by Julie Plec
Klaus woke up fully at last, sitting up and shoving the blankets away. The room was silent, and the longer he listened the clearer it became that the entire villa was just as still. Vivianne was gone. Again.
He slid from the bed and prowled from room to room, hunting for her. The villa was entirely deserted, and Klaus could feel his fear mounting. A thousand sinister scenarios flashed through his mind. He could almost see a vengeful Rebekah stalking Vivianne through the villa, and he moved faster, racing to find Vivianne.
There was an open garden in the center of the villa, filled almost entirely with a lily-covered pond whose glossy, flat leaves and delicate fingerling petals seemed to mirror the stars overhead. It was the kind of place Vivianne loved, full of flowering vines and unexpected shadows. Klaus was so sure he would find her there that he paused long enough to search the place twice. At any moment he fully expected to see the edge of her nightdress or a lock of her hair disappearing around a corner. But the garden was as strangely hushed as the rest of the villa. He couldn’t say exactly what finally turned his steps toward the front courtyard, where the evidence of his massacre still lay under the open sky.
He saw Vivianne before she saw him. She stood in the center of the flagstones, her black hair settling around her shoulders like a shroud. In the brilliant light of the waxing moon he could see that her hands were coated with blood, and it ran down her forearms in streaks. The front of her nightgown was dark with it as well.
The source of the blood was easy enough to find. Vivianne raised a heart to her lips like a child with a stolen cake, and her white teeth tore into it again and again. When it was gone, she picked her way carefully over to another dead body, shoved her fist into the man’s chest, and removed his heart.
From the condition of the corpses around her, Klaus could see that she had been at it for some time. Everywhere he looked there were splintered ribs glowing white, half-swallowed by the holes Vivianne had punched through dozens of chests.
When she saw him at last, he realized it was wet with more than just blood. Vivianne was crying as she devoured her gruesome meal, her tears turning from diamonds to rubies as they slid down toward her mouth.
Klaus wanted to hold her, to pull her close and tell her that everything would be all right. He found himself running at her instead, and knocked the heart from her hands. It was cold and tough, having sat too long in the chest of a dead man. It was revolting to touch, much less to think about eating.
The realization that this stringy lump of dead flesh had called to Vivianne, pulling her from their warm bed and out into the night, made Klaus feel physically sick. She lunged after the heart, falling to her knees in her haste to recover it.
“Stop,” he demanded, finally finding his voice, however rough and broken it sounded in his own ears. He caught Vivianne by her shoulders, pulling her back to her feet and wrapping his arms around her. It was more to restrain her than to comfort her, but she bucked and squirmed. “Viv, please! Stop, my love.”
She threw off his arms with a strength she could not possibly possess. She bared her teeth at him in a vicious snarl, and to his horror Klaus felt his own fangs extending in response. Vivianne turned to run for the wrought-iron gate that would lead her out into the countryside, freeing her to do things Klaus was afraid to imagine.
Desecrating the dead was bad enough, but whatever else she was, Vivianne’s blood was still half werewolf. If she killed someone, even when she was not in her right mind, then she would change on the next night’s full moon and be a thousand times more dangerous.
Klaus cursed himself as he pushed off the flagstones to catch her. He’d wanted Vivianne back so badly that he hadn’t let himself think about what coming back might do to her. He’d struck a devil’s bargain with a witch who couldn’t be trusted, and he was responsible for whatever Vivianne was now. He had to find a way to make this right, but first he had to stop her.
She was faster than she should have been, but Klaus was faster still. He intercepted her at the gate, and she let out an inhuman howl of fury and frustration. “Talk to me,” he pleaded, yanking her around by her arm. “Viv, whatever this is, we can get through it together. You just need to—”
She struck his face, and Klaus’s head snapped back from the force of her blow. It was far more than the strength of common madness. Vivianne was a changed woman, more than a witch or even a werewolf, and nearly a match for an Original. He wasn’t even sure she could hear him right then, much less answer him.
Hating himself for it, he hit her back, hoping that he could simply knock her unconscious and then decide what to do. But she stayed on her feet, becoming even more violent in her agitation. She screamed and fought like a wild thing, and for a few horrible moments he began to wonder if he would be able to contain her.
But at last she collapsed against his chest, sobbing as if her own heart were breaking, and he felt his own cheeks wet with tears. He vowed that Lily would feel this same misery, as soon as he could make that happen.
“It isn’t you,” he whispered, stroking Vivianne’s hair with one hand while the other pinned her arms to her sides. “This is something that is being done to you, and it’s something we can fight.”
“I can’t,” she moaned, burying her face against his chest. “I’ve been trying, Klaus, but it’s in me, clawing its way out. I can hear it all the time, and at night...at night...”
“It’s going to be all right,” he told her, turning her gently to face him.
He saw the light of madness in the center of her bottomless black eyes just a second too late, and she raked him across the cheek with her fingernails before he could even react. “You don’t own me,” she spat, elbowing him hard in the stomach and breaking away from his loosened grip again.
It killed him to chase her down, to knock her onto the ground and pin her down like a trapped butterfly. He felt as though he was betraying her somehow. The woman he had first fallen in love with was still in there somewhere, probably terrified and desperate to get out, and all Klaus could do was hurt her.
There was no doubt that she was a danger to herself, but Klaus still felt his stomach turn at the feel of her delicate wrists, her thin body being crushed beneath his own. Sensing his hesitation, Vivianne sank her teeth into his forearm so deeply that he could hear the grinding sound of bone against bone. He gritted his own teeth and struck her hard across the cheek with his other fist, ignoring the tearing feeling as her clenched jaw ripped flesh away from his arm.
Vivianne’s eyes rolled upward, and her long lashes fluttered and then closed. He didn’t know how long she would be out, and as much as he wanted to just cradle her in his arms forever, he knew he needed to move. He lifted her, startled all over again by how light her body was. No wonder she hadn’t been eating enough, if she had been feeling these sinister cravings all along.
Klaus would find a way to make this right, but for now he needed to keep her safe from herself. In his search he’d found a wine cellar, a long, dusty vault with a sturdy door. He carried Vivianne into the house and down the wide stone steps, his ears alert for any sign that they were being observed.
The servants’ fear served him well, and they were undisturbed on their way to the cellar. When he was halfway down the steps, he felt Vivianne begin to stir, and a faint moan escaped from between her ruby lips. Klaus sped up his descent, but by the time he reached the heavy door she was awake again.
Her furious wail echoed off the stone around them, and she began to struggle. Somehow she brought her knee crashing into the point of his chin, and he dropped her inelegantly at the foot of the stairs. She rolled into a crouch, teeth bared and eyes flashing, ready to do whatever it took to fight her way out.
But this time he didn’t hesitate. What he had to do was awful, but it was for Vivianne, and he couldn’t very well claim to love her if he put his own sensibilities above her safety. H
e used all of his strength to launch himself against her, knocking her backward into the shadows of the wine cellar.
She was on her feet again in a flash, charging back toward him with her bloody hands outstretched, but he slammed the door between them and drove the bars home into their sockets. He felt the wood shudder as Vivianne’s body thrashed against it, and after a brief pause he felt the same thing again. His arm throbbed where she had bitten him. The flesh was already beginning to knit itself back together, but in the meantime it hurt like hell.
Vivianne hurled herself against the door over and over, at first screaming her fury and then in eerie, determined silence. Klaus placed his back against his side of the thick wood, then let himself slide heavily down to sit, still leaning against it.
There was still a lot of night left. He couldn’t spend it with Vivianne, but he was hers as surely as she was his, and no matter what barriers lay between them, he wouldn’t leave her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A WITCH CROSSED the marshy expanse, and Rebekah parted the reeds to watch him. Elijah’s previous descriptions had been detailed enough, but she still caught her breath at the sight of the witch simply winking out of sight. There was no question that this was the spot, and the answers Rebekah was seeking began exactly where the witch had vanished.
She carefully moved to where he had taken his last step, keeping low to the ground and using the scrubby trees for cover. But the last hundred yards offered no real concealment, and Rebekah threw caution to the wind and ran. Her speed carried her across the remainder of the distance in the blink of an eye.
When the palisade wall and the town behind it burst into view the surprise nearly knocked the wind out of her. But Rebekah forced herself to relax and try to look as though she belonged. She wrapped herself more tightly in the dead traveler’s cloak, trying to ignore the rich, human stink imprinted on its wool. She walked evenly, not too fast, hoping that anyone who looked her way wouldn’t bother with a second glance.
Rebekah headed toward the thatched roof of the meetinghouse, although she couldn’t set foot inside of it. Candlelight glowed through the windows, and she could hear the soft murmuring of voices inside. She paused beneath a window, but Lily and her witches only spoke of supplies and strategy. It might be hours before they happened to mention anything of use, and even longer before she was able to catch Lily Leroux alone.
Silently, she moved away from the meetinghouse, drifting among the dark wooden huts and letting a plan begin to form itself in her mind. One of these homes must belong to Lily, and home was where the hostages were. Lily had a daughter, after all. Her “desperate mother” act was what had started this whole mess, and it might be the key to ending it. Rebekah was sure that Lily still had some normal human feelings left in her.
It was obvious which house belonged to the Leroux family. In spite of the swamp and the crude materials available, the queen of the witches had done her best to turn her hut into a palace. Ysabelle Dalliencourt had grown more relaxed and secure in her position as she had aged. Once opportunistic and power-hungry, she had developed into a mature and humble leader of her people, living simply among them and declining to make any kind of show of her status. But Ysabelle’s only daughter had not yet achieved that kind of perspective, and staring at the eyesore that rose up out of the mud before her, Rebekah frankly doubted that Lily ever would.
It was twice the size of the structures around it, squatting gracelessly among them like a giant toad among tadpoles. Designs had been painted onto the wood, fantastical symbols in shimmering gold leaf.
Rebekah recognized some of them as mystical, but they were passive spells: glyphs for prosperity and strength with no sign of any protective magic. Rebekah pulled open a window and held her breath.
Nothing happened, and she lost count of her heartbeats while she waited. There was no attack or alert, only the ordinary rules that prevented a vampire from entering a home without an invitation...which would be easy enough to obtain. Lily’s family must be asleep somewhere inside, and anyone as self-aggrandizing as she was would have at least one servant living there as well. Servants could be useful in all kinds of ways.
Rebekah’s window looked in on the house’s kitchen, empty of any signs of life at that time of night. She began to slowly circle the foundation, inspecting one darkened room after another and always listening for the soft, promising sound of a pulse.
“Who are you?”
Rebekah flinched back, alarmed that she’d been seen. The voice was soft and female, and she guessed that the speaker was young. There was a rustling of fabric, and Rebekah saw the girl sitting upright in her narrow bed. She might barely have been eighteen, with wide brown eyes and a soft, sweet face.
“Never mind,” the girl told Rebekah, studying her skeptically. “I know who you are, and I know you can’t come in here.”
“I can’t,” Rebekah agreed, charmed in spite of her annoyance. She didn’t like to be surprised, but a thoughtful adolescent wasn’t an especially threatening nemesis. Not even if she might be related to someone who was. “Are you Lily’s daughter?”
“Marguerite Leroux,” the girl confirmed, then bit her lower lip anxiously. Names could have power, and a witch should have known to be more cautious. Apparently, suspicion wasn’t in Marguerite’s nature.
Rebekah knew a thing or two about difficult relationships with one’s parents, and she felt sorry for this girl. She could easily imagine what it might be like to be raised by Lily Leroux.
“I’m Rebekah,” she offered generously, resting her elbows on the windowsill. “Your mother and I don’t get along.”
Marguerite’s mouth tightened, as if she wanted to smile but wouldn’t give Rebekah the satisfaction. “My mother does what she must to protect us from your kind,” she said, as if she was repeating something she had learned by rote. “I wouldn’t expect you to be friends.”
“Maybe not,” Rebekah agreed. “But who will protect your kind from her?”
She could see her words hit home, and she saw Marguerite make a conscious decision to reject them. Her heart wasn’t with her mother’s lunatic actions, but her head certainly was. “She’s doing what she has to do,” Marguerite said, squaring her shoulders stubbornly. “You conspired with the werewolves to drive us from our homes. If Mother has to resort to some darker magic to ensure nothing like that hurricane ever happens again, it’s not too high a price.”
Rebekah blinked rapidly, trying to make the pieces of the strange speech fall into place. “If she wants to make sure there’s never another hurricane, all she has to do is not raise one,” she snapped, a little more sharply than she had meant to. Marguerite crossed her arms defiantly, but Rebekah could see fear underlying the gesture.
“It’s a lie that our kind had anything to do with the hurricane,” the adolescent replied. “Grandmother wanted us to feel guilty because we couldn’t stop it, but it is the vampires who are to blame for how we live now.”
Rebekah laughed. “That’s absurd. Witches called up the storm against the werewolves, then lost control of it. Many died on both sides, and plenty of humans, too. New Orleans was flattened to the ground. It was all thanks to a temper tantrum thrown by your coven.” The storm had killed Eric Moquet as well, and for a horrible moment Rebekah saw his lifeless body again, crushed beneath the mast of the ship that should have carried them away to their new life together. “Your grandmother imposed a penance on all of you that may seem harsh these days, but it certainly was warranted at the time.” That and more, but Rebekah knew she was too biased to say so. No amount of rebuilding could ever truly make up for the fact that once upon a time, she had lost her entire future.
“That’s not what...” Marguerite seemed to realize that she had already said too much, and stopped in confusion. The girl was thinking, and that was a start.
“She told my brother you were
sick,” Rebekah said. “Your mother told Klaus she needed his blood to cure you. She played on what little sympathy he has, claiming you were near death. She wanted that blood for something else, didn’t she? It was a part of whatever black magic she worked. She rearranges the truth to suit herself.”
“She what?” Marguerite said, as if she really couldn’t imagine that such a thing was possible. She had a lot to learn about mothers, although Rebekah suspected that the lessons were about to be flying thick and fast.
“You weren’t close to your grandmother, were you?” Rebekah guessed. “Your mother wouldn’t allow it. She had her own version of how your people came to live here, and she sheltered you.”
“Grandmother was ill for most of my life,” Marguerite whispered. “She was elderly and frail. She didn’t need the stress of a child underfoot.”
Lily had indoctrinated Ysabelle’s grandchild with her own resentment and bitterness, twisting the facts to suit her own feelings. Marguerite had believed it, the way any child would have, but she was no fool. Rebekah could see her reordering pieces of old memories and half-heard conversations, creating a new and darker picture of her world.
“I’ve lived a bit longer than you, Marguerite,” Rebekah reminded her, softening her tone into something as close to maternal as she could manage. “But I’ve never forgotten the trust I placed in my own mother. I thought she was the most extraordinary woman, and in many ways she truly was. She was also flawed and fragile, for all the inhuman power she had at her command. She wasn’t perfect, not even in her love for me. You’re still very young, but I think you’re old enough to understand that.”
Marguerite shoved her coverlet aside and set her bare feet on the polished wood of the floor. She was tall in an awkward teenaged way, with narrow hips and bony elbows. Rebekah could see unshed tears shining in her brown eyes, and she knew her words had hit home. Marguerite was barely past childhood, but she seemed to feel the weight of the responsibility that lay on her shoulders now. She studied Rebekah’s face. “You may come in,” she announced at last, and Rebekah lost no time in dropping into the bedroom.