Текст книги "Первородные: Восхождение"

Автор книги: Julie Plec

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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE STATELY THREE-STORY white house that rose before him belonged to the Lescheres family—Klaus was sure of it. It had taken him half the night to find, but it wasn’t as if he’d been capable of doing anything else. Vivianne was the only thing on his mind. He balled his fists tightly, feeling rough patches of stray paint smears all over them. He had tried to lose himself in the art that usually soothed and consumed him, but every canvas his brush touched turned out dull and lifeless. The whole world had been dull and lifeless, without the sight and smell of Vivianne to breathe new energy into his endless nights.

In spite of his very confident hopes, he hadn’t run into her again, and his siblings were an insufficient distraction. Elijah’s quest for a homestead had made him moodier and more withdrawn than usual, and Rebekah had apparently decided to just enlist in the French army; she had been gone nearly a week without bothering to send word of her progress. There was nothing to take Klaus’s mind off of the absence of Vivianne, and so he had decided to take the initiative and find her himself.

He had circled the witches’ quarter for hours, skulking, eavesdropping, and tailing, and finally had narrowed it down to a single street, and then a single mansion. Now he hesitated, though, trying to decide what to do with his discovery. Somehow he had imagined that Viv would be sitting in a lighted window, gazing longingly out into the street when he arrived, but of course she was not. It was unreasonable to knock on the door, but it would be irrational to stand outside of a young woman’s house with the hope that she might leave it.

If she was home at all. She might be out somewhere, just as he would be, normally. She was probably out with her depressingly serious fiancé, in fact. His hands clenched, his nails biting viciously into his paint-streaked palms. Armand Navarro might be pretty useless, but even he would have the sense to steal a kiss from Vivianne on a hot summer night in New Orleans. She would probably feel obligated to allow it, and let him put his stupid paws all over her.

Klaus caught sight of a flash of white movement in the courtyard, and he scaled the latticed fence and dropped down on the other side before his heart could even skip its next beat. It was her, stealing carefully toward the house. She seemed to have just snuck in through the back gate. Out without her parents’ knowledge, he guessed—Viv was definitely his kind of girl. The nickname suited her, as vivid as she was.

She was watching the ground, placing her feet carefully on the damp grass to avoid stumbling in the dark, and the soft smile on her face made him wish that it were for him. Then she looked up and froze, her whole demeanor changing. Instead of joy at the sight of him, she looked afraid. The thought of her fearing him gave him a strange, secret thrill, but in the next moment she glanced nervously at the house, then quickly back to Klaus. She gestured at him and then at the gate, urging him silently to leave.

She wasn’t afraid of him at all, only afraid to be caught by people who would have expected her to be in her bed, sleeping. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had prioritized her reputation above him. It was maddening, and it was indescribably attractive.

Of course, leaving was not an option. Instead he crossed the distance between them faster than her eyes could follow, positioning his body between hers and the elegant manor house. “I came only to talk.” He offered her his most dazzling smile to apologize for the lie, but she didn’t look in a mood to be charmed.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she whispered urgently. “Go now, before you’re seen out here.”

“I ask only a few minutes of your time, Mademoiselle,” he persisted. He would not let her pass, but he noticed that she did not especially try. Perhaps curiosity was finally winning out over her well-bred stubbornness. “If you’d prefer, we can go inside, away from prying eyes and gossiping tongues.”

She was silent for longer than he would have liked, considering the options he’d left open to her. “Five minutes,” she agreed at last, her tone terse and businesslike in spite of the concession. “We can use the drawing room. No one will notice us in there. I left that door there unlocked.” He stepped aside, and she ran lightly across the grass. It crossed his mind that she might attempt to trick him and escape into the house, but when she reached the door she turned, and he could see the outline of an irrepressible smile on her lips. “Come into my home, Niklaus,” she said, as formally as a person could sound while whispering.

He had already reached the interior hallway while her hand was still reaching for the doorknob, and he held the door open for her with a courtly flourish. Her smile widened, and she dipped her head to conceal it as she joined him inside the house.

It had been smart to visit—Klaus was very nearly irresistible in person.

Vivianne lit a candelabra, and then turned to him expectantly. Klaus flashed her his most charming smile, then stepped forward and reached for her hand to kiss it. “I said five minutes,” she reminded him, stepping back out of his reach, “but I would certainly appreciate it if you took less.”

“I don’t believe that you truly would, Vivianne,” Klaus disagreed. “I don’t believe that a woman of your spirit and intelligence could possibly be happy in the life that has been laid out for you here, and I think that you understand on some level that meeting me is an opportunity for much, much more.”

An emotion flashed through her black eyes, and Klaus felt sure it was recognition. “It may have been laid out for me since birth, but that does not make it an unworthy life,” she countered. The words were persuasive, but her voice was not, and Klaus studied her face carefully. How could someone as clever and high-spirited as she was become so placid and docile at the thought of being used as a pawn? “It’s an honor to help bring the fighting and death in this city to an end.”

Someone had told her that, he knew, and probably had repeated it often. Klaus stepped closer to her, feeling drawn toward her in a way he could not quite describe. If she was torn she would not show it. “It is your life, my lady,” he told her, “not some abstract honor.”

“My life,” she repeated, a shadow falling across her pale face. He lifted a hand to her cheek almost without realizing it, but she stepped away from him again, her shoes making no sound on the thick blue rug of the drawing room. He let his hand drop back to his side, tingling with the false hope of contact. “It must seem so insignificant to you. We live and die in no time at all, compared to your kind.”

“That’s not true.” His voice was heavy with honesty. If that was the reason she’d kept herself so aloof from him, then he needed to make her understand that wasn’t the case. “A year is still a year to me; a lifetime is a lifetime. Having had more than a few of my own makes them no less vivid or important to me.”

“And yet you end them, left and right, in order to sustain those lives of yours.” Her mouth turned downward in disapproval. “I have no wish to get involved with your kind, however well-meaning you might be tonight. I want to end bloodshed, not befriend a creature who must survive by it.”

It took him a moment to even understand what she meant, and when he did he struggled to remain composed. The comparison between the nameless people he drained for food and her shining, crackling bonfire of a life was so ludicrous that it was all he could do not to laugh. But her moral qualms about his existence were apparently a real concern for her, and so he tried to remain serious.

“My kind are not what you think. I’m not what you think—yes, I must kill to live, but you make me want to be different. After decades of emptiness, you make me feel complete. I feel I have known you my whole life, Vivianne, and I can understand you as no one else can,” he said. He lifted her chin with one hand until her endless, unfathomable eyes met his, and she did not recoil from his touch. He could feel the delicate line of her jawbone through the warm, supple flesh that stretched across it. “I know you have a kind and willing heart, and I also know you long to be free.”

Her eyes closed for a long moment, and Klaus held his breath. “I remember when you first came to this city,” she said finally, and he frowned in surprise. He released her, the heat of her skin lingering on his own. Whatever he had expected to hear, it wasn’t that. Her eyes opened, but she looked everywhere but him. “You destroyed whatever peace was left in the city. Until now.”

She must have been a child, he calculated frantically. Surely she had been afraid of the rumors that had spread on his arrival. And it was true that he had taken it upon himself to control the werewolf population for the first couple of years—her father’s family. That had perhaps been rash, although there was certainly no shortage of the beasts in New Orleans. It was past time for his little massacre to be forgiven and forgotten. “Vivianne, do you know why Elijah and Rebekah and I came here?”

“No one else would have you?” she guessed tartly, reminding him without quite saying so that he’d not exactly been welcome in her house, either.

“Our father hunts us,” he explained, and the edges of her teeth bit down on her full bottom lip. “He will not rest until we are dead. We fled here, and were met with suspicion and open hostility. The witches were generous enough to accept our presence, but the werewolves made no such allowances. They saw us as their natural enemies, so that’s how I treated them. I couldn’t let them drive us out, Vivianne, that was all.”

Her face had softened, just a little. “But then nothing has changed,” she argued, although it sounded halfhearted. “You—we—are still natural enemies, are we not?”

He saw his opening and pulled her close to him, feeling the race of her heartbeat against his chest. “Are we?” he murmured, bending down so that his breath stirred her hair. “If you and I can find common ground, I’m sure that the rest of our kinds can be persuaded to do the same. We could lead them by example into cooperation and coexistence. We could create a legacy of peace that will be a beacon to the world.”

He almost had her, he could see it. If he kissed her now, she would respond. Her lips were parted, wet, waiting. But she’d come to regret changing her mind so quickly, he knew: She would distrust this kiss and doubt her judgment if he pressed too hard. Making her wait would be smarter. Let her think about him, miss him, want him...and compare him to that fool Armand every time the stupid werewolf opened his mouth.

When Klaus won her, he would win her completely.

He reached down and lifted her unresisting hand to his mouth, completing the more formal kiss she had denied him earlier. He could feel a faint trembling in her skin, and he smiled to himself as he released it. “I think my five minutes have passed,” he murmured. “I will not trouble you any more tonight. Just know, Vivianne Lescheres, that if you allow me, I will give you the world.”

He turned and left before she could answer. He felt suddenly inspired to take up his painting again—he knew exactly what the last canvas was missing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELIJAH SUSPECTED THAT the edges of the city would be the most likely spots. Witches and werewolves had eyes everywhere in the center of town, and the new residential neighborhoods were too orderly and visible for a purchase to go through unnoticed. But the outskirts, where the city faded into the bayou and the untamed forest, were still a half-wild paradise and the perfect place for a vampire to call home.

He rode out at night, while Klaus sank ever further into his lovesick misery and Rebekah gallivanted around with the French army. One of the Mikaelsons had to keep an eye on their true purpose and, as usual, the task had fallen on him.

Where the houses and shops gave way to patchy fields and makeshift farms, Elijah rode, surveyed, and occasionally made the most discreet of inquiries about land for sale. He had not yet met with any success, and in fact had been chased away by several suspicious residents. But he only needed to be lucky once, and he had a lot of ground left to cover.

There were still traces of the setting sun in the sky, but candlelight glowed in several spots, dotting the stretch of land he intended to ride over that night. One man, stooped and white-haired, was still outside, struggling to lash a wide piece of canvas over some barrels stacked at what Elijah judged to be the very edge of his land. There were full, heavy clouds on the horizon, and after watching him for a moment, Elijah rode toward him.

“Can I help?” he called when he was close enough, and the man spun around.

“You can stay where you are,” the man suggested sharply, and Elijah saw that, while his face was lined and tired-looking, his blue eyes were sharp and focused with intelligence. The house behind him was modest but in good shape, and he had kept his land clear of the forest that encroached on three sides. This was not a man who would drift into his old age in a featherbed, surrounded by fat great-grandchildren.

Elijah dismounted to put them on somewhat more even footing, and held up his empty hands meaningfully. “I am sorry to startle you,” he said softly. “I have been searching for a place near here to settle with my family and saw you working so late, that’s all. It seemed as though you could use an extra pair of hands.”

“An extra everything is more like it,” the man admitted, sizing up Elijah’s broad shoulders. “I should have made moving these into the cellar a condition of the trade in the first place, but I thought it would be just as easy to throw on a rain cover if I needed it.” He smirked wryly. “I was mistaken.”

“I can move them for you, if that would be better,” Elijah offered—in for a penny, in for a pound. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend among the homesteaders out here, and the man’s uncomplaining attitude toward a task that was most certainly beyond him was charming.

“It’s a two-man job.” The man looked at the barrels. Elijah realized that he meant he wasn’t one of those men, as he wouldn’t be able to lift his side of a barrel. It didn’t matter, since Elijah was much stronger than an ordinary man, but he hurt for the old man’s wounded pride all the same.

He walked to the barrels, tipping the nearest one into his hands and lifting it easily. “It is,” he agreed. “So please show me the way and open the cellar door for me. I’d rather not hold this any longer than I need to.”

The man looked incredulous, then delighted. There was a noticeable spring in his step as he crossed his little patch of land, making for the stump of what had once been an impressively massive oak tree. He pulled at an iron ring in the ground beside it, and a section of turf swung upward, revealing a gaping hole below. The cellar had been hollowed out beneath the spreading roots of the tree, and Elijah felt carefully with each foot for the next uneven dirt stair while balancing the large barrel against his chest. The next four trips went just as smoothly, and then the man closed the trapdoor behind them and wiped his hands on his trousers.

“The name’s Hugo Rey,” he grunted, his voice thick with emotion, holding out his right hand. Elijah tried to remember the last time a human had offered to shake his hand and couldn’t.

He accepted the gesture warmly, and gave his name—his real name, to his own surprise—in return. “Can I do anything else for you while I’m here?” he asked courteously, rather hoping that Hugo would take him up on the offer.

“You can join me inside for a drink, son,” the old man told him firmly. “That was hard work you’ve just saved me, and the least I can do is provide hospitality in return. You must be thirsty after all that lifting.”

Normally, the inadvertent invitation to feed would have whetted Elijah’s appetite, but the thought of hurting Hugo didn’t even cross his mind. “It would be my pleasure,” he agreed sincerely, and together they made for the house in the center of the field.

It had grown dark and rain was nearly at the doorstep. Hugo set about lighting candles and clearing odds and ends from the rough-hewn kitchen table. Bits of hardware along with paper covered in lists of figures and painstakingly precise drawings were swept away before Elijah could put his finger on what they were, and he refocused his attention on the stocky earthenware cups that Hugo set out in their place.

They were filled with a rough but serviceable liquor—a few steps down from rye, but a few crucial notches up from moonshine. Elijah sipped cautiously, while Hugo drained half his mug in a single swallow. In the candlelight, he looked even older than Elijah had assumed at first. It was astonishing that he still lived out here, all alone, keeping his house and land in decent order and even attempting manual labor at his advanced age.

“That stuff keeps you young,” Hugo said, lifting his half-empty mug by way of explanation. It was as if he had followed the line of Elijah’s thoughts perfectly, as if Elijah didn’t need to speak to be understood.

Had it ever been so easy with his own father? This man was centuries younger than Mikael, but much older than Mikael had been when Elijah was still his cherished human son. And yet there was something about him that reminded Elijah of a father, of the way a father should behave toward a child who had grown up and chosen a path for himself in the world. Moving the barrels had not been a tremendous challenge for an Original vampire, but nonetheless, Hugo didn’t seem merely grateful: Elijah had the sense that the old man was proud of him.

“Have you lived out here long?” he asked politely, sipping again at his liquor.

“Twenty years at least,” Hugo replied vaguely. “The city’s closer to my doorstep now than it was.” He sounded as if he disapproved of that development.

“I’m a rather private person, myself,” Elijah offered. “I’ve been looking for land out here, actually. My sister and my brother like the nightlife in town, but I think we’d all be more comfortable with a quieter place to come home to.”

Hugo’s smile was distant. “I always thought I would have children,” he said suddenly, and Elijah blinked in surprise. “My life was never the type that gives much room for a family,” the man went on, “but I think there’s a part of you that never stops planning for the future as if there is one.”

Elijah wondered how Mikael would have responded to that. His own children obviously had no place in the future he wanted to build. Did Mikael have some other sort of legacy in mind, or did immortals eventually cease to think about such things? Elijah always thought of the future, although perhaps not in the way Hugo meant. When Elijah looked to the future, he was always still in it. “Family is a blessing,” he mused noncommittally, “but blessings can come in many forms.”

Hugo nodded and refilled his cup. He held out the bottle meaningfully, offering more to his guest. Elijah, whose cup was still nearly full, took the bottle from him politely and poured in just a few drops more. It was always proper to accept hospitality, in his experience, or at least to make a reasonable show of it.

“I suspect I’ve been blessed enough,” Hugo answered thoughtfully, swirling the liquid in his mug and staring into it for a moment before taking another long drink. “I’ve used my talents in my work, made and kept a good reputation my whole life, and owned this square of land outright since probably before you were born.”

Elijah was not inclined to correct him on that last point; instead he simply nodded. It was clear to him that the wheels of the old man’s mind were turning, and he suspected that, if he waited, Hugo would say more. A silent moment proved him right.

“A man should have a home he can call his own.” His voice was low and forceful, almost a growl. “It’s not natural to be adrift, family or no.”

Unnatural once again. Abomination.

“I’ll drink to that,” Elijah replied, and matched action to words. “And to that note, do you know if any of your neighbors are thinking of selling? We have had some trouble with going through official channels in this matter, so we would be open to offering a nice price for someone willing to sign over the deed quickly, with no formalities.”

Hugo’s lined face crinkled into a knowing smile. “Not so popular with the higher-ups, are you, my boy? Local politics have no winners, at least not for long. Why do you think I’m all the way out here? I don’t have to deal with anyone who doesn’t value my time and work, and I prefer it that way.”

“I think I could learn much from your example,” Elijah admitted.

Hugo pushed his chair back from the table abruptly, and when he rose Elijah noticed that he was unsteady on his feet. That was a surprise. Although Hugo had partaken quite liberally of the liquor in his cup, Elijah had been under the impression that he did not normally drink less. He should have been accustomed to his generous nightcap, and yet he swayed as he crossed the room as if he were on the deck of a ship.

He returned with an intricately mosaicked wooden box, which he set down wordlessly in the center of the table, halfway between the two cups. With a long exhale, Hugo opened the box to reveal some worn, yellowed papers. Elijah stared at them, unsure whether he was meant to pick them up and examine them himself.

“I have a house, and not much more need of one. You need a house and do not have one.” Hugo’s gruff voice was blunt, but his blue eyes avoided Elijah’s as if he felt suddenly shy. “Keep searching among my neighbors if you like, but if you want it, this home will be yours upon my death.” He produced a fountain pen from one of his pockets, and Elijah stared keenly at it. Such pens, with a reservoir of ink hidden neatly inside of a metal casing, were rare—yet another unexpectedly interesting item in this modest little house. Hugo scribbled on the papers before him, then signed his name at the bottom of each page with a flourish. “I have not met a man in a long time that I would wish to consider my heir,” he mumbled when he had finished. “But I cannot stop thinking of the future, even now. And here you are....”

He trailed off, his eyes still fixed on the papers before him. Elijah understood that they were two of a kind. “I would be honored,” he told the old man gently, “and grateful. Eternally grateful,” he added, a little ruefully. If Hugo wanted his home—and his memory—to live on, he could hardly have chosen a better beneficiary. “But I hope that it will be a long time before we have the use of this remarkable gift. I would rather come to visit you here again, and often, if you will allow it.”

Hugo smiled and sat down heavily in his chair, although he was not a large man. “I would like that, too,” he said serenely, his gaze fixed on something in the distance that Elijah could not see. His lined face looked flushed in the candlelight. “But I think that the time for visiting is largely past. It has been very enjoyable, though. Very satisfactory.”

Elijah frowned and glanced down at his cup again. Was Hugo ill? Did he know something about his death that he had chosen not to share? His eyes moved forward to the signed pages between them on the table. He had made it his goal to own land, but now he felt deeply troubled about accepting it. As hard as it had been for the Mikaelsons to carve out a foothold in New Orleans, to find a friend had always proved even more difficult.

“I will use whatever time is left, then,” he promised, and a smile creased Hugo’s face. He poured them another glass from his bottle of liquor, which was already more than half gone, and Elijah raised his mug in a silent toast.

They talked well into the night. Their silences grew and lengthened as the hours wore on, and several times Elijah thought that Hugo might have dozed off. During these lapses, Elijah’s eyes roamed the room, taking in each small detail. He imagined how it would feel to have a home of their own again, a place as personal and lived-in as this one. Then the old man would rouse himself, and their conversation would resume. Hugo’s cheeks were still unnaturally flushed, and at times his mind appeared to wander, but he seemed to want their evening to continue, and Elijah was perfectly content to oblige him.

Finally, silence fell again, and to Elijah’s keen ears this one was deeper and more perfect than all the rest had been. The rainstorm had come and gone, and he could hear cicadas and bullfrogs outside. In the distance, the lazy spill of the Saint Louis River swept along. But inside the house, there was no sound at all.

Hugo Rey sat in his chair, one hand wrapped around his mug, but his eyes were empty and lifeless. The rise and fall of his chest had stopped, while Elijah’s attention had been diverted. He had passed, silently and peacefully, in his home and attended by a friend. Elijah knew that few humans were so lucky, but still, as he collected the papers from the table and returned to his horse he felt a painful twisting of regret in his chest.