A/N - I'm really sorry for the absolutely terrible delay, I had a couple of issues writing this chapter, but hopefully this turned out okay anyway :)
Disclaimer - I own this story, but unfortunately not Kol and Elijah :(
"You're still here?" Kol questioned, standing in the doorway of a room between that of Elijah's and Finn's.
Elijah looked up from Elena's bedside."I need to be here when she wakes up, Brother. She'll be delirious for a while, and I need to explain to her what happened."
Kol frowned, but shrugged. "If you say so, 'Lijah." He walked off down the corridor, leaving Elijah alone with the still-unconscious doppelgänger.
After Elijah had left the crypt, he'd taken Elena straight here, and sent word to Caroline that her friend had been found. Hopefully they'd be on their way back now.
As if on cue, Caroline came rushing into the room, wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a pink top. She dropped her bag by the door and rushed to Elena's side, watching her best friend lying on the guest bed.
"How long has she been like this?" She asked Elijah, who had stood up upon her arrival.
"...Care? How..." She spotted Elijah standing behind her best friend and her eyes widened. She gulped, desperate to wetten her suddenly dry mouth. "Elijah? Why are you here?"
"What happened, Elena?" Caroline pressed.
She looked puzzled, and sat up in bed, pulling the duvet further up her body. "I don't know. Care...could I possibly have some water?"
Caroline smiled, and flashed off, appearing a few seconds later with a glass of water. "Here you are." She passed it over, and Elena clutched it with both hands, downing the clear liquid within a matter of seconds. "More please."
Caroline frowned. "Are you okay, Elena?"
"I don't know," Elena answered. "I just feel so...thirsty."
Elijah leaned forward to rest his hand on her forehead to check her temperature, and that was when she lost it. Elena grabbed his shoulders and used them to pull herself up and latch onto the skin of his throat, above his collarbone. Caroline reacted quickly, pulling her friend off Elijah, while the latter held a look of surprise and shock on his face, reaching up to feel the bruised skin that was already healing.
"Elena!" Caroline exclaimed, looking shocked.
Elena herself just stayed sat up in bed, her hands pressing into the mattress on either side of her and her breathing loud and ragged, staring at Elijah like she was dying of thirst and he was the last cup of water on Earth.
Caroline gasped. "She's transitioning? But...how? She was okay yesterday! Who did this to her?"
Elijah's jaw set and he smoothed down the front of his suit. "Let me sort this out, Caroline. I know exactly what happened."
It was just after dusk, and the witches of New Orleans were gathered in their usual crypt. Tonight they were using the power of the new moon in order to summon their ancestors. Evelyn, one of the more senior witches lit a large black candle, and as the rest of the coven began to chant, a blast of icy cold air ran through the crypt, causing goosebumps to rise on the witches' arms.
A young witch near the crypt's entrance let go of the hands of the witches either side of her and shivered involuntarily. "Was that meant to happen?"
An older witch sighed in frustration. "When Sophie told us you were skilled enough to join the coven, Jasmine, I thought that meant you were ready for this."
"I thought so too, except I didn't know that my first spell as a fully-functional witch would involve this much power. I don't think I can handle this yet."
"Nonsense, child." She forcefully grabbed Jasmine's hand and the coven began to chant while one of the warlocks sliced his palm with a fancy knife and dripped the blood steadily over the candle. The power in the room grew until all the witches could feel it pressuring down on them, building up until it was almost unbearable...
...until suddenly it wasn't.
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen," came a voice from behind them, and they turned to find Elijah Mikaelson standing between the two witches nearest the door. "I do hope I'm not interrupting."
"You are," replied one of the warlocks rudely. "Please leave."
Elijah tutted, and started to make his way slowly around the edge of the circle. "How inconsiderate you are. I thought we could all at least be civil before I inevitably kill you all for what you did to Elena."
The witches looked at one another. "You collected Elena this afternoon. She was fine then; we didn't harm her."
"Then explain why she is currently with Caroline at the plantation trying to curb her desire for blood. How she woke up from a sleep in which she had no heartbeat. Explain that!"
One of the older witches spoke out in protest. "We didn't know, I swe-"
Elijah went up to the witch who spoke. "You forget, Mathilde, that I can tell when people are lying, even if I can't compel you." He took a matter of seconds to reach into her chest and yank her heart from her chest, dropping it unceremoniously on top of her still-warm body. "Who's next?"
Instinctively, the closest witches threw their hands up to either attempt to give Elijah an aneurism or to throw his out of the cemetery, but the Original waved his hand in the air ambiguously. "Your magic will not work on me, or anything else for that matter, I had a friend disable it from 9 o'clock onwards. And it just so happens," he said extending his arm to display his expensive leather-strapped watch from under his jacket sleeve, "that the time is now 8:07. And I have some work to do."
He advanced on two elders in front of him, pulling out their hearts simultaneously before they even knew what was happening, and then spun around to strike the head off a witch attacking from behind. He began to move around like he was in some sort of violent, bloody dance; snapping necks and pulling out hearts, and eventually he lost track of the fact that he was killing people a lot more innocent than himself even, and the faces merged into each other, the names no even coming to mind as he put a stop to the lives.
It only took him ten minutes to kill his way through the entire coven of witches, until only one remained. Jasmine stood shaking from fear in the corner, tears rolling down her frame from the violence of the mass murder she had just witnessed.
"Please don't kill me," she begged the advancing Elijah. "Please..."
Elijah peered at her curiously. "You weren't here this afternoon."
"Sophie let me join in this evening as my first official spell in the coven," Jasmine explained shakily. "I was still practising with Davina and Monique earlier. I'm sorry about Elena, whoever she is to you. I'm sorry the witches did that to her, but please sir, I had no part in it!"
Elijah nodded slowly. "I'm not going to kill you. You did nothing wrong. I'm sorry you had to witness this." He looked around at the broken bodies lying everywhere and the blood splattered all over the walls and floor. "You should go."
Jasmine nodded, and with a sob fled from the crypt. Elijah sighed, and looked at his handiwork. There were at least twenty bodies lying messily on the stone floor, and as he looked at their terrified open glassy eyes and gaping mouths the guilt hit him and began clawing at his insides.
His face crumpled slightly. "What have I done?"
"What were you thinking, Elijah?" Rebekah scolded as she patted down the soil on the last of the graves. "This isn't like you!"
"I don't know," Elijah muttered from where he sat hunched over on a nearby bench. "I don't know what came over me."
Rebekah sighed, and came to sit next to her second-oldest brother. "What is it?"
Elijah sighed. "Elena woke from her slumber this afternoon...in transition."
Rebekah scoffed. "And of course that's worth killing a good twenty witches over, isn't it? God, what is it with you and Petrova doppelgängers? Or anyone, for that matter? It's not like they're even that pretty-"
She broke off as Elijah suddenly had her pinned up against a mausoleum, his arm up against her throat. "Be aware of what it is that you're saying, Sister. I will not allow you to speak of Elena like that."
Rebekah gasped as Elijah took his arm away, feeling oxygen rush back into her lungs. "You don't know what's happening to you? And people say you're the knowledgable one! Elijah, you're over a thousand years old, you should know what's happening." She turned and walked off, turning back to say: "I suggest you don't tell Nik that we now have less than ten witches in New Orleans due to your actions tonight. He's already in a bad mood - Caroline's been depriving him of sex because she doesn't want to scar your precious Elena with the racket they make at night in her first week here." There was a 'whoosh' and then Elijah was left alone in the cemetery.
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