**** This Chapter is dedicated to kylieZ. She was the first one to guess what part of the last chapter was Twilight Related. More than my own life was what Bella had inscribed on a locket for Renesmee. Way to go girl! Glad I'm not the only Twi-tard up in here! LOL*****

Chapter 43

Kicking Ass And Taking Names, Viking Style or Ninja's Ain't Shit Compared To Ancient Norse Vampires

Eric's POV

"BILL COMPTON! RELEASE SOOKIE NOW!" Each door I passed was splintered into matchstick sized pieces as I passed. He would never run far or fast enough that I couldn't find him. "SURRENDER HER NOW AND I SWEAR TO END YOU QUICKLY, MAKE ME FIND YOU AND I SWEAR TO ODIN YOU WILL SUFFER LIKE NO ONE BEFORE YOU!"

Eric, he has me downstairs in the Queens Chambers! Stay where you are! He's already injured Pam, I think Quinn is dead! Don't come down he.....

I had been hearing her thoughts telling me where she was, but the scream of anguish was clearly audible from the floor below. I knew he heard the scream of frustrated rage from my throat as I blurred down the steps. I splintered open the doors and skidded to a stop. He had Sookie's hair twisted in one hand and a large blade pressed to her throat. I could smell that he had already spilled her blood and saw the cuts on her arms and stomach. He had sliced right through her dress and the wound was deep. She was losing blood at an alarming rate but would have no doubt already bled dry if not for having drank so much of my blood. I could see the wounds trying to heal.

"Well, Eric Northman, the Sheriff Of Area Five and the biggest prick I ever did meet in all my years. So nice of you to join us!" He took the knife from Sookie's throat and made a cut down her cheek. She screamed from the pain.

"You release her now, coward! Release her and we shall battle, man against man. RELEASE HER!" I made a move to advance towards him and he returned the blade to her neck, dangerously close to her carotid."

Eric, behind you! I heard the warning in stereo,Sookie and Pam both sending me the message at the same time.

I spun and caught the arm of my would be assassin. It was the Kings personal guard, Jade Flower. I ripped her both of her arms off at the same time before she had a chance to register it. I grabbed her neck and twisted, putting all my rage into the motion. Her head disconnected with a loud pop. I threw it across the room and bellowed with victory as her body twitched on the floor. I caught sight of the King and Queen seated on their thrones, their faces devoid of any emotion. I could feel the Kings rage as he witnessed the final death of his guardian.

"This pitiful excuse for a vampire has been playing you for a fool, Sophie-Ann!" I glared at her, maybe I would not spare even her. I could not believe I had pledged my loyalty to such a fool.

"No, your majesty. I come here to save you! Eric would have you assassinated along with your new husband! I am loyal only to you my Queen."

"Bill has been working on a database to catalog every vampire in the United States. If he's so loyal, why did he not tell you about that?" Sookie was being too brave, I wished that for once she would be a human and feel fear.

"That is a lie, my Queen. I have done nothing of the sort. Where's your proof?"

I took the computer discs out of my jacket pocket and fanned them in the air. "You're not the only computer savvy Vampire, Bill. I found these along with letters of your infidelity with your maker and some pilfered belongings. My Queen, here is all the proof you need that Bill Compton is a liar!" I turned and flung them at her feet. "FUCKING DO SOMETHING!" It seemed she would need more motivation.

I pulled a tape recorder out of another pocket and hit play. Quinn's voice echoed throughout the great hall from the tiny speaker.

"But how can I be sure that if I turn Sookie over to you, you will intercede for me with the Queen?"

Bill answered:

"I won't have to intercede with the Queen, she will be dead from the explosions by then and The King has already agreed to my list of demands."

Sophie-Ann turned a cold face to her King and raised an eyebrow. I threw the tape recorder at her feet. I advanced towards Bill again, he had lost some of the fire in his eyes. His look was apprehensive, like a cornered animal.

"I will make you suffer more agony than any being has ever known in the history of the world. I will chew your flesh off of your bones and spit it out, death is too good for you, you fucking miserable..."

The look on Bill's face was confused, he blinked his eyes repeatedly and staggered backwards a bit, dragging Sookie with him and pressing the blade into her throat, causing another cut. I looked at Sookie's face and saw that her mouth was moving. I calmed the rage I felt as best I could and listened in closely to what she was saying.

"Bill, you don't really want to do anyone here any harm. It was all just a big misunderstanding. No one here has wronged you in any way, it was you who wronged the Queen. You told the King you would help him murder Sophie-Ann so he could get control of what she ruled. Tell her Bill, tell her how you plotted against her and almost cost her everything. You want to admit your deception to her, you will admit your deception to her. Do it now, Bill. Do it!"

His mouth opened and closed several times before the words came out in a tumbling rush. "I turned against you my Queen, I agreed to help the King dispose of you in return for a position of power. I would have blown up your home and had you die in the explosion."

The Queen stood suddenly and bellowed in a rage. "Andre! Take this thing I have bound myself to and throw him into the dungeon until the Oracle can be summoned!"

The things that happened afterwards were all in a slow motion blur. Bill released his hold on Sookie and she began to run towards me. The King was trying to run past Andre and find his freedom, Pam was struggling to stand but there was so much of her own blood on the floor underneath her that her feet could find no purchase. Her throat had been slit to the point of near decapitation and her hands were busy trying to hold her head in place. Sookie was sliding in the blood that covered the floor in front of her. I saw Bill behind her, I screamed for her to move and I began moving towards her. I saw the flash of the blade and watched it disappear to the hilt into her back. She dropped to the floor and gasped in agony.

I saw everything in a single shade of red and found my hands around Bill's throat. I was screaming, enraged like the dreaded Berserker's of long ago. I punched his face and saw the bones on the right side of his head collapse. He fell to the floor, the undamaged side of his face dazed but there was a smirk on his lips.

"She's as good as dead, Eric. You will not have Sookie after all."

The sound that escaped me was beyond inhuman, I bent to grab his ankles and lifted his twitching form off of the floor, feet first. I began to pull his legs in opposite directions, I felt the sharp ripping of fabric followed by the wet ripping of flesh. His screams were fuel for the fire. I pulled until I felt bone and socket disconnecting, pelvis fracturing and separating, internal organs spilling onto the floor at my feet and then finally the silence as Bill Compton met his final death. I roared in victory and slung the two halves of his putrid corpse against different walls.

Sookie.

The Queen was beside her, wiping her hair away from her face the way you would a sick child. Sookie was too pale, her breathing was ragged and raspy, I could hear the blood in her airway.

"Min Alskarinna, where you go I will follow."

Sophie-Ann looked at me with amazement. "You truly love this human?"

"Yes, I do." What more was there to say?

"Andre! Bring me the vials! Make haste!" I made no sense of what she had said, I sat beside Sookie and lay her head in my lap. Drops of red fell on her face as I cried for pain, for the aching loss I felt already. She would die and I would follow. I could not hope to go to the same afterlife as her but I would fight my way out of hell, battle Satan himself to find her.

She smiled at me weakly, I could see that the effort dimmed the light behind her eyes slightly. "At least we had each other for a little while, my king. There is nothing that I could have ever denied you. I just wish that I had been smarter, listened to my heart when it was telling me that it wanted you."

I saw Andre enter the room from the side and hurry to us carrying a small, ornate case. He handed it to Sophie-Ann and bowed as he backed away. She opened the case and it's interior revealed hundred of tiny vials. They all appeared to contain blood.

"Eric, if you truly love this human, I have the means to save her but you will have to turn her to complete the healing. Is this your wish?"

I nodded, not daring to hope too much that she might be able to do as she said. She ran her fingertip along the top row of vials, reading the names listed on them. One especially ancient looking vial labeled with the initials VTD, was the one she pulled from the case.

"Sookie, dear one, open your mouth for me. I will make everything better."

Sookie looked up at me, questioning if she should do as Sophie-Ann asked. I nodded and smiled. I did not want to give false hope but she was near death, any comfort I could give her, true or false, was deserved. She opened her mouth and winced from the effort.

The Queen pulled the stopper from the vial and slowly tipped it over Sookie's open mouth. A single drop, as thick and as black as motor oil fell onto her tongue. She immediately convulsed, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.

"What have you fucking done?" My strength wasn't enough to hold her still as the tremors got worse. I looked at Sophie-Ann murderously, no one would be spared this night. She smiled at me.

"Just watch, ye of little faith."

As suddenly as they had started, the convulsions stopped. Sookie opened her eyes and looked at me.

"Your eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen, Eric." I laughed in spite of myself.

"It must be how they are contrasting against all this blood." She smiled at me, an angel surrounded by gore, blood and the remnants of violence. I felt the Queen stand up and move towards Pam. I heard the sounds of licking and knew that the Queen was lending her healing saliva to Pam's wounds to help her heal. It wasn't long before Pam joined me and kissed Sookie on her cheek.

"You'll be just fine now, in three days time, you will be a miserable rotten bitch of a vampire like me." Pam laughed but her voice revealed pain. She felt responsible for all that had happened and I would have to watch her carefully to make sure she did not decide to punish herself. Pam could be her own worst enemy.

"Pam, I could never dream of achieving your level of miserably rotten bitchiness!"

"Sookie. Ahhhh, Sookie!" Pam was sobbing as she leaned her face into my shoulder. I could not believe this show of emotion from her. Two hundred plus years I had known Pam now and I had never seen this side of her. Honestly, I hoped that I never did again. Weepy women scared me badly, weepy vampire women were worse that a boogeyman in the closet.

"Pam, could you please look after our Sookie? I need to confer with Sophie-Ann." She nodded and wiped her blood streaked face on my shirt. Thank you, Pam.

I stood and walked to where Sophie-Ann was replacing the vial she had fed Sookie from. She spoke without turning around.

"I won't tell you how I came to have possession of these vials. It is better that you do not know, Eric. I will tell you that they contain blood from the oldest vampires still in existence and a few who are not."

I motioned towards the one she had just replaced. "VTD, Vlad Tepish Dracul?" She did not answer out loud but gave a slight nod. "You gave Sookie blood from the original Vampire?"

"Don't be a fool! Dracul was nowhere near the beginning of our kind." She held up a vial that was so old, it looked like it might shatter from the look I gave it. It was labeled only with the letters JI, and looked to contain only three drops or less. "This, dear one, is the blood of our originator. The first of our kind." I could not fathom who the initials implied. She palmed the vial gently and placed it back into it's slot inside the case.

"A word of warning, Eric Northman." This did not bode well. "I will do my best to forget that your human glamored a hundred year old vampire. That is a very dangerous gift indeed and one might wonder if that gift will be magnified once she is vampire. You would do well to keep that ability a secret from everyone. There are many who would not like knowing that there is one such as she who can control the minds of our kind. She will need your protection now more than ever. I swear to keep this secret in return for my life being saved by your intervention and I consider my debt to you settled. Please let the weretiger know that he is released from servitude, should he recover from his wounds."

And with that she was gone. I turned to Pam and Sookie and sighed deeply. "Pam, please help me get Quinn into the vehicle. We need to get back to Shreveport so Dr. Ludwig can treat the tiger." I knelt and stared into Sookie's eyes. I saw no pain there, only the love that I could not exist without. "Sookie and I must go to ground before the sun comes up."

We made Shreveport with little time to spare. I had called my day man to arrange for him to transport Quinn to the good doctors facilities. I truly hoped he would survive. He would be a good man to have in my employ. Pam drove us to my plot of land outside of Shreveport. Chow met us there, having dug the hole that Sookie and I would occupy for the next three nights. They would have to rush to cover us and make it to their safety before the sun came up. I had removed all of my clothing in the car and now began to remove Sookie's as well. She was covered in blood, cuts and bruises. She was still the most beautiful thing my eyes had ever beheld. I picked her up and carried her to the hole, I leaped inside, landing gently so I would not jar her and cause her pain.

"Min alskarinna, do you still want to proceed with this as you requested? We will have an audience, at least until we are covered."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, my love." She wound her arms around my neck and pulled herself up to kiss me. I lay her onto the cold wet ground and placed myself above her. Knowing that I was about to make Sookie into a vampire had aroused me. I entered her slowly and glanced up at Pam and Chow. They amazed me by standing above us with their backs turned. I would find some way to reward their consideration. I began moving slowly, feeling every part of me come alive at feeling the warmth of her swallowing me. She sighed beneath me, her body responding to my movements. She turned her head to the side and offered herself to me and without hesitation, I bit. The dirt started to fall on us as I drank and moved inside my lover. Vampire speed made the filling in progress quickly. I was nearing release and felt Sookie stiffen beneath me. I could not help but to shed a tear as Sookie Stackhouse took her final human breath. God help me.