"You stay in here," she told him, pointing at the chair he'd sat in the night before. She left him alone in her room, and a few moments later, he heard her answer the door.

"We are here," a female voice said. He assumed this would be the Pam that Sookie had spoken of.

"Eric, come on out," Sookie called.

If the visitors truly were his friends – his subjects, even – he felt slightly ashamed meeting them in a bathrobe, but there was no help for it. The female had blond hair and a cold, impassive face. The male was covered in tattoos. He searched his mind for some memory of them, but the effort was futile.

The female smiled and bowed her head in respect. "Eric… you're well?"

"Master," the male said, performing a full bow.

He looked back and forth between them. Pam and Chow, a blond female and a tattooed male. Nothing. "I know you," he said aloud, as if he could convince himself of the fact. He would begin by thinking of them with their names.

"We work for you. We owe you fealty," Pam said after she and Chow had given each other a grim look.

From the corner of his eye, he saw that Sookie was backing out of the room, and he looked at her quickly. Even if he did know these two vampires, how could he trust them? Someone had done this to him, after all. Sookie was his bridge between the little he did know and everything else.

"Please don't go."

She turned around, but she didn't look at him. She was staring past him to the two vampires behind him. After a moment, she seemed to make up her mind, and she returned to his side.

He was about to start asking questions when a knock on the front door interrupted them. The vampires – his coworkers, his friends, he reminded himself – crouched into the same attack stance with which he had greeted Sookie the night before. He himself wasn't alarmed; he could see Jason's truck outside the window and knew that Sookie's brother had returned as promised.

Sookie went to the door and laid one hand against it. "Yes?"

"It's your brother," came Jason's voice from the other side.

He sounded different than he had earlier, as if something was wrong. Sookie seemed to sense this as well because she gave Pam a signal to go around to the front of the house. Eric backed away a few steps, surprised when the tattooed vampire – Chow, he told himself firmly – when Chow moved in front of him like a bodyguard.

Pam was quick; in no time at all Jason was yelling from outside. "Open up!" Pam called.

Eric, being much taller, could see easily over Chow's head as Sookie opened the door. He smiled at the sight of Sookie's brother fighting with all his might against Pam's hold on him. The Wal-Mart bags lay at his feet.

"You're by yourself," Sookie breathed.

"Of course, dammit!" her brother said angrily. "Why'd you set her on me? Let me down!"

"It's my brother, Pam. Please put him down."

When Jason was free, he immediately turned on Pam. "Listen, woman! You don't just sneak up on a man like that! You're lucky I didn't slap you upside the head!" Eric smiled again at the thought of a human slapping a vampire "upside the head" and the consequences that would inevitably follow. Pam also smiled, which Eric decided was fortunate for Sookie's brother. Jason flushed and smiled at Pam. "I guess that might be pretty hard." He bent to pick up the bags, and Eric was surprised when Pam helped him. Perhaps she wasn't immune to a handsome human man's charms after all. "It's lucky I got the blood in the big plastic bottles," Jason said, handing the bags over to his sister. "Otherwise, this lovely lady would have to go hungry."

"Thanks," said Sookie. "You need to go now." She looked from her brother to Pam, who appeared to be glamoring Jason. "Pam! Pam, this is my brother."

"I know," Pam replied, still staring intently at Jason. "Jason, did you have something to tell us?" she cooed.

"Yes…" His voice sounded thick and distracted, and his eyes were unfocused for a few seconds when they settled on his sister's face. Then he looked beyond her and saw Chow standing in front of Eric, and he snapped to full attention. "Sookie, are you all right?"

She moved aside a little as he stepped into the house. "Yes, everything's all right," she said in an airy voice that couldn't have convinced anyone. "These are just friends of Eric's who came to check on him."

Jason gave Eric a sharp stare. "Well, they better go take those wanted posters down." He went on to tell them about posters he had seen in local stores, offering fifty thousand dollars in exchange for information about Eric. He sounded a little too interested in the reward.

The response to this speech was silence. Fifty thousand dollars… that must be a good year's salary for most of the people around here. Eric wondered if he himself made so much. What if his own friends turned him in for the money?

He caught Pam's eyes as she looked at Chow. "They're hoping to sight him and catch him," she said. "It will work."

"We should take care of it." Chow nodded his head in Jason's direction, and Eric would have protested if Sookie hadn't done so first.

"Don't you lay one hand on my brother," she said firmly, putting herself in Chow's way. The vampires were staring her down, but she didn't waver. When her brother tried to say something, she stopped him. Her eyes were clear and fearless as she looked from Chow to Pam. "You'll have to kill me, too."

If they so much as touch you, I'll rip them to pieces.

"Big threat," Chow said with a shrug.

Pam seemed more thoughtful; she must like Sookie, or she wouldn't bother. Or perhaps she knew something about Sookie that Chow didn't…?

Sookie had told him that these were his friends, and Pam had said that they owed him fealty. Chow had even greeted him with a bow. It stood to reason, then, that he himself had the final say in this situation. He stepped out from behind Chow and spoke with all the authority he could muster.

"What is this about? Explain…" He picked the one who seemed to know more about Sookie. "Pam."

Pam's expression when she looked at him was that of a subject who is willing and grateful to cede power to her master. She seemed cheered by the fact that he was more like the leader she knew. "Sookie and this man, her brother, have seen you. They're human. They need the money. They will turn you in to the witches."

How could she assume that they would do such a thing? And a better question still was—

The humans asked it for him. "What witches?"

Jason scowled in his direction. "Thank you, Eric, for getting us into this shit." He squirmed away from his sister's hold on him. "And could you let go of my wrist, Sook? You're stronger than you look."

"Jason, please watch yourself," Sookie said in a voice that was oddly calm. She motioned to the sofa, and her brother followed her there to sit.

Pam and Chow seemed slightly less bent on killing the humans, but Eric placed himself at Sookie's feet. If either of them wanted to hurt her, they'd have to get through him first. Mentally incompetent he may be, but he knew he was perfectly capable of tearing off their heads.

Though Chow did not sit, Pam perched on the arm of a recliner. "Your brother must stay and hear this," she told Sookie. "No matter how much you don't want him to know. He needs to learn why he mustn't try to earn that money." She leaned back against the chair. "Several nights ago, we heard at Fangtasia that a group of witches had arrived in Shreveport. A human told us, one who wants Chow. She didn't know why we were so interested in that information."

"So?" Jason asked. "Geez, you all are vampires. What can a bunch of girls in black do to you?"

Pam gave him a withering look, but she kept her voice level. "Real witches can do plenty to vampires. The girls in black you're thinking of are only poseurs. Real witches can be women or men of any age. They are very formidable, very powerful. They control magical forces, and our existence itself is rooted in magic. This group seems to have some extra…" She twirled her forefinger in the air, as if she could coax a word from her head.

"Juice?" said Jason.

Eric had no idea what "extra juice" meant for witches – stronger potions? – but Pam seemed to consider the word suitable. She nodded. "Juice. We haven't discovered what makes them so strong."

"What was their purpose in coming to Shreveport?" Sookie asked.

Chow tipped his head in her direction, though he didn't smile. "A good question. A much better question."

"They wanted…" Pam glanced down at Eric. "They want to take over Eric's businesses. Witches want money as much as anyone, and they figure they can either take over the businesses or make Eric pay them to leave him alone."

He had more than one business? He had access to enough money to pay off a group of powerful witches? He felt a pleasant swell of pride.

"Protection money," Sookie murmured. "But how could they force you into anything? You guys are so powerful."

Eric listened as Pam explained what the witches could do; in short, they could ruin a business.

"So they want protection money," Jason said, as if Sookie hadn't reached that same conclusion minutes before.

Sookie, as usual, was a few steps ahead of her brother. "So how did Eric end up running down the road at night without a shirt or shoes?"

Pam and Chow didn't seem anxious to divulge much information to the humans in front of them. Granted, they could tell him alone, but he didn't want Sookie going anywhere. He wrapped his fingers around one of her ankles before he even realized he'd done it.

Chow folded his arms across his bare chest. "We told them we would discuss their threat. But last night, when we went to work, one of the lesser witches was waiting at Fangtasia with an alternative proposal. During out initial meeting, the head of the coven, Hallow, decided she, uh—" his dark eyes darted to Eric "—lusted after Eric. Such a coupling is very frowned upon among witches, you understand, since we are dead, and witchcraft is supposed to be so organic. Of course, most witches would never do what this coven was attempting. These are all people drawn to the power itself, rather than to the religion behind it." He paused for a moment, thoughtful, then continued. "This head witch, this Hallow, told Eric, through her subordinate, that if he would entertain her for seven nights, she would only demand a fifth of his business, rather than a half."

Jason gave a low whistle. "You must have some kind of reputation."

Eric couldn't help grinning. And why shouldn't he, he reasoned. Best to take pleasure in whatever good news came out of this fucked-up story. He was a good lover, it seemed. Well known for being a good lover. If Sookie would let him, he would show her just how good. He turned and looked up at her, unable to help himself. There was a hint of lust flavoring her emotions, but worry still dominated.

Chow's expression was downright dangerous now as he stared at Eric. "Though some of us thought he might be wise to agree, our master balked. And our master saw fit to refuse in such insulting terms that Hallow cursed him."

However damaged his mind was now, it certainly sounded like he had also been mentally damaged before.

"Why on earth would you turn down a deal like that?" Jason asked.

He wished he knew. Hell, he wished he knew anything more than the names of the people in this room, which was essentially the limit of his awareness. "I don't remember. I didn't know my name until this woman, Sookie, told me it." He shifted slightly closer to her, reminded yet again that she was his only anchor in an ocean of questions.

Jason pressed on. "And how did you come to be out in the country?"

"I don't know that either."

Pam, who had been listening quietly for a while, straightened on the arm of Sookie's recliner. "He just vanished from where he was. We were sitting in the office with the young witch, and Chow and I were arguing with Eric about his refusal. And then…" She made a poof gesture with her hand. "We weren't."

He felt Sookie's fingers in his hair, and for a few seconds, nothing else seemed to matter. Just as suddenly as she'd made the gesture, however, she pulled her hand back. "Ring any bells, Eric?" she asked him. Why would he ring bells? Was this something to do with one of his other businesses? He turned to look up at her in confusion. "Do you recall anything about this? Have any memories of it?"

"I was born the moment I was running down the road in the dark and the cold," he said, speaking only to her. Her eyes were so clear, and her touch had been so gentle. He wished all the others would leave them in peace. Whatever world he had left, he had no desire to return to it now. "Until you took me in, I was a void." Perhaps his whole life had been a void. If anything in that former life mattered to him at all, shouldn't he feel at least a hint of it?

Sookie swallowed and looked up at the other two vampires again. "This just doesn't track. This wouldn't just happen out of the blue with no warning." Her eyes narrowed. "You two did something, didn't you? You messed up. What did you do?"

There was an uncomfortable silence, and Chow looked murderous. Eric wrapped his arms tightly around Sookie's legs. Did she suspect that they had done this to him after all? He sensed her fear, but there was no need for it. He would kill Pam and Chow if he had to.

Finally, Pam said slowly, "Chow… lost his temper with the witch."

Sookie and the others carried on talking about the witch's spell, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He was closer to her than he had ever been; her scent in his nostrils was so strong he could almost taste her. With eyes closed, he pressed his cheek to the material separating his nose and his mouth from the skin of her thigh. This is all I want.

Jason stood up to tend to the fire, bringing Eric back to the present. "You've been in Merlotte's before, haven't you?" Jason asked. Eric stared back blankly; he didn't know anyone named Merlotte. "Where Sookie works," Jason clarified.

Even if he had been there before, he wouldn't know.

"I have, but not Eric," Pam answered Jason.

Jason smiled. "So no one's going to instantly associate Eric with Sookie."

"No, maybe not," Pam said after a thoughtful pause.

"So you're clear as far as Bon Temps goes. I doubt if anyone saw him out last night, except Sookie, and I'm damned if I know why he ended up on that particular road."

Yes, why? he wondered as the others' conversation faded into the background. Why her road? It stood to reason that an angry witch would send him somewhere dangerous, or that she might cast some kind of curse on him. Why send him running towards something that – at this moment, at least – he desired more than anything else?

"Why can't the Shreveport witches just cast a spell to find Eric?" Sookie was asking when he started listening again. Jason was back on the couch.

"They can't find anything of his to use to cast such a spell," Pam explained. "They can't get into his daytime resting place to find a hair or clothes that bear his scent. And there's no one around who's got Eric's blood in her."

Eric tightened his hold on Sookie's legs and cast a quick glance at her face. She was revealing nothing, and neither would he.

"Besides, in my opinion, since we are dead, such things would not work to cast a spell," Chow added.

Pam and Chow seemed to engage in some silent communication, and then Pam looked at Sookie decidedly. "Eric should stay here, where he is." A surge of happiness threatened to betray itself through a wide smile, but Eric forced himself to contain it as Pam continued. "Moving him will expose him to more danger. With him out of the way and in safety, we can take countermeasures against the witches."

"Going to the mattresses," he heard Jason say quietly to Sookie.

If he was suggesting that his sister should sleep with Eric, that was rude. What Eric hoped for, certainly, but not something a brother should say to his sister. But she didn't seem offended; in fact, she ran her fingers through his hair again. Then she did something odd, laying her hands over his ears. Any contact was welcome, though, so he released her legs and laid his hands over hers. Her fingers felt very thin and fragile under his. He could sense her tension and fear.

"Listen, Chow, Pam," she said. "This is the worst idea of all time. I'll tell you why. How am I supposed to protect him? You know how this will end! I'll get beaten up, or maybe even killed."

No, no, he wanted to say. I won't let that happen.

"If my sister does this, she deserves to get paid for it," Jason said. After an uncomfortable pause, the two vampires nodded in agreement. "At least as much as an informer would get if he called the phone number on the poster. Fifty thousand."

"Jason!" Sookie exclaimed.

Eric felt more pressure from her hands on his ears. Surely she knew that her hands couldn't stop him from hearing? And why should she care if he heard? He would pay her a hundred thousand if it were up to him. Even so, he was touched that she took offense to being paid. Some fast negotiating brought them to agree on thirty-five thousand dollars.

"Sookie, I'll bring you my shotgun," her brother said.

"That's really not necessary," she replied with a half-hearted laugh. She knew as well as Eric did that a shotgun was next to useless when certain creatures were involved. "Pam, Chow, is there anything else?"

Again the two vampires looked at each other. "I don't think so," Pam said at last. She rose from her place on the recliner and stood next to Chow.

"If any harm comes to him, you don't get a cent," Chow said.

Before her brother could protest, Sookie nodded. "Fair's fair. True Bloods before you leave?"

Pam and Chow accepted the offer, as did Eric. Sookie and Jason stood up, and Eric followed their example, staying close to Sookie's side as she escorted her visitors to the kitchen. The tete-a-tete didn't last long, since the vampires were eager to leave, and Sookie was just as eager to get rid of them.

Before Pam left the house, she laid a hand on Eric's arm. "We will do everything we can, Eric," she said.

For the first time that evening, he felt an affection for one of his workers – his friends, as Sookie had called them. It was also the first hint he'd gotten that they felt anything for him apart from a sense of duty.

When they all had left, he followed Sookie back to her living room. She added a log to the fire and sat down in front of it. "How did this happen?" she murmured.

He joined her on the rug, longing to reach over and pull her to himself. "I think this happened because you have a greedy brother…" A smile teased one corner of her mouth, and it gladdened him. "And because you are the kind of woman who would stop for me even though she was afraid."

She turned to look at him, her eyes searching his face. "How are you feeling about all this? I mean, it's like you're a package that they put in a storage locker." She gave a wry smile. "Me being the locker."

After a second's consideration, he replied, "I am glad they are afraid enough of me to take good care of me." Two vampires are afraid of me, but you are not.

Her eyebrows joined together, and she seemed at a loss. "Huh."

"I must be a frightening person when I am myself," he mused aloud. Then he smiled at her. "Or do I inspire so much loyalty through my good works and kind ways?" Her derisive laugh was all the answer he needed. "I thought not."

Sookie turned back to the fire. "You're okay." They sat together for several minutes in easy silence before she looked at him again. "Aren't your feet cold?"

"No." No part of him was cold, not with her in front of her fire like this. He weighed the consequences of leaning over to kiss her, but before he could make up his mind, she jumped up. He watched as she took a ratty blanket from the sofa and draped it over him. The gesture was touching, but the blanket was…

"That's truly hideous," he laughed when she had returned to her place beside him.

"That's what Bill said." She lay down on the rug and turned onto her stomach, resting her head to the side in her arms, smiling up at him.

Bill, her former lover. "Where is this Bill?"

"He's in Peru."

"Did he tell you he was going?" he asked carefully.

"Yes."

Her answers were short and to the point. She must not want to discuss this, or perhaps she was trying to appear disinterested. Perhaps both.

He picked his words with caution. He had no desire to hurt her, but if he wanted to win her, he had to know. "Am I to assume that your relationship with him has waned?"

"We've been on the outs," she said casually. "It's beginning to look permanent."

Eric rolled onto his stomach beside her and covered her with half of the blanket. "Tell me about him."

She hunched her shoulders in a shrug. "You know Bill. He's worked for you for quite a while. I guess you can't remember, but Bill's… well, he's kind of cool and calm, and he's really protective, and he can't seem to get some things through his head."

"He loves you?" How could he not?

Tears welled in her eyes. "Well, he said he did," she sighed. "But then when this vampire ho contacted him somehow, he went a-running. He'd had an affair with her before, and she turned out to be his… I don't know what you call them, the one who turned him into a vampire. Brought him over, he said. So Bill took back up with her. He says he had to. And then he found out that she was just trying to lure him over to the even-darker side."

She watched him with the expression of someone who's telling an exciting story to a captive audience – which, of course, she was. He didn't know what she meant by the "even-darker side," though. "Pardon?" he asked.

"She was trying to get him to come over to another vampire group in Mississippi," Sookie explained, "and bring with him the really valuable computer database he'd put together for your people, the Louisiana vamps."

He wondered what the valuable computer database consisted of, but he was too involved in her story to encourage a digression. "What happened?" he prompted.

"Well, Lorena – that's her name – she tortured him. Can you believe that?" No, he couldn't. "She could torture someone she'd made love with? Someone she'd lived with for years? Anyway, you told me to go to Jackson and find him, and I sort of picked up clues at this nightclub for Supes only. Its real name is Josephine's, but the Weres call it Club Dead. You told me to go there with this really nice Were who owed you a big favor, and I stayed at his place. But I ended up getting hurt pretty bad."

"How?" he asked, hoping it wasn't something he had caused.

"I got staked, believe it or not," she said. She smiled a little.

"Is there a scar?"

"Yeah," she said calmly, "even though…"

"What?" he pressed when it appeared that she wasn't sure if she should continue.

Her face flushed. "You got one of the Jackson vampires to work on the wound, so I'd survive for sure, and then you gave me blood to heal me quick, so I could look for Bill at daylight."

She was embarrassed, and he thought he knew why. Vampires didn't give blood to humans often; when they did, it was usually during love-making. But he and Sookie hadn't been lovers, and it sounded like he had shared his blood with her for practical reasons. Why should that be embarrassing?

That could be thought over later. He encouraged her to finish her story. "And you saved Bill?"

Sookie smiled. "Yes, I did. I saved his ass."

Still smiling, she rolled over to her back, and his blood pounded through him as she lifted her shirt. Was she…? No, she was showing him her scar. He shook his head to clear it and reached out to touch the faint pink line on her side. With all his will, he stopped himself from exploring more of her skin. She lowered her shirt again, much to his disappointment.

"And what happened to the vampire ho?" He didn't know precisely what the word "ho" meant, but her use of it gave him a good idea.

"Well, um, actually, I kind of…" Sookie looked up at him uneasily. "She came in while I was getting Bill untied, and she attacked me, and I kind of…" She averted her eyes. "Killed her."

He stared at her until she met his eyes again. "Had you ever killed anyone before?"

"Of course not!" she exclaimed, and he felt the truth of her words as strongly as anything he'd felt from her. "Well, I did hurt a guy who was trying to kill me," she went on, "but he didn't die. No, I'm a human. I don't have to kill anyone to live."

The small dig hit home. He wondered how many people he had killed. He wondered how many Sookie knew about. "But humans kill other humans all the time," he pointed out to deflect her. "And they don't even need to eat them or drink their blood."

"Not all humans."

He couldn't argue with that. "True enough. We vampires are all murderers." The thought bothered him.

"But in a way, you're like lions."

"Lions?" he repeated, looking down at her in confusion.

"Lions all kill stuff. So you're predators, like lions and raptors. But you use what you kill. You have to kill to eat."

In fact, that wasn't true. Only the very youngest vampires made "mistakes" when feeding, and even that was rarer now that bottled blood was available. He knew these things as instinctually as he'd known that he was a vampire and that he had given his blood to the woman beside him. Besides, most predators didn't feed on their own kind like cannibals.

"The catch in that comforting theory being that we look almost exactly like you, and we used to be you. And we can love you as well as feed off you." His gaze fell to her lips, then back up to her clear eyes. "You could hardly say the lion wanted to caress the antelope."

He had thought – and hoped – that he might reawaken the desire he'd felt from her earlier, but instead he detected fear and suspicion. He didn't know what to make of that.

Sookie frowned. "Eric, you know you're my guest here. And you know if I tell you to leave, which I will if you're not straight with me, you'll be standing out in the middle of a field somewhere in a bathrobe that's too short for you."

"Have I said something to make you uncomfortable? I'm sorry. I was just trying to continue your train of thought." Her eyes still searched his face for something he didn't know, so he changed the subject. And in his desperation, he rambled three possible topics in quick succession. "Do you have some more True Blood? What clothes did Jason get for me? Your brother is a very clever man."

"Yeah, Jason brought more True Blood for you," she replied, throwing the blanket off her so she could get up. "I haven't even looked at the clothes yet. Hang on." She made no reply to the last observation.

She returned with a plastic bag and a bottle of True Blood just as he finished folding the blanket and laying it over one arm of the sofa, where he'd seen her get it. While he sipped the blood, she pulled a blue sweatshirt from the bag and held it up in front of her. It had a big red "T" over a white outline of the state of Louisiana. He didn't know what it meant, but he nodded. She draped the shirt over one arm and took out the jeans.

"I hope they fit," she said, as much to herself as to him.

Eric shrugged. "If they don't, I can wear my old ones, the pair you washed for me."

He finished the blood and went to the kitchen to rinse out the bottle. When he returned, Sookie was sitting on the sofa with her legs curled underneath her. His new clothes were folded on the chair where Pam had been sitting.

She looked up at him and smiled. "Do you ever watch TV, Eric?"

"I don't remember."

He sat beside her and looked at her, thinking again of the lion and the antelope. No, a lion could never want an antelope, or any other prey, in this way. Sookie's sudden deep blush made him realize that he was staring, and he averted his eyes to the blank television screen across the room.

"What might I have watched on TV?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Buffy, maybe." She laughed. He wished she would do that more often because he loved the sound of it.

"It is a funny program?"

"Not really," she said, "but you would think it's funny." She jumped up. "I actually have some tapes of it. Hang on."

She found what she was looking for and pushed a tape into her VCR. A few minutes later, he found himself watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It might have been offensive to him if it weren't so funny. As amusing as the show was, he could barely pay attention to it once Sookie returned to the sofa and curled up next to him, pulling the ugly blanket over them again.

"Why is that vampire's head doing that?" he laughed at one particularly ridiculous scene.

Sookie giggled. "They do that when they want blood."

"I take it this show was made before you humans knew we were real."

"Yeah, it was."

"What did you think when you first learned it?" he asked, looking at her curiously. "Were you frightened?"

She looked thoughtful for a few seconds. "I think we were all a little scared. But more than anything, it was exciting. I wanted to see a real vampire so badly, and I finally did when..."

"Yes?" he urged.

"Bill was the first vampire I ever met. That was last year." She kept her eyes focused on the television screen, but he could tell she wasn't watching it. "I'm kind of tired," she murmured. "I'm going to bed. You feel free to stay in here and watch the show."

Though the exploits of the vampire murderess continued to be amusing, he turned off Sookie's television when the first tape finished. She was rooms away, but he could feel that she was still awake. In the darkness of her bedroom, he shrugged off the robe that had belonged to her former lover and slipped into the bed beside her as he had done the night before.

She didn't open her eyes. "Cold?"

"Mmmhmm."

He shifted over until he was right next to her, and he wrapped his arm around her. The position felt very familiar; somehow he knew that he had done this before. It only took a minute for her to relax and fall asleep, leaving him alone in the quiet dark.

He silently thanked the witch who had given him this, and he hoped his friends would fail in their efforts to undo it.

----

Getting to the fun part next! Thanks for your reviews. =)