by Julie Plec
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KLAUS SNAPPED A guard’s neck and buried his fangs deep into another. He was hungry and angry. There were a few servants hurrying across the courtyard and he killed them, too.
Daggering Rebekah hadn’t nearly satisfied his need to destroy...something. And anyway, Vivianne had forced him to let his sister go. He had fully intended to leave her lying on the beach with his silver dagger in her heart. With any luck the tide would have carried her body away. She might have drifted on the waves forever, powerless to bother anyone ever again except for the occasional passing ship that might need to steer around her.
But Vivianne had been overcome with compassion, and she had pleaded with him to reconsider. It pained him that she could be so forgiving, but that was Vivianne’s nature. Vivianne waited outside the iron gate of the palatial villa, her loose-fitting gown glowing under the nearly full moon. She seemed a bit thinner than he remembered, her delicate frame bordering on gaunt.
A guard ran across the courtyard brandishing a sword. Klaus snapped it out of his hand and used it to kill him, as well as two of his comrades, almost as an afterthought. Even as the guards collapsed onto the ground, Klaus noticed a footman stumbling toward the open gate. The man was probably just trying to escape, but the only way out of the villa happened to lead toward Vivianne, and for that he had to die. He flipped the sword up into a ruthless overhand throw, and a second later it was impaled in the footman’s back.
The mansion’s owner, the elderly barón de Something-or-Other, was staying at his residence in Baton Rouge, so at least the villa was mostly empty, and not very well defended. Klaus owed Vivianne a honeymoon, and he intended to give her one. The first had been cut short rather dramatically by Rebekah’s lunatic attack, but that was all behind them now. This would be even better: a palace deep in the countryside of Louisiana.
He tore both arms off of someone he was too blind with fury to even see clearly, and then there was no one left to kill. There must be a few terrified servants left hiding inside the mansion, but compulsion would take care of the rest, and perhaps it was time for Klaus to regain a little self-control.
If he wasted his entire honeymoon venting this rage, Rebekah would have won.
He stepped casually across the corpses to rejoin Vivianne, and lifted her in his arms. “My lady,” he said gallantly, “our villa is ready for us.” He carried her across the threshold, and she nuzzled her face against his chest rather than look at the bodies. She definitely felt lighter than he remembered, and he hoped that a cook or two were left among the survivors. Vivianne needed rest and food and safety and love, and he intended to provide all of them in generous amounts. He set her down in the elaborately gilded foyer.
“Alone at last.” She smiled, although the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes. “For the moment, at least. Klaus, we will be hunted wherever we go.”
He should never have told her that it was she the morts-vivants were after—it weighed on her. “I always admired this place,” Klaus told her, refusing to be drawn down that morbid line of thought. “I never had a reason to take it over before, but for years now I have thought of it as somewhere I would love to bring you someday.”
She looked around finally, taking in the beautiful mosaics and the graceful arches. Every inch of the mansion had been used to make the place even more stunning; the barón had plenty of money and no instinct toward restraint. His country home was hedonistic in its elegance, and Klaus looked forward to spending some very enjoyable days and nights under its frescoed ceilings.
“I’ve never seen a palace quite like this one,” Vivianne admitted. “I had hoped to travel once I was married, but...” She trailed off, looking confused, as if her new life were overlapping with her former one in such a way that she couldn’t tell which was which.
He hadn’t given her onetime fiancé a second thought since the blast of gunpowder had gone off, taking Armand Navarro with it. It stung a bit that Vivianne still remembered him as the man she had once meant to marry. Armand had been too provincial to ever truly satisfy a woman like Vivianne. He had been a local boy through and through, already married to his family’s pathetically small sphere of influence.
“Well,” Klaus replied, taking her hand and leading her down a column-lined hallway, “you are married now, and we can go wherever you like. This villa was modeled after a particularly flashy palácio in the south of Mallorca, and we can go there next and compare the two.”
Vivianne laughed, the sound ringing musically along the length of the hall. “Why stop there?” she teased. “From what I saw just now, we could conquer the world.”
Klaus wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders and tucked her closer against his body, a loving gesture meant to conceal the worry on his face. Vivianne had never been bloodthirsty; if anything, violence repulsed her. Even he could admit he had gotten carried away in the courtyard, and yet she didn’t seem troubled by it at all. She had only stood there, watching, and now she seemed willing to do it all again.
She drank blood, Rebekah claimed, and she begged me to kill her. Vivianne had hidden her face from the sight of the corpses outside, but once upon a time the mere thought of them would have continued to haunt her. She would have insisted on a burial, or at least a pyre, and she would have made Klaus swear that their next residence would be paid for in more traditional coin. What if she hadn’t been blocking out the sight of the bodies from her own eyes? What if she had been concealing something from Klaus, instead?
It was ridiculous, and he silently cursed his sister for planting these doubts in his mind. “If it’s the world you want, Viv, just say the word and it’s yours,” he told his bride, wondering whether this new, slightly unfamiliar Vivianne might take him up on the offer, where the old one never would have.
“As long as I have you, the world can take care of itself,” she answered, and he felt muscles relax that he hadn’t even realized he’d tensed. She had barely been back a month, after more than forty years on the Other Side. What more could anyone expect of her? If she had changed in death, who could blame her? It certainly didn’t mean anything was wrong.
Klaus heard the soft click of a door closing somewhere along the hall, and knew that the servants were growing curious about the villa’s new occupants. He should have been hunting them down one by one to lay his compulsion on them like a yoke, preventing anyone from trying to escape or send word to his siblings. But it didn’t feel right leaving Vivianne alone.
“Come out,” he ordered. “Show yourselves if you want to live.” After a minute, a handful of bedraggled humans emerged from behind the closed door.
One was injured, bleeding through a dirty bandage around his forearm. It couldn’t have been from Klaus’s attack on the courtyard, because all those people were dead. Maybe he had simply hurt himself by coincidence earlier in the day. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vivianne staring at the spot of crimson blood as if it were the only thing she could see. She looked pale and drawn, almost as if she might faint.
Klaus shook it off, deliberately not looking at her. He needed to concentrate on compelling the servants to do his bidding, to bring his wife food and make up a bed for her. She needed to rest and recover, that was all. And if they didn’t hurry up and help her do that, they could join their friends in the courtyard. In fact, Klaus decided it would be most efficient to leave the corpses there for the night. It would serve as a reminder to all that there were consequences for getting between him and anything—anything at all—that Vivianne Mikaelson desired.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE FIRST THING Rebekah did was feel around the bodice of her dress, searching for the dagger that had sent her away into the darkness. But that darkness was slowly receding—the dagger was gone. She didn’t know who’d removed it or how much time had passed...seconds or centuries.
But she was still on the same
beach and the moon looked almost full. Rebekah sat up and then winced as her head spun violently. She thought she might throw up. She could feel her blood starting to circulate again, sluggishly at first and then enough to warm her icy hands and feet. She rubbed her bare arms, trying to get a sense of the temperature of the air around her. Everything still felt cold, but she was pretty sure it was just her. As more sensations returned she could feel the pebbly sand beneath her, and the sound of the waves sliding across the sea.
The water was calmer than the night she had been daggered, and the tide was so high that it nearly lapped at her shoes. Forty-four years ago she had chosen this area because it was empty and isolated, and it hadn’t changed much in all that time. She wondered how long she’d laid there before someone had noticed a girl with a dagger in her chest. But where was that person...and the dagger? Surely Klaus hadn’t removed it before running off with his monster bride. He had looked deadly serious about taking Rebekah out of the fight, and remorse wasn’t his style.
He would be far away by now, no matter how long she had been unconscious. His first priority would be to protect Vivianne from anyone who might force him to face the truth about the evil lurking in her. He had daggered his own sister for her. The thing inside Vivianne would never need another ally as long as she had Klaus...and maybe that was the whole point.
Rebekah’s head was pounding, and she was starving. There was a fishing village not too far away, but the thought of dragging herself there seemed overwhelming. Even standing up was a challenge she didn’t feel entirely ready for, but it wasn’t as if waiting around would make her any less hungry. This was how it had felt to be human, she could dimly recall, weak and slow.
She forced herself to her feet, brushing off her hands and then shaking out her dress. It was hopeless—the fabric was stained with sand and salt, but there was no sign of rot or sun, nothing to suggest that more than a few years had passed, at the very most.
Rebekah sighed and trudged toward the cabin, which seemed like a good start. It looked deserted, but disrepair and decay hadn’t set in. The longer she was awake the more certain Rebekah felt that only a few days had passed. Everything looked too close to the same, and it even felt the same. Klaus and Vivianne had left nothing behind when they fled, but Rebekah could still sense a lingering trace of them there, like the smell of dried oil paint or faded lilacs.
Besides, surely Elijah would have come looking for her if she had been gone much longer. He would have had a coffin built for her so that she could sleep beside Kol and Finn. Elijah was a loyal, caring brother, unlike some others she might mention.
Even after just a few days Rebekah knew that Klaus and Vivianne’s trail would have gone cold. And there was no reason to think she would have more luck confronting them a second time than she had the first, especially since the silver dagger that had brought her down was nowhere to be found.
But Klaus wasn’t the only one who could help her, she realized. There was someone else who would know exactly what was wrong with Vivianne and how to fix it. The witches—the witch—who had brought Viv back had a great deal to answer for, and Rebekah decided it was high time she paid a visit to Lily Leroux.
She left the little cottage, slamming the door behind her with a satisfying thud. It was time for a fresh start, a different direction.
Rebekah struck out in the general direction of New Orleans, meandering a bit to avoid the more thickly settled areas while still traveling along the main roads. She didn’t feel like confronting a crowd in her weakened state, but one or two lone travelers would be just the kind of company she needed on such a journey.
She caught a man at a crossroads, warming his hands by a small fire. He had the sense to shrink back at the sight of her, although most humans weren’t so wary. Remaining young and lovely forever had its perks, and Rebekah had grown accustomed to being welcomed just about anywhere she went. The man leaped up from his seat and held out a rough, handmade wooden cross in one trembling hand. The morts-vivants must have spread fear and distrust throughout the countryside. “Stay back, demon!” the traveler shouted, and Rebekah smiled.
“You can put that away, good sir,” she called pleasantly. “I’m not the kind of creature who fears such things.”
The man relaxed, and Rebekah was on him in the blink of an eye, her fangs extending toward his sunburned neck. His blood tasted like the sky, like wind blowing over an open field. The heat of it warmed her, and she could feel the strength returning to her body as it ebbed from his.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“WILLIAM COLLADO,” ELIJAH greeted the werewolves’ leader, keeping his voice polite. “I am sorry that we have not met until now.”
“Stay away from us!” a wolf snarled from the crowd, but William silenced him with a stare.
“We haven’t missed the attention of your kind,” William replied once quiet had fallen again. “You might have stayed away longer, but I assume it suits you to come here now, just as it didn’t before.”
“It suits us all,” Elijah corrected. “A danger has arisen that threatens your kind just as much as mine. It will tear the city apart if we don’t band together to stop it.”
William chuckled, a sound that sent shivers down Elijah’s spine. “Does it hurt your pride, Mikaelson? To know you aren’t the only undead things roaming these woods anymore?”
So they knew about the morts-vivants. But William didn’t seem especially concerned about the danger stalking their lands. And neither did the rest of his kind, who smirked and rolled their eyes at the vampire.
“The witches have gone too far,” Elijah said, pitching his voice to carry over the whispers and laughs that rippled through the crowd. “They have been led astray by a madwoman who would happily see everyone in this city dead.”
“As far as I know, her minions have only preyed on humans, although it seems they’ve managed to irritate your kind as well. Lily Leroux’s plan doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me and mine, so I’m not sure why it warrants your visit.”
Elijah ignored the implied threat, and met William’s gaze. “Lily is making a bid for control over New Orleans. She has raised the dead, set fire to the city, and openly attacked my people in the town square. She has spun completely out of control, and it will take all of us working together to stop her.”
William smiled, a sinister expression that crept up to his blue eyes. The smile reminded him of Klaus when he was in one of his particularly dangerous moods.
“Have you stopped to wonder why they attacked you, vampire?” William asked. “Why they attacked you, and not us?”
“They haven’t attacked you yet,” Elijah corrected. “It’s only a matter of time.” But he understood what William was driving at, and he had to concede that the werewolf had a point.
“It’ll be a matter of a lot of time,” William disagreed, his smile vanishing as quickly as it had come. “You said it yourself: Lily is after power. And that means your kind has left mine with nothing that she wants.”
Elijah inhaled steadily and then exhaled again, reminding himself to choose his words carefully. Nearly everyone in New Orleans could lay blame on the witches for the ruin they had suffered back in 1722, but the werewolves had more than one grievance. The witches had destroyed their home, but Elijah and Klaus had personally destroyed their Pack.
It would be harder for them to choose between the Mikaelsons and Lily than Elijah had assumed at first. They had no foundation upon which to base trust for either clan. Their histories were murky and complicated, and it had been naïve to imagine that William Collado would set all of that aside now just because Elijah told him it was important.
The cluster of huts just beyond the circle of werewolves caught his eye: low with clay-tiled roofs. The contrast to the mansion Rebekah had built was inescapable. The vampires had prospered while the werewolves had huddled together in
the night, hiding in the depths of the forest as they struggled to rebuild their decimated Pack. No wonder they couldn’t see eye to eye with him now.
“They will not leave you alone forever,” he warned William, watching for the Pack’s reaction. Just because the witches were starting at the head didn’t mean they wouldn’t eventually make their way down to the tail. “Your kind has always been a formidable threat to the witches of this city,” he improvised, “and they will not forget that.”
But he could tell at once that his speech had fallen on deaf ears. The werewolves were too prideful. They would rather take their chances against an army of witches than admit what Elijah could offer them.
William spread his hands in a mock show of helplessness. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To be king, to rule New Orleans? We had nothing to offer you back when you drove us out of the city we built out of untamed swampland, and I think it’s best for us to carry on with that arrangement.”
“That’s a mistake,” Elijah told him bluntly, losing all patience for diplomacy. “Once we’re out of the way Lily will roll over you like so many corpses, and it’ll be too late to stop her.”
“Let’s find out,” a pretty young werewolf suggested, appearing at Elijah’s elbow with a sinister grin on her heart-shaped face. She caught one of Elijah’s elbows, and he felt another werewolf grab his other arm. He could have fought them both off, but there were hundreds more behind them.
“Take him to the pit,” William ordered dismissively. “I think the king of New Orleans could benefit from a night to think about the limits of his power.” His blue eyes found Elijah’s. “We’ll see you tomorrow night, vampire, by the light of the full moon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IT WAS THE same old dream again, but this time he knew that Vivianne was back where she belonged. How long would he remain haunted by the nights he had awoken alone? He just had to reach a little farther, just find the silk of her skin...