by Julie Plec
“Mother!” Rebekah screamed, but it was too late: Her doubt had done its work. The Other Side closed itself to her, then the sunlight faltered and winked out. Rebekah swallowed hard, tasting bitter disappointment as the world of her childhood melted away. She should have known that her mother wouldn’t hold out her hand forever. Esther wasn’t the type of parent who rewarded cowardice.
“I still belong here, then,” Rebekah told the waiting darkness, letting it surround her and seep into her skin. “I want to live.”
It was true, she realized. She wanted life so desperately and suddenly that it took her breath away. Stars swarmed before her eyes and then tree branches made stripes of blackness against the sky. Luc’s beautiful face stared anxiously into hers, and the cold, hard ground pressed into her spine.
“You came back!” Luc exclaimed, kissing her passionately on the mouth.
Rebekah pushed him away, her body still trying to remember how to breathe. She sucked in air once and then again, feeling the strange way it whistled around the hole in her chest. “You tried to kill me,” she gasped when she was able to speak, and she touched the ragged edges of her wound gingerly. “You did kill me.”
The stake was in his hand. Rebekah understood that he must have pulled it from her heart—he had just saved her from dying. But the sight of it chilled her, and for a moment it was as if time might run backward as easily as forward. Rebekah couldn’t tear her eyes away from the broken branch in Luc’s hand.
The tree spread above them, its leaves rustling ever so slightly in the first breezes of the morning. The eastern sky was light, Rebekah realized, and the faint, pinkish glow of dawn warmed Luc’s blond hair. His gaze followed hers, and he dropped the stake as if it had burned his skin.
“I would never hurt you,” he swore. “That man did something to me, the powder he had...I don’t know, exactly. I had no choice in what I did.”
“You called to me,” Rebekah said, feeling the muscles above her heart beginning to repair. “Did Tomás force you to bring me back?”
“No,” Luc answered, his voice loaded with conviction. “It felt like a fog was lifting, and then I saw you.” He hesitated, struggling to find the right words. “I saw you before. Lying here with my stake in your chest, but also running through the forest with your brothers. There was a cottage...you were everywhere around me, living here as a human.”
“I saw all of that, too.” Rebekah pulled herself up to a seated position, her fingertips exploring the hole. There had been so many wounds over the years, yet none of them had left a visible scar. To anyone who saw her, she might still be that girl who had played beneath this tree with flowers in her hair. Only she knew otherwise.
“I could feel your love,” Luc told her. “I could feel your will to live, and how much this world meant to you. That’s what saved you, Rebekah; that’s what let me call you back. You have the most powerful heart of anyone I have ever met, and your heart is what saved you.”
“This time,” she muttered, watching her skin slowly close over the hole the stake had left. She reached for the stake, feeling the ache of the wound as she moved. The stake was too valuable to leave behind, even if Tomás’s attack had changed everything. Rebekah might have come to Mystic Falls seeking revenge, but she had found far, far more than that.
“The sun is rising,” she reminded Luc, and he looked east as if he had never seen a sunrise before.
“There’s still time,” Luc said, squinting at the lightening sky. “Take all the time you need, Rebekah.... I will stay by your side.”
“There’s no need to stay here.” Rebekah smiled, threading her arm through his. “Let’s find some shelter for the day. We have plans to make, and more enemies than we need right now.”
Rebekah and Luc walked arm in arm toward the little town, and Rebekah tucked the White Oak stake carefully into the inner pocket of her cloak.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“IT’S ALL RIGHT,” Alejandra murmured, brushing one smooth hand along the side of Elijah’s face while staring into his eyes. “Whatever you saw at the brothel, it doesn’t have to matter.”
He opened his mouth to argue, to explain why Klaus’s betrayal had cut him so deeply, but he realized he didn’t need to. Alejandra wasn’t dismissing his outrage. She was showing him a way out.
With Alejandra by his side, Elijah wanted to find a way of enjoying his life that had nothing to do with power struggles. Klaus could have New Orleans and the pit of snakes it had become. If he wanted control of the city so badly, he was welcome to it.
“I always believed that staying together as a family was what made us strong,” Elijah said at last, turning his head to kiss Alejandra’s fingertips.
“But not anymore,” Alejandra finished, withdrawing her hand gently to pick up a goblet of wine that sat on the table beside her.
“I allowed my siblings to lean on that strength like a crutch,” Elijah went on, taking the goblet when she offered it. “I never understood how they could be so ungrateful, or how they could accuse me of holding them back when all I ever did was keep them safe. I should have allowed them to outgrow that protection; I’ve done them no favors by sheltering them. And it seems that they have thought so for quite some time.”
“Drink,” Alejandra urged, tipping the goblet toward him gently. “The past is over and done with, and it’s more enjoyable to discuss our future.”
“And for that you would prefer me drunk?” he teased, but he drained the goblet in one long swallow. The spiced wine seared his throat all the way down into his belly, and then its comforting heat began to seep out into Elijah’s limbs. It had been a trying night, but he was already beginning to feel steadier, more sure. Just being with Alejandra seemed to make more sense than everything else in the last seventy years. He buried his head deeper into her lap.
“You feel better now,” she guessed, her green eyes glittering in the sunlight that streamed through the windows of their hideaway. The house’s late owner had had lavish tastes, and Elijah thought the silks and velvets that upholstered his great room were a particularly fitting backdrop for Alejandra’s exotic beauty.
“I feel better now,” he agreed.
Alejandra smiled and stretched, her shoulders rippling like a cat’s after sleep. She had bathed and dressed while he had been gone, but Elijah could still remember every curve of the naked body beneath her gown. “You are a king wherever you go, my darling; I just want to come with you.” She took the goblet from his unresisting hand, glancing into its empty depths with an unreadable smile.
“I wouldn’t let you leave my side,” Elijah whispered, reaching up to twist his fingers through her black curls. “You’ve opened my eyes. Your passion, your humanity. The freedom in which you live your life has inspired me to change my own. Whatever comes next is something I want to share only with you.”
Alejandra smiled again, setting the goblet aside and leaning down to kiss him. “I think some time away from all this is exactly what we need,” she suggested. “I know a place. You’re too well known to steal away in daylight, but we can leave after night falls.”
“How will we pass the time until then?” he asked, sitting up so that they were face-to-face on the daybed. He could think of several ways, and he could tell from the way Alejandra kissed him again that she had a few of the same ideas.
He savored the taste of her. She was far sweeter than the wine. As she climbed onto his lap he caught her by the waist and lifted her. Alejandra’s legs twined around his torso, and Elijah felt a surge of desire so powerful he couldn’t wait another moment. He spun around and pressed her back against the nearest wall, pushing her skirts aside.
He made short work of the clothing that separated them, and she gasped in pleasure as he entered her. She clung to him even more tightly as he began to move in her, each thrust pressing her more firmly against the w
all behind her.
Elijah felt almost light-headed with anticipation. Alejandra smiled up at him, and the sheer joy of being with her nearly overwhelmed him.
* * *
“THE BOAT IS just ahead,” she promised, guiding him along the edge of the bayou by some process of navigation too convoluted for him to follow at the moment.
“You have a boat waiting?” Elijah asked, amused. They had spent every moment together since he had agreed to leave the city earlier that day, and he knew she hadn’t sent word ahead during that time. She had been otherwise engaged. “You must have been very confident that I would agree to come with you.”
Alejandra’s smile grew sly. “Don’t you remember how we met?” she teased. “I can tell the future, and as soon as I took your hand I knew all sorts of things about what would happen between us.”
Elijah laughed, hearing a new openness in the sound. When was the last time he had really laughed? “I should never bet against you, then, my love. I’ll try to remember.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Alejandra assured him smugly. “According to your palm, we will always be on the same side from now on.”
The whole city could burn down, for all he cared. All he wanted was his fortune-teller, her dark curls and warm limbs, and the freedom she had showed him. He could go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, spend a year making love to Alejandra without giving a second thought to what else might be going on in the world.
The boat was waiting by the edge of a narrow river that disappeared into a swamp. “Where will this lead?” Elijah asked curiously, trying to use the stars to determine whether its current ran toward the sea or the Mississippi River, but the constellations seemed to have moved to different parts of the sky.
“You’ll see when we get there. For once, you aren’t in control,” Alejandra purred, and she rested the palm of her hand on his back. The warmth of it steadied him, bringing him back to earth and fixing the stars back into their proper places.
“I can agree to that...just this once,” Elijah teased. He took the little canvas pack she carried and tossed it aboard, then swung Alejandra lightly onto the deck before jumping up after her. It was a small, shallow-bottomed craft, meant for the bayou and nothing else as far as he could tell. The boat had a surprisingly skillful carving at its prowl. It was a head with two faces, each profile facing in opposite directions. Four oarsmen waited for them, and stared at the deck when Alejandra was near, deferring to her as if she were some magnificent empress.
“Cast off,” she ordered, and they obeyed. Elijah could understand how they must feel—he was also dizzy when she was near. And to think that he had been ready to settle with a chain around his neck and Lisette at his right hand...Lisette, who had turned on him so quickly.
The memory of her sitting beside Klaus was painful and yet distant. It was almost as if years had passed since then, instead of only a few hours. Elijah was so sure of his new course, so committed to his new life, that the old one had already fallen away.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever come out this way before,” he remarked, squinting again at the stars. They seemed to move when he wasn’t looking, playing some children’s game to confuse him. The landmarks around the boat were also strange to him. Not even someone who lived forever could memorize the miles of bayou that spread around New Orleans.
But Alejandra knew their direction, standing on the deck like Cleopatra at the head of her navy. “You would have no reason to visit these parts,” she assured him, and Elijah wondered what sort of business had brought her here before. It seemed strange, but the whole world seemed mysterious to him at the moment.
They rode together for what felt like hours, the only sound the gentle lapping of the water against the boat’s wooden hull. An oarsman shouted, and the boat slowed. Elijah’s keen eyesight could just barely make out a few straight lines out in front of them. It was a low, vine-covered cabin with a thatched roof, a humble dwelling that was miles away from its closest neighbor.
“How did you ever find this place?” he asked in amazement, peering doubtfully at the cabin. It could not have had more than one small room, and from where he stood it looked cold and empty. He couldn’t imagine Alejandra in such a place, although he himself had lived in worse from time to time, when the situation had called for it.
“I have many secrets,” she reminded him, and the boat bumped up against the shore beside the cabin.
Elijah jumped down, soaking his boots in the shallows of the tiny river, and then held his arms up for Alejandra. For a moment, as his hands circled her waist, his head swam with the memory of the way they had spent their morning together.
Alejandra let him lift her down onto slightly more solid ground, although the surrounding swamp still sucked at their feet as they made their way toward the little cabin. Behind him, the men began unloading crates of supplies. Elijah was impressed with Alejandra’s planning. With only part of a day in which to prepare, she really had thought of everything.
A crocodile watched them from the tall grass, its tail swaying back and forth with a movement that reminded Elijah of a cat’s. “Shoo,” Alejandra told it coolly, waving a dismissive hand in its direction. The beast’s black eyes flashed, then it sunk back into the swamp. “Mind the vines,” she added to Elijah, shoving the cabin’s door open on its rusted hinges.
He could tell instantly that this had once been her home. Alejandra had never spoken much of her upbringing, but he had somehow imagined her as a black sheep—the sensual, free-spirited, mystical outcast of a genteel, middle-class family. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure.
As he held open the door for her, his left hand brushed against one of the vines that nearly swallowed the doorframe. It stung and then burned, and Elijah frowned in surprise to see welts rising on his skin. The pain was mild, yet it made his head swim and the cabin blur and slide.
Then the sensation was gone, and Elijah focused on Alejandra’s concerned green eyes, the furrow of worry between her eyebrows. “Come inside,” she urged him. “This place has many untamed dangers.”
It was cold and unwelcoming in the cabin, but Elijah built a fire while Alejandra hung lanterns. Soon it was almost cozy, although it was even smaller and shabbier than he had guessed from the outside. A thin, faded patchwork quilt covered the sagging bed, and the rest of the space was taken up with a table and chairs beside the low hearth. The air was stale and musty, but the fire crackled merrily, and the smoke was sweet.
“Welcome to our little hideaway,” Alejandra murmured, pulling him toward the bed, and Elijah forgot everything else in the heat of her touch.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HEAPS OF DEAD bodies covered the floor of the Mikaelsons’ mansion. Klaus paced among them, stalking from one room to the next and pausing occasionally to look out the windows for the first signs of the rising moon.
“Why aren’t they waking?” Sampson demanded, prowling around the bodies as if his anger could hurry the magic along.
“Patience,” Klaus muttered, and the werewolf snorted at the rather obvious irony. “It will happen any minute now.”
But Klaus could feel his victory slipping out of his hands.
“Lisette!” he shouted, and she looked up from her place beside one of the corpses. “How long until moonrise?”
“Now.” She shrugged. “Now, or in a minute, but I would have expected—”
One of the dead bodies stirred and shivered, and every single conscious person in the room turned toward it. The prisoner gave a rattling cough, and Klaus noticed that the front of his rough-spun shirt was saturated with dried blood.
“The ones in the hall are also moving,” a werewolf with long red hair called out, and Klaus saw more of the corpses beginning to twitch.
“Finally,” Sampson growled. “That human cult’s ranks are swelling every day, from the s
ound of it.”
“We’ll have no trouble putting down their rebellion now,” Klaus replied. The first prisoner coughed again, and Klaus approached him. “They just need to drink human blood to fully transform.” There was plenty of that in the mansion—they were ready.
“Never,” a hoarse voice gasped, and Klaus glared in surprise at the bloodstained man at his feet. The convict’s eyes were open at last. He took in the bodies around him and the vampire standing over him. “We will never turn against our own.”
“You are no longer human,” Lisette corrected, her tone leaving no room for compromise. “You’ve already turned against what you were.”
The man lifted his hands, patting at his hips and chest as if to make sure his body was still there. Then he raised them to his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed hard. “You’re wrong,” he replied. “I won’t.”
His body was wracked with sudden spasms, and Klaus leapt to his side. All around them the other prisoners were shifting, stretching, and testing their limbs, but Klaus didn’t trust what was happening.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, pulling the prisoner’s hands away from his face. There was a tiny glass vial clasped between his fingers with one end bitten off—the glass jagged, the vessel empty.
Klaus grabbed it and cautiously tasted the liquid. He cursed as it touched his lips. “Werewolf venom,” he snarled. He was half werewolf and immune to its poison, but any other vampire who drank it would die. A new vampire didn’t stand a chance against its poison.
“They all have it!” Lisette shouted from another corner of the room. She crossed over the bodies quickly, hurrying to get close to Klaus. “Your blood,” she whispered, so low that even he could barely hear her at first. “Couldn’t it—? Couldn’t you—?”
“Perhaps that’s what they want,” Klaus reasoned, keeping a wary eye on Sampson. It was true that his unique blood would counteract the poison, but half the convicts were too far gone to save. “Maybe the Collados hope that I’ll weaken myself to save the new vampires, and then they’ll turn on me when I can’t protect myself.” The idea lodged itself in his mind, taking on new significance.