Chapter 18: Open Wide

She never thought about having to spend Halloween inside. Mostly alone. It had been the most fun to be at Débauche and to work during special holidays such as these. Last year, she was dressed up as a zombified Disney princess that got her a lot of attention from freaks, but it had been so much fun.

And now she was stuck inside. Away from the club and reading a book about Travelers. It was such an extensive book, and she didn’t want to skim over it because she was afraid she was going to miss things. She wanted the book to kick start Peter’s wonder brain, but she had promised Klaus not to do that before she read it all herself. And without him.

Elijah and Hayley were going to a party thrown by Elijah’s little vampires, and Klaus was hunting down Lucien to have another encounter with Alexis. Freya was out, partying. At least Bella wasn’t stuck with Hope duty. The worst part of it all that Klaus had asked her to stay in the study or the bedroom and not go to the courtyard, that the servants would make sure she was well taken care of.

She wasn’t sure what was worse; living at the Compound or Débauche. All she knew was that she wanted to party. She had swung the balcony doors open and heard music and laughter coming from the streets. Having that as her music, she continued to read the book. Bella started to pay more attention when she came to the Petrova’s. There was nothing about doppelgangers or singers, much to her disappointment, but that was because they were rare things. And as far as singers, the Cold Ones liked to hide their truths.

Klaus had told her that they only learned of the line of Petrova’s being common for doppelgangers after they met Katerina, it was the line that he and his family had traced back to Tatia, who was in their village and the two were the spitting image of each other. Elijah had a book with that entire lineage, and not much of it, but this book, Kol’s book, was so much more.

She didn’t know the guy, but she thought he was awesome. Smart, to have a book on some very powerful witches, where, more often than not, their weaknesses were being discussed, and how they managed to overcome them. If this book was the key to knowing what was wrong with her, then she definitely owed him a drink in the afterlife.

It took her a few more chapters to get to the line of the youngest brother of Katerina’s father, and she was fascinated by what she was reading. It was truly the origins of her family. However, there was nothing mentioned about the line being extra special. She kept reading, and once she got to the juicy parts, on how the Travelers existed and who were in it, a few familiar names popped up for doing a lot of bad stuff.

That, and the fact that the Travelers seemed to be the root of all evil as well when it came to Cold Ones. She had gold in her hands. This had been one book talking about the origins of the Cold Ones that the Volturi hadn’t been able to destroy. Well done, Kol.

This could give Peter some more insight as well. Jumping out of the chair, she made her way over to the alcohol and poured herself a generous glass. She wanted to party, and since she was alone, she was going to party by herself.

Taking the glass with her, she went to the bedroom to grab her iPad and sent Myriam a text message, wishing her a happy Halloween before connecting it to her portable speakers and pressed her playlist. She was going to get drunk and dance all night until Klaus would come home and if she’d remember, she was going to tell him what she’d learned. If she didn’t remember, well, then he’d just had to wait until she’d sobered up.

Bella lost track of time when all of a sudden she could hear Klaus complain from his study that she was playing her music too loud and that he needed to have a chat with Marcel about the night’s events. Grumbling, she turned it down somewhat and poured the remainder of the decanter in her glass and continued drinking.

She couldn’t wait for Klaus to be done. She had something important to share, but what was it? Klaus sounded angry and then the voices left the study to go downstairs or something. She didn’t care. Bella turned her music back up and went to look for more booze as she downed the glass and nearly bumped into the doorpost. Giggling, she found a full decanter of bourbon on a side table – that was one good thing about living with vampires, there was alcohol on every table, or it seemed that way and brought it back to the bedroom.

It didn’t take much longer for Klaus to join her. She caught him watching her from the door as she danced and tried not to bump into things. “I thought I told you to turn it down, love.”

“Oh, poop,” she huffed as she stumbled to her iPad and turned off the music. “I’m having fun. It’s Halloween, and I have nowhere to go, no one to entertain… I mean, you were gone all day, leaving me with this boring book and hearing people in the streets having fun…” She made her way over to him and sighed. “And I don’t know if I’m drowning my sorrows or celebrating, how grand is that? I am so drunk that I forgot what I was doing or what the reason is!” She tugged on his shirt and pulled him towards the bed. “Come.”

“You’re acting like a spoilt brat, love,” he mused as he watched her, making sure she was alright. “I need to tell you something before Elijah comes in and tells you the same story but from his point of view.”

“Uh-huh,” she said as she pushed him onto the bed and sat down on top of him. She then wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, before remembering the night before, where she had massaged him, and his cock seemed lonely. Smirking, she slid down his legs, off the bed to help him out of his pants.

“I uh… well, Lucien and I went to crash Elijah’s exclusive party with the Strix.”

“Uh-huh,” she said as she yanked his pants over his shoes, losing everything in the process. Putting her hands on his thighs, she looked up at him with a smile on her face as she was sitting between his legs.

“We came in with a bunch of girls to make sure that Freya could slip in without detection.”

“Okay,” she said as she licked her lips, remaining eye contact with him. “Was that it?”

“Elijah might say that I was too handsy.”

Her smile turned into a pout. “Were you?”

His eyes widened in shock and disbelief. How could she believe that he was? “No! No, of course not!”

“I think you were,” she said sadly. “Because you were having too much fun all day and you forgot all about me. You left me here. You didn’t even call me or send someone to check on me. What if I got killed by Peter? Or by someone else? I could have stupidly fallen over the balcony and dropped dead on the floor.”

“You’re silly, Bella.”

Grabbing his cock with a firm hand, she squeezed it, hard. “I’m drunk off my ass! Of course I’m silly!”

“Let go of the goods, love,” he said with a strained voice.

“Fuck you, I’m going to suck you dry,” she said as she loosened her grip and took him into her mouth.

Despite the fact that he would never object to receiving a blow job, he had to stop her. She was drunk and irrational. He had let her go on for a bit so that she, too, could blow off some steam but she needed to sleep it off. He tucked his legs underneath him as he pushed her shoulders. “No,” he crooned as she released him. He pulled her up and carefully put her down on the bed. “We’re not going to engage in sexual activities when you’re positively drunk.”

“But…”

“That was your rule at Myriam’s, that should be your rule now,” he said as he tucked her in bed, it was a good thing that she was already in her underwear, so he didn’t have to undress her. “Unless the both of us are equally drunk.”

“That won’t ever happen. You’d have to drink two crates of bourbon to get there,” she pouted.

“Sleep. I’ll feed you my blood in the morning to cure your hangover.”

~o.O.o~

She groaned when the sun hit her face the following morning. Pulling her pillow over her head, she squeezed her eyes shut as thousands of demented midgets were using jackhammers to redecorate the inside of her skull. Bella had let herself go the night before. Too much bourbon. What was it? An entire bottle and then some?

The smell of fried eggs and bacon made her come to her senses somewhat, and when she peeked from under her pillow, Klaus was just setting a full English breakfast down on her side table with a big glass of orange juice. If she had to be honest, she was famished. She couldn’t even remember if she had dinner last night. Crawling out from her little bunker, she sat up and smiled at him, thankful for the breakfast. “Hi.”

“Morning,” he said with a grin and kissed the top of her head. “Eat up, how’s your head?”

“Eh, troublesome,” she squinted her eyes when he moved out of the way, and the sun hit her face again. “I’m sorry, I kinda let myself go last night.” She pulled the plate into her lap and sighed. “Tell me everything.”

And he did. Everything that they had found out, rescuing Alexis, losing Alexis, everything. By the time Klaus was done telling her, she had wiped her plate clean and was about to trade the plate of her glass of orange juice. He could already see that she was pinking up and doing better. He had hid a little bit of his blood in the baked beans and tomato juice, figuring that drinking blood on an empty stomach wouldn’t be a productive means of getting her cured of her hangover. “And now it’s your turn to share.”

“Oh!” She said brightly before downing the glass of juice and hopped off the bed to get back into her clothes. “You have to see this. This will shed so much light on the origin of the Cold Ones; you have no idea!”

“I thought you were reading up on Travelers?”

“Yes, I was,” she smiled as she zipped her pants and threw on one of his shirts before taking his hand and dragging him to the study. “They were created by Travelers. By complete accident, of course, but created by them nonetheless.”

“What?”

Bella nodded. “Mmhmm. Something like 2000 years before someone named Quetesh…?”

“Ah, the Egyptian goddess of sexual pleasure and sacred ecstasy,” Klaus mused before it hit him. “Qetsiyah?”

She rolled her eyes at him before nodding. “Yes. Anyway, the Travelers only grew in power over the centuries, but it all started with an accident. A few members of the Travelers wanted more power for themselves, at first, they were one with nature, and they decided to upset the balance. They were enslaved and made to build the Pyramids at Gizeh, and wanted to speed up the process because it was hard work,” Bella explained as she pulled him towards the book to show him. “They dreamt of finishing their task and taking over from the Pharaoh at the time to better themselves, to create more wealth. It was during a regular day at sunrise in the camp when they decided to piss off the deities. It killed the entire camp. Or that’s what they initially thought. From the ashes and ruins of the camp, the laborers rose, and their skin was reflecting the sun like tiny crystals.”

“You’re joshing me!”

“Nope,” Bella shook her head with a smile. “The remaining Travelers lost their magic for a while and were banished to other lands such as Romania and Bulgaria. Some went to Greece. There were tales that one day, by the grace of the Gods, power would be restored to the Travelers and that they needed to fix their past misdeeds of creating the men made out of stone, as they were wreaking havoc over the entire continent. Now, around 100 years BC, the Travelers, especially in Greece, had finally been able to prove to the Gods that their past misdeeds were just that, the past. Sure, they were well off and revered by the regular folk, often being showered with gifts such as jewelry and food, but they only took what they needed.”

Klaus grumbled as he sat down in the chair and pulled Bella onto his lap. He’d always known that his Bella was a history buff, but for her to piece together all the clues in the book, as they were just that, was just amazing. Or probably a remnant of the spell cast upon her. “Please continue.”

“There was a gifted witch at the time called Qetsiyah. It appeared that she had mastered immortality and wanted to gift that to her fiancé Silas, but before that, her most powerful spell had been an idea, at first, her mentor had improved it and cast it, causing yet again an amount of Travelers to lose their lives, but this time for good. Over the centuries they had observed that some men and women of stone had shown interest in people, claiming that their blood smelled better than others, and how those people ended up dying. A lot. Qetsiyah’s idea was to empower those better smelling humans to be the death of the Cold Ones, to clean up the mess that their ancestors had created centuries before.”

“Interesting.”

“The spell required so much magic, and so much energy that it required the sacrifice of half the Traveler population and until the 10th or 11th century, there was no actual evidence that it had worked.”

“So for 1200 years, they weren’t sure if their sacrifice had been worth it? That’s just stupid.”

“Or ingenious,” Bella pointed out. “It was prophesied that a new breed of Cold Ones would rise. They referred to them as Hot Ones at first, as they were seen as the complete opposite. While both were against nature, the Hot Ones would be able to blend in more with the regular folk as their skin wouldn’t sparkle in the sun. They would be indestructible and populate the Earth.”

“Are you talking about my family and our progeny?” He was intrigued now. He had always wondered why there were two types of vampires. Granted, they always stayed clear of each other, respecting each other’s culture, but how was this possible?

“Well, you told me about how your mother sought out the witch of your village after Henrik died, to turn you all into immortals. That witch was a descendant of Qetsiyah and she flat out refused because she knew what danger it could bring to mess with nature. Remember, due to her immortality spell, she created the doppelgangers.”

“My mother took it upon herself to turn us into immortals.”

“And voila, the Hot Ones were born,” she kissed him on the cheek. “And I must say, you are very hot.”

“But just to be clear, love, we are not related to the Cold Ones at all, are we?”

“Oh, no, no, I don’t believe so,” she smiled at him. “You’re pure blooded Vikings.”

“I’m not a pureblood, love.”

“I know, but as far as this book tells me, no Traveler went to Scandinavia, probably because it was too cold, and the Americas were too far away,” she turned a few more pages and pointed at it. “This is give or take a few hundred years after you were created and had spawned little sirelings of your own. This story tells the story of Carmen, daughter of a non-practicing Traveler from Italy, and she was a singer. Like, a real singer. But she fell in love with a Hot One and a Cold One at the same time. The Cold One lusted after her for her blood, and the Hot One actually cared about her. Carmen’s father remembered the story of how some people smelled better to Cold Ones than others and told her to be aware. She was too much of a talented singer to be killed.”

“What happened?”

“The Hot One took her away, he took her to foreign countries and had her sing for royalty. They earned quite some money over the years and, after a while, they encountered the same Cold One at a French court. Afraid that he was going to lose her, the Hot One turned her, unlocking the spell that was cast centuries before. Carmen found that she could easily kill the Cold One. And she did. Her blood turned into a beacon and for years, Cold Ones came to her wherever she performed, and she killed them all.”

“Are you serious?” Klaus laughed. “That sounds bloody awesome!”

“It does,” Bella smiled at him. “It took Aro and the other Volturi nearly 100 years to be able to end her life, but the damage had been done. Carmen, the singer, had slaughtered half of the Cold One population. Quite the embarrassment.”

“And that’s where the term singer comes from?”

“I guess,” Bella said with a shrug. “I think Peter can fill in the blanks about the spell, what it does, exactly. This book isn’t a grimoire, more like a journal.”

“Anything else that sprung to your attention?”

Bella nodded with a sigh. “But we’ll get to that later, okay? Let’s talk to Peter about this and see what he has to say. Maybe this information will do nothing for him, maybe it will.”

“Has he been fed at all?”

“We’ll take a fresh blood bag downstairs, but he’s a little bit of a purist,” she shrugged as she got off Klaus’ lap. “He’ll eat when he’s hungry, just like any other household pet.”

 

Untitled-1

2 Comments:

  1. I don’t blame Bella for having her own pity party.

    Love this twist of how cold ones and hot ones vampires came about. Very ingenious! Kol’s book was full of info.
    Great chapter!

  2. Can’t wait for more.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.