Chapter Three:
Ground Zero
Lakeview Area
Ten Minutes After Shop Explosion
Lucy Livingston was getting ready for her afternoon shift at the bank when the first plague came. Her eyes were closed at the time, suds bubbled atop her head as she leant into the cool spray of the shower. Fingers curled, she began rinsing out the shampoo from her blonde hair.
That's when the water became warm. Not scolding or burning, but… Balmy. Strange, she had thought. She preferred her showers cool, to give her a skip in her step.
This shower suddenly felt warm.
Warm and thick.
Scowling with suds still whirling down her face, down over her closed eyes, she tried to swipe them away.
Warm and thick and sticky.
And copper.
She could smell copper, like old pennies.
That damned Landlord had better not have skimped on the-
Her eyes opened at last, and they were greeted with red.
Bright, vivid, red.
Blood.
The water had turned to blood. Everywhere, up the tiles, down the drain, her skin splattered in crimson, more pouring out from the nozzle above her head.
That was about when she started screaming.
By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hands I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood.
Elijah Mikaelson
Elijah stood next to his brothers and sister in the Abattoir's remodelled living room, and he stared at the boy sitting on the chair.
The boy tied to the chair.
The boy who-
"What joke is this? For I find it entirely in poor taste."
Rebekah shuffled by his side.
"No joke at all. Not from us. We saw him in the street riding a bike and… Kol nabbed him."
Elijah could see no bruises, no cuts or welts, and as if she knew exactly what he was looking for, Rebekah scoffed.
"We didn't hurt him, just compelled him to sleep, and brought him back here. We're not monsters, Elijah. But we thought… Well, don't you want to know what he's doing having that… Looking like… He…"
For the first time since the phone call from Rebekah, and their fast venture home from searching for the Wielder who had hexed their doorstep, Niklaus spoke up from behind the siblings.
"It's a trick, clearly."
Elijah could not drag his eyes from the boy tied to the chair.
The boy who looked like their long dead brother.
"A trick that smells uncannily real."
The laugh that came tumbling out of Niklaus's chest was nothing less than cold and scornful.
"A trick all the same."
It was of no use, Elijah knew. When Klaus got an idea in his head, for better or for worse, like mould it could not easily be scrubbed out from the creases. If Klaus saw the boy as a trick, of which, currently, Elijah would begrudgingly agree, for what else could this farce possibly be, then it would take irrefutable proof to the contrary.
Undeniable evidence it was better for Elijah to ascertain than sending the poor soul into Niklaus's open maw.
Walking into the living room, Elijah grasped the back of the wooden chair to a writing desk, dragging the seat over before the boy, where he sat primly, one long leg slung over the other, suit impeccably made.
"Shall we talk then?"
The boy glared at him fiercely, from the same dark gaze Kol possessed.
The sight stung somewhere deep below, but Elijah swallowed the bitter memories down.
They tasted like ash.
"If you don't let me go home right now, you're all going to regret it."
Across Town
Fourteen Minutes After Shop Explosion
Dorothy had received the call in the afternoon, just after midday, from an old couple who lived out in the sticks of New Orleans, out by their numerous swamps and marshes. As an animal control officer, it was her job to follow up with the complaint, and Dorothy had made sure to snag the call before anyone else in the office could.
The couple were nice enough, not the type to make idle objections over the odd possum found in the rafters, so, yes, her curiosity was picked. People out in the rural parts of Louisiana typically never called in animal control, all too well versed in dealing with the problems themselves.
A bear maybe?
Racoons in the trash?
A stag caught in the wiring of a barbed fence?
An alligator in the pool?
Maybe this could be her breakthrough, maybe if she fixed this then the men down at the office would, finally, begin taking her seriously, instead of sending her on call outs about the odd bee nest or rat sighting in a storm drain.
And then the couple showed her their backyard, open, wide, trailing into the swamps.
The ground was green, and not with grass.
Dorothy stood upon the back veranda; hand frozen over her walkie-talkie.
"What the fuck?"
The sound of croaking was almost deafening, so loud and shocking it made her wince and shudder.
Frogs.
Frogs everywhere, as far as the eye could see, bouncing, leaping, squawking.
Frogs.
This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs.
Lucy Hawthorne
Witch
Wiccan Shop off Fifth Ave
Lucy Hawthorne's eyes scrunched tight, breath heavy, stilted, cringing into the corner of the room at her back as if she could fold herself so tightly, so small, she could pass between the brick and into the dark safe spaces far away.
Her shop was in ruins.
Bookcases on fire.
Windows shattered.
Her eyes squeezed shut tighter.
She could still see the woman through the lids. She shined so brightly it burned, pricked, made her eyes bleed even as she twisted her neck as far as it could, cowering into the corner, away from the terrible, terrible light with the faint outline of a person searing through the thin flesh of her eyelids.
"Last time I'm going to ask politely, Wiccan. Where is Henrik?"
Snot dribbled out her nose, down the dip of her lip, where it steamed.
Hot.
It was so hot.
Burning hot.
Blistering hot.
The shine grew.
Lucy could feel the skin of her bare shoulders and chest sizzle, cracking, sun burn given in seconds, worse yet to come.
Worse Lucy Hawthorne begged wouldn't.
"Please! You have to believe me! I don't know! I don't know! This wasn't us!"
Though she could not see through the burning bright light streaming through her pressed closed eyes, Lucy could feel that hand, that dreadful bare hand, fingertips inches away from the fall of her brow.
One wrong flinch and the two would meet.
Lucy had seen what that hand had done to her cousin only moments before, now a pile of ash somewhere by the torn down door, had seen the barest of brushes against cheekbone as this-… this… Thing had come storming in, as Bertha had asked her to leave, that they weren't open yet, her poor cousin who had no time to move, no time to close her mouth, no time before she burned from the inside out and blackened.
"Then who was it?"
The light blew, the blaze swelled, and everything was a painful, awful bright white.
A hot white.
A dead white.
"If someone crossed you it was likely the Vampires! Please!"
The fingertips at Lucy's brow pulled back an inch, and Lucy sobbed.
"What Vampires?"
This thing, this being of summer sun and death, that spoke so softly, so delicately, with the sound of a woman's voice lilting, did not sound particularly pleased at this information.
Lucy could only splutter, this one instant, just this one, the very moment her life depended on.
"The ones who own this town! Marcel and his lot… He keeps everything else in-… In check. If somethings gone down, he either has his hand in it or he knows who does. Please… Just let me go. I don't have Henrik. Please!"
The bare hand at her face retreated, the terrible light, however, did not.
"And where can I find this Marcel?"
Garden District
Twenty One Minutes After Shop Explosion
David Oakley was making his bed before he ran out of his house. The itch came by his ear. Mindlessly, he dropped the covers and scratched. He felt something. Scowling, he pulled his hand away, held his index finger up, and eyed the squirming black dot on the pad.
Lice?
Where the hell had he gotten lice from?
Another tickle, stronger, by his temple and he scratched.
A clump of lice, a squirming ball of them, fell from his scalp and scattered onto his shoulder.
His hair was crawling with them within seconds, his clothes too, no patch of skin left untouched, biting, feeding and-
He ran from his house, clawing at himself, screaming, swarmed.
And the LORD said: Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt
Elijah Mikaelson
"Whoever you are, I do advise you drop this façade and tell me exactly who you are and who has sent you."
The boy glowered from the chair.
"I told you, I'm Henrik Mikaelson!"
Elijah's eyes slipped closed as he stole a steadying breath.
The boy was insistent if nothing else.
"Our brother is dead, and has been dead for a very, very long time. That is impossible."
Elijah would know. He had spent a good century after his turning, when he learned the world was full of magic and miracles, searching out witches and sorcerers, and the odd occultist, looking just for this.
To have his brother back from the other side.
Each and every one had told him the same.
It was impossible.
Once gone, forever gone.
Nothing less than a… Well, a deity would be able to bring him back without… Complications. Complications such as rotting corpses, disposed spirits wearing their brother's shell, and, if the world was feeling particularly cruel, a short span of a few years before Henrik, trapped in pain and misery, would end himself in despair and suffering.
So, this boy before him, glossy-eyed and rosy cheeked, and clearly, by the new sneakers and shirt, and home-made packed lunch in rucksack, well looked after boy, a happy boy, a healthy boy, could not be their brother.
"I'm Henrik! It's really me Elijah! Look at me… Just look at me, please."
And Elijah did.
He saw Kol's dark gaze above Rebekah's button nose, and the beginnings of Elijah's cleft chin, and the curl of Klaus's hair hidden in the shade of their father's tresses, and he-
No.
This was not Henrik.
This was a trick.
A vicious, heartless trick.
For, as long as Elijah had lived, for all the countries he had walked, in all the wander and despair this life had to offer, he had never seen a god.
Not a kind one.
Not a tentative one.
Not a real one.
Niklaus, visibly bored of pretending to be patient, stormed over from the window, bracing his hands upon the armrests of the boys chair, peering bottomlessly close.
"Tell me who you are before I rip your tongue out from between your teeth."
The boy-
The boy snarled back.
"I'm bloody Henrik you idio-"
Klaus slapped a hand over the boys jaw, silencing the insult, pinning his head back against the wood of his chair. It was not hard enough to hurt the boy, but it was enough to keep him pinned down, keep him looking at Klaus eyes.
"Last chance. Who are you?"
Evidently, whoever had created this had the foresight to make the boy compulsion proof.
A moments silence and then-
Klaus snarled, dragging away from the boy tied to the chair, hand bloody where he had been bit.
No, not a boy, Elijah thought. Something wearing Henrik's face.
Klaus shook his hand, glaring, as the boy glared back with blood on his lip.
Spirited indeed.
"It's no use. We're wasting our time. We should just snap his neck and-"
Elijah shook his head at Klaus's leap to extreme violence. Had he expected anything else?
"We need to know who did this. We need to know who was capable of this. This is not Wiccan magic... I dare say this isn't even Wielder magic."
Kol snorted.
"We've tried getting him to talk, and nothing's worked yet. He's lively, I'll give him that. I don't know about you lot, but I'm not in the habit of torturing children, even if it is only an illusion."
Elijah stood from his chair.
There was nothing else for it.
"Maybe we don't need him to talk… Perhaps, if magic made him, magic can see deeper to whoever did this."
This got the boy talking.
"No! You can't! You can't look! You'll die when-"
"When?"
Niklaus pressed, but whatever the boy was going to say was promptly chewed back between his teeth.
Spirited and stubborn.
Elijah pulled his cell out his inner jacket pocket.
Treme
Thirty-seven Minutes After Shop Explosion.
Charlie Abbot, as he did every morning before his shift down at the ol' power station, reached across the dining room table and plucked himself up a juicy red apple for his lunchbox.
He polished it spit-clean on the lapel of his overalls.
A black spot buzzed.
Charlie Abbot grimaced and flicked the fruit fly off.
Waste not, want not.
Another buzz.
Wilder.
He glanced down to the bowl and-
Stumbled back in shock.
Flies, fat-bellied and black, swarmed the fruit bowel, the fruit bowl that had been sparkling clean only moments prior, and-
Something foul tickled his tongue. Charlie spat and-
A fruit fly flew from his mouth.
Another.
Another.
Another.
The flies flooded in from every crack and break in the house, every lip and chasm, and Charlie abbot was engulfed.
If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground where they are.
Elijah Mikaelson
The thunderous boom came somewhere just past midday, right after Elijah hung up his phone, witch having, rather reluctantly, agreed to visit their premise as soon as she could, and with it, the ground shook.
Screams came filtering in from the streets not long after.
"What was that?"
At Kol's question, Elijah glanced to the windows of the living room, strolling over, yanking back thick, velvet curtain.
Mayhem flooded the road, mortals running left and right and smoke rising into the air, the sun high and-
Bright.
Brighter.
Brightest.
Elijah, under the force of the shine, dropped the curtain back into place, turning away from the burning glare of sunlight.
Unnatural sunlight
Even though he wore his sunlight ring, his hand sizzled.
"I believe it came from over the road, but I can't see through the sun."
Laughter.
The boy… The boy strapped to the chair was laughing.
"You're in trouble now. She only shines when she's angry, and you've really made her really angry."
Rebekah dashed for the windows, skirting in the shadows, drawing the curtains closed.
It was little help against the suddenly explosive sunlight.
"Better get that witch here, and fast."
For once, the siblings were in complete agreement.
The sunlight faded from below the curtain.
Safe.
For a while.
Now they needed to know exactly what the hell was in New Orleans... Hopefully before it came knocking.
The Boundary of New Orleans.
Jose Porter stood at the edge of his farm, shocked, numb, mumbling to his wife equally surprised and silent at his side.
"I swear, Mya… They were fine just four hours ago. I saw them myself… What… What could do this?"
Beyond the acres of land to their family farm, Jose Porter's cows laid across the field, desiccated, leather and bone and bloated, carcasses fallen in spots of brown and mottled black, something like yellow bile seeping out pustules and nose and watery, pale eyes.
Dead.
The lot of them.
Dead from some disease, surely, for the way the skin was flaking and-
"Get a priest, Jose. Get a priest, now."
If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field—on your horses and donkeys and camels and on your cattle and sheep and goats.
Elijah Mikaelson
"Are you sure this is going to work?"
Rebekah asked as she eyed the Wiccan witch Elijah had brought into their home. The witch glared, but Elijah shrugged.
"Have you any other suggestion? If we are to fight whatever it is that is prowling in our city, we first need to know what it is."
Rebekah stayed quiet as the witch edged towards the boy, bracing her fingers against his temple. Henrik-
The boy, for he could not be Henrik, struggled against the move, but with Kol keeping his head firmly fixed against the backrest of the chair he had no where to turn. The fingers brushed skin…
Klaus grew impatient.
"Well? Do you see anything? Do you see who did this? Who the boy is beneath the magic?"
The witches gaze rolled to white, voice feeble, seeking.
"A cupboard… Alone… Scared… So scared…Running… She's always running… Where are you?... Give me just a glimpse… There you are… Sunlight on a long forgotten Idol... A temple... Oh… Oh god-"
The witch lurched back as if she had been burned, but it was too late. Her eyes erupted to flames, popping in the fire that ignited in her iris, screams, pained, filled the air as the witch fell to her knees on the rug, clawing at her fiery face.
She was dead by the time Elijah made it to her, rolling her onto her back.
Charred empty black sockets stared back into the room.
She was screaming even in death.
Kol whistled long and low.
"That's not a good sign, now, is it."
The boy, still tied to the chair, shook his head.
"I told you not to look! You're not supposed to look at Hemlock when she shines!"
Hemlock.
A name.
Finally.
However, the small victory was interrupted by the sound of ringing.
Niklaus frowned, reaching into his jeans, and pulled out his phone.
He brought it up to his ear.
From his distance Elijah could only hear the muffled hello, but he did, as clear as day, hear Niklaus's reply.
"Marcel?"
Mid-City Area
Forty-Four Minutes After Shop Explosion
Cloe Archer was a girl of fine tastes, a girl who liked everything to be exactly where it should be, exactly how she wanted it to be, when she wanted it there.
Standing before the bathroom mirror, splashing the expensive face wash from her skin, she thought, idly, that today was going to be a good day.
When Todd, a boy on the football team, finally saw her in the school play that afternoon, there was no possible way he would not fall madly in love her with.
It was going to be perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
Everything exactly as it should be-
Her fingers skirted across the sweep of her cheek, something hard and knobbled bumping across her finger. Frowning, Cloe dried her face off on the hand towel and peered into the mirror, and shrieked.
A boil.
Ugly, large, red and white, right on her cheek.
How was she going to get on stage now and-
Cloe glanced down to her fingers.
Another boil on the back of her hand-
Another on her arm, another between two fingers-
Cloe Archer screamed into the mirror.
The mirror that showed her face riddled with boils and sores and something weeping-
"Mom!"
Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men, women, and animals throughout the land
Marcel Gerard
The Factory.
Marcel stood in the remnants of what was once his home, surrounded by the dust of his Nest, his Vampires, his legacy.
Shattered at his feet.
A shining, bare hand was hovering centre metres from his throat, his throat that bobbed under a hard swallow, as he kept his eyes away from the glowing figure before him, as far as he could, don't look, don't look, you saw what happened to Gary who looked, cell phone trembling by his ear.
"She wants the boy back, Niklaus. I know you're in New Orleans, I've known for weeks, and I know you have him. Lucas spotted Rebekah and Kol lugging someone down an alley and… She wants the boy back, and in return…"
When the being spoke it was strewn with fire and death and high summer sun.
"In return, I won't kill you."
Marcel grimaced and repeated what he was told to.
There would be no fighting here.
His Nest had tried that and-
Now they were ash in the wind. Or worse.
Billy was still in the corner, dying of some disease, riddled with peeling skin and open lesions and black vomit.
Poor bastard had tried to sneak up from behind.
"In return she won't kill me."
The hand at his throat constricted, barely a hair breadth away from touch.
"Tell them to meet us at the cemetery off sixth avenue in thirty minutes."
Marcel does.
He has no other choice.
He was only lucky Davina was not here, safe in the chapel attic across the city.
Klaus went to answer from over the line, but the phone was plucked from his hand, taken by an unseen force, and he heard the sound of it being crunched under foot.
Dust too, now.
"What… What are you?"
The shine flares. Marcel was nearly left blind by the heat of it, had to blink away the spots clouding his vision.
This being, this women, for she spoke with a woman's voice, a women's voice with a tinge of a Scottish accent of all things, had breezed in not five minutes ago, laying waste to his entire Nest, decimating what had taken Marcel decades to create with a sweep of her arm, an arm you could not look at for the glow of it, and she had him pinned long before he could so much as sneeze.
She had only said one thing in the onslaught of madness.
Where's my Henrik?
"Your worst fuckin' nightmare, Vampire."
Her hand pulled away from his throat.
Marcel felt no respite.
He tried to move-
Nothing.
Not even a wiggle.
He… He couldn't move.
The woman laughed. The right kind of laugher is a soul-elevator, one that can take an entire group onwards and upwards… This woman's laughter felt like it could turn everything inside out and upside down and back around again, to lands where suns could walk on the earth with two feet and two legs and all ten fingers, and dash everything to death.
"You're a Vampire, buddy. That means you're dead… Which is right in my territory. Bad spot of luck for you."
And then, beyond his control, Marcel was walking for the door of the Factory, and he could not speak, he could not scream, he could only do as the woman dimming at his side wanted him to, without ever having to talk.
"Let's hope your friends don't fuck you over, aye?"
The Bywater Area
Fifty-Three Minutes After Shop Explosion.
The storms grew vast over the street, surging as the spring melt river, the air in tight eddies, its playful vortices unaware of their own strength.
And what strength it was.
"Have you ever seen hail like this before, Spencer?"
Spencer Church, huddled in a friend's house down the way from his own home, the only refuge he could find after running in from the street, shook his head as another pelt came, bouncing off a car, alarm screeching as the hood dented under the fist sized ball of ice.
More car alarms joined the crescendo, joined by the shattering of windows and the cracking of roofs, and the splintering of chimneys.
He dropped the curtain and dragged his friend back from the window.
"Never, Mary."
You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now.
Elijah Mikaelson
Cemetery.
In this place of tombstones carved with tender parting words, where the earth welcomed back their own, Elijah found a sense of tranquillity. A cemetery, to Elijah, was a place of soulful reflection; to see and ponder mortality and his own affliction, to see life in all its shadows and rays. A cemetery, he thought, was a place to remember that they were all sailors on a stormy sea, forever blaming each other for the wind of fate.
This cemetery, on the other hand, was a place of dead things, burned things, the forgotten and the unforgiven, the sun, glowing fiercely in the blue, right on high above one of the mausoleums.
Kol had the boy unconscious in his arms, as the quartet of Originals cautiously slipped inside the iron-wrought gate.
They found Marcel relatively easily, standing alone in an opening before the highest mausoleum, sun baring almost intolerably down upon their heads.
Elijah fiddled with the sunlight ring on his forefinger. No burns yet, but they all needed to be vigilant until they could figure out exactly what was going on.
A thousand years upon this earth, and Elijah had never quite seen anything like… This.
"Marcel? Where's this woman, then? Hiding? She better be-"
Niklaus asked from Elijah's side.
Marcel did not answer. He simply stood there, as stone faced as the tombs, dead to the world.
"Who? Me? Hiding? Never."
The voice came from somewhere up high, drifting down like feathers in a stiff breeze and-
That was when the sun fell from the sky, down from the mausoleum-
Not the sun.
Something that shined too brilliantly, and too intense, what Elijah had originally mistaken for the sun, and too-
"I told you not to look! You're not supposed to look at Hemlock when she shines!"
Elijah averted his gaze down to the crooked stone slabs at his feet, and even then, it was almost painful to look at anything at all.
Thankfully, his siblings seemingly came to the same conclusion as he had, wincing, gazes flickering away, Rebekah going as far to shielding her eyes with her hand.
This made the woman laugh.
A laugh that came with a… Darkening.
Light receding, ebbing away, heat too, blissful breeze, and soon Elijah found he could see again and... She was standing beside the stone still Marcel, and she was…
Young.
Younger than Elijah expected.
Human looking too if one only took stock of face value.
Young, and human, and short, and…
Golden.
Everything about this small woman seemed golden. Red hair so sharp it appeared as fire at her back, a fringe licking at the arch of her brow, her skin was freckled in gilt and gold leaf, and her eyes, a nearly impossible green, a summer green, had gilded splashes around the iris, and she-
She stilled glowed, Elijah saw, a shimmer to the corners of her lithe frame, her lithe frame that was covered from head to toe, from boot to glove, only the bare skin of her face, under a thick fringe, visible.
She looked like sunlight in flesh, daylight in bone, sunset in rapture, and achingly beautiful in the only way some creature of sunshine could appear to be to a vampire.
There was magic in the air.
Impenetrable.
Not dark, not light, but… Old. Powerful.
Intoxicating.
"What have you done to Marcel?"
The woman crossed her arms over her chest.
"Vampire-boy? Nothing irreversible… Yet."
The warning was obvious.
Lower Ninth Ward
Fifty-Seven Minutes After Shop Explosion
The locust has six legs, with two arms set in its chest, two legs in its middle and two at its rear. Both of its hind legs end in a saw. It is one of those animals that follow a leader, for it is organized in military fashion: after the first of them takes flight or makes a landing, all the others do the same. Its saliva acts on plants as a slow poison. Every plant it lands on is destroyed.
Aiden Shannon, peering out from his upstairs window, saw his garden destroyed.
His next-door neighbours too.
And theirs, and theirs, and theirs.
Stretching down the road, winding, a horde of Locust had descended on bush and tree and rose, devouring everything in their way. Aiden hissed into the phone at his ear.
"I'm telling you there are locusts in my garden! Hundreds of them! What do you mean you can't do anything?"
The pest control receptionist on the other side sighed.
"Sir, this is the sixteenth call we've received about the locusts in the last hour. We are doing what we can, and will shortly be-"
"Shortly isn't good enough! We've had to board the windows to stop them getting in! Poor Agatha is locked in her house alone, an eighty-year-old woman, you need to come and fix this right now!"
The line went dead.
How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields.
Elijah Mikaelson
Cemetery.
The woman's gaze fell to Henrik in Kol's arms.
The glow to her skin flared a moment before settling.
"He better just be sleeping."
This time, it was Rebekah who replied.
"No harm has come to him, unlike what will befall you for stealing his face to get at us and-"
Elijah could not stop his sister in time, for something was not… Adding up. Something just there, at the tip of his tongue, and-
Not before the woman-
Hemlock, the boy had called her, not before Hemlock reacted.
By disappearing with a burst of flames.
Gone.
She spoke up from behind them.
"Is that a threat?"
Elijah span, backing up, dragging his sister close to his side.
Hemlock smirked.
"Not so brave when I'm closer, are you buttercup?"
Nevertheless, her gaze, flicking back to the unconscious boy, gave away nonchalance. Her hand rose, two fingers up, flexing back and-
The boy was yanked from Kol's arms, right to Hemlock's side.
Wandless magic.
Strong.
Very strong.
Another wave of her hand, and Marcel sagged to the floor, blinking, heaving.
"There you go. You have Marcel back… Just in time."
Elijah frowned.
"Just in time?"
Hemlock slipped a glove from her hand.
"I said I would give Marcel back once you brought Henrik to the cemetery…I never said I was letting any of you leave this place in one piece. You should be more careful with what deals you strike."
The pale hand slipped over the arch of a tombstone, skin on stone.
"But-"
Kol was cut off as the sight of the bare hand.
I Must Not Tell Lies.
A scar, winding across the knuckles.
No… It couldn't possibly be-
The ground rumbled.
Hemlock smiled.
"This is the part where you run for your lives."
A hand, skeletal, punched through the earth by Niklaus's feet, fingers flexing for ankle, snagging, tugging. Nik went crashing down as the wind howled, as tombs shattered and bodies rose, and the fringe of the woman's hair fluttered in the wind.
That was when Elijah saw it.
Niklaus too.
Kol and Rebekah.
A lightening bolt shaped scar above a brow.
Oh…
Oh no…
It was too late.
Hemlock had her glove back on, and she was grasping Henrik, levitating at her side, by his shirt tail, and suddenly they were both gone in a flash of fire and light and the Mikaelson were left fighting for their undead lives.
Old Gentilly Road
Anya Vaughn sat her office desk, and scrubbed at her eyes tiredly.
"What do you mean we have no power? "
The worker of Entergy Michoud Plant fiddled with the hardcap in his hands, held to his chest, almost as if it could shield him from the scorn of his boss.
"Just as I said, Miss Vaughn. Everything's… Dead."
Anya waved her hand.
"Well, fix it! And before nightfall."
The man shuffled.
"But everything is dead! Nothing is working, not even the computers that run the diagnostics. We… We don't know what happened. It all just… Stopped working."
Anya slapped a hand down on the desk and stood.
"Are you telling me that come nightfall we're going to have a blackout? That's what will happen if we do not get those generator's up come sunset. Do you know what happens in a town like New Orleans when there's a blackout? When all there is is darkness?"
The man swallowed deeply.
"Riots."
"Riots! So fix this for all our sake! Or we both might just be out of gainful employment in the very near future!"
All of a sudden, the whirr of the engines spur back to life beneath their feet, working the earth for power and energy.
The worker before her smiled.
"It seems to have sorted itself out! What luck!"
Anya frowned.
"What luck, indeed."
Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.
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Rebekah Mikaelson grimaced as she flicked a chunk of rotten flesh from her shoulder.
"What in the bloody hell was that?"
Kol winced at her side, gingerly poking at the bite mark on his arm, shirt torn, hair dishevelled.
Elijah, Niklaus, and Marcel were hardly doing any better.
"Zombies, I believe. Very fast, very bite-y zombies."
xXx
"Do you truly believe that could have been Henrik?"
Kol shrugged at his sister's question.
"Well… She brought back a whole bloody graveyard, didn't she? What's a few centuries to someone like that?"
xXx
When the Mikaelson's arrived at the abattoir hours later, worse for wear but thankfully, relatively, whole, the door was already open. Klaus mutely nodded to Elijah, and both took guard at the far corners as the family edged their way in.
Hemlock and Henrik were in the front room, the former spread out on the chesterfield, feet kicked up on the mahogany table, the latter beside her on the chair.
Hemlock spotted them before they even crested the door, boots thudding on the hardwood as she sat up, waving a flippant hand in their general direction with a toothy grin.
"See? Alive and well. No harm, no foul. It was only a few dozen undead."
Henrik promptly kicked her shin underneath the table, before turning to the family in the door, smiling.
"What Hemlock means to say is she might have acted without having all the facts. She's sorry-"
"What? No I'm not."
"And she now knows that-"
"I know they're lucky to be alive. Or undead. Whatever the terminology for their kind is."
"We're family, and she wouldn't have done-"
"Oh, I bloody well would have, and I would do it again too. They kidnapped you, Henrik. They're lucky a few nips and nibbles is all they got."
"What she did if she knew the full story, and-"
"The full story being they're Vampires, ergo, complete fuckin' weirdos."
Henrik shot a glare at the woman.
"If we could all just… Sit down and talk like adults, I'm sure we could come to an understanding."
"They'll understand my foot down their throat if they try to take you again and-"
"'Lock, please."
A sigh.
"Fine. Only because you asked."
xXx
Rebekah cut in.
"And what are you?"
Hemlock shrugged by the window sill, shine a dull glimmer in the low light.
"In the strictest sense, I suppose you would call me a Demigod, but I prefer just 'Lock."
A.N: Hello all you glorious readers! To clear up shop, the four pairing won. So this fic is staying as a Fem!Harry/Klaus/Elijah/Rebekah/Kol. I know some of you might be disappointed, but popular vote won, and it might actually be easier to just focus on those at hand rather than shoving in more where it's very easy to get convoluted. I do want to say thank you to everyone who sent a message/review/poll vote! And I do hope a majority of you are happy with this turn.
One reviewer asked me why I put half the next chapter in with the one I publish (I assume you're talking about the previews) and I just want to say that the previews are always around 400 words, never any higher than 450, and the chapters I publish are around 6,000 to 9,000. That is hardly half. So, if you want no spoilers at all for the next chapters, just skip that part. That is why I mark it clearly, so you have a choice whether to dip your toe in or not.
Thank you all for the follows and favourites and reviews! You guys really have kept this fic alive, and made me smile more than once this trying year, and I hope in return this fic has done the same for you.
Once again, if you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review! I love hearing from you all, and hopefully I will see you all again soon.