All right, then." Selina said. "We know what we have to do. When should we leave?"
"I can't believe I forgot about that last time," Klaus said. "How could I have been so stupid?"
"Oh, relax," she told him. "You always have trouble paying attention to things that have absolutely nothing to do with you."
"But we were there when it happened last time," he said. "Why didn't I realize that we had to follow the same steps?"
She shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "But let's not worry about it anymore now. Let's just go to bed and ponder how we're going to turn me back to the person I was during the sacrifice. That's probably going to be really difficult, won't it?" Selina said. "And it's not like we can tell Alistair just to make my werewolf side dormant again. And how would you even do that?" She shuddered. "I bet it's going to be painful." She lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over herself.
"Don't worry," Klaus said, climbing onto his side of the bed and putting an arm around her waist. "I know other witches besides Alistair, whose morals are much more flexible. I bet if I asked, one of them would fix you right up."
He sucked in a breath. "Being around you when you have a dormant werewolf side. Things will be just as fun as they used to be." He began rubbing her stomach. "And then I'm going to bite you, and we'll be on our way."
"I'm not going to make it easy for you," she said. "You're going to have to catch me. I'm not just going to lie on the floor and offer you my neck."
"I'd never ask you to," he said. "That's not much fun anyway."
"And just so you know ahead of time," she said, "I do 'die' after I receive the bite, but I wake up good as new in a couple of days. I'm telling you this now so you don't think you failed."
"And when you wake up, you'll be...?"
"Human again," she said quietly. "A doppleganger yes, the lost doppleganger, but human."
He turned her over and began kissing her. "Sounds very enticing," he said. "I can't wait."
"Of course," she nodded. "Especially since I'll actually remember you this time instead of having amnesia and avoiding you. Actually, I didn't avoid you when I had amnesia, I just-"
"You did," he interrupted her. "You did avoid me!"
"But that wasn't my fault," Selina said. "I didn't know we were married, so that would have been creepy!"
"Anyway," Klaus said smoothly, "how many times has this whole werewolf bite thing happened to you?"
"Three, I think," Selina said after a moment. "The first time, it was so creepy because I was awake for a little while before I was pulled out of my coffin. That's not something I want to repeat. And then my cousin who was in love with me brought me back to his house and kept me there because everyone thought I was dead and he didn't want anyone to kill me, and...well it was very complex."
"Why was your cousin in love with you?" Klaus asked.
"Well," Selina said, "remember how I always told you that my mother and the rest of the family were in denial about the werewolf side? Well, my cousin saw me attack and nearly kill their overseer when I was five, and he kept a really close watch on me after that. He was scared that if he let me out of his sight for even a minute, I would get lose, kill somebody and turn. Kind of like how I was with Adrian before you went and made it a moot point."
Klaus rolled his eyes.
"It got even worse as I got older," she continued. "Even to the point where Michael suggested that either he and I marry, or I become a nun. Neither of those options were doable for me."
"Did your mother know that you would be a little more feral since you were born during a full moon?" Klaus asked.
Selina nodded. "Uncle Jacob told her," she said. "And so began her crusade to keep me as boring as possible."
"Well," he said, "at least we ended that."
"True," she nodded, leaning back on the bed. "That makes me so happy. Best choice I ever made."
He kissed her and pulled her up so that she could put her arms around his neck. "You know," he said, "I'm not really tired."
She shook her head. "Me neither. Would you like to wear me out?"
He nodded and they made love until they both passed out on the bed, the blankets and sheets all over the floor, and a lamp, broken from being kicked off the bedside table.
Selina was jolted out of sleep by the shrill ringing of the telephone. She opened her eyes, gently pushed Klaus off her and rolled onto her stomach to look at the clock. She didn't see it. It had been knocked onto the floor as well. She looked off the side of the bed and saw the dark, square shape, glowing faintly red on one side on the floor, just far enough away from the bed to be difficult to reach. But she tried anyway, leaning farther and farther forward. But just as her fingertips touched the clock, she fell off the bed with a scream into the pile of blankets.
The noise made Klaus moan slightly, but he didn't wake up. The man could sleep through anything. She grabbed the clock and groaned when she saw the flashing numbers. She put the clock down and grabbed the phone. "Listen," she whispered angrily, "it's two-thirty in the morning. What the hell do you want?"
"That's a fine way to greet me," Elissavetta said. "Especially since you're already up anyway."
"I'm sorry," Selina said shortly. "How can I help you?"
"I just wanted to know if you were pregnant yet?" Elissavetta asked.
"No," Selina shook her head. "Not yet, and maybe not ever. Deal with it!" She slammed the phone down before Elissavetta had time to say anything else and then crawled back into bed. Once her head hit the pillow, she felt Klaus' arm go around her waist again. "What was that?" He asked groggily.
"Nobody," she said. "Just your mother wanting to know if I'm pregnant again. Why that couldn't wait until daylight, I have no idea."
"Hmmm..." He nodded and fell back asleep again. Sighing, she closed her eyes, hoping that she would be able to sleep just as well.
Klaus woke up just before sunrise and saw that the space beside him was empty. He checked the bathroom and saw no one, so he began walking around the house, calling Selina's name. When he reached the kitchen, he finally heard her voice.
"Looking for me?" She asked and then giggled. She was standing naked against the doorframe of the kitchen, clutching a nearly empty bottle of rum in one hand.
"Yes," he nodded, his eyes roaming her body in spite of himself. He averted his gaze. Now was not the time. Something was clearly wrong. "Just so I can be sure," he asked, "Is this an early morning surprise for me, or is there something wrong with you?"
She slammed the rum bottle down on the kitchen table. "I've been in here for hours," she said. "Your mom called at two-thirty this morning to ask me if I was pregnant again yet, and then after I hung up on her, I fell asleep and had the worst nightmare ever."
"Just a minute," he said, when he noticed that his eyes kept straying away from her face. He went and grabbed one of his shirts and put it on her, buttoning it down to the last button so at least she was covered up. Then he got distracted by her legs, so he grabbed a blanket from the hall closet, pushed her into a chair, and threw the blanket over her lap.
"What are you doing?" She asked.
"Well," he said, "you're having some sort of problem and I want you to know that I care. The only way I will be able to take it seriously is if I put all distractions out of sight and out of mind."
"Oh," she said. "Okay."
"So about this bad dream you had?"
Suddenly, she burst into tears. "I don't want to tell you," she said. "You're going to think it's stupid."
"No, I won't!" He shook his head earnestly. "Just tell me what happened."
"Okay," she said, sniffling. "I had a dream that we had another baby and it was a girl that had my features and you got so enamored by her that you paid attention to her and locked me in a room so that you wouldn't have to look at me anymore!"
"That's just ridiculous," he said. "You can't actually believe that that would happen."
"It could," she said. "You can't pretend like you've never thought of Adrian that way."
"Well all right," he said. "Maybe just a little."
Selina looked at him balefully, her bottom lip jutting out. "You wrecked me, you know. You're giving me all this attention and now I don't want to share it with anybody."
"Come here," he said, holding his arms out. She shoved the blanket onto the floor and then went to sit on his lap.
They kissed deeply and he picked her up and took her to the sofa where he undressed her again, savoring her happy moans as he ran his hands over her body.
"So I'll win all the time?" She asked.
"Yes," he nodded. "All the time."
They went back to their room and dressed. "Whose turn is it to take Adrian to school?" Selina asked. "I could do it. Or do you want to?"
"I will," he said. "You stay here."
When he returned, she'd dressed and was making breakfast for them. "Hey," he said, coming into the kitchen and putting his arms around her waist. She was wearing a rose colored button down shirt with short sleeves and a gray skirt. "Hey to you too," she said as he began to kiss her neck. She flipped the pancakes over and then put them onto plates, then turned around and kissed him back as he ran his hands over her body, lingering, of course, on her butt. "You need a little?" She asked him.
"Stupid question," he said, taking her hand and leading her to the laundry room. They emerged sighing contentedly a few minutes later, sitting down at the table to eat. "So," she said after swallowing a forkful of pancakes and taking a sip from a blood bag. "What did you want to do today?"
"I was thinking I should call some of my contacts," he said. "The witches, remember, that I mentioned yesterday?"
"Oh, yeah," she nodded. "The witch that's going to make my werewolf side all dormant so nothing can go wrong again. And about that," she gestured with the fork. "Don't be so hard on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. It happens."
"I can't afford mistakes," he said. "This is too important." She could see that his muscles were beginning to tense up.
"All right," she said. "Let's talk about something else."
He nodded. "Sorry about my mother calling this morning. Her sense of timing is never the best. That's probably what made you have that nightmare."
"Yeah," she shook her head. "It was ridiculous, I know, but-"
"No, it's not," he said. "I find it comforting that you're just as self-centered as I am."
"The thing is, I do kind of want to have more kids," she said. "At least one more. But if it's a girl, I'll have to compete for attention, and if it's a boy then I'll be vastly outnumbered..."
"But you'll have one more man to shower you in shameless adoration," Klaus said. "Think of that."
She nodded. "You have a point."
"And honestly," he continued, "you really don't have to compete for anything. The thing you're afraid of losing is the sex, which to be frank is completely incomprehensible to me, but..."
"...But it's not inconceivable for me to be worried," she said. "You know that. It's happened to you!"
"Exactly," He nodded, "which is why I would never torture both of us by putting you through the same thing!"
"I'll go load the dishwasher," she said when she noticed their dishes were empty.
"All right," he said, kissing her again. "I have some phonecalls to make."
A couple of days later, Selina and Klaus were in the car again. "Tell me again who we're going to see," Selina said.
"Her name's Chloe," Klaus said. "Thanks to her, three towns in West Virginia are under quarantine for a flesh-eating virus. And she's been helping criminals get off scot-free for years, and..."
"So basically you're telling me she's corrupt," Selina said. "That's good, I suppose."
"Exactly," he nodded. "We can't have someone with a conscience handling this. It wouldn't work."
"True," Selina nodded. "But wouldn't it have been easier just to ask Alistair? I mean, he helped you the first time. Who's to say he won't do it again?"
"I just didn't feel like asking him," Klaus said. "Technically this wasn't something I told him about when I first came up with the plan. I mean, originally, it was to get hold of you, or rather a girl like you, and then have my hybrid race that way, but then I thought, why not just do both? It'll give you a bit of a rest, yet we still get who we need to take over the world."
"How thoughtful," Selina said.
"You're jealous, aren't you?" He said, grinning at her.
"No," she shook her head and scoffed. "No I'm not!" She paused. "She's not going to like, make you pay her or anything, will she?"
"Ah," he nodded. "So you think that the only way she'll do this for me at all is if I go to bed with her in exchange. Well that would put her in charge, wouldn't it?"
Selina nodded.
"And how often do I let that happen?" He asked.
She shrugged. "Not often."
"Exactly," Klaus nodded. "Especially for a woman who's only a witch and nothing more. She's a means to an end. That's it."
"Okay, okay," Selina held her hands up. "I just wanted to be sure."
They sat in silence for the rest of the trip and then pulled onto a dirt road and drove down it aways before reaching an isolated cabin. "Wow," Selina said. "That's almost a cliche, isn't it?"
"She has to be isolated," he whispered. "Being around people throws off her focus."
"Ah," Selina nodded as he took her hand and led her up to the cabin door. "She wasn't always a witch, you know," he said. "She brought it on herself."
Selina frowned. "What do you mean 'she brought it on herself'?"
He grinned. "She told me once that she was really in love with a man, but he abandoned her and fell in love with somebody else, and just before their wedding, Chloe ran into the woods to have a visit with the witch who used to live here. I forget her name. Anyway, Chloe asked for a spell that would make her ex-boyfriend forget all about his fiancee and love her again instead. The witch did as Chloe asked, but the price was that Chloe became a witch too. And not only that: she became cold, heartless and unable to love anyone."
"What happened to her boyfriend and his fiancee?" Selina asked, her hand on the doorknob.
"Oh," he said, "they married, of course. He forgot all about her."
Selina looked in the window and saw a young woman sitting at a harp, strumming the same notes over and over again. Her hair was dark and ratty, her pale face smudged with dirt, her brown dress old and ratty. When the woman turned to look her in the eye, she gasped and stepped back. "Maybe you should be the one to knock," Selina said quickly. "She knows you better."
He cleared his throat and knocked on the cabin door. The woman answered a few seconds later, a wicked grin crossing her face. "Well look at you!" She said. "I never thought I'd see you again. What brings you here?"
"I need some help," he said.
"Ah," Chloe nodded as she gestured him inside and shut the door in Selina's face. "Still working on that plan to become a hybrid and take over the world?"
"Actually, that is in the process of working," he said. "I got everything activated in myself and..."
"Would you like me to find you a mate?" Chloe asked, a twinkle in her eye.
"No," Klaus shook his head. "I got that taken care of too. I even brought her with me."
Chloe's eyes widened. "You did? Where is she?"
"On the porch," Klaus said. "You forgot to let her in."
"Oh," Chloe said, her eyes downcast. "I didn't see her." She went to the door and let a scowling Selina inside. "Well," Chloe said, looking her over, "You're not exactly what I expected."
"Skip the small talk, will you?" Selina snapped. "We came here for a reason!"
"And what's that?" Chloe asked, looking at Klaus.
"Well," he said, "a short time ago, I attempted to make others like myself, using the traditional methods of transformation. Unfortunately though, that failed and every werewolf in the pack we found ended up dead. But then, Selina found a book of some research her uncle did and we realized what we did wrong."
"You didn't give them any of the doppleganger's blood did you?" Chloe asked.
"Exactly," Klaus nodded. "But now that's going to be a bit difficult since she's a hybrid as well. So what we were hoping you could do is some sort of magic to repress her werewolf side, at least until we get proper numbers for an army."
"I could do that," Chloe nodded. She looked at Selina. "Sit please, dear." Selina sat. "And I'm going to ask you to step outside," she told Klaus. "If you stay here, you might disrupt the procedure. No matter what you hear, don't come back inside until I say it's all right."
Klaus looked at her uncertainly for a moment and then stepped outside.
"Now," Chloe said to Selina, "undress, please."
Selina did as she was told, although grudgingly. Chloe put Selina's clothes on a dressmaker's dummy and took some of Selina's blood and smeared it over Selina's clothes, mumbling some spell as she did so. Then, she grabbed a pair of silver shears and jabbed them right in the spot of the dummy where the heart would be. The dummy began to bleed Selina screamed. Chloe stabbed again and again and again, until Selina was weak, exhausted and crumpled in a heap on the floor. She was covered in her own blood, because she'd bled as the dummy had. Every inch of her hurt. She wanted to die.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that," Chloe said. "There's no other way."
Selina looked up at her and nodded.
"Why don't I fix a bath up for you?" Chloe suggested. "It won't take long and it'll do you a world of good."
"All right," Selina said quietly.
Chloe returned a few minutes later and helped Selina into the tub, watching her intently. "How are you feeling?" She asked at last.
"Good," Selina nodded. "The water's nice and warm."
Chloe grinned. "No pain at all?"
"No," Selina shook her head. "Should there be?"
"Well," Chloe said, you can answer that. You're sitting in a bath full of wolfsbane. Should you be in pain right now?"
"Yes," Selina nodded, letting water drip through her open fingers. "But I'm not."
"That just means the spell worked," Chloe said. "Did you bring other clothes with you?"
Selina nodded. "Yes."
"All right," Chloe said. "I'll have Klaus get them for you."
Chloe came back a few minutes later and Selina dressed. Then, she and Klaus left the cabin, but not before Chloe said "I know where another wolf pack is...if you're interested."
"We will be," Klaus nodded. "Eventually."
"And when you go," Chloe said, "Can I come with you?"
"Why?" Selina asked. She was still smarting a little from the spell.
"I could be of help," Chloe said. "You never know. Why are you waiting?"
"I have things going on next week," Klaus said.
It was the night before the day he always considered to be his "birthday" and he was determined that this one would be better than all the others. That meant that no one from his family could be involved. They would just wreck everything. He told Alistair and Astrid about his plan and they agreed to keep Adrian for a couple of days, then called the pilot for his private jet and the two of them got Selina on the plane without waking her. They flew to Maui, where Klaus got a cabin on the black sand beach, in one of the areas that was farthest away from the tourists. No one would disturb them there, and it would look beautiful at night. Just as he'd dreamed about. "Happy birthday to me," he whispered to himself.
