Stan, and Stan himself was about as pissed as they came without actually attacking. Though she was within touching distance of Sookie, with Eric prowling about the room and no longer by her side, Elliot felt very suddenly alone as the furious gaze landed on her.

"You should've told me Eric'd hired fucking humans, Isobel," Stan snarled, apparently deciding that the Viking was below his attention at present. Elliot's gaze was hard on the dark haired vampire, her offence tangible in the way the air thickened but nobody seemed to notice, except Eric. His pacing brought him close by Elliot for a second and he pressed two fingers lightly against her wrist, where her pulse ran, before his pacing continued uninterrupted. It wasn't much but it was enough and Elliot pulled in a breath, the air around them relaxing as Sookie voiced her own annoyance.

"Now wait just a minute -" she began, only to be cut off as Bill stepped up to her shoulder.

"Respect her," he snapped at Stan, who only smirked. Isabel turned to him instead, her lovely voice quiet but angry just the same.

"I couldn't tell you, Stan – you've been off on your own for days," she told the dark haired vampire, arms folded as she observed him with a chilly expression.

"Are you certain Godric was abducted by the Fellowship of the Sun?" Eric cut in, speaking for the first time and voicing the question he'd been musing over with Elliot and to himself for hours now. They knew that the church had been the ones to try and take Sookie, but while Eric was largely assuming that meant they had Godric, it couldn't be for certain. For all they knew the FoS was just one branch of a much larger plot.

"Yes."

"No."

Two answers at the same time and Elliot turned away, rolling her eyes as she shifted, restless as the vampire she'd spent the night with. "They are the only ones with the organisation and manpower," Stan told Eric as Isabel turned to him.

"But they're amateurs," she countered, arms folded and evidently tired of voicing the same facts over and over. "It doesn't make any sense. This is Godric we're talking about." And again with Godric; all Elliot knew about him was that he was some great vampire, great enough to have what felt almost like the whole of the world shifting with unease at his disappearance and still Elliot knew little about him aside from his damned name.

Sookie broke in, ever the diplomat, but Stan ran her ideas down, spreading his hands as his voice got a notch louder. "Full out attack," he said resolutely with a sharp nod of his head. War was what he wanted, quite evidently, and Elliot's dislike for him increased. Any man who yearned for hurt and battle was not much of a man, in her opinion. Any man who inflicted pain on others for his own damnable reasons wasn't much of anyone, but she kept her jaw tight because if she started talking she'd just start arguing and that wasn't going to help this case overly. What the hell she was doing there she didn't know; Eric had admitted earlier that he wished he'd left her behind, and that he had half a mind to return her to Bon Temps until she'd sworn fervently at him and told him in no uncertain terms that she'd make her own way right back just because.

She scowled at Stan's 'plan'; extermination was hardly the answer – wasn't this whole thing to prevent a killing? "Yeah," she said, voice unexpected from her silence and dripping with sarcasm; five heads turned sharply to look at her. "Vampire-hating church gets burned to the ground – I wonder who did that. Excellent plan." Isabel shot her a tiny smile but Stan scowled, his body swaying as though he had a mind to step towards her until a low, wordless growl from Eric had him in place, though furious.

Bill said something about the King of Texas that had Elliot starting, and Stan replied coldly, giving Isabel cause to berate him. Elliot was miles behind, still stuck on wondering when the hell Texas had become a monarchy and why she hadn't been in on that memo before realising belatedly that they probably meant a vampire king and by then Eric's patience had been worn to the ground.

"You are completely incompetent," he snarled, swinging around to glare at the Dallas vampires. Elliot jumped as he spoke up, his voice loud behind her, and she turned to look at him but his focus was beyond her. "What's happened to Godric that he surrounds himself with clowns?" he asked icily, blue eyes sweeping from Isabel to Stan. The former stepped towards him and Elliot's fists clenched as her voice spilled out, just as icy as Eric's.

"We invited you as a courtesy," she told him coldly. "This is not your territory – you have no voice here."

Stan smirked. "Yeah, Sheriff," he said mockingly. "Why don't you run on back down to Louisiana?" Was this how vampire politics worked? Mindless bickering until five hundred years later something eventually got done? This was pathetic, and nothing like what little snippets she'd seen of vampires so far had led her to believe it would be.

"Oh I'm not going anywhere," Eric assured him, danger in every word. Elliot's eyes flashed to Sookie as she spoke up but the waitress was ignored, much as Elliot was being.

"What we need is a plan," Bill spoke up, with the first sensible words Elliot had heard in a while and Isabel and Stan set to bickering again. The cowboy confirmed Elliot's suspicion as his eyes narrowed. "It's not a movie," he rebuked Isabel's words firmly. "It's a war."

"Idiots." Eric had had enough (and Elliot was surprised his patience had lasted even this long); he turned on his heel and stalked away. There was an uncomfortable silence; Stan was seething, Isabel's eyes had rolled heavenwards and Sookie and Bill were shooting each other worried glances. Elliot sighed.

"I'll go after him," she said, turning before any of them could say a thing and striding after Eric. She hadn't a clue where he'd gone but she'd rather spend hours searching this house for him than another minute with the bickering vampires. Fortunately the Viking hadn't gone far; the first door to the grounds and Elliot had him – he always seemed happier outside, not the sort to enjoy being cooped up, and she found him beneath an old and sprawling tree in a little garden that was secluded from the rest of the house by tall hedges.

"Godric's chances of returning safe head evermore towards zero," he said as she approached. Elliot stopped beside him and slid her hands into her pockets.

"Is this how vampires work, then?" she asked after a moment. "Argue and argue until someone gives in?"

"Mostly," he replied, his voice deep in the quiet night. "Stan will always go for the fight, Isabel would rather be cunning; Bill cares only for his human and thus nobody will ever agree."

Elliot was thoughtful for a second and she stepped around Eric to circle the tree, simply for something to do. "What about you?"

"I will do whatever it takes to free Godric," Eric said without hesitation, as Elliot had known he would. It was that, more than anything else, that made her want to free the old vampire. Eric was not the sort to attach to things easily but to Godric he was incredibly attached and for that, she wanted him safe. Not that her want was going to mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it was there all the same.

"Whatever it takes," she repeated, leaning against the trunk on the opposite side of Eric. The moon was bright overhead and Elliot looked up at it, biting her lip for a second. "If we can prove, absolutely, that the Fellowship has Godric, what then?"

"Then we get him out." The resolve was clear in his voice, even without being able to see the vampire's expression.

His words alone didn't spell out a plan but Elliot didn't mistake his tone; whatever it took was what he would do, whatever it cost – whoever it cost. "People will get hurt." Both of them knew it; there was no need to say it but Elliot couldn't not.

"I don't like it much either," Eric admitted. "Especially as Stan is like to kill them all, but what else am I to do?" He was suddenly there, in front of her without Elliot's realising he had even moved, and he was staring down at her as though he expected her to have all the answers by some magic. She didn't. "I will kill them myself if they stand between me and Godric."

"And if they don't?"

"It is Stan who sees mercy as a weakness, not me." But he had a temper on him and Elliot was fairly certain that she and he would have differing ideas about what 'standing in the way' entailed. The gist of it, though, was that Eric wanted Godric and Stan wanted a fight.

"If we get Godric out without anybody noticing then nobody need be hurt," Elliot pointed out after thinking on it for a minute or so, during Eric had stood silent and expectant. "If nobody notices there won't even be a fight."

"In theory," Eric agreed. He shifted to lean against the trunk himself, his body so close that Elliot had to force herself to focus on the matter at hand and not his chest. "Stan is one for revenge, though, and I doubt getting him out will be a simple matter. If it was Godric would be back with us already."

"Well then we do it carefully," Elliot replied. "With a fucking good plan."

Eric nodded slowly, his eyes on her. "And that plan is?"

"Pretty much non-existent," she shrugged. "I dunno, Eric – I'm just talking." Elliot took a tiny step back, telling herself she was imagining the slight disappointment from Eric at that, and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it in silence and taking a drag that she blew skywards. "If we can get in without being noticed, we could get out without being noticed." Getting out with Godric would be harder, sure, but half-baked plans that were largely made up on the fly always seemed to work the best anyway.

"I don't like all these 'we's," Eric said warily.

Elliot scoffed. "Give over, Eric. You brought me here to protect Sookie, so here I am. I know you're not so stupid that you haven't even considered what I'm thinking."

"I have considered it, then dismissed it," Eric told her stiffly.

"For no good reason."

"For very good reason," he countered, sounding angry now. Elliot blew out more smoke, watching him without worry. "To send the two of you inside would be madness – not only because of the danger to yourselves but if you were caught Godric would be lost at once. The minute they know we're onto them they'll kill him."

Elliot flicked ash away, running her tongue over her lower lip as she shook her head. "Caught," she repeated. "What's to be caught, Eric? Sookie and I'll be two idiots looking for some new church – we'll be all hookey and howdy-do and praise Jesus or whatever. Sookie can listen, find out if they have Godric – maybe even where – and then we have the means to make a plan."

"Risky," he countered, looking less sure and in that moment Elliot knew she had him.

"Not," she said. "There's nothing risky about two women looking for a new church – our old pastor slept with his brother's wife or something – gosh, imagine that – and presto. The only risky part is being brainwashed into their idiocy." And there was little chance of that for a woman who had long ago given up on God lending her any help.

Eric finally smiled, just a little, but it was enough. "I doubt anything could brainwash you, Elliot," he told her, shaking his head. Elliot laughed quietly, flicking the cigarette stub away. Eric's eyes watched it fall. "I wish you wouldn't smoke those things," he said, serious again. "They'll kill you."

"At this rate I think it'll be crazy vampires, not cigarettes, that'll kill me," she replied casually, though it was something of a genuine worry, none of which ran deep as the fear that it would be Michael who killed her in the end.

The vampire's blue eyes closed for a second. "Don't say that." But then he opened them again and he looked himself once more, albeit strained and worried and somehow paler than he had been last night, though that might have been the brightness of the moon. Either way, there was a lot he wasn't saying.

"So – we have a plan. We should go back inside and tell the others before Sookie bitch-slaps Stan," Elliot said, turning away from Eric, who was laughing for reasons she couldn't fathom.

"That," he told her, "is something I would pay to see."

AN: I really, really hate this chapter and I am so, so sorry for it but I just can't rewrite it again; I'm bored of it and I hate it so I'm putting it up and then I can move on to the ones I really want to write. In short – sorry it's so crappy, the next one will be better because we're getting into the good stuff!

I meant to say last chapter but I reached 100 reviews! And I honestly can't even tell you how unbelievably happy that makes me, I almost shrieked when I saw and just – thank you all so much for reading, reviewing – just having a look. It means more to me than I could ever say and just...thank you. If I could give everyone reading this now a massive chocolate-covered Eric, I totally would. Even though I'd be tempted to keep him for myself I'd give him to you guys – that's how much I love you all.

Unfortunately what with all this worry about Godric going on and Stan being...well, Stan, Elliot and Eric haven't had a chance to examine what that night changed for them, if anything – but they will. They will.

The title makes absolutely zero sense for the chapter – I was mostly just thinking of Stan and figured it was close enough, but it's a song by New Found Glory. I did want something more fitting but it's really late and I have work tomorrow and I hate this chapter anyway so I'm going to give it a crappy title!

Thanks for reading, as always, and I'm hoping to get the next chapter up before the week is over to make up for slow updating times recently and general rubbishness of this one. Night all! :3