by Julie Plec
“He doesn’t want to!” Rebekah cried, furious at the resigned sound of Elijah’s words. She wanted to shake him, but she couldn’t bring herself to cause him any further hurt. His suffering had already clouded his thinking—that much was obvious. “Just stay here and let us handle this. We’re not children, Elijah. We haven’t been for a long time.”
For a moment she saw them again as they had been, three children running in the sun. She could feel the heat of the daylight on her skin, hear her brothers’ laughing shouts, smell the flowers she wore in her hair. Rebekah had all but died again from the power of that memory, and then she had been reborn from it. She wanted to share that feeling with Elijah, with everyone. The whole of New Orleans deserved the resurrection that Rebekah had experienced. Maybe the battle to come was what they all needed.
“I know you’re not children,” Elijah sighed. “Believe me. But I can’t wait here like a prisoner, wondering all night if I might be able to help. So accept that, Rebekah. If you’re as capable as you say, you’ll be able to kill me if that’s what it comes to. And I don’t doubt for a moment that Niklaus will do what is necessary.”
Klaus placed the jagged branch back in its box and locked it securely. “We’ll decide this tonight, brother,” he promised. “If you’re still of sound mind at moonrise, you and our stake will come along to enjoy the spectacle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ALEJANDRA SLIPPED HER silky dress down over one shoulder, then the other. Elijah watched her, entranced, as she revealed a magical expanse of skin. Her breasts gleamed in the moonlight that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and still the gown kept sliding down, down, down toward the floor.
She looked up at him slyly, her green eyes glittering through the web of her black eyelashes, a knowing smile playing on her lips. She knew how he desired her, and she enjoyed seeing it written all over his face. She was teasing him, toying with him, delaying his pleasure until the moment he couldn’t stand to wait another second.
Alejandra stepped closer, and Elijah’s fist clenched over the White Oak stake in his hand. He wanted her; he wanted her more than anything else. But he knew that was wrong, that there was something out there that was more important than his longing for Alejandra. It wasn’t real; she wasn’t real.
He could feel the warmth of her skin so close to his, and smell the smoke and whiskey in her curled black hair. She certainly seemed real, and although he knew better, Elijah’s grip on the stake relaxed a little. Her presence made him feel weak, and her naked body washed white by the full moon held the promise of his restoration.
“I’ve missed you,” he told her, hating himself for the truth of that confession.
“I’m right here.” She smiled, and reached down to caress the side of his face, tracing the line of his jaw with one fingernail.
Elijah closed his eyes and drove the stake into her chest, unable to watch as it struck home. He could feel the wood pierce her skin and crack her ribs, then separate the muscle of her heart. She screamed, a high, wailing sound that was echoed by a sudden blast of wind outside.
The windows slammed open and the tempest swirled into the room, and Elijah opened his eyes to see Alejandra’s face blazing with fury. Her hair billowed in the rising storm, and her fingers bent like claws, reaching for his throat.
Then she disappeared, melting away into the howling wind, dissolving like poison into wine. She was replaced by pain: burning, searing, miserable pain that threatened to destroy Elijah from the inside out. Without Alejandra, there was no hope for him, the pain whispered. There would never be anything to fill the space where she had been, and Elijah would suffer without her forever.
He couldn’t even move anymore, as if his limbs were being pinned down by someone much stronger than himself. He strained his eyes open, returning to the place of his suffering.
As the last of his hallucination slipped away, his agony grew even worse, amplified immeasurably by the thudding of his heart in his chest. His breath seemed to scorch his throat and lungs, and the faint sound of crickets outside the window might as well have been a metal hatchet tapping inside his ear.
Lisette tightened her grip on his forearms, and in spite of himself, Elijah groaned in pain. “You were sleeping,” she told him, her voice betraying a concern that bordered on fear.
The sky outside his windows was newly dark, with only the first scattering of stars piercing the sky. Moonrise was still hours away. The battle hadn’t started yet, but Elijah had dreamed through the better part of the day. Thanks to Alejandra’s snare, he had almost missed his chance to prove that he was stronger than some magic trick, that he could still fight and kill like an Original.
“It’s late,” he said, struggling against Lisette’s hands. “Rebekah and Niklaus must be at each other’s throats from waiting so long. You should have woken me.”
“I haven’t been able to wake you any more than I’ve been able to force you to sleep,” Lisette said, letting go of his arms at last. She was still between him and the door, he couldn’t help but notice, and she didn’t look inclined to budge. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you walk out of here.”
“What do you mean?” Elijah asked, trying to make sense of her total lack of urgency. They needed to be in position, narrowing down the many warehouses by the river until they could surround Tomás’s. The wolves needed to be in place by the time the moon rose, and Elijah was slower than he cared to admit at the moment. “There’s too much to do before the fight. Lisette, I’m delaying the others when they already need to be in position.”
She bit her lip and looked away, and Elijah could read the entire truth in her face. “Don’t worry about all that right now,” she suggested. “Please. Just get back into the bed and rest.”
“They’ve gone already,” Elijah said, and she flinched a little as his words struck at her secret. “My sister and brother thought it easier to leave me behind than to worry about me in the midst of a battle. They are unsure of my health and unconvinced of my loyalties, and so they set you over me like a guard dog and went off to fight my battle without me.”
“They were so worried about you,” Lisette soothed, but Elijah was in no mood to hear it.
“I worry about them,” he reminded her. He finally noticed the silver candle burning beside his bed: It was the one Amalia Giroux had given to Klaus. A hundred vampires needed to die before it burned itself out. “When have my siblings ever been better off without my help? Alejandra and Tomás separated us on purpose, knowing how much weaker we are when we’re apart. Did they not consider the stupidity of doing exactly what their enemies had conspired to do?”
“They considered that twelve hours ago, more or less, you were running headlong toward the open forest as if the love of your life waited for you there,” Lisette responded, her hurt showing more than she probably wished it would. “That the powder can control you is no fault or weakness of yours, Elijah. It’s no reflection on you. It’s just the way things are. And as long as you’re under its influence, you’re a danger to everyone around you, and so they thought it best to let you sleep.”
“They thought,” Elijah repeated, intrigued by her choice of words. “What about you, Lisette? You would never have chosen to stay out of a fight just to watch me dream. You want to be there, in the thick of things, and you can’t possibly believe I’m dangerous enough to justify both of us staying home.”
She rolled her eyes at his transparent manipulation, but Elijah could also see he had struck on something true. “I told you that I would always be here for you, you idiot,” she said. “There will be other wars, Elijah, and other chances to fight. Of course I’d rather be in the thick of battle beside you than sitting here, but this is my mission. I will stay with you here until you’re cured.”
Elijah stepped closer to her, taking in every faint freckle on the bridge of her nose. �
��I’m already out of bed, though,” he pointed out. “And with you along to keep me in line, I might as well be cured.”
“How do you expect me to do that?” Lisette demanded, folding her arms across her chest. “You’re about a thousand years older than I am, and you’re possessed by a dead woman with access to magic I’ve never even seen. I got lucky once, Elijah, but let’s not pretend I’ll be any help if things go really wrong.”
She was right. But Lisette didn’t need to be stronger than he was. She only needed to be armed. “Come with me,” Elijah suggested, a bit more softly and with the offer of compromise in his tone. “There’s something I need to show you.”
He refused to lean on her as they made their way down the staircase and to the drawing room. He had almost grown used to the searing pain that seemed to want to rip his body apart from the inside. It had been intolerable at first, but after days of having no other choice, Elijah was almost able to ignore it.
“What is that?” Lisette asked when he had forced open the iron box and pulled out the White Oak stake for her to see. She touched it curiously, running her fingers along the rough bark. Elijah shuddered to see her so casual with it, but any stake could destroy a vampire like Lisette. She had no particular reason to dread this one any more than all the rest.
“This is the weapon that can kill me,” Elijah explained, folding her palm around the stake and releasing it into her care. “Bring it with you, and be ready to use it if you must.”
Lisette stared at the stake as if seeing it for the first time, then she looked back up at Elijah, momentarily speechless. “I can’t use this,” she whispered at last. “Elijah, I would never be able to use this on you.”
“You can and you will,” he assured her. “I have no doubts, Lisette. You have proved that I can trust you with my life, and I know I can trust you with my death. Whether you need to use this or whether you don’t, you will not make a mistake.”
Lisette opened her mouth again and then closed it, apparently thinking better of her reply. A wolf howled somewhere out in the bayou—a real one, as the full moon was still nearly an hour from rising. But that time would be wasted if they didn’t hurry.
The doorframe was still an empty hole leading out into the darkness. Elijah stepped through and Lisette followed, tucking the stake into the bodice of her dress as she went.
Elijah smelled the powder just a moment before the pain began again in earnest. It smelled a little sweet and somehow spicy, like the perfume of some exotic land he couldn’t quite place. Lisette cried out and then went perfectly still, and he knew that the substance had worked its way into her lungs as well.
Tomás stepped up onto veranda, his dark cloak swirling around him like a second shadow. A silver clasp glittered at his throat, and Elijah could make out the shape of a head with two faces, each looking in opposite directions. One faced the future and the other the past, he remembered dimly: Janus, the twins.
“How good of you to come out,” Tomás greeted the two vampires. His pale green eyes flickered between the two of them, sizing up Lisette in a way Elijah found deeply distasteful. “I hope you don’t mind that I took advantage of that witch’s arrival to cross your protection spell unannounced.”
Elijah tried to answer, but his mouth no longer belonged to him. Tomás reached out to stroke Lisette’s flame-colored hair as if he were appraising merchandise. “I’m glad you weren’t left alone,” he said to Elijah, although his eyes still lingered on Lisette. “I have work to do in this house, and you and this beautiful woman here are going to help me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
KLAUS’S ARMY, A RESTLESS, shifting mass of violence and hunger, was gathered on the docks that ran along the Mississippi River. Klaus counted his soldiers, making sure that every last vampire had answered his call. Elijah’s health depended on their obedience.
Klaus could see Rebekah scanning the crowd as well, her full mouth set in a serious line. To his pleasant surprise, his sister had readily agreed to his true plan, once he had explained the extent of it to her. The insidious corruption of New Orleans’s residents had seeped into the very bones of the city, and she felt as strongly as Klaus did that their only choice was to start over and wipe the slate clean. This would be more than just another battle: It would be a new beginning.
The solution to nearly all their problems lay on the other side of the warehouse door behind Klaus. The storeroom was vacant for now—the werewolves’ scouts had confirmed that the whole neighborhood was empty, actually, except for the supernatural beings. But it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Klaus gave the doors a solid bang with his fist to get everyone’s attention. When his soldiers were silent Klaus cleared his throat.
“This is where we will stalk our prey,” Klaus announced, and his voice echoed off the water. “The loathsome rats we have come to exterminate call this place home.” Amalia had been as good as her word. Her witches had located Tomás’s warehouse, a huge wooden building just beside the river. They were waiting a bit farther upstream, ready to join the vampires and werewolves in destroying the Cult of Janus, but unaware of what else Klaus had in mind.
He reached behind his back to thrust the double doors open, revealing the interior of the warehouse behind him. The seemingly endless room was full of half-burnt candles, scraps of parchment, and cast-off clothing, sure signs that Tomás’s friends had been using this as a meeting place. There were also plenty of crates and boxes stacked along the walls, and based on Klaus’s earlier scouting, it appeared that business was good. If Tomás had been as talented a rebel as he was a merchant, New Orleans might belong to him by now. He had already seen that the warehouse was packed with silks and tea from China, cinnamon from Dutch Ceylon, Ottoman fine leather, and truly impressive quantities of Barbados rum.
“The humans meet here at midnight on the full, new, and half moons,” Klaus went on, stepping back to let his vampires inside. “They will come tonight and gather here to plot their next move against us. And we’ll already be here, waiting for them. Won’t that be a nice surprise?”
A cheer went up from the soldiers, and Klaus added his own shout. He wanted them in good spirits, liquored up and ready to fight without asking too many questions. Enthusiasm was the only ally he needed, and his army had that in spades.
Klaus loosened a few crates of the rum and pried them open while his army filled the warehouse. He tossed a bottle to José, then pulled out another. The black-haired thief popped off the cork and took a long pull before passing the bottle to a former whore. She drank so eagerly that a few drops ran down her face and spilled on the dirty floor.
Klaus smiled to himself and continued passing out the rum, whipping his soldiers into a frenzy of chaos and pandemonium. “All we have to do is wait,” he shouted, and this time the roar that answered him was almost deafening.
Rebekah pushed her way through the crowd of wild and rowdy vampires. “My dear sister,” Klaus announced, feeling expansive so near to his moment of triumph. “Total victory is nearly at hand. Drink with us.”
Klaus pulled the last flask from the crate and bit off the top of the bottle, spilling it liberally as he handed it to Rebekah. She wrinkled her snub nose in disgust, but she drank from it all the same before pouring the rest out on the ground. Klaus tore open the next crate.
“Luc came back during that stirring speech of yours,” she told him, then snarled viciously at a vampire who had the poor judgment to bump into her shoulder. “He says the werewolves are getting restless this close to moonrise. Sampson has them waiting downriver, so that he and Amalia can close in from opposite directions once the humans are inside. No one will escape.”
“Neither friends nor enemies nor innocent bystanders,” Klaus agreed, restless for the beginning of the bloodbath.
“We have no friends, Klaus,” Rebekah replied, “and no one here is innocent. We only have enemies
.”
“Every time we turn to the witches or the werewolves for help, it only strengthens them,” Klaus agreed. “They profit whenever someone moves against us, and it’s time to be done with them. Even if it requires a sacrifice.”
New Orleans would burn, and whatever was left in the morning would be a reborn world.
“One hundred vampires, with Luc as the hundredth,” Rebekah mused. “Not to mention anyone else who showed the poor judgment to get involved in all of this.”
“It’s the only way we can take control of our own destiny,” he replied, his eyes wandering around the room again, making sure all was in order.
Klaus was impressed by Rebekah’s commitment to her word. When she’d suggested that Luc could act as a messenger between the three armies, Klaus had been sure it was only a pretext to keep her lover out of harm’s way.
But one hundred vampires needed to die that night, and when Elijah failed to wake at sunset, Luc’s fate had been sealed. There was no one better to keep watch over Elijah than Lisette, and Rebekah had apparently made her peace with that. Klaus had never thought much of Rebekah’s tiresome obsession with love, but he was glad to see that at least her brother’s life mattered more to her than some blond pirate she had met a mere month ago.
That was the difference between her and Klaus: Rebekah always had hope for the next great love she believed was waiting around the corner for her. Klaus had lost that hope decades ago. There was no more life-changing, earth-moving love out there for him, and that left only power.
The werewolves and the witches wanted to take that from him, but Klaus wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. He had seen more of the world than any of them would ever see, and he understood it far better than they ever could. To them, “power” meant a place in New Orleans, but by the time he was done, there would be nothing left of New Orleans, and no one left to fight over it. That would suit Klaus just fine.