"This is wrong! I should be there, too."
Nik had been gone for half an hour, and I was pacing across the room. Rebekah had been 'asked' (a.k.a. forced, or at least strongly suggested) by Nik, as he left, to keep me company. I'm sure she was regretting that now. And judging by how she was staring, in an annoyed manner, at her nails as she sat on the end of the bed, I think my assumption was a safe one.
Part of the reason why I had agreed to stay back was because I didn't want to be near Lewis or that apartment building. But staying behind turned out to be way worse than going. Every minute felt like an hour and I was constantly worried that something bad was happening.
"Would you relax, Riley!" Rebekah's frustration was showing, but I didn't blame her. "Lewis can't hurt Nik; he'll be just fine."
"I know that! But knowing doesn't make the waiting part any easier."
"I'd say you got off relatively easy, Ri. Nik could have been more forceful; he was downright polite by asking you to do what he wanted, instead of forcing you."
"Good think daggers don't affect me." I said before sticking my tongue out at her.
"Can we do something besides pacing around the room and wearing down the carpet?"
I glared at her. "You can do whatever you'd like, Bekah; you don't have to stay with me."
"I don't mind hanging out with you, Ri, but I like you much better when you're not so anxious."
I rolled my eyes but I didn't comment. I continued pacing.
"If Nik can survive being pursued by our father for a thousand years, he can most definitely survive an encounter with yours."
I stopped pacing when Rebekah mentioned Mikael. "I'm so glad I never knew your father."
"He was always so hard on Nik. Even before he learned of Nik's true parentage. He was always more hateful than fatherly to him."
"You know, I still see evidence of your father's treatment of Nik in how he acts." I sat down on the end of the bed next to Rebekah. "Especially regarding how he is around me."
"What do you mean?"
"He has this unwillingness to believe or trust in anything good. And he always feels undeserving of anything joyful. He doesn't feel as though he deserves to be happy. And I blame that on your father. He broke Nik so completely that he genuinely believes no one could ever love him."
"Do you love him?" Rebekah interrupted me with a raised eyebrow.
Her question gave me pause. "I don't know. I don't know if I know what love is. Or what it means. But I do know that I care about your brother. A lot. And he's the one person I always want to be around." I chuckled. "Even when I'm angry with him."
Rebekah smiled and I continued.
"He has so many walls up around him. I spend most of my time just trying to break them down. But no matter how hard I try, all it takes is one instant, one flash of a memory, for them to all be put back in place, stronger than before. And it breaks my heart every time I see that happen."
I paused when I felt the pricking of tears in my eyes. "I don't know how to convince him that he is not undeserving or that it's okay to be happy. So I'm just going to take my own advice and give it time." I shrugged. "That's my plan anyway; I can't convince him outright, so I will just have to show him. Over time."
I let out a frustrated sigh. "It would just be a lot easier if we weren't always surrounded by drastic circumstances."
Rebekah laughed one "ha," and smiled warmly. "We are Originals, Riley. There is never a day away from that. There will always be something or someone coming after us, wanting to kill us."
I nodded. "And I'm not going anywhere. I'm just — I'm just venting to my best friend because Caroline wants nothing to do with me anymore and you care about him even more than I do."
Rebekah leaned over pulled me into a hug. "It's not wrong to want some peace, Ri. You and Nik deserve that. He deserves to be happy, and I know you're the one that can help him find his happiness." Bekah pulled back from the hug. "Though I must say, I'm shocked someone as cool as you is not tired of my brother and his moody, broody ways yet."
It was my turn to laugh.
Nik returned shortly after I resumed pacing across his bedroom. He walked into the room and came up to me and kissed me. His arms went under mine to wrap around my back, pulling me close. I was momentarily shocked, but when that passed, my hands moved upwards and rested against his chest.
He pulled away with a smile but kept his arms around me. "I love it when you're right."
"Well, if it garners that response, I'll try to be right more often." I tore my eyes away from his face to check on the rest of him. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. I found Lewis."
"And?"
"He wasn't alone. The hunter was with him."
"The hunter?" Rebekah asked as I stepped away from Nik, anxious to hear about what he'd learned.
"Not their first clandestine meeting," I explained to her.
"Not their last either," Nik said. I turned back to face him. "When I arrived, the hunter was already in Lewis's apartment. Anita quickly broke the silencing spell and I could hear every word.
"The hunter knows about the bloodlines. He knows that if he kills me, he'll kill every vampire that was sired from my bloodline. And if he kills my siblings as well, he knows he'll kill every vampire in existence."
That is quite possibly the worst piece of the knowledge for the hunter to have gained. "Does he know how to kill you?"
"Yes. He knows he needs a white oak stake. He's angry that he doesn't have one. He wants Lewis to use magic to find one or to create one."
My eyes widened. "Is that possible? Either one?"
"No," Rebekah informed me. "Magic cannot just create something from nothing. That would defy the laws of physics. And a white oak stake cannot be found using a locator spell."
I nodded. "Good."
"Do you think your father would turn you into a vampire, only to eventually plan to destroy the entire species?" Rebekah asked me.
"Why not? Maybe he does have some scrap of a conscious and he couldn't actually kill his own daughter so he turned me into something he wouldn't mind killing. Plus, he wouldn't be killing me directly; he'd only have to kill whoever created my vampire bloodline. He could restore some of his magical balance by wiping out the 'monsters.' " I used air quotes.
We were all quiet as the potential of that became more and more real. Even though Lewis killed me, I knew he wasn't entirely cold-hearted; not yet. So he made sure I had vampire blood in my system before I met up with the accident he created. It's one thing to kill your daughter after she has vampire blood in her system, but it is an entirely different thing to kill her without the vampire blood.
Nik broke me out of my reverie. "That's not exactly what's going on, love. The hunter believes he and Lewis are working towards the same goal: the end of vampires."
" 'Believes'?"
"After the hunter left, Lewis continued speaking. He was talking aloud to himself as he flipped through some grimoires. He may have gone mad. He spoke only in short, clipped phrases, not in complete sentences, so his plan has to be pieced together."
"What did he say?" Rebekah seemed to be as anxious as I was.
"He called the hunter a fool for believing him. Lewis does want to kill Rebekah and I, and our siblings, but not just yet. He spoke of separating the bloodlines first. He's not ready to destroy the entire vampire species. He kept saying 'not yet.' We were right about how his real goal is to get close to me. He needs to be close to somehow obtain our blood in order to separate us from our vampire bloodlines."
"He wants to kill your family without killing the vampires sired from your bloodline?"
"I believe so."
That didn't make sense. "Why would he want to do that? I know he hasn't cared much about keeping the balance since he became a warlock, but this seems like a gigantic imbalance."
"He seems to hope that if he can do this — if he can separate my family from the bloodlines we sired — maybe he can restore whatever imbalance he created by turning you into a vampire."
"What?!"
"He often muttered 'protect Riley.' He is defying nature, and the vampire hunter, to destroy the oldest vampires in existence without ending the existence of his newly-turned daughter."
Nik was quite for a few moments. He was letting that information sink in for me. But I didn't know how to process that.
"That—" I shook my head. "That doesn't make sense."
"He also muttered about how he should have never killed you. He believes that he should have let you come into your magic, instead of taking it away from you, regardless of how dark or powerful you would have become."
"Because if he hadn't killed me," I realized, "he wouldn't have to figure out a way to separate you from your bloodlines." He nodded.
" 'How powerful'?" Rebekah asked.
But Nik spoke to me. "Your magic."
I thought about that for a moment. "Lewis said his magical bloodline was cursed to forever delve into dark magic and he killed me to protect me for it, but what if that is only half true?"
"It sounds as though he killed you because he didn't want you to have any magic at all, dark or not."
I nodded. "That sounds more like the Lewis I grew up around." I seriously had no trouble believing that Lewis killed me because he didn't want his daughter to be more powerful than him.
"He's really that power-hungry and selfish?"
"Yes! Maybe, because my magic would be solely rooted in the darkness, whereas his had the potential for good or light or whatever the opposite of dark is, maybe he was afraid that I would have been more powerful than him, so he turned me so I would never know."
"Wow," was all Rebekah could say.
"Yea, a real Father-of-the-Year type, right? But what could be possibly gain by killing your family but not all vampires?"
"Your gratitude, perhaps," Rebekah suggested.
I scoffed. "He clearly does not know me at all or else he would know better than to think I could ever possibly be grateful to him for killing two of the most important people in my world."
Rebekah smiled hugely at that. "I know; I am wonderful."
"Wonderfully annoying, perhaps," Nik muttered. He turned to face me again. "But I think I can explain your question, love. Lewis continued muttering things like 'lived too long,' 'don't need forever,' and 'see how they like a life expectancy.' "
"He wants to give vampires a life expectancy?" Rebekah asked. "Why?"
I saw the pieces of his plan coming together now. "He's protecting me and himself. This is his way of not going against the hunter," I pointed out. "If he can separate your family from their sired bloodlines, he can still help the hunter to kill you, but he doesn't have to worry about me dying too. He's able to keep whatever deal he made with the hunter. The Originals die, but his daughter doesn't." The idea made me nauseous.
It was only then that I noticed he had returned alone. "Where's Anita?"
"She's in the hotel room I've set her up in. She left the apartment building once she broke the silencing spell. But there's more." Nik seemed hesitant to tell me what 'more' meant.
"More to Lewis's plan?"
"No, just more that happened. I left one of my hybrids outside the apartment building, so I could maintain my knowledge of Lewis's location. I had left the apartment building only moments earlier when I received a text from my hybrid, informing me that the hunter had returned. I ordered my hybrid to tell me everything that was said, now that the silencing spell was gone. But when I received no answer, I went back to the apartment building to find that the hybrid's head was no longer attached to his body."
"Did Lewis kill him, or the hunter?"
"The hunter. It had the unmistakable mark of an experienced hybrid killer."
A few moments later, we heard the front door bag open, followed by the sounds of struggling, muttering, and grunting.
By the time I made it to the top of the stairs, Nik and Bekah were already down by the door. Near them were the three people causing all the noise: two hybrids and Lewis. One of the hybrids had Lewis's hands held behind his back.
"Why did you bring him here?" Nik asked.
"We couldn't let him go on living, not after he killed one of our own."
Nik was furious. "This warlock didn't kill your fellow hybrid."
"That's why he's still breathing. His friend, the hunter — well, his head is no longer attached to his body."
Both hybrids laughed.