by Julie Plec
Vivianne screamed again, and the noise spurred Rebekah into action. Klaus was a heavy enough sleeper, but it wouldn’t be long before he realized that his beloved was no longer slumbering by his side.
Rebekah raced along the beach, overtaking Vivianne within moments. She caught the distraught girl’s arm, but Vivianne screamed again and lashed out, striking Rebekah hard across the face. “It’s me,” Rebekah whispered urgently, but Vivianne fought even harder against her grip.
“Let me go!” she shrieked, her voice entirely unhinged. Her sharp fingernails raked across Rebekah’s cheek, and Vivianne froze at the sight of the blood that welled up in their wake. Then she lunged forward, her lips curled back in a feral snarl, and Rebekah felt the other woman’s teeth sink into the skin her nails had broken. She was drinking, trying to drain Rebekah’s blood while her hands searched for a better hold.
Rebekah shoved her away in horror, and Vivianne ran into the shallow, lapping waves like a woman possessed. Deciding that the time for delicacy was past, Rebekah tackled her around her slim waist, driving her down into the muddy sand and soaking them both in shockingly cold salt water.
Vivianne rolled with an unusual strength, almost overpowering her for a moment before Rebekah managed to catch her by her shoulders and hold her beneath an oncoming wave. Vivianne sputtered and coughed, lunging back for the shore, but Rebekah had the upper hand now and she wasn’t about to lose it. She pushed Vivianne’s head below the water again, reminding herself as she did that it was for the girl’s own good.
“Stop fighting,” she warned, but Vivianne kept thrashing like a mad thing.
She gulped in a breath of night air before moaning, “Just kill me.” They were both drenched in seawater, but Rebekah felt sure she could also see tears coursing down Vivianne’s face in the moonlight. “Please,” Vivianne whispered, so softly now that her voice seemed to fade into the crashing waves. “You have to just let me go back.”
“You want to...die? Again?” Rebekah sat back in the sand, ignoring the waves.
“Something is wrong with me.” Vivianne gasped, pushing back wet strands of black hair. “I can feel it inside, and it wants to get out.”
It was exactly what Rebekah had suspected, and yet hearing it out loud was different. For all the strange moments she had noticed, there had been hundreds more when Vivianne seemed perfectly normal.
“It’s not easy to live again after dying,” Rebekah told her gently, helping her to her feet and holding her up against the pounding surf as they made their way toward the shore. The girl was docile in her arms, seeming to rely entirely on Rebekah’s strength as if her own were suddenly gone. “I know, Viv. But that doesn’t mean—”
“Klaus!” Vivianne screamed at the top of her lungs, stunning Rebekah into silence. Another wave broke against their knees, and Rebekah lost her grip on the girl’s arm. “Klaus, help! Your sister is trying to kill me!”
Vivianne sprinted for the shore while Rebekah floundered in the water, cursing her own stupidity. Vivianne had told her what was wrong, and she hadn’t been willing to listen. She had forgotten what she had known for over a thousand years: No one had a stronger desire to live than someone who had already died.
Vivianne’s pain was real, and Rebekah believed that there was a part of her that was horrified by whatever darkness was creeping up on her. But that glimpse beneath the surface had been buried before Rebekah had wrapped her mind around it.
Vivianne’s white shift glowed in the moonlight as she ran up the beach, and Rebekah caught Vivianne halfway back to the cabin. The two women fell together, striking the sand so hard that it knocked the breath out of their lungs.
“Klaus, help me!” Vivianne cried again, and Rebekah clapped a hand over her mouth.
“I’m trying to help you!” she hissed. “Shut your mouth for a minute and let me!”
Vivianne bit her instead, clamping down hard on Rebekah’s left arm and holding on as if her life depended on it. Rebekah felt her blood coursing hotly along her skin, and at least a little of it made its way into Vivianne’s waiting mouth.
Rebekah was repulsed, just as horrified as the real Vivianne would have been. This wasn’t the real Vivianne, she understood now. It walked and talked like her, but it was something else that wore her skin and even her personality like a mask. And it was eating away at the inside of that mask, thinning it out until little glimpses of its true nature showed through.
She ripped her arm away and slapped Vivianne’s face so hard that her head whipped sideways.
Then Rebekah felt herself jerked up and backward by a powerful force. Her time was up. She wouldn’t get a chance to find out what was wrong with Vivianne that night, and maybe not ever.
Klaus had finally woken up, and he was in no mood to talk.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ELIJAH’S CURFEW HAD worked. Every door in New Orleans was locked against the night, all the shutters tightly latched. The cobblestoned streets glistened from the summer rain, and there was no other sound except for the vampires’ footfalls echoing off the stone walls.
There weren’t as many vampires as there had been at the wedding the night before, but they had healed, and most importantly of all they knew how to kill their opponents.
Tonight was going to be their night.
Klaus had fled and Rebekah had gone off after him, trying to atone for her horrid lack of judgment. Their inability to keep their emotions in check had cost Elijah two of his strongest warriors, and he resented being the only Mikaelson who was truly dedicated to his family’s well-being. But the rest of Elijah’s army was at his back, and they were more than ready for a good fight.
There was no sign of them until the vampire army reached the town square. There were dozens—maybe even hundreds—of torches approaching the square from the opposite side.
No humans would have dared to venture out so late, not even en masse. This was an entirely different kind of uprising. Elijah signaled to his vampires to spread out, and to capitalize on the keen vision that made torches unnecessary for them. They could see the witches coming, but the flames would blind the witches. They were walking into a trap.
Small bands of vampires hid behind buildings, fountains. They waited while the witches marched straight for the center of the square, with its rather unfortunate statue of King Carlos III.
Through the light of the torches Elijah searched for their leader. Her straight nose and high cheekbones were just like her mother’s, and the torches warmed her brown hair almost to the same auburn glow. Lily Leroux marched at the head of an army of witches, both living and undead, and the light reflected in her brown eyes was pure madness.
“I see you’ve stopped hiding behind your minions,” he called, and each side took in their enemy. The addition of the living witches to the morts-vivants had swelled their ranks considerably, and Elijah could see that they were well outnumbered. There had been hundreds of witches the night before, and now there might have been nearly a thousand.
“Your time is over,” she called back, her voice pitched chillingly low. “New Orleans has always belonged to the faction with the strongest army, and that advantage is no longer yours.”
He could hear the bitterness in her words, filled with the memory of her people’s fall from grace. They had never been quite as powerful as the werewolves, but the witches had occupied a place of pride since the city had first begun to emerge out of a shabby fishing village stuck at the edge of the bayou.
It had been their own fault they had lost all of that, but obviously Lily didn’t see things quite that way. She had raised the dead. She was responsible for human and vampire deaths, she was responsible for Ava. She had used Klaus and Vivianne to further her own quest for power, and in doing so she had struck at the very heart of the Mikaelson family.
No one could be allowed to attack Elijah�
�s people and then simply walk away. “Strike!” he shouted to his forces.
“None of them leave this square!”
The vampires surged forward, and the witches leapt to meet them. Grunts and screams rose into the still night air. Elijah pulled the hot, slimy heart from the first mort-vivant he could reach and held it up, hearing a cheer rise from the vampires around them.
There was an intense flash of light and something knocked him sideways. He pulled himself free and jumped back to his feet, noticing a huge scorched patch beneath his feet. He spun around and saw Lisette rising from the ground as well, brushing her clothing off without any sign she was hurt.
Lily let another fireball grow between her hands as she whispered her spell. She aimed the second bolt directly at the tall redheaded girl, who was too distracted by a knot of three other witches to see it.
Elijah dove to pull Lisette to the ground, and the spell sailed over their heads, crashing into a pack of witches. All three burst into flame, so burnt to a crisp that it was clear no ordinary fire consumed them. Lily was throwing something far more powerful and dangerous.
“We need to take her out,” Lisette grunted, rolling up to a crouch.
Another vampire—a blue-eyed waif Elijah dimly remembered being smitten with his sister—took one of the fireballs to his chest, and his scream pierced the noise of the melee around them. It went on for what seemed like minutes as the unnatural fire consumed him, burning away his flesh and then even his bones. In moments there was nothing left of him at all...and Lily was already brewing another ball of her potent magic between her hands.
Elijah drove forward, trying to reach Lily before her next assault could be launched, but the fighting seemed thickest around her. Every step he took brought him up against more morts-vivants, and more stake-and spell-wielding witches. He struck and hacked, but he couldn’t seem to make any real forward progress.
Lethal spells sizzled through the air, and Elijah could tell that Lily’s aim was wild and out of control. Her fire burned through his fighters and hers alike, destroying witches, vampires, and a considerable number of manicured hedges.
An especially far-flung spell struck a stable near the edge of the square, and it went up like a torch in the darkness. Flaming timbers splintered and fell, and out of the corner of his eye Elijah saw the town house beside it start to smolder. Lily would burn down the city if she wasn’t careful...and she showed no signs of growing cautious.
A tavern across the way caught fire, and the two patches of brightness began to move toward each other, encircling the square in flames.
“Your mother would be ashamed of you!” Elijah roared, and Lily finally turned his way. She was enjoying this, reveling in the death and destruction she was raining down. She shot a spell off quickly, almost flippantly, immolating two vampires along with an undead witch.
“My mother died in the swamp,” Lily spit back, and he could hear her over the din of the battle around them as if they stood alone in the empty town square. “I’ve learned all she had to teach and more, and I have no desire to emulate her example.”
She launched fire at him and he sprang clear, using her distraction in the moment she released the magic to get closer. Only a few defenders separated them now.
A mort-vivant clutched at his back, catching hold of his shirt and attempting to slide her arm around his throat. Then she twitched and jerked, releasing him as quickly as she had caught him. “Go,” snarled Lisette, her arm covered in the dead thing’s blood, its hot, red heart in her hand. “We’ll keep them off you.”
In spite of the generous “we,” she was the only vampire in the vicinity. Apparently, though, she was enough. He felled two more witches who stood between him and Lily.
“I’ll give you one more chance,” he growled when he reached her. He couldn’t kill her, not with the spell still connecting her to Klaus. But he could distract her and create an opening to knock her unconscious. Klaus would be outraged, but he’d have to understand. “Think about your honor, Lily, the honor of all of your kind. Your mother’s memory deserves better than this evil.” Elijah could feel waves of heat emanating from her hands, but she didn’t bring them together. Lily knew she was safe, even if her army was dying around her.
“I don’t care about honor,” she hissed. “I care about taking this city back, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Whatever it takes, whatever it costs.”
“Half of your new city is burning, then,” he said, “Haven’t you ever noticed that it’s only when we’re fighting that there doesn’t seem to be enough of New Orleans to go around?”
She laughed bitterly. “As long as we’re content being under your boot or the werewolves’, you mean, everything is just fine. I don’t think so.”
“Every time you try to take power, look what happens,” he pointed out. He needed to defeat her, but the fact was that he wanted to reach her. He couldn’t look at Lily without seeing her mother’s face, and her mother had been Elijah’s friend. “You can’t rule this city without razing it to the ground.”
“Better gone than yours.” She shrugged, and then smiled. Elijah leaped forward, but it was too late. With a sudden pressure in the air around them, Lily vanished.
As if some signal had been passed between them, the morts-vivants began to drift away down the cobblestoned streets, disappearing among the flaming buildings. Over the fire’s roar, Elijah could hear the clatter of hooves and the sound of shouting voices, and he realized that the humans had arrived to stop the fire.
As Elijah turned to follow his vampires back to the house, he nearly tripped over a prone body that lay half in, half out of the fountain. Her hair shone reddish-gold in the glow of the flames, and Elijah cursed his carelessness.
Lisette had certainly held her own and more, but from the look of things she had fought off over a dozen witches while he had traded threats with Lily Leroux. She stirred as he lifted her, lashing out blindly even though her heartbeat was so weak he could barely hear it.
“The fighting’s done for now,” he told her, gently restraining her hands until her gray eyes were able to focus on his face. The news that Lily had gotten away could wait. Lisette had gone above and beyond to make it possible for Elijah to take out the power-crazed witch, and he could only imagine what she would have to say when she learned that he hadn’t managed to do it. He looked forward to seeing Lisette back on her own two feet while she dressed him down for his failure.
It was time to leave. The plaza was littered with bodies, and there was nothing to be done about that. He called to the nearest vampires and signaled a retreat. He needed a new plan, and his options were running out. His forces were badly weakened, yet the witches only seemed to be growing stronger every time they clashed. Elijah needed reinforcements, and there was only one place left to turn.
There was no love lost between the Original vampires and the werewolves. But the werewolf Pack had never much cared for the witches, either. The uneasy truce between those clans had been plagued by setbacks and betrayals even before the witches’ hurricane had destroyed the werewolves’ home and sealed their exile.
Now that Rebekah had admitted that she had been behind the poison, it seemed that the werewolves still hadn’t chosen a side in Lily’s war. But everyone wanted something, and Elijah had a lot to offer to new allies.
He turned, with Lisette still in his arms and her head lolled against his chest. She would be better in no time, he knew, but for now he carried her, stepping carefully.
Elijah had never had the slightest intention of ever doing the werewolves a single kindness again, and he knew what Klaus would say about the idea. But containing Lily and her kind was of the utmost importance. If he had to make friends of old enemies in order to save the city from her madness, then that was exactly what he would do.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOR DECADES
, KLAUS only had one recurring nightmare. He would roll toward Vivianne in bed, reaching for her, and find nothing but the cold, crumpled sheets behind him. He was always seeking her, and she was always just out of reach.
For a moment he thought he was dreaming again—the empty bed was just another nightmare he would wake from if he just kept reaching. His hands slid blindly across the cold bedsheet, trying to find the warm curve of her body. The screaming was a new addition, though, and the longer it lasted the more wide-awake Klaus felt.
The screaming was real, he realized, and Vivianne was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t just the bed; the entire cottage felt cold and empty without her. And someone was screaming.
He bolted out onto the darkened beach, and he saw them immediately. The two women who struggled together on the sand were so familiar to him that for a moment Klaus thought he might be dreaming after all. His sister had never appeared in this dream, but in all of these nightmares, everything imaginable stood between him and Vivianne. Rebekah slapped her so hard that her head snapped backward, and Klaus could see blood on his wife’s fragile skin. The mismatched fight offended him to his very soul: Rebekah’s invulnerable immortality stacked up against a woman who had been dead longer than she had been alive. It was unfair, and worse than that, it was mean. Klaus had always been able to fall in and out of hate with his siblings, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling such contempt for his sister.
He crossed the wet sand between them in the blink of an eye and threw Rebekah back, putting as much distance between her and Vivianne as he could. Vivianne looked unharmed, but she was crying hysterically and clung to him.
“What the hell have you done?” Klaus demanded as he rounded on Rebekah.
She sat frozen in an awkward half crouch, but looked ready to spring at him. It was bad enough that she had conspired with Elijah to ruin his wedding, but then she had chased him down to ruin his honeymoon, too? That seemed low, even for her.