Fairytale Ending
by adlyb
Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
Summary: Klaus takes his girl and his hybrid and gets out of that one pony town.
Spoilers: Through 3x05, The Reckoning
Rating: R
Warnings: Suicidal ideation/hostage situation/explicit violence/gratuitous angst/dubious consent
The Abattoir presides over the corner of Royal and Dumaine, where it has stood since the Second Great Fire of New Orleans. Elena and Klaus had paused there together once, in those crystal sunshine mornings before she realized what he had been doing to her mind.
The name had evoked a certain mystique, she had thought when he first spoke it to her, an echo of an old world haunting, the perfect name for Klaus's abode.
She is every bit gratified, then, by her first glimpse of the hazy, candlelit gloom of the interior, saturated with clinging shadows, ripe with the soft clinking of crystal glasses and the susurrations of filmy dresses and the low, murmuring seductions unfolding just out of sight.
Marcel himself opens the door for them.
Klaus pauses at her side. "Marcellus."
Marcel takes them both in, smiling broadly. There's a predatory beauty to him standing there, so unearthly still, in a dark crisp jacket. His eyes rake over Elena before he resettles his attention on Klaus. There's something about that brilliant smile and those glittering black eyes of his, that devil-may-care joie de vivre combined with that sense of steady and inevitable purpose in him, that sets her heart hammering.
Klaus puts a proprietary hand on Elena's arm. "Allow me the pleasure of introducing you to my companion for the evening, a Miss Elena Gilbert."
With perfect poise, Elena extends her hand to Marcel, delicately arching her wrist so that the fragile bones show to their best advantage. It's important to emphasize her mortality, to remind that she's just a little human girl and cannot possibly do anything of any consequence. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the corners of Klaus's mouth tip up. He likes that she's playing along in his little game, has an eye for and an appreciation of the little details that comprise a truly good ruse.
Perhaps it is why he cannot let her alone.
Marcel takes her hand like a gentleman and kisses the back of it, a debonair gesture seemingly instinctual to all vampires. At least, to all the ones she has met so far.
"A pleasure," he tells her, a pleasantry as empty as any other. He fixes his gaze back on Klaus, dismissing the little human amusement Klaus has brought with him, and steps back, so that Elena can finally see into the building. "Welcome to my home."
Klaus propels her inside, to a courtyard with a glass ceiling. Vines creep over the walls and glass, and trellises obscure the faces of revelers gazing down on them from the room's many balconies.
The guests themselves fill the room to bursting, a spectacle of bejeweled masks offering only tantalizing glimpses of beautiful faces, glittering fabric revealing provocative hints of the graceful limbs beneath them. She sees vampires she vaguely recognizes from Marcel's faction, mingling with their human companions, and double that number of vampires she's never seen before in her life.
Every head turns to watch them as they pass by.
There are entire tables of champagne, and other things, things Elena has never tried before. Beautiful tall women with empty expressions weave through the crowd, carrying samples of everything to each and every guest. When one of them offers Elena a small pouch of powder, Klaus waves the attendant off. She ghosts away into the crowd, and Elena does not see her again.
There's a live jazz band playing near a bubbling fountain, and Klaus uses the excuse of a dance to pull her close. It's a slow, meandering dance he pulls her into, something beautiful and seductive with the pale silver glow of the rising full solstice moon filtering in from above. She loops her arms around his neck and he presses his hands to her hips. His lips move against the sensitive flesh just under her ear. "You'll want to search my old rooms upstairs. Take the servants' stairs around the back. Second floor, take the first two rights and then it's the third door on the left." This close to each other, the jazz band blocks out any chance of someone overhearing their conversation. His lips on her skin guarantee no one will read them.
Revulsion twists her gut. It's equal parts an icy, clear rage toward her dance partner and a clammy disgust with herself that makes her shiver. She forces herself to press closer to him, and doesn't think too long on the way her body molds to his.
Elena tips her face up to his, so close that anyone looking would think she was begging for a kiss. A couple of days ago, she would have been. "What if those are no longer your rooms? What if he's changed something?"
"He won't have." He leans down and rests his chin over her shoulder. His fingers trail in her hair as he looks out over the crowd. "I'll keep everyone distracted down here. You go, and find my diamond."
He steps back, and pushes her toward the stairs he had mentioned.
She glances behind her, once, in time to see Klaus grab hold of one of Marcel's hanger-ons.
With luck, she won't see him again.
At least, not for a while.
There's a plan half-formed in the back of her mind.
Get through the spell, and Klaus will be bound again, cursed.
Weaker.
Weak enough to kill, maybe.
Tonight, when it's over, she's going to escape, she's going to save Stefan and Tyler, and she's going to find a way to take him down once and for all.
I'm going home, she thinks, and feels entirely like herself for the first time in ages.
She's in the hall outside Klaus's old suite of rooms, skirts held carefully in her hand so she won't trip, when someone grabs her arm and spins her around.
"You actually got him to bring you. I'm impressed," Marcel tells her. He lets her go and looks her up and down. "You look sharp."
Elena takes a step back and smooths the skirt of her dress. She straightens her shoulders. "I was wondering when you'd find me."
"What are you doing up here, anyway? I thought I'd have to pry Klaus off of you."
"Do we have to complete the ritual by a certain time? Like, when the moon reaches its apex or something?" She glances at the delicate face of her watch.
Marcel nods. "Right. Follow me."
He guides her back toward a set of servants' stairs on the other end of the hall from the ones she used before, and then they climb up, up, until they are in the dormered top rooms of the Abattoir, which follow like a maze until they reach a candle-lit room with a clear oval skylight.
Standing in the center of that room is a girl, a little younger than herself, maybe, although, it can be hard to tell. Everyone seems younger than her these days.
The girl crosses her arms. Her oversized sweater slips off her shoulder. She is, Elena realizes, holding an enormous knife. "Marcel...? Is this…?" The girl trails off.
Marcel smiles and pulls Elena toward where the girl is standing. There's an open grimoire behind her. "Davina, I want you to meet Elena. Elena, this is Davina, witch extraordinaire."
Davina shifts from foot to foot. I have a witch, Marcel had said. A strong one.
At this moment, with everything riding on this, Davina seems like a thin hope to place everything on.
Once, she thinks, Bonnie had seemed like less.
"Marcel thinks we can trust you," the other girl calls out. "Prove it. Prove you're not trying to trick us."
"I'm not here to prove anything to anyone. I'm here to take Klaus down."
Davina stares at her, skepticism writ large on her face. She locks eyes with Marcel, and makes a little motion, a little can we talk? tip of the chin. He starts over to her, and just like that, Elena can see this all falling apart around her. They'll waste time, and the moon will get too high and there won't be enough celestial energy to draw upon, or Klaus will wonder where she is and break them up before they can finish the spell, or they'll use her instead of letting her help, and she's not going to let that happen, she never wants to let that happen again.
"Please," she calls out. Marcel pauses, and turns back to her, but Elena doesn't take her eyes off of Davina. "It's the only way I have to protect my family from them. He's already killed my aunt, and my—my father gave his life to save me from him last year. I don't have much family left." She clenches her fists. "That's what you want, right? To protect your family from him?" Slowly, deliberately, Elena unfurls her fingers and holds out her hand. "So let me help you."
There's a long pause, while she waits for her words to settle the issue one way or another. She can hear her blood rushing in her ears.
Davina looks up at Marcel, first. Their gazes remain locked on each other for a long moment, as they work through some silent argument, until, finally, he smiles at her. It's not at all the smile he's been offering Elena, Klaus, Agnes, everyone else. This smile is sweet, and private, the smile that maybe he only has for Davina, and she can see, suddenly, when he chucks Davina under the chin, that she had read them right when she called them family.
The gesture strikes something in Davina, something that makes her square her shoulders and cross the room. She grasps her hand.
The fierce smile Elena feels spreading across her face is not a lovely one, but it is a genuine one. "I hear we're going to re-bind a hybrid together." Her voice is low and ringing with conviction.
A light sparks in the other girl's eyes. "Damn straight, we are."
"So how does this work, exactly?" Elena asks as she draws closer to Davina's work table. It's just the two of them now, Marcel having returned to the party lest his absence draw any unwanted attention.
There's a circle drawn in chalk on the floor, directly beneath the skylight, and a heavy marble bowl sits next to a pile of pale and shimmering milk-white and pale pink crystals on the table. Beside those, a little crystal phial holds some kind of viscous liquid, stoppered with a gleaming piece of gold. The witch carefully sets the knife on the edge of the bowl's thick rim before she answers.
"You're going to have to trust me, because I'm going to need your blood. I think it'll hurt. A lot."
Elena shrugs. "I'm used to that. What else?"
Davina takes a deep breath. "The curse isn't a Claire spell, or even one from my coven, so I've had to do a lot of work trying to figure out how to reverse engineer it based on what Marcel's told me about how the sacrifice was supposed to work. Do… do you want to talk about it, maybe? Walk me through what happened?" She fidgets with her hair, plucks at the sleeves of her sweater. "In case I'm missing any details, I mean. Something important that could screw up the spell."
She's never had to talk about the sacrifice before. Everyone has always already known.
And yet, also… No one has ever asked her.
So she tells her. Talks her through the basics, the moonstone and the rings of fire and the dual werewolf and vampire sacrifices. How Klaus tricked and turned Jenna just to spite her, even though she'd already agreed to go along with everything, how he made her watch while he murdered her. How John had used that spell to save her life, and she had had nothing left at the end except another black dress and another double funeral, and everything was so hazy and fast afterward, and before she knew it even that too quiet summer was over. Everything was over.
Tentatively, Davina touches her wrist. "We're the same. Sacrifices who didn't go gently."
Elena feels a sudden, savage kinship with this other girl. Even if she didn't have her own reasons for doing this, she knows that she would, just to keep Klaus from using her in his schemes.
"I heard. About the Harvest."
"Then you know why I'm here. I won't let anyone hurt Marcel. He's my real family." She turns back to her work table, taps her fingers against the rough wood surface. "It's not just Klaus, you know. I wouldn't be surprised if the coven showed itself tonight. They've been more active than usual lately."
"So then what are we waiting for? Let's give them hell."
Davina explains the full spell to her with care.
First, Davina will use the blessed dagger in order to cut Elena's arm, and fill the ceremonial bowl with blood. Next, Davina will use the selenite crystals to focus her energies as the moon rises, and craft the web of the spell over her blood. "I hadn't figured in the part about the werewolf and vampire sacrifices," she admits. "I don't think Marcel knew that part. But! I think I can maybe burn some vervain and aconitum and let the ashes fall in." Her voice gains confidence as she speaks the idea aloud. She nods once, firmly. "Symbolic and elemental mirroring. That will work." She says it so simply, with such utter confidence, that Elena does not question her. Yes, she can see it now. Why Marcel called her extraordinary.
"What's the phial on the table then?" Elena asks.
Davina smiles, grimly. "The final ingredient. It's werewolf venom." She picks it up and hands it over to Elena.
Elena studies it, clear and deadly in the moonlight. When she rubs her thumb over the glass, a pulse jumps through her. She recognizes that power. "This is Klaus's." She knows without needing confirmation. "How did you get this?"
"When he bit Thierry, Marcel was thinking ahead. I extracted it from his blood."
"Is that it, then? That seems too easy."
Davina plucks the phial from Elena's fingers and wrinkles her nose. "The last part is the gross part. You're going to need to stand in the middle of the circle and drink the bowl down."
"Oh. That is gross."
"After that, we'll sit down, beneath the moonlight, and I'll take your hands, and I'll finish casting the spell, while I channel the power of the full solstice moon into you."
The idea of that much power—the full power of the French Quarter Coven commingling with that kind of celestial event—all of that power going through her…
"So how will we know it's worked?"
"Okay, I lied. This might be the gross part. If it works, everything you swallowed will crystalize, and you're going to cough up a new stone to work as the binder."
"What, another moonstone?"
"It'll be more of a bloodstone. But yeah. Basically."
Elena thinks about all of this. It's dangerous. Anything could go wrong. She could die from getting hit with too much magic, or she could choke on that stone. Hell, she's not even sure she has to be alive after the channeling for the stone part to work. They could cut it out of her dead body.
But she's died before, and she's willing to die again if it gives anyone the chance to take down Klaus once and for all. If it means giving her family a real shot to be safe from him. (If it means Jenna can rest just a little bit easier.)
"You know what? I've done grosser. Should we get started?"
Davina gives her a curt nod. "Is it terrible if I'm really glad I'm not the one who has to drink that? Or do the regurgitating?" She makes an over the top grimace, and Elena can't help but laugh, despite the circumstances. Or maybe because of them.
Carefully, oh so carefully, Davina slices the blade across her forearm. The blood pours down her arm in sheets, collecting in the bowl, dribbling on the floor. Elena clenches her fist to make the blood flow faster. Her blood looks black in the dim light. When Davina begins to cast her spell, it throws her reflection back at her like a mirror.
She presses her hand to the wound hard, casting around for a bandage or some clean cloth or something to stanch the bleeding. When she turns around to ask Davina, the other girl's eyes are very far away. Somehow, Elena doesn't think she'd hear her if she spoke. The crystals in Davina's hands clink as she revolves them in slow circles over her palms, and the room is filled with the soft indistinct murmur of Davina's spell-casting.
She finds a piece of cotton gauze, and does her best to tie it around her arm.
The moon moves in a slow, slow arc overhead. Elena tries to guess how much time until she has to step into that circle.
When Davina adds the venom, goosebumps break out on Elena's arms. She feels it, when her blood, her power, touches Klaus's. She wonders if re-binding Klaus will sever this connection between them.
It can't be that much longer now.
Marcel comes in, studies Davina, and makes his way across to the room to where Elena leans against the work table. He murmurs in her ear, his tone so casual compared to the import of his words, "Klaus is starting to wonder where you are."
Taken aback, she pulls away. Her hand flies to her throat. "Did he say something?"
Marcel chuckles mirthlessly. "No, but he doesn't have to."
"How much time do you think we have before he comes looking for me?"
"Not enough. You should go down for a minute, stall him."
She nods, straightens her dress. Sticks her arm under Marcel's nose. "We need to fix this before I go down there."
"As the lady commands." He bites into his hand, and Elena has only a moment to reflect, this is my life now, taking blood from all sorts of vampires without batting an eyelash, before she presses her lips to his palm.
But maybe it won't be her life for much longer.
He shows her where to wash her arm and rinse out her mouth and straighten her hair and makeup, and when she is done, her eyes are so cold she thinks maybe she could still pass for Katherine after all.
She thumbs at the scar on her lip.
"What should I tell him?" she whispers to Marcel as they descend the stairs.
"What did you tell him when you slipped off?"
"I haven't been in the bathroom for an hour."
He shrugs. "Tell him you got lost. It's easy enough here."
She finds Klaus easily enough in one of the long dining rooms off the courtyard. From the open door, there's a clear but inobvious line of sight to the balconies and stair accesses. Marcel's right, he's definitely settled in to watch for her, and trying not to call attention to it. When he spots her, he crosses over and pulls her into a small, empty study across the hall.
To any bystander, they must look like they're secluding themselves for a tryst.
"Any luck?" he asks, glancing toward the door.
She had hoped not to see him again until this was all over and there was nothing he could do about it. Hoped for it, because she hates the way she notices the low timbre of his voice, the hopeful gleam in his eye that would be so easy for her to mistake for vulnerability.
"Not yet." It occurs to her that he might call this off, might decide to send her home and carry out whatever screwed up Plan B scheme he has certainly planned, all by himself. No doubt he'd escort her home if that were the case. She'd have to wait for him to leave her alone, backtrack here, and sneak back in, and by then, she will have missed Davina's window.
She wouldn't be going home tonight after all.
Her pulse pounds in her ears. Marcel and Davina are counting on her.
"It wasn't in my rooms?"
She shakes her head. "I looked everywhere." Inspiration strikes her. "Some of Marcel's creeps came in at one point. I had to hide under the bed. That's why it took so long."
Klaus looks her up and down. "You don't look too disheveled."
She shoots him a glare. "Do you think I liked having to redo my hair without a comb?"
"Did they say anything?"
"You were right, about the diamond." Carefully, she sidles up to him and takes his hand between both of hers. "Klaus, if I don't find wherever Marcel's placed it before he hands it off to that witch…"
He stops breathing for a moment. The freeze in him is so subtle that if every bit of him were not attuned to him, she wouldn't have noticed. "Worried, are we?" he asks her softly.
"Klaus."
He takes her jaw between his thumb and index finger and tips her face up to his, the better to study her face.
She is so close to succeeding, so very close, that it is no hardship at all to let the anxiety show on her face, to let those little frustrated tears gather at the corner of her eyes. She lets her lips fall open, lets herself stare at Klaus while he stares back. She uses every ounce of that fabled Petrova allure—
"Alright," he tells her, releasing her. "Go. Search the other rooms upstairs." She hurries away. "But, Elena." His voice halts her at the door. "Come back to me in one piece."
She sweeps toward the stairs, hands gripping her skirts. At the bottom of the stairs, she pauses, and turns back toward the party. She sees Marcel heading over to Klaus, drinks in hand. Good. Let him distract him, however he will.
It's because of that pause that she's there when the doors swing open, and a gang of strangers emanating pure menace prowl into the room.
At the front of this crew is a sullen-eyed, dark haired man, slight of build, who offers Marcel a sardonic smile. "I'm here to parley with the vampire king," he calls out. "On behalf of the Crescent Wolf Clan."
The loup-garou pack. In human form for one night only.
The air itself seems to thicken with tension. Subtly, Marcel's minions are all shifting forward, and the wolves behind their leader have already bared their teeth. The promise of violence hangs heavy in the air.
Elena automatically looks over to Klaus, all the way on the other side of the room, cut off from her by this pack of potential predators. The intensity of his gaze on her pricks at her. She realizes, belatedly, that she's not just cut off from him; she's cut off from everyone, a lone human in a sea of werewolves raring for a fight. She'd be torn apart instantaneously if she got caught up in that.
Klaus is fast. Faster than anyone else in the room. He could probably reach her side and pull her out before anyone batted an eyelash.
If she lets him do that, she'll never make it back upstairs.
Elena gives him a slow, deliberate nod, and glances toward the stairs. The only other way out, but far from his protective arm.
His jaw clenches. He doesn't like this one bit, but if she acts first, forces him to react, he may just let her get away with it.
"You come into my house, crash my party, and ask me for a favor?" Marcel calls.
"It's no secret you were the one who laid this curse upon us."
"Casualty of making war on my people."
"We are weary of this fight." The werewolf leader's eyes gleam with something feverish, something Elena suspects has been long suppressed. A strange effect of the solstice moon, perhaps. "You're a good king, Marcel. Now let me be a good king to my own people. Let me make truce with you, and we can work this out between us."
Klaus clears his throat. "It seems to me like you are in need of a mediator. May I suggest myself?" He smiles, that small and dark, smug smile, and clasps his hands behind his back. "I am, after all, the only one with a foot in both camps."
Oh, how he must hate that the werewolves would approach Marcel and not him.
Elena backs away from the pack, toward the stair access.
Their voices float down the hall after her.
"Okay, Jackson, let's talk then," Marcel says. "You, and me, and Klaus. Let's work on this truce."
"And my pack?"
"Are you afraid they'll embarrass you?" Klaus asks.
"They're only human one night out of the month," Jackson remarks. "Seems fair to me they might mingle, enjoy the party."
"It's not a truce yet," Marcel tells him sharply.
She doesn't hear the rest of that. She's already racing up the stairs.
Immediately, she encounters a problem.
The hall upstairs is teeming with werewolves.
The stairs she needs to finish the climb to Davina's work room is on the other end of the hall.
She ducks into the corner of an alcove, next to a balcony overlooking the courtyard that is so thick with wrought iron screens that anyone looking up would have trouble seeing in, and presses herself to the wall. She'd have to cross back into the werewolves' line of sight in order to reach the stairs back down.
There are at least six wolves up here, maybe more, slipping quietly in and out of the rooms. When had they gotten ahead of her?
Cautiously, she eases up to the edge of the balcony and peers into the party below. Still lots of werewolves down there. So what are at least half a dozen doing up here? And why are they sneaking?
A pair pass close by, and pause at one of the doors. "How much time do you think we have?" one of them mutters.
"Jack said he'd buy us as much time as we need."
"What if we can't find it?"
"It's here. That old bitch of a witch said it was, it's gotta be."
Elena shoves her hands in her pockets and leans back against the wall. They can't be looking for the diamond, she tells herself. Klaus was jumping to conclusions. She knows, as a fact, that Marcel's plan has nothing to do with the diamond, and that Klaus has totally misconstrued everything. Invented the scheme with the weapon out of nothing but suspicion and poorly connected dots. So there's no way these werewolves are also looking for it…
"Do you hear something?" One of them asks, voice pitched lower now. "I coulda sworn I heard another heartbeat."
"What are you doing up here?"
From her vantage point, she can just barely see one of the Marcel's vampires approaching the pair at the door.
"Just got turned around."
She hopes she sounds better than that when she lies.
The vampire also doesn't seem too convinced. "The party's downstairs."
Another set of werewolves step out of one of the rooms down the hall. When they see the vampire questioning their pack members, they skulk up to the group. A third door opens, and a fifth werewolf joins them.
The vampire crosses his arms over his chest, looking for all the world unconcerned. There's a certain cocksure bravery in him that she admires, with all of those glistening werewolf teeth so close. She wonders whether the full moon means their bite is still venomous, even though they're in human form.
"Is this a conspiracy, then?" the vampire asks. "Whatever." He tries to shove past them, but two of them latch onto him. Two more help hold him still. One of the werewolves produces a stake from the inside of his coat.
They've been caught out, and they don't want any witnesses.
If they can pin a vampire, what can they do to her if they find her?
She has to make a run for it. Maybe they'll be too distracted—
The vampire throws one of the wolves off. The wolf goes smashing through the iron balcony screen, into the party below. He lands with a sickening crunch.
It's all inevitable from there. The wolves and the vampires turn on each other, that violence that simmered in the air now a rolling boil.
The vampire in the hall with her fights a losing battle against four angry werewolves. Once he's dispatched, she knows they'll find her and that she'll be next. No witnesses allowed.
Taking her chances, Elena darts past the hall. One of them yells after her but her feet fly too fast to pause. She throws herself down the stairs.
The courtyard is chaos. Werewolves with their hearts ripped out, vampires impaled on dining room furniture, and, worst of all, scattered groups of cowering humans, dead humans, crying and bleeding humans. Utterly defenseless here. All the glittering beauty of the night turned to horror.
Blocking it all out, she throws off her heels and sprints in her dress as best she can, angling toward the other side of the building.
(She can't do anything to help anyone here.)
(All she can do is die if she tarries even a moment longer.)
There's got to be another set of servants' stairs that she can take all the way back up to Davina. Klaus will be too distracted to notice her, he'll never see her take the pair she's not supposed to be taking.
She hurtles into the side hall on the other side of the courtyard, nearly slipping in a puddle of blood and champagne, and dashes down the hall, pausing only to check the intersections and rooms for any tucked away sets of stairs. Her heart thunders and her feet burn from slapping against the immaculately polished marble floors.
At last, she ducks into a cleverly concealed side pantry and finds what must be the right stairs.
Klaus comes barreling down the stairs before she can climb two steps. There's a disturbingly wild gleam in his eyes. "Elena," he breaths. He pushes her back from the stairs and against the wall, hands braced against her shoulders. His hands and shirt sleeves are soaked through with blood, and they leave vivid crimson marks on her shoulders. "Are you hurt? Harmed in any way?" He scans her, takes in her bare feet and sweaty face, the no doubt runny mascara and mussed hair.
Her mouth works, but no words come. Everything feels cloudy, and she doesn't have a lie prepared for him. Her heart gallops in her chest.
"It's a bloodbath up there. When I couldn't find you, I thought…"
"They were already upstairs when I got up there. I ran away when they killed that vampire…"
He moves his grip to her bicep and pulls her with him back toward the courtyard.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
"This has all gotten wildly out of hand. I'm getting you out."
"Back to the house?"
A ring opens up around them as he marches her through the courtyard and out onto the street. Only one werewolf is stupid enough to attempt to take Klaus on. Klaus doesn't even pause as he rips the creature's heart out.
Outside, she struggles to break his hold on her. "Klaus, we still have to find—"
"I'm getting you out of New Orleans."
She drops still. "What?"
"I'm getting you out. Sending you back to my sister."
Suddenly, it feels hard to breathe. She can't get enough air into her lungs. "I don't understand," she whispers.
The moon has not yet reached its apex. There's still time.
"The board is set, and the players have all placed their pieces for their final moves." He takes out his phone and taps in a number, turns away from her and says something into the phone too quietly for her to hear.
Her shallow breath rattles in her ears.
Klaus turns back to her. "I've called you a private town car. When he gets here, I'm going to compel the driver to get you out of the city."
"I'm not leaving."
"Sweetheart—"
She dodges his touch. "Just tell me why! Tell me why you're sending me away. You owe me that much."
Klaus covers his eyes with his hand and rubs at his temples like he is very, very tired. "As it turns out, it's not Marcel after the diamond, but the witches. The wolves are working for them. It seems like after my run-in with the witches the other day, they've taken it into their heads that they'll have to remove me from the equation if they want you. And oh, how they want you." He lifts his hand and stares her down. "So you see, I have to make my move tonight. I won't have you used against me, and I won't have you stolen from me."
"How do you know that, though? You could have your facts wrong."
"The werewolf I tortured seemed forthcoming enough."
A black car pulls up and a uniformed driver steps out to open the passenger door.
Klaus compels the driver, and all the while, Elena is just trying to breathe.
If she runs now, Klaus will catch her. And then she'll be locked in the town car, with a one-way ticket out of town.
"Klaus, don't send me away," she tries one last time.
"Would that I didn't have to, my dear." He helps her into the car, and tells her, "Keep the doors locked. Windows stay up, and you're not to set foot out of this car until you're at least 200 miles outside of New Orleans. Rebekah's expecting you tomorrow evening. Oh, and buckle up."
She has no idea if all of this is supposed to be a compulsion, or if it's all just Klaus being overly authoritative. She buckles up just in case.
She stares after him for a long time after the car pulls away. He disappears from her line of sight, and just like that, he recedes into her past. She could run away at the first rest stop, and he couldn't do a thing to stop her from doing it. Run away and fade into the teeming millions. Klaus would slip away like a bad nightmare.
Except, she knows she'll never do that, never surrender her family back in Mystic Falls to his ravenous hunger for revenge against the smallest slights. And oh, he would see this as something major, something unforgivable. He knows it too. That's why he didn't include a word in those instructions explicitly forcing her to stay in the car until she returned to that terribly large and lonely house. How satisfying, it must be for him, to not even have to compel her to remain his hostage.
Fuck that.
They're moving pretty steadily through French Quarter traffic, avoiding the lights on Decatur in order to get moving as fast as possible, but still going way below normal traffic speeds. Once he turns onto Esplanade, though, where the tourists are thinner, he'll speed up, and she will miss her chance. Now or never.
Elena pries the lock up between her thumb and forefinger, swings the door open, and throws herself out onto the sidewalk. She has the presence of mind to tuck and roll as best as she can. The landing hurts like hell, and she doesn't let herself think too much about the dirt that clings to her cut up hands and knees and feet. She squeezes every other thought out of her head except the dire need to return to the Abattoir.
Behind her, she can hear the driver slam on the brakes and jump out of the car.
Elena pushes herself into a run, careening as fast as she can toward the crowds of tourists just up ahead. It's easy to get lost inside of that crowd, easier still for her to ditch the human chauffeur. She's a little bit offended that Klaus gave her such an easy guard to escape from, especially after she's had years of practicing on vampires to train her in the finger points of sneaking and eluding.
By the time she's made it back to the Abattoir, she's panting, her dress is torn, and her feet are a disgusting black mess.
She has no idea how to sneak around the back of this complex. It'll have to be through the front door. If Klaus is still inside, this will end very badly for her.
Luck is with her.
Marcel must have been waiting for her (hoping for her), because he opens the door up as soon as she reaches the doorstep.
"Glad you could make it back." He sounds awfully cool-headed, for someone whose epic plan just almost folded under.
"Is he here?" she asks, that most urgent of questions.
"He left a few minutes ago. If you'd come any faster, you would've run smack into him. C'mon." He leads her through the torn up remains of his party. Various vampires she half-way recognizes pick through the corpses strewn over the floor, the broken furniture, the bits and pieces of glass and metal and viscera.
"How'd you put an end to it all?"
He pauses. "I didn't. Klaus did." He doesn't seem eager to elaborate further.
Marcel walks her over to the bottom of the stairs. "Good luck up there, kiddo. We're all counting on you."
Her heart's slamming against her breast-bone by the time she makes it back up to Davina's attic room. Everything rides on this.
The other girl glances up at Elena. Takes in her ragged appearance, the blood and the muck on her. "That took long enough." She stands and hustles Elena over to the center of the circle. "Come on, we have to get started quickly." Not a word about the horrors that unfolded downstairs less than an hour ago. Whatever Davina makes of it all, she spares no time for discussion.
It's not important. The only thing that matters is the spell she's about to take part in.
Elena sits down, and Davina hands her the bowl. The liquid within it is pure black shot through with silver. The marble is cold under Elena's fingers. When she tilts the bowl, the contents do not move as they should.
"Drink it all down," Davina instructs her. "All of it, or it won't work."
Dutifully, Elena tips the bowl back. God knows she's drank enough blood the last couple of years, but this is different. Not like drinking vampire blood at all.
It burns hot and cold when it hits her throat, and, worse, churns her stomach to vicious currents when she swallows.
Her stomach heaves.
"That's it, hold it down," Davina encourages her.
Elena remembers, suddenly, back in middle school, when Jenna had had her wisdom teeth out. She'd stayed over at their house to recuperate, and the blood she'd swallowed after the operation had made her unable to keep anything down for the first two days.
Mercifully, finally, the bowl empties, and Elena sets it down with trembling fingers. When she moves too fast, her gorge rises, and she has to press her hand over her mouth and take slow, steady breaths to keep from throwing it all up. Her face feels cold to the touch, and her teeth ache from how hard she clenches her jaw.
"Ready?" Davina asks.
Slowly, she lowers her hand and shuts her eyes. "Yes."
She feels Davina take hold of her wrists, and hears her begin the spell, and then—and then—and then she feels.
She feels her skin, stretched tight over her muscle and her bones, feels each hair rippling down her body, down to root and follicle. Feels muscles attached to her tendons and her ligaments and the wet frame of her bones, and through that muscle and that bone her blood, and through that blood there is air and water and salt and something else, something that is not supposed to be there, but is there in her, in her blood, that connects to the moon and the sea, that thing that can be pressed and shaped with flame, bound and unbound. Something of sun and moon that leaps for the water because like water it is a mirror, angling forward and backward through her blood, through the blood engendered at her quickening, through her mother to her mother's mother and her daughter to her daughter's daughter. And the mirror reflects her, on and on into infinity.
She tries to pull away, but Davina holds her fast.
Everything inside of her doubles. Redoubles.
The moon crosses the sky at a torturous path, and Elena feels the power of that light building inside of her. Feels something else, that disturbing awareness of her power, that elemental force, start to curl its fingers away from the werewolf venom inside of her. Infinitesimally, she feels that connection she had sensed so keenly when Klaus had fed her his blood start to loosen.
Tonight, the moon holds sway, and so does she.
The building trembles.
She feels that trembling, too, in her wrists, where the bones begin to vibrate and rub together at a maddening frequency, in her ears, which ring and ring and ring until she cannot hear anything at all but that clear high ringing, and in her breast, where her heart twists and thuds irregularly, frantic as a bird. She tastes the blood at the back of her throat and bites her tongue hard as a particularly violent rumble rolls through her, rolls through them. The injured throb is distant as a star compared to what else is happening inside of her.
Davina stares beyond her, through her—no, inside of her, where she is working so hard to sever that connection and rebind the spell. All of it is happening inside of her, where that stone is slowly beginning to metamorphose.
The door explodes open, and a flying board crashes into Davina's face. The projectile hits her with a sickening crack. A terrible torrent of blood pours from her temple as she collapses, boneless, to the floor.
The connection between Elena and Davina snaps, and a blinding bolt of light explodes throughout the room.
Everything is doubled in her vision, the light and the dark reversed to eye-watering effect.
To be the conduit of all of that magic flowing through her body had been an ecstatic terror. To have it ripped out of her by force is pure, exquisite agony. A piercing migraine swells behind her eyes. Everything tastes and smells singed, and she realizes that her nose and ears are bleeding.
Blindly, Elena grapples along the floor for Davina, but her fingers touch only empty floorboard. When she stretches forward, her fingers come up against cool plaster wall. The backlash from the spell being interrupted must have thrown her to the other side of the room.
She blinks her eyes, trying to clear her vision. Spots, just barely, one of the intruders lying on his back by the door, limbs strewn at odd angles, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Behind him, the other intruder is staggering to his feet, the heels of his palms pressed to his eyes. A flicker of motion on the other side catches her attention, and she sees a third, a woman with hair standing wildly on end, as if she's been struck by lightning, fumble towards the circle under the skylight. She shakes her head, once, violently, as though to clear it. And there, just outside the lip of the circle, bleeding out into a wide arc on the floor, is Davina.
All of the candles have guttered out, but the bright full moon provides plenty of light by which to see.
The house shakes, scattering dust from the ceiling beams. Something else is going on downstairs. Something dreadful.
As quietly as she can, Elena draws back into the deeper corners of the room, and tries to think.
Distantly, she wonders if Marcel regrets throwing this party.
The man calls out, softly, "We know you're in here, doppelganger. No use hiding." At that moment, he steps into the pool of moonlight, and Elena cannot contain her sharp intake of breath. It's one of the witches who kidnapped her for that aborted sacrifice. And here she and Davina are, the two lambs for the slaughter they want most.
The man hears her gasp. He lurches toward her, but misjudges and runs into the wall a couple of feet from her. His hands are still pressed tight to his eyes. As though whatever that light was, it hurts his eyes much worse than it hurt hers.
If she makes a run for it, she may be able to get out in time before he's able to catch her. Except… She cannot leave without Davina. She will not leave her.
She casts around her. One of Davina's crystals has rolled to a couple of feet from her. And there's a broken plank from the door, about three feet long and made of sturdy, solid oak, close to hand.
She will not allow herself or Davina to be taken.
Without giving herself time to second-guess herself, Elena plucks up such tools as she has and chucks the crystal out through the open door. The selenite shatters, and both of the intruders turn toward the noise. When their heads are turned, she races toward the center of the room, dodging around the man as he stumbles toward the next room over to investigate, and makes a lunge for Davina. The woman, close enough to reach out and grab her, notices her, snarls and reaches for her, but Elena is faster—she darts back, grabbing hold of the board with both hands and then swings, hard as she can. The woman must still be stunned from the lightning, because she's just a tick too slow to dodge, and the board hits her square across the face. It's a vicious blow, full of all of Elena's seething frustration at having come within a hair's breadth of finishing that spell, all of her dazzling rage, her vacuumous loneliness and crushing disappointment. The woman drops like a stone.
Elena grabs hold of Davina, this time, but despite the fact that the girl is just a slip of a thing, her unconsciousness makes her a dead weight. She throws Davina's arm over her shoulder and tugs her up, but she knows, absolutely knows in the pit of her stomach, that none of this will matter. All of this takes only seconds, but it's seconds that they don't have. The other witch will be back any moment, Davina is in no fit shape to run, let alone walk, and Elena is fresh out of ideas.
"Davina," she whispers, patting her on the cheek. "Davina, if you can hear me, you have to open your eyes. We need to get out of here." Her fingers come away sticky with blood. She pulls her toward the door, staying to the side of the actual doorway, praying they can get close enough that if the man comes back, they can slip out past him.
Davina frowns, and slowly, her eyes open. When she speaks, the words are garbled, like her mouth is full of cotton.
The house groans again, and sends Elena toppling over. They land with their backs to the wall by the door. At least they've made it this far.
Everything feels bruised, every nerve, every molecule. She can feel the blood and venom sloshing around in her stomach, more solid than it should be. Half-transubstantiated. For a while, she just focuses on taking huge, gasping breaths, doing everything she can not to be sick right here, not to curl up and give in.
She looks up to the skylight. The moon is well past its apex now. Too late for regrets.
Davina stirs again and tries to speak, but Elena covers her mouth with her hand and tries to soothe her back into silence. It's good that she's waking up, Elena tells herself. Any moment now she'll come to and zap this guy. The fantasy, at least, is comforting.
From the room beyond, she can hear the witch's footsteps as he stalks back toward them.
Slowly, as quietly as she can, Elena stands Davina up, a hand over her mouth. They have to be ready to get through that door as soon as the witch steps far enough into the room.
She presses them against the wall.
The footsteps are just on the other side of the door.
Just another moment.
The witch steps into the room, over that third witch's corpse, spots his knocked out accomplice, and then whirls to face them, arm raised to throw a spell.
He and Elena lock eyes. There's a real hatred in them she hadn't anticipated.
Davina pitches her hand up and the witch folds in on himself like a piece of paper. There's an unpleasant snapping of bones into unnatural angles, a short garbled scream, and then the witch falls dead at their feet.
Davina slumps in her arms, unconscious again.
They have to keep moving. Surely, given the tremors that still periodically rock through the building, there are other witches downstairs. And they must know where the epicenter of all that magic in the house was.
Dragging Davina through that attic is bone-wearying work. The girl can't walk at all, and Elena has to keep chanting to herself that the other girl will be fine, it's just a shallow head wound and head wounds bleed a lot. It'll be fine, because they'll find Marcel and he'll fix her up and then they'll finish the spell.
She can still feel the beginning of that stone forming inside of her, a lump in her belly.
They make it down to the second story.
Elena spends a harrowing ten minutes hiding in that same alcove from earlier in the evening, waiting for a group of witches to move on.
Except, while earlier the werewolves had been looking for the diamond, Elena feels quite sure that the quarry this time is Davina and herself.
When the witches finally vacate the hall, she steels herself to look over the balcony. There, down below, is Agnes, along with another dozen witches, some of whom are familiar from that time they kidnapped her.
She'll never make it all the way out the door with Davina like this.
After some tough decision making and some quick searching, she brings Davina into a bedroom with a king size bed pushed against a wall. She scoots Davina as far back into the corner under the bed as she can, and then grabs clothing from the dresser and armoire to pile up around her so that if anyone were to look under the bed, she'd be completely obscured. It's not the best camouflage, but hopefully, anyone looking will be in too much of a hurry to wonder why so many shirts and sweaters are under there.
Carefully, she shuts the door behind her and makes her way downstairs. Marcel must be here somewhere. She does not let herself even consider the possibility that he is dead.
It's slow going work. She has to duck into closets or behind sofas more than once, and each turn into a new corridor of rooms must be carefully reconnoitered before she actually makes it. She cannot afford to be caught under any circumstances.
She's done things like this before, she tells herself. Just another day at the office for Elena Gilbert.
Even so, the clock is ticking down against her. Each minute is another minute that Davina forgoes help. Another minute when she might be found.
In Marcel's study, she hides under a table when Agnes storms in, that blonde witch she'd hit with the door board following on her heels.
"They were both upstairs when Laurent, Jared, and I interrupted them." She touches the side of her head and winces. That eye is going to blacken.
"And now? How could you let them both escape?" Agnes asks, voice like a crack of thunder. "The Claire child, I can understand, but the doppelganger is just a girl."
"She's deadly vicious though. Don't you remember how she killed Lysander?" The witch makes some sort of gesture here, like a ward against evil. "Horrible way to die."
"That child no more planned that than Davina Claire planned to acquire our coven's power. She's a pawn, mark my words. Someone else put that blade in her hands."
"The hybrid."
Agnes makes a non-committal noise. "Did you at least see what spell it was they were working?"
"When we entered the room, there was an explosion. We were blinded for some minutes, and by the time we could see again, everything had been overturned." She produces a small glass bottle, and hands it over to Agnes. "I was able to collect some of Davina Claire's blood, though."
Agnes strokes the bottle with the tips of her fingers, like she's petting a snake. "The Claire child grows crafty," she muses. "She knew we would sense her working such immense and potent magicks, and so she set a trap. She'll be an asset, once we retrieve her."
"We can't find either of the girls. And we've been as unsuccessful as the wolves at finding the diamond."
"The scry told me it was here. So must it be. Keep searching."
"And the vampires? We can only hold them off much longer."
"Keep searching."
Finally, she finds Marcel. Or Marcel finds her.
She would have screamed when he reached out and grabbed her, if not for his hand over her mouth. Her relief when she spins and sees it's him makes her weak in the knees.
Impulsively, she throws her arms around his neck. "Thank God it's you. I've been looking for you for ages."
"Where's Davina? Did you finish the spell?"
"That's why I was looking for you! We were ambushed before we could finish. She's hurt too badly to move. I had to hide her upstairs."
"Fuck." Marcel bites his lip while he thinks. "They haven't found her yet," he mutters. "Where is she?"
She quickly fills him in on the details. "Wait, Marcel," she calls when he pushes past her. "Why haven't you gotten rid of the witches yet?"
"They're still strong, even as weakened as they are by not finishing the Harvest. Maybe they're drawing on the moon. Anyway, we were too disorganized after the fight with the Crescent Pack to give the Quarter Coven the fight they deserved. We've had to pick them off one by one." Marcel moves her into an empty study and sits her down on the couch. "Stay here until I get back."
"Marcel—"
He turns back to her.
"Stay safe."
She should have kept moving, but like an idiot, she'd felt safe as soon as she'd found Marcel. Stay here until I get back, he had told her, and she had listened.
It only takes a couple of minutes for Agnes to find her.
The lights flip on and Agnes's lips twist into a facsimile of a smile. "Have you been waiting for us, dear?" she asks.
Three more witches, including the one Elena had hit, file into the room.
Elena opens her mouth to scream, but Agnes snaps her fingers and just like that, her mouth snaps shut and her hands are bound to her sides.
"Check her," Agnes orders. "Make sure there aren't any nasty surprises lurking this time."
When the blonde struts up to her, Elena struggles, trying to twist away from her grasping hands, but to no avail. She roughly pats her down and shoves her hand into her dress pocket. To everyone's astonishment, the witch pulls out the perfect paragon diamond.
Klaus's directions at the start of the evening had been perfect. Elena had found it right away, before she ever went up to the attic to help Davina, and had kept it safe all night. Another object of power to stash away, just in case she needed to bargain with it later.
Agnes lets out a low laugh. "Aren't you full of surprises? First Papa Tunde's Blade, and now the paragon diamond. Tell me: how did you come by these things?"
It's all rhetorical questioning. Agnes is not stupid enough to undo the bindings on her jaw, lest she attract Marcel's attention back.
An immense calm falls over Elena. She remembers this feeling, from the night of the sacrifice. Standing by the fire, tears in her eyes, but unwilling to die like a coward.
She is still that girl. Often, she has felt at odds with herself since the resurrection, like she is somehow less potent, less brave, less capable. That spell tonight had shown her differently. She had seen the inmost, most secret parts of herself, and she had known herself to be implacable, unchanged even in death.
And so Elena stands, back straight and chin up, and dares look Agnes in the eye.
"You know, it's very interesting that you should have had that blade. Did you know it was used for human sacrifice? So there's a certain harmony between your energies. Tell me, did it call to you?"
It did. When she picked it up, it had felt alive in her hand, and she had wondered what that meant, had wondered if it had been one of the dark objects Klaus had warned her about. It had called to her, like a faint echo of the thunderous roar with which Klaus calls to her.
If she had been successful tonight, the siren song of their blood connection would have been severed, and she would be able to think clearly around him again. And hate him as completely as she knows she should.
The building lurches, and there's a great cracking sound as of ice as though every chandelier and window upstairs has just exploded.
She feels a surge of hope.
Agnes pauses. "We leave now. Take the girl, and let's be gone."
"What about Davina Claire?"
"It was different when we could take her unconscious. She's awake now."
A streak of unnatural violet lightning illuminates the room, as though to emphasize her point.
As the group of witches forces Elena out of the building, through that great open courtyard which earlier tonight had been so lovely, she sees what does indeed look like a terrible battle taking place on the second floor of the Abattoir.
She struggles, of course, the best that she can, kicking and shoving at each witch in turn. She won't go down without a fight.
And she wonders, if the coven Klaus hunts is here, where is he?
It's her last thought before that witch she'd hit covers her temple with her hand and throws her mind into blackness.
Waking up from that black abyss is like how she always imagined the swim up from the bottom of the river beneath Wickery Bridge would have been if she'd have been able to free herself from the car.
She used to imagine what it would have been like, her parents and her all swimming up to the surface together, in those weeks she lay recuperating in the hospital afterwards.
The water would have been thick and dark and cold, but the moonlight on the surface would have guided them to safety.
Elena throws up everything in her stomach. She emits everything in a bolus of black and silver sludge, round and smooth like a stone until it hits the ground and splatters in an enormous puddle.
The remains drip down her chin, which she wipes away with the back of her hand while she pulls herself into a seated position.
"Geez, what were you two trying to do? Blood magic?" The voice is faintly familiar.
Elena looks up and recognizes Sophie, the witch who had had second thoughts about killing her the last time.
"What do you want?" Elena croaks.
"Here, drink this," Sophie says, offering her a cup of water. "It's not poisoned or charmed or anything, I just know it can be a bitch waking up from one of those black-out spells."
"Why bother giving me water?" Elena asks. "You're just going to kill me anyway." Despite her words, she takes the cup and takes slow, steady sips. Too much too fast and it'll make her sick again.
Sophie shifts from foot to foot. "I don't have to like it, okay? But Agnes has control of the coven, and I can't fight that."
"How long until they sacrifice me?"
"A few hours. Is there anything I can bring you to make you more comfortable? Are you hungry? I could bring you a tray."
Elena stands, ready to bluff her way out of this. "Klaus will come for me. He's unkillable. He'll tear your entire coven to shreds and scatter your bones to the four corners of the earth if you harm me."
"The hybrid has been dealt with. I'm sorry." Sophie turns on her heel and shuts the door firmly behind her when she leaves.
Elena bangs on the door, but it's locked, and no one answers.
There are no windows, no chance of escape. They've got her locked in some kind of closet. There's no furniture, no tools for her to use.
Shit. Shit.
Dealt with. They must've used the diamond to forge the dagger, and caught him unawares somehow.
The blonde witch comes to visit her next.
"So you're up. I bet you're sorry you hit me."
"Sorry I didn't hit you hard enough."
"My name is Cecile, by the way. I wanted you to know that, so you'll know who it was who extinguished the last of your hope."
"Sounds dramatic."
"You're in the seat of our power. Your hybrid's been daggered. This holding cell is spelled to lock so fast that only our magicks can unseal it. There's no escaping for you."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Cecile gives her a cruel smile. "Lysander and I were supposed to be married come this spring, but you tore out his heart with that evil blade. Do you know that when it strikes flesh, the blade actually burrows into the victim's body? It's unbearable. You tortured him as he died. I still hear his screams when I sleep." Her voice is cold as winter when she speaks. Elena knows that kind of grief, the kind that stretches so deep that it tears out all the warmth and beauty and leaves only frost behind. "So I took real satisfaction in plunging that dagger into your hybrid's heart myself. He was such a love-struck fool. He came to us here, thinking to catch us off our guard, thinking he'd destroy us here and now and save you from us. Head too full of you to think straight."
"He knew I was here?"
Cecile snorts. "As though we'd give him a chance to make off with you. No, we never told him." She grabs Elena by the back of her head, fingers tearing at her hair. "Agnes won't let me be the one to cut your throat, but I'm going to be the one to hold you down while you die."
She throws Elena back against the wall and slams the door on her way out.
A plan starts to take shape. It's a narrow hope, but she won't just walk meekly to her death. Not this time.
Elena stands by the door to wait, just where the arc of the open door would hide her.
Sophie comes back with the tray she promised. "It's not much, just PB&J, but better than nothing, right?" She can hear Sophie pause at the door, then, hurriedly, she steps all the way into the room. Elena can read the thoughts on her face. She thinks she's too late, that Elena's already been taken for the sacrifice.
Elena darts around the door and shuts it tight behind her. The door seals shut. On the other side, she can hear Sophie banging on the door. Hopefully, it will take her some time to work the spell that will set her free.
She finds the front door fast enough, but it's too heavily guarded. Same for the back door, but there's a circle of witches sitting at the kitchen table right by it. She tries the windows, and finds them all sealed shut. She tries to break one on the ground floor, but the chair she picks up rebounds off of it like the glass is made of rubber. She's well and truly trapped in a house spelled to keep her in, and full of enemies she has no chance of slipping past.
That means there's only one option left.
Cecile had said that Klaus had been daggered here. That meant that he was still here, somewhere. He had to be. The witches couldn't possibly have had time to move him, and even if they did have the time, would they? Or would they keep him here, in their stronghold, another powerful artifact to maybe someday use to their advantage?
Critically, he never found out she'd been captured. That gives her an opening.
She ghosts through the halls, searching. Time ticks by, each passing second a precious resource she cannot afford to lose. How long until Sophie breaks free? How long until the witches notice she's escaped her holding cell and start to look for her in earnest?
She squeezes her eyes shut and reaches inside of herself. To that seed of pure elemental power she had sensed before. The sun and the moon, sea and flame. She feels it in herself and when she reaches outside of herself, she finds it again. An answering, slumbering, like the ocean at low tide. Ripe with the promise that the moon will bring the waters crashing back in.
Elena follows that feeling down to the cellar, a dank, wet stone room illuminated by tiny iron filigree windows, with a large square grate drain in the middle of the floor. She gropes along the walls, searching, drawing nearer, until she finds him, stretched out on a rough wood-planked table.
Klaus looks more at peace than she has ever seen him, face relaxed in this unnatural and impermanent death. She had thought he looked terribly handsome when he came by her room to escort her to the party. The gray pallor of his face does not change this. He is still very beautiful.
When she touches her hand to his face, the shared power between them leaps to the surface of her skin. She can feel him, so viscerally, this unnatural thing her blood and power has created.
She wishes she could leave him here and never think about him again.
She's glad she has a reason to save him, that has nothing to do with her heart.
She hates herself for that, almost as much as she hates him.
And yet there is something inside herself, some desperate will to survive, that will not let her walk away.
Elena grasps the dagger, glittering gold in the faint moonlight, and pulls it free from Klaus's heart.
Color blooms in his cheeks and reddens his lips. His throat bobs, and beneath her hand, Elena can feel his heart begin to beat again. Klaus opens his deep blue eyes and stares at her.
"You're supposed to be long gone by now," he tells her softly.
"I came back for you. I couldn't leave you."
He sits up and dangles his legs over the edge of the table. "We're still in the compound?"
Elena nods. "I snuck in after you."
He shakes his head hard and stands up. He stumbles, still oddly unsteady on his feet, and Elena catches him. His gaze catches hers and she cannot look away from his eyes, dark and liquid in the moonlight.
"You came back for me," he whispers. "You saved me." He looks completely overwhelmed, stunned, by his own words.
She offers him a tremulous smile. "I did."
He strokes her hair back from her face. "Wait here for me. I'm going to take care of this."
Just like that, he's gone like he wasn't standing there just a moment ago.
Elena shivers and wraps her arms around herself.
The screaming starts a moment later. She can hear and smell other things—floorboards cracking, flesh and fabric burning. It's undoubtedly a massacre up there.
And it's all her doing. She's the one who set the cat amongst the canaries.
No, she tells herself. It was their doing. They're the ones who wanted to murder two girls for the sake of their power.
It's all over in minutes.
Klaus returns to her, soaked through with blood. He wears it like war-paint.
"Not all the coven were here, but a fair portion," he remarks. "The French Quarter Coven have made themselves clear. And the Crescent Pack."
More than ever, after the events of tonight, Klaus is at war.
"What next?"
He studies her, shivering in the basement. He takes off his jacket and wraps her in it. The fabric is wet against her skin, but warm. She pulls it closer around herself.
"We'll go home. Regroup. And when I return, I'll remind them whose city this truly is."
Go home.
She'd thought she'd be on her way back to Mystic Falls by now. She'd been so close. She can still taste that half-formed bloodstone in her mouth.
Go home.
She'll never get another chance like this again.
Klaus may be right. Her home, it seems, really is with him.
She's surprised to discover that she has no more tears left to cry for herself.
A/N : Oh man, has it already been six months since I last updated?! What a jam-packed winter and spring.
Thank you to each and every person who IM'd me on tumblr, left a review, or reached out otherwise during the hiatus. I always love hearing from you, and your messages were very kind and definitely kept the next part of this fic in my thoughts. I hope the fact that this chapter comes in at over 11,000 words, nearly triple my average chapter length, helps to apologize for the delay!
So… I'm pretty excited to hear your reactions. Drop me a review or find me on tumblr at livlepretre – and let's get this fic rolling again!