Bon appetite!
May the Best Man Win
Chapter Twenty-One
OLIVER
Ever since Jackson left for Mystic Falls, Oliver was in charge. Yet here he was, standing in the pavilion with the rest of the pack and chatting between a few women, when his glimpse around the tent brought his attention to a crowd at the other end. They were gathered around a wooden chair, deeply carved with wolf-heads in the arms and with the plush seat lifted up somewhat like a throne. There sat Hayley, smiling with a rosy flush lightening her cheeks as her hearty laughs shook the room. She was in the midst of an engaging story, thrusting her hands to and fro as her audience watched her every movement with wide eyes.
Then, in a last denouement, she swept her arms wide out and jumped up from her chair, shouting out her last words, which Oliver could not quite hear through the general roar of the room. The crowd exploded again with laughter, and Oliver saw as the women around him let their eyes stray toward the noise.
Oliver was in charge, indeed. He did not give a damn about Jackson's command. He had been with the pack since birth, and she had been in town little more than ninth months.
A voice bellowed loudly over the others, strained with concern, but he was lost in thought. Then he heard it again.
"Hayley!" someone shouted. Oliver roused from his reverie, peaking through the crowd to see Hayley leaning on the chair and grasping her round stomach with a pained frown on her face.
Immediately, he pushed through the crowd and approached her, placing a hand on her shoulder and whispering into her ear.
"What's wrong?" he said.
"The—" Hayley stammered, "the baby's coming!"
—
An orange moon was rising up into a dusky violet sky with a peppering of stars sprawled overhead, as Oliver paced in a circle in a patch of dried mud. He was at the base of a few stairs that led to a trailer where the witch doctor's medicine was stored. As fast as he paced, though, he could still hear the muffled screaming slip through the windows.
Snap.
He heard a rustling through the woods and his ear perked as he turned toward the noise. Peering into the dark shadows of the woods, he thought he could see, just barely, the outline of one shadow moving between all the motionless silhouettes of the trees. But as his sight adjusted the darkness, a sudden flash blinded his periphery. He cast up a hand to shield the light of the oncoming truck.
The truck came to a screeching halt steps away from him, and the car door threw open.
"Jesus!" Oliver hissed, brushing his hand through his hair as he locked eyes with the driver, "I called you an hour ago. What took you?"
Klaus gave no response and merely jumped out of the car, leaving the car door ajar, and jogging to the mobile home. As he entered, Hayley lay screaming on a bed with sweat trickling down her forehead. The witch doctor plunged a washcloth in a cold metal bucket and padded Hayley's forehead with it.
Hayley dropped her head down on her pillow in exhaustion and saw Klaus standing in the doorway.
"Klaus!" she gasped with a smile on her face. She put her hand out grasping out the air clingingly like an infant reaching for its mother.
Klaus's lips curled in a wide arch as he walked over to her bedside, kneeling down and laying the back of his hand on her brow.
"Yes, love," he cooed with a soothing wipe of his hand across her forehead, "I'm here now."
Oliver entered the doorway and stood with his arms crossed, chewing his bottom lip as the witch doctor walked away from the bed to a table full of vials and wet rags prepared for the birth.
"She's been like this for an hour now," Oliver remarked, though he was not sure to whom.
The witch doctor snorted while she washed her hands in a bowl of hot water.
"She's giving birth," said the doctor, "it takes time, but she's about to crown."
Klaus, though, had other plans. He leaned over, whispering into Hayley's ear, and Hayley nodding in her delirium followed his lead as he began to guide her to sit on the edge of the bed. He took off his leather jacket and laid it around Hayley's shoulder.
"Come on, love, it's time to go home now," he said, beginning to lift her to a stand.
"What!" the witch doctor screeched, "You can't go!"
"Yes, we can," Klaus began to pull Hayley up, at which she began to moan in pain and slumped into the bed like dead weight.
At that, the witch doctor darted across the room with a look of shock etched on her gaping face. She thrust herself between the two and guided Hayley back onto the bed, helping her rest her head on the pillow once again.
"Didn't you hear anything I just said? She's about to crown. She's having the baby now!"
Klaus rolled his eyes and shouted firmly, "I will not have my daughter born in a swamp amid a pack of rabies ridden mutts!"
Oliver took a step forward, "Excuse me?"
Klaus waved his hand dismissively behind him, not even bothering to glance back at Oliver, with all his attention focused on the doctor as she opened Hayley's legs and prepared for the last few pushes.
"Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?!" Oliver took another step forward, lifting a fist.
"Get out!" Klaus barked, throwing a sharp stare in Oliver's direction, "Don't pretend that you don't know the filth your own people live in – a bunch of drunkards and drug addicts! Aye, just as I drove in, I saw another one creeping through the woods, probably to peddle out some more of your daily doses."
"Fuck you!" Oliver hissed back, but Klaus glared back again.
"Out!"
—
Oliver stomped outside, slamming the door behind him and rushing down the stairs and into the dust. He strode right up to Klaus's truck and lifting his foot, kicked straight into the side of car door with the sole of his foot. It left a dent. He straggled back a step, not realizing how strong he kicked.
Snap.
He heard that rustling in the woods again, just as he had earlier.
'Klaus did mention something about people in the woods…' Oliver thought, his eyes squinting and seeing yet again a dark outline that moved through the black shadows. He squatted behind the truck and observed further, making out the shape of a man.
Ducked low, Oliver crept into the woods, walking along a darkened path so as not be seen, making not a sound. When he entered the tree line, he could see nothing but a dark blue pall with faint nebulas of blacks floating in between. Then, as he came upon a blanket of black, he knelt down and listened – he could hear it. Breathing. In and out and in and out.
He crept toward the sound – and then lunged on top of it.
A man yelped in surprise, but Oliver wrestled him into an arm lock and dragged him out into open, out of the woods.
From the light of the moon, he could see it – it was Diego, that slippery right hand man of the Vamps. In a sudden movement, Diego wrenched himself free of Oliver's grip and sped away in a blur, but as he went he dropped something. Oliver walked up and picked it up – a camera.
He turned it on and clicked through the pictures – pictures of him, his tribe, the camp.
"What is this?" he mumbled.
—
As the morning came, with a white light breaking over the horizon, Oliver sat in the camp's pavilion by himself, snuggling into the wolf-armed chair with deep thought knotting his brow. He heard a rustling as steps moved in from his left; he looked up.
"It went alright?" he said.
Klaus nodded, bobbing a little bundle up and down in his arms with a warm smile.
"Is that her?" said Oliver.
Klaus nodded again.
"Esther," he said and nothing more, his enchanted eyes pouring into the little thing.
Oliver forced a gracious smirk and then lifted the camera in his hand.
"Would you mind explaining what this is?" he said, "It has pictures of us – the wolves, the camp. Diego had it."
"What do you have Diego's camera for?" Klaus did not lift his eyes from his daughter and pawed at her little face with his finger as he walked around the room.
"He dropped it," Oliver said, "after I ran him out of the woods."
Klaus raised a brow, "What was he doing there?"
Oliver snorted, "That druggie you thought you saw?"
Klaus looked up at Oliver with a curious glint in his eye.
"It was him," said Oliver, "Your fucking brother…he's been spying on us."