"Where is she?" he demanded, pushing past a petite nurse who had raised one hand in a half-hearted attempt to stop him. He didn't wait for an answer. The pull of Sookie's blood and the scent of fairy led him directly to her room. He caught a glimpse of Bill in one room, but he had no time or interest to spare for Bill at the moment.

Sookie's fairy cousin had obviously sensed his arrival, for she opened the door only a second before he reached it. Unable to look at Sookie's broken body just yet, he watched in silence as Claudine picked up her things. Her intoxicating scent was not lost on him, but it was impossible to enjoy when he could also smell Sookie's wounds and the medicines being used to treat her. He clenched his jaw in fury – at the fairies, at Victor, at himself above all.

The soft click of the door behind him told him that Claudine was gone, and he moved to the foot of Sookie's bed with heavy steps. When his eyes found her scratched and bruised face, he squeezed his fingernails into his palms.

"Fucking fairies," he hissed.

Sookie's lips moved, and her words might not have been audible if he hadn't been a vampire. "Dead now," she reminded him.

"Yes," he replied bitterly. "A fast death was too good for them." She acknowledged this with a small movement of her head. He gathered his resolve and said, "I'm going to look at your wounds."

Her voice was even softer now. "Okay."

He drew back the thin hospital bed linens until they lay just below Sookie's feet. The last time he had looked at these shapely, tanned legs, he had been placing kisses on them. That kind of reflection would not do at the present moment, he reminded himself. He could only see the flesh below her knees, and that alone made him wish he could tear Victor Madden limb from limb. The fairies had sunk their teeth through to the bone in many places, he judged from the areas that Dr. Ludwig had not stitched and bandaged. He stared for some time, keeping his face as expressionless as possible while his blood burned with wild, blind rage.

Finally, he managed to say in a level voice, "Pull up the gown." Sookie's arms moved slightly, and he realized that he would have to do it himself. With great care, he raised the flimsy hospital gown to reveal Sookie's thighs. She had turned her head away, eyes squeezed closed. Though he wanted to do the same, he forced himself to look. He had felt her pain the night before, but to see it was something else entirely. They had slashed and ripped her to pieces.

I would hate to ruin that beautiful skin, he had said to her once. One day, I will see all of it.

His rage was melting into something dangerous, especially considering the fight ahead: anguish. That was something he could not allow, not if he expected to do battle.

He straightened her gown and said quietly, "I'll be back in a minute." As soon as her door shut behind him, he leaned back against the corridor wall and allowed the blood tears to escape his eyes.

Enough of this, he told himself after only a minute's pause. You're wasting time, and you're wasting blood. He had gulped down no less than three bottles of blood on his way over, and he didn't intend to weep any more of it away. After examining Sookie's wounds for himself, he knew that he should have drunk even more.

When he slipped into the room where he had noticed Bill earlier, he found that Clancy had arrived and was giving blood to Bill. The scent of dying Were permeated the already unpleasant hospital air that hung thick in the room.

"Silver poisoning," Clancy said.

Eric nodded; Pam had given him the short version of all this before he left, and he had spoken to Bill on the phone. "I know." He opened the mini-fridge and took out two bottles of blood. "I'm next door if you need anything."

"Eric…" Bill rasped. "I want to talk to her."

Eric didn't reply. He returned to Sookie's room and set the bottles on the floor. "Move over," he instructed. She did nothing but look up at him with a blank expression on her battered face. "Move over," he repeated urgently.

A split-second later, he silently berated himself for being so fucking stupid – of course, she couldn't move. With as much care as possible, he moved her body over enough to make room for himself. He lay down on his side next to her, propped up on his elbow.

"I'm going to feed you," he said, stroking her cheek with his finger.

"What?" she murmured.

"I'm going to give you blood. You'll take weeks to heal otherwise. We don't have that kind of time." He extended his fangs and sank them swiftly and deeply into his wrist, then held it to her mouth. "Here," he said as he supported her neck with his other arm.

Normally, giving his blood to her was one of the most sublime pleasures, but there was nothing in this to enjoy, not even the gentle pull of her lips or the occasional touch of her tongue on his skin. She drank slowly in her weakened state, and the wound healed itself before she'd taken enough. He raised his wrist to pierce it again.

"Are you sure you should do this?" she asked. Her voice already sounded stronger.

Here she lay, almost tortured to death, and she was worried about him. Even the horror of the situation couldn't smother the warmth that flared inside him. He had heard a song in the bar once with the lyric "For you I'd bleed myself dry." The humans who wrote and performed that song could not have understood those words or meant them as much as he did.

"Yes. I know how much is too much," he assured her. He stroked her hair as she resumed drinking. "And I fed well before I came here. You need to be able to move."

She paused and looked up at him, her lips stained red with his blood – a sight that would have awakened his lust at any other time. "Move?"

"Yes," he said, raising his wrist back to her mouth. "At any moment, Breandan's followers may… will find this place. They'll be tracking you by scent now." He ground his teeth together. "You smell of the fairies who hurt you, and they know now Niall loves you enough to kill his own kind for you. Hunting you down would make them very, very happy."

Sookie turned her head away from his wrist, which was healing up now anyway, and began sobbing softly against his chest.

He ran the backs of his fingers down the side of her face. "Stop that now," he said, though it was a struggle to keep his own voice level. "You must be strong. I'm very proud of you, you hear me?"

"Why?" she asked.

He bit his wrist a third time and coaxed her back to it. "You are still… together," he said. "You are still a person. Lochlan and Neave have left vampires and fairies in rags." He recalled one or two scenes that he had witnessed with his own eyes. "Literally rags." He pressed his lips to her hair. "But you survived, and your personality and soul are intact."

"I got rescued."

"You would have survived much more."

When she had finished drinking, he removed his arm from under her neck and allowed her head to rest on the pillow again. He took one of the bottles of blood he'd brought with him and poured it down his throat. He had given her a little too much blood, but she needed it more than he did.

"I wouldn't have wanted to," she said as she watched him drink. "I hardly wanted to live after…"

Her voice trailed off, and he set the empty bottle aside and turned his attention back to her, kissing her forehead. "But you did live, and they died." He traced his fingertips over the spot where he'd bitten her as they made love a few nights before. "And you are mine, and you will be mine," he said firmly, conveying protection rather than possession. "They will not get you."

"You really think they're coming?" she asked.

"Yes," he said with a grim nod. "Breandan's remaining forces will find this place sooner or later – if not Breandan himself. He has nothing to lose, and his pride to retain." He sat up and blinked away a brief wave of nausea. "I'm afraid they'll find us shortly. Ludwig has removed almost all the other patients." He cocked his head and listened for a moment. "Yes. Most of them are gone," he confirmed.

"Who else is here?"

"Bill is in the next room. He's been getting blood from Clancy."

Sookie frowned. "Were you not going to give him any?"

As if I had any left to spare, he thought wryly. "If you were irreparable, no. I would have let him rot."

"Why? He actually came to rescue me. Why get mad at him?" As her strength increased, so, it seemed, did her ready indignation. "Where were you?" The hurt in her voice was far worse than any anger that might have laced it. He turned away from her and closed his eyes; he could not lose any more blood, and he certainly wouldn't accomplish much by allowing her to see his tears. "It's not like you were obliged to come find me," she went on. "But I hoped the whole time…" Her voice broke. "I hoped you would come. I prayed you would come." Her fingers found his and gripped them tightly. "I thought over and over you might hear me-"

"You're killing me," he interrupted her, unable to bear any more. "You're killing me," he said again. There was a long silence as she waited for him to continue, and he fought for a semblance of control over his rioting emotions. He reached for her through the blood bond and found – apart from the fear and confusion and hurt – trust. That was a small relief, at least. "I'll explain. I will," he promised at last. "You will understand. But now we don't have enough time." His voice was steady now, and the fourth bottle of True Blood was restoring his strength. "Are you healing yet?" he asked her.

"I'm beginning to feel like I'll be better sometime." He smiled; whether she felt it or not, at least she was sounding like herself again. "Oh!" she said suddenly, "is Tray Dawson still here?"

He turned around again to meet her eyes. "Yes. He can't be moved."

Her face fell. "Why not?" she asked, and he could tell that she already knew the answer to her question. "Why didn't Dr. Ludwig take him?"

There was no point lying, even if he had wished to. "He would not survive being moved." The Were smelled of death; Eric was actually surprised that he had clung to life this long.

"No…"

He told her what he'd learned from Pam and Bill, how the fairies had captured the Were and given him vampire blood in an attempt to drive him mad. "They had fun with him before they had…" He stopped himself. "Before they caught you."

"Dawson's that hurt?" she said, looking confused. "I thought the effects of the bad vamp blood would wear off by now."

Eric shook his head. "The vampire blood they used was just a vehicle for the poison. They'd never tried it on a Were, I suppose, because it took a long time to act. And then they practiced their arts on him." He left it there, unwilling to think more about the "arts" of Neave and Lochlan. He laid a hand on her leg. "Can you rise?"

She made an attempt to lift herself up on her elbows, but she was still too weak. "Maybe not yet," she admitted.

"I'll carry you," he said.

"Where?"

"Bill wants to talk to you." Whether he liked it or not, he owed Bill his utmost gratitude for saving Sookie; the least he could do was comply with Bill's request to speak to her. Besides, there was a chance that Bill didn't have much longer. He regarded her with a sudden tenderness, realizing how much it may hurt her to see her former – her first – lover in such condition. "You have to be brave," he added gently.

She motioned to her purse, which lay on the nearby table. "My purse… I need something from it."

He handed it to her and watched as she withdrew a garden trowel and a child's plastic water gun; he could smell the lemon juice inside the toy. And here he had been coddling her, reminding her to be brave. Sookie had never been anything other than a fighter, and in that moment he loved her more fiercely, more completely, than he ever had before.

The slam of a car door just outside called him back to the urgency of the present. For all he knew, it could be the fairies or their allies. He stood and lifted Sookie into his arms as swiftly and carefully as possible, then made for Bill's room. Clancy was still giving blood to Bill, and what seemed like a month's worth of True Blood bottles lay empty around him. One never would have guessed that Bill had been given so much blood already, so pallid and sickly was the color of his skin. The Were smelled even worse than he had earlier, if such a thing were possible.

Eric carried Sookie to the open side of Bill's bed and placed her next to him. Bill turned his head slowly from Clancy's wrist and opened his eyes to see her.

Seeing Eric's questioning look, Clancy shook his head. "The silver is in his system. Its poison has traveled to every part of his body." He took a long sip of the half-full bottle in his hand. "He'll need more and more blood to drive it out."

Eric had no reply, and Clancy stood and walked away from the bed. Eric followed him, leaving Bill to tell Sookie whatever he wished.

"Will he survive?" Eric asked in a low voice.

"I doubt it. If the silver doesn't kill him, the fairies sure as hell will. Where's Pam?"

"We arranged everything before I left. She's nearby with transportation. Maxwell is with her." He tapped the long knife sheathed at his side. "You brought a weapon?"

Clancy answered with a single nod, and they stood in silence for a while.

"All this for some human," Clancy whispered after a time, gulping down the rest of the bottle. "It's a waste, Eric, and it's criminal."

Eric growled from somewhere deep in his throat. "She's not some human. She's my wife. You would be wise to keep your mouth shut." Before Clancy could reply, their eyes met suddenly; they had heard the same thing. "They're coming," Eric said loudly.

"Breandan's people?" Sookie asked from the bed. Her voice sounded much stronger and surer.

"Yes. They've found your scent," Clancy told her with accusation in his tone.

Eric unsheathed his knife and held it up. "Iron," he said. He grinned to show his fangs as the prospect of battle infused him with new and much-needed energy.

To his surprise, Bill matched his grin with a twisted one of his own. "Kill as many as you can," he said smoothly. And then, even more surprising: "Clancy, help me up."

Sookie laid her hand on Bill's arm. "No."

"Sweetheart, I have always loved you, and I will be proud to die in your service," Bill told her, moving her hand and motioning Clancy over. "When I'm gone, say a prayer for me in a real church." Eric turned to hide his smile as Clancy helped Bill to his feet. Silver poisoning had certainly not weakened Bill's penchant for melodrama. "Eric, have you a knife to spare for me?" Bill asked a minute later.

Eric removed the spare weapon he had strapped to his leg and passed it back to Bill. It wasn't a long or particularly good knife, but it was iron, and it had a blade. His phone rang, and he fished it from his pocket, glanced at the caller ID to see Niall's name, and flipped it open.

"Yes?" he said.

"Vampire, we are coming to avenge my kin. It may take longer because only one portal has remained unblocked by Breandan. Fight as well as you can without us."

Fuck.

Niall hung up without another word, and Eric followed suit, shoving the cell phone back into his pocket. "Niall and his fae are on the way," he told the others, explaining what Niall had said to him about the portals. "Whether they'll come in time, I don't know."

Clancy walked back up to him and said calmly, "If I live through this, I'll ask you to release me from my vow, Eric, and I'll seek another master." He shook his head. "I find the idea of dying in the defense of a human woman to be disgusting… no matter what her connection to you is."

"If you die," Eric said, baring his fangs, "you'll die because I, your Sheriff, ordered you into battle. The reason is not pertinent."

He could tell that Clancy was biting back some choice words – words he might have spoken aloud if they hadn't been in the mixed company of a human and a Were. "Yes, my lord," he said finally.

Eric placed his hand on Clancy's shoulder and tried to look at him as the friend he had become. "But I will release you if you should live," he said. A warrior fighting for a cause he hated was a liar to himself and a liability to his comrades. And until recently, Eric would never have dreamed of defending a human with his life. Clancy's abhorrence of such a thing was the rule, not the exception.

"Thank you, Eric," he said.

By now they could both hear and smell the fairies. Eric's battle focus was lost momentarily when he felt a wave of love coming from Sookie, and he turned to her. He had never felt that from her before, and it made his heart leap… until he realized that she was looking at Bill.

There was no time for processing this, no time for feeling anything, because an ax blade smashed through the door. Eric listened to the fairies' shouts on the other side of the door and tried to determine how many enemies they faced. Six? Seven?

The first fairy to break through the broken door was an easy kill, with Eric slicing open his belly and Clancy relieving him of his head. The heady aroma of fae blood only fueled Eric's bloodlust, and he raised his knife to kill the next. Before he could attack, the smaller knife that he had given to Bill flew through the air and pierced the fairy's neck with deadly accuracy. Raising both hands to his throat, the fairy gaped and fell sideways, his body twitching on the ground before it stilled.

Breandan was next, carrying a sword that smelled of Claudine's blood. Eric had only a second to spare for regret as Breandan came at him in a frenzy. He roared and fought back with all his strength, which wasn't as much as usual because he had lost so much blood. The fairy managed to dodge Eric's every move, and then his place was taken suddenly by a tall female wielding a mace. Eric ducked her forceful swing, which hit Clancy instead. With a shout of pain, Clancy fell to his knees, and as Eric continued to fight the female, taking a painful slash to his arm in the process, he saw from the corner of his eye that Breandan had finished Clancy.

Eric heard Breandan's voice behind him. "You're the one. The one who killed Neave."

Eric could only hope that Bill was strong enough to defend Sookie from Breandan's wrath; he himself was doing all he could to keep the female from attacking Sookie as well. To his surprise, the dying Were tried to help them, but Breandan's sword made quick work of him. And then Eric heard a ragged gasp behind him and smelled Breandan's royal blood. He gave a fanged smile to his female enemy, who screamed in fury and abandoned her fight with him to kill Sookie. But the fairy bitch was no match for Sookie's little water pistol of lemon juice. She gave a screech of pain as the acidic liquid burnt into her flesh, and Eric whirled around to slice off her sword arm and finish her off with a stab to her heart.

There was movement behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Niall. About fucking time. He could tell that Niall had done some fighting of his own because the fairy's bright white garments were stained with blood.

Eric turned back to Sookie just as she leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor next to Bill, who was still and silent. It was then that he realized his own weakness; the slash in his arm had bled profusely, and the edges of everything around him had become rather hazy. Sookie was bleeding from a facial injury that must have reopened during the fight, and he knelt beside her to take some of the blood he needed. Though he was surrounded by pure fairy blood free for the taking, nothing tasted as sweet as this.

"Off her, vampire," came Niall's voice, as if from very far away.

He closed his eyes and swiped his tongue over his lips to catch one last, sweet taste of Sookie before he lifted his head away from her cut, which was already healing because of his saliva. Sookie's essence, combined with the rush of victory and the overpowering scent of fairies, made him dizzy with pleasure, and he fell against the wall next to her and leaned his head back. His gaze fell on Clancy's headless body, and every trace of pleasure vanished like mist on glass.

Sookie turned to him. "Is Bill alive?"

He glanced over at Bill, who still hadn't moved or made a sound. "I don't know," he said. Thanks to Sookie's blood, his arm was starting to heal, though he still felt too weak for his own liking. He rested his head back on the wall again as Niall knelt before Sookie.

"Niall..." she murmured as the fairy looked on her with pain in his deep eyes. "Niall, I didn't think you would come in time."

Niall embraced her and stroked her hair with one hand. "You are safe now. I am the only living prince. No one can take that away from me. Almost all of my enemies are dead." He met Eric's eyes briefly, then flicked his gaze away.

Sookie rested her head on the fairy's shoulder and sighed. "Look around," she said softly. "Niall, look at all that's been taken." Her last few words caught in her throat, and Eric could see tears making their way down her cheek and dripping onto Niall's tunic.

Niall pulled back from her and touched her face with his fingertips. "You need to go home."

"Claudine?" she asked.

The fairy prince hung his head. "She's in the Summerland," he told her, confirming what Eric already knew.

Sookie buried her face in her hands and wept aloud, her shoulders shaking, and Eric wrapped one arm around her. Enough of this misery. "Fairy," he said firmly, "I leave cleaning this place to you. Your great-granddaughter is my woman. Mine and mine alone. I'll take her home."

"Not all the bodies are fae," Niall replied. Eric was about to remind him that Clancy would disappear when Niall added with a nod at the dead Were, "And what must we do with that one?"

Eric didn't give a fuck what they did with him; the Were had helped Sookie, but in the end, it mattered little what became of a dead body. The fairies were masters at disposing of the corpses they left in their wake.

"That one needs to go back into his house," Sookie insisted. "He has to be given a proper burial. He can't just vanish." She pulled away from Eric slightly and started to stand, then groaned in pain. A moment later, she said, "He's alive, Eric!" He turned his head to see her smiling up at him, her face glowing with real happiness. "Bill's alive!"

He remembered the rush of love she had felt towards Bill just before the battle, and he found he couldn't match her enthusiasm. "That's good," he said. At this moment, he wanted nothing more than to get the fuck out of here. He reached for his phone and called Pam, who answered on the first ring. "Pam…"

"Finally! I have been-"

"Pam," he interrupted her. "Sookie lives."

"Bill?"

"Yes, and Bill, too," he said. "Not Clancy. Bring the van."

Sookie had passed out, whether from exhaustion or loss of consciousness he did not know, and he lifted her up, holding her close to his chest. Niall stepped in front of him as he tried to make his way over the corpses and out of the room.

"I can see from your pallor that you're weak and hungry," the fairy said. "Don't feed on her. She's lost enough blood already."

Irritated, Eric pushed past Niall, but he stopped at the broken door and turned around. "You should know by now that I would never cause this woman harm. Don't dare insult me again by suggesting otherwise."

By the time he exited the hospital, Pam had already backed the van up to the door. He was pleased to see that they had brought a mattress to transport anyone who was injured, and he laid Sookie on it while Pam and Maxwell went inside to get Bill. He was practically staggering with his need for blood now, and he folded himself across the back seat of the van. Pam and Maxwell returned with Bill, laid him on the mattress beside Sookie, and then lifted the mattress back into the van.

The van was very quiet as Pam drove towards Bon Temps. She and Maxwell had, no doubt, seen Clancy's body – or what remained of it – and they were both somber. Eventually, though, Pam asked, "What will Niall do, Eric?"

"He didn't tell me, but I would expect him to close the last remaining portal." He finished the bottle of blood that Pam had handed back to him from a cooler between her and Maxwell. "I hope he does."

"It will be too bad if they leave this world," she sighed. "I love them so much. They're so hard to catch."

"I never had a fairy," Maxwell said.

Pam looked away from the road to grin at him. "Yum," she said, and Maxwell chuckled.

Eric closed his eyes. "Be quiet," he said sharply. He regretted it as soon as he'd said it; after all, they had only been trying to be cheerful in the wake of a friend's final death. They fell into silence again until Eric said, "Clancy lives on in Bill." He was reassuring himself more than they. He was the one who had ordered Clancy to forfeit his long life for Sookie's.

"As you live on in Sookie," Pam murmured, almost to herself.

It was an odd, cryptic thing for her to say, and he opened his eyes to look at her, but she was staring straight ahead at the road.

When they reached Sookie's house, Eric and Pam carried her inside to her bed. Pam laid a pack of True Bloods on the bedside table. "You'll be okay?" she asked him.

"We both will, thanks to you," he said, remembering the horrendous night before.

"Just following orders, Master."

"A welcome change."

Pam smiled. "I didn't say it would last."

He closed Sookie's front door as Pam and Maxwell drove off to deliver Bill to his own house. The plan was for Maxwell to stay with Bill and give him blood as needed until morning. Felicia would replace Maxwell the following night. After that, Bill would have to make his own arrangements or rely on True Blood.

Eric walked back to Sookie's bedroom and sifted through her chest of drawers until he found a gown that looked loose-fitting and soft. He leaned over her and smoothed her hair back. "Sookie, wake up." Her eyes drifted open. "You don't want to go to bed covered with blood and dirt, do you?" She shook her head. "Come, dear one," he said.

He helped her up and into the adjoining bathroom, where he started the hot water running and undressed her, mindful of all her wounds. Fortunately, her stitches were such that she could sit in an inch or two of water while he bathed her. The injuries he had seen earlier in the hospital were healing fast, which pleased him. Sookie leaned her head back on the edge of the bathtub and kept her eyes on his face as he took care of her. When he had finished and the water was swirling loudly down the drain, he helped her out of the tub and wrapped her in a towel. She stepped into him and laid her head on his chest as he held her to him.

"Is that better?" he asked. He felt her nod against him, and he smiled.

When she was dry, he slid her gown over her and guided her back to bed. He had nothing clean for himself, so he tossed all his clothes aside before he joined her. She reached for his hand and tugged him closer until he was settled in beside her. He felt love from her again… not a sudden wave as it had been earlier for Bill, but a blossoming warmth as she fell asleep in his arms.