These past few weeks have been tough, I had so much work piled on me, and I barely got the time to write. I've only begun writing again this week when my schedule has become less toxic. I wanted to include more scenes in this chapter, but then it all became too long a scene so I had to cut it off to have it for the next. Thank you all for your reviews, they encourage me to go on with writing the story. When I feel pretty shitty I go read the reviews and tell myself some people want to read what I write. So thanks for the support, guys.
Chapter Four: Education
The rain fell steadily on the wooden floor of her terrace. Camille O'Connell had been staring out at the gray skies all morning, debating on whether or not to stay at home or run her errands. Staying at home in pajamas won out. Keeping herself busy would have been the perfect solution to lapsing into dangerous daydreams. Now she was stuck here, waiting for the rain to dwindle. She'd made herself a mug of hot chocolate instead and was planning to curl up with one of the romances she'd bought on a whim. Although, at the back of her mind, reading love stories while hearing the raindrops on the roof seemed utterly counter-productive to what she wasn't supposed to be thinking about.
Was it only a week ago, when they were at Hope's party? When she'd been unable to keep herself from confiding to Klaus about her feelings of loneliness? When he'd told her, in no uncertain terms, that he would always look out for her?
She didn't know how exactly she was supposed to feel. On one hand, this was the Klaus who had done so much kindness to her. On the other hand, this was also the Klaus who had done so much damage to himself and others, add to the fact that he was impulsive and volatile in nature. Oh and did she forget the part where he was a thousand year old part werewolf part vampire with a gazillion enemies wanting him dead?
Yet, despite all of these things, just hearing those words come out of his mouth had made her feel warm. Relieved. Happy.
After that, her tears had dried, and she was overcome with embarrassment about her emotional outburst. She was thankful for the distance Klaus had now kept to compose herself. She remembered rummaging through her purse for a piece of tissue, she remembered noticing the music wafting from downstairs.
They were slow songs. Not exactly the type one should hear at a child's birthday party, but then this party was never really for Hope, was it? It was more of a political move, if anything, to solidify alliances with humans and werewolves. His daughter's coming out party, unfortunately, might have just been a front for these machinations.
It made her think about how much of Niklaus Mikaelson she didn't really know. He was a complication, that's what he was. And he had a thousand years to accumulate all these weird little idiosyncrasies in his personality.
Klaus had noticed her slightly tilting her head to listen to the song, and a look of faint amusement briefly crossed his eyes. "I do love a slow song."
"So do I." Her eyes met his. "I think."
"Did you want to dance?"
She looked at him in surprise, remembering the last time they both danced..
Ask me to dance.
She smiled. "Umm, it's probably better for the both of us if I put away my dancing shoes for good."
He raised his eyebrows and said nothing.
"I kind of remember being ditched last time, and for someone who doesn't really dance…" she trailed off with a laugh.
Klaus looked as if he wanted to say something about his previous ungentlemanlike behavior and then hesitated, as if deciding not to say anything was the best route. He gave her his best sheepish look instead, eyes cast down like a guilty dog.
And she would have totally fell for it if she didn't see those brief flash of dimples before he hung his face. When he looked up, indeed, all she saw was mirth in those eyes.
She shook her head in disgust, thinking Klaus Mikaelson probably had enough charm in his little finger to literally get away with anything. It's probably been this way for a thousand years.
She was getting ready to say something scathing about not even trying to use those damn dimples on her, when he held his hand out, and looked at her askingly.
"I've behaved dishonorably the last time. Allow me to make it up to you. May I have this dance?"
"Dance now?" she asked, stunned. "With me?"
"Who else is in this room, Cami?"
Another slow ballad was starting downstairs, clearly audible through the second floor. She became aware that aside from a sleeping Hope, they really were quite alone in such a small room.
You've danced with him before, why is your heart beating so fast now?
"It's just dancing, love," he said quietly.
She hesitated, thinking just a night ago, she had sworn to distance herself from the original family, telling herself it was the best for her sanity. She thought of everything Klaus had declared so sincerely. How it made her feel. Was it really so bad to stay here for a while? To feel some semblance of intimacy? Family?
"I seem to recall someone telling me months ago that there are good things in life, and 'a slow song' and 'a good friend' were both included in that list." he said, holding out his hand once more.
She smiled, finally caving in and taking his hand. Moving closer. "Did you just throw my quote back at me?"
"I believe I did. You see, you think of me as a scoundrel, but I have quite a good memory for the things you tell me," he said.
He gripped her right hand steadily with his left, and put his other hand on her bare back, gently nudging her even closer to him.
They swayed slowly to the beat. Just two people holding on to each other, no fancy moves, no counting steps. The way he studied her upturned face made her feel self-conscious, and she felt her breathing slowly becoming more uneven. It didn't help that his hand was pressed against the skin of her back, his thumb absent-mindedly stroking the skin there.
They barely moved while dancing, yet each time he shifted them around the floor, she was fully aware of his thighs pressing against hers. Aware of how strong and warm the hand that gripped hers was. Aware of the smell that surrounded them, whether it was cologne or aftershave, she didn't really know. Whatever it was, it just smelled good, clean, manly. It smelled like him.
She had this sudden desire to put her head on his shoulder. She wondered what he would do if she did that, just put her head on his shoulder and and stay like that for a long time. Would he twirl her around again and leave her?
You are never alone, not while I am here.
She felt her heart beat fast in her chest as he drew his face nearer and gazed at her with that same unreadable look he's always had. If she could just manage not to stare too long into those eyes, if she could just keep herself from getting sucked in, she'd be fine. She found herself staring at his nose instead, noticing that miniscule bump on the bridge. Her eyes moved across to his cheeks, and she'd thought about how some people had all the luck with bone structure. Her eyes finally went down to his lips...
Oh god, wrong move, Cami.
With much effort, she willed herself to tear her gaze away from those lips and raise her eyes.
When they finally met his, she knew then, as those piercing blue ones stared back at her, that she was in trouble.
Camille O'Connell, pysch major, horrifyingly mortal bartender of Rousseau, was falling.
She pulled back right as the song was ending, suddenly terrified at this realization.
"I… I have to go, I'm sorry," she stammered out, not looking at him.
She rushed out, out, out of the room, out of the compound, almost running in her heels, back to her tiny apartment, back to her home, where she felt safe once more.
And that was the last time she'd seen him or talked to him.
…
Here she was a week after, staring outside, watching the big raindrops splash on the ground. What she would give to be young and carefree again, jumping in puddles like these while she held on to her parents' hands.
Was she a coward for running away like that? Perhaps. The old her would have bantered with him as if nothing was really out of place. Right now, she felt out of sorts. She felt exposed and vulnerable, as if she'd just laid all her cards on the table. And she had, basically, just revealed a side of her she never showed to anyone else.
She felt safer before, when it was just him confiding in her. When she listened and just gave advice, it was all fine. Suddenly, the tables were turned, and it was him giving her comfort. She'd been confident about the wall she'd built around herself for years, not letting anybody in. Finn had spotted that right away, that reluctance to share anything too personal. Even as she let her guard down, she still kept that tiny part of her intact. She could view everything from a distance. As long as she kept that part of herself protected, intact, no matter what happened, she would come out unscathed. Nobody could hurt her again.
And yet here she was, for the first time in a long time, she'd just let somebody in. And not just anybody, but a man with issues as thick as a phone book. She was completely out of her element and it was throwing her off.
She sat on her tiny kitchen table and stared at the mug of hot chocolate she'd made earlier for herself. She touched it and felt the coolness of the ceramic. Great, she'd been so absorbed in her thoughts her chocolate got cold. Could nothing go right today?
She sighed and laid her head on the table face-first with a loud thump.
Maybe she should just repeatedly bang her head against the table, maybe that would help cure her of this stupidity. She thumped her forehead against the wood again.
"Penny for your thoughts?" came Elijah's mocking voice from above her.
She straightened up so fast, the chair screeched against the floor.
"Jesus Christ! Elijah! You scared the crap out of me. Do none of you ever knock?"
He was dressed once more in an immaculate suit, giving her one of his aristocratic nonplussed looks. Looks that seemed to be growing in frequency whenever they were in each other's company.
"To be clear, Camille, I have knocked. And I have been calling your name for quite some time now. If, for some reason, you've been too busy wool-gathering about certain… people… then that is entirely no fault of mine."
"What did you just say?"
"Hmm?" He feigned not knowing what she meant and made a motion to pick up some invisible lint from his already spotless suit.
She sighed. "Why are you here?"
"Is that your way of welcoming guests?"
"Just unwanted ones."
"Weren't you supposed to be curing me with your human compassion, and not your feminine indignation?"
"I'm testing out a new theory. Your friend, Freud, wouldn't know about it."
"You know, Camille, you seem to spend too much time with certain relations of mine. You are beginning to sound entirely too much like them."
"Oh my God, you're right."
"As I am always," he said smugly, beginning to fill her tea kettle with water from the sink. He began opening her cupboards and took out tea and sugar.
"Would you rather I sound like you then?"
"Enlighten me, how exactly do I sound like?" She saw those perceptive eyes slightly narrow.
"Uhh, smart. You sound really smart, Elijah."
"An intelligent call on your part."
"Thank you. I value my life." she said, watching him take out teacups and teaspoons like it was his own home.
She started, "So two questions, what brings you here, and I know for sure it's not the crappy tea I have, and more importantly, how are you not even remotely wet with all the rain?"
He looked down at his suit as if noticing how dry it was for the first time, and then looked out her window with the torrential downpour outside. He motioned to the umbrella he'd placed near her door. "There is such a thing as an umbrella. Need I explain the function of it to you as well?"
She went to the door and placed the umbrella on top of one of her welcome rugs to avoid the drip on her poor wooden floors.
"What the…" she said, studying the 'R' insignia on the handle of the black and silver umbrella. "Oh my God. Is this a Rolls Royce umbrella?" She shook her head in disbelief. "I suppose a car goes with this too?"
"One has to have some sort of protection from the rain when one goes out, I believe."
"You do know most people buy the car for the car, and not for the accessories," she commented, feeling faintly sick at the Mikaelsons and their filthy rich lifestyle.
Meanwhile here she was, living in an apartment where she just saw a roach in the bathroom. Before she could even kill it last night, the blasted thing had scurried off to hide in one of those wedges in the paneling. She mentally shuddered at the recollection and wanted to hit Elijah in the face with his ridiculously overpriced umbrella.
Elijah stated, "The key word is 'most' people. Now that we have established how I have managed to… miraculously stay dry, despite your continuous obsession with irrelevant subjects baffling me, let me tell you why I am here."
"To rub it in my face that you all have money to burn while I have to work as a bartender to pay my rent?"
"I am here to teach you self defense."
"Oh." That made her pause. "Okay. That's good too, I want to learn. I've been thinking about how I want to improve on using the knife." She was getting excited when she remembered something bothering her. "Wait, does… does Klaus know about this? Is he going to pop up somewhere? Because the last time you and I were…"
Surprisingly, Elijah smiled. "I assure you, he is not."
"What makes you say that?" she said dubiously.
"Because with the intent of keeping you out of harm's way and giving you a stronger chance of survival should you ever fall into that way, Niklaus… was the one who adamantly requested I do this."
There was a long silence.
Elijah smirked, not bothering to keep the pleasure off his face as he realized he'd said the one thing that could shut Camille O'Connell up. Finally.
….
He'd been watching her from sometime now, that traitorous human. Traitor to her own kind. He'd seen them vampires come in and out of her apartment like it was a fucking vampire convention in there. Disgusting traitorous human.
He'd watched them all from afar, hell bent on getting revenge on the supernaturals responsible for his sisters' and niece's deaths. And all trails led back to the Original Family, right here in New Orleans. Ever since they came back, it had been nothing but a bloodbath. He was at his wits end on how to ever get them back, how to ever exploit any of their weaknesses, when he saw her.
There she was, behind the counter of the bar, beautiful and young. Full of life and innocence. He didn't know what was it about her that attracted him, maybe it was the earnest way she worked until late at night, or the way she smiled kindly whether it be a young jock or an old man.
But then one of the Mikaelson brothers came and talked to her and the fantasies he'd been entertaining in his head all shattered and quickly turned into rage. She was just like every other human who whored themselves out to vampires. Sick, needy little things looking for a quick high as they got bitten by these blood-suckers. Her neck was free of bites when he last saw, but he never knew with these stupid women nowadays. They had other parts of them bitten. Hidden parts. All whores for the supernaturals, the lot of them.
And she was the biggest one of them all, connected to the brothers that called themselves Niklaus and Elijah. The most powerful supernatural beings in the planet. How laughable they would be keeping such a close eye on a mere human girl and yet not realize how vulnerable she was to the dangers of their enemies. To the likes of him.
Camille O'Connell would rue the day she decided to choose the wrong side.
….
The week that Elijah decided to give her a surprise visit turned out into the longest week for Cami. After his announcement of wanting to train her, he'd ushered her to his place across the river, saying it had more room. She tried not to be annoyed as Elijah escorted her into his spanking new Rolls Royce and wisely kept her mouth shut the whole ride. No complaints or wiseass remarks were going to be heard from her as long as Elijah was seeing to becoming her mentor in self defense.
Training was scheduled every other day at his spacious loft. She once again observed that Elijah did like surrounding himself with things of beauty and luxury. The judo mats that were laid out beside the living room looked out of place with the dark and rich woods that decorated his home away from the compound.
Their first day had started out with basic moves to throw her enemy off balance. She'd been doubtful she could do it at first, but Elijah had shown her how to position her hands and feet to properly distribute her weight to be able to use her body as a lever to throw someone. Amazingly enough, after the first couple of clumsy tries, she'd finally been able to throw Elijah on the floor.
She whooped and was met with a stern look. Or as stern as he could get, lying prone on the floor.
After giving her several more scenarios wherein she'd be grabbed from behind, he demonstrated several variations of throws that should work, no matter how heavy her assailant was.
"The key is to catch them off guard, Camille. You see, absolutely no one expects a human to fight back. Once you catch them off-balance, you have precious extra seconds to make another move to attack, or simply to run off and hide. Of course, we are dealing with supernaturals, the second part is going to be a tad... difficult."
She was nodding in agreement when she felt the strangest sensation on the back of her neck. A slight prickle, as if someone was watching from behind. Very quickly, she turned around to see who it was, fully expecting someone.
There was no one there. She looked at the door to see if it was open, but it remained closed and she didn't hear anyone come in.
Elijah looked at her in annoyance, "If you must insist on wasting your time like this, Camille, you will do well to remember that you are also wasting mine."
"Yes, I'm sorry, I just felt like someone was…" she stopped, feeling self conscious at how stupid she sounded. Elijah had supernatural senses, of course if something was out of place he would have known even before she did.
She put it at the back of her mind and focused intently on what he was saying, resolving not to waste both their time and efforts. By the end of the second hour of practice, she was beyond exhausted. Her limbs felt like jelly and she had sweated disgustingly through her workout clothes. Elijah, of course, hadn't even broken into a sweat and looked like he was on a shoot for a men's fitness magazine, calmly drinking from a water bottle.
"Do I get some water too or is that just for you?"
"I suppose you deserve some," he said, handing her an extra one. "You did the best you could do today with your weak human girl limbs."
"Gee, thanks. I'm weeping from your high praise."
"It will take some time for you to get stronger, but now you know some of the basics of throwing, you can catch your assailant off guard, and stab to kill."
She gaped at him, "Ummm, yeah, about that stabbing and killing part…"
"I will, of course, teach you how to properly handle a knife in the coming days. We will practice with a much more suitable one than the one currently in your possession. I would suggest a bigger blade for deeper penetration of the wound, and a bigger hilt for easier twisting once you have buried the blade. It will certainly maximize the damage."
She blanched at his words, not daring to make a sound lest he get more grotesque in his description.
"Right now, Camille, you need to practice what you learned today. Practice it often enough, well enough that they become second nature when you are grabbed from behind or up front."
She nodded. "Thank you, for agreeing to do this."
He stopped moving and looked at her, taken aback by her gratitude. "I'm doing this for myself as well."
"Oh? Does it keep you busy?"
"Why, yes. Teaching a weak human requires a lot of patience. And of course, utmost self-control not to expire from laughter when..." he stopped upon noticing the mutinous look on her face.
"Well, I'm glad I was able to provide some sort of entertainment for you at least, Elijah," she paused, gearing up her ammo. "You seem to be doing a lot better lately. Any reason to that?"
"Hmm, must be your company," he said evasively.
She raised her brows. "Me? Oh no, must be a certain new dark-haired woman that must be doing wonders for your mood."
Gotcha.
He looked at her so intently, she was shocked her face didn't burn off.
She'd gone to the bathroom earlier and noticed long strands of dark brown hair on the floor. She knew they weren't Hayley's because Hayley's was a shade lighter than that. She wouldn't tell Elijah how she knew. Let him wonder what she knew and how she knew it.
She stared triumphantly at the straight face he was trying hard to keep, and smiled sweetly. "You have a thing for brunettes? Anyone I know?"
He crossed his arms and considered her for a second, before finally conceding to reveal something to her. Elijah already knew perfectly well she'd conclude, and conclude wrongly. Better it come from him.
"She is someone who has given me… a fresh perspective on things. Let's just leave it at that. I do not want to preempt something that is still ambiguous to me as well."
She raised her hands, "Fine, fine, I'm not prying. I'm just happy to see whatever you're doing right now is working. You look much better, you sound much better."
"If this is your way of charming me, you must know…"
"You're going to say something really insulting right now, aren't you?"
"It is brunettes I do have a thing for," he said, shrugging.
"Right. That's what I thought."
"Niklaus, in the meantime, try as I may to understand his particular preferences…"
Her ears picked up at the mention of Klaus' name.
"...has always had a thing for blondes," Elijah finished, giving her very blonde hair a pointed look.
Few words were exchanged after that.
….
Elijah Mikaelson had gone back to the compound the next night for the sole purpose of delivering a lecture. He finally spotted his brother staring out his balcony, viewing his own corner of the French Quarter.
"Elijah," he said, acknowledging his brother's presence without turning around.
"Niklaus, need I remind you of what we talked about regarding your request for me to train Camille? If you are not going to fulfill your end of the bargain, we might as well forget this plan of yours. If you wanted to see to her training yourself, then you should have told me so in the first place."
Niklaus gave him a hard look. "Will you look after Hope then? Will you manage the wolves? Will you be able to look at Hayley and Jackson and keep up with things? Will you manage the witches? The reason you agreed to do this was to be absolved of all of these responsibilities."
Elijah said nothing.
"You are overreacting, as usual, brother. I see no problem with me going to your place to see how you both are faring along. You need not bother yourself with welcoming me, of course. Just keep at what you were doing."
Elijah raised his eyebrows. "How arrogant you are to think she would not be able to sense when you are there. You are a distraction to both of us. I do not understand how you expect her to learn how to protect herself so quickly when every now and then her brows are furrowing and she is looking around trying to figure out if something is out of place. Is she to learn by osmosis?"
His brother had the audacity to smile. "Does she know it's me? She's a clever girl."
Elijah exhaled sharply, losing his patience. "I do not care who she thinks it is. You asked me to give her training and my condition was you stay out of it, otherwise your intention of giving her protection flies right out of the window. You cannot possibly meddle with everything else."
"I do not meddle. I merely check on things. And how dare you accuse me of meddling when that is your role our whole lives!"
"Do you really want to argue about this right now, Niklaus? Because I have one thousand years of history where you were only too good at inserting yourself where you didn't belong…"
"Well that's only from your memory, Elijah, and we both know how unfairly subjective that is."
Elijah paused, just looked at him, refusing to be dragged down to a childish and petty battle. "Niklaus, I am warning you…"
"Your obnoxiously loud voice is going to wake up Hope and she's just finally gone to sleep."
He stared Niklaus down, unwilling to budge by threats of waking up his precious niece.
Klaus rolled his eyes and sighed. "You have my word I won't be visiting again."
"Thank you." Elijah began walking away.
"How is she, by the way?" Klaus called out. "At training."
He turned back and looked his brother in the eye. "Terrible."
And with that, Elijah exited the compound.
….
Her shift at the bar tonight had been something straight from hell. Aside from its usual patrons, Rousseau's was jam-packed with rowdy tourists, including a group of thirty or so males all from the same college football team. It was apparently their last night in New Orleans and the boys were out to have some fun. She could barely keep up with everybody's orders, let alone have time to shield herself from a barrage of terrible pick up lines, drunken propositions and the usual leering a bartender faced.
It also didn't help that her whole body ached from her training. There had been three sessions so far and they had all been, well, brutal. The mere act of raising her arms to pour alcohol into a glass made her wince. She didn't know why she thought she could do this. She put down the heavy pitcher of beer she was filling from the tap and rotated her arms to work out the kinks.
"Does it hurt baby?" one drunk guy said loudly.
Oh great, here we go.
"Let papi make it better," he continued, earning loud cheers and high fives from his jock buddies.
Bruh, I'll make you hurt, bruh, she thought furiously, imagining having a vampire's strength and just flinging the guy as far as she could out of the bar. It was these times when Elijah's colorful words about twisting the knife for maximum damage to an enemy now seemed to make sense.
Finally two am came and it was time to close the bar. She said goodbye to the two other servers that were locking up. She was beyond the point of exhaustion and just wanted to get home. Maybe she should hail a cab instead of walking the ten blocks to her apartment. She did have enough tips for it tonight.
On second thought, after waiting for five minutes for a cab to come by with no such luck, she just decided to walk.
She finally reached her apartment, thankful to be home after the longest day in history. She took a hot shower, put her pajamas on, hit the lights, and was dead asleep in minutes without a thought or a worry.
….
She woke up feeling disoriented, feeling something was out of place. What time was it? She looked at the clock. 4 AM. For some reason her heart was beating fast, as if someone or something had made a loud sound and woken her up. The room was dark, but she felt the hair of her arms all stand up, getting the feeling that she was not entirely alone.
She groped around for her cellphone which she always left under her pillow, careful not to make it light up and alert whoever was with her that she was awake and had a phone in hand.
She heard a soft male titter from across the room. The sound sent chills up her spine. The confirmation that someone was indeed with her while she was sleeping just moments ago made her genuinely afraid for her life.
"Who's there?" she called, unable to keep the fear out of her voice. No answer. She continued to hide her hand and phone under her pillow, hoping to god she was pressing the right buttons.
She felt that whoever was in the room with her certainly had the intent to hurt her, and she needed to get any weapon in her disposal immediately. Her arms quickly reached for the knife she'd kept by her bedside.
"Tut, tut," the stranger finally spoke. "It's not there."
She felt a cold sweat as she fully realized the danger of the situation she was in. He had her knife. He could see what she was doing, while her eyes were still adjusting to the dark.
"What do you want?" she asked in panic, jumping off her bed and going to the side farthest from the voice.
"You don't remember me?"
"No! I don't know you!"
He turned on one of her small lamps, and she could finally see his figure. Baseball cap, tall, medium-build. He was ten feet away from her on the opposite side of the room, trying to close the distance in between them. There was nowhere to go but the door, which was nearer to him, and she tried to make a run for it.
Within a few steps, he lunged for her and tackled her without hesitation. She hit the floor on her back. Hard. She tried to get up but found herself unable to move, feeling the wind knocked out of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walking to her other side, drawing his face closer to hers.
It was a scary thing to experience, to have her assailant's face be that close to hers without being able to do anything. She laid there, frozen with shock and fear.
"Now do you remember me?" he asked, taking off his baseball cap, an insane smile on his face.
She nodded in terror, feeling the tears well up as the pain from falling hit her.
It was Sci-fi Novel guy from the bar.
That nice regular who'd been coming the past couple of weeks, chatting her up when the hours were slow, wanting to know her interests, wanting to know what things she did for fun here in New Orleans. Wanting to know who her friends were and where her family was. She had thought he was harmless and was just bored and making small talk with the local bartender. She should have been more suspicious. Nice guys were never what they seemed.
"Why?" she croaked out. She gave a small effort to move again and found that her arms had unfrozen themselves. Now she focused on trying to take deep breaths to get her breathing back to normal.
"Why? Why? Do you even know who my sisters were?"
She shook her head, feeling the pain in her back as she tried to move her neck.
"Jane Anne and Sophie Devereaux. My two witch sisters. Imagine my shock to hear that not one, but both of them had died. My sweet little niece, Monique, was found dead too. Supernatural causes. I have no choice but to assume it's because of these damn vampires infesting our town like a plague. But then I wouldn't know, would I? They've cast me out from New Orleans, not having any magic in me. I can only come back now that the witch faction has weakened." He looked at her without any emotion. "Despite everything that's happened, despite being cast out by the coven, I loved both of my sisters dearly and I mean to avenge them their deaths. You are the key."
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
She needed to get out of here. She needed to get out of her apartment. She needed to find something to defend herself with when he chased her. Where were her other weapons? Where did she put those damn stars? The other knives? She couldn't think straight. Not while she was breathing like this, almost hyperventilating with fear and taking short little gasps. Her brain couldn't function without oxygen.
Calm down, Cami. Calm down. Keep him talking. He's not a witch, he is human. Just like you.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak slowly. "I still don't understand. Why me? How am I the key?"
He laughed. "Are you distracting me, Camille O'Connell? Very well. I'll explain. At the end of the night you'll be dead anyway, you might as well know why. It is because you are their weakness. I have been observing you for some time now. You are the only unprotected ally they have. You are their only human ally, yet they leave you vulnerable and unprotected. You, who have sold your soul to these fucking vampires, yet they leave you out here to dry! You side with these immoral murderers, these brothers, knowing the damage they've done to us humans. Tell me, what do you get from them, hmm? Are you screwing them both?"
He hovered over her, straddling her, his eyes crazed and excited as he made a move to put his arms around her neck.
"They must be good enough for a whore like you," he said maliciously.
Without thinking, she did the first thing she did out of instinct, she reached out and punched him in the neck with all her might. The way Elijah taught. She felt the immediate shock and ensuing pain in her arms as her fist connected.
His eyes bulged as he choked, momentarily falling to his side. She used that moment to push him off her and crawl out, limping towards the drawer in the living room area where she'd remembered she kept her other weapons. After agonizing moments, she finally reached the drawer, breathing hard, hands frantically groping at the objects in the dark.
Her hands felt around the ninja stars she'd kept stashed in there for safe-keeping. Hurry, hurry, hurry. She was able to grab onto two before she felt a hand land heavily on her shoulder.
She shrieked as he forced her to turn around, a manic expression on his face.
Without further warning, he gave her a hard backhand slap. "That's for punching me, bitch!"
"And this is for betraying our kind," he said, plunging the knife, her missing knife, on her chest.
She stared in shock, barely able to believe she'd just been stabbed.
I got stabbed. I got stabbed. I got stabbed. Am I going to die? Shit, shit. Why can't I feel pain? I got stabbed. Oh my God, I got stabbed. He stabbed me with my own knife. I can't die like this.
I CAN'T DIE LIKE THIS!
Her fingers remained clenched on the unsharpened grooves of the stars, suddenly feeling angry at being stabbed by this useless excuse of a human being with her own knife.
He held her close, undoing his belt, looking deep into her eyes, expecting to see pain, expecting to enjoy every moment of torturing her while she bled to death. "And this is for being a…"
"SHUT! UP!" she screamed at him, a woman gone insane from hysteria, and stabbed the two ancient ninja stars as hard as she could on his neck, burying them both deep into his throat.
There was a moment where it felt as if everything moved in slow motion. His eyes went from her hands, to her eyes, a look of disbelief in them.
Blood spurted from his neck and onto her face. She gagged at the blood that accidentally went into her mouth and fell to the floor, but not before seeing the thousand cuts the curse of the stars had across his whole body.
He fell after her, his whole body crumpling on top of hers.
She barely was aware of Klaus entering her apartment minutes after, effortlessly lifting his body from hers, ripping out his heart out of his chest with an angry cry. Although she was quite sure she'd already killed him previously, and taking out his heart would have ensured he was indeed dead, she didn't blame him at all for violently yanking his head off with brute strength and flinging his lifeless body out of her window either.
She barely registered Klaus pulling out the knife out of her chest and applying pressure on the wound over her chest. Barely registered him biting his own wrist and holding it across her mouth to make her drink his blood.
She only remembered being held tightly after that. Remembered the feeling of being carried away by strong arms as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
"Klaus, you came," she murmured.
He stared so long into her eyes before answering. "No one will harm you now."
She nodded, feeling safe in his arms, and closed her eyes to sleep.
….