I sat next to Nik, stroking his face gently as he gasped in pain from Papa Tunde's blade embedded in his chest.
"This was all you." Elijah told Nik from the end of the bed.
"Did you really have to use that blade?" I asked her.
"Would you rather I let him kill Rebekah?" he asked me sarcastically and I gave him a look.
"There has to be a way to convince him that killing Bekah isn't the best thing." I said.
"And with that I need your help." He told me.
"How?" I asked him.
"My brother has a mystical torture device buried in his chest that I put there." He reminded me. "You are the only one I can trust him with."
"What do you need me to do?" I asked him as he removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeve.
"Every second it remains causes Niklaus untold suffering." He told me. "And now I intend to remove it. You might want to take a step back." I crawled off the bed and moved away slightly.
"What can I do?" I asked him.
"Of all the people that could be here, you're probably the only one he wouldn't immediately slaughter." He said before using a scalpel to slice Nik open along the red scar that was bisecting his chest, before jamming his hand into the open would. "He loves you a great deal, Nicole. Use that." He said before pulling the knife out of Nik's chest making my husband groan. Niklaus will be weak as he recovers. So, watch over him and feed him. But slowly, please, and from your wrist."
"We have blood bags in storage." I reminded him.
"We do, but your blood is laced with vervain and you're pregnant. So, the vervain will burn him and his love for you and the baby will stop him from draining you. He'll ingest it slower. Perhaps you could use the time constructively? Persuade him not to murder his baby sister." Elijah said while cleaning his hand of the blood that coated it. Once he'd done that he leaned over Nik. "Niklaus, it was not my desire to bring you pain, but I will not see you hurt Rebekah." He turned back to me. "Now, I fear Sabine will be making a final move against us. I intend to find her and to end this."
"Elijah." Nik called to him weakly and Elijah bent closer to him again. "You will pay for this." Elijah said nothing before disappearing again. I crawled back on the bed and supported myself so I could watch his face.
"Are you hurt?" he asked me and I shook my head.
"The baby and I are fine. Nikolas is playing in his room." I told him. I offered him my wrist so he could heal from the blade. He shook his head.
"Not from you." He told me.
"There's no one else willing to open a vein for you, my love." I told him with a smile on my face. He looked me in the eyes before taking my wrist in his hands. He bit into my wrist while looking up at me. While he fed I couldn't help but feel like this was an intimate moment between us. I watched him take my blood as he watched me until he was done.
"You willing to talk to me now about trying to kill you sister?" I asked him after a moment.
"I'm too weak for your lecture right now." He told me.
"She's your sister. How can you want to hunt her?" I asked him.
"Because she has done what no one else has managed to do to me for 1,000 years... Rip my heart out." He told me.
"What happened when Michael came to New Orleans the first time?" I asked him.
"We had finally made peace in the city between all the factions. Werewolves, humans, witches and vampires. We were celebrating in a jazz club and that was the night I gave Rebekah and Marcel my blessing to be together out in the open." He placed his hand on my cheek and I let him into my mind so I could see what he wanted to show me.
Rebekah and Marcel walked into the Jazz Club and approached the bar together before separating in front of Nik and Elijah who watched from a nearby table.
"Look at these two pretending to be apart while so clearly a pair." Nik said. He began to stand up, but Elijah put his hand on his arm to try and stop him.
"Niklaus, not now. Why must you cause trouble?" Elijah sighed as Nik shrugged out of his grip and grabbed two glasses off of the table. He clinked them together to get everyone's attention before raising his hand to gesture to the band to stop playing.
"I'd like to take this opportunity to draw attention to two people who have been sneaking around behind my back together. As we move into a new era, we require more progressive attitudes to match. So, to my loving sister and my right-hand man and best friend Marcel, may they find joy in each other." Everyone took a drink while Marcel and Rebekah shared a startled look. "Enough talk...Music!" the band started again and as everyone resumed partying Nik approached Bekah. "Over the years, I've thwarted your loves simply to protect you. I knew if we had to run again, your heart would be broken, but we don't have to run anymore. We've found a home." He gave her a small kiss on her cheek and smiled at her. "Be happy, my sister."
"I'd let my guard down and given in to happiness- more fool, I." Nik told me in the present day as he sat up in bed and grabbing a shirt and putting it on. "They'd already betrayed me, and brought to town the one thing I'd been running from for centuries... my father." Once his shirt was on he laid back down.
"I know. My mind was link with Bekah's as well." I told him. "Elijah implied Rebekah and Marcel could be anywhere in the world by now so what's the point of following them?"
"Oh, I'm not so sure about that." He said with a smirk on his face. "They'll need a cloaking spell, and for that, they'll need a witch. There's only one place they can go home." He sat up once more and attempted to get out of bed and I rolled my eyes before he nearly fell. I caught him and helped him stand once more.
"You're still weak." I reminded him.
"I'm still hungry. There's a fresh blood supply in the kitchen." He reminded me.
"You won't even make it that far." I told him. "So, be a good little boy and get back into our bed."
"If I had a quid for every time a woman has tried that line on me." He told me.
"You would be broke by now." I told him.
"I beg to differ." He said smirking at me. "Women other than you find me quite charming." He told me.
"Other than me?" I asked him with a smirk of my own. I took his hand in mine so I could see more of his past.
Nik was having sex with a woman with a crescent birthmark on her right shoulder. That answered the question of where he'd seen it before. The woman giggled when she saw Elijah standing in the doorway.
"Sleeping with the enemy, I see." Elijah said to Nik.
"I'm the ally now, darling." The woman reminded him.
"Well, indeed." Elijah said smiling.
"Oh, and as a gesture of goodwill from our old enemy—" Nik held up four tickets to show Elijah. "- Tickets to tonight's opera, Le Grand Guignol."
"They have a soprano to die for. I'll introduce you if you promise not to eat her." She told them both.
"Oh, Lana, a good soprano is never dinner." Elijah told her making them all smile.
"Tell Rebekah to bring Marcel. Feel free to tell her now, big brother. I have some business I need to discuss with our new ally." Nik told him before laughing with Lana as they continued as though they hadn't been interrupted.
"You like opera?" I asked him. "Maybe we should see one of the shows when they're next in town."
"I always had a particular soft spot for Le Grand Guignol. I like the story. [He gets out of bed] It was a tale of forbidden love, a Romeo and Juliet of sorts. On the day they are to marry, family and long-festering hatred intervene. Thousands are massacred. A father even kills his own child in the final act. I can almost appreciate the irony." He told me before moving to our alcohol stash.
"I'm not sure that will help." I told him.
"Not sure it doesn't." he told me.
"Well I'd join you, but I can't drink. Ultimately unfair." I complained making him chuckle a bit. "Elijah might not like the sudden alcohol loss with Hayley missing and you hunting Bekah and Marcel."
"Don't speak to me of Elijah." He told me harshly.
"He loves you." I reminded him.
"Yes. He does, and he proves it time and again, even when my father enlisted him to kill me." Nik told me.
"I didn't know Michael asked for help from anyone. He threatened help from the Salvatores back in Mystic Falls." I said.
"Elijah has always carried guilt for that night for not stopping our father. I told him not to blame himself. When your father wants to kill you, he wants to kill you. Nothing you can do about it." Nik's phone vibrated and he answered it with a smirk. "Oh, I hate to be a know-it-all. My sister and her lover have been spotted in town. So, story time endeth here, I'm afraid." He walked over to a statue on the table and knocked it over. The statue broke on the floor and he picked up what it was hiding.
"The white oak stake." I said. He smirked before using his vampire speed to leave the room. I quickly ran around the compound trying to find him when I heard someone in the street screaming. I ran outside to see Nik feeding on a random man. When he finished he stopped feeding and dropped the man. "Where are you going?
"Well, if you have to ask, you obviously haven't been paying attention. I'm going to kill my sister, but first, I needed some sustenance with a little less vervain in it. No offense." He told me.
"When Davina showed me all the people you killed I could have hated you for it, but I didn't. If you kill Rebekah you will be so full of regret in the years to come that you will come to hate yourself! Revenge against those who hurt our family is one thing, but you won't survive if you're the one who kills her." I told him.
"I'll tell you what I almost didn't survive, love- My sister bringing the most vile creature ever to have walked the earth down upon me." He said.
"Yes, Michael. But, by hunting Rebekah and Marcel down to the ends of the earth, by terrorizing them the way you were terrorized, you'll be no different than him." I told him and his face dropped.
"I've been called every shade of monster, but that's new. My father? Mikael was the monster monsters were afraid of. Come. Let me show you." He held me to him before using his vampire speed to get us to where he wanted us. When he stopped I saw we were in front of the ruins of an old opera house "You know this city's history. That night in 1919, when the opera house burned down on this very spot? That was my father at his worst." He placed his hand on the back of my neck and I was once again thrust into the past.
The opera house was full of people with Rebekah and Nik in a private box. Bekah looked around anxiously for Marcel as Nik red the program looking bored and impatient.
"Well, this is off to a bad start. Your first big date together in public after I gave you my blessing, and he stood you up." Nik said and she gave him an annoyed look.
"Something must have delayed him." She insisted.
"Or, now that your elicit affair is out in the open, he finds the whole relationship a tad lackluster and has run off to Havana with a showgirl." Nik teased.
"Don't be such a toerag. I'm going to check the lobby." She said before rising from her seat.
"See if you can't find our brother while you're there. The curtain is about to go up." Nik called after her. She left and Nik put the program down. After a short time someone entered the box and sat down behind him before poking him with the white oak stake.
"I would advise against trying to flee, boy." Mikael told him. "I can drive this into your heart before you can even think of getting to your feet, and I don't want you to die yet."
"Father—" Nik said in shock and fear.
""Father?" Haha! Still clinging to that word after all these years, a bastard desperate for a daddy? I wonder if your real father would be as embarrassed as I was of you before I discovered you were not mine. Most likely." Mikael taunted him. Angry, Nik was going to turn around but Mikael stopped him. "Oh, oh. Uh-uh. Easy now, boy. Don't worry. Death will come, but we need to have a little chat before you shuffle off your immortal coil."
"Any words we have for each other have been spoken long ago. But, know this- I am no longer the animal begging for scraps of your affection. I will die knowing my hatred for you was just. I will fall proud of all I have achieved here. So, Mikael, if you're going to kill me, then get on with it." Nik told him.
"Au contraire, Niklaus. Some things remain unsaid. For instance, you were right to be proud of your achievement here. As I walked the streets, your name was spoken of in reverent tones by the city's finest. So, after I kill you, I will remain here in New Orleans until every last person who remembers you is dead. The deeds of the mighty Klaus will be remembered by no one And you, boy, will simply never have existed." Mikael told him before the orchestra began to warm up in front of the stage. "Ah. The grand show." Mikael relaxed, pulling the stake away from Nik as the lights went down. He leaned forward and tapped Nik on the shoulder. "Oh, I made some alterations in your honor. You'll love it." The conductor tapped his baton against the stand and began the show.
"And what a show it was." Nik told me in the present. The curtain to reveal Marcel staked in the hands to a wooden cross, barely conscious. Lana was dead and propped up on a swing, her mouth taped shut and a stake impaled through her chest. Elijah was thrown over what looked to be an iron fence. "Mikael compelled the audience to watch it all, applaud as if it were the drollest of comedies, and then to leave celebrating a terrific night at the opera. I tried to save Marcel." I watched as Nik pulled the stakes from Marcel's hands only for Mikael to stop him. "My father had other ideas. Rebekah attempted to intervene." The crowd applauded as Mikael pushed Bekah to the ground and staked her with a normal stake in the stomach. "All these years, I actually believed she was trying to save me." Nik tried to attack Mikael again but the older man threw Nik across the stage while the audience continued to applaud. "But then big brother swooped in." I watched as Nik stood to once again try and help Marcel.
"There's no helping Marcel." Elijah told him brother.
"Just when we thought all was lost." Nik said.
"We must run." Elijah said. Nik scooped Bekah up in his arms and as they left, Mikael plunged his hand into Marcel's chest and began to feed off him. After they were gone Mikael picked up a lantern and walked off the stage.
"And so I ran, beaten like the dog my father believed me to be. And as we fled for our lives, he burnt it all to the ground." Mikael walked up towards the exit past the audience, all of whom just sat and stared at the stage. He smashed the lantern onto the ground, causing the floor to catch fire which quickly spread throughout the opera house. "And with it, we assumed, Marcel."
"I lived, but all that we had built died, as did the last shred of me that felt human. That is what my father took from me that night. I assure you, Nicole, I will not terrorize my sister and her lover for centuries. Nor will I humiliate and torment or dehumanize them. No, none of that. I will simply and quickly end them." He let me go before using his vampire speed to get away.
"Nik!" I called to him, but it was too late. He was gone. And I knew who I needed to hit to find them.
I made my way through the cauldron in search of the once dead witches. I saw someone duck into a store and followed them quickly. I walked in, but it was empty.
"I know you're in here." I called out. "Come out."
"Nicole." Genevieve said coming out of her hole with a smile on her face. "To what do I owe this honor?"
"Where are they?" I asked her.
"Where are who?" she asked, but with the gleam in her eyes I knew she knew who I was talking about.
"My family. Where have you and your little friends tricked them to go?" I asked.
"The cemetery. But I don't suggest you go there." She told me.
"And why not?" I asked her.
"Because, they might all be dead and we wouldn't want you and the baby to be harmed because of your hysteria." She said with her smile still in place.
"Last time I was pregnant I was shot and Nikolas is perfectly healthy now." I told her. "You wanna try and stop me you are more than welcome, but…" I pulled out my gun and pointed it at her. "I'd have to shoot you and something tells me you don't want that." I backed away from her and made my way to Nik, Bekah and Elijah.
