"The last of my burns have healed."
Eric looked up from his bills to see Pam framed by the doorway of his office, her fingers pressed to her forehead. When she moved them, he saw that the skin of her face was once again flawless and white. Her recovery had been painful, and his slightly less so, but none of the Rhodes victims had suffered as Sophie-Anne did. Their queen had lost both of her legs, not to mention Andre. Judging from the news Eric occasionally received from Gervaise's people, she was more distraught over the latter. He himself had tried to feel an appropriate regret for Andre, but he soon gave that up. Andre's death made Sookie safer – made him safer – and he was not sorry for it.
He removed the pen he had stuck absently between his teeth and gave Pam a quick appraisal. "Good as new." With the return of Pam's health, it seemed, came her flair for entertaining the clientele; she wore a shiny black leather dress that must have been tighter than any corset she'd been tied into during her human life. "Who painted on your dress?" he asked with a smile.
"Like it?" She spun on her stiletto heels to give him the full view. Before he could answer her, the phone rang, and she reached for it. "Fangtasia, where all your darkest dreams come true." He watched as her expression turned to confusion. "Who?" she asked after a moment. Another silence. "One moment." She laid her hand over the receiver and whispered, "Niall Brigant? It has to be a prank."
Eric pushed away the budget and took the phone. No one who knew that name would make a prank call about it. He raised his eyebrows and indicated the door, and Pam left without a word. "I am here," he said.
"So you are." No, it was no prank. Eric hadn't heard the voice in over a century, but he would have recognized it anywhere. "We heard about the misfortune in Rhodes."
"Yes." Eric tapped the pen once, twice, three times. "I assume that Rhodes isn't why you called me."
"Not entirely, no," the fairy replied, "although it was the catalyst. My great-granddaughter was staying in that hotel."
"Sookie." It wasn't a guess; as soon as Niall had spoken the words "great-granddaughter," Eric had known beyond any doubt. Of all the fairies who could have been Sookie's ancestor, did it have to be one so powerful? His bond with her was much more dangerous than he had imagined, especially if Niall knew ab--
"Yes, and you performed the bonding rite with her." Shit. He could almost hear the ancient fairy smiling in the brief silence that followed. "I have no quarrel with you, vampire. In fact, I called to ask for your help. I would like to meet Sookie at last, and I want you to bring her to me. She trusts you."
"Wouldn't that be dangerous for both of you?" Eric hedged.
"I think you and I can agree that intimacy with those we love is worth the danger."
"Tell me where you want to meet her."
* * *
He called Sookie's house and left a message with the witch, but Sookie didn't return his call until the following night.
"Hello?" he answered when he picked up the phone. Clancy had simply said, "Phone, boss," and shut the office door again, with no indication of who was calling.
"I'm sorry I didn't call you back before now," came Sookie's welcome voice. "I just got your message. Did you call about my money?"
No greeting. Immediately asking about money. It was always business with her, as if she stubbornly refused to treat him as a friend, much less as a lover. To be fair, Sophie-Anne should have paid her for Rhodes by now. He jotted down a note to ask the queen next time they spoke.
"No, about something else entirely," he told her. "Will you go out with me tomorrow night?"
"Eric," she sighed after an awkward silence, "I'm dating Quinn."
"And how long has it been since you've seen him?" He knew for a fact that Quinn hadn't come near Louisiana since the bombing. If Sookie was indeed dating him, it was in name only.
"Since Rhodes," she admitted, and he heard uncertainty and hurt in her voice. Had the bastard even called her?
"How long has it been since you heard from him?"
"Since Rhodes."
Eric clenched and unclenched his fist. What kind of man would fail to see or call his lover after a bombing, for fuck's sake? "I think you can give me one evening. It doesn't sound as though Quinn has you booked." As soon as he spoke the words, he winced. What he had intended to be a jab at Quinn instead sounded like a jab at her.
He heard a sharp intake of breath. "That was mean."
"It's Quinn who's cruel," he said through gritted teeth, "promising you he'd be here and then not keeping his word."
"Do you know what's happened to him? Do you know where he is?"
The question – and the accusation it seemed to imply – would have offended him if he hadn't heard the worry and desperation in her tone. Quinn could go fuck himself, but Sookie was unhappy, Sookie was the one he cared about, and Sookie was the one on the other end of the line.
"No, I don't know," he said softly. Enough about Quinn. "But there is someone in town who wants to meet you. I promised I would arrange it. I'd like to take you to Shreveport myself."
"You mean that guy Jonathan?" she asked. While Eric racked his brain for a Jonathan, she went on, "He came to the wedding and introduced himself. I've got to say, I didn't much care for the guy. No offense if he's a friend of yours."
"Jonathan?" he said when she paused to breathe. "What Jonathan?"
He frowned as she described the Asian vampire she'd seen. He wasn't anyone Eric knew, and he certainly hadn't "checked in." Whatever this person had heard about Sookie, it hadn't been from Eric.
"I don't know him," he told her. "I'll ask here at Fangtasia to see if anyone has seen him." What he didn't tell her was that he was going to have his people actively searching for this Jonathan. An unauthorized vampire seeking out Sookie was not something to be taken lightly. "And I'll prompt the queen about your money," he added, "though she is… not herself. Now, will you please do what I'm asking you to do?"
She sighed. "I guess. Who am I meeting, and where?"
"I'll have to let the who remain a mystery," he said with a smile. "As to where, we'll go to dinner at a nice restaurant. The kind you'd call casual dressy."
"You don't eat. What will you do?"
I'll sit in my car and fantasize about drinking fairies. "I'll introduce you and stay as long as you need me to."
"Okay. I'll get off work about six or six-thirty." She didn't seem very interested; then again, how was she to know that she would be meeting her fairy grandfather?
"I'll be there to pick you up at seven."
"Give me till seven thirty," she said. "I need to change." She sounded resigned, tired, and moody.
They had been apart for too long, and their bond, for lack of a better expression, didn't like it.
"You'll feel better when you see me." I'll feel better when I see you.
"Better" didn't begin to describe the tide of happiness that swept through him the next night when she opened the door. He hadn't seen her since that terrible morning in the sun, and he felt ridiculously like an over-eager puppy who had just found its favorite toy. He could almost hear Pam sneering at him. But how else to describe this completely irrational, completely foreign pleasure? He wanted to forget Niall, lead Sookie inside, tear her "casual dressy" clothes off, and take her against the wall. Or some piece of furniture. Maybe the shower. Or all of those places in sequence. Then repeat. He wanted to drink her dry, but that would mean no refills.
He settled for a kiss on the cheek.
"Thanks," she said as he opened the car door for her. She had already buckled her seat belt when he joined her inside and started the car. "I'm glad to see you're all better."
"I can still feel the sun burning under my skin sometimes, but that will fade."
They rode on in silence for a while, and Eric enjoyed it. When Sookie was quiet, her blood could speak for her, and he liked what it told him: that she felt safe and content and, yes, happy here with him. He was also grateful because the silence allowed him to think about what he wanted to tell her. With Quinn out of the picture and Andre dead, there was nothing to prevent them from taking hold of the happiness that could be theirs.
"How's Pam?" she asked. "I talked to her a couple weeks ago, and she was still in a lot of pain."
"Pam is doing well."
"That's good." Another long stretch of silence. "Did you find out anything else about that Jonathan guy?"
"We'll talk about that later," he said easily, not wanting anything unpleasant to dispel their comfortable peace. But what if she had asked for a reason? "You haven't seen him again, have you?"
"No. Should I expect to?"
He answered her with an absent shake of his head. Was this a good time to say what he wanted to say, or should he wait until she had met Niall? He decided to warm her to the idea slowly.
"I'm glad for your sake that it appears Andre didn't survive the bombing," he said.
"I'm sure the queen will miss him." Both her voice and her blood gave away the fact that there was more to tell there, but that could wait.
"The queen is distraught, and her healing will take months more," he told her frankly. He turned back to the road. "What I was beginning to say…" What had he been about to say?
"What?" Sookie pressed.
"You saved my life. You saved my life, and Pam's, too." You risked your own life because you didn't want to lose me. You love me. Say it.
"Yeah, well…" That's it? Yeah, well? He waited. "We do have the blood tie thing going," she pointed out.
He could see where this was leading. Would she pin everything on that now? When denying her feelings stopped working, blame the blood bond?
"That's not why you came to wake me first of all the day the hotel blew up," he said gently, even though she must already know it. "But we won't talk further about this now. You have a big evening ahead."
Neither of them spoke again until Eric parked in the small shopping center where the restaurant was located. He turned off the car and looked at Sookie just in time to see her examining her clothes uncertainly.
"Don't worry." His eyes fell from her eyes to her mouth. "You're beautiful."
He unbuckled her seat belt for her and looked at her again for a second before he tasted her lips briefly. It had been too long, and the kiss was too short, but now was not the time. Later, after she spoke with Niall. Later they would reach an understanding. He pulled himself away from her unwillingly and walked around the car to open her door. He took her hand to help her out, and he held onto it as he led her to the door. She was nervous. He stroked her palm lightly with his thumb; her shiver surprised and pleased him.
"A party of two?" asked the greeter when they walked in.
"We're meeting someone," he told her.
Her eyebrows flew up. "Oh! The gentleman…" She trailed off. Clearly, Niall hadn't lost his ability to make an impression.
"Yes," Eric nodded.
"Right this way, please." She led the way to Niall's table and indicated Sookie's chair. "Your server will be with you shortly."
Niall had obviously worked a bit of magic to hide his scent because Eric didn't detect a trace of it. He watched as the fairy rose to seat Sookie. She gave Eric a questioning look; touched by her trust in him, he smiled and nodded, sending a bit of calm her way through his blood. When both of them were seated, Sookie looked up at him again, obviously wondering why he didn't join them. She wanted him there, but Niall had made it clear on the phone that he wanted to speak with Sookie alone.
"Child," said the fairy. When Sookie turned to him, he revealed to her one pointed ear.
If she was surprised, she didn't really show it. "Okay…" she said with a little nod.
Eric touched her shoulder. "Sookie, this is Niall Brigant. He's going to talk to you over supper. I'll be outside if you need me."
He acknowledged Niall with a quick nod and left them alone. Apart from a short moment in which he felt Sookie get terribly upset, the hours passed uneventfully. He contented himself with reading a history of the Count of St. Germain and downing two bottles of TrueBlood that he had stashed in the glove compartment. Sookie would smell like a veritable fairy banquet when she emerged from the restaurant, and he had to take precautions.
When he felt her getting closer, he left the car and leaned back against it to wait for her. He started on another bottle of TrueBlood just in case.
Fairy banquet, indeed. She was a walking orgy. Every step she took across the parking lot was an invitation – no, a demand – to take her in every sense of the word. He closed his eyes, inhaled, licked the traces of fairy-perfumed air settling on his lips.
"Snap out of it," Sookie said, snapping her fingers in front of his face.
He opened his eyes and focused on her face until there was only one of her. "When you smell like that…" He leaned a fraction of an inch closer to her. "I just want to fuck you and bite you and rub myself all over you."
She wanted him; she was afraid of him. She acted on neither impulse. "Hold your horses. What do you know about fairies, aside from how they taste?"
Draining the last of the TrueBlood, he opened the car door and tossed the bottle inside. He leaned on the door and imagined it as a barrier between himself and the woman he was fighting not to drain. The temptation to drink every drop of her blood and then turn her was close to overpowering him. He told her what he knew about fairies, and it was an effective distraction.
"So in the past, the vampires and the fairies have fought each other?" Sookie asked as they settled themselves into the car. "I mean like pitched battles?" She buckled her seat belt.
"Yes. And if it came to that again, the first one I'd take out is Niall," he told her frankly.
She gaped for a second. "Why?"
"He's very powerful in the fairy world. He is very magical." He knows that he could use you to kill me. He looked away from her as he backed out of his parking space, then found her eyes again while he waited to turn onto the road. "If he's sincere in his desire to take you under his wing, you're both very lucky and very unlucky."
"I guess I have to ask you to explain that."
"There were thousands of fairies in the United States once. Now there are only hundreds. But the ones that are left are very determined survivors, and not all of those are friends of the prince's."
"Oh, good," Sookie sighed. "I needed another supernatural group who dislikes me."
They fell into silence as Eric considered what he would say to her when they reached her house. He noticed absently that the speedometer was topping 100. Sookie cleared her throat in an exaggerated way, and he looked from her to the flashing lights in his rearview mirror.
"Jävlar." He slowed and pulled over to the wide shoulder of the interstate, muttering a few more choice words under his breath.
Sookie was grinning from ear to ear. At least someone was enjoying this. "With a vanity plate like bloodsucker, what do you expect?" Suddenly, her face darkened. "Were!" she hissed. "There's something wrong!"
A split-second later, he had turned off the car's lights, pushed her down from the seat into the large area of the floorboard, and leaned over to shield her with his body. He had expected danger from her association with Niall, but not so soon as this. The Were shot through the window, and the bullet tore into Eric's neck with ripping pain. The force of it slammed him back in his seat for a moment.
Perhaps stupidly unaware that he couldn't kill a vampire with a bullet in the neck, the Were stuck his head and arm through the window to go for Sookie, but Eric was too fast for him. Eric seized the Were's wrist and tightened his grip until he heard the bones crunching together. The Were's fingers lost their hold on the gun, which fell into Sookie's lap, and she quickly scooped it up and aimed it at him.
"Who are you?" she demanded, pointing the gun inches from his terrified face. "Who sent you?" Her eyes were flashing, ruthless, sexy as hell.
He was turned on and furious, and the scent of blood – both his own and the Were's – pervaded the small space inside the car. If that weren't enough, Sookie still smelled like a fairy banquet. His fangs extended. Whatever information this asshole had, Sookie would have to get it, and fast.
The creature gasped and whimpered. "They told me to."
"They who?" Sookie persisted, her voice deliciously hard and cold.
They would get nothing from this fool. Eric bit savagely and relished the blood that flooded into his mouth.
"Don't let him turn me into one of them," the Were sobbed, pleading with Sookie.
Eric would have laughed if he weren't so pleasantly occupied. As if he would turn this pathetic sack of shit into his own immortal child. As if he would give this worm the gift he had given to Pam… the gift he would eventually give to Sookie.
"You should be so lucky," Sookie told him. She opened her car door and got out as Eric finished off the miserable Were.
Sookie turned off the flashing lights in the Were's car, and Eric used the cover of darkness to drag his victim out of the car and over to the slope just off the shoulder of the interstate. He drank only a little more, even though he had lost a lot of blood. The Were tasted foul. He swiped his hand roughly over his lips and chin. All things considered, he had made tidy work of it.
He watched as Sookie walked back to the Corvette and looked for him inside. He watched her clean his blood from his car seat. He admired the curves of her body in the dark. In a flash, he came up behind her and turned her in his arms, pressing her to the side of the car. He raked his fingers through her hair and held her there, inhaling her scent, absorbing her warmth. A wave of lust crested inside him, and he realized that it was hers, too. He kissed her only briefly before she tore her mouth away, panting.
If his self-control was a cliff and fucking Sookie violently against the car was the chasm below, he was hanging on to the edge with only the tips of his fingers. He thought of her in the car trunk in Jackson, and he let her go and stepped back.
Sookie's eyes were wide as they settled on the wound in his neck, and she reached out to inspect it. Because she couldn't know his thoughts of the past few minutes, she didn't fear him; she cared for him. Her blood was calming him, soothing the monster inside.
"What was that about?" he asked in a reasonably level voice as she examined his neck. "Was that an enemy of yours?"
She shivered and folded her arms across her chest as she looked over at the Were's car, now dark and silent. "I have no idea."
Of course the attacker had been her enemy. She must know that. "He shot at you. He wanted you first," he pointed out.
"But what if he did that to hurt you?" she asked, and he froze. She knew, then, that she was his weakness. That she was in danger because people could use her to get to him. But then she continued, "What if he would have blamed my death on you?" As blind as ever, dear one. Just when you approach the truth, you lose sight of it again. That's not how your death would hurt me. Could she really not see what she was to him, or did she willfully deny it to herself? When he had no reply to give her, she added, "And how'd they find us?"
"Someone who knew we'd be driving back to Bon Temps tonight. Someone who knew what car I was in." Only Niall fit that description, but Niall wouldn't try to have his great-granddaughter murdered. As much as he feared and mistrusted the fairy, he knew that much to be true.
"It couldn't have been Niall," Sookie said quickly, as if she had read his mind.
"I don't think it was the fairy, either," he assured her. A car sped past, its lights fading in the distance. "But we'd better talk about it on the road. This isn't a good place for us to linger." Especially since a mangled Were lay at the foot of the shoulder.
They got back in the car, and Eric pulled out onto the interstate. The silence between them wasn't comfortable now, but dark and brooding. What he had wanted to say to her when they reached her house would have to wait. Sookie shivered, and he glanced over at her for what must have been the hundredth time.
"What are you thinking about, Sookie? Your face has had thoughts rippling across it too fast to follow."
"Eric, just get me home," she sighed. She propped her elbow on the car door and leaned her head against her hand. "I'm in emotional overload."
He turned onto the neatly graveled road to her house. "We need to talk about this again," he told her. She said nothing. He stopped the car and turned to her. "Sookie," he said softly, tracing his fingertips down the side of her neck, "I'm hurting. Can I…?"
Goosebumps rose on her skin and her heart quickened. His request to have some of her blood had, it seemed, made her want him. He saw her knuckles whiten as she clenched her fists.
Then he felt the bullet moving inside his neck. He closed his eyes and rested his head back, gritting his teeth as his body expelled it. When the bullet fell, Sookie caught it and closed it in her fingers. He wondered absently what she had done with the bullet she had picked up and kept in Dallas.
"I think you can make it home," she told him. She got out of the car, turned, and leaned down to look at him. "You can stop at Merlotte's and get bottled blood if you really need some."
He could see that she didn't want to let him inside because she didn't trust herself with him. Though he was disappointed, the thought pleased him. He smiled a little. "You're hard-hearted."
"I am," she replied, returning his smile. "You be careful, you hear?"
"Of course. And I'm not stopping for any policemen." He winked at her as she shut the car door, and he watched as she made her way into the house. He stayed close by until the early hours of the morning, parked inconspicuously near the turn to her drive.