Cami heard a crash downstairs as she quickly followed Klaus through the abattoir to get down to the courtyard. Her heart thundered in her chest at the sound. Whatever was going on, it didn't sound good.
Her and Klaus went down the last set of steps that led them to the bottom floor and that's when she noticed Rebekah nearby on the floor of the courtyard, the wooden remains of a destroyed chair around her. She seemed a little out of it from the attack, but she was already trying to get back on her feet.
Across the courtyard, Freya and Hayley ran down another staircase to face the threat.
Cami didn't have to look for the source of the attack on Rebekah for long. There "Death" stood, close to the entrance doors to the abattoir, looking completely unbothered by the situation they were in.
Freya's hands shot up, some sort of spell falling from her lips. Almost immediately, Death was pushed back a little. They tried to take a step forward, but they stumbled. Freya must have thrown up a boundary spell to stop them from entering any further into the abattoir.
"You aren't welcome here," Klaus addressed Death. "Leave now or you will be teared limb from limb." Well, that was to the point.
Death raised an eyebrow, although the action looked unnatural on them. Any "human" expression just didn't fit on their stony face. "I have no qualms with you, vampire. Move aside."
Cami watched Klaus tense up as he stood in front of her, a barrier between her and Death. "That's not going to happen."
"You can't have Cami or Davina," Hayley said. Her eyes flashed amber, her wolf side barely being restrained.
Death's chest rose and fell with a sigh. They stepped forward, their body pushing against Freya's boundary. They didn't stumble, and after a moment, they simply took another step forward, as if the boundary wasn't there at all.
Freya's forehead creased with confusion. "What—"
"Your magic can't hold me back," Death interrupted. "As I showed you earlier, I am stronger than all of you." Their gaze settled on Cami, sending a chill down Cami's back. "Now give me my two souls and this will all be over."
Cami took a step backwards, preparing herself to run if need be. If Death really was as powerful as they said, and it seemed like they were, fighting was pointless.
Eyes still fixed on Cami, Death said, "It will be painless. One touch from me and your soul will leave this plane and return to the afterlife, where you belong. You shouldn't be here."
Cami swallowed, her throat feeling tight. She could vaguely remember the cold, dark place that Death called the afterlife. It wasn't horrible, but she had absolutely no desire to go back there. She wanted to live.
"Why can't you just let me go? Why can't I live?" Cami asked.
Death looked at Cami blankly. "Because you two being here throws off the balance. You died; your souls belong in the afterlife. Not here. The afterlife needs the two souls it was promised."
"If the balance," Klaus emphasized the word with disgust, "is off because the afterlife needs two souls, I'll simply kill two other people and their souls can restore the balance."
Death shook their head. "It doesn't work like that. One day, those two"—they dipped their chin in Cami's direction—"will die eventually, as all humans do, and then their deaths will push things out of balance yet again because I'll have two extra souls to deal with."
"So what? The amount of souls that are supposed to be in the afterlife is like a fixed number or something?" Cami asked.
She didn't seriously expect Death to nod in response. Even if Klaus did kill two other people to replace her and Davina in the afterlife – which she was not entirely on board with anyway – her and Davina would pass away some time in the future. It was inevitable. But then their souls would be the extra ones since those other two people would've taken their places in the afterlife. From the way Death spoke, it seemed like the number of souls in the afterlife couldn't be tampered with.
"Then we will turn them into vampires, so that they won't die at all," Klaus roared.
The sudden sound made Cami flinch before she fully registered what he said. "Wait, what?" She didn't want to become a vampire again. That whole experience hadn't exactly been a walk in the park for Cami to go through the first time.
Death tilted their head to the side. "Kill two other people to restore the balance and turn the missing souls into vampires? That would solve the problem, I suppose," they admitted. "However, what's to stop me from getting past all of you and returning the missing souls to the afterlife right now?"
"Because these two deserve to live," Hayley cut in. She stepped toward Death, trying to reason with them. "They both died young, when they had their whole lives ahead of them. They deserve their chances to live again."
"Everyone deserves a chance to live," Death replied. "These two aren't special."
Cami discreetly shuffled closer to the staircase. If Death didn't agree to this crazy plan the Mikaelsons had decided on, she wasn't going to stick around to watch Death fight off everyone again and try to kill her.
"Twenty-four hours," Hayley petitioned. "Give us twenty-four hours to fix this mess. If we can't by then, you can do what you need to."
Death stared her down for a minute. Cami held her breath as she waited to hear their response, her feet now resting right below the bottom step of the staircase.
"Fine," they finally said, making Cami release a breath that she hadn't realised she'd been holding. "But you bring the two new replacements souls here, to me, in exactly twenty-four hours. I will touch them and release their souls to the afterlife. That way, I can make sure they go where they need to, and that they don't have to"—Death glanced around with distaste—"endure whatever brutality you vampires would put them through."
"As opposed to the way you'll kill them?" Klaus countered, a sardonic smile crossing his lips. "Because that is what you'll be doing; killing them. No matter how much you may try to dress it up nicely to make yourself feel like you're better than us lowly vampires."
"Unlike you, hybrid," Death hissed out the word, "I take no pleasure in ending life and I see no need for pointless suffering. Whether you like or not, I am better than you."
Klaus scowled and looked like he was about to say something else in reply, when Hayley jumped in before he could. "So, twenty-four hours?"
Death looked at her again with an assessing gaze. "Twenty-four hours," they confirmed.
"Davina?" Cami called out as she ran through the upper levels of the abattoir, in search of Davina. For whatever reason, she hadn't come downstairs when Death had arrived, so she had no idea that the two of them now had a chance to get Death off of their backs.
Assuming that she was more than likely in Kol's room, Cami made her way there and knocked on the bedroom door. "Davina? It's Cami. We need to talk."
Almost immediately, Kol opened the door, but only wide enough for him to peek out to address Cami. "What do you want?"
She'd never particularly liked Kol. There was just something about him that didn't sit well with Cami. She would've preferred for Davina to be the one to answer the door, so that she didn't have to interact with him at all, but it looked like she didn't have a choice in the matter.
"Oh, I need to speak to Davina. Is she in here?" Cami tried to look past Kol to see into the bedroom, but he pretty much blocked her entire view.
He let out a slow sigh through his nose. "You need—"
"It's okay, Kol," Davina interrupted him from inside the bedroom.
Kol didn't look too pleased, but he moved away to allow Davina to come to the door.
"Are you okay?" Cami quickly asked her, still watching Kol as he walked further back into the bedroom. He was acting strange and it worried her slightly.
Davina's gaze lowered to the ground before lifting to Cami again. "I'm fine. We're just having"—Davina paused to think of the right word—"a disagreement right now. Is everything alright? What happened downstairs?"
Cami relayed all of the information to her about Death's sudden appearance and the agreement the Mikaelsons had come to with them, barely taking a breath as she hurried to tell Davina about it.
To her displeasure, Davina didn't seem too thrilled to hear about it. "But even if we do get Death off of our backs, Inadu is still out there. This agreement might solve one problem, but we still have her to deal with."
"Yes, but don't you see?" Cami said. "Maybe there's a way we can give Inadu to Death in our place, after we've broken the linking spell between us obviously."
"Obviously." Davina leaned against the doorframe and chewed on the inside of her cheek. "We'd still have to find someone else to give to Death too. You're okay with killing someone innocent to save ourselves?"
Cami wasn't okay with that. She wasn't okay with it at all. The agreement that they'd managed to get Death to agree to was probably the only thing that would work to get Death to leave them alone, but that didn't mean Cami was completely on board. It was their only option though.
Inadu wasn't innocent. That much was for certain. Cami would happily give Inadu to Death to replace Davina's soul in the afterlife. The idea had immediately popped into her head once Death had calmly walked out of the abattoir after agreeing to the idea of the replacement souls. "There are plenty of people in this city that aren't innocent. One of those people can replace my soul in the afterlife and Inadu can replace yours."
"Do you have someone else in mind to offer up to Death?"
She thought about it, but truthfully, she had no one else in mind. "No, but we can figure it out."
Davina looked sceptical about it.
"There's one other thing," Cami chimed in, internally cringing because she knew this wouldn't be received well. "After we give the replacement souls to Death, to ensure that we don't eventually throw off the balance again, we can't die." Seeing that Davina wasn't quite getting exactly what she was saying, Cami went on, "We have to become vampires."
Davina physically recoiled at the idea. "No. No way. You actually want to become a vampire again?"
"I don't want to be a vampire again, but maybe being a vampire wouldn't be any worse than what we are," Cami whispered back to her, despite knowing that even by whispering, the vampires in the house would still be able to hear her.
She had absolutely no desire to turn into a vampire again, but at least she would know what she was getting by becoming a vampire. Whatever her and Davina were now – whatever Inadu had turned them into when she'd brought them back from the dead – was another beast entirely. Part of Cami was growing sick of the numbness she felt; the lack of hunger or thirst or even the simple basic need to use the bathroom. She couldn't experience any of that anymore.
She found herself wondering if feeling a vampire's hunger again would feel somewhat better than the emptiness she felt now, but she knew that she was probably just not completely remembering the horrible bloodlust she'd experienced as a vampire.
"I want to be a witch again," Davina admitted, quietly. "What if there's some sort of way for me to be that again? That could get destroyed if I become a vampire now."
Cami had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. Was she the only one that was thinking logically and realistically here? "Davina, I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to be a witch again. Inadu took that away when she brought us back. You can't turn into a witch the same way somebody can turn into a vampire. It's not possible."
Davina pressed her lips together and looked away again. "I'm not ready to give up on that yet."
Well, you better get ready, Cami thought. She was about to say that to her when her gaze moved past Davina and spotted the duffel bags that were resting on the bed behind Davina.
"Going somewhere?" Cami asked, nodding her head at the bags. She hoped that she was wrong about her assumption, but the guilty look that appeared on Davina's face told her that she wasn't. "You're running away? Really?"
"Kol suggested it," said Davina. "He doesn't want to risk something going wrong and Inadu or Death taking me away again."
"And you're just going to listen to him?" A sense of abandonment filled Cami. They were supposed to be in this together. They had been in this together from the moment they'd both woken up on the floor of that crypt, and now, Davina was trying to leave her behind. She wouldn't have expected the idea to hurt her as much as it did.
"It might be my best option to survive. I don't want to be here with the Mikaelsons away," Davina stated. "I just want to be with Kol. It's all I've wanted for so long now."
Apparently, the whole "we're in this together" mentality only applied to Cami.
She clenched her jaw and tried to ignore the lump in her throat. "Okay, fine. You go do that then."
Davina must have realised that she'd hurt Cami's feelings somewhat. She looked at her, her expression pleading with her to understand why Davina was doing what she was doing. "Cami, I didn't mean it like that."
"No, I think I understand exactly how you meant it. Have a good life with Kol. I'll handle Inadu and Death." Cami barely looked at Davina before she turned her back and walked away.