A month has passed since I started my attempts of fixing my magic. A long, painful month. I repeated my masochistic ritual almost every day and the results were showing. Slowly but surely the suppressing shield on my magical core was weakening and my magic was becoming stronger. I didn't pass out anymore. And the amount of magical power that I could use before the pain hit me has grown exponentially and wasn't going to stop. And I wouldn't stop "torturing" myself too, but unfortunately I ran out of the blood that Nik gave me...
Nik.
Thoughts of him made butterflies stir in my stomach. We were texting and calling each other every day, and it was amazing. We got to know each other better, our likes and dislikes, everything that we could think about to ask each other. His voice at the end of the tiring painful day, cured me even better than his blood, that I couldn't stop thanking him for. I wanted to see him so bad that it wasn't even funny.
I sighed heavily, making myself stop thinking about him till it made me depressed again, and concentrated on a movie that me, Elena and Bonnie were watching at the moment. Usually Caroline would have been here as well, but her father was visiting, so she was spending as much time with him as she could. Jeremy was in his room and Aunt Jenna... I actually had no idea where she was, so I decided to fix that right away.
"Where's Aunt Jenna, by the way? I haven't seen her for hours." I asked Elena, my eyes remaining on the TV. It was a horror movie actually and the shitty one at that, not scary at all, but Elena and Bonnie were almost buried in a blanket, and only their eyes could be seen.
Elena looked at me with huge eyes with the "are you seriously asking this question right now" expression on her face, but still answered anyway.
"I think she went to do some grocery shopping."
Ah yeah, right. I was the one who made the shopping list, how could I forget that? I was feeling weird all day, like something was going to happen and the feeling was bugging me to no end. I returned my attention to the movie only to see that it was about to end. I still had no idea what it was about.
"I'll go make some tea, you want some?" I asked standing up and heading to the kitchen.
"Mhm!" and "Yeah" was all that I got in return, so I decided to let them finish the movie and started making the tea. My herbal tea was quite popular among my family and friends. I am a witch after all, and knew enough about herbs to have my own little greenhouse in the attic.
Anyways, the tea was almost ready when girls appeared in the kitchen, still wrapped in a blanket, and yes a blanket not blankets, they shared one huge blanket and looked like some huge mutated burrito. Looking at them and their confused faces I couldn't hold my laughter.
"It's freakin hot outside why are you two wrapped in a blanket? You think it would save you from a monster?" I asked teasingly.
"It's the point of watching scary movies, you somehow feel safer," Bonnie replied rolling her eyes a little, before trying to reach for her cup of tea and failing because she forgot that she was still wrapped in a freaking blanket. It was hilarious watching those two exchange confused looks before trying to get out of it.
I was happily sipping my tea, silently listening as girls discussed the movie.
"I somehow knew from the very beginning that he was going to die," Bonnie said looking a little confused.
"So you've seen the movie then?" Elena asked, throwing an accusing look at her.
"No, it was the first time I watched it. It's just, I'm feeling weird lately that's all," Bonnie shrugged it off, obviously uncomfortable.
I took another sip of my tea thinking about Bonnie's words. Her magic was giving her signs, but she refused to see them. She didn't believe in supernatural and her Grams was doing a shitty job educating her as well. She was a Bennett witch after all, Bennetts were powerful even for those who performed ancestral magic. But she won't be in denial for too long, I could feel it. Either she would learn how to control it or it would get the control over her.
I got distracted from my thoughts by a phone call. I took out my phone and immediately answered when I saw the name on the display.
"Hello Mr. Cooper," I greeted the caller who was my grandmother's (and now mine) business partner/worker who was also aware of our family secret.
"Ms. Black, it's been a while." Our families were having business together for a century now since one of my ancestors saved one of his, it was a long story. "I have some excellent news, at long last. I've found it." He sounded so proud of himself that it gave me a hint of what exactly that mystery "it" could be.
"You found it?! How? Where?" I asked nearly falling from the chair from excitement.
My family collected magical items that fell into the hands of humans. Mr. Cooper's job was to search for these items through private collections and auctions and to try and buy them. Now, usually he would do that himself, but the item that we were talking about was the grimoire which belonged to one of my ancestors, a very powerful witch named Nefeli. My family was looking for it for centuries, and now he was telling me that he finally found it.
"Yes, Miss. It will be up for auction in a few days in New York. Our chances are pretty high, but there are some collectors who will most probably be interested in a 600 years old "journal" written in Ancient Greek. So we need to be prepared to put up a fight. Should I book you a plane ticket?"
"Yes, please. We can't let it slip through our fingers. Send me the time of the flight. And thank you Mr. Cooper, you did an amazing job," I said and hung up the phone.
"The flight? What is going on?" I heard Elena's confused voice and turned to see her.
"Yeah. You know how I inherited my biological family's business, right?" I waited till she nodded in agreement and continued. "Usually I would hold some weight only after I turned eighteen, but this situation really needs my attendance, so I have to fly to New York for a few days. I will be back for your birthday I promise," I said cupping her cheeks with my hands.
"If you already have to deal with everything now, what will happen when you turn eighteen?" she grumbled, her voice almost indistinct because my hands were still squeezing her cheeks.
"More work, I guess," I answered pinching her cheeks without listening to her silent protests. "I'll go pack my things, just in case."
"Look at you, being a businesswoman at seventeen, you go girl," Bonnie said laughing.
"Oh I will," I waved them off and headed to my room.
I was almost done with packing when I received a message from Nik.
"Hello, love. I can feel that you were thinking about me."
I rolled my eyes tapping a response: "Hello, Nik. Yes, actually I was. The last time I packed my things for a trip I met you, so..."
"Going somewhere, sweetheart?"
I smiled and texted back: "Heading to NY for a business meeting."
"Well, aren't you a grown up now?"
I can almost see him tapping that with the smug smirk on his face, but I decided to play along: "Actually not yet, but I will be in a month and then I will be allowed to do a lot of things..."
"Oh is that so? For example...?"
Now we were flirting. It happened every time when we spoke, the tension between us was always too much. I decided to tease him a little bit: "...To vote?"
He didn't answer for a whole minute and then:
"I miss you, love."
I thought he would carry on with our flirting as we always did, but his sudden confession made my heart skip a beat. It was so sudden, but so heartwarming, he never said that to me before and I really thought that he wasn't the type.
"I miss you too." And God knows it was the truth. I really missed him.
"When is your flight? I will order you a cab and book you a room in a hotel." That made me smile, he pretended to be an Alpha Male, but at the same time was so caring.
"I'm arriving at 11 a.m. tomorrow, but you don't need to do anything, my business partner will pick me up."
"Okay then. Call me if you need anything."
"I will. Thank you for everything."
"Good night, love. Sweet dreams."
"Good night."
I put my phone away with a heavy sigh. I wish I had a picture of him or something, to look at when I missed him. God, I was behaving like I'm an 18th century wife waiting for her husband to return from a war or something. That was really pathetic, but I couldn't help myself.
I thought about returning to the girls in Elena's room but decided to call it a day and go to sleep as I would have to wake up earlier tomorrow. It was promising to be a long day.
I was sitting near the window, looking at the clouds beneath me, mesmerized by what I was seeing. My fingers were itching for the brush, the desire to paint the beautiful view in front of my eyes almost overwhelming.
My flight was nearing its end, and I couldn't help but feel satisfied. My family started to hunt down magical items that somehow ended up in humans' hands two centuries ago. Grimoires, cursed objects and jewelry were dangerous for those who didn't know what they were dealing with. But this particular Grimoire was a special case. Witches of my bloodline were searching for it for almost six centuries.
My ancestor Nefeli, who it belonged to, was one of the most powerful Black witches. Also she was one of the rarest cases in my bloodline where a witch gave birth to two children, but only one child would inherit our magic and the other would just be a human. That's exactly what happened to her daughters, one was a witch, the other was human. And the human one seeing as her mother spent more time with her sister became really envious and jealous and one day killed her mother in her sleep and tried to kill her sister as well, but failed and ran away. But she took something very important with her, her mother's Grimoire.
Her sister was searching for it her whole life, but didn't succeed. As didn't her daughter, and daughter of her daughter and so on, till this day. And I felt so proud that I would be the first Black witch to hold it since Nefeli herself.
I was distracted from my thoughts by our pilot's voice announcing our landing and soon enough was exiting the baggage claim area and heading to the exit. I was just about to call Mr. Cooper to inform him of my arrival, when I heard all-too-familiar voice right in front of me.
"Hello, love."
I looked up so fast that my neck almost snapped, not even bothering to hide the smile threatening to overtake my face.
"Nik!" I threw myself onto him, hugging him tightly and he returned the hug slightly picking me up in a process. My face was buried into his neck and I could feel myself calming down by every intake of his delicious scent. "I missed you."
"I missed you too, love. More than I could even imagine." His voice was so soothing and I thought I felt him discreetly kissing my hair but I could be wrong. I broke the hug, my face slightly red, feeling a little embarrassed.
"What are you doing here? Don't get me wrong, I'm so glad to see you, I just didn't expect that," I asked smiling shyly.
"I live here actually, and when you told me that you were arriving today I wanted to meet you. And here I am. Where is your companion by the way, you told me someone was going to pick you up?" he asked looking slightly confused.
"Actually I kinda lied, he offered to come and pick me up, but I refused. I thought I would just order a cab and head to a nearby hotel, I didn't want to bother anyone," I said smiling sheepishly.
"Well then it's a good thing that I came, is it not?" he asked looking smug, then picked up my suitcase and offered me his hand which I took gratefully.
We exited the building and headed to a parking lot to his car. He put my suitcase in the trunk and opened the passenger door for me. I smiled gratefully and got into the car. He was such a gentleman.
"Well, tell me what is this business of yours about?" He asked starting the car.
"My family's lost relic will be put up for an auction tomorrow, I need to buy it back. The witches of my family were hunting it down for six centuries now, so it's kinda big deal for me, you know?" I asked looking at him.
"I understand. You want me to come with you?" He asked glancing at me and quickly returning his gaze to the road. "Someone with the ability of compulsion might come in handy."
"That's actually not a bad idea." I replied thoughtfully and noticed that he looked a little surprised by my quick agreement. "What? I will do anything I can to get that thing. I'm not gonna let some old money bag with thirst for historical relics to have it. It belongs to me as the last witch of the Black bloodline."
"I sometimes forget that you are different, love. Any other witch would never like the idea of me, a vampire and abomination, compelling some innocent human."
"Stop saying that! You're not an abomination. I really hate that word," I said huffing with annoyance.
He looked at me with a strange expression then said, "I remember you saying that before and I wanted to ask you why are you so sure of it? Everyone knows that the vampires are abominations of nature."
"That's some bullshit. And I told you already that witches cannot do anything that nature forbids them to. So if nature really didn't want it to happen the Original Witch would've never been able to turn her children into the very first vampires." That was another piece of knowledge that was kept in my family. We didn't tell anyone not because it was such a big secret, but because no one ever asked.
I noticed him flinch when I mentioned the Original Witch but shrugged it off, he looked really shocked by what I told him. He looked like he was going to ask another question but decided not to.
"We are here," he simply said stopping the car in front of a very beautiful cottage.
"And where is it here, exactly?" I asked confused. "It is not a hotel."
"This is my house," he said smiling and continued seeing my unsure expression. "I couldn't let you stay at a hotel when I have plenty of room at my place, now could I?"
I wasn't sure if it was a right thing to do, but it was better than staying at a hotel and I trusted him, so I only said. "Thank you."
He smiled and got out of the car and I was about to do the same, when he suddenly appeared at my side of the car and opened the passenger door for me. I gave him a small smile and got out. He went to grab my suitcase and I looked at the house for the first time. It was a baroque-styled two-storied house, not too big but not small either. Really beautiful.
"You have a beautiful house," I said when he came to stand beside me with my suitcase in his hand.
"I'm glad that you like it," he smiled showing his dimples and led me inside.
It was even more beautiful from the inside. He gave me a quick tour and showed me my room on the second floor where I left my luggage, then we went down to a living room where he headed straight to his mini bar.
"You want some?" he asked pouring me a drink.
"Yes, thank you. I don't drink much, because it's really hard for me to get drunk but I love the taste, if it's a good stuff of course," I said before taking a small sip. "Mmm... scotch."
"I like women who fancy scotch," he said with a teasing smirk and I blushed.
"Oh really?" I asked raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, I think it's quite sexy," he answered sipping from his own glass.
He was sitting in the armchair with a glass of scotch in his hand, looking relaxed and so freaking sexy, and the way he was flirting with me was giving me goosebumps. His strong gaze was holding mine, I was so captivated that I couldn't look away even if I wanted to.
"So you were telling me that vampires wouldn't be created if nature didn't want it to happen, right? That's quite hard to believe," he finally said breaking silence. And I was really glad that he did, the sexual tension was becoming too strong.
"Yes, um, as I told you immortality was kind of a sensible topic for some witches. Do you really think that after they spent thousands of years trying to achieve that, some unknown witch, doesn't matter how powerful she was, was able to create a ritual to turn someone into an immortal just like that without even trying to?" I asked raising an eyebrow. "To be honest she wasn't even that powerful, practically speaking, let's imagine that she really created that ritual, only to turn one person she would've needed so much power that it would've left her completely drained, and she turned all of her family into vampires in one night. That shouldn't have been possible. But I told you already nature didn't give an access to that knowledge to anyone."
"Then how did she do that?" He asked looking really confused then suddenly he started to understand. "Unless..."
"The Original Witch became some sort of a vessel of the Nature that night. She thought she created that ritual herself but she was wrong. She was just doing Nature's will without even knowing it."
"But why? Why would nature want to create us?" He asked, then stood up and started pacing back and forth. It was obviously an important subject for him.
"Well the reason is kinda cruel actually. As you know, there should be balance in nature. Each species occupies its place in the food chain and performs a certain... task. Did you know that if the frogs ever become extinct the insects will breed in huge numbers, the number of plants will decrease and the forests of the planet will suffocate and parish? People will feel them disappearing when the epidemics of deadly diseases will take their place. Because without frogs, mosquitoes will grow. Nature always feels imbalance and tries to fix it as best as it can. So when it felt like the number of humans was increasing exponentially, as they worked their way up to the food chain, which was really easy as they haven't had any strong enough natural enemies, Mother Nature decided to create one. And she did, but she didn't get the result that would satisfy her. The species was fatal for humans, true, but they were more like animals and were lethal only once a month." I looked at him waiting for his reaction and he didn't disappoint me.
"You are talking about werewolves," he said stopping dead in his tracks and holding onto the back of the chair. "But I thought they were created when some crazy witch cursed her enemies or something along the lines."
"The same situation as with the Original Witch. We witches are instruments of Nature, Nik. It just interferes when it needs and uses us as its tools. It happens really rare once or twice in a few thousand years, but still."
He looked at me trying to process everything that I've just said.
"I understand," he finally said. "Please do continue, you are telling me life changing things right now."
"Werewolves did their job, but they weren't enough. Not only they breed like humans and become lethal only once a month, but they need to kill to trigger the curse. Some of them could live long human lives without even knowing who they were for generations. That's why there was an experiment number two. The Vampires. And it became a success. Not only you are deadly, super strong and immortal, but most importantly you need to feed on humans to survive. That was quite brilliant. Your kind controlling the human population it's the same as with frogs and insects."
I took another sip of scotch, catching my breath a little. It was funny how every time we meet I end up lecturing him about one thing or another. And he believes everything I say without accusing me of lying or something like that. Which is really important because it shows that he trusts me. And I really appreciated that.
"Then why witches hate us? Only because of immortality? But why if it's the will of nature itself?" He asked distracting me from my thoughts.
"Of course it's because of immortality. I told you that witches nowadays don't know or rather forgot a lot of things, they just believe their ancestors. The witches who created the Other Side were really happy at first, because creation of your kind meant that there was a way to become immortal, but when they found out that when witches turn into vampires they lose their connection with Nature which means they lose their magic... let's just say they were pissed. And it wasn't really hard for them to convince others that you were abominations. Even the Original Witch was punished as soon as she appeared on the Other Side." I noticed him flinching again when I mentioned the Original Witch, and I decided to ask him about it. "I noticed that you react strangely every time when I mention the Original Witch. Tell me, what's wrong?" I asked gently.
He was silent for a second, looking out of the window, thinking about something really hard. Then he finished his drink in one go and turned to look at me.
"You are quite observant, love. I react strangely because I had a very difficult relationship with her," he said looking at me intensely, with a strange mix of emotions on his face, then his words finally sank in, and I looked at him shocked trying to see if he was joking or something, because if he knew the Original Witch personally, that meant... "The Original Witch is my mother."
My mind became completely empty for a moment. I was in such a big shock that, just like him seconds ago, I automatically finished my drink, not even noticing the burning sensation it left behind. Then I finally looked up at him and noticed that he looked somehow vulnerable, as if scared of my reaction. I thought that probably every one ran away screaming from him as soon as they knew who he was. And that thought made my heart ache for him, even knowing with my mind that he was the strongest and most ruthless creature on earth. It didn't mean he wasn't lonely.
I finally felt my ability to speak return to me.
"Nik... as in Niklaus. Niklaus Mikaelson," I murmured and gave him a little smile.
"At your service, my lady." He gave me an elegant bow.
My smile must have encouraged him as he smiled back a little sheepishly showing his adorable dimples. He was The Big Bad Hybrid. And I think I was falling in love with him.
I was so screwed. Or was I?