Chapter 2:
Beacon Hills, California
Clutching the sink in the bathroom, he raised his head to look into the mirror, having wiped away all the left-over blood on his hands and using the time to collect himself, knowing that in a matter of an hour he might just lose everything he had built for himself in Beacon Hills. Going down the spiral stairs, he saw the blood had been cleaned up everyone had changed into sweats and t-shirts that they all kept at the loft in case they had to sleep over for any reason. Taking up a seat on the carpet in front of the TV, facing the couches, he waited for Derek to step out of the kitchen and his own seat before starting.
"Before I start that long and frankly traumatizing story," he turned to Derek especially, "Talia knew. When I first got to Beacon Hills, I was on the run, in hiding, I needed to keep a low profile and towns like this are perfect for that, small enough to be looked over on the map but just big enough to get lost in the crowd. I didn't actually know there was an established pack or any pack here until I had already gotten here. I presented myself to your mother and told her, asked for asylum and permission to stay in her territory. After hearing me out and extracting several promises from me, she agreed to let me stay."
"What promises?" Peter questioned, "and why was the rest of the pack never told?"
"If there was ever a need and she asked for my help, then I would step forward and help out. If there was any supernatural problem as a direct result of me or after me, then I would deal with it myself with if possible zero casualties. Also, that I would never hurt anyone here in Beacon Hills unless they were an active threat to someone else, within reason, and if I hurt anyone innocent then I would leave her territory and never return. As for why the rest of the pack was never told, that was a request of mine. I was in hiding, I didn't want anyone to know where I was, the less people who knew the better."
"You keep saying in hiding, but from what?" Malia asked
"My parents, specifically my father, Mikael, and my siblings." A stunned silence fell over the loft at that.
"But your father's the Sherriff, why would he want to kill you? And I thought his name was John. Also, since when do have siblings." Scott voiced everyone's thoughts.
"His name is John, but the Sherriff is not my real father, circumstances just led to me taking his last name to hid better. Also, I do have siblings, have had them since the day I was born. Seven siblings in total although two are dead."
"What circum-" Jackson started only to interrupted by his girlfriend.
"Can we have that 'long and frankly traumatizing story' now, together instead of bits and pieces." Lydia quoted, the rest of the pack looking expectedly at the mole dotted vampire in front of them.
"When my parents originally married and tried to have children, my mother, Ester found that she was barren and incapable of giving birth. So she went to her sister, my Aunt Dahlia, who was a witch, for help in getting pregnant. My father, Mikael, was a wealthy land owner in Europe, and a Viking. He and my mother had two children with a third on the way. Their firstborn child, my sister Freya and their second born, my brother Finn; she was, at that point early into her pregnancy with my second eldest brother Elijah. While my father was away fighting, Freya fell sick because of the plague."
"The plague? How old are you really?" Isaac questioned incredulously.
"I was born in the 10th century, though I don't know exactly when, we didn't exactly have a calendar on hand. There were no such things as minutes, hours, days, months or years. A year was measured by winter. As in how many winters a person survived is how many winters old, they are. A month was a moon cycle." Stiles smirked at the stunned faces. "For simplicities sake, just say I'm a thousand years old."
"Jesus" Erica murmured.
"By the time my father had come back, Freya was already dead. To protect their future family, my mother went to a friend and mentor of hers, Ayanna, for help. Ayanna was also a witch and she consulted the spirits for advice. They told her of a land where the people were blessed with good health and prosperity. So, my parents and several others including Ayanna packed and moved. They ended up in a small village in a place that is now known as Mystic Falls, Virginia."
"But America wasn't discovered until 1492." Allison interrupted.
"Not by anyone your history books, but the land was occupied long before Columbus stumbled onto it. He's lucky I didn't help him discover the bottom of the ocean first, or the stomach of a shark." Stiles snarked.
"You knew Columbus!?" Lydia exclaimed.
"My family and I were on the ship when he 'discovered' America. Like I said, he's lucky I didn't kill him before he could 'discover' anything. Columbus needed to learn to keep his hands to himself."
"Why would you kill him?" Scott yelped as Lydia jammed her elbow into his side.
"He tried to put his drunken hands all over my baby sister. If I hadn't killed him then one of my brothers would have. We happen to very protective of our family's princess."
"You have siblings!?" came Cora's voice, intermixed with Jackson and Scott's.
"That village was where my parents had the rest of us and where we grew up. My eldest brother Finn, then Elijah, then Niklaus, then Kol and myself, then my little and only sister Rebekah and finally my younger brother Henrik. There was a pack of werewolves that we lived close to; they were different to you."
"Different how?" Peter's eyes gleamed at the chance to learn more.
"These wolves are not bitten, they are only born, it's a genetic thing that's passed down through bloodlines, lying dormant until activated. These types of wolves, it really is a curse and less of a gift. To activate the gene, a person has to kill, whether it's on purpose or even just an accident that led to someone's death, it doesn't matter. Once the gene is triggered, from the next full moon onwards, the werewolf will break every bone in their body one by one until they painfully shift into their wolf form. There is no beta shift or flashing eyes or fangs and sideburns. Every other day and night of the month, they are fully human. They are stronger and a little bit faster than regular humans but nothing compared to you guys. Also, their senses as just slightly above a human and they don't have healing powers. On the night of the full moon, once their shift is complete, they're little more than wild animals, utterly feral, only capable of differentiating between pack and nothing else. Such a thing as anchors don't exist for them, they lose sight of humanity until dawn when they once again start to shift back into human, also agonizingly painful."
Slowly throughout the explanation, all faces paled until by the end of it, many had turned green. Erica and Isaac had to make a break to the bathroom, dry heaving sounds filling the loft. Scott sat still, shocked at how bad it really could have been for him, Allison own face paled at the thought as she comforted her boyfriend. Derek's eyes were flashing red as Cora gripped his hand tight, she and the rest of the pack seeking comfort from their Alpha. Giving them all ten minutes to calm down, Stiles continued with his story.
"Our village had a tunnel and cave system built underneath it and every full moon night, from sun down to sun up, we would go under to the tunnels and caves. They were protected by magic to not let the wolves through. In the morning we would go back up continue on with our day and chores. Other than that, one night a month, our lives were relatively normal if a little difficult, although that was purely because of our parents. Father was a Viking, he valued physical strength and fighting prowess most of all and our mother was too soft spoken when it came to protecting us from his temper."
"He… did he ever?" Isaac spoke up hesitantly.
"Yes" Stiles sighed. "Mostly, he stuck to using Nik as his punching bag but I wasn't far behind. We would take the blame for the others. Spare them the pain but Finn was generally safe from Father's temper since he was our mothers favorite, always clutching at her skirts. Elijah was a gentleman, loyal and just with a sense of right and wrong that was just down right annoying at times. He was the diplomatic one but still a capable hunter and fighter so Father generally left him alone too. Kol was vindictive and mischievous, always pulling pranks but a good fighter and utterly ruthless to those who hurt people he cared about. Rebekah was the only girl of the family, Father generally left her alone and under the tutelage and discipline of our mother. Henrik was the baby of the family, the most coddled and still a child, he was able to get away with a lot of things that the rest of just weren't. Mostly it was Niklaus and myself that were in Father's crosshairs all the time. He hated Nik most of all, but me he hated for always taking Nik's side instead of his. Unlike the rest of our siblings and Mother, I actively intervened no matter how much Nik or the others always tried to stop me. Father hated me for that."
"That how you knew. How to help." Isaac stated.
"Yes. One night, Henrik sunk away from the rest of us and into the forest during the full moon. Nik realized it first and went into the forest while Elijah came to get the rest of us. We all knew Henrik's fascination with the wolves and how they shifted but we never thought he would sneak away to see them, if only out of fear of what Father would do. We searched until it got too late and Father forced us back into the cave system where Mother and Rebekah were waiting. What we didn't know was that Niklaus had already found Henrik but they were too deep into the forest to come back out safely without being attacked by the wolves, so Nik forced Henrik to climb a tree, only Henrik was distracted by the wolves and climbed on a dead branch that couldn't hold his weight. The branch broke and Henrik fell."
"The next morning all of us were back home and getting ready to head out to search for the both of them before Niklaus broke through the tree line screaming for our mother as he carried Henrik home, they were both covered in blood. Nik begged Mother to heal him, but Henrik had already died. Our parents were devastated at losing another child. The whole reason they moved to the New World was to protect their future family from a premature death. Father blamed Nik for Henrik's death and if Elijah and I hadn't intervened then Nik would have most certainly been dead."
Stiles took a deep shuddering breath at the mental images invoked by the story, it been a long time since they had ever talked about this; usually they never brought it up to anyone beyond the fact that their younger brother died. The only ones they had told was at the very start, Nik had mentioned it to Lucien but none of them ever went into detail or spoke of it to anyone else ever again, not even between themselves. He could clearly remember the blood dripping from Nik and Henrik's bodies as he desperately tried to help his mother heal their baby brother. Kol and he had joined in, being the more magically versed of the siblings.
"Mother and Father went to Ayanna to beg her help in making sure nothing like happened to another one of their children but Ayanna refused and warned Mother that she was going down a dark path where there would be consequences for the type of magic she was trying to use. When Ayanna refused, Mother did it herself; that night all of us given a glass of wine to drink at dinner, in honor of Henrik. We finished it all, not knowing that our parents had spiked the wine with blood; as soon as we were done, Father grabbed his sword and ran us through with it."
"He killed you!?" several voices cried out, growls and snarls accompanying them.
"And he wasn't gentle about it either." Stiles bitterly rubbed at his chest, remembering the pain of the sword, the confusion and betrayal and his mother not even shedding a tear, simply watching.
"The next day we woke up confused with a sensitivity to light and a dry cotton feeling in our mouths, like no amount of water would ever make it go away and a pain in our gums. When the door opened to the room we were in, we saw Father standing there with a girl from the village, her wrist was cut and blood dripping down, Father forced her bleeding wrist into our mouths and held it there until we swallowed a couple mouthfuls of blood. It was euphoric, everything was heightened, all of our senses and emotions, even our personality traits, every little thing was stronger and more."
"But why not just leave instead of… doing that?" Jackson raised the question, eyes flashing a supernatural blue.
"Pride. My father already ran from the plague, he didn't want to run from the wolves as well. Where the wolves were fast, we were faster, they were strong, we were stronger, they could bite, we had to bite harder. But the ritual had consequences that our parents didn't think about. To bring something to life like that, to make it immortal is against nature. Everything is meant to die at some point."
"So, for every strength the spell gave us there was a weakness as well. The neighbors that had once freely opened their homes to us could now keep us out. The sun that my mother channeled for life now burned us and kept us indoor for weeks while Mother found a solution. The tree that she called upon for immortality was now the only thing that could take it away. The flowers at the base of the tree now burned and prevented compulsion. But the most terrible price was the hunger. It was blood that finished the spell and so now it would be blood that we craved above all else."
Mystic Falls, Virginia
The sound of a ring tone interrupted the quiet peace in the living from of the Mikaelson Mansion. Nik put his sketchbook and pencil down as he pulled out his, hearing the vampires voice on the other end who had given him the information about his brother.
"I have news about an Original." the voice on the other end said, and they all froze. The only originals that were not currently in the house were their father and Mischief and he would kill for news on either.
"And that would be?" Klaus demanded, and the voice seemed nervous. They cleared their throat before responding.
"There are rumors about one in Beacon Hills, California. There is a vampire there who's said to be strong enough to take on a pack of alphas." If it was a single vampire, chances were it was his youngest brother.
"Is that all?" he asked, and the vampire on the other end gave the affirmative but didn't hang up. "Is there something you wish for?" Klaus asked sarcastically, irritation bleeding through, and the voice on the other hand confirmed this.
"The information came from an Alpha who says that the territory the vampire protects should, by law, be given to the Alpha Pack. The pack the vampire is rumored to protect, the Hales do not follow the code and so should be dispatched of, according to him." the voice said, and Nik and Elijah shared a look, finding it very easy then to discern just who this anonymous tip came from; one of said Alpha Pack.
"I see. Perhaps then they'd like to arrange a meeting. If they can prove that this rumored vampire is indeed an Original, my family will do something about the problem." The hybrid hung up, looking at siblings with excitement and nerves. After 94 years they may have finally found him.