A/N:Welcome back, everyone! How are you all today? Good, I hope? Thanks as always to everyone who reviewed last time: ThisIsMeAndYou, DreamonAlina, CrzyAsians, FictionalBoysAreBetter, CarlyLynn, Lavendor Queen, Elejah88, Fangirling007, Savage Kill, victoria, Raven Okumura, SphereShadow, willdawg992003, that one Guest, gameofassbutts, Adela, and that one other Guest! You guys rock! Additional thanks to all of you who are reading the story just in general; you may not leave reviews, but I know you guys are out there, so thank you for following this story. :) And extra super thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! You're all so sweet! :D
Anyway, this is the promised bonus chapter that I mentioned yesterday! Basically, it'[s my birthday today and to celebrate I decided to post another chapter of Inevitable right away. ;D In any case, this time we have another fairly short chapter, but it's another sort of transition chapter. There's Ezra doing some deep thinking, and a conversation between Elijah and Hayley that involves a certain werewolf giving a certain vampire an apology over digging up an old flame's grave. Oh, and Zoe doing some Zoe-style detective work. Enjoy!
Chapter 56
"I don't forgive people because I'm weak. I forgive them because I am strong enough to understand that people make mistakes. "
Ezra spent roughly ten hours dozing on the floor of Rebekah's bedroom as a wolf. He would have stayed even longer, but Klaus had finally returned from getting Marcel and Thierry settled in, as well as getting the other vampires sorted out, and it was clear that the Original hybrid wanted some time alone with his sister. So Ezra uncurled from his resting position on Rebekah's rug, shook out his fur a bit, then lumbered towards the door.
He was stopped on his way out, though, as Klaus rested a hand lightly on his head between his ears.
"Thank you for looking after her," Klaus said in a low voice, and his facial expression was so solemn that Ezra didn't doubt the sincerity of his gratitude.
Since he was a wolf and couldn't talk, he just nipped at Klaus's finger and gave a chuffing sound in reply
A small smile flitted across Klaus's face. "You should get some rest," his friend advised. "It's been a long day, and no doubt tomorrow will likely bring more of the same."
Ezra huffed out a little wolf-sigh of unhappy agreement then padded from the room on quiet paws. Once back in the privacy of his own bedroom, he shifted back into human form and stretched his arms up above his head to try and loosen up some of the tightness lingering in his muscles. He was almost entirely recovered from Sirena's torture, but there were still aches and twinges here and there, as well as a sort of just general weariness.
After a moment of self-assessment, though, he realized that he actually didn't care very much about any of those things right then. No, his thoughts kept drifting back to Rebekah instead; how fragile she'd looked in that circles, how she'd clung to him during the car ride back to the compound.
How he'd surrendered control to his wolf just for an edge to help find her. That, most of all, made both his head and heart hurt.
He'd never, never given up control so completely, not for any reason. There had been a handful of times when Ezra himself had been too weak, too damaged, and his wolf had seized control for the sake of survival. But that had always been a case of the wolf taking control; Ezra had never given it.
But he'd done it for her.
He'd done it for her, with absolutely no guarantee that he'd be able to get control of his body back from his wolf afterward; no guarantee that letting his wolf take over wouldn't erase Ezra himself altogether.
No guarantees whatsoever that he wasn't destroying himself trying to save her.
At the time, those risks hadn't mattered, hadn't seemed important. Getting to Rebekah and making sure that she was safe had been all he'd been able to think of. But now, looking back on it...God, it had been suck a risk.
But worth it, he realized. Rebekah...she was worth it.
And things had turned out well enough this time around. They'd gotten Rebekah back, and Ezra's hold on his wolf didn't seem to be any lesser from the effort earlier.
Which left him with only one real worry.
If Rebekah was put in danger again, would he make the same choice? Would he surrender control to his wolf to keep her safe? Even knowing how much of a risk it could be for his own well-being?
He was more than a little horrified to realize that the answer was...yes. Yes, he would risk it all, for her.
For Rebekah.
I drummed my fingers impatiently on the edge of the desk as I waited for the printer to finish churning out the crime scene photos I'd bribed an NOPD rookie for; the kid had been just enough of a newbie to cave under a delicate combination of threats and bribery, and had agreed to send me the photos after forty minutes of careful negotiating.
I had thanked him, arranged for an Edible Arrangements gift basket to reinforce my gratitude, and then proceeded to spend another four hours poring over the pictures on my computer, hunting for some detail that would point me in the right direction. And after two hundred and forty-seven minutes of zooming, enhancing, squinting, and rotating, I'd found something.
I'd thought it was a tattoo at first, and hadn't paid much attention to it, because this was America and if a nice motel clerk wanted to get some ink on his skin it was nobody's business but his own. But something about it had been nagging at me, and I'd fussed with my computer's picture editing software until I got a better look at the mark from the corpse. And what I'd seen intrigued me.
It seemed to be a coven sigil, a mark that a coven would traditionally use to identify themselves, not unlike a family crest. But this sigil wasn't one I recognized. Which didn't necessarily mean anything; covens pop in and out of existence like boy bands, there one day and gone into oblivion the next. This mark, though, captured my attention, even though the image was out-of-focus and hard to identfiy.
I hadn't realized why it had caught my interest at first, but then I'd seen a circle of thorns wrapped around the main design of the sigil, and it had reminded me of Sirena's personal crest, a winged serpent with thorns wrapped around its body. It was a tenuous connection at best, but it was enough to make me curious. Could Sirena have had something to do with the murder at the motel after all? I'd ruled her out as a suspect initially, even despite her bloody reappearance into our lives, simply because the clerk's death hadn't really been her style.
Something as simply as a beheading wasn't like her. She preferred to use poisons and torture to bring someone down; she liked to see her victims suffer. And a beheading, while gruesome, was a quick end for the victim. No suffering, no prolonged agony. And so I'd drawn the conclusion: not Sirena.
The strange sigil, though, was making me go back and reconsider her involvement. I still didn't think she'd done the kill herself, but it was possible that she'd had a hand in it, somehow.
Seriously, though...how?
To say that Elijah didn't want to deal with Hayley right then would have been an understatement. That being said, he did understand that a talk between the two of them was probably a fair bit overdue.
"What did you want to talk about?" he asked her, standing up and brushing himself off from where he'd knelt down beside Zoe; he wished she was here with him now, but she'd dashed from the room as if she'd caught on fire, and he knew her well enough to know better than to chase her down.
Hayley just stared at him with wide eyes, chewing on her bottom lip. "I'm sorry about Celeste," she blurted out at last. "I know you really loved her and that she still means a lot to you, and I shouldn't have gone behind your back to help Sophie dig up her bones."
He let her words hover in the air between them for a moment before speaking. "Is that all?"
She winced a little at his chilly tone. "Elijah, I'm really, really sorry."
He clenched his jaw at the pleading look in her eyes. "Fine, then," he said at last, exasperation lacing his tone. "Apology accepted."
Her face lit up like a Hollywood billboard. "Really? Great!"
He tried to hang onto his resentment, but it was hard to do with Hayley standing there looking so desperate for his forgiveness and acceptance. Still, he wasn't willing to let her off the hook entirely. "I need to know why, Hayley."
Her face fell a little, her excited relief dimming. "Why what?"
"Why did you do it," he told her. "Why, when you knew how much she means to me?"
A long stretch of silence, then "Because...she's gone, Elijah." Hayley swallowed. "She's dead, and she has been for a while. My people, my family? They're here now. And they need my help."
Elijah couldn't think of a good response to that. He hated what she'd done, but she'd done it for the sake of family. Hadn't he done much worse, for his own family? He was, he realized, in no position to judge Hayley so harshly, not after some of the reprehensible actions he'd taken or condoned in the past.
He swallowed hard and shook his head, banishing the echoes of his deeds that were rising in his mind. "I can't blame you for trying to help your people," he said to Hayley.
She gave a weak smile. "Thanks, Elijah. Not that it did me or them any good in the end," she added bitterly.
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
Hayley huffed out an angry breath and reached up tp brush a strand of hair out of her face. "Well, Sophie teamed up with that Sirena chick, right? Ezra's psycho ex-girlfriend?"
"It would seem that way, yes," Elijah agreed.
"So she's our enemy again," Hayley finished. "And enemies don't help each other break curses on the other side's loved ones, do they?" She shook her head, looking furious. "I can't believe I ever trusted her in the first place. You'd think I would have learned my lesson the first time, when she threatened me and the baby." She rested a hand protectively on her belly.
Elijah sighed. "I'm sure Sophie had every intention of trying to help you break the curse on the wolves out in the bayou. But...she's lost her way, I think. And now that her sister seems to be dead permanently..."
"She's not going to want to help anyone with anything," Hayley concluded. "I guess that doesn't surprise me...I just wish there was some way for me to help my family," she added, looking just a little bit desperate and lost. "Even just something small. Anything."
Against some of his better indistinct, he went and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, trying to offer a small bit of comfort. "We'll find a way to help them," he assured her. "Don't worry."
She leaned into him, resting her head lightly against his chest. "You promise?"
"I promise," he told her firmly.
A/N: Okay, okay, like I said, another short chapter. I'm sorry! But you know how these things happen like this sometimes; if it's a good stopping point there's not much I can do, you know? XD Seriously, though, I had to stop it here because my next chunk of writing starts a couple days after the events of this chapter, and while I can do POV shifts during chapters, I (sort of) draw the line at skipping ahead several days in one bound. So...yeah, stay tuned for Chapter 57. ;) Also, don't worry about that little moment between Hayley and Elijah at the end; it will have absolutely zero impact on my Zolijah endgame. ;D
As always, drop me a review if you've got a second to spare; I love hearing from you guys! :D
