Chapter 51: Only Believe

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Even as he lunged for Bill Compton, Eric knew with absolute certainty that he would only be able to get to him—be able to stake him and twist his head from his shoulders—if Appius allowed it. Still, Eric basked in the terror of Bill’s expression.

But only for a moment.

Then, he felt the inevitable pain as his maker punched him so hard that his forward momentum towards Bill was not only brought to a halt but also reversed.

Eric slammed into the marble floor of the ballroom hard enough to hear it crack. And then he felt his body make a dent in the floor as Appius stomped his taut stomach. The Viking could feel his back snap at one of his lower vertebrae and spared a thought for Jade Flower, whom he’d killed earlier that same evening by demolishing her spine. The Viking was thankful that his own spinal injuries had not left him immobile.

To be immobile and to be in Appius’s clutches were never a good combination.

Despite the pain he felt thanks to Appius’s “tender mercies,” Eric didn’t regret his effort to get to Bill. The terrified look on Bill’s face had been a thing of beauty, and Eric spared the effort to smirk at the younger vampire.

“Sookie will pay for everything you have done to me!” Bill yelled out.

The Viking growled, even as he sent a burst of love and strength to Sookie. He felt it coming right back to him. Indeed, he’d felt her giving him strength all along, which had made resisting Appius just a little easier.

“William!” Appius snapped. “What have I told you?”

“She is not Sookie,” the younger vampire replied, shamefaced.

The elder nodded. “She will have no name as far as you are concerned,” he paused and turned to look at Eric for a moment, “until you turn her, William.”

That statement made the Viking growl even more.

“The phone!” Appius demanded of Bill even as he smirked at his eldest progeny.

Bill immediately handed the device to his master and then quickly went back to stand next to Alexei.

Appius considered Eric for a moment. He bent down where his eldest child was still healing on the floor and whispered to him. “I do not think I will trust you enough to dial after all, but you will give me a number where I can reach your telepath, or I will end Karin.”

Eric’s eyes moved quickly to his older child.

“But before I kill her, I’ll spend years with her—years where her mind is as it is now. And then years when I allow her to be in her own mind again,” Appius threatened, at a volume only Eric could hear. “The things I will make her do when I control her,” he continued—as if savoring the taste of his words and, especially, the thought of the evil he could do to Karin. “And then I will torture her with the knowledge of all that she has done before I torture her body. By the end, she will beg me for her death—like you once did. Do you remember? When you were very young?”

Eric glared at his maker.

“Or,” Appius said as he stood up, “you will give me Sookie’s telephone number. It is a small thing, after all.”

The Viking looked at his child. “Will you let Karin go if I give you the number.”

“She will be as free as a bird tomorrow night,” Appius promised.

“Now,” Eric said, trying to sound firm.

“Do not test my patience, child,” the elder warned. “I merely wish to speak to the woman you bonded yourself with.”

Eric nodded almost imperceptivity as he sent regret and caution to his bonded.

“1-318-555-8235,” Eric said softly.

“Ah! Progress!” Appius said in a celebratory tone as he dialed the phone.

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FIVE MINUTES EARLIER

Trying not to be too distracted with what his sister was doing next to Appius, Mark Stonebrook carefully eyed the Weres and other two-natured creatures in the large ballroom.

Mark was pissed off because he was clearly the only one in their group who seemed concerned that they were completely fucking surrounded! His sister was too focused on Eric Northman, as were Bill Compton and Karin. Despite the fact that only Karin was bespelled, all three of them seemed obsessed by the large, blond vampire—though for different reasons.

But the most obsessed of all was undoubtedly Appius himself; the ancient was looking at Eric as if he were a toy that he’d been forbidden for a thousand years! For a moment, Mark almost felt sorry for Appius. It was clear that the elder vampire wanted Eric’s love and devotion more than anything else in the world. Appius’s desire had festered, rotting the ancient for a millennium.

Mark recognized that Appius wanted to project that he was perfectly in control of Eric—and of himself. However, the Were-witch could sense that it was the child—through his resistance and resilience—who was actually in control, though Eric was certainly powerless in the grips of his maker.

Mark sighed. He was all too familiar with the basic truth that power and control were two different things.

Very different things.

Indeed, those capable of unimaginable power, such as his sister and Appius, often lacked control of themselves. And—perhaps because of their power—they could not deal with situations when they were not all-powerful.

Mark looked at and pitied the other two witches in their group. They were about as self-aware as glamoured humans, for they were fully attuned to Hallow, ready to do anything she told them to do. They practically worshipped her, and his sister loved the adoration. Of course, the other witches were also high on V, thanks to a dosage offered by Hallow after Appius had decided to ditch his previous plan and make a more frontal approach.

Mark knew that the other witches would likely become cannon fodder—or meals for the insane vampire, Alexei—if he didn’t protect them.

And he would—if he could. But his priority was Hallow.

Always his sister.

Mark wished fervently that he and his sister had never met Appius Livius Ocella. Better yet, he wished that Hallow had never met Bill Compton—since he was the reason why Appius was in the equation to begin with!

The male Were-witch’s heart pounded as Eric Northman made a leap for Bill. For a split second, Mark thought that the warrior would take out Compton, but Appius flung Eric to the ground like a ragdoll, eliminating that hope.

Mark shook his head a little—as if he were answering “no” to some kind of unspoken cosmic question. In truth, he wasn’t sure what he was saying “no” to. His sister’s obsession with Eric Northman? Appius’s sadism? Bill’s fawning over Appius? Alexei’s rabid insanity? The mass of the queen’s guards just waiting for an opening to attack? Mark’s own complicity in making sure that no attack could get to his sister, Appius, or their group?

Despite all of his reservations about the situation, Mark stood ready to, once again, cast a shield that would surround them all with protective magic.

He looked at his sister.

Protective. That was the emotion he felt when he looked at her.

It was all he had ever wanted to do for her—protect her. But she was her own worst enemy, and she’d put herself on a path from which no protective spell Mark knew could save her.

To his side, Mark heard Karin grunt as Appius once more bent down to whisper to Eric so that no one else could hear. Mark focused on the beautiful vampiress. From what he’d been able to find out about her, she had been trying to protect her maker from Appius when the elder vampire captured her.

Once again, Mark felt a sense of connection with Karin. They were both protectors. And Mark sensed that—like him—she was willing to sacrifice anything to protect the one she loved most.

Mark had heard Appius snidely refer to her as “Karin the Slaughterer” the night before. And—not being able to sleep even once his sister had been down for the day—Mark had used one of his connections, an old witch in Belgium, to find out about the beautiful blond vampiress.

The witch hadn’t been able to tell him much, but she’d told him some.

Mark had learned that—despite her nickname—Karin wasn’t a brutish slaughterer. She was an assassin for hire, meticulous in her work and selective in her targets. She was a cold-blooded killer—to be sure. But she was not cold-hearted. If anything, she had rid the world of vampires who were a plague upon it. It was too bad she’d not succeeded with Appius.

As Eric called out a phone number to Appius, Mark continued to study Karin. She was suffering terribly. And Mark’s heart felt sick for her. She didn’t deserve this.

For a moment, he felt tempted to lift Hallow’s curse upon the woman. He knew that, to lift the magic spell, it would take only two things. The first was a single word spoken by a witch who had good intentions toward the bespelled vampiress. The second was the burning of a wooden stake close enough for Karin to inhale the fumes.

Mark wondered if Hallow even knew that he was aware of the hex-reversing charm she always snuck into her spells involving vampires. Oh—she’d told her brother all about it. But that telling had occurred on a day when Hallow was out of her mind on V—before she’d learned to fully channel the blood’s power and avoid most of its negative effects. Hallow had also told him how she put “backdoors” into other spells, too. She was self-aware enough to know that such counteractions to her spells were necessary—given the fact that her magic sometimes didn’t go the way she thought it would. In short, she was simply too strong to control her own magic at times, and she needed a way out of a spell when that occurred.

When Hallow told him of her countermeasures, Mark felt proud of his sister. Oh—he knew that these measures were not necessarily to protect others from her power. They were mostly so that Hallow could protect herself or reverse anything that she didn’t like so that she could try again. Still, Mark liked to think that the backdoors to the spells showed a sign that Hallow could be responsible with her magic if she chose to be. And that thought had heartened Mark over the years.

Now, knowing about the backdoor spell just tempted him as he looked at the pathetic vampiress who was all but foaming at the mouth to get to her maker. Karin had been so beautiful before Hallow took control of her; then, worse, she gave that control to Appius. And, again, something stirred in Mark as he looked at her.

Attraction?

Yes.

But mostly understanding.

Yes. He was tempted to set her free, especially given the fact that he couldn’t free himself of his obligation to his sister.

Mark shook his head, but this time he knew why his was motioning “no.”

He was denying Karin—and himself—their freedom.

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FIVE MINUTES EARLIER

Keeping her abject terror from the bond she shared with Eric had been the most difficult thing Sookie had ever done as she watched Appius manhandle her strong Viking as if he were a helpless infant.

She would gladly share anything—everything—with Eric. But she knew that the last thing he needed was her fear. He needed her confidence in him and her strength, so those were the emotions that she focused on sending his way.

From Eric, she’d been receiving a myriad of emotions—defiance, hopelessness, anguish, resolve, anger, fear.

By far, the most important emotion she’d felt from him was love, and she felt a burst of that emotion for her every few seconds—almost as if the vampire wanted to ensure that she understood his affection even if he was existing for his last moment.

Those bursts were his way of prioritizing her, despite his own dire situation. And, with each burst, she loved him all the more.

But there was also pain filtering into the bond—physical and emotional pain—as Eric fought against some of Appius’s commands. She was frightened by his pain, frightened most of all to acknowledge that she would do anything to take away his pain.

She would kill for him; indeed, she wanted to kill for him.

She should have been horrified by that thought.

But she wasn’t.

She should have been scared out of her wits.

But—to her surprise—she wasn’t. Overwhelming fear had practically crippled her in the trunk as she’d awaited what fate would bring her at the hands of Bill. She’d felt powerless. And a big part of her despaired in the moments before Eric ripped the trunk off of the car in order to get to her.

As she watched Appius towering over her bonded, despite the fact that he seemed several inches short of 6 feet tall, she should have felt powerless.

But she didn’t. Maybe—realistically—she was powerless. Maybe all of them were where Appius was concerned. But she wouldn’t let herself succumb to hopelessness.

There was too much to look forward to with Eric—even if they had to live thousands of years of hell before finding their way to each other in some kind of faraway afterlife. It didn’t matter; she knew that they would find one another.

They were not powerless. She wouldn’t let them be.

She stretched out her telepathy for all that she was worth. The range and control she could achieve would have been unthinkable for her the year before. Back then, she’d wished during the darkest parts of the night—when Gran was asleep—that she could miraculously wake up without her mind-reading gift. Night after night, Sookie had tried to draw her ability into herself, hoping it would collapse once and for all under the pressure of her hatred for it.

Despising her telepathy had made her hate a fundamental part of herself. At the time, Sookie hadn’t been self-aware enough to understand the damage that hatred had done to her confidence and her sense of selfhood. Bill had preyed upon all of her doubts about her worthiness—all of her worries about whether she could truly belong anywhere.

In stark contrast, Eric had helped her to understand that everything she’d once perceived to be a weakness was actually a strength. And—because of his encouragement—she now loved herself. And she appreciated her telepathy.

So she stretched it out. She skipped over the queen’s Weres for the most part, lingering only long enough to see Eric through their eyes, confirming what the video feed was telling her: He was still whole, but he was in the fight of his life struggling against his maker’s commands.

She targeted the witches within Appius’s group. The one that was obviously in charge of the others—Hallow—had the mind of a cesspool. The were-witch hungered for Eric—his blood and his body. She wanted to possess his mind. She saw him as powerful and beautiful. She longed to make him lust for her. She longed to control him. She was powerful, but she also had the most discontented—and disoriented—mind that Sookie had ever heard. Hallow was miserable.

Sookie vowed that she would put her out of her misery if she could—with prejudice.

The telepath left Hallow’s mind and jumped into another female witch—and then another. Their thoughts were useless. They both revered Hallow—and V. They’d do anything for the witch and the drug. Beyond that, they were mindless.

Sookie jumped into the male witch’s thoughts and immediately stiffened.

“What is it?” Thalia asked from next to her.

“Something promising,” she whispered. “Hallow’s brother doesn’t want to be here,” she said, closing her eyes tightly so that she could stay with him. But something unexpected happened; instead of simply spying on his thoughts, Sookie found herself able to push those thoughts in a general direction. She nudged a fleeting thought of regret within Mark Stonebrook and then “listened” as he moved fully into that thought. There was a substantial part of him that wanted to let Karin go. Another fleeting thought made Sookie believe that he might know how to release Eric’s elder child from the spell she was under.

Sookie pushed him into that thought—that memory.

She acknowledged the new facet to her telepathy without fear and pushed a little harder.

“Amelia. Octavia,” Sookie whispered—as if speaking any louder would interrupt the flow of Mark Stonebrook’s thoughts.

Cognizant that the telepath was exerting a kind of magic well beyond their own, the allied witches moved toward Sookie somewhat cautiously.

Sookie smiled slightly as she continued listening to Mark’s mind, nudging his thoughts along as needed. “Hallow put a backdoor—a failsafe—into the spell she’s usin’ on Karin.”

“What is it?” Octavia asked excitedly.

“Someone with natural power—a witch—must perform the failsafe,” Sookie reported. “A word has to be spoken. And the witch has to light a stake on fire—close enough for the vampire to smell it.”

“Do you know what da word is?” Octavia asked, her Creole accent quite noticeable.

Sookie pushed and caught the word right before Mark entered another thought related to how protective he was of his sister.

She opened her eyes as she left his head. “Freedom,” she said with a rueful laugh. “The word is ‘freedom.'” She shook her head. “The bitch probably enjoyed the idea of vampires begging for their freedom—saying that word again and again. So close to activating their way out of the spell in some ways, but impossibly far in others.”

Octavia nodded in agreement. “One like Hallow enjoys her sadistic games.”

“But why have a failsafe at all?” Hadley asked.

Octavia turned to the young vampire, but it was Amelia who responded. “For the inexperienced, a failsafe is needed as a protection in case something goes wrong. A more experienced witch will use a failsafe so that a spell can be undone quickly.”

“Hallow has never lacked power, but she has lacked control over it,” Octavia mused. “She has likely had many mishaps over the years and has needed to protect herself from them.” The elder witch scoffed. “I cannot imagine she put a failsafe in for any unselfish reason.”

“Can you do the counter-spell?” Sookie asked Amelia and Octavia. The telepath shook her head. “It won’t be easy to light a stake on fire inconspicuously. I have a hard enough time lightin’ a piece of wood without some paper or leaves or something.”

Octavia gave her a kindly look. “Don’t worry about fire,” she said, snapping her fingers and producing a jolt of smoke and flame. “I’ll just need to get close to dee vampiress who’s suffering from da spell.”

“Karin,” Sookie whispered.

Octavia nodded. “Karin,” she repeated. “It might not be easy. The other witches might attack us as soon as we show up.” She looked at her apprentice. “You cannot create fire as I can, so you will have to be the one to block any spells Hallow and the other witches send our way. You understand?”

Amelia bit her lip nervously. “I understand. I’ll try.”

“‘T’will be fine, girl,” Octavia said, giving Amelia a nod. “You are young, but you are capable of dis. I know it.”

Looking a little more confident, Amelia nodded.

“Okay—we need a plan for how to get you out there as safely as possible,” Sookie said, right as she felt a pang of caution coming from her bonded. Her eyes, which had settled back onto the video feed, closed as she used her telepathy to jump back into Mark Stonebrook’s head.

In it, she heard what he heard: Eric was giving Appius her phone number.

A movement from Mr. Cataliades on the other side of the room caught her attention. The demon lawyer—the one who had given her telepathy—was looking back at her, his expression meaningful. Sookie had pushed her telepathy farther than she’d realized that she could, but she needed help, so she pushed a thought to Mr. Cataliades. “Go into the male witch’s head. I can’t keep my focus on him, and I think he may have more to give.”

A momentary look of surprise came to Desmond’s face—not because Sookie projected to him. No—he was not surprised that her power was growing even before the eyes of everyone in the room. He was surprised that she trusted him with this. She had—understandably—been wary of him, for his neglect had been the reason why she’d lived most of her life without the guidance and help that would have made her telepathy into the gift that it had been intended to be. Instead, it had cursed her.

Despite his initial failures in her life, the part-demon held a great deal of fondness for Fintan’s progeny. And he knew that—tonight—he could begin to make those failings up to her. He also recognized that she’d pushed her request to him, rather than speaking it aloud, even though they were in a room of friends. She was protecting the secret of his own telepathy—even in her moment of great adversity.

Desmond nodded to signal that he would do as she wished, even as he marveled at her generosity of spirit. That, too, however, shouldn’t have surprised him. For Fintan had been the same way.

Understanding Mr. Cataliades’s signal that he would take over monitoring the mind likeliest to help them, Sookie took a deep breath and took her phone from Thalia, who’d been holding it since Eric’s earlier call. She was looking at it when it rang.

And then she answered.

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go to Chapter 52

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Thanks to everyone reading and commenting on this story! And a special thanks to Kleannhouse, the wonderful beta for this story!

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