by Julie Plec
“When it happens,” she whispered, not quite meeting his gaze, “I feel like I’m becoming one of them. Of the...you know. Maybe Lily’s trying to turn me into one of them, and that’s why I...I—”
“Yes,” Klaus interrupted, to spare her the pain of saying it out loud. Bad enough that he couldn’t stop reliving the bloody scene in his own mind. “Perhaps the opal has more than one use. She could be using it to link you to the morts-vivants, the same way she linked herself to me. Maybe that’s why you feel their hunger.”
He could only hope that Lily had felt the pain of Vivianne’s attack. Lily would have healed just as fast as Klaus did, but at least the nasty bite on the forearm and the ringing blow to the chin would have hurt.
“If it weren’t for that pendant, you could kill her and be done with it,” Vivianne pointed out, shrugging her way out of the towel and into a flimsy robe that lay over the back of a nearby chair. It was covered in images of peacock feathers, which shimmered and glowed in the morning light. “Taking it back would do more than ending whatever spell she’s been working on me. It could put an end to this entire nightmare, and we would finally be happy.”
She was right. Getting their hands on Esther’s pendant would solve all of their problems at once. It was a shame it was guarded by an army of undead witches and hanging around the neck of a madwoman he couldn’t attack without attacking himself. But Klaus had done the impossible more than once.
“So I’ll go get it,” he said, as if it were just that simple.
“And then what will you do?” She smiled, and he saw a hint of her old humor in the corners of her mouth. Some color was finally returning to her face, and he was so transfixed by the cherry red of her lips that he struggled to register what they were saying. “You’re going to need to bring me along, Klaus.”
Klaus caught her by the shoulders, crushing her body against his chest. “You need to stay away from Lily, love,” he insisted. “You’re the last person who should be anywhere near that witch.” Due to the linking spell, he knew he should stay away as well, but there was no one else he trusted to get the opal.
His mind was already racing, plotting out every angle of a possible attack. He could probably just charge in and make it up as he went along. That usually worked just fine.
“I think you’re forgetting, darling, that I’m a witch, too.” Vivianne’s smile had turned coy—she was definitely feeling better. “I was a pretty decent one back in my day, you know. And I’d been reading your mother’s grimoire back at the mansion, on nights when I couldn’t sleep. I don’t need to be able to ride into battle or even get close to her at all.”
As distracting as it would be to bring the most precious person in the world into the middle of a war, it would be even worse to leave her behind and wonder what might be happening to her.
“We’ll go together,” he agreed. “If we ride, we can be back in New Orleans by sunset. We’ll find Lily and do whatever it takes to get the opal away from her, and if your magic can destroy hers, I will kill anyone who comes near you while you cast the spell.”
Vivianne stretched up onto her tiptoes and kissed him, and he could taste the fire his words had lit within her. “Send word to the stables, and I’ll be dressed by the time our horses are saddled.”
He pulled her hips against his and kissed her back, a slower and more lingering kiss than the first one had been. “There’s not that much of a hurry,” he suggested, and she shivered out of her robe.
His clothing followed the thin piece of silk to the floor, and their bodies came together before they could even reach the bed. They made love on the thick pile of the carpet while sunlight streamed in through the windows. Klaus held her tightly, claiming her through the touch of his hands, the searching trail of his mouth. It would have killed him to let her go, even for a second.
Eventually, they had to rest, and as he held her close he steeled himself for the wrenching, unbearable separation that was to come. It was only temporary, he told himself, but there was an insistent part of him that drove him to kiss Vivianne again, to breathe in the lilac scent of her hair, to memorize every inch of her skin.
Klaus couldn’t rid himself of the fear that he was fighting fate, not just some witch. Nothing ever came for free, especially not when magic was involved. Klaus wanted to believe that he and Vivianne had paid enough already. But as he lay on the soft carpet, his legs entwined with Vivianne’s and her face nuzzled against his shoulder, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was already too late for them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MARGUERITE MUST HAVE done much of her work right under her mother’s nose. She had sifted through Lily’s notes and spell books, even sorting the ingredients the witch stored in glass jars along the walls according to which she might have used. Rebekah was familiar with witchcraft, but without the girl’s help she could never have made sense of the massive pile of information in Lily’s private chamber.
Once they were able to begin their search in earnest, Marguerite was like a bloodhound on her mother’s trail: tracking spells across scrolls and grimoires, testing them against the jarred ingredients, and comparing notes with Rebekah about what Elijah had observed of the morts-vivants in action. It was impressive to watch, even if Rebekah still chafed at each little setback and delay.
All in all, it didn’t take long for Marguerite to form a pretty clear idea of what had been done to bring the morts-vivants back above ground. Rebekah could tell when the young witch had caught the right scent, even though Marguerite herself was maddeningly cautious about following it. She checked and rechecked her pages, letting promising bits of information slip so slowly that Rebekah thought she might scream. But the girl obviously knew what she was doing, and so Rebekah forced herself to be patient.
“They’re still rising,” Marguerite murmured, holding a piece of parchment up to the sheltered flame of her lantern. “The spell calls to them, but it takes time to work across distance. Our ancestors in New Orleans heard the call first, but it’s still working its way outward.”
“Then every time we fight them, there will be more of them,” Rebekah interpreted grimly. The news was unwelcome, but not a complete surprise. The morts-vivants had started as a trickle and then become a flood.
Marguerite had been cagey about the clashes between their kind since Rebekah had left the wedding to find Klaus, but from what Rebekah had been able to gather, Elijah had fought the abominations again, and there were even more than before.
Rebekah hoped that he had been making new vampires, but that was a short-term solution. Countless witches had died over the centuries, and they would have to turn the population of the entire world into vampires to stop the rising tide. And there was one in particular Rebekah would not look forward to meeting on the battlefield. She tried to imagine Esther tearing a heart out to eat it, and shuddered.
“There are mentions of your mother in here,” Marguerite marveled. “Esther, right? Grandmother used one of her spells.”
“Did she now?” Rebekah said. She could vividly recall the sight of Elijah bolting out of their hotel with their mother’s grimoire under one arm. There were no actions without consequences, she reminded herself. Anyone who lived as long as an Original was bound to see the ripples of their choices extending across generations and continents, turning up when they least expected it.
They had been so quick to blame Klaus, but Elijah bore some real responsibility for this fiasco as well.
“It was something about contacting her ancestors,” Marguerite went on, rifling through the pages in front of her. “Not to bring them back, but just to create a link between this world and the Other Side. The spell made the barrier permeable and located them behind it. Mother built on that, using the vulnerability that Esther’s spell created to send her own magic through.”
Rebekah sometimes felt like she would never tr
uly be finished with the past, no matter how hard she tried to focus on building a future. “What we need to do, then, is to sever the link, and prevent this nightmare from spreading. So how is that done?”
She watched Marguerite for any shifting patterns in the young witch’s loyalties.
“There’s a beacon,” Marguerite said finally, pushing parchment into a pile and then tapping them to straighten their edges. “The call is being sent out by something, and that same something provides the power that keeps the dead witches on their feet. It controls them and animates them, and if you destroy the signal the entire spell will end.”
Rebekah immediately thought of her mother’s opal pendant. It had linked her to Klaus—who could say what else it might do? She imagined it pulsing with invisible light, sending out messages that only the dead could hear. Smashing it would free Klaus and send the morts-vivants back to their graves...a lot to rest on one fragile stone.
“I know what Lily used for the beacon,” Rebekah said. “I may need your help in getting it away from her, though. Can you—?”
“It’s not an ‘it.’” Marguerite frowned, her fingers tracing a complicated hieroglyph in a book that looked like it must weigh as much as she did. “The beacon has to be alive. It has to have a heart. You don’t destroy it; you kill it.”
“Alive?” Rebekah gaped. “You mean it’s a person?”
“A witch,” Marguerite clarified, turning a page and then flipping it back again. “But it can’t be my mother, because it needs to be a witch who’s died before. They’re the window the others crawl back through, and when there are no more left to come back, the first witch, the key to the magic, becomes one of them.”
That could only be one witch, and now Lily’s plan made perfect sense. Returning Klaus’s lover to the world wasn’t for Klaus...it was for Lily.
She had worked her spell to raise the morts-vivants around the one dead witch whose safety was guaranteed. No one would be able to get near Vivianne, thanks to Klaus, so no one would be able to stop the spell. They made an unholy, unkillable triad: Klaus, Vivianne, and Lily, each sustaining this evil in his or her own way.
“There has to be another way.” Klaus had nearly lost his mind the first time Vivianne had been taken from him. To lose her again, and to know this time that it had to be final...Rebekah couldn’t imagine what that would do to her brother.
But Marguerite’s face told her everything she needed to know. There was no hope for Vivianne, and no hope for the rest of them as long as she remained alive. “You know who it is, then,” Marguerite guessed. “I’m sorry if this is unwelcome news, but this is what the spell is. It’s the fundamental architecture of the magic that brought the morts-vivants to life. You have to strike at the heart of their web if you want to bring the whole thing down.”
Rebekah had to remind herself that she was still grateful for the clever girl’s help, even if the result hadn’t been what she’d hoped for. Marguerite had betrayed everything she had ever known to serve the greater good, and Rebekah didn’t intend to forget that. “There’s a place for you with us, if you want it,” she offered, although she knew the teenager wouldn’t take her up on it.
“My place is here,” Marguerite answered, her round face solemn. “These are my people, and they need me. Mother needs me, too, even if she doesn’t realize it right now. I’m only doing this to help her. I’m no traitor, and I won’t run like one.”
Rebekah embraced her, holding the girl’s bony, awkward frame for a few moments longer than even she could have explained. “I have to go,” she apologized, then hugged Marguerite again quickly, one last time. “Thank you for all of this. You’ve done well, and I’ll see that it wasn’t in vain.”
Even if that meant the end of her own brother’s happiness. Rebekah sped back toward her mansion, ordering her chaotic thoughts as she went. Elijah needed to know everything at once, and then they would need a plan.
To Rebekah’s surprise, though, Elijah wasn’t alone. His study was full to bursting in comparison to its customary silence. Without Rebekah or Klaus to rely on, Elijah had apparently turned to other confidants, and Rebekah dug her fingernails into her palms to control her automatic resentment.
She felt even pettier when Lisette jumped up from her chair, catapulting herself toward the door to fold Rebekah into a hug before she could even say hello. “I’m so glad you’re back!” the vampire whispered in her ear. “Elijah needs you here.”
Rebekah gently removed her friend to arm’s length, studying the changes that a few days and as many battles had wrought in Lisette. “You look like you’ve been taking care of things well enough,” she decided at last, and Lisette beamed.
The other man in the study wasn’t familiar, but the mere sight of him made the hairs on Rebekah’s arms stand up. “The moon will rise in less than an hour,” she told Elijah. “Are you sure you want that in your office when it does?”
The man’s brilliant blue eyes flared yellow for a moment, but he looked just as amused as he was offended. “This would be the sister,” he guessed, and Rebekah raked him from head to toe with her stare.
Plenty of men would have been shaking in their boots by the time she was done, but Elijah’s new friend didn’t so much as flinch. “Strange bedfellows,” she muttered.
“We have more in common than not, tonight,” Elijah said to her, waiting for Lisette to stand aside before embracing his sister. He kissed her on the cheek and then looked her over, a brotherly habit he hadn’t been able to shake after centuries of invulnerability. When he saw that she was unharmed, his shoulders relaxed.
“Brother,” she said, and gave him a quick hug, “I have news.” She glanced at his two companions, not wanting the truth about Vivianne to slip outside of her family circle, especially to a werewolf.
But to her displeasure, Elijah didn’t send them away. “Whatever you have to say—”
“William,” Lisette interrupted, “let’s go take a look at the ranks. I wanted to make sure your left flank wouldn’t get tangled up with the scouts Julian’s been leading through those hills to the east, and I think if you show me what you had in mind...” With a gentle but very firm hand on his back she steered the werewolf out of the study, leaving Rebekah and her brother alone.
Elijah watched her go for a long moment, and Rebekah could read his entire heart in the expression on his face. This was hardly the time to begin a new romance, but she had to admit that she approved of his choice. Elijah spent too much time alone, took on too much of the weight of running New Orleans. He deserved someone who made him happy. They all did.
“Killing Vivianne is the only way to stop the morts-vivants,” she told him in a rush. Elijah rocked back on his heels and set his mouth in a firm line.
“That’s what I feared,” he answered, “The moon will rise in less than an hour”—he rested his hands on her shoulders—“and we will do what we must. As we always have to protect our brother and our family.” The daylight was fading and the witches were coming. They had a war to fight.
“So we will....Just tell me you didn’t offer the wolves the whole city?” she asked, sliding her arm through his elbow.
“Certain arrangements have been made, but don’t worry about that now. The night can still hold many surprises.”
“That sounds like something I should worry about, brother.”
“I’ll explain on the way.” With a sly smile, he led her out of the house, toward the lawns where Elijah’s motley armies had assembled. He outlined his deal with the werewolves as they walked, and Rebekah filled him in on the details of her encounters with Klaus and his dagger, Vivianne, and Marguerite. For a couple of minutes, it was like old times: the two of them comparing notes and conspiring against their enemies. All that was missing was Klaus, but some things couldn’t be helped.
They separated as they reached the others, moving a
mong the ranks of vampires to pass along last-minute instructions, advice, and encouragement. Rebekah could feel the excitement mounting in her blood as the first hints of moonrise began to lighten the edge of the horizon. She needed a good fight—something uncomplicated and violent.
Just then she heard shouting from the hills to the east, and the vampire scouts came racing back to the main group. They were ragged, and there weren’t as many of them as they should be.
Rebekah vaulted up the side of the fountain in the center of the lawn. She could see the advancing army, blackening the hills like a horde of insects. There were more of them than she had thought possible, more than they could possibly kill. “The witches are coming!”
She heard hundreds of voices pick up the cry and pass it along, just as a mournful howl cut through it all, sending chills down her spine. One of the werewolves had changed into a shaggy brown beast with burning yellow eyes, and he howled again, calling to the rest of his kind. The first rays of moonlight glittered on his bared fangs, and then the howling multiplied and drowned out everything else.
Elijah shouted orders, sending the vampires and wolves charging toward the witches, and Rebekah gamely jumped down to join them. It was going to be a bloodbath, and she wouldn’t miss it for the world.
As her feet hit the ground, she was nearly bowled over by the hooves of a chestnut stallion, whose rider pulled up just before they collided. Klaus grinned down at her, and out of the corner of her eye Rebekah saw Vivianne stopping her own horse at a somewhat more reasonable distance. Klaus helped his wife down from her horse and then kissed her feverishly. Sharing a look of good-bye, Vivianne made for the open front door of the mansion, and Klaus turned back toward Rebekah. In the light of the rising moon, she could see that her brother’s eyes were alight with the same battle lust that had already descended on her.
“Dear sister,” he greeted her with an irrepressible smile. “You didn’t intend to start without me, did you?”