Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE.

Damn that Thyra10 and her persuasive manner and puppy dog eyes. That woman goads and prods like a true champion.

Important: I debated with myself for a long time over whether to turn on anonymous reviews. My stumbling block is that I can't reply to said reviews - nothing more frustrating, and I've seen many an anonymous review with a question in them. Most of my reviews and PMs on the fics I've written consist of questions on them, and that's great for registered users, but some people aren't registered. I thought about answering questions on Twitter, but at 140 characters, I'd end up with 60 tweets to say what I want to say, and it still has the sticky registering issue - and why bother to change one registration hassle for another? So, my alternative, to save you non-registered types actually registering (because it is a pain and I was and still am reluctant to register as it smacks of effort) is to get a livejournal. I've turned on anonymous commenting, but have made it moderated - so that I don't come back to 600 Viagra ads. That means your comment will be seen and approved by me when I reply - which I can guarantee will be within 24 hours of it being asked - my LJ emails me. The direct address is linked under "Home Page" on my profile, and that way you can ask a question about my fics and I will answer it.

I struggled with who should tell this story – I was going with Pam, but Pam knows way more than Sookie does about specifics, as she was right there and Eric's not talking...'cept about zones. :D I had to go on Sookie's observations - which are designed for the reader. Sookie (and by default CH) doesn't spoonfeed the reader - you have to use your fabulous observation skills. DITF left me with some questions, but while other people seem to be concerned whether Sookie's professed love for Eric was 'just right' in a Goldilocks type scenario: What the hell were Appius and Alexei up to in Area Five?

"We came to wreck everything and ruin your life…God sent us."

Sonny Jim from Romper Stomper (1992).

I think back to how well Eric was handling things, until his maker turned up. How well it was going until the boy - the boy who was so not a boy - turned up. I don't know what's going to happen now, but I suspect that Appius and Alexei took a sledgehammer to his life. I've never seen Eric without hope, helpless, defeated and depressed. It was disturbing. I can only hope that his 'unwelcome business' from Appius is finished or will be finished soon. Looks like seeing him Tuesday is a dream I might have to give up. I dread what will happen now. I close my eyes and think back to how things were going and now…

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

Way back right after the takeover, Eric had told me that he'd need to be very alert to stay ahead of the King. He meant of course, that he'd have to plot overtime, be more devious, be more ruthless, and was concerned that Felipe de Castro was more ruthless and clever than he was. He was terribly busy following the Vegas kingship. For two months, he was hard at work keeping ahead of the King and making sure that he worked out ways to keep himself, his Area and his people free from too much interference. Interference would mean giving things up to the King. Felipe wasn't his friend or helper, and in the great competition of vampire life, he wanted everything he could get from Eric.

Eric didn't call me during that time, and I knew that he was busy. I'd wanted to see him, to work out our mutual issues, but I could tell from the bond that he was having a difficult time with keeping his Area well under the new regime. So I waited until he was good and ready, with enough breathing room. I stayed away from him as he'd wanted me to - so that he could focus on business and not getting killed. He did come to visit me one night of course, and the King just followed him straight here, so I could see Eric's whole point. If the King followed his Area Five Sheriff around, even when he was sneaking off to see me, then I bet the King was snooping around in every skerrick of Area Five business.

Eric had always had a bit of free time before that. But during those two months, it seems that he had no time for me. Of course, it could be that he didn't want me around the Las Vegas vamps – for all I know, they'd been sniffing around for something to hold over Eric's head. Eric's a true vampire in the keeping things to himself department, as he's certainly never told me. I followed his lead and logic with that, so maybe he didn't think I needed to know. It's not as if I relish spending all of my time in the company of vampires in general anyway. Specific vampires, sure, but not the generalised vampire "public".

I'd learned over time that that's what vampires did to other vampires – they looked for things to threaten; things that others cared about and then used it to make sure that the vampire - or human - behaved. Eric had done that to Bill, and it was done to Eric. Heidi told me how they used her son to get her to do what they wanted. It was a dangerous life if a vampire cared about you because other vampires were always looking for an advantage in their world, or to hobble an enemy. You could be threatened with pain for a lesson for someone else. You could be killed because you were an unwelcome distraction. Or you could be abandoned in a shack in Arkansas.

Eric had found out about Victor's plan to jockey for the state at the worst possible time – when I was in peril for my life. For sure, Victor had been watching them closely, but Eric never suspected that was for any other reason than just Felipe. That's how things went after a takeover - they watched you closely to see if they had made the right decision, and to instill the right amount of fear in you to play it straight - or as straight as a vampire Sheriff can. Eric wasn't all knowing, all seeing, and he couldn't cope with the sustained plotting from all sides at all times. He'd thought that the immediate threat came from Felipe, and surely it did. But he'd missed that Victor was also interested in my fate – namely that my fate was to meet a bloody and desolate end. All because I was a lot of use to Eric, at least on paper, but no use whatsoever to Victor. Just to stick the knife in, Victor wanted to watch Eric while it happened.

It's not as if Victor's given up on that eventuality either. Victor tried again – or rather his agents did. Bruno Brazell and Corinna waited until I was with Pam, and took their opportunity to remove me. If nothing else, that incident proved that if I looked to Eric to solve all my problems, keep me alive, he was rather inadequate for the job. The only person who helped me in the heat of that fight was…well, me. Pam was elsewhere, and I had to defend myself. It wasn't as simple as just letting Eric deal with it, as if I had to do nothing. He couldn't be everywhere and do everything - no more than Pam could. Pam couldn't physically be protecting me and also fighting Corinna, and Eric couldn't watch everyone at all times - he was only one man.

Eric was pushed to his limits in that time. When I'd rung him earlier that night to arrange to tell him about the various fairies dealings, he'd told me that he was meeting with Victor, and that that would be stressful. He didn't have endless time to deal with things if they weren't a problem in the immediate future, or worry about things. The subtext of that is that there was only so much that he could deal with, only so much he could be on top of, and I was well aware of that fact. There was a limit with how much I could lean on Eric, rely on him to do for me.

Honestly, I'd been able to count on Eric to deal with some things, but he had never shown the ability to be a superhero. That first night at Fangtasia, he hadn't been able to get to Longshadow before the vampire bit me, only after, and before I died. That night encapsulated how I had to be to be with Eric. If I hadn't put my arm up, if I'd been the type to freeze in the heat of the moment, then I would have been dead. It wasn't just Eric who kept me alive that night, but my own responsibility.

That held true with Victor's plans. Eric didn't and couldn't protect me from Victor's plans. If I couldn't take the evidence with my own eyes, even Pam told me that Eric couldn't afford to take his attention off vampire politics to deal with all my problems. That if I was selfish, and put too much weight on him, all the vampires in Shreveport could die. Indeed, the night she was driving me back to my house, she'd told him that it would be bad for him to come to my side and draw attention to us.

If that weren't enough, at a time when Eric had enough on his plate, his maker, Appius Livius – as he'd so generously allowed me to call him – had turned up. In a time when Eric needed to be free, to have no further worries, Appius had turned up to lay more problems on Eric's lap.

Eric told me that Appius had brought unwelcome business, and that seemed to be separate to whatever was going on with Alexei, because Eric had left my house in order to deal with business from Appius after both of their deaths. Unwelcome business really told me nothing, and anything is possible with a term like unwelcome business. Eric really did keep a lot of stuff to himself, just as some as I kept things from him. He'd told me before that he may not tell me everything, but what he did tell me was true, and I kept the same attitude with him. There were things that were none of my business, and things that were none of Eric's business. In the order of full disclosure, Eric had just as much information to spill as I did.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

But it was Appius' return – and the boy, the boy that was not in fact a boy – which he brought with him that brought big problems to our lives. I'd seen up close that Alexei was damaged. He was haunted in a tangible way by his past, the murder of his entire family and then brought back to existence. One could call it life, but it didn't seem as if it were something Alexei relished. Appius had brought him to Shreveport in the hopes that Eric could fix him.

Alexei was a terribly damaged vampire. Most vampires die in trauma – that's how you become a vampire. But what was done to Alexei was particularly awful. He wasn't just drained and murdered as most vampires were, and which was traumatic enough. After a thousand years, thinking back to the night that he died Eric still didn't think it was a merry old event and a new life he'd stumbled upon. Alexei had watched his whole family die in front of his eyes. Alexei had shown me himself that all he loved had died.

Rather than leave him to his grave, Appius needed to bring the exceptional to himself, in some twisted way to collect the variety of the centuries. He'd wanted to keep some Russian royalty because he hated the Bolsheviks, but he wasn't too concerned with whether it was really right to bring Alexei back to this life. Eric's own turning was different. He left behind children, and a hope that those he loved would go on. That even though he might be dead and gone, his human life was not in ruins. Alexei had no such hope. He was the ghost of a family that had been brought low, and then exterminated.

If that wasn't enough, he was subject to Appius' personal attentions. Eric had a point about the Roman attitude to their rights, and I have no doubt that he was right, but then Eric hadn't exactly recovered from his experience after a thousand years. Oh sure, he gave a great appearance of indifference, but when it came down to it, he was happy that he wouldn't be under his Maker's control. Eric wasn't indifferent, and he wasn't a damaged boy who'd already watched his family die before coming under Appius' "loving" care.

I wasn't sure that whatever life Appius had lived with Alexei was really that great for the kid's mental health. It wasn't anything but sick to go and visit your own grave, and even worse to prepare bones for it and then re-enact the manner of your own death on them. To burn them and pour acid on them, to cut them from your own flesh over time. Appius was truly a monster, and I wasn't too clear that either of them were terribly connected to reality. Alexei had to go along, but Appius thought that this was a great idea - so that Alexei could have peace - peace through de-boning.

Appius by himself was a scary figure. He was two thousand years old, and spoke of the many vampires he'd tried to make with relatively little feeling. He'd said that Eric was the first of those children to survive. I didn't know if he'd had no idea how to turn someone, or whether it was something that happened sometimes. It's not the most exact of sciences - or science at all - and as supernatural creatures all involved a little magic, that just made the process a less sure thing. But Appius certainly didn't seem to mind trying whenever he felt like he wanted to keep someone, and he'd killed Eric, taken his life without any guarantee that he would survive the process. That right there, tells me a lot about how much Appius cared about the wellbeing of the vampire children he made.

Eric told me that his maker was a good man for his times, and maybe he was. I'm sure that Ancient Rome was not a place where all life was sacred, and a man would never kill needlessly. But in our times, Appius was frightening, not only for his power over all of us, but because of the way that he thought about other people. Alexei had acknowledged this, when I'd asked him if he was a sadist, a total jerk or a child molester, and Alexei had told me all three. No wonder Eric loved and feared him, and talked about how the vampire had cared for him but also caused him decades of pain. Decades of that same care and pain had sent the already fragile Alexei over the edge.

Even more frightening, Alexei told Jason and I that Appius was not the type of vampire we were used to, the one that mainstreamed. All of the vampires I knew well mainstreamed. They kept their killing to a minimum, they tried to drink synthetic blood or willing humans, and they did those mundane 'human' things like paid taxes and owned property. They weren't rogue, and they signed into Areas. They weren't the most upstanding citizens, what with the fact that they did kill humans and each other, but they weren't the worst of their kind.

Appius didn't try to fit in with laws, and stuck to the shadows. He wasn't concerned overly with paying taxes, not killing humans or drinking synthetic blood. It was not a surprise to me that Alexei looked curiously around my kitchen as if he didn't often see one. I venture that the few times he did, it was part of a murder scene he'd just created. Alexei admitted that perhaps sticking to the shadows for so long had muddled their thinking, and lead to them cutting out some of his bones. That was a horrifying thought. Not only because that sort of thing can mess with your mind, but also because Alexei didn't feel too bad over mutilating himself and instead comforted me in my horror at what they had done.

Appius' entrance into Eric's life was a nightmare and one that Eric had no control over. I can only be thankful that it was ended so quickly, and didn't go on for weeks and weeks. Appius didn't look like he was going anywhere for a long time. I dread to think of what sort of mess that would have left in Eric's life – if he had one to come back to. Eric had limited control over his maker, and if Appius deemed that he would do what he would, Eric could only entreat him, not control the situation. That was dangerous for Eric, who is in a mainstreaming position.

Nor could Eric get Appius to control Alexei. Born of a carelessness that earmarked the vampire who lived in the shadows, Appius didn't watch Alexei carefully at all. It was of little consequence to him that two young men had died in Eric's Area. Eric himself was hardly mourning their deaths, but rather lamenting the trouble that it would visit on him. It made no real difference to either of them that these two young men died because they happened to be out at night, being all human. But at least Eric cared if it continued, if only for his own selfish reasons. Appius didn't care a whit.

With Victor peering around for Eric to make the wrong move, to be distracted, to show some reason why he should be punished or demoted, Appius had brought all this trouble to him, heaped Eric's already heaping plate chock full of trouble. Pam had said to me that Victor was looking for something to get on Eric - something that would bring him down, and discredit Eric. Appius seemed vowed and determined to find a way to hand such an advantage to anyone caring. As Eric pointed out, his maker didn't care about his position in this country, not even slightly.

Appius had brought Alexei and created a vulnerability that if Victor ever found out about, would surely lead to serious problems at the hands of his vampire bosses. If not Victor, then surely Felipe, or one of the Kings and Queens of the Amun clan would demand that vampire justice deal with Eric, Appius and Alexei. Eric covered it up as best he could, but there were spies in his Area – and he didn't know who was given that opportunity to take him down.

If it were known that there were still vampires like Alexei out there in the world, to the general human public, it would be a disaster. Eric was a mainstreaming vampire, no matter how brutal, no matter that he didn't routinely kill humans as a matter of course. His safety relied on the idea that mainstream vampires were safe, and that where they existed, people wouldn't die. Eric went to a great deal of trouble to market himself and his bar in this way. The posters that the were-witches had pinned up offering a reward for Eric had shown Eric as if killing was the last thing he would do. It was a lie of course, but that was important public relations. It was the way he marketed himself to the world, and he didn't broadcast the deaths in his Area. That's what vampires had vampire cleaners for.

Eric's job was to control the vampires in his Area – that's what all of his Sheriff duties were about. It's how he kept his job and his life – by controlling the vampires in his Area. Alexei, however, was shown to be uncontrollable. He had broken free of Appius' control, and even the night that Appius was at my house, he didn't feel that it was safe practice leaving Alexei around humans for too long. The fact that he didn't watch Alexei that closely made me shiver for Jason's safety and my own. When Appius didn't watch Alexei that reflected badly on the vampire who ran the Area – and here it's Eric.

If Eric couldn't do his job, Victor would not hesitate to see that weakness, and use it. I didn't know much about what went on with Alexei, but I suspected it was more than Eric ever told me was going on, and I'm sure I'd be dropped right into it as his wife. Pam had told me that if Eric died, all the Shreveport vampires would die, and I didn't think that the incoming vampires would give much quarter to Eric's human wife, even if she were telepathic. If I made it out alive, which was doubtful, I certainly would pay for any trouble that came my way thanks to the way Eric went out.

If Eric went down, if he was discredited, things didn't look good. Not only would he die, but all of the vampires who stuck with Eric would die. If he didn't keep on top of his problems, one of the vampires in his Area would certainly turn on him to guarantee their own life. It's what they did. They might stick by him while Eric was handling things, but if it came down to the bitter end, they would choose their own safety first, and guard their life jealously. It would only be the rest of us who got punished in that way, and the takeover would be completed months later. The vampire who ratted Eric out and helped to bring him down would be guaranteed the prize of staying alive. Not so the rest of us. We would all follow Eric into the grave.

On top of all the problems that Appius caused in Eric's general Area business, he caused quite a bit of turmoil in his private life. The night Appius arrived, Eric left with no indication that he would return, and he didn't contact me. Whatever he was doing, I wasn't involved and our private time was off the table. Eric didn't tell me about why it was that he kept Appius away from me, but I can only guess, and I didn't much like my guesses. It could have been a few reasons, and none of them were particularly happy ones.

It could have been that Appius had a penchant for collecting the unusual. Eric himself had called me a "startling talent" and Appius had called me rare when he'd seen me. Appius may not have wanted me to be tied to him, but he could have easily ordered Eric to make it so, and I would be tied to Eric who was surely tied to Appius. I had a taste of that and I didn't much like it. To be further under Eric's sway, and to watch Eric under his sway…not what I would want. I wasn't sure how likely that was as a reason though – anyone could ask around about me. Keeping me out of Appius' presence wouldn't really do much but buy me a couple of weeks to get my things in order.

When Jason had walked up to the attic, Appius had given him an assessing gaze, and I think Appius is the type of vampire to decide what's best for someone else's life…and death. Appius was interested in males, and I'm sure that the fact that my brother had a wife and a life wouldn't have stopped him. It didn't stop him from turning Eric. Nor did Appius seem too concerned that Alexei could have killed me in my kitchen, or Jason in my yard. He might have shown me a bit of respect because I'm Eric's wife, but I noted that Pam called him Ocella – I got to call him Appius Livius. I'm sure that the only reason he cared about me at all was because he cared about Eric. Appius let me know that that had limits too.

It could have also been that Appius saw me as competition for his relationship with Eric. Competition that he might choose to eliminate. At heart, when he wasn't scaring the tar out of me, Appius struck me as creating his children out of loneliness. I suppose many vampires did before the Great Revelation, and the Revelation had changed nothing in Appius' life – not in a tangible sense. Appius certainly made a remark about how I wouldn't keep Eric either – if only he knew I'd had a devil of a time trying to get rid of Eric before we married. I didn't keep Eric at all – that was all Appius – Eric definitely pursued me, until I was suddenly married to him.

It could have been other reasons I hadn't thought of. But Eric wasn't big on explaining his reasoning. He couldn't really fault me for coming up with my own explanations and not liking the conclusions. If he wanted me to think well of him, well, he had to tell me otherwise. But Eric didn't tell me more than he had to. It was real hard to have faith in us when I didn't see him and he didn't tell me anything. It's not like I knew it would all be over soon and everything would be back to how it was. I had no indication that either of us would survive the encounter with his ancient maker and the boy who was so not a boy, much less our relationship. As much as I might wish to be at times, I am not psychic.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

The night I'd gone to Fangtasia, things had looked really bad. I can't read Eric's mind, so I don't know what happened, and he hadn't told me. I didn't know what I could have done about it anyway. I am one human, and he's a thousand year old vampire. If they couldn't solve their own problems, I doubt I could do much to help. I could appreciate that he was pushed beyond his limits, and well into despairing over the situation. I think Eric was just about ready to give up from the way he'd spoken about everything. He'd succumbed to a moment of hopelessness – and that was a feeling I knew well, and one that Eric probably didn't experience often.

I tried to look at what I saw that night, and it gave me the chills as to what difficulties Eric's life was going to rain down on all of us. When I got there, Maxwell Lee was on the back door, and he wasn't complaining as if he got a bad job – a businessman, guarding the door, doing menial work. Normally, that sort of job was left to vampires like Bubba or humans – all the other vampires in Eric's world had jobs. He didn't have lots of vampires with free time that were bouncers or bodyguards. That sort of thing was reserved for some royalty, like Sophie Anne, but most royals made do with their seconds, like Eric did. Being a second is like a full time job.

Pam had a full time job though – she handled the front podium most of the times I saw her, and she couldn't be at two doors at once. Maxwell Lee was left at the back door, which had never been guarded in all my time of having gone to the club – it was only ever just locked. As I look back on it, he was probably stationed there to keep Alexei in the club. He'd also told me that he was glad I was there. Since there was nothing I could do about Appius that all the other vampires couldn't do better, I can only guess that he meant he was glad I had come to remind Eric that things weren't hopeless.

I don't know if he'd just gotten past Maxwell, or whether since Alexei had gotten out and gone killing that Eric had decided to step up security, but keeping Alexei in the club hadn't proven to stop trouble. One of the first things I noticed was that Fangtasia was relatively empty. I'd never seen it like that as long as it was open. It was shocking. Eric could have closed the club, but obviously he didn't. I could only guess at what had driven his customers away. It occurred to me that perhaps he had to keep it open to allay any ideas that Victor had about what was going on. If someone were watching Eric's house, undoubtedly someone would be watching the club. While it was certain that Victor had spies, if Eric didn't trust anyone but Pam and I, maybe Victor didn't trust his spy either. Even if he did, he could only get information when the spy would tell him, and I didn't know if Heidi worked at Fangtasia. Obviously Eric wasn't sure either, and kept the club open for the sake of appearances.

If the club was being watched the same way Eric's house had been, it would appear to be a normal state of things, and if the spies were at work, then they couldn't report on their work phones. Closing the club let them go home, free to report on a whim. Closing the club would give some appearance that things had really gone wrong to any vampire watching, and involve calling Victor in to take advantage of Eric while he was down. Closing the doors of Fangtasia would indicate something had gone seriously wrong - and even the night Eric had poofed out of his office, cursed with no memory, they didn't close Fangtasia. If Victor could show that Eric wasn't making money for his King, Victor wouldn't hesitate to use that against him.

Whatever Alexei and Appius were doing in Fangtasia, it was surely a cause for worry. Felicia – a vampire – had scars on her neck when she came up to the table to take our drink orders. I can't imagine what it was that was going on, and how badly she'd been injured before I got there. She had scars when I arrived, and it wasn't as if some vampire had been feeding from her as I walked in. Or maybe they had, and they were in a far worse situation. I know from all the times I've seen vampires injured, that it's only a short period of time before they heal up. They don't tend to share blood and bite each other too often either – they only seemed to do it in dire need, like when Bill was suffering from silver poisoning, or when Eric had been held down by silver chains. Eric had told me before that the sharing of blood - and thus power over each other - was not something vampires indulged in as a constant practice.

Whatever Alexei and Appius had been doing before I'd arrived, it was probably something pretty bad. Maxwell had been glad to see that I was there; Eric had asked me to drop everything and come to him on the phone. Fangtasia could have been a madhouse before I walked in later in the night. I didn't even have a clue what had gone on other nights before that. Whatever had gone on that night or the nights before, there were few tourists, few fangbangers. Pam was manning the front door, and she didn't have a whole lot of people in the car park that she'd turned away. The customers just weren't there.

When I'd been to Fangtasia previously, they were doing well. Even after the Great Reveal, there had been people lining up at the door of Fangtasia. It was the equivalent of a scary 'fun' house the night I walked in, the night of "Surprise you're married" with people lined up at the door ready to gawk at Pam and all the other vampires. So something must have happened that Fangtasia was almost empty. As Pam pointed out to me when she was driving me back to Bon Temps, Eric wanted to appear like a man in front of me, and he wasn't a particularly talkative man in the first place. Figuring out what was going on in his life felt like a mystery, or a puzzle - where I got some important information but the rest was heavy lifting.

When Katherine Boudreaux turned up, the agent for the Bureau of Vampire Affairs, she noticed the absence of patrons in Fangtasia. So I could only hope that that was all that would happen. I hope that she was the only one to notice, and that that's all she did – was notice that there were less patrons. Eric seemed concerned and just about at breaking point that she would turn up that night. I could only guess at what had happened before I walked in, but it wasn't good. That the representative for the Bureau of Vampire Affairs turned up would have been one more heaping of worry on Eric's plate. On a night when things weren't going so well, the very last thing that Eric needed was the government noticing that some of the vampire citizens were not dating humans, like Eric, but killing them like Alexei.

The very last thing Eric needed was more people relying on him to solve problems – he had more than enough on his plate. That night he was close to breaking point and he had been finding it difficult to deal with for a while. I could only imagine the other stresses Appius visited on him with his unwelcome business and the impossible task he'd given Eric of fixing the damaged boy that was so not a boy.

Appius refused to see the evidence of his eyes – the boy didn't just attack humans who he thought tasted good, or boys his own age to express his anger. Anyone at any time could be attacked. The boy was too dangerous to be allowed to live. He was deeply damaged, and had no will to behave himself and enjoy his death, and he wasn't the first vampire that I'd seen like that. Jake Purifoy lamented being brought back from the dead just as much as Alexei did. But like all arrogant people, Appius refused to acknowledge that he'd made a mistake. Like all people in love, even if his love was terribly twisted, he refused to see that he had made a mistake, and needed to let go.

The situation was so impossible that Pam was tempted to take matters into her own hands. It wouldn't have done any good. Appius wouldn't have allowed her to do anything to Alexei, and if she had, Appius would have hurt her. I didn't think it was better that Eric should lose his second and his child – the only vampire he trusted in his Area. Appius probably wouldn't have gone quietly, and he might have destroyed Eric's life as well as killing Pam. It wouldn't have solved anything, and may have made things worse.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

It happened the night that I was with the Shreveport Werepack, the night Eric was lucky that neither my brother or I were home. If we had been, neither of us would have lived that scene out. Alexei would certainly have killed Jason, and I probably would have been killed trying to save my brother, or because I said the wrong thing to Appius in my grief. If we'd been home, things would have been so much worse. It was about divine providence that I was out visiting a different form of hell that I missed the hell waiting for me at home. I don't know that Eric would have called me to warn me - he didn't know where his maker and his brother were going, and wasn't in great shape to have a good long think about it.

Fights weren't about matching strengths. I'd been in enough fights that I knew it was chance and advantage that mattered the most. Maybe if you were playing a video game, you'd battle down your strengths until the one with the most points won. But real fights work out on lucky punches, the element of surprise and chance. That's why they're so scary. Just because you're better armed and stronger doesn't mean that you will automatically win.

Alexei might be a boy, who was so not a boy, but in order to get past other vampires, he just had to strike first. They just had to look away, be distracted, not watch him every single second. That's how he'd escaped their custody – because most vampires don't have to be watched every minute of the night in case they haul off and start the killing. The key to winning is just to surprise your victim, hit them in a spot that is soft, or will take the worst damage, and you'll keep the odds of winning on your side. They have to react to an attack they weren't expecting, and they're already hurt.

It helped that to Alexei, it was neither here nor there if he lived or died. The party with the least to lose and total focus had the better chance. If it were merely a matter of pitting strengths where chance never played a role, Longshadow would have killed me that first night at Fangtasia. I was younger and weaker, and he was a deadly predator. If it weren't Longshadow who killed me, then it would have been any number of would-be assassins who followed him. I relied on sheer chance and quick reflexes to get through most of what I'd gone through - not strength or superior weaponry.

Alexei happened to overwhelm Pam when her attention was divided between Alexei and her concern with Bobby Burnham; and Eric in turn no doubt in his concern for Pam, Bobby and Felicia. Since Alexei informed me later that I should have let Pam pass away than heal her, I don't think Alexei cared too much if she lived or died. His attention wasn't divided – he wanted Bobby Burnham and he got Bobby even if he had to go through Pam to do it. In the scheme of things, Alexei's focus was down to whatever was in the way of his killing Bobby - while Pam had to worry about Alexei and all the holes he could see to wriggle through and get Bobby.

That same chance worked in my favour when it came to taking Alexei down. Two fairies couldn't defeat him facing him, but after he was worn down, slowing down, and I had some silver, I took the chance that his attention was elsewhere. I didn't like my plan at the time, but it was better than letting it go on, and waiting to take him down once he'd had his fill of fairy blood.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

Appius and Alexei were finally dispatched that night. I couldn't be anything but glad that it was all finally over. But the devastation that they'd left in Eric's life, well it was easy to see why he was so defeated. His life was already fraught with danger, and they came into it and laid waste. He barely had time for us, with all the things that were going on. When they came along, well, he had no time for us. It effectively put a stop to anything going on between us, with no indication of when things would get back to normal - or at least stressed normal - as they had been. The normal fraught with less dangers anyway. His maker had just offloaded all this trouble into Eric's life, and given him unwelcome business to worry about. The entire business was unwelcome, and maybe it wasn't over yet. If even a whiff of the trouble Appius and Alexei had given Eric made it to Victor, then the problems were even bigger. Eric was concerned that all the trouble would become known - in the papers - and by whichever vampire could make use of it.

Eric had said to me that night at Fangtasia that if they weren't gone by Tuesday, he'd come and spend the night with me no matter what they were doing. I couldn't help but wonder if they'd already caused enough devastation to his state of affairs that the situation would be so irreparable that he might as well take that night off to be with his wife before his plans, his life, came crashing down around his ears. The boy, Alexei, who was so not a boy wrought more damage into Eric's barely orderly life than Victor could hope for.