Six:
The Sanctified Scapegoat
Mystic Falls; Old Witch House Grounds
One Hour Before Moonrise.
Finn Mikaelson stood alone in the centre of the pentagram before the upright stone sarcophagus. It was a brute of a thing, ruthless and crude in its old age, dim granite notched roughly, dips where moss and lichen had begun to fill in ruched flurries. It had been carved many centuries ago, on the orders of a troubled Franciscan nun locked in a monastery plagued by nightmares of the thing she called the All-Blood. A lone symbol etched upon the towering face of it the only give away to what was sealed inside its invisible cracks.
A line in a circle in a triangle, smeared with the blood of a Hybrid. A small donation from Tyler Lockwood, who had jumped at the chance to finally free himself from being under Niklaus's control.
That would be the Mikaelson's downfall that night. The broken people they left in their wake, baying for blood and revenge.
Finn turned roughly from it, felt the hairs on the back of his neck quiver, an unsettling feeling deep in his gut, like maggots squirming, fear twisting messy knots with his bowels, when he heard the sound of a twig snap somewhere deep in the woods.
"They're coming, mother."
Esther, bent over the pentagram, filling the pattern with oil and salt, the last point painted in a gritty arc, darted a weary glance to the surrounding woods, grim and gloomy and barren to her Wiccan eye as they were.
"No, it's too soon. The moon is not high enough."
She rolled swiftly to the last three huddled and waiting underneath the canopy of a bare-branched Burch, as close as they dared to the stone monolith taking centre stage in the clearing outside the old Bennett house.
"Get in the pentagram. Now. My children will not be able to enter."
Bonnie was the first to move, stepping over the blanched white line on the bracken floor, feeling the subtle wash of magic flow over her, followed quickly by an anxious Elena, the pair brought up by a frowning Stefan.
Immediately they were hit with the same feeling Finn was. That sense of doom, that prickle of danger, that itch of death.
"I still don't understand why Elena must be here, exactly-"
Esther cut off Stefan with a crisp, clear glare, lighting the last candle of the circle with a flick of glib her fingers.
"I told you, the Doppelganger must be present for her blood has linked my children. I have allowed your presence here tonight, Salvatore, so you might see the labours of your fruit, all of your fruit-"
Esther added with a curving sweep of Bonnie and Elena.
"Come to fruition. Is this not what you three wished for? The end of the Mikaelsons? Have I not delivered on my part? Now all I ask if for your help in finishing the last rite."
Stefan's jaw clamped shut, the muscle of his mouth jumping, but no further argument came, especially when Elena reached over the small distance separating the two and laid a soft hand upon his crossed, tensed arm.
"It's alright, Stefan. It'll be fine. We… We get this over and done with, wake this thing up and then put it back to sleep, and then we can move on, right? Just like we wanted. We won't have to look over our backs for Klaus's shadow anymore. We won't have to worry about Rebekah or Kol at school. We can finally live in peace and quiet. We just… We just need to finish this. A few hours more and it's done."
Stefan's arm's fell from his chest, defeated.
This… This is what they wanted. No more Klaus, no more Mikaelsons, no more death. Peace sounded awfully nice right then, not only to Stefan, but to Elena and Bonnie too.
Elena, sensing she had eased his momentary misgivings, turned to Bonnie.
"Where's Abigail? I thought we needed her to channel your ancestors?"
Bonnie, staring deeply at the sarcophagus, nodded in the dark. She could have sworn she felt the… Thing staring back. Glaring back right into the bones of her, the marrow of her, the damned stardust that had formed her atoms millennia ago, and, wearily, she thought the thing found her lacking.
It wouldn't, after that night.
When the Mikaelsons were dead and gone, when her friends were finally safe, no one would think to terrorize her again.
A Witch is dangerous.
A desperate Witch with nothing to lose is deadly.
"She's at our ancestral home just over there. She'll be channelling, pulling the magic through from the Other Side, and I will lead that power over to here."
To Esther was left unsaid.
Another branch snapped. This time it was close enough for Stefan to hear, robbing his gaze to the dark surrounding woods. Bonnie tried to smile at her friend, tried to steel her spine, tried to tell herself this was the right thing to do, the only thing they could do against Niklaus Mikaelson, that, despite the feeling, this sense of doom emanating from the sarcophagus, she couldn't be hurt here.
Not in her ancestral home, not with her friends around her, not with her ancestors watching, powered by the night, so close to the surface, Abigail and Damon so close by, in the house behind them, ready if something went wrong.
No.
Nothing would go wrong.
They had no room for mistakes now.
"Don't worry. Damon's gone with her just in case. We've got this."
Elena nodded, echoing her friend.
"We've got this."
Neither girl sounded as sure as, perhaps, they hoped they would.
Esther stiffened by the candles.
"My children… Come forward."
Finn finally pulled himself away from the sarcophagus, slinking to his mother's side in the heart of the pentagram, one foot in front, ready.
"Stay beside me, mother."
Esther smiled gently, patting her eldest son on the shoulder like one would ruffle the head of a good guard dog.
"It's okay. They can't enter."
As if he took it as a dare, there was a glimmer of movement by the tree line of the clearing, a Vampire speeding in the descending night, and Kol Mikaelson appeared in the dark, foot raised to enter the pentagram before the circle lit up, a jagged, raging wall of fire springing forth, and he was driven back from the flames.
The youngest Mikaelson brother growled, fangs flashing in the amber light.
"That's lovely. We're stuck out here while the favourite son plays sacrificial lamb. How pathetic you are, Finn."
This time it was Esther who stepped before her son protectively.
"Be quiet, Kol. Your brother knows virtue you cannot even imagine."
Elijah was slower to come out the thicket and towards the fire light, suit impeccable, not a hair out of place. Something hard and unyielding, like a knife's edge, glinting in that dark gaze of his.
"Whatever you think of us, killing your own children will be an atrocity."
Esther snarled, lip curled over blunt teeth no less dangerous than a Vampire's.
They hid the sharpest tongue around.
"My only regret is that I did not let you die a thousand years ago."
They all came then. Klaus, swaggering. Rebekah, storming. Caroline-
Elena jolted forward, towards her friend, but Bonnie snatched an arm out, grasping elbow, halting her from crossing the border of their safe little circle. Exactly into the path of a waiting Kol.
"Caroline! What are you doing here? What are you doing with them?"
The blond in question grimaced, woefully shaking her head at Elena's perplexed question.
"What other choice did you give me, Elena? You're going to get us all killed if you do this."
Stefan interceded, he, too, like Finn, bracing his feet, rooted himself to dirt and grass, readying for a fight.
"The linking spell-"
Caroline scoffed.
"Means nothing. You didn't tell him, did you, Elena? What that thing in there eats. If you lot wake that All-Blood up, the Mikaelsons won't be the only thing on the menu tonight, and I'm not dressed for a banquet."
Kol, prowling along the edge, sharp angled face flickering in the fire light, light to dark and to light again, smirked.
"And I'm guessing by your willing participation in this mess, Salvatore, you don't quite understand Sire lines either. We get dusted, every single Vampire we have ever Sired falls with us. You're not just killing us; you're killing every Vampire in existence."
Stefan, slowly, turned to Elena. She stood beneath his stare, and-
Shuffled.
Her gaze dropped from his own guiltily.
"Elena?"
The Doppelganger broke, shaking her head.
"We're going to put it back to sleep before it starts-... You know, on everyone else. And Esther said the linking spell will break the Sire lines. No other Vampire would-"
But it was too late for her reasoning, as Stefan, suddenly slack but contrarily hard, stumbled back a step, away.
And another.
And another.
Until he left the circle.
Caroline flashed to his side, pulling him further away from the circle, the sarcophagus, the death.
They could smell it here, in the air, dancing in breezes and drifts. The All-Blood smelled like pomegranate and pine, and something distinctly feverish like gunpowder.
Stefan pulled himself closer to Caroline's side.
"Why didn't you tell me? How could you think I would… Why-"
Nevertheless, Klaus growled, a thick noise from deep in his chest, a wolfish warning.
"Enough! All this talk is boring me, and I know you're only buying time for full moonrise, mother. End this now or I'll send you back to Hell. You've sent us on a merry chase this night, trapping this wood with get-me-lost spells, but it ends here."
Esther sighed deeply, breaking away from Finn to stand beside Bonnie, reaching down to clasp her hand.
Their fingers linked, entangled, interwoven.
It was too late to go back now. The breeze picked up.
Abigail must have begun.
They only needed a little more time.
"For a thousand years I've been forced to watch you. Felt the pain of every victim, suffered while you shed blood. Even you, Elijah, with your claim to nobility, you're no better. All of you. You're a curse on this Earth stretched out over generations. If you've come to plead for your life, I'm sorry, you've wasted your time. I suppose this moon phase will have to do. Finn, now."
Elena tried to move away from the salt strewn pentagram, reeling, reaching for Stefan-
But her back met something solid, hands grasping at her arms, pinning. Finn stood behind her, the sound of Vampire teeth snapping down into place ringing in her ear. Bonnie must have seen something she had not, perhaps Finn's lowering head, for she grew wide-eyed, tried to reach for Elena, but her clasped hand pulled tight, Esther holding her in place.
It all happened at once then.
Finn's head dipped, searing white-hot pain flared in Elena's neck as the flesh tore open, Esther chanting in the breeze of the forest, echoed by a hundred dead Bennetts, Bonnie moaning, knees crumbling as the magic, the channelled magic of centuries worth of spells and lives, was simultaneously flooded into her system and then sucked like venom from a wound in her skin-
She fell face first down to the floor, and finally, having what she wanted, Esther let go of the hand.
Bonnie tried to move, to sit up, but her hand fell back to the floor, barely an inch above, and her eyes slipped shut, dazed.
"No!"
Stefan yelled, diving for Elena, but Finn was done, throwing Elena down, the body rolling in the grass, over the circle, discarded like a candy wrapper.
Stefan's own knees met stone and mud and broken twigs as he fell beside the Doppelganger. The Gilbert girl groaned, clutching at her neck, alive.
"Oh, thank god-"
The wind picked up, howling, and Finn dashed for the coffin-
He stumbled.
Frowned.
Glanced down.
A pale stake was skewered through his ribs, blood splattering on trodden grass.
Rebekah stood outside the circle; hand raised but empty from the white-oak stake she had sent flying, tears cresting in her eyes, voice shaky but stern.
"I'm sorry Finn, but I couldn't let you do this."
Esther's scream flew in the wind, and she lunged for Finn crashed by the sarcophagus.
"No!"
She grappled with his shoulders, watching skin rinse grey and dull, veined, dead.
"Just hold on, my boy. Just hold on a little longer. We can finish this and-"
Finn spluttered, black blood oozing, and he moved no more.
Klaus stepped close to the fire, lips a thin line over sharp teeth.
"It's over. You don't have your sanctified to despoil. Give it up, mother."
For a long moment, Esther stayed huddled over the corpse of Finn, brushing back his locks, hand gently cupping face, hair a curtain over her eyes, shoulders shaking.
It was too late that the rest realized it was laughter and not tears trembling her frame.
She turned, glancing over her shoulder, dark eyes keen in the night as they met Klaus's.
"You always were too self-assured for your own good. So sure you were always right and never wrong. Finn was not the sanctified, boy. He was merely prepping the first meal. Don't you remember anything from your human life? When you hunt, you cut the rabbit before sending it off to lure out the wolves."
Klaus growled again, a thick and heavy rumble in his chest that bled into the whipping wind.
"Don't play games with me-"
But Esther turned away from him, the roaring in the wind growing, almost deafening, hounding-
Howling.
She looked straight to Stefan crouched over the Doppelganger.
"You were baptized, weren't you? Italian families always ran more Catholic than most."
Her face washed sleek like jade, as cold to the touch as it too.
"It's your niece in there."
Stefan blinked, unsure he had heard correctly over the wind, over the growling, over the crackling of the fire.
"What?"
Elena began to sit up with Stefan's help, neck bleeding still, staining shirt red, but heart thumping like a jack hammer behind her ribs.
Pomegranate and pine, gunpowder hot in the air.
Caroline cut through the gale to stand beside her friend.
"Don't Stefan-"
Esther shook her head, hands relinquishing her dead son.
Soon to be joined by three others and a sister, if she had anything to say about it.
"In 1977, you heard rumours of your brother, Damon's, reckless behaviour. You feared it would get him noticed by the locals and end with a mob at his door. You couldn't go and reign in him, you knew he wouldn't listen to you… So you sent your dearest friend, Alexia Branson. She was only too happy to help you. You never even realized what you had set into motion."
Stefan shook his head, grasp falling from Elena's arms, hands clenching into fists at his hip.
"I don't know what you're on about-"
But he did.
He did.
Caroline tried to grab his shoulders, tried to pull him away, but he wouldn't be moved.
"Don't listen to her, Stefan. She's trying to get into your head-"
Esther scowled darkly.
"Alexia stayed with Damon for six months, trying to rehabilitate him for you. She thought if she tried hard enough, Damon would come to see his wayward path and come home. To you. She thought that was what you wanted. Damon himself wanted none of it, of course. Your brother never knew what to do when a good thing landed in his lap."
Slowly, Esther stood up from Finn, turned, back to the towering coffin and the old Bennett house.
"He just wanted Alexia off his back, so he played his part. Played the reformed. He fooled her. That's when they fell into bed together. Just one night. That is all it ever takes. Damon took her to the roof. Alexia thought it was romantic."
"Mother, stop this-"
But Esther would not be stopped, would not be silenced, not by Caroline and not by Klaus.
"The next morning, asleep on the roof, Alexia Branson awoke when the sun started to burn her skin. Panicked, she ran to the door to get inside but it was locked and wouldn't open. Damon taunted her on the other side as he reinforced the locked door. He abandoned her on that roof, leaving her stranded in the tiny shadow of the locked doorway."
Stefan stared, locked, bolted to place as if, like the trees that surrounded him, he too now had roots he never knew he had before. Unseen things. Thorny things. The shadow of the sarcophagus felt as if it was stretching for him.
"What are you saying?"
Esther laughed raucously, poignantly.
"All it ever takes is one night… To conceive a child. Alexia went onto that roof alone. She didn't leave it that way. She had a special something growing inside of her. A thing people would have killed to get their hands on."
Stefan shook his head and stood once more, fists white knuckled at his side.
"Lexi would have told me-"
Esther cut him off.
"You didn't see her for two years after that. You thought it was odd, didn't you? But then you thought she was just relaxing after dealing with Damon. Who could blame her, you thought. She was alone, a Vampire impossibly with child, and she was scared. She just wanted help. That's when the Wand Wielder found her. He promised to help her. Promised he would keep her child safe. People would be after her child, he told her. So many people. She couldn't trust anyone. Not even you. And then she gave birth, and he wiped her memory clean. By the next time she saw you, she had thought she had spent the last two-years travelling Europe, and the Wand-wielder had his precious weapon."
"You're lying-"
"Am I? Can you be sure on that?"
Esther questioned intently.
"Are you willing to bet the life of your niece on it? She's in this coffin, Stefan. She's been sleeping for so long. She's hungry and lost in the dark. Are you really going to leave her like that? Why did you think I needed Elena to get Damon's blood? You must know by now. You must sense it. She's your blood. The blood of your best friend... You failed Lexi, will you fail her too?"
Stefan glanced to Elena, and then to Caroline-
"You… You knew, didn't you?"
Caroline shook her head, reaching for Stefan, but he moved away sharply.
"You heard what that prophecy says, Stefan! That thing in there is going to eat us all and Klaus said family relations make murder messy-"
"Klaus?!"
Stefan roared, the dam broken, rage like water flowing out untamed.
"Since when did you listen to Klaus?! You knew? You knew and you said nothing? I thought we were friends-"
Klaus zoomed over, hands up when Stefan snarled, fangs free, veins below his eyes.
"Don't do anything reckless now, Stefan. I don't want to hurt you, but if you push me I will. Mother's told you this merely to get you to-"
"How many of you knew? How many? Elena?"
Elena croaked, still clutching at her wounded neck.
"I didn't… I thought-"
Stefan laughed a hollow sound, empty and flat as the starless sky above. A shadow creeped into his right. Another towards his left.
Elijah and Rebekah circling in.
Trapping.
Barring him from getting to the sarcophagus if he were to show a sign of moving to it.
So that's how it is, is it? Stefan thought.
They didn't see the other shadow by the decrepit house behind them, hadn't seen it come out the door like Stefan had when Finn had collapsed, too focused on the threat under their nose than the one skulking in the shadow.
Right.
Stefan straightened.
Time. They just needed time.
"And now you all think I'm going to, what? Open it up?"
Klaus glared hotly.
"We can't afford that bleeding heart of yours from interfering in this. We didn't tell you because we didn't want you to have to make this choice. It might share some of your DNA, but that doesn't make it family, mate. You don't know what it's capable of. You don't know-"
Stefan snarled.
"You don't know either! Family, you say? Niklaus Mikaelson is lecturing me on family? That's rich, isn't it? You might have fooled Caroline, but you can't fool me, Klaus. I know you. This hero act doesn't suit you. You don't care about me or Caroline, maybe not even your siblings. You're only worried you won't be top dog if that sarcophagus opens."
Stefan boomed back, just as deep-seated and just as thundering. Klaus didn't take the challenge lightly, eyes flashing pale yellow, fangs plunging through gums.
But he didn't deny it.
Stefan waved him off.
"I'm sorry if me not stabbing my siblings into submission and attempting murder every month on their lives seems so alien to you, Klaus. Like a weakness… But it isn't. I won't let you lot do this."
Kol was the first to lunge, getting an arm wrapped around Stefan's neck, bending him in half, fixing him down.
"And we won't let you open that bloody coffin, mate!"
Caroline tried to jump for him, perhaps to help, but Rebekah was faster, snatching the younger Vampire by the scruff of her shirt to pin her back against a tree by the throat.
Stefan-
Stefan smiled, blinking up at Klaus only a few steps away.
The Hybrid smirked back.
He thought he had won.
"I wasn't the only one baptized in my family, and you've all been so focused on cornering me, you forgot to look behind you. I won't be opening the coffin."
Stefan sneered.
"But he will."
Stefan's gaze finally darted over to the sarcophagus, to the shadow that had come skulking closer-
Damon Salvatore stood beside the carved stone. His gaze was dark, no smile to be found, not even a twitch. He looked like marble in the night, like one of those Michelangelo carvings, a fallen angel with rebellion in his curls.
Lucifer with fire in his eyes and blood on his lips.
Abigail Bennett was struggling in his grasp, feet flailing off the ground, silent by the crushing grip to her larynx, blood smeared across her mouth.
"Damon, please-"
Still weak on the floor, still being drained by Esther at the edge of the circle, Bonnie Bennett reached for her mother, hand trembling in the air.
Damon didn't even glance her way. There was no witty remark, no devil-may-care grin, no clever game.
Just silver-cold anger locked in a stone-stark face.
He snapped Abigail's neck with a wet crunch. The body fell to his feet. Eyes blank and lifeless. Bonnie screamed, high and shrill, as the wind burst. The body of her mother, once married in a church, sanctified, despoiled by the vampire bit marking her neck and the Vampire blood in in her veins beginning a transition.
The line in the triangle in the circled glowed, sickly green in hue, and then dimmed to a burned black streak.
Kol let go of Stefan, bracing, the Mikaelsons instinctually backing up, banding into one, waiting-
And nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
Kol relaxed, grinning.
"Well, that goes to show that it really was just a fairy tale-"
Somewhere in the old Bennett house, a clock struck six-seventeen. Moonrise time for Virginia in October.
A knock, muffled, come from inside the coffin.
One. Two. Three.
Ready or not, here I come.
The lid of the sarcophagus cracked and blew, came flying off, soaring, shattering into the dull thicket, taking two trees with it in an almighty screech of wood splintering, nearly a few heads too. The Mikaelsons dropped, Esther ducked, Damon bowed to the side, everybody diving for the floor.
A combat boot came slinking out the dark maw of the coffin, thudding onto the ground, followed by another.
Green eyes glowed in the night, the sound of a bone shattering growl resonating through the clearing.
The wind died to silence.
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"What did you just say?"
The All-Blood asked millimetres from Niklaus's throat. It was the first time the All-Blood had spoken, and her voice was like smoke and mirrors, deceptively soft and dark, sleek and lilting, and-
And British.
Esther, crouched behind her, still in the circle, frowned.
"Do it! Do it now! Fulfil the prophecy!"
The fingers pinning Klaus to the tree by his neck slackened, a beat, and then the Hybrid fell back to the floor as the All-Blood turned away from her meal, shifted eyes bleeding back to a startling, but human, green.
She was grinning, Kol could see from the floor, from where she had thrown him.
lopsided and dimpled and wild.
"Wrong thing to say me of all people, sweetheart."
In a blink the All-Blood was gone-
Not gone.
Moved.
Standing right next to Esther, head bent, teeth tearing.
The witch screamed, cried, but all that came out was a gurgle and a rattle. Kol could only watch as his mother struggled, banging fists, trying to cast magic, but nothing worked, nothing could shake the All-Blood off.
The struggling stopped soon, and the All-Blood dropped the body, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Pesky things, Prophecies. They never go the way you think they're going to go. I've had just about enough with them, cheers."
The All-blood turned, moonlight painting the blood on her face black, stepping over the dead body of Esther, rolling her neck, kicking back against the overturned sarcophagus, sitting on the rubble like one might sit on a throne.
Carelessly but consoled in their own power.
"Fuckin' coffins give you a right crick in the neck, aye? I don't suppose anyone's got a cigarette I can bum?"
A.N: Had to go split this chapter into two. Part two, I am hoping, to have out to read by next week sometime. Hope you all enjoyed this one! Hemlock is, quite literally, just around the corner. Aaaah, here it comes boys! Get your stakes, holy water, and garlic ready. It won't help, though ;).
THANK YOU all for the followers, favourites and the lovely reviews! I hope you all liked this chapter, and if you have a spare moment or two, please drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon!
