by Julie Plec
Rebekah caught up to him after a few moments, steering her raft through the sluggish water. “Come aboard, and help me keep this thing on course,” she ordered. “The wolves didn’t build it with ease of navigation in mind, although I’ll give them credit for keeping me out of that brackish mess you’re floundering in.”
Klaus hauled himself out of the sucking mud and crouched on the rough logs that made up the raft. “Head west for now,” he said, “but there’s no such thing as a steady bearing out here.” The overgrown swamp was all twists and switchbacks, defying any ordinary attempt at navigation. But Klaus could almost see Alejandra’s scent, beckoning him from deep in the bayou. Hours passed as Klaus and Rebekah floated down the river. He’d never been this deep into the marshes before—nothing good ever happened out here.
“It’s gone,” Klaus said suddenly. The faint trace of Alejandra had dissipated, and farther downstream there was nothing but the ordinary stench of the bayou.
Rebekah stuck her oar into the mud at the bottom of the river, then pushed them toward the muddy bank. “It must pick up there,” she said, jerking her chin toward an opening along the bank. It was a big enough gap for a boat to let passengers ashore.
Klaus tested the air. He blocked out the bullfrogs and cicadas, attuning all his senses to the one person he had to find as they left the raft behind. Alejandra had come this way, he thought, but her trail was quickly overwhelmed by the smell of burning peat. Klaus heard the crackle of a fire and then the low chatter of voices nearby. “Stop,” he hissed to Rebekah. “There are easily a dozen of them.” He gestured for her to follow him.
The humans sat around a fire that was downwind of a little cabin, but Klaus could also smell the moonshine amid the smoke. They were well on the far side of drunk and hadn’t even bothered to post sentries. A well-worn track of boot prints led from the fire to the cabin, and Klaus was almost positive he recognized Elijah’s tread.
A hawk-nosed woman lifted a bottle in an impromptu toast to Janus, and the rest of the humans followed suit and cheered. Klaus felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. What horrible thing had happened to inspire this festive mood? And what did it have to do with his brother?
Klaus longed to kill them all, but it was as if Elijah’s voice was in his ear, reminding him to exercise restraint and plan out his steps.
“I’ll take the six on the left,” Rebekah offered, “and you can have the six on the right. Fair?”
Klaus gritted his teeth together and shook his head. “Let’s get the lay of the land first,” he said, barely recognizing himself.
He felt Rebekah’s head snap toward him and could feel the shocked look on her face. He flicked his eyes toward his sister and gave her his most innocent smile. One of the humans split away from the group, and Klaus followed, moving through the tree cover. The man was fumbling with his trousers when Klaus caught him by the collar, wrapping a hand around his mouth in case he was a screamer. The man’s eyes bulged with fear once he saw Klaus, but he didn’t struggle. Klaus guessed his reputation had preceded him.
“You’re not on my list at the moment,” Klaus reassured him softly. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
The man nodded, his eyes wide.
“Good.” Klaus smiled, moving his hand down from the man’s mouth to grip his throat. “I’m looking to surprise a few friends of yours. I need you to tell me exactly where they are, and how well armed.”
“One of them used some kind of witchcraft on me,” Rebekah warned, approaching Klaus and his new friend from the other side of the campfire. “It was a powder that burned. What other tricks do your leaders have up their sleeves?”
“And what have they done with our brother?” Klaus growled, making sure the hostage understood the importance of the question.
The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling against the pressure of Klaus’s hand. “You’ve come too late, vampires.” He gasped. “Our lady Alejandra has already done her work on the abomination in the cabin, and he’s no longer any brother of yours. He’s one of us now, and he’s going to deliver our city back into our hands, where it belongs.”
“You could have just said ‘He’s in the cabin,’” Rebekah replied, moving away as Klaus snapped the man’s neck with a twist of his hand. “Let’s go.”
As Klaus stalked past, shouts of alarm rose from the circle around the fire, but Klaus didn’t want to waste his time with them. The only people who mattered were inside the cabin.
A woman grabbed a heavy staff and jumped in front of Klaus, shouting at him to stop.
“If you want to live, I suggest that you run. Now,” Klaus said. Then he pried the staff from the woman’s hands and struck her in the face, hard enough to shatter her cheekbone. She collapsed and clutched her bloody jaw, moaning with pain. “You won’t get a better offer from me,” Klaus announced to the rest of the humans.
A handful broke and ran, but a group held their ground, making a desperate stand between the vine-covered cabin and the two furious vampires. “You may be powerful, but we are many,” warned a man. “Your kind thrives on darkness and secrecy, but you have been exposed, and that will be your undoing. You can’t kill us all, and we will no longer bend to your will.”
“We can’t kill you all?” Rebekah asked, sounding amused. She lunged forward, lifted the man by his throat, and threw him against an oak tree. “Anyone who stands between me and my brother will learn otherwise.”
Klaus saw another man reach for a pouch at his belt, but before he could warn Rebekah the man had withdrawn a handful of purple vervain flowers. He threw them squarely in Rebekah’s face, and she screamed, extending her fangs.
“We don’t have time for this,” Klaus fumed, knocking the man aside and then grabbing Rebekah by the arm to restrain her. The burns on her face were already healing. The humans might be determined, but they were only foot soldiers. There were thousands more back in New Orleans, anyway, and killing these rebels would accomplish nothing.
“We will fight to the death!” shouted a sweet-faced woman with chestnut hair, pulling a dagger from a sheath. It glinted silver in the firelight, and in spite of himself, Klaus was impressed by the preparations these humans had made.
“We’ll take you up on that another time, love,” Klaus promised. He elbowed the nearest man in the chest, pushing him into two of the other humans, then gestured for Rebekah to follow him.
The chestnut-haired woman ran at Rebekah with the dagger, but she only sighed, caught the woman’s arm as the dagger came down, and broke it with ease. She threw the woman at the nearest humans and followed Klaus to the cabin.
The vines that covered the little house seemed to reach for them, clinging and burning wherever they touched skin. Klaus tore a handful off the wall and smelled it, ignoring the singing pain it caused to his palm. “What the hell is this stuff?”
“Let’s skip the botany lesson,” Rebekah suggested, pulling the vines from her golden hair and throwing them aside. “Just get Elijah and burn the place to the ground. That should sort it out.”
Klaus threw his shoulder into the wooden door and it shattered inward, spraying the small room with splinters. Two tall, cloaked figures stood over a bed where Elijah lay, pale and seemingly unconscious. But his brother’s face turned toward the sound of the door breaking, and his cracked lips silently formed the words “Come in.”
The two humans turned as well. Klaus recognized his fortune-teller, and the man beside Alejandra resembled her so strongly that he could only be her brother. The man—Tomás—threw some iridescent powder at Klaus with a lightning-fast flick of his wrist, but Klaus moved even faster. He had Alejandra by the throat before Tomás’s powder had even fallen to the floor. He bared his fangs dangerously close to her face.
“Your brother needs me alive,” Alejandra warned, choosing her words carefully.
“Lies.” Rebekah sneered, and Klaus turned to see her sitting astride Tomás, his face shoved into the powder on the floor. “There’s nothing you have to offer us except your deaths, and those are close at hand.”
“What my sister says is true.” Tomás gasped, and Rebekah tightened her grip on the back of his neck. “Elijah is hers now—killing her will break him.”
Elijah groaned, his eyes open and unseeing. Klaus eased his hold on Alejandra’s throat, even though all his instincts told him not to. “Explain yourself,” he ordered, backing up a step.
“Vinaya powder has allowed me to take possession of Elijah.” Alejandra smirked, although her racing heartbeat contradicted her confidence. “Soon I will have complete control of him, and he will be my instrument to break your hold on our city.”
“All the more reason to kill you now,” Klaus pointed out, licking the tip of a fang.
“Have you ever seen a puppet with its strings cut?” Alejandra asked, her voice cruel and a little amused. “Your brother belongs to me now, and my power sustains him. If I die, he will stay trapped in his pain. Forever.”
“Nothing is forever,” Rebekah said.
“I am your only chance at getting him back, and for that you need me alive,” Alejandra replied with a lingering smile.
Klaus weighed her words, testing them for truth. He knew a fair amount about magic, and she’d be tremendously lucky if her powder worked as she promised. In Klaus’s experience, magic was rarely so convenient. Magic had laws unto itself, and Alejandra wasn’t even a witch—she was just a human who was in far over her head.
There was only one way to find out if she was telling the truth: Kill her. Klaus’s eyes fixed on the pulse in Alejandra’s neck, his decision made. She saw it, too, and her scream rattled the cabin’s windows.
“Elijah!” she yelled. “Protect me!”
Elijah lay still on the bed. But he sprang into action at the sound of her voice, hurling himself against Klaus so hard that Klaus heard his own shoulder break against the far wall. Alejandra had told part of the truth, at least: Elijah was hers now.
“Elijah!” Rebekah cried, hurrying to her feet, Tomás momentarily forgotten. The man rolled away from her to join his sister near the hearth.
Elijah moved faster than the human eye could follow to stand between...the twins, Klaus realized, seeing their faces together. They had chosen the symbol of their cult to reflect their own self-image. Alejandra and Tomás weren’t just humans who played at being witches—they also fancied themselves the two faces of the god Janus.
“Kill them both,” the fortune-teller whispered, pulling her cloak around her slender form, and Elijah obeyed.
He was every bit as fast and as strong as if he weren’t bewitched, and he managed to throw Rebekah across the room before she could make a single move to block him. She crashed into the rafters and then collapsed onto the bed, too stunned to pull herself back up.
Klaus had a little more time to brace himself for Elijah’s next attack, but he didn’t fare much better than their sister had. “Elijah,” he began, blocking the first punch, but Elijah’s second blow spun his head so hard that Klaus’s spine snapped. Rebekah flew at Elijah, trying to distract him while Klaus’s neck pulled itself back together, but Elijah truly was a man possessed.
For a moment, Klaus could see the White Oak stake that Rebekah had brought home with her. Nothing short of that could stop Elijah now.
“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?” Elijah demanded, catching Klaus and slamming him sideways onto the bed. It groaned and then collapsed beneath the impact. “I was happy to finally be away from you two, and you just couldn’t let it be.”
Then he spun to deal with Rebekah, twisting free of her grip and crushing her up against the fireplace. The hem of her gown, still wet from the swamp, began to smoke and pop. An acrid smell filled the cabin, and Klaus could see a nasty burn beginning to form on his sister’s leg before she managed to fight her way free.
Tomás and Alejandra had retreated to the broken bed, watching the vampires’ every move. Klaus heard their friends calling from outside, urging them to flee from the cabin, but Alejandra’s face was fierce and proud. She believed that her champion could destroy their enemies, and she wanted to witness the moment Elijah overpowered his siblings.
And he would beat them—Klaus saw that clearly. Elijah wanted to fight, and that gave him a sizable advantage. Klaus and Rebekah only hoped to stop him, but in the grip of Alejandra’s powder, Elijah wanted to destroy them.
Klaus rolled and grabbed Elijah’s ankle, jerking him off his feet so that his head and hands landed in the fire. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, as much to himself as to the brother who couldn’t hear him.
He dug into the flesh of Elijah’s back with his bare hands, trying to pull out his spine. Elijah landed a brutal kick in the center of Klaus’s stomach, but Rebekah recovered enough to help. She held Elijah’s face to the embers.
Klaus could tear his brother limb from limb, but it wouldn’t matter. Elijah would recover from any trivial wound, and every wound was trivial to an Original. The only way to stop this—to truly end it—was to kill Alejandra and hope that she was wrong about vinaya powder.
Elijah heaved forward and shattered Rebekah’s rib cage against the edge of the hearth. There was no more time to waste if Klaus and his siblings wanted to walk out of this miserable place. If he wanted to win, he would have to cut the strings that made his brother dance.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
REBEKAH RUBBED AT her sore ribs, kicking Elijah’s face almost as an afterthought. The whole fight was pointless. She didn’t want to hurt Elijah, but it didn’t seem like she had much of a choice. Klaus was back on his feet, and Rebekah struggled to her own, ready to coordinate their next attack, but Klaus was looking the wrong way.
Rebekah was fast, but Klaus had a head start. “Don’t be an idiot!” she shouted, and then Elijah caught her ankle, holding her back. “Put an end to this,” she pleaded to her older brother, wrenching her way free. “Elijah, I know you can hear me.”
“I never stopped hearing you,” Elijah snapped, rolling to his feet. “I just stopped listening, little sister. What do you think drove me out of New Orleans?”
“That bitch who put a spell on you,” Rebekah countered, “and Niklaus wants to kill her for it.” Elijah’s foot snaked around hers, tripping her as she tried to run back to Klaus.
“I’m not done with you yet, Rebekah,” he snarled.
Rebekah fell to the ground, pinned under her brother’s legs. She twisted, trying to free herself before Klaus did something unbelievably stupid.
“Stop!” she yelled, but Klaus didn’t listen.
He closed the distance between him and Alejandra in three long strides. Alejandra began to shriek and Tomás moved in to shield her, but Klaus was an unstoppable force. Klaus ripped the woman’s head from her body before Rebekah could even cry out a last warning. Blood spurted from of her neck like a hot, red fountain, covering Klaus in the grisly aftermath as her body slumped to the floor.
Elijah screamed in pain, a wordless, mindless howl that seemed to go on and on for days. Rebekah tried to embrace him, pushing back strands of brown hair and making what she hoped were soothing noises. She searched for any hint of recognition in his eyes, but he just stared at the ceiling rafters and moaned.
“Klaus,” she snapped, “get over here!”
Klaus glanced at Elijah, then at Tomás, who was staring at his twin sister’s head in horror. Klaus let the head drop from his hand, and it rolled to tap Tomás’s foot. The man whispered something inaudible and touched the two-headed silver pin at his throat. Rebekah thought she saw wetness in his pale green eyes, although he kept rigid control of the rest of his face. The moment seemed to stretch out forever, and then Tomás broke and ran, fleeing for his life through
the cabin’s shattered door. Rebekah didn’t want to let him go, but all she could think about was Elijah.
Klaus appeared at her side, and Rebekah fought the urge to ask him where his concern had been when he’d decided to murder their only key to unlocking their brother.
“It will pass,” Klaus said, his voice taut with anxiety. “Just give him a minute while the spell wears off.”
Rebekah remembered the sight of Luc, lying helplessly beneath the White Oak tree. The powder had affected him far longer than it had her, and Elijah had consumed much more of the stuff than either of them had inhaled. Klaus’s recklessness might still cost them everything they were trying to save.
“It’s not wearing off,” she pointed out, resting her hand on Elijah’s broad forehead. It was damp, beaded with cold sweat. He writhed in obvious agony, and his pain only added to her fury. Elijah fell silent, his jaw clenched so hard that Rebekah could see muscles standing out on the sides of his neck. “Niklaus, you have no idea what you did. What if Alejandra was telling the truth, and this is his life now?”
“Then we’ll bring her back from the dead and make her reverse it,” Klaus insisted, his chin jutting out stubbornly. “Or we’ll find some witches and force them to help us, or we’ll discover some other powder that counters this one. There’s no way that letting her live was our only option, and when you’re done being dramatic, you’ll see that.”
Rebekah wished she could bash Klaus’s head in for that comment. This was all his fault, after all. He was the one who had first brought Alejandra into their lives. Even Rebekah’s mistake of playing into Tomás’s hands had started with Klaus. If he hadn’t carelessly threatened Marguerite so many times, Rebekah might have given the murder a closer look. She sincerely hoped that he was putting all the pieces together and taking his share of the blame to heart, even if he would never admit to it aloud.