Pam drove them to Sookie's house the next night in her car. After the meeting, she planned to visit Miriam, who had been admitted to the hospital again, while Eric stayed with Sookie. Their first knock on Sookie's door wasn't answered, so Eric rapped more loudly. He could hear voices from the television. When Sookie finally opened the door, she looked haggard. He couldn't see any signs of injury on her, but she moved as if her body ached.
He put his hands on her shoulders and studied her face. "What's happened?" he demanded. If she had been hurt or in danger, he should have known it. He silently cursed the broken blood bond.
Pam, who had been picking up scents, spoke before Sookie could reply. "Ohhh, who's been entertaining… Wait…" She held up one hand and sniffed again for dramatic effect. "An elf, a fairy, and Bill?"
The fairy he could understand, but an elf? Bill?
A humorless smile curved Sookie's lips. "You been taking tracking lessons from Heidi?"
"As a matter of fact, I have," Pam replied proudly. "There's an art to drawing in air to sample it, since we no longer need to breathe."
Sookie made an "Ohhh" sound with her mouth and looked up at Eric, who didn't give a fuck about tracking lessons and wanted to know what was going on with her. Now.
"Come on inside, you two," Sookie said, stepping out from under Eric's hands to stand aside. "I'll tell you about my little adventure while I heat you up some True Bloods."
They followed her to the kitchen, and Pam sat at the table while Eric paced. "Well?" he pressed.
"Long story short, I got chased by these two guys, and I had to run over to Bill's for help. Dermot and this elf, Bellenos, went after the guys. After that, I took a shower and fell asleep by accident. So nothing's wrong."
This last bit she directed at Eric, who nodded in grim acceptance. What could he do, after all? With the bond gone, she was vulnerable. He knew it, and so did she. It was as simple as that.
He and Pam drank their bloods in silence until they all heard a knock at the back door. Pam set down her empty bottle and went to answer it. Eric knew that she was curious about the humans who had agreed to help them kill Victor.
"Yes?" she said, and her voice sounded much too cheerful.
A male voice replied, "Where is Miss Stackhouse?"
"Sookie!" Pam called. Now she sounded positively gleeful. "You're wanted!"
Sookie went to the back door with Eric right behind her. He saw – and smelled – the freshly decapitated heads before she did. Beside the elf, who must be Bellenos, stood Dermot, and the combined scents of fairy and blood were enthralling. Pam was chattering to Dermot and Bellenos in an airy, deadpan way, and Eric fought a smile. However amusing he found Pam's antics, the fact that these two men had wanted to harm Sookie, and the fact that he hadn't been able to sense it at all, still made him unhappy.
When Pam moved from the door, Sookie saw the heads for herself, and her hand flew to her mouth. A second later, she turned on her heel and ran down the hall. Her bathroom door closed with a slam that shook the picture frames on the walls.
"I sometimes forget that my niece is human," Dermot said, looking apologetic.
"Well, I think they're lovely. Just lovely!" Pam cooed.
"Where are the bodies?" Eric asked them. "I don't want Sookie to be troubled with this."
"After I had anointed my wound with their blood, we destroyed the bodies," Dermot said.
"Except for these, which I took for myself," the elf said. He held up the head in his hand. "After they have been shown to the kin in Monroe, they will also be destroyed." He handed over two dirty, wet wallets, along with some filthy and blood-soaked scraps of paper. Pam took these, looking utterly disgusted, and laid them on the hall table beside her. "These probably contain information that could prove useful."
"What about their vehicle?" Eric asked.
"Vehicles," Bellenos corrected. "They arrived on four-wheelers. We will take care of them."
Eric noticed that the fairy and elf looked at each other and grinned. He peered behind them and saw that the four-wheelers were parked a short distance behind them.
"It seems you've left nothing to worry Sookie, for which I thank you," Eric said.
They each gave him a solemn nod and headed back to the four-wheelers. Pam laughed as Eric shut the door and led the way back to the kitchen. Pam rinsed out her bottle and threw it away, then took Eric's, which had been abandoned half-full on the table. Sookie returned to them a few minutes later.
Raising the True Blood in a mocking toast, Pam told Sookie that her visitors had left. "They were sorry it was too much for your human sensibility. I'm assuming you didn't want to keep the trophies?"
Sookie's expression was stony – her attempt, Eric knew, to hold on to her composure. "No, I didn't want to keep the heads," she said. She sighed. "Kelvin and Hod, rest in peace."
In hell, Eric added for himself.
"Those were their names? That'll help in finding out who hired them," Pam noted. She drained the rest of Eric's bottle of blood and set it aside.
"Um… where are they?" Sookie asked.
Eric smiled a little, unable to help himself. "Do you mean your great-uncle and his elf buddy, or do you mean the heads, or do you mean the bodies?"
Sookie gave him a dry look on her way to the cabinet. She took a glass and walked to the refrigerator. "Both," she said. "All three."
"Dermot and Bellenos have left for Monroe," he told her as he watched her pour herself a soda. He explained that the fairy and elf had been very satisfied with their kill.
She sipped her drink. "I'm glad for them." Then she frowned. "I should tell Bill. I wonder if they found the car?"
"They found four-wheelers," Pam replied, grinning. "I think they had an excellent time driving them."
"So… the bodies?" Sookie asked with a wince.
"They've been dealt with, though I think the two of them took the heads back to Monroe to show the other fae. But they'll destroy them there," Eric assured her.
Sookie gave him a nod of grim satisfaction, and he saw that her shoulders relaxed slightly.
"Oh! Dermot left their papers," Pam said.
She disappeared into the hall and returned with the mens' meager belongings. Sookie saw the state of them and immediately found an old towel to spread over the kitchen table. With no ceremony whatsoever, Pam dropped the wallets and papers and went to the sink to wash her hands.
Gingerly, Sookie reached for one of the wallets and unfolded it. "Hod Mayfield from Clarice," she murmured, reading the name on the man's driver's license. "He was twenty-four." She searched the pockets and the clear, plastic photo and card sleeves, withdrawing a photograph of a fat woman, along with various identification cards and wrinkled receipts. Sookie handed him a worn card that read "Proof of Insurance" across the top. "That means he had a regular job," she said. She pulled out a stack of twenty-dollar bills. "Gosh, that seems like a lot."
"Some of our employees don't have a checking account. They cash their paychecks every time and live on a cash basis," Pam said.
"Yeah, I know people who do that, too," Sookie said. She fanned out the bills for them to see, and it was a little difficult because they were so new and crisp. "But this money is all twenties, right from the machine." She looked up at Eric. "Might be a payoff." Eric nodded but said nothing. He and Pam watched with minimal interest as Sookie searched the other man's wallet. He doubted that it would contain anything much different from Hod's, and he was right in thinking so. "I guess they could have taken me up to Clarice through the woods on the four-wheelers, but what would they have done with me then?" she mused. "I thought one of them…" Her forehead crinkled. "Through his thoughts, I caught a glimpse of an idea about a car trunk…"
Eric remembered opening a car trunk in Jackson and finding Sookie, raped and almost drained, in Bill's arms. He banished that thought quickly.
"Who do you think sent them, Sookie?" he asked.
"I sure can't question them to find out," she said, prompting a laugh from Pam. She suggested that the Pelt woman might have sent them, but for the fact that they weren't from Shreveport.
Eric disagreed with her on that; a person as obsessed with vengeance as Sandra Pelt could just as easily hire men from other places. In fact, she might be more likely to do so. "We've had eyes looking for her in Shreveport, but no one's spotted her," he said. He wouldn't be surprised if she had left the city altogether.
"So this Sandra's goal is to destroy you, your place of work, and anything else that gets in her way?" Pam asked.
"That sounds about right," Sookie said with a wry smile. "But evidently she's not behind this. I have too many enemies." She sighed.
Pam gave her a smirk. "Charming."
Before Eric could tell Sookie not to rule out Sandra, she asked Pam about Miriam.
"She's going to pass soon," Pam told her in a stony voice. "I'm running out of options, and I'm running out of hope that the process can be legal."
Considering that they were plotting the assassination of their regent, they had already abandoned "legal" as an option.
Eric's phone rang. Frowning, he stood and paced away as he flipped it open. "Yes?" he answered without bothering to look at the caller ID.
"Ah, my betrothed." It was Freyda.
"Your Majesty." His eyes darted over to Sookie and Pam, and he hurried to the living room. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I have received the copies of your latest appeal, Eric," she said. "This rejection was handed down by the Ancient Pythoness."
"Yes."
"You realize, of course, that you have exhausted every option at this point, correct? I expect to have the marriage papers signed and returned to me by the end of next week."
"I had decided to remain optimistic that you might change your mind and take my own wishes into account."
She laughed, low and throaty. "Appius Livius' arrangement benefits both of us, Eric. Especially you. With everything I have offered you-" Distracted by a loud noise from the kitchen, he missed the end of her sentence. He ran back to Sookie and Pam. "Eric?" Freyda said. "Are you still there?"
The noise had come from Sookie's chair, which lay behind her on the floor. Her eyes flew to his, full of hurt and anger. He glanced at Pam, whose face told him everything.
"Excuse me," he said to Freyda. "There is a crisis. I'll return your call later."
"What-"
He closed the phone before she could say anything else. "Pam, I am very angry with you," he said slowly, struggling to keep his voice under control. "I am… seriously angry with you." In an effort to keep his fangs retracted, he clenched his jaw tightly until he could speak again. "Leave this house now and remain silent." It hadn't been a maker's order, but she obeyed him nonetheless.
When he heard the back door close behind her, he looked at Sookie. "I love you," he told her, and he wished that she could feel the truth of it, the unwavering strength of it. Then he told her everything. He would pause occasionally, giving her a chance to respond, but she had nothing to say. He turned away from her after the admission that he would be forced to put her aside, filled with a bitterness he could not keep from his voice. "I know you've always insisted that you weren't my true wife, so presumably that would not be so difficult for you." There was no sharp reply from her, and he met her eyes again, drawing reassurance from what he saw in her face: that it would be difficult. That she did care. "Though I believe it would be," he murmured.
Pam had been right all along. He should have told Sookie everything. She wasn't blaming him or ranting about vampires' ways or running from him. She was afraid to lose him. She might, perhaps, want to fight for him. If he had trusted her enough to give her the truth long before now, she might have been fighting alongside him. But all he could do now was assure her that he had done everything he could.
"Oh, no…" she whispered when he had finished. Her eyes were welling, but she seemed determined to keep her tears at bay.
"Oh, yes. I've appealed to Felipe, but I haven't heard from him. Oklahoma is one of the rulers eying his throne. He may want to placate her." Assuming he's alive. "In the meantime, she calls me every week, offering me a share of her kingdom if I'll come to her."
"So she's met you face to face," Sookie said.
He wasn't sure why she would assume that, but he nodded. "Yes. She was at the summit in Rhodes to make a deal with the King of Tennessee about a prisoner exchange." He stepped closer to her and took her hand. She didn't pull it away. "Sookie, you must believe that I had no knowledge of this beforehand, that I had no choice in the matter, and that I have done – that I am doing – everything in my power to undo it. I realize I should have told…"
Her gaze had wandered from his, and he spun around to see what she was looking at behind him. Bubba was grinning at them through the window over the sink.
Sookie pulled her hand away. She seemed grateful for the distraction. "Let him in," she said.
It was unlike her not to welcome a guest herself, especially one she liked as much as she did Bubba. Perhaps she simply wanted "a moment," as the humans put it. He did as she asked and met Bubba at the back door. Bubba sped inside, obviously eager both to escape the now pouring rain and to see Sookie.
Eric walked back to the kitchen at a normal pace, and when he arrived, Bubba was telling Sookie that Pam was still outside.
"You and Mr. Eric doing okay in here?" he asked.
Before either of them could reply, there was a knock at the front door. Unless Sandra had sent more of her hired men after Sookie, this had to be Colton and Audrina. Eric followed Sookie to the door just in case, and he could hear Bubba sloshing along behind him. Colton and Audrina were indeed the ones at the door, though Pam had evidently intercepted them first. She had a hand clamped on either of their shoulders.
"Please come in," Sookie said, stepping aside for them. Pam released them, and they hurried in as she looked up at Eric over Sookie's shoulder, not moving from her spot on the porch. "And you, too, Pam," Sookie insisted. "We need to put our heads together."
After Pam had stepped in and shut the door, the three of them returned wordlessly to the kitchen. Freyda was forgotten for the moment; they had to plan an assassination.