Lewis was frantically flipping through several of the grimoires. It almost looked as if he were translating the language of one using another, except he was using three grimoires. As I watched him, he appeared to read something in one grimoire, check it in a second grimoire, and then confirm it in a third.
"What makes you so sure Klaus doesn't already have witches looking into this very issue?" I tried to keep him talking, in the hopes that it would delay any attempt he made at trying again. To be completely honest, I wasn't too concerned about that human, but I definitely didn't want Lewis to hurt C again.
"Because not all witches will; not even if they're being threatened by the Original Hybrid." He never looked up from the grimoires as he spoke.
"But you will?" I crossed my arms.
"This is very dark magic, something I have experience with."
"This dark magic, is it the reason you killed me?"
He whipped his head up to look at me. "I was protecting you!"
"So you've said. Several times." I stretched my arms out at my side, parallel to the ground, with my palms up. "But I'm still dead."
Lewis paused before speaking. "Yes, I was protecting you from this dark magic. I didn't want you to live the life I have."
"Why don't you just stop?"
"I can't!" he yelled. "Dark magic grabs a hold of you and you cannot escape it." He stood and smiled at me. "I'll use a simile that you may better understand: it is like having someone much stronger than you shove his hand into your chest, grab a hold of your heart, and squeeze."
I scoffed. "You couldn't have known whether I would follow you down the dark magic path or not."
"You would have been unable to escape it. It was my dark, dangerous legacy. Any descendant from my magical line would have been doomed. So I severed the line."
I didn't understand, and apparently my face betrayed my confusion, because Lewis continued speaking.
"I never had any magical guidance. When my magic presented itself, my parents and grandparents had already died. I learned about magic through their effects — my inheritance.
"I started down the path of dark magic, though the magic I was doing wasn't particularly dark or evil — that is just what it's called. I was doing magic for personal gain and not caring about maintaining the balance in nature.
"I stopped using magic all together, for a while, when I met your mother, but the lure was too strong by then. It had a hold of me."
He paused to sigh before continuing on. "I left my family — you and your mother — when I felt myself slipping back in. But I didn't just slip in, I fell. Hard.
"But nature won't let you pursue dark magic without consequence. Even if the witch or warlock is too far gone to care about the consequences, as I was, nature will find a weakness. And my weakness was you.
"I was told that, because I hadn't found balance with my magic, my magical lineage was now cursed. Doomed to forever venture into dark magic. No escape." He stepped closer to me.
"You are my magical lineage, Riley. I was an only child and you are my only child; you are the only one who would be hurt by my bad decisions.
"My magical lineage is cursed to forever feel the temptation of dark magic, and always be unable to resist it. Each generation will fall deeper and deeper; each would stray further than the last from nature-bound, balancing magic.
"So I ended his magical lineage. I severed it. It now ends with me."
I didn't have any immediate questions for him, so I said nothing. I couldn't even look at him.
He spoke after a few quiet minutes. "You're volunteering to stay here?"
I nodded. "Let C go; I'll take her place."
"Okay, I'll make the arrangements to let her go home."
Before I could respond, Lewis walked around a storage shelf, towards the door.
C tried to speak as Lewis left the room. I knelt down closer to her.
She spoke in pained, drained whispers. She was still weak. "Klaus needs more hybrids, now that some are un-sired, but this isn't the way, Ri."
"He doesn't care about that, C."
"It's Klaus; of course he does."
I decided to tell her the truth, now. She deserved to know. "The sire bond cannot be broken, C. All Tyler did in the Appalachians was get comfortable with turning into a wolf whenever he wanted."
She struggled to shake her head. "No, he broke it."
I shook my head. "No, C. Think about it: no matter how many times a hybrid changes into a wolf, and even if he or she changes so often that it doesn't hurt at all, that hybrid would still be grateful — on some level — to Klaus because he or she does not have to change on the full moon. Or ever.
"If Klaus wants Tyler to do something, he'll have to do it. Tyler won't have a choice."
"How do you know?"
"He told me."
She scoffed. I rolled my eyes at her.
It still felt odd, calling him Klaus again, but I knew better than to say "Nik" in front of C. She'd probably freak. And this way, it was more of a personal and private name — something just between the two of us.
"Think about it, C: he spent a thousand years waiting to break his hybrid curse; do you really thing he wouldn't have used that time to learn absolutely everything about everything involved; not just about how to break the curse, but also to learn everything about being a hybrid and building his army. So when Klaus says the sire bond cannot be broken, it can't be broken."
She groaned quietly. "So Tyler and Hayley have been working together to accomplish nothing?"
I didn't know how to politely respond to that, so I said nothing at all. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. As the moments passed, I could feel her regaining her strength; she went from completely leaning on me because she was still weak to merely leaning against me for comfort in a terrible situation.
We both perked up when we heard steps on the stairs.
Lewis came back into the storage room. C and I stood. Lewis closed the various grimoires that were open before walking towards us. I noticed that he was able to freely cross the boundary line as he pleased. Maybe it only prevented vampires from crossing it?
It was only once Lewis crossed the salt line that I saw he wasn't empty-handed. He waved his hand in my direction and again I was pushed to the wall and held in place by an unseen force. It was pointless, but I struggled against it anyway as he charged at C and raised his not-empty hand. It was a syringe. "No!" I yelled. He jabbed it into C's neck. She gasped before passing out.
"Do you have to vervain her?"
Lewis picked up C's unconscious body. He didn't respond to my question until after he had carried C across the boundary line. "She can't know our location. She was unconscious when she came here; she'll be unconscious when she leaves."
Just as Lewis walked around the storage shelf, carrying C, he must have waved his hand or something, because the force holding me in place against the wall let up.
I stepped up to the boundary line and raised my hand to press my palm against it. It was still in place.
As I heard Lewis's steps going up the stairs, I knew I was now alone.
Caroline woke up at on the couch in the living room at home. She was groggy and her neck was sore. She rubbed the tender spot on her neck as she struggled to sit up. Once she was sitting upright, she remembered why her neck hurt.
Lewis.
Ri.
Oh my gawd!
Caroline got up, found her phone, and dialed Bonnie's number as she left the house. "Bon, where are you? We need to talk!"
By the time the sun had completely set, a small band of supernatural Mystic Falls residents had gathered in the living room of the Mikaelson mansion. Present were Klaus and Rebekah Mikaelson, Caroline Forbes, Tyler Lockwood, Elena Gilbert, Damon and Stefan Salvatore, and Bonnie Bennett.
"He what?" Tyler asked.
Klaus was standing on the sidelines of the group, facing the window. He appeared to be not paying attention to the people in his living room, but he was listening intently. And planning.
"Lewis has Riley. I don't know where. But he's trying to reanimate dead blood."
"Why?" Damon asked.
"To help Klaus," Caroline simply said.
As stated earlier, Klaus was listening intently — he was mildly shocked to hear his name in this particular context — but he didn't flinch when his name was said.
"Again, why?"
"He wants to use it as a bargaining chip." Caroline turned to face the Original Hybrid. "Lewis wants a trade of sorts: you regain the ability to create hybrids and in exchange you leave Riley alone forever."
"Is he talking about the cure?" Elena asked. Her eyes glinted and twinkled with hope, despite the grim circumstances of Riley being held hostage.
"Always with the cure," Rebekah muttered not-so-quietly.
Caroline shook her head. "No. Lewis collected the blood in a container and attempted to reanimate it that way. It won't affect your vampire status, Elena."
Elena's face fell. She tried to hide it, but she was a moment too late.
Klaus seethed underneath his calm exterior. That stupid doppelganger was more concerned about her cure for vampirism than Riley's safety or life. Pathetic!
Finally, Klaus spoke. He didn't look away from the direction of the window. "Is this kind of magic even possible?"
Minus Klaus's, everyone else's eyes shifted to Bonnie. She paused for a moment before answering. "I don't know. Lewis is dabbling into very dark magic. It's incredibly dangerous. But with that kind of magic, it just might be possible."
"We need to go now," Caroline stated. Klaus silently agreed with her.
"No time to wait," Elena agreed, eager to prove that she wasn't still thinking about the cure, even though everyone present knew she was.
"I hate to admit it," Rebekah sneered, "and I never thought I would admit this, but Caroline and Elena are right. This is Riley we're talking about."
"We can't just rush in," Stefan pointed out. "We need to figure out a plan first."
"We don't have time for a plan, Stefan." Caroline's voice was pleading
"If he is using the dark witchy voodoo," Damon interjected, now speaking to Caroline, "I vote that we send you and Klaus in first. Maybe your pup of a boyfriend, too. Lewis can take you all out first, and our lives get a lot less annoying and complicated."
Tyler stood and stepped towards Damon; the hybrid's fists were clenched and slightly shaking.
"Am I wrong?" Damon asked the rest of the room. No one answered him.
"Shut up Damon!" Bonnie yelled at him. She paused before speaking more calmly to the others. "I hate to admit it, but as annoying as Damon is, he does have a point. Lewis is using some seriously dark magic; we won't even begin to be able to defend ourselves if we just rush in."
Again, Klaus said nothing but he begrudgingly saw Bonnie's logic.
Klaus felt like an idiot for not realizing that Riley would never listen to him when he suggested they wait to go after Lewis. He should have known she would do almost everything she could for her family. He would do the same.
He also should have known something was off because Riley didn't kiss him before leaving him earlier that day. They always kissed before they parted company.
And now she was the hostage and he wanted nothing more than to rush right over and kill Lewis to free her. But he had to be smart about this. This time, having a plan was incredibly crucial.
Bonnie spoke next. "I hate to say this, but I think we should wait another day before going to save Riley."
Several 'what's were heard throughout the room. Klaus even responded to this, emitting a low growl.
"Just hear me out." Bonnie spoke with her hands out in front of her, trying and hoping to keep everyone calm. "The power of the full moon will finally be over and Lewis will be that much less powerful. The power of the moon is strongest on the full moon, but the moon retains some of the strength for several days after the full moon. Once the moon sets and the sun begins to rise, that's when we should strike."
"No!" Rebekah and Caroline yelled at the same time.
"We can't wait."
"We have to go now."
Both were still speaking at the same time.
"She's right," Klaus said. "We need a plan."
"We don't even know where she's being held," Stefan reasoned. "You were vervained so you wouldn't know, Care."
"He's holding her in the basement of the uptown apartment building. In the old slave holding quarters."
"What?" Caroline glared at Klaus. "You've known all along and you haven't said anything?"
"Riley figured it out. When I suggested we wait for nightfall, and to add man power, she left and presumably went directly there."
Stefan stepped closer to Caroline. "We need a plan, Care. We're dealing with unknown and incredibly dark magic. We should follow Bonnie's plan and wait until at least dawn and give ourselves that time to learn more about who and what were up against."
"He's right." Klaus was still looking towards the window, seemingly ignoring everyone in his living room. "Let's do our research and add to our strength. We'll reconvene two hours before dawn." And Klaus left his living room before anyone could respond.
He left to call in a witch of his own and to gather up his hybrids.