Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, and thank you all for your patience, to those I owe mani's to, for their nerves, here are the answers you asked for; or at least some of them.

Part 29

Pam's footsteps were not light as she ran down the flight of stairs to my room, neither was the sound of my door splintering, but of course, it had only been designed to keep out nosey humans and not a vampire spawned on thousand year old blood, or nine hundred years old at that time give or take.

"Eric!" She screamed, concerned for my safety, because what else could Sookie possibly be screaming about except something terrible having happened to me?

"Pam!" I called back as she burst into the bedroom, the sight of her, wrapped in a silk kimono; and I am so glad she had the presence of mind to pull it on; did nothing to quiet Sookie who looked more terrified than ever. Pam looked at me, assuring herself of my health, and then looked to Sookie.

"What's happened!" She yelled over Sookie's shrill cries.

"I do not know." I tried to calm Sookie but she fought against me pulling her into my arms.

"Be quiet girl!" Pam yelled directly at Sookie. "Exactly what do you think your screams are going to accomplish? You're in a basement, with two vampires, you don't think the place is soundproofed?"

"Pam!" I yelled back in annoyance; ready to chastise her for her obvious lack of compassion, but before I could say anything else, Sookie quieted. Damned if Pam was not effective, if somewhat crude in her application of the means. I whirled back to Sookie, whose face was ashen, except where the tear streaks had turned it red, her eyes were wide as a deer caught in the headlights of a semi, and, curse me for saying it, the salt had swollen her lips and turned them a deep shade of crimson that I desperately wanted to kiss. But this was not a fairy tale, and before you state the obvious, I have changed my mind on that subject, think wisely, a kiss from the prince would not restore the princess. The fact was, it likely would have gotten me slapped, something that would have wounded my pride more than anything else and curled Sookie's opinion of me even further into the depths.

"Who are you?" Sookie stammered out in a fragile sounding voice. The last hope I had in my chest sank. She did not know who I was.

"My name is Eric." She did not even look as though she had heard me.

"Who am I?" I wanted to slam my hand against the wall, the frustration was almost palpable to me and it was so hard to fight it. She had lost everything, again.

"You are Sookie Stackhouse." I managed to keep my voice calm.

"Why are you holding me prisoner here?" The tears continued to run down her face, I leaned forward, out of habit, to wipe them away and she shrank back from me even further, looking me over completely, as I was still naked, as I had been when we were sleeping.

"I am not holding you prisoner Sookie, you are my guest here."

"You raped me." She squeaked.

"I did no such thing!" I roared, in a tone filled with far more anger than I had wanted her to hear from me. She shrieked and I realized my mistake. Not that it changed the underlying emotions. "We made love last night, and we slept in each other's arms." I did not worry about what Pam might think of my admission. Sookie did not seem convinced sadly, but at least she calmed her sniffling.

"Why am I here? Have you glamoured me? Are you feeding on me?" her hands went to her throat, presumably to feel for wounds. There were none to find, not only because I had not fed on her, but because she had taken so much of my blood that any I could have made would have healed almost immediately.

"I am protecting you Sookie." I saw Pam's expression change and I knew full well, even without our Maker/Child bond that she was thinking 'fine job you've made of that'. She had enough sense not to say it out loud.

"I don't understand." Her voice continued to waver and she kept herself scrunched into the corner of the bed, back to the headboard, as far away from me as she could without actually leaving the safety of the sheets that covered her. "Why don't I remember anything?"

At that very moment my cell phone, back on my desk began to ring.

"Dear Gods!" I whirled around, my blood boiling, and hearing Sookie's shriek as I exposed more of myself did not help my mood. I grabbed up my robe angrily and tore the tie in two as I tried to belt it. With a roar I did not feel like suppressing I let the shreds fall to the ground and walked out with the sides hanging open. I heard Pam behind me trying to soothe Sookie, and promising to retrieve some clothing for her, in fact she brushed past me at speed to retrieve the shopping bags I had left in the great room. I could still hear Sookie's racing heartbeat and smell feel the fear; it fueled my rage. I punched at the phone for lack of anything better.

"Hello!" I growled into the speaker.

"Eric, this is Arthur." My fury at him swirled into the maelstrom that was already present.

"Arthur! This had better be good! I am busy!" His response was not at all what I had expected, it was calm, too calm, not at all like the nervous vampire I had questioned the night previous. It left me with a sense of disease.

"Someone wishes to speak with you." He was toneless.

"I do not have time for meetings right now Arthur!"

"She says you'll want to see her."

"I do not care what she says, I am busy!"

"She says her name is Marie, and that you'll want to meet her."

I stopped, I was not sure if the fury was calmed, or if it simply had reached a white-hot level, beyond my ability to feel it any longer. It was not as if some calm had come over me, but a pause in time where the name, and everything that had just transpired sank in.

"Where?" I growled.

"She'll meet you at Fangtasia."

"I am on my way."

I knocked on the doorframe of my bedroom before entering, I did not want to scare Sookie any further, especially by walking in on her changing. I found her still wrapped in a sheet, looking at the piles of clothing around her; as lost as I ever remember seeing her. It tore at my heart but I did not let it show.

"I have to go to the club." I said to Pam, "Stonebrook is coming. Please, take care of Sookie."

"Who is Stonebrook?" Sookie mewled.

"She is the witch that has done this to you Sookie, and tonight I am going to settle this one way or another." I grabbed a handful of hangers from my closet and went back out to get dressed, stilling the urge to put my hand through something until I was well clear of the house, where I destroyed a street sign; not a Stop sign if you are curious, and I paid for it after. I had felt the confusion and the terror in Sookie's mind as I had left, and it seemed that our bond at least had survived the curse, and while it gave me only a thread of hope, it was something.

I do not know that I even looked where I was going as I flew to Fangtasia, I had flown the route so many times it was like second nature to me. And I took those few moments to try to plan out what I was going to do once I arrived. I could not simply kill Marie Stonebrook and hope that Papa B and Octavia could release Sookie from the spell. That thought made me wish that I had instructed Pam to contact them, but I had left in such a state I was not thinking logically. My emotions were getting the best of me, as Pam had warned me, and I decided to land a few blocks away from Fangtasia and to walk the last of the distance, buying myself a little more time to formulate some kind of plan. I knew I had to get her to reverse the spell, and now that I had a fair idea as to the substance, if not the complexities I had to be careful how I went about that. Afterwards I was going to kill her, and probably Arthur and his friend Amy, but the fun stuff would have to wait, and I was not above a bit of negotiating.

I flung open the front doors: I do like to make an entrance after all, and walked into the club as if I owned the place, which I did. Arthur hardly looked up from the bar, which furthered my assessment of his being enchanted. His little witch girlfriend, gloves and all, was at the far end of the bar, furthest from the door, also trying not to look at me, but not quite succeeding. Her I had terrified, and that was a plus in my column I figured. Marie, the only other person in the establishment was sitting in the middle of the bar, a copper brazier in front of her, a wisp of bluish smoke rising in a tendril from it. The smell was sickeningly familiar.

"You wanted to see me then Witch?" I spoke through clenched teeth, my fangs dropping even before the first word had fallen from my lips. I kept my tone even and succinct.

"I thought perhaps you might want to see me?" She responded, with a sickening amount of syrup dripping in her voice.

"Really? I think I would have been much happier had you never darkened my door madam." At that she let out a laugh. It would have been more appropriate as a cackle I thought to myself, but it was derisive enough.

"My spell has taken its full effect this night I see." Apparently witches had some kind of witchy radar about such things.

"I want you to lift it."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Because I want you to suffer Eric Northman, the way I have suffered."

"Explain yourself then!" My hands clenched into fists, my nails cutting into my palms.

She laughed again and I rethought the wisdom of not killing her outright. I took a step towards her, but she waved a finger at me like a naughty child.

"Ah ah ah. If you come any closer I will blow on the embers in this pot and the smoke will take your memories too Mr. Northman. And then where will you and your precious Miss Stackhouse be?" I stopped, a growl rumbling in my chest.

"You told your heart's desire that you loved her this evening." Her smile was mocking and I imagined the time when I would finally wipe it from her face permanently. "And she was lost to you again. How tragic." She swirled the tendril with her fingertip creating a little helix in the smoke.

"Why?"

"So you would know how I feel every day when I think of my children and know that I cannot tell them that I love them!" The hiss was more typical of the witch I had been imagining.

"I did not kill your children witch!"

"They are dead because of you! And now you cannot tell your Miss Stackhouse that you love her without her losing everything all over again." Gods be damned! This bitch was pure evil.

"So as I see it Mr. Northman, you have a few choices, more choices than I was given! You can restore her memories piece by piece again, like a half made jigsaw puzzle, only to have to push her away before you profess your love." I growled at her, one might have thought there was a Were in the room with us. "Or," she continued, "you can send her away immediately, and leave it to her friends to help her restore her memories; perhaps that nice shifter, or the Were or even that Mr. Compton fellow." I knocked off a good sized piece of wood from the bar with my fist. "Always knowing that she could have loved you, and given herself to you."

Suddenly there was someone else in the room with us, Pam, who had come in from the office area. She looked at me, and I heard her voice in my mind, clear as if she had spoken the words out loud. 'Don't worry, Sookie is safe, I'm here to help.' I nodded at her.

"Of course, there is a third option."

"And what would that be?" I imagined it to be no better than the first two, and I was correct.

"You can turn her. The spell will not survive her death, she will have all her memories restored, and you may profess your love as you see fit."

An impossible choice to be certain, I could not kill Sookie or turn her, her hatred of me for making that choice for her would drive her from my arms as surely as it seemed that I must do then.

"Why are you doing this?" Came Pam's question.

"Ah, little vampire spawn, I am doing this because he killed my children!" She wheeled on Pam, though I knew she had not been surprised by her presence.

"Eric didn't kill Hallow! I did!" Pam screamed at her, "And your son died at the hands of the wolves. Eric was not complicit in anything that transpired!"

That knowledge seemed to shake the witch just a little, I saw her resolve flicker, just like her heartbeat, and in that instant Pam had flung herself at Amy at the end of the bar, and I blazed towards Marie, knocking her to the floor, and covering her brazier with both my hands, effectively cutting off the oxygen to her embers, burning both palms in the effort, but as Pam flung the young witch across the dance floor and turned her attentions to Marie, I hurled the now dead brass pot and its ash through the front door of the club, effectively removing the witch's threat. I picked her up by the throat, my hands still raw from the glowing coals and I lifted her off the ground so that her feet dangled just above the floor.

"Amelia?" She tried to choke out, obviously referring to the other witch, who was quite unconscious.

"Remove the spell!" I bellowed at her.

"Kill me Vampire, I have nothing to live for."

"No!" Came the call from the darkened hallway that led behind the Dias and to my offices.