Chapter Text
Eric was combing his hair and straightening his suit when Pam peered around the doorframe and tapped it lightly with her knuckles. "Cleo's here to see you before you all meet up with Andre," she said. "And, um… Russell's here, too. Any idea what he wants?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." He took one last look at himself in the mirror to make sure he was presentable for the night's events, then turned out of the small hotel bathroom. "I'll see Russell first," he said, motioning for Pam to open the door.
But when Pam opened the door, already bowing her head in deference to Mississippi's king, Russell swept in, dragging Cleo behind him. "What I have to say is no secret!" he exclaimed. "I am the happiest vampire in Rhodes!"
Eric raised an eyebrow. "What's the happy occasion?" he asked. He cast a wondering glance to Cleo, but his fellow sheriff looked as nonplussed as he himself did.
"In a few short hours, I shall be marrying Bart Crowe," Russell pronounced.
"Let me offer my congratulations," Eric replied with a dip of his head.
"And I, Russell," Cleo said. "A happy century to you both."
"Oh, it will be much longer than a century." The king was beaming, and Eric found himself battling a once-foreign emotion that he now experienced with some regularity: jealousy. "I was told that you can perform marriages," he said to Eric.
"Yes," Eric said with some surprise. "I thought it would be helpful, as a sheriff, to be able to officiate marriages in my area. Saves me some paperwork and--"
"Wonderful, wonderful. You will officiate our wedding tonight. Damned priest didn't show up."
"Priest?" Eric asked with some amusement.
Russell waved his hand. "Bart's a Catholic, wanted to be traditional and all that. The priest was accommodating enough to agree to officiate the wedding of a vampire, but this evening he found out that the wedding was between two men. Fucking bigot. Anyway, my Bart will have to make do with the Church of the Loving Spirit tonight. I assume that's where you got your certification?"
Eric nodded. The CLS had been established in recent years to facilitate vampires and humans who wanted to worship together. They met at night, of course, and they held the controversial belief that vampires could be ordained. Church-goers were generally Christians, particularly in the South, but the CLS embraced all religions.
"Wonderful," Russell said. Everything was "wonderful" for him today. He handed Eric the knife for the blood exchange. "I leave this in your hands."
Not long after, Eric found himself slipping on the ceremonial robe and pulling the black velvet hood forward to cover his head. The bonding knife was a small but noticeable weight in the right pocket of the robe. He waited beside the dais as the two kings stepped up and faced each other. Cataliades was already in his place, standing beside the out-of-state lawyer who had drawn up the marriage contract, and Quinn the tiger occupied the dais as well, apparently serving as the Master of Ceremonies. Eric scowled behind the hood.
Quinn looked over in Eric's direction and motioned for him to begin. Eric strode ceremoniously onto the stage and took his place between Russell and Bart. He raised his arms to call for silence.
"The ceremony begins!" Quinn announced as if the vampires present didn't already know that. Eric ground his teeth in annoyance. "Let all be silent and witness this joining," Quinn added for good measure.
Now shut up, Eric thought. He pulled back the hood and looked out over the audience. He felt a surge of admiration in his blood, and his eyes flitted to find the source. Sookie.
"We are here to witness the joining of two kings," he proclaimed in his most commanding voice. "Russell and Bart have agreed both verbally and by written covenant to ally their states for a hundred years." The two men looked at each other and smiled broadly. "For a hundred years, they may not marry any other. They may not form an alliance with any other, unless that alliance is mutually agreed and witnessed. Each must pay the other a conjugal visit at least once a year." Judging by their mutual lovestruck expressions, the conjugal visits would be much more often and much less for the sake of duty. "The welfare of Russell's kingdom shall come second only to his own in Bart's sight," Eric went on, "and the welfare of Bart's kingdom shall come second only to his own in Russell's sight." He turned to Russell. "Russell Edgington, King of Mississippi, do you agree to this covenant?"
Russell beamed more than ever. "Yes, I do," he said, extending his hand to Bart.
"Bartlett Crowe," Eric continued, turning to the other man, "King of Indiana, do you agree to this covenant."
"I do," Bart replied solemnly. He reached out and clasped Russell's hand.
The tiger knelt and held out the chalice for the blood exchange, placing it under the kings' hands. In a flash, Eric withdrew the bonding knife and made a slice in both of their wrists, which bled into the chalice. So clean were the cuts that the knife had no spot of blood on it. Eric slipped it back into the robe.
After each drinking from the chalice, Russell and Bart kissed… and kissed. No, the conjugal visits would not be limited to once a year. Eric stood aside and watched as the kings and the lawyers signed the official agreement. It was done.
"The marriage is sacred for one hundred years!" he announced.
He followed the happy couple as they stepped off the dais and began mingling with the high-spirited audience. There was much small talk to be made, and he fell into it with the familiarity and ease of centuries. Not to mention the boredom of centuries. Sophie-Anne and her entourage were hosting serious discussions in one corner. Eventually, as he pretended to listen to a Tennessee sheriff's ramblings about the potential profit to be gained by using Bubba to stage Elvis sightings, he saw that Sookie had been added to the queen's circle.
Some time after that, he saw Andre guide her away from the queen and out into the hallway used by waiters and other service staff. He excused himself from hearing the laments of one of Russell's subjects, a casino owner from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and made his way to the exit. He felt Sookie's distress even before he pushed through the door. Andre had backed her against a wall and was holding his bleeding wrist over her mouth.
Rage surged up through him, but he bit it back. Only one strategy would prevail here if he valued both Sookie's life and his own: caution.
"Andre, why are you doing this?" he asked, hoping that his tone was more curious than threatening. He didn't think he succeeded.
Andre bared his fangs as he turned, and Eric could see that he was not pleased at the interruption. "Are you questioning the will of your queen?"
Caution. A light touch. Confidence.
He paused for a few seconds, precious time to think fast and to summon the tone he needed. "Andre, let me offer a suggestion. She must be kept happy or she won't cooperate anymore." He cocked his head in Sookie's direction. "We've exchanged blood several times, Sookie and I. In fact, we've been lovers." He spoke as if he remembered everything, but also as if it meant nothing to him. He had no qualms about lying to a snake like Andre. "I think she wouldn't be so balky if I were the blood giver," he continued, referring to Sookie as if she weren't even there. The way Andre saw her. "Would that suit your purposes? I'm under oath to you." He finished this speech with a bow of his head.
Andre said nothing at first, but he did release Sookie. He looked back and forth between Eric and Sookie, then said to her with a leer, "You look like a rabbit hiding under a bush while the fox tracks her." He considered her for a few moments. "You did do my queen and me a large service… more than once. If the end result will be the same, why not?" He turned again to Eric, who hoped his face wasn't betraying the relief he felt. "All right, Eric. As long as she's bonded to someone in our kingdom. I've only had a drop of her blood to find out if she was part fae. If you've exchanged blood with her more than once, the bond is already strong." You have no idea. "Has she answered well to your call?"
The idea of Sookie answering his "call" was about as likely as a Were building a snowman on a full moon night in hell, but Eric swallowed his amusement and answered without hesitation. "Yes, she heels nicely."
Sookie was not stupid; she bowed her head in submission and said nothing. Good girl, Eric thought.
"Well, then, go on," said Andre, motioning from Eric to Sookie.
This had not been part of the plan. The plan had been to take her to his room and make a good show of it. Creating a full blood bond with Sookie was unthinkable. She would resent it, and he himself would be even more at risk than he was already by his tie to her. The fact that Andre would have this knowledge made the scenario even bleaker.
"Right here?" he stalled. "I'd prefer somewhere more private."
Andre crossed his arms. "Here and now." There was no hint of leniency in his tone.
Sookie's wide, frightened eyes found his, and Eric met her gaze steadily. "Sookie…" This is the best I can do.
She gave a small nod. "Eric." Then she offered her neck to him, an antelope giving herself to the lion, not because she trusted him, but because she had no choice.
He took the edges of his robe in his hands and brought them up around Sookie, bracing them against the wall behind her. If he had to bond with her in this public hallway with Andre standing by, this was the only thing he could do to keep it between them – personal, the way it was meant to be.
"Eric, no sex," she breathed in a voice that was obviously meant to be stern, but instead sounded unhappy and vulnerable.
Vulnerable was what they would always be to each other now, with no feelings hidden. Dangerous. Intimate. He pushed her collar away with his nose, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to the pulse in her neck, inhaling her scent deeply as her arms found their way around him and held on. He sank his teeth in hard and fast. With no orgasm to make this moment pleasurable for her, Sookie gasped with the pain of it. Eric lowered one hand to her back, gently gliding his fingers up and down through the thin material of her clothes. No matter how many times he drank from her, the sublime taste of her blood never failed to take him by surprise. Her heart was racing, which made her blood pulse more forcefully into his mouth. After an appropriate time, he licked and sealed the wound.
"Now, Sookie," he said hoarsely, pulling back a little. He raised the arm he had put behind her back and offered his wrist, but that position proved awkward. Sookie shook her head slightly and unbuttoned his shirt with trembling fingers. It wasn't the first time she had undressed him. He wished he could remember. Her tongue darted out briefly to wet her lips, and she leaned closer to bite him. Remembering the knife in the pocket of his robe, he reached for it and cut his own chest. It would be easier for her that way.
Sookie covered the cut with her mouth and drank from him. Every sensation – the pull when she sucked, the warmth of her tongue against his skin, the scrape of her teeth – was bliss. Though she didn't know what was happening, the very idea that he was giving himself to her, that she was taking him for her own, swelled the rush of desire that always accompanied a blood exchange. His blood was coursing through her now more than ever before, and hers spread through his body like hot light. She sucked hard a few more times, and his body reacted as if she were sucking something else entirely. He came with a soft, suppressed moan, silently cursing Andre for preventing this moment from being in a bed, with a happy and willing Sookie wrapped around his body, both of them sated with mutual pleasure.
The wound in his chest had healed, and Sookie buttoned his shirt up again. Behind him, the door to the large assembly room flew open and an unwelcome voice yelled, "What the hell are you doing?"
Sookie froze in his arms.
"They are obeying orders," said Andre.
"My woman doesn't have to take orders from you."
His woman?
Eric was happy to see that Sookie looked as offended as he did at the tiger's words of ownership.
Sookie stepped back from Eric and looked away from him as he fell back against the wall. "Andre, I'll finish the job I undertook to do for the queen here because I shook on it." She swallowed, her eyes hard. "But I'll never work for you two again. Eric… thank you for making that as pleasant for me as you could."
"Oh, no problem," he said a little vaguely, his mind still a tangle of desire and anger.
"Quinn, I'll talk to you later, as we agreed," she finished.
She stormed away, leaving Eric with Andre and Quinn. Andre, apparently unfazed, nodded with satisfaction that the deed was done and returned to the main room.
"Did you force yourself on her?" Quinn demanded.
Eric gave him a withering look and pushed past him to go to his own room and change.