by Julie Plec
“Never—ripping out hearts is your specialty.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ELIJAH COULD FEEL an almost physical shock as the two sides collided, teeth and fists connecting in a thousand different ways. Werewolves’ snarls filled the night as they tore into their prey with wild enthusiasm. Elijah could feel the decades of pent-up rage exploding within them as they sprang, tearing out throats left and right until a vampire arrived to neatly remove each mort-vivant’s heart heart.
His vampires attacked methodically, tearing out one bloody heart after another with grim efficiency. They had not forgotten the humiliating draw they had reached in the city a few nights back, and all around him, Elijah could see fighters who had no intention of reliving past mistakes.
Still, there were more morts-vivants than ever. Klaus’s horse had become uncontrollable even before the battle was joined, and Elijah could see him surrounded on every side by the flesh-hungry creatures. Elijah fought his way toward his brother, feeling several spells and at least one pair of clutching, groping hands glance across his body.
But before he could reach Klaus, Elijah spotted a flash of coppery blonde hair, and two of Klaus’s attackers crumpled into a heap on the bloody grass. Lisette was there, watching out for his family. She looked stunningly fierce in the moonlight, her face streaked with drying blood. She could have been a Viking goddess, turning the tide of battle wherever she went.
Elijah turned to see Rebekah twisting a mort-vivant’s heart inside of its rib cage, her mouth flattened into a grimace. Another one lunged at her back, but a wolf caught it by the ankle, dragging the dead woman to the ground. The witch wailed and sank her teeth into the wolf’s shoulder, tearing at it even as the wolf shredded her torso with its claws.
Then Elijah was forced to concentrate on the knot of attackers coming his way. They seemed to creep in between the vampires, separating them by sheer numbers until they were isolated and vulnerable. Elijah tried to call to his troops to stay together, but every last one was fighting for his or her life.
Lisette reached his side, snapping a mort-vivant’s neck twice before finally killing her. “They’re splitting us up,” she warned him, and in spite of the violence around them he grabbed her around the waist and kissed her.
“Well, I didn’t mean you and me, but I’ll take it, Elijah Mikaelson.” She kissed him again. “Just try to reorganize the troops before we’re all cornered.”
“Are you now the one giving orders, Corporal?”
“Oh, just you wait,” she said, and then ripped out the heart of the nearest witch.
A wolf hurtled through the air, thrown by a mort-vivant whose hands were coated in blood all the way up to his shoulders. Its heavy body struck the ground in a heap, and Elijah could tell that it was already dead. The werewolves were paying a high price to regain their old lands, but they were certainly committed to the task.
Everywhere Elijah looked, wolves were cutting in and out of the ranks of the witches, slicing through them like knives. They linked the vampires together, creating pathways between them and opening up lines of sight. The bargain with William had been a good one, he decided.
He decapitated a mort-vivant and shoved the body toward Lisette. The headless man stayed on his feet, but he staggered and lurched, and she had no trouble finishing him off. They worked together, clearing space to reach little islands of isolated vampires, bringing their army back into a cohesive whole.
“Good fight, brother,” Klaus called, grinning while he broke the back of a mort-vivant who looked no older than sixteen.
“Glad you could make it,” Elijah answered, ducking below a werewolf so she could sink her jaws into the arm of a witch who had been casting a spell in Klaus’s direction.
“Is Lily here?” Klaus asked urgently, turning his back toward Elijah so that they could fend off attacks from every side. “I need to get to her.”
“Haven’t seen her yet,” Elijah grunted, cracking open a tall blond man’s chest to pluck his heart out of it like a piece of fruit. “But she can’t be far—she wouldn’t miss this.”
Rebekah crossed in front of them, breathless, her honey-colored hair swirling loose around her shoulders. A witch shot one spell after another at her, engulfing her in fire, then blood, then sickly green mist before trying fire again. None of those trifles could bring down Rebekah Mikaelson, but they seemed to have her stunned, disoriented, and unable to reach the woman.
Klaus broke away from Elijah, punching in the witch’s head with one ferocious blow and pulling Rebekah toward the shelter of her siblings. Elijah could have sworn he heard his brother mutter an apology for Rebekah’s daggering, which was surprising enough to make an impression even in the midst of a pitched battle.
“I’m sorry, too,” he heard Rebekah say, clearly enough to carry. “I should never have...” Whatever else she said was lost under the scream of a werewolf, who rolled on its back with its entrails exposed.
The three of them were on the same side again. They dispatched one mort-vivant after another, working together smoothly, just like a family should.
But it was an illusion, Elijah knew. It would all explode again when Klaus found out about Rebekah’s plan to end the spell. Klaus was determined to find Lily, and Elijah hoped against hope that he knew of a different way to end this.
“There she is,” Klaus said, flipping a witch through the air and throwing him into a pack of snarling werewolves.
Elijah looked up to see Lily standing just out of the fray. A tall, thin girl stood beside her, and even in the moonlight she looked familiar. Had Lily been so confident of victory that she had brought her teenaged daughter into a war with her? Elijah wouldn’t have believed any other mother capable of such carelessness, but Marguerite Leroux was by her mother’s side nonetheless. Lily’s hubris must be boundless at this point, for her to think her invulnerability was enough to protect her daughter. Lily watched the fighting with a small smile on her face, as if it didn’t bother her at all that her people were dying en masse.
Klaus moved off toward her, not caring that the path was blocked by dozens of witches. Elijah fell in beside him, and Rebekah did the same, keeping the worst of the fighting away from their brother. “Slow down,” Elijah shouted, but Klaus was like a man possessed in his desperation to reach the witches’ leader.
“I’m going to kill her,” Klaus announced through gritted teeth, spearing an undead woman with a long knife he had taken from some other unlucky witch along his way. He twisted the blade with determined precision, carving her heart out like a hunter cleaning a deer.
“You can’t,” Elijah pointed out, wishing Klaus would use common sense for once in his endless life. “She’s linked to you.”
“Through the pendant she stole.” Klaus feinted at a dark-haired witch, who reacted too slowly and had his chest split open.
Klaus’s talent for revising history was impressive under the circumstances—he’d brought this war upon them by trading away the pendant. Elijah knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by arguing that point, and when Rebekah spun their way, her dark eyes flashing with outrage, he shot her a warning look.
“Taking the pendant back will let us kill Lily,” she snapped, “but this is no time for petty revenge. We need to put an end to these monsters for good, not indulge every impulsive whim that comes your way.”
“All we need is that pendant,” Klaus insisted, scanning the field for the shortest path to his enemy. “We can free Vivianne from her connection to the morts-vivants and let our armies put them back in the ground.”
Rebekah froze for a moment, her mouth open as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words. A ball of green fire hissed through the air and struck her squarely in the stomach. It sizzled as it hit home, and the force of it knocked her backward into the arms of a blood-soaked mort-vivant.
Rebekah turned to deal wit
h her new assailant, the remnants of the spell still smoking in the fabric of her dress. In the meantime, another undead witch broke past her, leaping toward Klaus’s unprotected back. Elijah moved to intercept the attack, and his boot smashed into the head of the mort-vivant in midair. The thing fell to the ground, stunned, and Klaus turned to engage him, his knife flashing brutally in the moonlight.
Too late, Elijah realized that Rebekah had shaken off her own attacker and had fought her way back to Klaus’s side. “The pendant won’t free Vivianne,” he heard her say, leaning close to their brother’s ear but keeping one cautious eye on the knife he held loosely in his left hand. “Niklaus, I’m so sorry, but—”
“There’s Lily,” Klaus interrupted, and Elijah honestly wasn’t sure whether he had chosen to ignore Rebekah’s words or simply not registered them at all. He shoved a werewolf out of the way and charged into the thick of the battle, leaving his siblings behind.
Rebekah shifted her weight as if she intended to follow him, but Elijah caught her by the shoulder, holding her back. “We have enough to do here,” he warned her. “Let Klaus fight in his own way, if you want there to be any chance of him coming around to yours.”
Rebekah’s face was full of resentment, but she accepted Elijah’s read of the situation. “He’s going to have to come around quickly,” she muttered darkly. “I don’t intend to spend the rest of eternity killing these things.”
“We’ll end them well before then,” Elijah assured her, and then the current of the battle swept them up again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HE WAS ATTACKED from every side, but Klaus didn’t care. Lily Leroux was within reach, and nothing so insignificant as a war was going to keep him away from her. Vivianne was watching the battle from the attic windows, preparing the spell that would destroy the opal’s hold over her, and he intended to do her proud. He would get the opal from Lily one way or another, and if he had to take her head off to get it then so much the better.
A mangy werewolf, so thin Klaus could see its ribs through its rough gray coat, bounded in front of him, snarling. Klaus gave the beast one second to recognize him, ready to snap its neck if it didn’t stand aside. The werewolf hesitated, its yellow eyes scanning Klaus from head to toe, and then it flinched away, seeming to realize its mistake. An arm shot out of the throng of witches, punching through the wolf’s lean chest, and Klaus didn’t wait around to see any more. He could win the war by destroying the enemy’s leader, and casualties were going to be inevitable in the meantime.
There were only a few witches left between him and their general. They fought hard, and the morts-vivants were strong. But Klaus had been laying waste to armies for over a thousand years, and he had no intention of being deterred from his goal.
Lily was chanting something, her brown hair loose around her shoulders, partly concealing her face from view. She was so focused on her spell that she almost didn’t see Klaus coming until it was too late. At the last minute her head snapped up, her skin thick with sweat from with the strain of casting.
He could see the white opal that hung from her neck. It was full of flashes of orange and green fire, just how it had looked when he had handed it over to her. He couldn’t wait to rip it off her treacherous, lying neck.
Klaus wasn’t sure how his momentum reversed itself or when his reach for the pendant’s chain shifted. The magic moved him seamlessly into the opposite direction, and his fingers closed on empty air instead of the ancient chain. He found himself facing a mort-vivant who grinned malevolently in spite of the fact that a werewolf had disemboweled her earlier in the night.
He twisted around, disorientation making his head spin. Lily blurred and then came into focus, looking enormously pleased with herself. “Was it this you were after, vampire?” she asked, as casually as if the two of them were sharing tea. She touched the opal with a finger, and it glowed softly in the brilliant moonlight.
Klaus moved slowly this time, approaching her warily and trying to feel the edge of the spell before getting caught up in it again. “You might as well hand it over,” he suggested. “I know what you’re using it for, and I’m not going to stop until I find a way to take it back.”
“The only way this chain comes off my neck is if I take it off myself,” she informed him, her voice dripping with disdain. “And I can’t be harmed as long as I wear it. What are you going to do, Niklaus—threaten me to death?”
“You grew up on stories of my family,” he reminded her. “Is there anything in the long, ugly history between our kinds that makes you think I bother with idle threats?”
“You have no choice.” She shrugged. A howl rose up from the melee behind him, but he didn’t take his eyes off the witch in front of him. “We are linked for life, Klaus, whether you like it or not. And I suspect our life will be a rather long one, so you might as well get used to the idea now.”
He wanted to tear her smug face right off the front of her skull. “If you think you have all the time in the world to turn Vivianne into one of your pet monsters, witch, you’re sorely mistaken. You’ve put her through enough already, and I don’t intend to rest until she’s free of your curse.”
Lily laughed, throwing her head back so that her throat was exposed in the moonlight. He could just rip it out, just take her head off and pull the pendant over the bloody stump. If he could only get his hands on her, there was no limit to the ways he could destroy her.
“That curse is her entire life now,” she told him, still chuckling as she said it. “Your blushing bride is far beyond your help, vampire. The spell is cast, and she is what she is. Killing me won’t save her, and neither will this trinket of your mother’s you so eagerly gave away.”
“You lie,” Klaus hissed, although he could hear the ring of sincerity in her voice. “All you’ve done from the beginning is lie.”
Lily shrugged. “I told you I could bring her back, and I did. Now I can take my city back, and you can watch her become like all the others.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Klaus gritted through his clenched teeth, wondering as he did how he would prevent it. Lily had laid her trap well, and he seemed to be blocked at every turn. Now, when the most precious thing he had ever encountered in his entire life was at stake, Klaus found himself running out of ideas.
“You can’t stop it,” Lily said, as if she was enjoying a private joke. “You, of all people, can’t kill her. Why do you think I chose her for this spell? It was never about her—it was about you, and what you would do to keep Vivianne Lescheres alive.”
Klaus didn’t care anymore about the magic that linked them. He struck blindly, stabbing at the witch’s face with the long knife he had taken from one of her minions. Lily didn’t move or even flinch.
He heard voices shouting somewhere around them, and saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. But he was so focused on his victim, her smug face. Her smile filled his vision, blocking out everything else, until it was too late.
His knife was buried in someone else, a slight girl who might have been barely eighteen. Her shout was cut off abruptly when the blade severed her throat, but another voice continued to scream. Lily went deathly pale, catching the girl beneath her arms to keep her from falling to the ground, and everything was wrong.
“What have you done?” Rebekah wailed, staring at the child as if she had been her own.
Lily sank down gently onto the grass, cradling her daughter against her chest. “He couldn’t touch me,” she whispered, so softly that Klaus could barely hear it. “There was no need, Marguerite. Why did you interfere?”
The wound in Marguerite’s throat bubbled and spurted with blood, and her brown eyes looked glassy. The rest of her life wouldn’t last any longer than a few more breaths. She had tried to save Lily, but Klaus still regretted hurting her. She was too young to know better, and far too young to be br
ought to observe a battle. It was as much Lily’s fault as his own that she would die, but that was little consolation.
“The opal pendant,” Rebekah said. She moved to kneel on the other side of the girl’s shuddering body, but Klaus laid a cautionary hand on her arm, keeping his sister beside him. “It links you to an immortal—if she wears it will it do the same for her?”
Lily touched the chain around her neck, closing her eyes for a moment as if the mere thought of it pained her. “I can’t transfer the spell,” she admitted, her voice breaking with tears. “I’d do it in a heartbeat if I could. This was all for her—my life’s work was to build her a future. I should have given her the opal to start with, but I never thought...” She wiped her tears away and, with a shuddering sob, composed herself just enough to finish. “The pendant can’t help her now.”
“It can,” Klaus disagreed. Both of the women stared at him, although Marguerite herself was too far gone to look his way. “Give her the pendant, Lily. Take it off and put it around her neck, and I can guarantee that it will save her life.”
Rebekah’s mouth gaped open in confusion, but Lily’s tear-filled eyes narrowed in sudden understanding. It was the last bargain she would ever strike, but with time running out, she showed no interest in haggling.
“Save her, then,” Lily agreed. She bent to kiss her daughter’s forehead, then slipped the opal’s chain from her own neck onto Marguerite’s.
“Give her your blood,” Klaus murmured to Rebekah, who wasted no time in opening her wrist and pressing it to the girl’s parted lips. He could see her mouth working, just barely enough to drink a few drops, but it would be enough. The blood of an Original vampire would bring her back to life, as long as it was in her body when she died.
She would be a vampire, and she would be motherless, but Klaus thought that was a reasonable enough price to demand for a Mikaelson’s blood. He had given the first vial away far too cheaply, but he was wiser now.