I woke up in the same bathtub shortly after sundown. Sometime after I checked out, the water had been turned off and a thick black blanket had been thrown over me. Before I even thought about moving I reached out to see who (or what) was around. Eric was in the bed, asleep and not in good shape. "I know you're awake, Sook." No wonder I recognized that voice earlier.
"Barry!" My voice was hoarse and I moved slowly, painfully and tried to remove my blanket as fast as I could without doing more damage to my already miserable body. He knew my intentions, and peeled the blanket from me slowly. "How did you know to come?"
"Sookie, I could hear you from across the city- I felt everything once the Fellowship started busting out the windows. I got here as fast as I could but I was too late for a few people." He looked disappointed, but we had both been through Fellowship attacks on vampire buildings in broad daylight and we both knew that there wasn't much that could be done. We'd even been through it together in Rhodes.
I was astonished. "You can still hear me?"
Barry was surprised I didn't know about this earlier. "Sookie, I can do so much more than hear you. I can feel you." Okay. That was creepy. But good to know!
"Why didn't you come earlier? With the FBI? With Malia?"
"I couldn't find you. I was looking and then I met Claude and he said you would be fine. And then I felt you being freed. So I didn't come. I didn't know, I'm sorry, Sook." Claude, my cousin of sorts was tall, dark and very handsome. And a fairy. Not the gay pride fairy (well, that too) but an honest to goodness fairy. I had been much closer to his twin, Claudine before she was killed in the fairy-on-fairy war…but that's another story. He could tell that my thoughts were straying and he brought me back to now. "Your guy should be fine. I've seen them..you guys..bounce back from worse than him. He's pretty gnarly, but we got him some blood before we went back to sleep." Barry shifted in his shirt to cover fresh vampire bites on his wrist. He understood the consequences of letting a vampire drink from you, and he was already experiencing some of the more awkward side effects. He'd been thinking about Eric naked since he drank from him hours ago. And once he realized that he had unconsciously shared that tidbit with me, he turned a deep shade of pink. Oh wow, that rush of blood to his cheeks, oh my, oh…Barry.
He darted out of the room and slammed the door behind him, jamming it shut with a chair. "I know that's not really you in there, Sookie. I'm going to get you some blood and I'll be back." He picked up his pace until he crossed paths with Pam in the hallway, and I quickly learned that she was one of the few vampires that he still really truly feared. She was bringing a tray of hot bloods up to our room, and Barry told her that he'd be back up in a few minutes. She popped out a little fang for him and he nearly wet himself as he ran away. Seconds later she waltzed through the door, twirling the tray like I had done for years at Merlotte's. She kicked the chair out from under the door knob and the door swung open, offering me a warm bottle of True Blood with a straw.
"You look like shit, Sookie." She held the bottle close to my face and pushed the straw in my mouth. "I've got six bloods for you. Barry will be back with more in a few minutes." I am going to be fine. Pam wasn't the friendliest to have around, but she always got the job done and that was a huge comfort right now. I could feel Eric trying to be alert, but falling back into oblivion. He was bad.
"Eric…" I mumbled as Pam swapped out the third empty bottle for the fourth full one. "Can I go to him?" Pam looked thoroughly nauseated by my request.
"Drink two more of these and he's all yours. You both need to sleep this off. I'm heading out in a few minutes to do some stalking and you both need to just stay here. I'll lock the door and I've hired some of the local weres to keep guard on this floor until we leave." I managed to choke down the last of the six bloods and Pam threw the bottles in the trash can underneath the marble sink and slowly lifted me out of the bathtub in the same way that Eric had thrown me in here earlier. She put me down on to the bed next to Eric, who lay face down on the deep red satin sheets. His back and neck were covered with dried blood and his body's early attempts at healing from whatever had stabbed him several times in his back. Judging by how long he was taking to heal, I'm guessing that silver had been involved. I shifted and tried to pull a thin sheet over the both of us as Pam turned her back to us to leave. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that her back looked like Eric's. She hadn't gotten away as easily as she wanted people to think she had.
Eric's brain was buzzing but the partially formed thoughts were slowing down. I placed my hand in his and gave it a squeeze. "I'm here Eric. You're here. And we're going to be fine." He found the strength to squeeze mine back before his thoughts felt silent and I lost him for the rest of the night.
The next night began with a shifting in bed as Eric climbed out and headed towards the shower. Over 24 hours of straight sleep had done him good and his thought patterns were nearly back to normal. He still seemed distracted, but not enough for me to worry about it. I was still in the place between a vampire's sleep and the point at which my body became animated for the night. I breathed deeply for smells and took in my surroundings. The blood that had been spilled on the floor remained but had sunken in to the carpet and dried. The windows had been blocked so that the sun would not hit us at our weakest moments, and the hot water from the shower crept into the room and created a clean fog. I inhaled Eric's scent and soon became animated enough to open my eyes and begin my night. And I thought I'd start by jumping in to the shower with my man. I let my hands lead the way as I slipped in to the shower under the hot water. Eric was so tall that he was never able to really stand under the water so this had become my spot. I started with a tight embrace across his muscular stomach. The water was warm enough to make him feel like his body was human again, and I let my hands run across his back, now covered with fresh scars from the day before. Most of them were stab wounds, and one patch of skin missing in the shape of a cross that must have been silver. For the first time since I had known Eric Northman, he truly looked defeated. He tried to summon words but none came. We both had everything and absolutely nothing to say to each other.
We stood in the shower, embraced with hot water dripping over our bodies. I felt like I had taken a beating as a human again, feeling so alive and so dead at the same time. Eric stood motionless, his arms wrapped around me, his chin resting on my head. Finally he spoke. "They came for Pam first. So I went and took care of my first child. I was sure that I would have time to come back for you, but I was wrong."
"You did come back for me. And I'll be fine." I guess I was unconvincing, he held me tighter to him. I looked down to our feet, surrounded by the swirls of blood flaking off of our bodies. "Please let me go with you tonight. I need to listen in to what's going on. I can help. If I had listened in last night, I might have been able to stop what happened today. I need to go. It's my duty as a vampire."
He chuckled at that. "Your duty as a vampire." He stepped back so that I could see his face. "Let me worry about duty as a vampire. I would like you to stay and rest tonight, but I understand if you would rather go. If you take some of my blood you will heal faster."
He offered his wrist to me to drink. "Eric, you need it all. You need to heal first." My fingers traced his wounds on his torso and I felt him flinch, as if that was him agreeing with me. "I'll drink some before I go, and I'll come back early. But now more than ever I need to be listening in. The Fellowship isn't done here and I need to figure out where they're going to strike next. I'm not going to be good for anything but listening in right now, but I'll do what I can."
"Then rest," he began, "and I'll come back to get you before the meeting starts." He kissed my hairline and the water sprayed his face, letting some of the dried blood slide down our bodies and down the drain.
"No way!" I tried to sound enthusiastic. "I'm going to that too! That could be the most important part!"
Eric shrugged his broad shoulders. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?" He asked earnestly. I shook my head no and he managed a small smile.
I wore a clever little suit like the women at Harrods had worn (Pam thought I might have needed one since the meeting was moved back a day to allow extra healing time for the undead participants) and by 9 o'clock, Eric stood by the door looking very handsome in his suit. We had both had a few more bottles of True Blood in efforts to bounce back and we were started to feel like our good ol' dead selves again. The burns on my face had mostly disappeared and the scars on his back were growing fainter by the hour. I was still very sore and feeling weak from my time in the sunlight, but I was once again functional. I was adding a spray of perfume to my hair, which I had twisted up in a sleek bun to keep it out of my face for the night. Eric and Barry had spoken and Barry had agreed to stay within hearing range of me tonight in case he was needed to act quickly, or find others to act quickly in his place. A rough pack of werewolves from outside the city limits were hired to stand by the front entrance of the hotel doors. Weres had a little more protection from the outside world- they weren't as obvious as vampires and had fewer weaknesses. The one weakness we share with the weres is silver, and let's just keep that between us, okay?
"Ready Miss Stackhouse?" Eric asked, offering his hand. His other hand held the strangest thing- what appeared to be a briefcase full of information Pam had put together.
"I am, Mr. Northman." The nice thing about men that live forever is that they have all the time in the world to wait for you. And I'd happily have him there for the rest of forever.
Barry sat by a fireplace in the lobby, an untouched gin and tonic in front of him, pretending to be immersed in a book on how to stop smoking. Barry didn't smoke, but he needed the cover so that he could listen around without raising too many eyebrows. He and I were also chatting back and forth about what we were hearing from others. There were employees running around doing their chores and delivering warm blood to the vampires around the lobby. Some were afraid of more attacks and curious as to whether it would happen again tonight. But nothing that stood out as dangerous, only afraid. Pam was doing laps around the building, looking out for any signs of abnormal activity. The meetings grew interesting as Eric and several others (including the Pharaoh Ramses we had seen earlier, minus his posse, Count Dracula of Romania and his partner, Wilhelmina Harker- seriously! and other influential vampires from all over the world). Together they discussed current laws of vampires, amended some as necessary and eliminated some as needed and naturally added a few new ones. Seeing all of these people together was like having a close up look at the evolution of vampires. Dracula, while technically not the oldest here (Ramses and then Eric) was closest to what we assume the "original" vampires looked like, more partially-turned werewolf than human. Miss Harker, however, could have easily been mistaken for a human if not for her pallor from over a hundred years of darkness. Ramses and Eric were physically polar opposites, Ramses being short, bald and fairly dark complected for a vampire while all 6'5" of Eric towered over him with flowing blond hair and the bluest eyes. Sookie…we've got a guy wearing an earpiece heading towards the elevator. He's an agent. Got him. I stretched my arms out in the agent's direction to point him out to Eric, who nodded lightly before excusing himself for what he said was another bottle of True Blood. Before he could blink, Pam had appeared before us with a report of three other agents, one at each entrance of the building trying to bribe their way past the weres. But I could feel more than that.
Ramses and Dracula were still discussing the events of yesterday including the breaking of the painted windows and the attack that they were expecting two days later than it came. After much counting it appeared that only three vampires had been lost to the attack, all three of which were body guards for the vampire Queen of Russia, who was fine and slept through the entire event. Ramses bragged on how the Fellowship would have never made it through his sarcophagus, and Dracula commented how old fashioned that was -which was a little bit hilarious considering the source.
I snapped back to the reality of agents sneaking around the hotel. I listened in on the one that had penetrated the lobby full of vampires, and was surprised by what I found. This agent needed our help in tracking down Malia, who had escaped from the woodshed and had gone rogue.
"She knew about our plans to track down Fellowship members, especially those that we have counted as terrorists. She knows far too much, and she is highly unstable, very dangerous, and must be stopped." The agent told us as we sat around the coffee table in Pam's room. Ramses had joined us over the past few minutes with the intention of talking Pam into joining his entourage of sorts, but had agreed to at least hear the agent out.
Pam spoke, with a nod of permission from Eric. "So you're saying that you need help to kill the creature you sent to kill the three of us? And why should we trust you now, Agent Copple?"
"Because we don't know where else to turn. As the three of you know, she is particularly dangerous."
Pam had her rebuttal prepared. "So you, who knew about the Fellowship's presence in London and their plans to kill the vampires attending the conference, and you let them do it anyway? And after we're down in numbers and physically weakened, you need our help? We hardly have any incentive to help you out, sir. It looks like you're alone in a room with four hungry vampires that hate you. So talk."
Eric cleared his throat as a means of butting into the duel of words in which Pam and Copple were engaged. "What Miss Ravenscroft means is that we're going to need a little loyalty from your part. And we also need you to understand that if your actions stray from what is promised to us, you and your fellow agents will return to American soil in a casket." The agent swallowed, and then nodded. Pam licked her lips for dramatic effect. The agent shuddered in his chair. "And we're also going to need to know what it is that we're dealing with here."
The agent was waiting for this moment, and reached slowly into his briefcase, pulling out a rather thick file labeled EX-452 with a picture of the creature we knew to be Malia, standing in a pose normally reserved for mug shots. He pushed the file across the table to Eric, who opened it to see a copy of a period table of elements with small notes in some of the squares. "Radium, 500 mg" he said outloud, his eyes dancing across the page trying to make sense of Malia. "Boron, 750 mg, Krypton, 50 mg, Lead, 200 mg twice daily, 400 days." The list continued.
"This is the chemical composition of experiment 452. She's not exactly human anymore. She started out as an experiment on a corpse and she somehow ended up…radioactive." Duh.
I spoke up next. "I know this sounds really stupid, but I'd kinda like to know what she eats." I thought it was a valid point.
"Originally, nothing. She was kept alive on battery acid. But now she eats whatever-whoever she wants. And this is the problem. We can't take her down with any weapons we currently have and lately she has been drawn to vampires. So we can only assume that she will be showing up here within the next couple days if she's not already here."
"So we kill her?" Pam asked.
"No Miss Ravenscroft. We need her alive" he changed his mind after his poor word choice, "we need her animated."
Pam and Eric spoke next in Swedish so that they could make a decision together. Note to self: learn Swedish. The room was silent outside of their exchange, and the tension could be cut with a knife. Their exchange included a small plea from Pam, a laugh in return from Eric, and several nods of agreement with each other.
"Agent Copple," Eric began. We were all on the edge of our seats, waiting for what he would say next. "Miss Ravenscroft and I have come to an agreement, which you will honor or you and your team will leave on the next flight back to the US." Copple nodded. "One. You will take this experiment back in any form we give her to you. Dead, alive, in pieces, and you will give us $10 million US dollars, which we will not pay tax on. Ever." Copple nodded and reached his hand out to shake Eric's, sealing the deal. Pam nudged Eric's ribs to remind him that he had forgotten something. He rolled his eyes and began again. "And Miss Ravenscroft will be on the cover of Vogue."
"Ma'am, I have no control over the decisions of a privately owned business," She popped a little fang out for him to show that she was dead serious. "I'll make sure that it happens." His mind changed very quickly with those little pointy teeth.
The door of Pam's room slammed open from the outside and Barry barged in, mentally instantly regretting the decision once he realized the agent was in here. He would have sensed it if he had only listened in for a split second. Telepaths. They never learn. "Uh, I've rounded up the rest of the agents. They're in the lobby… waiting." Lobby waiting meant being held down in their chairs by the presence of some very scary werewolf guards and a few hungry vampires. But at this point, I could care less. Agent Copple was thinking of ways that he could meet our requests without breaking every rule the agency had ever written and the vampires of importance- Eric, Ramses, and the Count, were heading out the door to meet with other vampires of importance to discuss what had been decided upon. This left Pam and I staring at a terrified agent, shuffling around in his briefcase, stumbling over words to tell Pam.
"I could make you all temporary agents, that would give you the power you need to…"
Pam could care less what he had to say. "Sookie, let's beat it. I need a massage."