The pain was all-consuming, as if it were all he had ever known and all he ever would know – a thousand years of knowledge and experience condensed into this intense suffering. Worse than the physical pain was the anguish of being helpless as Sookie's screams ripped through his body, each one like a knife in his veins. No amount of struggle against Victor's silver chains did him any good. He couldn't even feel the silver eating at his flesh; Sookie's torture usurped every nerve ending in his body. At his feet pooled the blood that poured from his eyes as they wept, from his tongue as he bit it.

Victor had arrived in Shreveport the night before, bringing with him a retinue of six from New Orleans. He was "just passing through," he said, visiting all the sheriffs to ensure that the new kingdom was being established properly. Eric had been in the midst of calling local vampires and making sleeping arrangements for the group when Sookie called. She had used his cell phone number for the first time, which pleased him.

"Yes?" he had answered. Only last-minute wisdom had kept him from adding "dear one."

"Eric… The king said he owed me. I'm in real danger. I wonder what he could do about that."

"The threat involving your older kin?" he had asked Sookie carefully. He remembered glancing at Victor, who had picked up one of Pam's scattered magazines and appeared oblivious.

"Yes," Sookie had replied. "The… uh, enemy has been trying to get Amelia and Tray to introduce him to me. He doesn't seem to realize I would recognize him, or maybe he's very good at pretending. He's supposed to be on the anti-human side, but he's half human. I don't understand his behavior."

While Sookie spoke, Eric had placed his hand over the phone and hissed for Victor's attention. With a wink and a leer, he had indicated to Victor that this was a lovers' conversation, and he had excused himself from the office and out the bar's back door. Bubba, newly returned from one of his random excursions, had been sitting outside with a dead cat between his teeth.

Eric had grimaced and turned away. "I see," he had said to Sookie in a low tone. "So protection is necessary."

"Yes."

After a moment's consideration, he had said, "And you ask this as…?" He had already decided that if she asked it as his wife, he would go to her himself and without delay. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't call on him as her husband unless she had no other choice.

"I ask this as someone who saved Felipe de Castro's life," she had replied.

He had nodded. Serious, then, but not dire, he had thought. How foolish that seemed now. "I'll present this petition to Victor, since he's here at the bar. I'll get back to you this night."

"Great… I appreciate that, Eric." She had hung up on her end before he could answer her, but there had been a warmth in her voice that belied the cold dismissal.

He had tossed his phone and caught it a few times, looking up at the dark sky and thinking, and then he had turned to Bubba. The remains of the unfortunate feline had vanished. "Bubba, how would you like the job of keeping watch over Sookie for me?"

Bubba had grinned broadly. "That would suit me just fine, Mr. Eric. Miss Sookie and me are real good friends."

"Excellent. Come inside with me, then," he had said, motioning for Bubba to join him.

Victor had been just where Eric had left him – thumbing through Glamour. "Arranging a clandestine tryst with your ravishing Sookie, I assume?" he had asked, throwing the magazine aside.

Eric had forced a convincing laugh. "Not tonight," he had said lightly. "Sookie's got some family troubles she needs to sort out. I think I'll send Bubba to make sure nothing unfortunate happens."

Protection coming, he had texted to her cell phone after sending Bubba on his way. It hadn't been enough.

Eric turned the key in the ignition of his Corvette and was about to shift into reverse when Victor tapped two knuckles on the window. Swallowing an impatient growl, he lowered the window. "You need me?" he asked.

Victor flashed his white teeth in a broad smile. "I do, in fact. Care to join me inside?" He cocked his head in the direction of the bar. "I won't keep you long from your Southern belle."

As much as the delay irritated him, Eric couldn't refuse. He rolled up the window, turned off the car, and followed Victor inside. "I thought you were leaving tonight," he observed as they chose a booth near the back. He signaled a waitress for two bottles of blood.

"You seem quite eager to rid yourself of me, old friend," Victor laughed with a hardness that Eric did not like.

"Not at all. What can I do for you?"

"You can start by telling me why you sent a vampire – even one as useless as Bubba – to interfere with your woman's human affairs last night." Still smiling as though he were discussing the weather, Victor opened his True Blood and took a swallow. "I understand that she is your pet, but surely you can't be blind to the fact that she takes up an increasing amount of your time. Time that, to be frank, you owe to us."

Eric turned his bottle in absent circles. "Tell me one thing I have neglected, and I will correct it."

"Oh, there's nothing in particular," Victor replied. He leaned back and looked bored. "But as a business owner, I know you will agree with me that there's a big difference between an adequate job and an exceptional job. In Las Vegas, we don't accept adequate work."

"I see." With a thousand years' training in self-discipline, Eric kept his tone measured, his mannerisms calm and steady. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

Victor leaned forward again and said quietly, "Haven't you considered, Eric, what you and I could-" He stopped when Eric pulled out his phone.

Bill's name glowed in the caller ID window. "Do you mind?" he asked Victor.

"Not at all." Victor's mouth curved into an unpleasant kind of smile. "It makes my job easier when you prove my point for me."

Shit. But he had to answer it; a call from Bill would only be about Sookie. "What," he said shortly.

Bill was just as brief, his voice urgent. "I'm at Sookie's house. They've taken her. Lochlan and Neave."

At that moment, everything else fell away. Fangtasia, Victor, Felipe, Pam. Sookie was everything, and now everything might be lost. "I felt nothing…" he said, wishing to make it untrue. No one could survive Lochlan and Neave. They were infamous. He didn't know how he could feel that the air was knocked out of him when there was no air in his body, but there was no other way to describe it.

"You wouldn't. They knocked her out cold when they took her."

"Wait there." He hung up and cast a level gaze across the table at Victor. "I must go," he said. "Sookie's life is in danger."

"So I heard. Bill Compton talks very loudly when he's in a panic, doesn't he? The inexperience of the very young." Now he looked like a snake when he smiled. "You will not go. Not when fairies are involved. Not for a human."

Eric swiped both bottles of blood off the table, barely hearing the crash as they hit the floor. Leaping to his feet, he towered over Victor and bared his fangs. "I'll kill you if you try to stop me. You know I will."

"Indeed. But you can't overpower the retinue I have waiting outside."

At the same moment Victor reached for his phone, Eric pressed the speed dial number for Niall. Two rings stretched across an eternity before the fairy prince answered.

"Eric, what-"

"Lochlan and Neave have Sookie," he interrupted. His voice had an unfamiliar quality to it; he would later realize that it was panic. "Bill is waiting at her house. I can't… they won't… Move heaven and earth, Fairy. I will track down and drain every one of your kind – including you – if she is killed. Don't make the mistake of doubting me." The words might have sounded more threatening if his voice hadn't broken halfway through.

Niall was saying something, but Eric never caught what it was. Victor's people had stormed in, and now several of them threw him against the wall, sending his phone flying. Pam ran into the bar from his office in a whirl of black silk as he sank his teeth into someone's neck. He ripped out the attacker's throat, but there were too many of them. They restrained him with thick silver chains.

"Pam!" he shouted. "Call for help!"

"Take her," Victor said calmly over the din, and two of the vampires left Eric, who was now helpless against the chains, and seized Pam. "Take her into his office and watch her. Make sure she doesn't call anyone." While they obeyed him, Victor strode up to Eric, shaking his head. "You just killed one of my servants," he said, though he didn't look at all surprised.

Eric flung his body against the chains, not caring that it was futile. "Let. Me. Go," he hissed, his words strangled with fury and pain.

"I can't allow you to take sides in a fairy war. Are you mad? I don't care if they disembowel her and rape her corpse – I will not put vampire lives at risk for your human. You are angry now, but one day you will thank me for saving your life."

"Felipe… promised her… his protection," he said through gritted teeth. The silver had burnt through to the bone in some areas, and his body was racked with the agony of it. "He promised."

"I know nothing about that."

"Victor…" His voice was little more than a whisper now. "I married her. I love her." He had been trying to hold his body straight so as not to press it further against the silver, but his strength failed, and he fell limp onto the chains.

Then Sookie, wherever she was, came to consciousness, and there was nothing but torture.

"Master?" He felt Pam's hand on his face, and he opened his eyes to look up at her. Her cheeks, usually flawless, were marred with long trails of red. He had never seen her cry. "Eric?"

"Sookie…"

"She's safe. She's alive. Dr. Ludwig is caring for her."

He lay very still, searching for her inside of himself. Yes, his blood told him, she lived. He wrapped that knowledge around himself and burrowed deeper into it like a frightened child.

"Victor?" he murmured eventually.

"Gone. Felipe is probably going to tear his shit up. I'll explain later. You should sleep now." She stroked his hair back from his forehead, and for a split-second, he saw the human woman that Pam had been.

His eyes drifted shut again. It was close to dawn.

Sorry to post such a short chapter after weeks of no updates. I lost my inspiration for a while, but it came back this week, all suntanned and refreshed. I think it was vacationing in Jamaica. Next chapter will finish book 9, and then we'll journey on to book 10. :D