AN: Hey everyone! Sorry its ben so long since the last update life has been pretty hectic (Not an excuse I know.. L..) Am going to Australia in the new year for a year so trying to get things organised with that and my laptop officially broke taking all of my previous chapters and this chapter when it was in progress with it…. LSad times.. Back up your files people I learnt the hard way…But the good news is that I got a new laptop…finally…early Christmas present so yay and was able to finish the chapter and start on the next already. JThank you to all who are still reading and reviewing/favouriting/following. You don't know how much it means to me..:) Hope you like..
Paris, France
1864
The sky was dark, dotted throughout with bright stars and a crescent moon at its apex. It was early in the night, only about seven or eight yet the streets below seemed eerily quiet. News of brutal murders on the streets of Paris had spread like wild fire and now the residents had opted to stay inside when night fell, feeling safer within the confines of their own houses. A candle illuminated the window of one desolate apartment on the top floor of a lonely detached house on the end of Rue de Vousir making the girl who gazed out of it look like a silhouette to any of those that peered out of their own windows. Her long dark hair flowed down her back as she tilted her head upwards to look at the moon above them. Her eyes were glazed over, like she thought of something else while looking upon the scene in the night sky.
A noise from behind her, a door opening and then closing again made the glaze disappear but she did not turn and look. She had begun to see dots in her vision now, those only one sees whilst gazing at something bright for a long period of time.
"Natalie come away from the window" the male voice said walking over to her briskly and forcible pulling her away knowing full well that she would not obey his orders. She stood still watching cautiously as he pulled the shutters closed and peeked out a small crack in the left one.
Natalie tilted her head to one side and analysed her brother.
"You're scared" she concluded her voice airy and vague.
Noah looked to his sister crease lines framing his eyes and face.
"I have explained this to you already Natalie, he is coming and we must hide. We cannot fight one so powerful".
"He will come no matter if we hide or not" she replied sitting casual down on the sofa by the window not looking at all alarmed at her brothers fear.
Noah looked to her and this time it was he who studied her.
"What have you seen sister?" he asked he too moving away from the window and taking to the seat beside Natalie.
She smiled all-knowingly and tapped her temple with her index finger.
"He comes because I know where she is"
Noah shook his head.
"No sister, he comes because he thinks you know where she is, just like he thought our mother did and her mother before her"
Natalie smiled.
"But she lives now, and I can find her" she said smiling.
Noah studied her worryingly looking to see any flaw in her abnormal demeanour. His twin sister was born a little strange; she was airy, carefree but a very powerful witch and seer. The seer she had inherited from their maternal line, a talent a very powerful vampire required use of. So he came, time after time and generation after generation looking for someone he lost long ago and when he didn't hear the news he wanted he would kill the seer and return twenty or twenty-five years later to pray on the next generation of Delacroix's. This time his sister seemed to be sensing something his mother or the generations before did not. The location of this very important person.
"Are you certain?" Noah asked "Where, where is she? Who is she?"
Natalie stood very suddenly making Noah have to move backwards in his position as to not be elbowed in the face.
"There's no time" she said diverting her gaze to the door "He is coming".
Noah's eyes shot to the door and after a second or two he was back in a defence mode.
"Go" he said moving to the table where a gun sat dismantled "Hide, in the place where we decided before, remember?".
He went to work reassembling the shot gun not realising that Natalie had not moved from her position.
"No more running" she said taking up a stance in front of the door, awaiting someone to enter it "I have what he needs".
Noah loaded the shot gun with a special kind of wooden bullets and moved to his sister.
"We do not know what he will do to us once he gets what he needs Natalie"
"But we know what he will do to us if he doesn't "
He looked at her deeply, severely, trying to probe her mind to discover whether this moment was one of the few minutes of sanity she spoke each day. Chance told him it wasn't, that after all of the years running that this was the moment that his sister had become his savour but searching her eyes told him different. He believed her to be speaking truth, and she wasn't good at masking deception.
"Very well then" he said his voice echoing her voice of calmness. He pulled away from her and went back to the many tools and weapons he now had streamed across the table, he made sure to glance each of them before picking up his targeted choice. Standing directly in front of her he handed her the wooden stake.
She looked at it, then at him oddly before speaking.
"Noah those stakes don't work on them and you know it" she said with a slight smile at her brother's foolish notion.
Noah shook his head still holding out the sharply wielded weapon to the brunette girl.
"It's not for him"
Before she could question he continued.
"I will not be like one of them, I cannot live as them. When the time comes….if the time comes you will do what is right over what is easy?"
He looked at her, brown eyes meeting blue, his pleading.
She smiled and took the wooden object from her brother.
"Only if you promise to do the same"
Noah nodded.
"I will"
"Very good then" she said with a melodic tone as she skipped happily to the shuttered window. She stared out again through the crack ignoring her brother's previous warning of staying hidden. He let her be and began hiding weapons in various locations of the room. If there was to be a fight he was going to be ready.
"I have a good feeling this time" Natalie said as her brother hid a stake in the unlit fireplace and a dagger behind a cushion on the sofa.
"Yes well when it comes to any of the Mikaelson's, good feelings is not what I tend to have".
"But I sometimes feel sorry for Kol" Natalie began and Noah almost had to steady himself in shock "I mean he lost the love of his life and was cursed to live forever with only the memory of her. I mean it's romantic" Natalie all but swooned at the window sill.
Noah scoffed.
"Nat he has killed generations of our family looking for her, he will stop at nothing until he finds her including if that means maiming, torturing or murdering. Not romantic at all if you ask me"
"You don't know what it's like" Natalie argued. Noah didn't know what to say, this man had killed their mother, grandparents and generations before that and his sister was defending him.
"Neither do you" he countered getting a tad angry at her.
"Yes I do" she spoke this time looking directly at him. "Every time we're near him or I am in the presence of him I feel it. His pain, his anguish, his torment. It is not like anything I have every felt before myself. As a human I don't think it's possible to feel such emotion"
"That does not excuse what he has done; many people have lost those they love, including us because of him".
Natalie looked ashamed and fell in on herself.
"I only say it brother because I am feeling it now" she said a little meekly.
"You mean he..?" Noah began.
"Is close" a voice said from the doorway.
They turned in shock to see him there. The handsome, arrogant, slightly psychotic cold blooded murderous vampire, Kol Mikaelson.
"Very close in fact" he said with a smirk.
Noah pulled his sister close with one hand while gripping the shotgun with the other.
"Now Mr Delacroix there is no need for that, it is only a simple question that I must ask you, or is it your sister here that has the gift?"
"You stay away from her" Noah said with more strength in his voice than he felt "Now if I'm right you can't enter here without us inviting you in, so we seem to be at a bit of a stalemate".
Kol seemed unaffected by the question and just leant on the doorframe with his arms folded the smile unfaltering from his structured face.
"Well look at you trying to negotiate for your lives, your grandparents could have learned a thing or two from you" he paused looking amused at the two sibling's ashen faces.
Noah unconsciously pulled Natalie back further from the door hiding her behind him slightly.
Kol narrowed his eyes.
"Based on your brother's behaviour darling, I'm assuming it is you who I am looking for?"
Natalie looked out from behind her brother. Her demeanour was fearful but her eyes showed that she was determined. Determined to stop the torment of her family once and for all.
"I have the information you need" she said in a voice slightly louder than a whisper.
Kol's smirk vanished.
"Come again?" he asked disbelieving what he had just heard.
"Natalie" Noah warned shooting her a look over his shoulder.
"It needs to be over Noah" she said with strength and consoled him by touching her hand to her shoulder "I can do this" she whispered.
"I've seen her" she spoke this time directing her voice to Kol. "I've seen who she was and who she is now. She does not look any different but she is different" she stopped to think of what to say. Kol's face was a mixture of pain, hope and interest. He stayed glued to his position leaning on the doorframe listening to any and all information that the female Delacroix could give him.
"She knows not of whom she is or what she can do, her past has been erased from her mind" she spoke all of this as if she were reading it from an invisible document from inside her head.
"She doesn't remember me, does she?" Kol asked finding it hard to keep the dejected disappointment from his face.
"No" Natalie said without restraint. She was in her mind now, reading whatever information of the matter resided there "But she dreams of you, of the past. She thinks they are makings of her own mind but she finds comfort in them".
Kol stood up straighter and went to enter the apartment, forgetting himself that he was magically barred from the residence without invitation.
Noah cocked the wooden bullet gun and aimed it towards the open door. Natalie lay her hand upon his outstretched hand in an effort to calm his nervous brash behaviour.
"Where is she?" Kol asked his eyes burning from his position at the door.
Noah shot Natalie a warning look, pleading with her to not tell Kol everything, to leave something in their arsenal to barter with.
Even Natalie, in her less than sane state of mind knew that what she was about to do was more than risky but she had to, she wanted it over with and this was her chance.
"If I tell you" she began her voice a lot louder and stronger than Noah had heard it in a while "Then you must promise that no harm shall come to my brother and me".
Noah looked to his sister, his emotion shining through to her through his eyes. Ever since their parents had been killed by Kol when he was just a boy he knew that this was the moment to where his life had been leading to. It was either going to end right here and now or finally begin.
Kol looked to be contemplating the offer but after a few moments resolved back to the first and ultimate question.
"Tell me where she is?" he asked his tone calm and his mannerisms irritatingly cocky.
"Promise me" Natalie enforced.
"Very well, very well" Kol scoffed as if the Delacroix's negotiating for their lives was getting in the way of Natalie answering his question.
Somewhat happy with the response she received she closed her eyes and concentrated.
Seeing wasn't an exact magic. Seers couldn't decide or choose what they were going to foretell. Some were not even powerful enough to decipher the meanings of the signs and symbols that were sent to them. Natalie however had displayed an extreme affinity to the magics, so much so that she seemed to live on the logic of them rather than on the logic and understanding of everyday life. She was now trying to conjure up that exact scene she had foreseen in her mind's eye just days ago. The scene that generations of Delacroix's before her had prayed to see, for it may have saved their lives. She stood there, eyes closed, face tranquil and body still for minute after minute and Noah could see Kol get more and more impatient. Kol went from leaning on the door frame to almost having his body pressed on the invisible barrier that prevented him from entering the room.
"Well?" he yelled at Noah after another minute had passed.
Noah held up his hands in a calming gesture to try and sooth the angered Kol.
"It just takes her a few minutes, that's all" Noah defended eyes not leaving Natalie's transfixed form. He watched her eyes move under her eye-lids, darting from side to side as if flickering from one image to another.
"I have it" Natalie finally said a slight air of victory in her voice, Kol perked up.
She opened her eyes and took a moment to look at her brother before moving closer to the doorway.
"Nat" her brother warned as she got into arms- length of the doorframe.
Natalie didn't respond but did stop moving.
"She is at the place where you last knew her Mr Mikaelson" she stopped and tilted her head to one side as if a flow of information was still trying to reach her "She is no longer of the Shepherd's but is now belonging to the name Salvatore".
Kol smiled both with relief and genuine happiness.
"Very good darling" he smirked before backing away from the door. Noah and Natalie could both be seen taking a visible sigh of relief.
"Take them" Kol said as suddenly two large burly men came out of nowhere and walked straight into the room. Apparently having no trouble with the barrier. Natalie shrieked in terror as one grabbed her by the arms. Noah went to fire his gun but had it knocked out of his hand at the last minute making the wooden bullet embed itself into the wall by the doorway. The second man soon overcame him and was dragging him out behind his sister.
"Tut, tut Mr Delacroix" Kol said condescendingly "You wouldn't want to hurt two innocently compelled men now would you?"
Noah hesitated a moment but looked very much like he would hurt two innocent men, if he could.
"You promised you wouldn't hurt us" Natalie argued as she struggled in the first man's grip.
"That I did" Kol said in the same tone as before "And I won't, not if your information is correct. But how am I to know that from the streets of Paris? We will go there, once I determine you are right, once I find her and if you both do nothing of sorts to vex me on the trip there then I shall let you both go"
"And if she's wrong?" Noah asked.
"Well then let's just say I'll have you two to take out my disappointment on"
"I'm not wrong" Natalie defended glaring at her brother accusingly.
"You expect us to follow you trustingly Mr Mikaelson? You cannot compel us to do your bidding as you did these two, we know of a little thing called Vervain" he said indicating to the two men. Kol casually walked up to the male Delacroix and twisted his arm back, the same arm he was using moments ago to hold the gun making it make a sickening crack. Noah screamed out in pain as Natalie watched on in horror.
"I also find that pain is a good motivator Mr Delacroix, don't you agree?" Kol sneered before taking the lead down the hall.
Noah scowled but could do nothing else. Both Natalie and Noah, both subdued by men more than twice their size had no choice but to follow him.
So what do you all think? I know there was no Kara in that chap but yay Kol! And we are out of the prologue territory now and in 1864 so I feel like the story can properly begin! JLike I've said before if you have any ideas or comments let me know, I would be so happy to know whether you are liking the story or if it's going the way you want or not. I promise the next chapter won't be as long a wait, I already have it started JThanks again! xxxxxx