Sorry for small/short updates. Removing linoleum from a wood floor is teh suk [sic]. Renovations start tomorrow and we're not done. So again, I will get back to you who have reviewed recently, I swear! I've been spending my spare rest moments on story instead... hopefully that will entice you to forgive me for the review reply delay? Pretty please? :)

Speaking of reviews, thanks a ton to those who have reviewed, and I also appreciate the Faves. With no further ado...

14. Eric Gives In

"The house is still mine, and they don't know I'm a vampire," Alexis said again.

Eric looked at Pam. "Will you tell her?"

"Newborn or not, her plan is better than yours." Pam flipped another page. "Though since you are a vampire now, permission to enter has becoming meaningless, so any and all of us can go inside whenever we want to." The last was said to Alexis.

"I still think-"

"You aren't thinking," Eric told her. "I will not allow you to endanger yourself in such a fashion."

"She's my sister, I have the right-"

"I will not allow it," Eric reiterated.

"Why not?"

Leaning back in his seat, he said without thinking, "I liked you better when you didn't argue with every word that came out of my mouth."

"If you ever liked me at all," she muttered, turning to look out the window.

He sat down in the seat beside her, and pulled her back against him. She sat rigid for a moment, then melted. He put his cheek against her hair. It was cool now, no longer heated from her body as it once was. "I am trying to keep you safe."

She pulled away. "Why? You wish I was dead, you just don't have the stomach to kill me."

"That's not true, Alexis. Killing is not something I hesitate to do. If I wanted you dead, you would not be here."

"You're lying to yourself, Eric. I know that you think I'm a stupid, clueless baby. Pam thinks I'm useless and irritating. I don't talk much, and people have always thought I was an idiot because of it. But I'm not, Eric. And I'm not incompetent, either." She straightened. "Just because I don't enjoy making decisions doesn't mean I'm not able to." Her brown eyes finally met his as she said, "And just because I was willing to obey you doesn't mean you were always right. You walked away from me, I didn't walk away from you."

"I didn't walk away, and I never said you were stupid or clueless." He was angry, but it was a strange sort of anger. It wavered and seemed to rise and fall as if it weren't entirely justified. He had to work to maintain it else it die and blow away on the breeze of uncertainty.

"Vampires are not so different from humans, Eric. Little of what is said is ever stated directly. I think that if aliens watched us interact they would never have any idea of what we were really saying. Humans or vampires."

"I don't wish you were dead."

"I thought you cared about me, when I was human."

"And I thought you loved me," he growled at her.

"So did I. Until I realized that I never really knew you at all. Until it dawned on me that it was never personal for you, and you weren't trying to protect me at all. You were just sadistic."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," Pam snapped from behind him.

To his surprise, Alexis laughed at her. "Pam doesn't know me, either. I made my choices. I want to do this because it's my fault that Haley was taken. I didn't know it before, but now I do. And I want to help because I'm responsible for all of this."

"No, you aren't. You didn't make your father abduct Haley-"

"It should have been me," she told him. Her face was grim and tight. "When we were little, Carlos came to see us, to pick between us. He's thirteen years older than us. He got to select his future bride. He picked me at the time. But I didn't like him; I thought he was cruel. So I made myself nothing and nobody so he wouldn't want me. Instead of leaving us alone, he took Haley."

"You being a vampire makes him no less cruel," Eric told her. "You cannot blame yourself for his decision to take Haley."

"You cannot blame yourself for your family's death. One man, no matter your prowess in battle, could not have saved them. Yet you blame yourself anyway."

"That is none of your concern!" He had definitely liked her better when she was afraid to say things like that to him.

"I think she knows you just fine," Pam said, still thumbing through the magazine. Looking up at him, she shrugged. "What?"

"You're only trying to keep me alive because you don't want to feel guilty for wanting me dead."

Pam's eyes met his as she slowly lowered the fashion magazine, and she said. "You know, what bothers me the most about that sentence is that I actually understood it."

He could gather women like sand into a bucket, but he'd be damned if he could live with them.

"You should be on my side," he finally said to Pam.

"I'm always on your side, Eric. Except when you act stupid and unreasonable. I'm so glad you don't do it very often. Or didn't." She began to inspect her fingernails.

Alexis was back to staring out the window. He wondered if there was something he could do to get her to understand.

"You know, you should really just fuck her. It would make you both feel better and I could get back to important things like Vogue."

He sat down beside Alexis, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. "There is a better way, Alexis. It doesn't have to be done that way. We can just go in and take them."

"He'll know you're coming. He'll be ready in some way," she answered, still looking away.

"Alexis, do you really think you have what it takes to kill a man?"

Her voice was soft. "Eric, I know what I am. Women like me hide for a reason. I know I'm not a leader. I'm a follower. This world... it hates followers, Eric. It squishes us, it destroys us, it hates us. We hide because the men most attracted to us are sadistic ones like Carlos." She turned to look at him and he felt a pain run through him that was both unfamiliar and yet becoming more familiar the longer she was a vampire. "Like you." She shook her head. "You are not what I thought you were."

Anger rose in the wake of the pain. "And what did you think I was, soft?"

"I thought you were a leader worth following simply for the sake of love and loyalty. But now I know that you care only for fear. I will not follow out of fear alone, Eric. As I found a way to escape Carlos, I will find a way to escape you."

"No need to escape, Alexis. I am doing this because they have put my bar into legal jeopardy. It's my duty to the vampires and even the humans of my area to protect them from the backlash if this is discovered and reported. I do not intend to fail. You may do this your way. But if you fail at it, I will simply burn them all out, including your sister and your nieces. So before you decide that you will pursue this idea, consider that."

"I am terrified, Eric. But it is my nature to be loyal. It is my nature to desire the protection and the safety of the people I love."

"And you think my nature is so very different?"

"I didn't."

She would not speak to him further, and he began to understand Pam's irritation with her. The flight was over, and they disembarked to find the promised American mercenary forces at the designated place. The plan was simple and it was elegant to Eric's way of thinking. They would go to the property, fight their way in, destroy Alphonsio and Carlos, and bring the women they could back home.

But Alexis wanted to try to trade herself for her sister and get captured. She would then save the girl and her children when the shooting began. She believed that she could do it with her vampire strength. Eric had to admit that if it were any other vampire, he could accept that she could probably do it. But Alexis hadn't killed anyone yet, and she was so emotionally fragile.

If she had to kill to survive, he didn't believe she had it in her. For all that she had fought him, it had been her first impulse to flee, not to fight. She was prey. She had the mentality of prey. She had the look of prey. And even she knew it.

But he somehow knew that this was one time and one issue in which he could not push or control her. The friction between them made it difficult to begin with, but there was the added factor that she would defy him for her sister... and it was not entirely unreasonable that it should be so.

In fact, he found himself admiring that courage and the loyalty that it showed. Loyalty that, had she not been made a vampire, might have been his. He walked to the waiting car with his head down, wondering why that realization made him want to tear everyone and everything in the vicinity apart.

He let her get a taxi from the airport to a local vampire-ready hotel, and caught Pam's look.

"She's going to die," Pam told him. He was surprised to hear regret in her voice.

He lifted a brow at her.

"What? She's quiet. Unlike your Sookie, who couldn't be quiet for more than a few seconds at a time and who thought we were meant to be bosom buddies."

"She is your Progeny," Eric reminded her.

"I know," Pam told him. "She was a good choice, I think. Though she still refuses to spend your money properly."

He grinned. "You're losing your touch, Pam."

She snorted. "I got her into Gucci shoes for the plane ride tonight. It would have helped if you'd noticed."

"I was preoccupied with your pink nails," he answered, knowing that she loved it when he noticed her pink.

"If you get yourself killed for that newborn, Eric, I swear I will torture her for the rest of her life."

"You're so delicious when you're vicious, Pam."

"Thank you, Eric."

He sat back and smiled.

The next night, Alexis's abduction went exactly as planned. They took her right out of the street, and Eric followed them from overhead. That was the beauty of humans; they never looked up, especially at night.