Chapter 4: Business at the Loft and the Compound

I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, having had a really bad nightmare during the dead of night. The alarm clock on my nightstand read 7:06 am, and a pale streak of sunlight was just beginning to peek over the horizon and paint its various oranges, lavenders, and reds across the busy waters of the Mississippi. I could hear the distant honking of cargo ships as they communicated in their own kind of language. Sighing, I laid back down and stared up at the ceiling for a good thirty minutes before deciding to get up and head to my bathroom. My hair was everywhere, and it looked as though I had decided to lick a light socket. Shrugging, I selected clothes from my closet and went into the bathroom to shower and wake up. To be honest, I was not at all looking forward to meeting either Elijah (whom I normally get my information from, unless he is impaired or away) or Marcel with a man who, to them, is the equivalent to having a serial killer standing at my shoulder, probably ready to gank us the first chance he has. At this thought though, I stopped; Mikael did not know I was a vampire. Did he have an inkling of suspicion? If he did, he certainly is the master at masking what he is thinking. Which further adds to my fears, but hey, aren't most of us afraid of something?

When I stepped out after a few minutes, there was an abrupt knock on my bedroom door.

"Who is it?" I called out.

"It's just Haniel," came the reply. "Balthazar just wanted to see you whenever you get done. Anywho, I'm off to some business down near the graveyard to get a report for my superiors. See you later, darling!"

I heard a whoosh, which meant that she had gone to her location instantly. Pulling on my clothes, I opened the door and headed down the hallway to Balthazar's study. As soon as I had put my hand up to knock, Balthazar opened the door and motioned, rather urgently, for me to come in. "Have a seat, my dear," he stated in a soft voice. I complied with a bit of reluctance, as it was not normal for him to be so urgent.

Taking a seat across from me, he laid out an item, wrapped in cloth, on the dark oak desk. "I have been given clearance from Michael himself to let you take this as you go and interrogate Elijah and Marcel. God only knows how they will be with him around." Carefully, he unfolded the white and gold cloth to reveal a slender knife, with a long blade and a silver handle. I stared at it incredulously for what seemed like forever. "Is this…"

"An angel blade? Yes, that it is." He looked at me with a smile on his face. "I believe I trust you enough to let you handle one of these if there were to come danger. Although," he paused for a little bit of dramatic effect, "you do have the bullets, which are made from angel blades, but since I expect you want to appear more diplomatic and not be toting around a Desert Eagle, I figured this blade would suit you just fine."

I looked up at him, with disbelief still apparent in my eyes, before rushing over and hugging him tightly, much to his surprise. "Thank you, Balthazar." His arms wrapped around me as he returned the hug, the scent of sea salt, sunbake, and a million other scents flooding my nostrils, and the feeling of his firm chest soothed me. The slight smell of pepper did make me sneeze, which interrupted the moment.

"Bless you!" he laughed. "Right. Are you going to be wearing a jacket or anything of that sort?"

"Yes, I am going to be wearing the yellow and black Hufflepuff hoodie."

"Oh boy, you sure?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, magic is not exactly held in the best light right now…"

I raised one of my eyebrows. "Harry Potter's magic is fictional, and is not the kind of dark magic the witches in the graveyard-"

His icy blue eyes twinkled, and he started laughing. "Ah, my dear, I was just jesting. Right, you will want to hold the knife in your sleeve in a way to where the end of it is cupped in your palm. It may prove to be a pain in the rear, but I think you will be able to handle it."

Rolling my eyes, I turned to go back to my room, and was met with one of the power angel guards standing at the door. "Balthazar, sir, Mikael says he is ready and waiting to go." He turned to me and gave me a sympathetic look.

"Tell him to wait in the garage, and show him where it is, please," Balthazar ordered. Once the guard had gone to carry out the order, he turned back to me. "Well, may God be with you, my dear." He gave me a kiss on my forehead, and with that I turned and headed out to face...well, whatever I may face.

But more importantly, I needed my Hufflepuff hoodie.

Mikael was pacing around the area of the garage before he noticed me making my entrance. "About time, too!" he huffed when I came in.

"What, you think I'm jumping for joy about having you around? Shut your piehole, bucko, and get in the car," I snarled. I was not about to let this dirtbag intimidate me, especially not when the stakes at hand had been raised; unlocking the driver's side door, I slid into my Trans-Am and cranked the engine. Mikael hesitated for a moment before getting into the passenger's seat. We shared a long and cold glance with one another before I turned my attention to the driveway, and promptly drove off.

The ride there was mostly silent. That is pretty much it.

First stop was the Mikaelson compound, and from what I have gathered from spying on the family (and from learning just the general history about the area), the compound was actually known as a place called The Abattoir, and it used to be owned by the Mikaelsons until they had fled the city under mysterious circumstances (I say mysterious because I did not come to know them until about the early 2000s, which was also the same time I was assigned to keep track of their movements). Marcel, the man I was going to see later, had apparently taken hold of it after the family had fled, and used it as a sort of meeting place for a purpose I have yet to know. Thankfully, the street outside the large brick house was mostly silent, save for the occasional passerby. I pulled around into one of the parking slots to the side of the house, and promptly cut the engine, but before I got out, I turned to Mikael and stated, "You can stay in the car, if you want. I don't exactly think Elijah or any of 'em will be exactly glad to see you."

"I'm not afraid of them, girl-" he started.

"And you think I don't know that? I do not think I want to stand on the end of the angels' anger if you get killed by them; they find you too valuable for this investigation," I hissed. "And it may do you good to use my name, Mikael. Not too many people are fond of being called by their gender over their given name."

He looked at me with a hint of shock in his eyes, but mostly annoyance and anger. "I will stand my ground if they do attack, Abira," he snapped back, using my name in a sarcastic manner. "Do any of them know you work with the angels?"

My anger cooled off a little bit, and I shook my head. "No; they never realized I was spying on them. I made an acquaintance of Elijah and Klaus by claiming I'd heard of them from a friend."

"Well, that may not exactly be good for our advantage. If they knew you were working with the angels, it would be easier to get information because they will be too frightened of the angels to resist giving you the needed information."

"I can't just give out who I work with willy nilly, especially not to them. There is a reason I do not get involved in too many things around here; hear me when I say I have enemies everywhere, very powerful enemies. Enemies that make you look about as threatening as an angry Chihuahua."

Mikael frowned at this. "I'm still going in. If anything, they will be too intimidated by me to resist."

I took this to consideration. For a you know what, he does have a good sense of how folks work; plus, this would probably be an even better idea. "That's actually a good idea." With that, we both got out of the car, and I moved to the trunk. "But just in case, you may want a weapon on you that could delay an attack." He came around to the trunk, and when I opened it, his eyes grew wide.

"How in the-" he sputtered, leaning in to take a closer look. "What are you preparing for, the end of the world?"

I chuckled at this frightening vampire's reaction. "No, these are for my- erm- job. Don't worry, they aren't illegal."

He continued to stare, so I reached in and selected a small Baretta 93R pistol, examining it. "You have shot guns before, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have. I was a police chief in Chicago back..well, a long time ago."

"Huh." I handed him the pistol. "Baretta 93R. Excellent pistols, very lightweight. Automatic rounds. Stopped producing 'em back in '93. I would keep it concealed if I were you."

After closing the trunk, we made our way to where the front entrance was, and I knocked on the door. Nobody came for about 5 minutes, but then we heard footsteps and a dark-haired woman answered it. She looked at me with vague curiosity and maybe with a hint of haughtiness before her eyes shifted to Mikael. Horror overtook her features and her green eyes shifted from him back to me in a frantic manner. "Uh...who are you?"

I smiled. "I'm Abira Lee; I'm an acquaintance of Niklaus and Elijah. Is Elijah home?"

She continued to look between Mikael and I. "Elijah is a bit...ill, at the moment, but I can get Klaus. I'm Hayley, by the way. Come in."

"Nice to meet you, Hayley." I moved past her into the ginormous bottom floor, and Mikael drew up beside me. As she went to go find Klaus, Mikael hissed, "She beat me up one time, and she was heavily pregnant when doing so. Tough and a bit of a snob, to put it lightly."

"When she was pregnant? There's no way- human women can hardly stand up when they become heavily pregnant." I shook my head. "Hybrid pregnancies must be weird to the extreme."

"They're actually not supposed to happen. Now werewolves can become pregnant, and Hayley was one, but then she and Niklaus had relations and then she was pregnant. The issue is that Niklaus is half-vampire, and vampires are sterile."

"Ah."

Within the minute, Niklaus came down the stairs. "I was told I had visitors." He stopped suddenly at the last step, and, like Hayley, developed a look of horror and disbelief over his features. "Mikael."

Mikael's features shifted as well- his eyes became icier than ever, and he developed the creepiest grin I had ever seen. "Hello boy."

Klaus turned to me, a kind of horrified anger spreading across his features. "And what business do you have bringing him here, Abira? I know we do not exactly like each other that much, but I never expected you would want to kill me."

"We are not here to kill you, Klaus. He is here with me on research business," I replied calmly.

Niklaus looked at me skeptically. "Are you friends with him?"

"No, not in the least," Mikael answered this time. "Rather, we are...cooperatives." He shared a glance with me, to which I shrugged. Sounded about right.

"We will not be long. I just have some questions," I piped in. When Klaus did not object, I inquired, "Have you heard of any odd supernatural happenings around New Orleans?"

He thought for a moment, then replied, "Other than what is going on with my brother, I have heard that there were some mysterious bites occurring around the bayou and near the cemetery."

"Can you recognize the bite patterns?" Mikael inquired.

Klaus gave him a withering glance before replying, "I have only seen one of the bodies, back when I was down by the bayou with Hayley trying to talk some sense into her people, and I only saw it for a flicker of a second. But from what I could tell, it was unmistakably that of a hybrid."

"Had you seen that body before, but alive?"

"No. Why, do you think I am responsible for these bites?" He spat the last question.

"You are a suspect in this," Mikael snapped.

"I can safely assure you that I am not responsible for these bites. I do not completely drain the bodies I feed upon."

I scoffed silently at this.

"Now what about Hayley?"

"What about her?"

"Could she be responsible for these bites?" Mikael clarified icily.

Klaus paused for a moment before he turned around and proceeded to yell, "HAYLEY!"

Good Lord, he has the lungs of a whale, I thought.

Hayley appeared at the top of the steps. "You do realize that you don't have to shout, right?"

"Abira has something to ask you."

Hayley focused on me with a gaze that told me she was both bored and apathetic, but she listened anyway.

"Are you aware of the bites occurring around New Orleans, especially around the cemetery and in the bayou?"

She blinked blankly for a moment, then she began thinking. "I have. Bite on the side of the neck, blood drained?"

"Precisely. Now, have you been around either the bayou or in the cemetery any time recently?"

"Other than going with Klaus to see my people and to visit a place near the bayou, no."

I nodded. "Good. That is all we needed. Thank you." Just as Mikael and I turned to leave, Klaus shouted, "Wait!"

This I had a feeling about. Upon turning, we both faced Klaus coming up to us. "Last I saw you, Mikael, we had you cornered in the warehouse."

"Yes, being surrounded by a pack of fools, women, and children you force to fight your battles," Mikael replied, his last word embedded with a sneer.

"How odd I find it that just as I delivered that great last line, with my comrades behind me, there came a blinding light and loud bang. Then the room began to smell suspiciously of tear gas, and once it cleared, you were gone." He looked at me now, suspicion filling his gaze.

And I thought Mikael's gaze was scary. I shifted the angel blade in my hand a small bit.

Mikael stepped in front of me and flashed Niklaus the best fake confused look I had ever seen in years. "Really? I don't remember that. Perhaps your delusional mind was making things up. Anyhow, there is one more thing we need; is Marcel around?"

"He should be at his loft across the river."

"Excellent. Bye!" I piped up, scurrying through the door after Mikael.

Mikael placed the gun back in the trunk, and closed it before he came to the passenger side of the car. He remained silent for a few moments, during which I took the liberty to ask, "Why did you lie back there?"

"Hm?"

"You pretended as though you did not remember me rescuing you. Why?"

"The angels find you valuable too, do they not? I don't want them becoming angry at me either." He sighed. "Plus, I did not want to satisfy Klaus with the truth; he isn't worth that."

I was shocked, to say the least. "Thank you, I guess?"

He nodded, and with that, I started the engine and drove away.