VI.
The door opened and a light was turned on. Dermot came down into the basement with Preston and told me we were leaving. Preston handed me a pair of thick socks, which I put on slowly. I acted sleepy and tried to stall for time in order to read Dermot. He was happy, happy that things were going smoothly and that he had outwitted his father. He looked at me as if I was pathetic, made disparaging mental comments about how slow I was, that I wasn't attractive enough to have any fae blood at all. He could hardly believe that I was Fintan's granddaughter. I tried wading through the morass of his mind. Where were we going, how were we getting there? I got nothing from his mind on that. I tried to stall further.
"Uncle Dermot, can you tell me anything about my grandfather, about Fintan? Anything at all? Niall won't tell me anything."
He turned to me and looked down on me in more ways than one. "He's dead," he spat at me. He then nodded to Preston to indicate that I was to come upstairs and he climbed the stairs to depart.
Well, clearly my great uncle is just the gem of the family, I thought to myself. As he headed upstairs I caught the name from his mind, Dieter. And images. Frightening images, of dark things.
When we got upstairs I was surprised to see just a regular house. Preston suggested to Dermot that they should give me something to eat. It was very late afternoon, maybe an hour or forty-five minutes before sunset, I could see. I had not eaten the entire day and the only thing I'd had to drink was half a cup of coffee in the morning.
"Let her go hungry. She will be more cooperative hungry. Dieter will be pleased if it is easier to control her," Dermot replied.
Nice, I thought. I asked to use the bathroom. At first he didn't even want me to do that and then I pointed out that I wouldn't be smelling too nice for Dieter if they didn't let me. When I washed my hands I got several handfuls of water to slake my thirst. When I came out, they surrounded me and again, I was whisked away by magic to some other place.
I remembered how Sam had commented on meeting my great-grandfather and shaking his hand, that he felt that Niall was scary. My great-grandfather was a kindly man compared to Dieter Jaeger. Dieter was as tall as Eric and dark. Very dark. In more ways than one. Dark hair, dark eyes and if it was possible, in contrast to the bright whiteness of my great-grandfather, he gave off dark light. He was in every sense a brutal entity. I could not even consider him a man. He was too malevolent to grant him that, to endow him with some sense of humanity. When I first met my great-grandfather that he had told me "Dear one, we are all beautiful to humans, but some fairies are very nasty indeed." I wondered why he hadn't just mentioned Dieter by name.
When Dermot brought me in, as his special gift to him, Dieter was busy burning someone. With magic. He burned a man, who I thought was a were, to death right before our eyes. We entered the room to see the screaming man. An equally large female fairy off in the shadows cackled at the screams. Dieter kicked the ashy corpse and signaled to someone to remove the refuse. I felt, in looking at the scene, as if I had descended into Hell. I was almost numb with terror.
Dieter acknowledged Dermot and then walked around me. Something about him commanded so much of my attention that I hadn't even taken the time to glance around the room we were in, to take in my surroundings. He was all you could focus on, all encompassing. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and stared down into my eyes. I felt an ice cold mist push into me, into my mind. I lurched internally and tried to resist. He was just overwhelming. I had never felt anything like it. He let go of me roughly, pushing me back as he released my neck, so that I stumbled.
"She is bound to someone. Strongly bound, by choice." He spoke with a German accent.
A familiar voice replied, "She's bound to Eric Northman, the Area 5 Sheriff."
I gasped as I looked across the room to see John Quinn emerge through a doorway.
Dieter looked at me and said, "Northman? The Viking? This is a problem. The bond is very strong. He would find her in no time and that will diminish our advantage." He seemed to be considering his options and it was very clear that one option was to simply get rid of me because I wasn't worth the trouble.
He looked at Dermot, as if surprised he was still there, and then waved him off, as if to say 'get out'. Dermot looked over at me rather darkly, as if I hadn't been worth the trouble to him, either. Delivering me had not brought him the regard for which he had hoped. I was, evidently, vampire-damaged goods. As he started to leave he had some sort of encounter, with the female fairy, which left him scurrying from the room. It looked as if fire emanated from her fingertips. What had he delivered me to, I wondered…
Dieter walked around me again, thinking. Then he grabbed me roughly and towering over me whispered something that was like a sledgehammer hitting the anvil of my brain. I tried to resist him but it was almost painful. No, it was painful. In an excruciatingly slow and increasingly painful process, I felt almost as if he was at once smothering something inside me and yet pulling things out of me. Like my entrails or something. I felt like something was being rent inside me and the pain became almost unbearable and I cried out. I resisted him as much as I could but it was taking immense effort. I could hardly breathe and felt as if I would pass out.
"Vampirdirne. Hure." Dieter said, like he was cursing at me in what I guessed was German. He slapped me across my face and then grabbed my throat as I swayed back into an upright posture. I tasted blood in my mouth as he stared down at me with his black eyes. "This bond is so fucking strong. It might be better to just get rid of her. If she is so bound to him, who knows if Niall will even care if we threaten to kill her. Why would he want her if she is bound to a vampire? He is grown weak and stupid if he is attached to this." He released me again, roughly pushing me away by my throat, which was left sore from his grasp.
"You could use her as bait to trap Northman. Just because he's supposed to be in Vegas doesn't mean you're not going to end up having to fight against him eventually. You could get him out of the way now. He seems quite attached to her." Quinn's voice was so level and even as he suggested this.
I looked at Quinn with horror. He did not even look at me and his manner was cold and indifferent. Still trying to kill off Eric, I thought to myself. I should have told Eric, should have warned him of Quinn's offer to me. I should have told him about Andre. I should have told Eric so many damn things that I didn't. My head throbbed every time I even thought of him. What had Dieter done to me, I wondered? I felt cold all around my heart and mind. Numbness and thickness filled me, as if I was wading through molasses to even think about anything relating to Eric. I was sure I'd been glamoured, but I had the sense that it wasn't complete because it hurt when I actually did manage to muster thoughts of Eric. That I could still even get there at all was at least something. It was like pushing into a wall, hoping to move it. Perhaps it would just take work to fight the glamour. But I certainly didn't want Eric to come trying to rescue me if their plan was to trap him and kill him… Perhaps Dieter's damaging the bond, if that's what he had done, was safer. It might make it harder for Eric to find me and therefore safer for him. But maybe my great-grandfather could find me? Could he deal with this Dieter on something like equal footing, I wondered?
And the whole business of Quinn, here with Dieter? The mention of Vegas… Realization dawned on me. The weres and the Fae. My enemy's enemy is my friend. Quinn really hated vampires. So the Fae and weres were allied. In one week's time all the Sheriffs of both states would be in Nevada at Felipe's celebration. Without leadership, a battle with the vampires of the two states would be a snap. So many of the vampires left running things would be too young to even begin to know how to fight the Fae, I surmised. Between their magic, their strength and the resilience of the various weres as foot soldiers, it could be a literal bloodbath for the vampires. Plus the vampires could not defend themselves in the day. The Fae could gain a significant victory in the first battle of a war. Louisiana, a known vampire stronghold, was a perfect place to start because its King lived far away from the state now.
Dieter smiled at Quinn's suggestion of trapping Eric and looked at me and laughed in a manner that was truly malevolent.
"I have smothered the bond, but let us see if we can draw them, yes. I'll make sure we parade her around. Someone will surely talk about it. Let us see if we can lure them both. Niall and the Viking. Would the vampire be so foolish as to fight over a human? You say she is a telepath?" He tried to grab me again but I ducked away from his grasp.
"Don't you touch me again" I hissed at him.
"She is, and they have used her extensively at their most recent summit" said Quinn.
But Dieter was ignoring him now. "Don't touch you? Really?" And suddenly without his laying a hand on me, I was slammed into the wall. I cried out and slumped to the floor, my head and back stinging from the blow against the wall. "Which do you prefer?" he said as he towered over me. He grabbed my arm and yanked me back to my feet and then backhanded me so that I fell yet again. "Magic, or the warmth of a hand striking you? The warm, personal touch offers so much more, do you not agree?"
I spit blood out of my mouth and looked away from him, trembling. I was getting vile feelings from him, as if I was reading him and I was increasingly fearful of just how horrible things could get.
"Get her out of here, Helga. Clean her up and then bring her back and sit her over there," he said to the tall, blonde female fairy, who was now near the door. He had pointed to a chair against the wall, behind a table on which a map of the state of Louisiana was spread.
The huge female fairy grabbed me, half lifting me, and walked me past Quinn. I sluggishly read from him some jagged thoughts of thinking that he could get Dieter to give me to him when they were done, but his thoughts were not… kind. We had broken badly and I had left him, in his mind, for a vampire he hated and with whom he now thought I had betrayed him in Rhodes. He thought Dieter would help him kill Eric and then…
From what I felt in Dieter, he was not planning to give me away to anyone. No he had worse plans in store for me. I trembled inwardly. What a bad end, I thought to myself. I had never envisioned how I might die. Right now, I was thinking it was a real possibility in the very near future. I didn't want to give up hope. But the more pragmatic side of my nature, which had grown exponentially in the past two years, told me that my survival odds were rapidly diminishing. There was no way I could escape someone like Dieter. Few people could. Look at what he had done to that were, I thought. And he enjoyed it. He enjoyed killing. He took pleasure in hurting people. It would be insanity for anyone to try to rescue me…
The female fairy gave me a shove into a bathroom and handed me a change of clothes, since my shirt was now spattered with my blood. I looked into the mirror. I was bruised all around my throat and on my cheeks. I was swollen around one of my eyes, too. It didn't look as bad as it might, I guess because I had had Eric's blood the night before. But it still hurt. As I looked at my reflection all I could think about was Eric, even though it hurt whenever my mind strayed there. Hours ago all I wanted was for him to find me and rescue me. Now I was afraid he would try. That both he and Pam would try to fulfill the terms of Felipe's protection of me. But I knew it was more that just that to them. I saw Eric's eyes in my mind. Even though it hurt in more ways than one, Eric's words echoed in my memory. "I love you, Sookie. You're mine and I love you."
No, I thought to myself. Just don't. Don't try to save me. Save yourself. It's what I want. It's what you want for those you love. Let me go...