The Originals: The Loss Read online

  Just like before, the other witches seemed to sense the heart. A few of them turned on the one who held it, and the fight grew hopelessly complicated as they all battled for the same thing. Elijah focused on protecting the vampires, freeing those who got cornered and engaging their attackers until his troops could regroup and fight again.

  He knew that his side was losing. One vampire after another fell to the morts-vivants, and although a slow trickle of fresh soldiers still came up through the tunnels, he knew those reinforcements would soon run out. Sooner or later the house would be empty except for Klaus and Vivianne—how was that for a wedding night?

  Elijah heard a strangled scream to his left, and spun to see a vampire impaled on the arm of a grinning mort-vivant. He sprinted toward them, but Lisette got there first. She had ripped her gown above her knees for freedom of motion, and what was left was so covered in gore that its original yellow color was barely discernible. Her face was grim and focused, and she didn’t hesitate before plunging her own arm through the chest of the dead witch. “How do you like it?” she demanded, twisting her hand and withdrawing the organ. She clutched the mort-vivant’s slimy red heart in her hand, and held it up spitefully in front of his face.

  His grin faltered. He lost his grip on the vampire, who staggered away as fast as she could. Her injuries were grave, but they would heal; her attacker wouldn’t be so lucky. The mort-vivant crumpled like burning paper as Elijah watched. He collapsed on the grass with a final, spasmodic twitch, and then lay still.

  Lisette studied him for a moment to make sure he wouldn’t rise again, then lifted her head to shout. Her voice was like a hunting horn, cutting smoothly through the noise and chaos of the battle. “Take their hearts!” she cried. “They die without their hearts!”

  Elijah could feel the shift among his kind as the cry was taken up again and again, spreading to every corner of the battle. Every vampire who heard the words attacked with renewed energy.

  They had taken on many losses, and if the vampires hadn’t been outnumbered at the start of the battle they surely were now. But the monsters now had a mortal weakness, and that was all Elijah’s army needed to know.

  “Die, bloodsucker,” a voice rasped beside him, and Elijah didn’t blink. He shot out his arm; skin and muscles tore under the force of his blow, and his fingers closed around the monster’s wildly racing heart. Elijah crushed it in his hand as he tore it out, savoring the faint gasp of shock that would be the last sound that ever escaped the mort-vivant’s lips.

  Finally, he was able to exact some measure of vengeance for Ava’s untimely death. All of the anger and outrage he had been forced to contain since that night came bursting out of him, and he attacked the morts-vivants with merciless savagery.

  The re-dead witches started to pile up, and Elijah could now hear cheers among the screams of pain. The morts-vivants fought hungrily, but there was no doubt that the tide of the battle was turning.

  By the time the sun rose, forcing both sides to retreat, the lawns were covered with corpses. Dozens of vampires were lost, but by Elijah’s estimate they had taken at least a hundred of the undead witches with them. The rest of the morts-vivants—three hundred or fewer, he guessed—fled from the lightening sky to the east, melting back into the woods.

  The vampires made their way back the mansion, some limping and others carrying wounded comrades. Elijah saw Lisette again, supporting a friend who had lost one of his legs and whispering encouragement to him as they hobbled along. She seemed to feel Elijah’s eyes on her, turning for a moment to smile at him as if all the carnage had been nothing more serious than a picnic on the lawn.

  Elijah watched her for a moment longer than he could really explain, then lifted a groaning vampire nearby and started back across the bloody grass. In spite of the long and trying night, he felt energized. The next time the morts-vivants dared to come out into the open, Elijah and his vampires would slaughter them all. With one last satisfied look at the mutilated corpses, Elijah strolled inside the house to rejoin his family.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE BATTLE WASN’T going well. Klaus could tell that even from the shelter of the attic where he had taken Vivianne. He prowled from one window to the next, his sharp eyes picking out one fight after another. The morts-vivants just kept coming, no matter how badly they were crushed, slashed, or disfigured.

  Klaus understood that his presence outside wouldn’t make much difference, and that protecting his new wife was more important. But he still longed to fight, to tear, to rip.

  The ring of fighters seemed to contract a little every time he looked, getting closer to the walls of the mansion. He saw vampires he had made with his own blood fall while even the most horribly injured witches kept fighting.

  It had to be Vivianne they wanted. They had only started harassing the city after she returned. She was the key: They had come to pull out her beating heart and drag her back to their cold graves with them.

  “We can’t stay here,” Klaus said, his voice falling flat in the still, empty air of the attic.

  “The protection spell will hold,” Vivianne assured him. “If it survived the hurricane, it will survive this.”

  Vivianne had never flinched away from fear for her own life, but she could be moved by fear for others. She should be afraid. For the first time in a long time, he was.

  “No, Vivianne...I think the dead witches have come here for you,” he said, letting the worry show in his eyes. “They will keep attacking as long as you are here.”

  Magic might have a price, but that didn’t mean Klaus intended to pay it. He might not be able to defeat the army that was trying to steal back his wife, but he could outrun them. He had managed to steer clear of Mikael for centuries—this would be no different.

  She twisted her hands together, absorbing that news. “I’m endangering the vampires by being here, you mean.” Her black eyes darted. “The only people who were willing to welcome me back, to celebrate our wedding, to accept us, are out there dying for me?”

  Put that way, it sounded even worse than he had meant it to. “If we leave, though, they’ll have no more reason to attack. They’ll break off, and morning is getting close. We can be halfway across the world by the time they’re ready to try to pick up our trail. If we get away now, they may not be able to find us again at all.”

  He had no way of knowing how the witches had followed Vivianne in the first place, actually. It was likely that they had secured the help of the werewolves, who had weakened the vampires in advance of the attack. The wolves might be prepared to follow them during the day, trading off stages of the hunt. Even worse, maybe more morts-vivants would rise from their graves wherever Vivianne went.

  He would fight off however many came for her, and they would stay on the move as often as they needed to. All that mattered was that they were together now. Vivianne had died and that hadn’t ended their love—they could work around any other problem that the world threw their way.

  Another scream rose from the garden, and Vivianne jerked forward, almost running toward the stairs. “We are already packed,” she said, as if reminding herself.

  “We’re just leaving for our honeymoon a bit early,” he assured her as he followed. “We’ll stay away until Elijah learns the secret to sending these creatures back where they belong”—they, not her—“and then we will return to help my siblings destroy them.”

  The heavy trunks they had intended to take on their honeymoon would be far too bulky to bring along, but there were also a few smaller packs that Klaus could carry with ease. All were waiting beside the kitchen door, ready for a servant to port to Klaus’s stagecoach. He picked through the pile of luggage quickly.

  Vivianne occupied herself with finding some food, ignoring the remnants of the tainted wedding feast. As she pushed aside a platter of beautifully pink peeled shrimp, somethin
g caught Klaus’s eye. It was a blue glass vial, lying half-concealed by a giant soup pot. He had seen that vial before, or at least several dozen others just like it, during his brief reign as owner of the Southern Spot.

  The whores always needed special teas and mixtures, and a good portion of the clientele also dabbled in laudanum and other substances. The suppliers of more common articles such as whiskey, soap, and fruits all had side businesses to meet those needs discreetly, and Klaus knew exactly which one used blue vials.

  He snatched up the vial from the counter and gingerly tasted the inside of the rim. The stinging sensation was immediate and familiar. This was no medicine, nor was it some drug. This vial held werewolf venom. No werewolf would have needed to trade for a vial of their own toxin. But a vampire would have.

  Klaus was used to betrayals by now, and he knew that his own family wasn’t exempt from the practice. But this was worse, somehow. Elijah and Rebekah must have conspired to let their enemies win by poisoning their own. His dear siblings had fully intended to let the horrifying creatures reach Vivianne, and they had tried to shift the blame away from themselves, making convenient scapegoats of the werewolves.

  There was only one possible explanation for such treachery. Elijah must have taken Rebekah into his confidence. Through his endless research, Elijah knew that the witches were coming for Vivianne.

  And Rebekah herself was unbelievable. She hadn’t wanted to help with the wedding at all. She had never wanted to welcome Vivianne as a sister; she only wanted to help put her back in the ground. His own brother and sister had plotted the death of his wife to save themselves. He would never forgive them.

  They would have their honeymoon, but they wouldn’t ever return. The whole city could sink into this cesspool of deceit for all he cared. The morts-vivants could pull out the hearts of every single inhabitant of this vile swamp in search of Vivianne’s, but they would never get another chance at her. There was no one Klaus could trust to keep her safe except for himself, and that was exactly who he would rely on from this moment forward.

  “Come on,” he told Vivianne, hating the rough, angry sound of his own voice. It was ridiculous that this would still get to him after a thousand years of being let down by his family.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, laying a cool hand on his forearm.

  He almost laughed at the absurdity of the question. What wasn’t wrong?

  “Nothing as long as you’re with me, my love,” he told her, and kissed her forehead. “But we can’t stay any longer.”

  “Then let us go,” Vivianne agreed, shouldering one of the lighter packs. It was an odd combination with the trailing silk wedding gown she still wore, but the defiant angle of her chin made her look brave and even a little rakish.

  Vivianne squeezed his hand, and he smiled down at her. The entire world was ahead of them, where they could spend forever in each other’s arms. Finally, after decades of disappointments, they were free.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  REBEKAH WATCHED THE injured being carried back into her home for what felt like forever. Her voice sounded numb in her own ears, but as much as she would have liked to retreat into her own room and stay silent, she had forfeited that luxury. “Take her to the green bedroom in the south wing,” she ordered, resting a cool hand on a mauled vampire. “Keep talking to her until you see her starting to heal. Her name is Amelie.” There were dozens of them, all with names and memories and gaping, gruesome wounds.

  Rebekah was filled with conflicting emotions, and if there was one thing she hated, it was feeling uncertain of herself.

  She had been wrong to play her silly little prank at the wedding. Just when the vampires had most needed to stand together, Rebekah had divided them, letting her resentment against Klaus get the better of her common sense. She had no way of knowing how many of her kind might have survived if they had all been at their full strength. Their blood was on her hands.

  Blood on her hands, though, was still less troubling than blood in Vivianne’s mouth. Something was terribly wrong with her new sister-in-law, and Rebekah was the only one who knew it. Klaus wouldn’t see—he didn’t want to see. And Elijah had been so busy trying to discover the origin of the morts-vivants that he had missed the vital clue right under their very noses.

  Rebekah needed to investigate Vivianne’s strange behavior at the wedding, and she needed to apologize to Klaus (preferably without explaining exactly what she was apologizing for).

  But the newlyweds were nowhere to be found. Rebekah’s search took her from the attic all the way down to the kitchen, where she noticed that some of their luggage was missing from the pile beside the servants’ door.

  Klaus had fled with his bride, leaving his siblings behind to clean up his mess. It was just like him, and Rebekah would have been outraged if she didn’t bear so much of the blame.

  At least his sudden departure afforded Rebekah the opportunity to dispose of the evidence of what she had done. She ran to the counter where the potato soup had rested, but although the large pot was still there, she could find no trace of her little glass vial. She checked the tile floor, and then, with mounting anxiety, all of the other counters nearby.

  Anything might have happened to it. A cook might have unwittingly reused it for some other substance, or perhaps it had broken and the pieces had already been cleared away. But in her heart, Rebekah knew better. Klaus had been here to collect his packs, he had found the vial, and he knew that the traitor was someone in his own house. He had left to find safety with Vivianne—the least safe person he could possibly have chosen—because of Rebekah.

  She ran back upstairs to find Elijah, who was deep in conversation with Lisette. They seemed to be reminiscing about the moment when Lisette had killed the first mort-vivant, and Elijah’s face was animated.

  “I need to speak with you,” she interrupted, nodding an apology to Lisette. She stepped away and left the siblings alone.

  “What is it?” he asked, and she could see the energy of the battle still written all over his face.

  “Niklaus is gone,” Rebekah told him, rushing on. “I’m sorry, Elijah, but my temper got the best of me, and I meant to just play a harmless joke, to take him down a notch or two.”

  “The—” Elijah frowned, then his brown eyes held her own, and she knew he had figured it out. “The venom.” The playful excitement Rebekah had seen when he was speaking with Lisette was entirely gone. He was furious. “How could you be so stupid? I expect this kind of thing from Klaus, but I didn’t think I’d see you stoop to his level.”

  If she’d felt stung before, that hurt a hundred times worse. “I know,” she snapped. “I need to find Niklaus and apologize to him, but I wanted to tell you first. You were right about the morts-vivants all along, and I was too angry at Niklaus to see it. But, Elijah, they aren’t the only danger, and my apology isn’t the only reason I need to find Niklaus.”

  Then everything she had seen over the last few weeks tumbled out of her at once. Rebekah related every false note Vivianne had struck until the moment she had drained the goblet of blood. It wasn’t until she had finished, nearly breathless, that she dared to glance at Elijah’s face, to see if he believed her.

  “I think Lily Leroux used Niklaus,” he mused. “She brought Vivianne back, but I believe she also conjured the morts-vivants, or communicates with them somehow. I think she needed the bargain with our brother, in order to further her true agenda.”

  “So you see why I need to find the newlyweds,” Rebekah said. “I plan to leave immediately”

  Elijah hesitated, as if he were considering her previous mistakes. But instead he kissed her once on each cheek in the French style. “Go,” he agreed. “We both have work to do.”

  An entire army of vampires had disturbed the packed earth of the tunnels, but only one exit had footprints leading away from the hou
se. Rebekah following their trail east toward the ocean and realized that she already knew the way and had traveled these same roads forty-four years before. Rebekah had told Vivianne about a cabin by the sea where she had spent an unforgettable few days with Eric Moquet, and the young woman had been so charmed by Rebekah’s description that she had convinced Klaus that they should retreat there for their honeymoon.

  When she reached the cottage there was still some daylight left. She couldn’t just barge up to the door and knock, and she wanted to understand more of what was happening to Vivianne first. Rebekah had known some humans and a few witches who had been resurrected from the dead, and none of them had ever sickened for want of blood. It wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t right. Vampires were the only creatures who were supposed to possess such hunger, and Vivianne certainly wasn’t a vampire.

  And so instead of marching to the door and making things right with her brother, Rebekah hid. Even on their honeymoon, surely Klaus couldn’t spend every second with his new wife. Sooner or later one of them would have to leave the cabin alone.

  So she waited, listening to the ceaseless lullaby of the waves sliding up the sandy beach. The rest of the day passed without even a glimpse of the happy couple, although Rebekah knew they were inside. Candles glowed to life in the small windows of the cottage as night fell, and eventually they were put out again. A cool breeze began to blow in across the water, carrying a familiar tang of salt with it. Rebekah dozed at intervals, bored beyond belief, and every time she was startled awake she expected to see Eric Moquet striding across the sand, the moonlight glinting off the dusting of silver hair at his temples. No one had ever claimed that atonement was easy.

  A scream jolted her awake, and Rebekah leapt to her feet, instantly alert. The door of the cabin hung open, the darkness behind it gaping like a missing tooth. The sound had come from the beach, where she could just see a figure running for her life. But nothing was chasing her.