JEZEBEL
October 28
Lightheaded and nauseous, the next morning began where I was feeling unbearably doubtful. I watched the six O'clock fog glide past the steps leading into our dark green house, my nails like tree stumps from the self-imposed stress of what I'd done. Was defeating Celeste so important that I had to call on Death and his pale horse to come and sweep New Orleans away in bloody darkness?
I kept with the thought though I'd tried to shake it away.
It was easy to avoid a massacre if I was the first face Mikael would see. If Kol was right and he can kill Celeste, then I just had to waltz her in front of him somehow and hope he spares me.
"Hope isn't enough," I heard behind me.
Looking to my right, bare toes curling into the dry dirt next to the steps, I met my reflection's deadened glance.
"You hope you haven't just made a big mistake, you hope you can live past this moment, you hope Ángel lived past his... Is that what he taught you. Now's the time to stop praying, because God has given you shit," she monotonously advised.
"Qué sabes?" I scowled.
"I know that today isn't going to be your day. You'll hate life and you'll hate yourself. But no matter the soil, you need to start growing. How can you do that without pain?" she answered back.
My hand swept across the splinter of the rickety step and nearly ripped the skin of my palm. I winced, grabbing onto the cut with the concealing sleeve of my opposite hand.
I took my eyes off la sosia I'd been dealing with and began to search for the location of the bloodied splinter.
Three little leaves had sprouted from between the makeshift amends in the aged boards, marking the splinter like circled prey. A few shifts between me and the foundation of the farmhouse caused me to inch back. The little sprouts began to sway side to side, wind being absent and my movements far from being a disturbance. It could have been rodents or the rattle snakes I'd seen slither across the back acres. Maybe there was a chase between the two.
The rapid growth the sprouts into brightly colored blood orange leaves. The lengthy pod which appeared in the middle of the curled petal tongue indicated to me I'd been its magical intervention.
My gaping mouth closed on a short inhale when an opposing voice came from behind me.
"Just the dame I've been looking for! Quite the shoddyocracy of a show you put on recently. Well, now I have a bone to pick with you," Klaus bellowed within the quick strut he made in my direction. I picked my knees up into my chest and drew closer to the front door where I knew he could not pass.
His determined boot stopped against the first step with a harsh tap.
"Why is this about you! You traumatized those children, they could have been orphans!" I battled him with hushed tones.
He replied in a fully outdoor voice, "And that's hardly either of our concerns. Their mothers are likely awaiting the Spring with drooling mouths for their harvests, anyhow! You ought to view it from the positive side. Every child desires a life without rules, to grow up resilient like the heroes in their favorite fairytales. I like to think of it as the gift I give happily!"
Over time, I started to think Nik projected the absence of an effective parent onto his justifications of robbing others of their own happy or well-lived world. Every child was no good in his eyes without the learned lesson of fending for oneself. I understood it eventually, for, I couldn't change his mind about any of it. But in that very first moment he expressed it to me, I was perfectly outraged.
"Damn you!" I growled at him, stepping forward. "You are miserable and you want to make everyone around you miserable, too! I did this out of the last bit of ho— Out of kindness...I had left in me. But I have none for you. I hope you can forgive yourself where no one else is able to. If you were petrified of witches before, you best watch your step because you walk on the ledge of their patience."
His hands rose to each side with a short moment of relief, pacing with me as I tried to remove myself from being in his direct range of moment.
"So you see my dilemma," dramatically sarcastic, he complained, "You've empowered them! And by doing so, you've empowered any other tribe that's ever held a vendetta against me. The werewolves have gotten bright ideas, as well. And should the Guerreras cause a scene tonight, I will label you the cause!" he howled.
That's when I had my epiphany. My father discoursed the Guerreras before. Their crest was as historically rooted in werewolf history as mine; they had to recognize me if only I told them my name.
Caught up in my rambling thoughts and desires, I felt the steep drop off the right side of the porch, catching myself just in time and rendering myself vulnerable to any attack.
"The Guerreras..." I mumbled to myself hastily. "You know them? They are here? Right now?"
As I neared Klaus, his eyes twitched with an opening.
"You have to take me to them," I demanded.
"Hadn't you just mentioned your absence of kindness for me? Do you not agree that is a dual-sided snake, love?" Klaus said.
I shook my head, my eyes burning with twigged red lines and a glaze of its own. My hands latched around his left forearm with a crushing strength as I tried to be civil in my approach to a lowly begging.
"You don't understand, I could go far from here if you tell me how to find them! If they know my name, they would take me back to Middle America and hold me for ransom. They would call on my father for whatever suits their needs, and he'd come to retrieve me. Please. You won't ever hear from me again, neither would the witches. Just do this one thing, and I promise you they won't so much as breathe in your direction when I find them," I spoke in a run-on, retaining a mix of whispers and mutters.
I appeared to be making way with him. He was well aware if he sent me running in his enemy's direction, they'd leave him be.
"You are one to wake snakes as I see it, Jezebel. Or just as bold. If you hadn't misbehaved so I think we could have been friends. Tonight, we host the Hallow's Eve gala at our home. They are always late, as you will be. Have Celeste tag you along. If you aren't gone by sundown, Celeste and her people will experience a black wave you cannot save them from this time around," Klaus instructed.
His arm gently tore away from my near-white grasp. My heart thudded with sudden peace as a tear fell from my eye watching him walk away.
CELESTE
October 30
Sister of mortal tiding.
We call on you this Hallow's Eve to celebrate our Sabbat and gain our gratitude for the preservation of our offspring.
Witch kind has been in peril since the ocean drained from this land and made way for the construction of New Orleans.
Come alone.
Eterpitum solitudis.
.MDCCCXX
Vicesima tertia.
I slumped against the velvet of my faded peridot armchair in front of the fireplace, my eyes crossing each line again and again. In the pit of my stomach a fire burned, my methane a fatal mixture of wrath and arrogance.
The witches wanted to exclude me from Sabbat so they could conspire with their new obsession, the heart-over-mind messiah. Being officially disowned, I was able to consider the truth of the reason. You could not be a part of a coven when you were the new queen of something bigger and stronger, like the Knot. I was a glutton of opportunity, and I was officially a threat. Should Jezebel have seen the letter that'd been left perched on her windowsill, she would learn to rise from dependency and resist me harder.
So, I found myself preparing for the scenario in which I would pass on before I could deliver the Knot to greatness.
Jezebel's light footstep, descended down the staircase in the unlit darkness of the house, her dark head of hair floating in the moonlight presenting itself through the stained glass of our front entry.
My eyes narrowed upon her staggered step, unlike that of her typical shinning around.
"What do you intend to do?" I heard behind me.
I addressed the reflection of my Knot sister in the mirror on the mantle of the grand fireplace, my fingers dancing around the strings of my corset as I cleared my throat.
"What I do best. I'm going to erase the present and start writing the future, sister," I smiled. "And she looks...a little something like this."
I rose from my seat, approaching the heavy ornate mirror an watching my ringlets elongate into much coarser wavy black weeds of hair, my eyes tingling from change in color and skin prickling from a dense fire that turned melanin into olive.
JEZEBEL
Klaus's deadline went into effect the second I walked into the Mikaelson mansion; as did mine. Already overwhelmed by the crowd of disguises and the stuffy glow of candlelight tripping the drunks, I nearly flinched with irritability when someone brushed passed me.
My reflection stood before the mess I was to walk into and amend, her long dark hair swaying like wine in the glasses of the guests.
"There are three ways to tell a predator from prey. When you see a predator out in the wilderness, it feels like seeing a removed kinsman in your house. You don't know much about them or what they're like, you just know not to be too forward," she began, "Then, you'll recognize they want something from you and vice versa. The dilation of their eyes, their pace, their noises—it's all telling of an exchange or a robbery. Third, they never do anything to be cruel or calculating–all the blood and bone that's been shed before was to keep the body and soul together."
I remarked in front of my reflection, "Who's predator are you?"
She smiled brilliantly as a single, glimmering body of wealth strolled in front of her and made her vanish.
"It's rather rude when the guest of honor is the latest of them all," I heard another converser.
Klaus approached, the pearls of his shark grin fanning the smell of blood and moonshine in my face.
"As I remember it, I was desired to be late," I frowned at him.
He cackled to himself at my confusion by his sarcasm, his fingers dancing around the half empty glass of alcohol in his hand. As two identical women passed between us, their eyes were thrown in opposing directions between Klaus and I. He was shameless in further interaction, the simper on his face almost maniacal.
"Do tell, where is Celeste this evening?" Klaus rejoined our greeting.
"I was supposed to meet her in the Quarter cemetery. The witches wanted to honor me. It shouldn't be long before they realize I'm not coming. Where are they?" I summarized and cut to the point.
"You don't care for small talk, I see. I admire that. I suppose I can skip the niceties," he began. "Until the Guerreras arrive, I don't see why we can't start with a dance. Let's display a case of false forgiveness, shall we?" He purred.
His hand extended to me, to which I address his charming expression with a frown.
Klaus mocked me, "Don't look so nervous. I only bite when it's called for."
CELESTE
(Trigger warning)
As I walked through the multirow of torches and candles glowing a bright emerald just for me, I smiled knowing all their eyes could see was Jezebel. My bare feet stepped on cracks and weeds, welcoming the misfortune they'd all brought upon themselves.
"Welcome, Jezebel," one elderly woman greeted me.
I returned to her a lighter grin than the last, my shoulders slumped back and my hips heavy with confidence as I walked.
I paused at the end of the coven crowd, eyeing each and every woman, occasional man, and child oblivious to the privilege of life they held.
"I'd like to thank you for being so kind tonight. Though, it's a shame Celeste could not be here...I am curious to understand why you would not call on your leader, my family to be here with me," I imitated her quiescent honeyed voice.
"Celeste DuBois was never ours. It was our mistake for believing otherwise. She convenes with a force as ancient as any Original, and a power greater than Hecate," Madame Fargo swore as she stepped forward. "You, be you witch or be you mortal, you are her greatest prize. Our ancestors wish to show you their appreciation for protecting our children from Klaus Mikaelson. Be our sacrifice to them on this night, and you will be indicted into their legion, guiding us from the other side."
Where I thought Jezebel would be the ultimate hostage, I found she was instead a potential saint. They wanted her to be an Ancestor.
I sighed heavily, with a slight smirk.
"Sacrificing me so that Celeste is unable to? How incredibly childish. You give a life to please an unending line of neurotic spirits who take away your freedom to fight back. That is what makes you weak and unworthy of any kindness at all. Once Carmila rises, Celeste will fight to make the dead into slaves of the living. Any witch who stands in the way, was not fit to carry on their family blood. I saved you once. I think I should be in charge of the sacrifice tonight, and I choose...all of you," I smirked.
Shouts of offense and anger and disgust erupted from each corner of this quaint perimeter.
A sharp click ignited where the cobblestone ground start to crack beneath my feet, slivering along in quick fragments and dividing itself like tree branches around the feet of the witches, the ground beginning to cave as my plain feet hovered from the ground and lifted me until I could see the ground beneath me cave and sink down into a sharp abyss.
The mausoleums and heavy grave markers lost foundation and slanted forward crushing handfuls of breakable skulls and leave few to escape out the vaguely rooted pillars that marked the nearest entrance to the cemetery. Screams and quaking and crying roared like wildfires as the earth gave up on Louisiana and let its heart swallow up in full.
"Oh, righteous day," I whispered.
A cry in the distance interrupted my train of thought as I exited the cemetery on flat feet.
"Celeste!" Elijah screamed from down the stone road of the Quarter.
I broke into a hobble, grabbing at my hair to make my eyes water.
Pathetically, I whined loudly, "Elijah!"
He rushed at me, his handsome evening attire sodden with the oncoming downcast and my crocodile tears as I held onto him.
I blubbered, "The witches! They're dead!"
"What has happened!" He cried.
I interjected, "There was a disagreement. Someone destroyed the cemetery from the inside, I barely escaped. I have to find Jezebel. I need to know she's safe!"
He looked around frantically at the glow of fires over on the distant side of the Black Clay and the growing crowd of bystanders, stopping carriages to rubberneck.
"She's at the party with Niklaus. Come. We'll find her," Elijah swore, dragging me away with a shielding arm against the storm.
KLAUS
Passively, she let me lead her through the dance with little to no interest in letting her guard down. There were heads facing away from their partners, like compasses pointing to Jezebel standing at the axis of danger. She didn't notice a thing.
"What you said the other morning. It was about every child wishing to be free from rules. Did you wish for that?" Jezebel amended sincerely.
"I don't believe now is the time to divulge each other in tales of our childhood," I sighed.
"I just want to know because I think you're justification of genocide is interesting," she told me.
Now, she was goading me. She saw where my case had wavered and where I had made a fool of myself originally.
"If you mean to rehash an anecdote from my book of faults, let's not leave yours out of sight and out of mind. The way you speak, love, it's similar to that of a man who fools himself into thinking he is the bigger person. You mean to tell me that you have never done anything rash or within the arms of paranoia?" I twisted the conversation.
Her gaze dropped without the slightest movement of her head.
"That's right," I leaned in, speaking into her ear, "Come down from your humble stage and remember. You have made mistakes and perhaps, they've made you unpopular. Yet, you live. Sparing you my last bit of patience, I'll offer you this last piece of wisdom. What you are doing here tonight—I think it's just another one of those ugly mistakes."
Jezebel swallowed, exhaling calmly.
She replied, "...Unlike you, I have no room to let the mistake go to waste."
She drew her head away from mine, eyes latched onto the view over my shoulder as her grasp released from mine at the end of the song.
With a bored exhale, she watched one of the taller Guerrera folk recently arriving raise his glass to her gaze.
My hand travelled a short distance to reach and wrap around her forearm.
"At least here in New Orleans, we're not neglectful of mercy. There is nothing to be said about survivors in the hands of wolves like those," I warned her.
Without returning my glance, Jezebel responded, "You didn't give me sympathy. You just know you will lose to me. Perhaps, that will teach you to be less proud, Niklaus."
She took her arm away, walking straight into the arms of catastrophe as she greeted the Guerrera with a polite hand on his back. After a mere second of greeting, I witnessed a stupefying pause between the two figures. The Guerrera's charming grin was gone and Jezebel's face is expression colder than the crescendo of a new waltz.
With the flick of his hand he sent away his brothers, stuck with the girl who spoke quickly and with aggression on her full lips.
His hand wrapped around one of hers, as he patted it patronizingly. The confidence in her façade was quick to disperse as he spoke quietly to her, shaking his head and eating away at her hardly given proposition.
Rebekah strolled to my side, grabbing at my forearm.
"Elijah's nowhere to be found. I suppose I'll have to do with you as my next partner. Though, you can't keep pace for the life of you," she pouted.
Her eyes followed mine to where the Guerrera stood talking to Jezebel as intimately as I just had been, and with less vigor as the start of the conversation. Jezebel's head slowly turned to the side as she took her hand away, face deadened as if every nerve had snapped and made her numb in an instant.
Without much more context, he watched her walk out the front door and left the scene.
"What's happening there? Did she finally get a taste of her own medicine?" Rebekah sighed.
"So it would seem," I hesitated.
JEZEBEL
I had a dream once as a child. I was laying in bed on the morning of my fifteenth birthday. I stretched my arm upward, pretending to take down the stars. Then, the cobalt ceiling cracked. It imploded, and behind it, I did not see sky nor heaven; not space, not death, not hell—just the color black. What was special about this dream was nothing of its obscure storytelling. It was that my eyes were open when I'd had it.
And there I was, experiencing it again. But this time, it was the ground that was black and sucking up into itself, leaving me afloat.
I couldn't shed a tear. I couldn't take a breath or blink. At one point, I thought I might dispell what little I had to eat that day, but the feeling was fleeting. I sat on the side of the loud, bright mansion, the drizzle in the sky coming down on top of my head.
The clap of thunder and lightning made the entire house bump with drunken delight.
My chest heaved, heated up, and danced with ticklish bugs of despair. My eyes fell away into the dark horizon, shining with rainfall and colorless trees framing the broad shoulders of an audience.
The tall stranger got closer and closer until he was upon me with observance of pure disgust.
"What are you doing here?" I croaked.
The blonde giant slowed the removal of a silver dagger from the holster up his waist.
"I was summoned by a pathetic demi-witch by the likes of the Zhukov name," Mikael declared, "Carmila had no maternal gifts, otherwise told by the cowardice radiating off her kin right now."
He only made everything I was feeling worse. I catapulted myself to my feet, clumsily catching myself with a forearm pressing off the side of the home.
I snapped, "I did not summon you to talk to me with such vulgar familiarity! Celeste is at the farmhouse down the road, prepped and sitting for her slaughter. If you walk in there without first committing to her annihilation, I will make you regret uttering my family name!"
Calmly but with a vexed flex in his jaw, the Destroyer put the tip of his dagger to the top of my left breast where he could gather my heartbeat.
"I heard your bark loud and clear when you invaded my head! And the only way I can truly defeat the woman you seek is to assassinate my descendants that remain on this imbalanced earth. If she cannot have them, she cannot win. Only then, when she has felt her defeat, will I slay her and her demons," he hissed back.
I pushed away his dagger, the raindrops falling and slipping down our heads breaking into a briefer and heavier pat. The more frequent claps of thunder nearly drowned me out.
I rose my tone, "Still, it's so imperative that you must make the death of your only children into the reason for you to make the balance right again? Celeste and her her Knot are always going to find a way—"
Mikael swore, "I will not unpack my reasons to you, wench. You cannot stop me here—"
Grabbing his coat, I disguised my left hand which swam beneath his coat to retrieve the dagger.
"You do owe me explanation! Celeste has a plan and I don't think it can be stopped by the murder of the Mikaelson children! Especially Klaus. Tell me now, or suffer your error with me!" I exclaimed.
He shoved me away, and I hid the dagger in the side of my skirt's red hemming.
Mikael warned, "Stay out of my way or suffer as a casualty and nothing more!"
I blinked against an adjacent lightning bolt over the nearby bayou brush, and he was gone.
Sodden, I felt my hair gain the weight of the storm and loosen the pins in my hair, weighing me down with a sodden gown.
I pulled the silver dagger out from behind me, examining it with pulsating hands struggling to stay still.
"Jezebel..." I heard.
Elijah, wallowing in fear and loathing, steps out from behind the house as calmly as he can.
"Give it to me," he said cautiously.
I could not form a complete sentence, my combination of emotions handicapping me and closely formulating me into a ticking explosive.
His ruffle-cuffed hand slowly extended, his step rocking in one spot to see if I'd surrender the weapon by his illusion of coming closer.
I shook my head pathetically.
"No. This isn't safe with anyone," I swallowed.
He retorted, "That is not for you to decide. That thing is a deadly device, and it will hurt anyone in that house...including my family. I can overlook you calling on Mikael, but first, you need to give it to me."
The swollen and nauseating feeling in my stomach and throat defined that I'd been caught. Being caught by Elijah meant I felt trapped.
He could outrun, he could smell me, he could catch me, and he could kill me if I thought about fleeing with that dagger.
"I'm trying to help you, I swear it," my voice quivered. "Please. Go inside."
Elijah amplified his voice to be above mine, "Jezebel it is not an option. Now, before I do something I regret!"
With one quick strike, I lodged the dagger in his heart, my teeth clamping down on my tongue. He quaked with a rush of pain, mouth ajar and choking as he turned white as the moon.
I did not bother apologizing or promising a better tomorrow. If he was a true Original, this would only stop him for so long and he'd deliver me my dues when he woke. I'd clearly crossed a line, Celeste would be dead, and both of us were going to pay for our actions as though we were actual family.
CELESTE
(Trigger warning)
He was a masked man tonight, but his prominent walk of a gigantic ape and unmistakable shape of mouth made him my walking target.
The oblivious siblings, absent of Elijah's oversight, were gazelles at the water's edge for their looming crocodile parent. I took matters into my own hands.
"Departe," I chanted in singularity.
The crowded ballroom froze like a lake in winter's jaws, except for the few icebergs which floated freely unaffected by their shared magical immunities.
Mikael turned to face the Knot, caution in his eyes and actions, knowing he was outnumbered.
"So, it seems I underestimated the number of you left behind by your mother duck," he scowled.
The rest of my sisters removed their animal masks, prompting him to remove his skeletal disguise.
"What are you doing here Mikael? You know better to step onto the same soil from which you were excommunicated," I purred.
Mikael scoffed, "You mean to compile me into the same ring of punishment as my wife? Esther might have betrayed Carmila, but your response was far from justified."
"Your wife stole immortality from our Knot!" I screamed at him.
"And your Knot stole my son! Henrik!" Mikael boiled. "And I reap not only the consequences of what Esther had the ability to do to my children, but the responsibility to avenge my young boy, as well. If that means I must kill my children to erase your plot, so be it. Here we are! Why don't we settle this before they run for the hills."
"Gladly," I smiled.
I raise my fist to his eye level, his eye sockets bursting into flame and skin slacking off his bone like a roasted pig. He wailed in terror, unable to stop it with the magical defense around his neck and his left ring finger. Falling to his knees, my heart thumped with excitement in seeing the nuisance literally crash and burn. The others chanted a rhythmic dead language to intensify the pain and suffering of the Destroyer, unable to control their occasional cackles and hungry noises.
A burst of lightning suddenly struck through the ceiling, right between Mikael and myself. It broke a fragment of the sterling silver crownings of the Mikaelsons' cathedral ceilings, causing it first to swing by a wedge of sturdy wood fixturing.
We all watched as it swung wide until it began to fall freely, taking the restraints on the glass chandelier with it. The chainlinks spinning away from their golden axis swam through the room at a sharpened speed, the chandelier catching fire on flammable persons and objects lying about the room.
I teleport to a higher place beside the frozen Mikaelsons. The clap of thunder in concert came again, knocking on the door with the sodden Jezebel, panting in a rage.
"She looks like she wants a fight. Finally. The night is upon us sisters. Push her into submission," I declared.
Jezebel watched, troubled, as the slain sisters of the Knots rose from their bloody death beds, retaining a completed physique with the help of their blood magic.
Her hand flew out the side an empty loveseat nearby pinning Nadia and Flora to the wall and applying pressure until the crack of bones sounded just the same as the thunderstorm. Shards from the chandelier rose from the floor and out of injured guests who had yet to wake up from another dimension.
It was a miracle to see her move along with her craft, but less so when the Mikaelsons were in the crossfire and without the means to defend themselves.
The chandelier's fragments struck between the eyes of Lydia and Marin, A handful of bystanders receiving the better have of them to the throat and chest. Their blood splashed against Jezebel's neck and chest, though it did little to stop her from carnaging the entire room.
Another bolt of lightning struck down through the readymade hole from the first strike. The golden chandelier chain flailed and seizured with life, swinging wide until half the public room was halved like a harvested wheat field.
Reneé and Saoirse remained the last to stand in Jezebel's line of fire. They did not want to move.
One rotation in her wrist snapped the spines of the last witches and Mikaelson guests, and then she was coming for me.
"Stop," I calmly commanded.
Jezebel refused, the charged and flickering gold chains swinging their tails high like venomous snakes.
"Apparit saveti," I hissed below my breath, my hand waving out to the side and freezing where my muscles locked with power.
A harsh coughing and sounds of a scared mammal came from my left.
Jezebel obeyed me upon the sight of Kol, bound like a puppet, bloodied and tongue shriveled like a dried berry.
"See no evil, speak no evil...you know what comes next. I'm rather glad he can still hear me. So he knows how you choose to move against me. Your actions reflect his consequences," I haphazarded her.
Her voice graveled with rage, "What's the matter? I thought you intended to fight for my subordination in good health and in good death."
I step closer, daring her to make a move.
"Indeed. So you may as well strike me, but we both don't want that to happen. You kill me here and now, you expose yourself. You've killed most of the guests, you've killed my witches; Kol, Elijah and Mikael suffer under your precious provisions. You are the enemy of the Mikaelsons in all this. And your father cannot rescue you from your deserved fate...god rest his soul," I growl.
I used her moment of quiet hesitation to subdue her from behind, teleporting behind her to grab her hair and force her down like a rabbit in a hat, into the puddle of blood beneath our feet.
My pythons rise from their nest of carnage and their reborn ears await my command.
"Chain the hybrid, I trust wherever you bury his siblings is a fair punishment. Go. Now," I demanded.
"The Destroyer, Celeste. He'll wake," one of them warned me.
"Let him. There's far less he can do where his children are concerned," I howled.