by Julie Plec
“You don’t see that every day,” Lisette remarked as the creature ambled toward them. “Not even if you’re us.”
“Go,” Rebekah snapped. “Get back to Elijah—he’ll need everyone.” The mort-vivant reached her and swung viciously at her head, and Rebekah blocked the blow and then tore his arm off for good measure. She threw it as far away as she could, but out of the corner of her eye she saw it crawl toward an armless mort-vivant.
Before her monster could regroup enough to attack again, someone struck him from behind, punching through his back as if it were made of paper. As he fell away, Rebekah paused, intending to thank whoever had intervened, but she didn’t recognize the owner of the hand that held the creature’s bloody heart. Then, to her amazement, the man who had killed the mort-vivant raised the heart to his own mouth, tearing into it with red-stained teeth.
“He was one of yours!” she exclaimed, but she realized it didn’t matter. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the magic that was holding the morts-vivants together and giving them purpose.
She had thought the battle was chaotic before, but now it was absolute madness. The morts-vivants that she and her allies had spent the whole night ripping apart were reassembling themselves at random, with the wrong heads on the wrong bodies and limbs attached backward. They were killing indiscriminately, and blood flowed and spurted everywhere she looked.
An undead witch lunged toward one of the few remaining living ones, who cast a ball of unnatural fire at it. The mort-vivant, blazing like a torch, didn’t even hesitate before tearing the witch apart and devouring her heart.
While Rebekah watched in increasing disbelief, the thing began to melt before her eyes. Still burning, incredibly, still eating, the mort-vivant began to bubble and collapse in on himself, his flesh sloughing off his bones into an unsightly mass on the ground.
Shouts went up across the battlefield, and she realized it was happening to all of them. Every single mort-vivant was disintegrating. Rebekah could still make out the outlines of faces, mouths frozen open in silent screams. Some reached their hands reached up, the skin flaking away, and she couldn’t decide whether they were pleading for help or making one last, desperate grab for some unseen enemy’s heart.
Rebekah waited with the rest of her army. Not one vampire or werewolf dared to believe this sudden victory, so hard on the heels of the false one. But the disgusting remains of the morts-vivants stayed as they were, and eventually, she knew, they were going to have to believe their eyes.
Rebekah could feel bile rising in her throat, and she skirted the battlefield, avoiding the outliers as best she could. In the center, where the fighting had been the thickest, the sticky, deformed puddles oozed together, mingling the unnatural remains into a giant mass of indistinguishable vileness.
Rebekah slipped among the returning vampires to join Elijah. “It’s over,” he said when he saw her, as if that weren’t the most obvious thing in the world that morning.
“Niklaus ended it,” she said, knowing in her bones that it was true. She had never admired Niklaus more than she did in that moment, knowing what he must have done and what it had cost him.
Elijah’s square jaw clenched, betraying some emotion too deep for him to even put into words. “We were losing,” he said finally. He glanced around at the remnants of his army, a few handfuls of vampires limping toward the mansion. The werewolves had already disappeared back into their woods, although Rebekah was sure they would be back to claim their reward before long. “Niklaus will need us now.”
The eastern hills were already on fire with the promise of sunrise, and the wreckage of the battle at their feet had an almost beautiful glow. It was like a masterful oil painting of some long-ago disaster, misery turned into art. Rebekah took the arm Elijah offered her, and together the two of them strolled across the lawns toward their home and their brother.
In Rebekah’s long experience, time changed everything except people. She and her brothers had spent over a thousand years together, and they had been buffeted this way and that during their endless lives. But over time she had come to see that there was a core self in each of them that dated all the way back to their human days, and that couldn’t really be touched by any of what had come later. They were who they were underneath, no matter what scars marred the surface.
Klaus might never quite be the man he’d been now that he had lost Vivianne for good. But he wouldn’t be a stranger, either. He was her brother, as he always had been and always would be, and she could respect his grief enough not to fear it or try to ward it away. It would pass, just as everything else eventually did, and they would still be a family.
Once again it was time to rebuild.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ELIJAH ROLLED OVER, relaxing back onto his pillowcase. Lisette twisted to adapt, settling her head into the hollow of his shoulder as if the two parts had been made for each other.
“The sun is still up,” she murmured. “We’ve got hours yet.”
“We have another hour at the most,” he disagreed, but he felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth nonetheless.
“An hour is ages,” she reminded him, running a nimble fingertip along his bare chest. He was nearly distracted by her offer, but as night fell it was becoming more and more difficult to block out all of the fresh irritations it would bring with it.
“The council will meet tonight, for the first time since I offered the werewolves a place on it,” he reminded her, as if anyone could have set foot in the Mikaelsons’ mansion during the last two weeks without knowing that. In deference to William Collado’s special circumstances, the city’s shadow council had revived the old tradition of meeting at the new moon. It would keep the belligerence to a minimum, and considering Elijah’s frame of mind about the entire affair, not much else would.
Lisette resumed the idle tracing of her fingernail. “They should be grateful,” she said, “They did little enough to earn that seat, and I would hope they will remember it.”
“Memory is a funny thing.” Elijah had seen it time and time again—grudges nursed for generations, and favors forgotten by the next day.
William would surely argue that this hadn’t even been a favor. His wolves had, after all, fought as promised, and not a single vampire had been touched by the poison from their fangs. The fact that the werewolves hadn’t turned the tide of the battle as expected, and had had nothing at all to do with their eventual victory, didn’t change things in their eyes. William had kept his end of the bargain, and it wasn’t his fault that Elijah regretted having to keep his own.
“You had to give them what you promised,” Lisette pointed out, “and you have. Now that that’s done, we can begin the business of taking it back.”
“We’ve done it before.” Elijah smiled, admitting to himself that she had a point. It had been enjoyable enough to ride high on his success in New Orleans since the hurricane, to think of himself as its shadow king. There was an energy in rebuilding a kingdom. “I suppose I could be persuaded to do it again.”
Lisette laughed and snuggled closer, all length and surprising softness. “I doubt you could be persuaded otherwise,” she chided. “Even for an hour.”
There was already less time than that. They needed to dress and rejoin the rest of the world. But not immediately, and so he twisted his head to kiss her. She met the gesture with a tiny hum of approval, kissing him back enthusiastically.
Elijah rolled, pulling her beneath him in the center of the bed so that he could take full advantage of the last few minutes of their time together. Lisette laughed and curled herself against him and drawing his mouth down against her own. He lost himself in her, in the movement of her body and the mischievous glint of her gray eyes.
In the end, he just held her, sated and a little bit late. He would have liked to stay that way forever, but eventually Elij
ah couldn’t justify letting his siblings wait. He slid regretfully from the bed. Lisette stretched out along his sheets, well aware of how tempting her naked body was, and smirked when he hesitated one last time.
“Go,” she told him, snapping the coverlet playfully toward his legs. “New Orleans isn’t going to govern itself, no matter how many wolves find their way in.”
He did as she suggested, pulling on a cloak over his hastily donned clothes as he strode down the curved main staircase. Rebekah and Klaus waited for him at the bottom, looking ready to leave and more than a little impatient. “Finally,” he heard Rebekah mutter, but no amount of glowering could dampen his spirits.
“The carriage is here,” Klaus observed, leading the way out of the front door. The coachmen jumped to the ground and hastily held the door of the carriage open for them. “He’s been here half an hour, although he’s never minded waiting on our Rebekah.”
She made a face at Klaus as she climbed into the carriage, and Elijah sighed as he followed them onto the velvet-cushioned seat. No matter how many times their world was turned upside down, some things just couldn’t change.
Klaus and Rebekah had been almost excruciatingly polite to each other in the aftermath of Vivianne’s death and the end of the morts-vivants, but of course they hadn’t been able to keep that up for long. Two weeks later they were back to their old selves, bickering and badgering and storming along the mansion’s corridors shouting at each other like unruly children. Their brief détente had been enjoyable in its way, but Elijah found he was more comfortable with their old, familiar relationship. Family was what made a home, and without question his siblings were his.
“The old Werewolf Quarter is bustling again,” Rebekah mused as the carriage rattled down the drive. “They haven’t lost any time profiting off of your little arrangement.”
“Why should they?” Klaus asked, apparently willing to shift the focus of his scorn away from his sister as long as Elijah was available to present a better target. “It’s not as if they stand to benefit from giving us time to reconsider.”
“What’s done is done,” Elijah snapped. “They held up their end, and so will we.”
“Nearly half our lands gone for nothing?” Rebekah scoffed. “Their end of that bargain was a good deal easier than ours.”
“Niklaus was prepared to give away twice as much for love,” Elijah pointed out, irritated. “And as I recall, dear sister, your main contribution to stopping him consisted of childish pranks.”
Rebekah looked struck, but Klaus didn’t so much as blink. The blow had been too low, Elijah knew at once. He couldn’t imagine what Klaus felt now, having risked everything only to lose the love of his life a second time. He hesitated, torn between the impulse to apologize and the desire to simply ignore the barb the way his brother obviously had.
Maybe Klaus couldn’t rise to Elijah’s unfortunate bait—he’d had the same emotional nonresponse to everything relating to Vivianne. The wound seemed too deep for him to even feel it. He was a man so thoroughly changed by the loss of his true love that he seemed somehow not to have been affected at all.
It was troubling, and it put Elijah in the awkward position of constantly second-guessing himself around Klaus. Kindness was too forced; harshness was too brutal. Klaus might have resumed his old, familiar repartee with Rebekah, but Elijah still couldn’t quite bring himself to join in the game. If Klaus would only grieve, Elijah would help however he could, but as it was he just couldn’t fathom what his brother needed from him now.
“I’m sorry, Niklaus,” Elijah sighed at last. “That was unfair of me.”
Rebekah looked smug, but Klaus smiled almost blandly. “It’s nothing,” he insisted, as he had been for two weeks now. As if losing Vivianne hadn’t affected him in the slightest; as if they should all just go back to normal and find Klaus already there. “I’ve actually been thinking about the opportunities this little snag presents for us,” Klaus went on, pulling back one of the curtains to gaze out into the streets of New Orleans.
“Opportunities?” Elijah repeated, uncertain he had heard the word correctly. Klaus had spent the forty-four years since Vivianne’s first death painting aspects of her in his solitary attic. Had he begun scheming already? Barely a fortnight after her second death? The carriage struck an uneven patch of paving stones, jostling them all before continuing to run on smoothly in the night.
“We’ve seen how it goes when we hold the sole power in this city,” Klaus began, obviously eager to engage his siblings on the topic that had been consuming him, even to the exclusion of the grief he should have been enduring. “Exiled, the werewolves grew strong and the witches went rogue.”
“Vermin are a constant concern in any city,” Rebekah agreed. “Even if we managed to stomp them all out, more would trickle in from the countryside to take their place.”
“Exactly.” Klaus pounded his fist on the knee of his breeches as if Rebekah had made his own point for him. “Control that excludes the werewolves is obviously no real control at all. But now they’re back.”
“In some strength, though,” Elijah frowned. “They aren’t returning as our subjects. They hold land and a seat on the council. There are nearly as many of them as of us after the battle against Lily’s witches, and they’re hardly supplicants any longer.”
“No, not supplicants...tonight.” Klaus smirked. “But life is long, dear brother. Now that the wolves are back, where we can watch over them and subvert them, we have all the time in the world to bring them to heel. Right here in the heart of the city, where they can never grow back into a threat without us noticing it.”
It was a clever observation, and Elijah had to admit that the idea had merit. Exiling the other clans had only hurt the vampires in the long run, and if there was anyone who should know to take the long view it was the Mikaelsons.
Elijah had made his mind up that he would keep his word, and he intended to do so. But as Lisette had pointed out earlier, the letter of his promise to William would be fulfilled that very night. After that, it was every family for itself. “Keep talking,” Elijah urged, leaning back against the velvet-covered cushions behind him.
Klaus smiled, looking half like a wolf himself in the lantern light. “This is our city,” he reminded Elijah and Rebekah both. “It was from the beginning, and it will be in the end. The only question is how we govern it, what it takes to hold power against all pretenders. We will still be standing long after all of them have crumbled to dust, so I propose that we make sure we’re standing on top.”
Even Rebekah looked intrigued in spite of herself, and Elijah found a smile that matched his brother’s creeping onto his own lips. “The werewolves have intelligent leadership,” he warned. “They won’t bow down easily.”
“I don’t think ‘easy’ is on Niklaus’s list of requirements,” Rebekah said, but her deep blue eyes were alight with her brother’s words.
“A challenge would be welcome,” Klaus agreed, leaning his elbows on his knees and templing his fingers together. “But I don’t anticipate much of one. A few stray puppies should be easy enough to housebreak.”
The carriage rattled on, carrying them swiftly toward the next twist in their path. One war was over, and the next was stretched out before them like the waiting night.
* * * * *
The untold story of THE ORIGINALS has only just begun.
Read on for a sneak peek of
THE ORIGINALS: THE RESURRECTION
Coming soon from creator Julie Plec,
Alloy Entertainment and HQN Books...
PROLOGUE
1788
THE CITY WAS burning. From the east end to the church, New Orleans was lit up with flames, and Klaus Mikaelson was to blame. Sampson Collado, trapped in his wolf form, lifted his head and howled in fury at the full moon. Smoke rose from the city before h
im, billowing into dark, sooty clouds. The moon had been the most powerful force in Sampson’s life for twenty-one years, and it glowed an ominous red as it hovered above the flames.
Sampson had been born into an unprecedented period of peace, but that was over now. The Mikaelsons just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Any truce that involved the three Original vampires wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, not in the long run. Sooner or later, one of them would get angry, jealous, or just bored.
Nine times out of ten that “one” would be Niklaus, the most volatile of the three siblings. Klaus Mikaelson had raised an army of vampires, violated the fragile peace between the clans, and finally had set the city ablaze.
Thanks to the full moon, Sampson’s Pack had all left their homes without so much as the clothes on their backs, and now those homes were burning. The fire had started near the bend of the river, sweeping north and west until the entire city was ablaze. By morning, there would be nothing for them to return to, and the wolves would be penniless exiles once again.
The smell of smoke burned in his snout. Even from the far side of the river, Sampson could feel the heat of the fire biting at his fur. The wind whipped along the water and launched a thousand embers from one wooden roof to the next.
Sampson growled low in his throat, wishing he could to do something—anything—to combat the spread of the flames. The Werewolf Quarter was the only home he had ever known. To watch it get razed to the ground was almost unthinkable, but in his wolf form there was nothing else he could do.