A/N: And one more.

Pam heard a sound in the bar, like a chair scraping across the floor. Dammit, she was supposed to be alone. But something told her this wasn't Ginger or an overly-determined patron.

Silently, she left Eric's office and crept down the hallway. She opened the door to the bar. The neon signs that advertised True Blood and varieties of human alcohol that usually illuminated the club all night long were unlit.

With no windows, the room was plunged into Stygian darkness. Even Pam's vampire vision had trouble picking out shapes in the room.

"We're closed tonight," she said in a calm voice, her hand reaching unerringly for the baseball bat kept under the bar. "You'll have to come back another time."

As she spoke, she threw the object in her other hand, a bottle of beer. As it crashed against a wall, she listened intently in the shattered silence. She sensed only a small movement, instantly stilled, several feet to her left near the dancer pole. Her respect for her opponent went up but she had great confidence in her own battle skills.

"I thought a vampire as old and strong as the great Eric Northman would better guard his property. Your security, as they say, sucks." Pam heard a slightly accented voice pierce the darkness.

Pam kept herself loose and relaxed, despite the insult to her maker, as she moved silently as possible toward her enemy. She knew now she faced a vampire; but how old and how strong, she didn't know yet. "Eric Northman is his own security. Besides, he has me."

Pam wished devoutly the old baseball bat was a sharpened stake. Each time her opponent spoke, she came closer to locating his position in the blackness. Of course, the opposite was also true.

"You?" the tone of her adversary's voice was drily amused. "You are merely the next installment in the payment of your maker's great debt to Russell Edgington."

Pam knew now who she faced. Anton Sejour. Perfect, just who she'd wanted to meet. She prepared to attack the other vampire but couldn't resist adding, "And you're nothing but Russell's second best butt-boy!"

Pam launched herself upward but seemed to hit a brick wall. Anton easily plucked her out of the air with his hand tightly around her throat. His other hand tore the bat from her grip. He slammed her against the floor and Pam felt several ribs shatter. Anton pinned her in place with a boot grinding against her neck. She struggled but could not escape him. He was clearly older and faster than she.

Her captor sighed as he flashed a penlight in her snarling face. "Somehow I expected better from Eric Northman's progeny. But no matter, you will meet the true death." Anton's fangs glinted in the slight illumination. "Tonight."