08: Viper

[City of the Dead, LaFayette Cemetery 1, New Orleans, LA. February 20th, 2020. 10:54 pm.]

He was ready to sink his teeth into the little witch. Ever since he returned to New Orleans, she had been nothing but trouble. She had made questionable decisions at every turn, and he couldn’t remember one single good, profitable, thing that she’s ever done. Davina Claire was this tiny little pest who had everyone wrapped around her finger. She was Hellbent on destroying him, foiling every plan Elijah had to make New Orleans a better place, to create peace and maintain the balance of power.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to make a power hungry witch even more powerful by making her regent of all nine covens in New Orleans had been right out of their minds. Fortunately, he had killed Vincent the first chance that he had once they had extracted Klaus’ brother Finn from his body. He had corrupted Davina even further. Klaus had to admit, despite Kol’s penchant for wreaking havoc and his desire to kill him in the past, Kol had been a real influence on Davina. Right until he died the first time, and the Ancestors took away their relationship upon his return. Marcel, whom Klaus had tasked with to keep an eye on her, was mere minutes away from getting his heart ripped out for his treason. Marcel would have stopped her if he’d truly been on Klaus’ side.

However, Klaus felt euphoric that Bella came into their lives. Under her influence, Kol had mellowed somewhat, and Klaus didn’t even have to think about keeping an eye on the former happy homicidal maniac. Kol was still a happy lunatic but no longer out for blood – much. But right now, Klaus imagined that both his brother and sister-in-law were seeing red, their daughter had been taken. Their family. And yet, Kol wanted to defend the little witch, saying she would never stoop this low. Idiot.

Hope had been taken as well and while Klaus was extremely pissed about that too, Nina was an innocent bystander. Bella and Kol had done nothing to deserve Davina’s wrath. Maybe it was stupid that he felt more angry about that than on the kidnapping of his own daughter, but he didn’t care. It also gave him some peace of mind that his daughter was with his niece, she’d look after her. Precious little Nina, just a toddler.

He kicked in the door of Davina’s hideout. “Where are they!” He demanded as he made his way through the building, followed closely by Kol and Bella.

Davina looked up from writing something down with a look on her face that was a mix between confused and sheer terror. Bella could feel how she put up her defenses as she addressed the angry hybrid. “What are you talking about?” She then looked at Kol and Bella and cocked her head. “Shouldn’t you two be consuming your marriage by now?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Davina Claire,” Klaus sneered. “Where are Nina and Hope?”

“What do you mean?”

Klaus launched himself at the small witch but immediately fell to the floor, writhing in agony before she looked at the happy couple.

“Hope and Nina are gone, Davina,” Kol spoke calmly, not wanting to suffer her wrath as Klaus was currently doing.

“Oh. That sucks,” she evenly replied as she released Klaus from the spell and saw the look on the faces of the Mikaelsons. She couldn’t help but laugh. “You really think I have something to do with it? Oh, wow, that’s just…”

“No, I don’t,” Kol spoke as he gently squeezed Bella’s hand. He could feel her fear for the children radiate off of her. She wasn’t angry either, just scared. “Neither does Bella.”

She turned to Klaus, who had been smart and had stayed down on the floor. “But you do. I’m hurt, Klaus. Do you think that I would take your children to get to you? Innocent children who have nothing to do with my business with you? I have to admit, it’s something I briefly considered, but I realized that you would do something like that, and I am nothing like you.”

“Then where are they, Davina? If they’re not here, where are they?”

“Not here, obviously!” She shot at Klaus. “Even if I had them, do you think I would be so stupid to bring them here?” Davina rolled her eyes at the hybrid before looking at the couple. “I’ll help you. I doubt a locator spell would work, but with the three of us we surely have enough power to push through whatever magic is protecting them, if it’s magic in the first place.”

Bella wasn’t quite sure what to think. She couldn’t believe that Davina was that good of an actress, and she was still angry about this whole situation. She was supposed to be celebrating her union with Kol, have wild sex in every corner of their room, the bath tub and whatever and this was not how she thought their day would end. She did know that whoever took Nina and Hope, they were going to die. Either Klaus would tear them apart or Bella would make their deaths agony by slowly pulling them apart.

Either way, they were going to pay for what they’ve done. No one was touching her baby girl and her niece and get away with it.

[Accessing current feeds]

[Mystic Falls, VA. Former Salvatore Boarding House. January 23rd, 2311. 11:23 am.]

Bella had had a rough night; she had kept vomiting and eventually had retreated to the bathroom and locked the door because Kol and Klaus kept hovering. When morning finally came, she lay curled up on the couch, sleeping, with a blanket over her while the other Mikaelsons watched over her.

“How is this possible?” Klaus breezed. “I thought the food we got her was clean, something that agreed with her. Did Damon undercook something?”

“No, the food was excellent,” Kol sneered at his brother. “I checked.” Something else had to be going on, and he hoped it wasn’t because of what he had done. He had felt awful about how his wife was doing so poorly after her return from the dead. He had watched her suffer for a few days, and despite him offering to feed her some of his blood – she didn’t want it.

She had been so human about it, that whatever she was suffering from was going to go away eventually, and she didn’t need any magic or blood to help her get over it. So, he did what he did best; he became impatient and had put some of his blood in her hot cocoa the night before and had her drink it all.

It made him feel sick to his stomach knowing that he could have caused this. He’d promised her not ever to hurt her, and he had. Luckily, the tiny bit of blood that he had given her should have gone through her system by now, and she’d get better again. Hopefully. She had to get better. He wasn’t sure that he would want to go on without her now that she was back. Kol’d get his brother to dagger him for eternity, or he’d find the remains of the White Oak Tree and kill himself. For sure.

No, maybe not.

“It must be the damn chip in her head,” Klaus muttered as he looked at Bella. “Does our friend know if it’s safe for her to keep it in her head?”

“It’s not the chip, Klaus,” Sam gently said as she stood behind him and massaged his shoulders, he looked like he needed it. “I think it’s something else.”

“What, love?” Klaus looked up to Sameen, who nodded towards Kol. She had seen the slight change in expression on his face when he spoke about the food and thought it was shifty. Sure, she thought something else was going on too, but at least she knew for a fact that Kol had done something. “Kol?”

“Nik?”

“What did you do?”

Klaus sounded too calm, too calm for Kol’s liking and quickly thought if his brother had anything on him that could severely hurt him. “Nothing,” he replied as he got up and moved closer to Bella. If needed, he’d wake her up but before he realized it, his brother had pushed him across the room and up against a wall.

“What. Did. You. Do, Kol?” Klaus breezed as he had put his arm against his brother’s throat and kept him there. “Are you really that dimwitted to harm your wife?” He pulled Kol away from the wall before slamming him into it again. “Have you lost your bloody mind?”

Letting out a growl, Kol pushed Klaus off of him, launching him through the air into another wall, the painting crashing right on top of his brother. He was on top of him in seconds, grabbing Klaus by his shoulders before hoisting him up and threw him across the room again.

“Guys!” Sam’s voice sounded calm, but there was a warning underneath it. “Stop it. Right now. We’re not going to do this again.”

“If you want to live, stay out of this,” Kol spat at his brother’s mate, causing Klaus to knock him over and stab him with a broken bottle. “You bloody tosser!” he growled, kicking his brother off of him, again, and pulled the bottle out of him before launching it at Klaus.

“Hey! Redirect your anger towards something else before you end up destroying this house,” Sam knew that she could only throw idle threats at the boys. The only reason their fights ended in the past was because she got herself into harm’s way trying to diffuse the fight, nearly killing her once or twice.

Bella had woken up from the ruckus and looked around, seeing the destruction and finding Sam somewhere out of the brothers’ way. “What’s going on?” She watched how Kol got flattened to the ground by Klaus sitting on top of him before Kol kicked him off of him. When Klaus hit the ceiling, Kol was already on the other end of the room, his smile matching his brother’s. “Boys?”

“See, this is what I was talking about,” Sam said as she sat down on the couch next to Bella. “Amongst other things.”

“They’re just fighting.”

“They’re destroying the house,” Sam pointed out. “And while I love a good fight, I don’t fancy meddling with two Originals. Again.”

“But why though? Why are they fighting?”

“Kol did something to you to make you this sick,” she replied as she winced at the sight of Kol slamming Klaus into the fireplace, leaving an enormous dent in the shaft. “He’s not saying what.”

“Oh,” Bella huffed. “It’s fine. I know.” She got to her feet, a little bit unsteady at first but managed to stay upright and pulled the two fighting brothers away from each other with her magic. “Calm the fuck down, both of you.” When both brothers opened their mouth to say something, she pushed them against the opposite walls. “Calm down.”

“He started it!” Kol said as he pointed at his brother, unable to move from his position.

“No, Kol, you started it!” Klaus sneered, frustrated that Bella kept him dangling from the wall.

“Look, I don’t mind you two having a fight, but don’t do it inside the house because it’s not your house. It belongs to Damon and Stefan,” Bella spoke calmly and lowered both brothers down. “But so that you know, I know that Kol fed me his blood and now we know it won’t work. I’m surprised his patience lasted this long.”

“Hey!” Kol complained as Bella put both siblings down on the ground. “Am I that transparent?”

“No,” she smiled sweetly at him and made her way over to him to kiss him. “But you love me and don’t like to see me suffer. Vampire blood should be healing anything, and it didn’t. What I don’t like is that you went against my wishes.”

“Against your wishes or not, you are going to visit a doctor today to have your blood tested,” Klaus growled, still angry that Kol had given Bella his blood. He could understand why, Klaus would probably have done the same to Sameen had they been in similar situations, but the girl had reacted so violently that something must have been wrong.

If anything, Bella’s response to Kol’s blood was what he had expected what would happen. He and Sameen hadn’t said anything about it to the newly reunited couple as not to worry them, but Bella’s blood smelled off. She smelled off, unlike any other human being. Sameen had told him on the day that Bella had come home after having spent time together on the train and in the car.

Klaus had smelled it. At first, he had shrugged it off due to Bella just having been resurrected, but the smell had persisted. If anything, it had gotten worse since she had returned from her solo trip to New Orleans. She wasn’t affected by a witches’ curse. If she were, she would have noticed that herself. Something more subtle was going on, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

“Fine,” Bella said with a shrug. “I’m going to take a shower, get into some comfortable, warm clothes and drag Kol off with me while you clean up the mess you two have created.”

“Your health is the reason for this mess.”

She angrily muttered a spell to cast an illusion over the fireplace so that it appeared fixed as she walked up the stairs. “The rest is up to you!”

[Mystic Falls, VA. Doctor’s office. January 23rd, 2311. 2:13 pm.]

“Oh God, that does smell horrid…” Kol scrunched his nose upon smelling Bella’s blood as the doctor, heavily under compulsion, had made a tiny incision for some of his nanobots to get inside of Bella to analyze her body.

Bella had ignored him as she was fascinated by how modern medicine had made giant leaps in the last 300 years. The doctor had explained to her that the nanobots could see everything, test for anything and, when programmed for it, could fix damage like broken bones or whatever, making the patient load on hospitals non-existent. There were even kits you could use at home to test yourself for cancer or even cure it. It was all very mind boggling to her, and it kind of freaked her out; surely there were still malevolent hackers about? What if such nanobot would get stuck somewhere? Or not come out of her body?

“Hmm,” the doctor said as he observed what his bots were gathering. “Oh, oh, dear.”

“What?” Kol demanded as he eyed the doctor. “You’re under compulsion, remember? Tell it like it is.”

“Ah, well, for one, I haven’t seen this in a very long time. My hobby is rare herbs and all but the results that they are showing me… You ah… you’re a vampire and your wife is a witch, correct?”

“Yes, we’ve told you that ten minutes ago,” Kol spat.

“Kol, calm down.”

“There’s no calming down, Bella, he’s worried, which makes me worried and when I get worried, I get angry so he’d better tell me what’s going on before I snap his neck.”

“It seems like a week ago; you’ve ingested a large amount of a mixture of a wild variety of hemlock combined with vervain, wolfsbane, lobelia flower and yellow chrysanthemum laced with arsenic. In the old days, you’d have been dead instantly from the hemlock and arsenic alone, but with the climate change and all, the potency of these herbs have diminished,” the doctor continued happily, almost as if he was fangirling over the herbs. “These bots can’t tell if magic has been used, so you’re on your own with that. There’s some damage to the anterior section of your hypothalamus, specifically the part that regulates your body temperature. Unfortunately, we can do a lot with medicine these days but I can’t fix this. Especially if there’s magic involved. I could end up making you feel worse.”

Bella felt the color drain out of her face and had set up a barrier around the doctor to save him from Kol’s anger. If it were possible, there would be fumes coming out of his ears right now. “It makes sense now,” she said softly before getting up and started pacing around, her own anger now coming to the surface. “Those stupid, conniving witches! I’m going to kill them!”

“That’s the spirit, Cuddles,” Kol smirked. “Now, would you please lower down the shield so I can snack on the good old doctor?” It didn’t seem like Kol had been adequately listening to the doctor’s words. If she had to guess, he tuned the doctor out after listing the herbs, probably trying to make sense of them himself instead of trying to hear the doctor out. Kol knew his herbs alright, always boasting about his extensive knowledge, but the look on his face told her that he realized that it was a miracle that Bella was still walking around on two feet. And at the same time he was probably trying to force the negativity to the back of his head.

Bella scowled as she did what he asked of her before using that special wand the doctor used to get the nanobots out of her body before looking around for a band-aid. She watched in fascination as Kol drained the doctor from all his blood, finding it strangely arousing.

So what she was being poisoned by the witches? She was going to kill them and if she weren’t going to be able to, Kol definitely would. Now that she knew that her troubles were magical, she was going to find out before they’d go to New Orleans and lower the barrier to take it back. She felt betrayed, angry and found the entirety of it all so unfair.

It wasn’t fair.

But she was certainly going to have sex with Kol on the examination table once her husband was done snacking. They both needed to redirect their anger towards something mutually beneficial for the town’s safety. Then, they’d go home and inform the others, find the right location to do the spell to drop the barrier and get it done. Then maybe, just maybe, when she wasn’t dead yet, she was going to kill those witches and find herself a cure. Getting turned into a vampire was impossible now, seeing as she couldn’t hold down Kol’s blood.

Fucking witches. They were going to die.

[Mystic Falls, VA. Former Salvatore Boarding House. January 23rd, 2311. 5:43 pm.]

Bella was hungrily eating her chicken legs that they had picked up from the shop as Kol informed his brother what they had discovered. She was still a bit floaty because of the incredible sex they had had; who knew that shared anger sex was so amazing? She was now once again cold and sitting in front of the fireplace while enjoying her food. She should feel too angry to even be able to eat, but she had to have something. Unlike the vampires in the house, she actually needed human food to sustain herself.

While Kol was talking to Klaus and Sameen, Bella was also thinking about what the doctor had said. If magic had been involved, he couldn’t have done anything, but surely there was a way for Bella to find out if magic had been used? She had used a spell like that, once and had written it down somewhere. What had Klaus done with their grimoires or were they still in the Crypt? She couldn’t remember if she’d given them to Klaus to protect.

She shifted a little to see if her bones had warmed up yet but let out a deep breath when that hadn’t happened yet. Had she given Nina access to her and Kol’s books? Why couldn’t she remember? Had it been that long ago or that unimportant? Sighing, Bella looked up from the flames and looked at Klaus. “Klaus, where did our grimoires end up?”

“They’re in a safe place. They hold a lot of powerful magic, I couldn’t allow for it to be passed down to your descendants.”

Bella nodded. “I need them, can you get to them?”

“What, now?”

“Please?” She smiled at him. “Unless they’re far away, then no.”

“What do you need the books for, Cuddles?” Kol asked as he sat down next to her and gently rubbed her arms over the thick blanket she had already over her. He was worried that their extracurricular activity of today was the cause of her feeling this cold again. He certainly hoped not as it was something they could for sure repeat one day. “You have a talent for remembering all your spells, everything you’ve done. You know them.”

“I do, I just want to be sure. It would also give me an opportunity to look for the other spell to help me bring down the barrier around New Orleans.” Well, that was half a lie, and she hoped that Klaus hadn’t picked up on that; werewolves could always tell when someone was lying. She had been so relieved that Kol’s mind hadn’t shifted into overdrive after realising that it had been a miracle that Bella was still walking around, breathing.

Maybe even thinking that the herbs would work their way out of her system on their own because she didn’t seem to be suffering much from their effects and up until today she had been doing fine. She just couldn’t remember her spells, almost as if her brain had started to develop dementia within the last twelve hours. When she heard Klaus huff, she knew she had been caught. She sweetly smiled at Kol and caressed his face. “Besides, wouldn’t it be fun to see our books again?” Hell, maybe she could find something that would get the poison out of her system.

“Sure,” he smiled and kissed the top of her head. “But let’s focus on the barrier spell first, alright? We can worry about other things later.”

Or maybe, she thought, he knew quite well what was going on and didn’t want to upset her, make her last days count. Or something.

“There’s a slight problem with getting those books,” Sam replied and shrugged when Klaus shot her angry look, willing her to shut up. “They’re in New Orleans.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay,” Bella shrugged and pushed her food away from her as she settled against Kol before sitting up again and scribbled something on a piece of paper before handing it to him. “I can drop the barrier tomorrow if you have enough cannon fodder for the werewolves. I need these herbs to help me.”

“Don’t you need a particular location?”

Bella shrugged. “I’ll wing it and I guess that he cast the spell at a central spot in New Orleans. Which is around the old Gentilly landfill in its current state. Should be close enough,” she spoke before drawing the current state of New Orleans onto a piece of paper. “There are two cable cars – or things that look like them anyway but they’re a lot faster – going up to New Orleans. One takes you to Downman Road, and the other takes you closer to the French Quarter. If I time it right, you could use them to get into New Orleans without a scratch.”

“Isn’t there another way?” Klaus tiredly rubbed his face.

“Uhm, not that I know of. You could, of course, get off the vactrain and hop on the next one when I’ve lowered the barrier but yeah, those cars give me a little bit more time to get there.”

“I don’t like this plan,” Kol said as he playfully poked Bella’s shoulder. “Because you’re going into werewolf territory all by yourself.”

“I’m a big witch, Kol, I can take care of myself,” she said with a grin on her face.

“Who says she’s going to be on her own?” Sam said with a knowing smirk on her face. “We’ll discuss the details later. For now, you’re going to relax your ass off, and we’re going to take care of your shopping list.”

“But…”

“Yes, and a nice butt you have, Cuddles,” Kol grinned as he scooped her up from the floor and took her upstairs. “A nice, hot bath.”

“Will you be in it?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I could keep my hands to myself…”

A/N: Check out the family tree that I created for this story! It might help you a little for reference.

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