Chapter 10

Kol stayed for a few more hours, they just quietly talked about what happened and they both made sure that they were alright. Bella wanted to be sure that Kol wasn’t feeling bad and Kol wanted to be sure that Bella wasn’t afraid of him after what happened.

Bella wasn’t sure why this was so important. Perhaps she just didn’t want to lose Kol as a friend. She liked his company and she wanted to make sure they were okay. Kol was different. He wasn’t like any of her human friends, he was better. And maybe it was because he had hundreds of years of experience being human, or being alive, but Bella simply liked his energy.

It was easy to be around him and his family. More around Kol as she spent the most time with him but apart from Elijah sometimes, she didn’t feel that they didn’t want her around. It felt more real, and there was a real connection. At least, that’s what she thought.

She didn’t dare to voice that thought because right now everything was fine, what if she’d mess things up?

Bella looked to her door when she heard a knock and Charlie’s face appeared. “You’re not up yet?”

“It’s Sunday, dad, good morning.”

“But your friends are downstairs, they told me you guys were going bowling in Seattle today?”

Bowling. Nice one. “That’s today?”

“But Bells, you’re going to have to be careful, alright? Seattle isn’t one of the safest places to go to right now, despite you guys going with adult supervision.”

“We’ll be fine, dad, I promise,” Bella smiled as she got out of bed. “I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes.”

Charlie sighed and nodded. “Not that I’m not happy that you’re leaving the house, again, but…”

“I’ll pack my mace,” Bella said reassuringly. “Promise,” a devious smile appeared on her face then. “Feel free to do the stern concerned dad cop thing to them. Make them squirm.”

“I already did,” Charlie grinned before closing her door again and Bella could hear him go downstairs.

She quickly took a shower and got dressed before heading downstairs. “I am so sorry, I didn’t know we were doing it today.”

Rebekah smacked Kol over on his head. “I knew I should have set the date with you and not him. Men, right?”

“Yep,” Bella kissed Charlie on the cheek and followed Rebekah and Kol out. “Can we stop somewhere for breakfast first then?” She asked before closing the door.

“Sure. Myriam has found out something about your family and it’s not what we initially believed,” Kol nodded as he helped her into the car. “She, Nik and Elijah have already set off, but we can give them a call so they stop at the nearest stop.”

“What new information?”

“The Heretics weren’t part of the Travelers but from a coven of witches who ousted them for being siphoners,” Rebekah replied, bored of it. “Because when you have to get it from other sources, it’s not real magic.”

“Now, the Gemini Coven do have something to do with the Travelers though. It’s easy to see where historians got it wrong. The Geminis cursed the Travelers 2000 years ago for inadvertently creating the Doppelgangers and have watched them ever since,” Kol explained as he started the car and drove off. “And, as it happens, some of the Gemini are still alive and they might know more about your powers or where you come from.”

“Myriam’s going to be so pissed that she didn’t get to tell you herself,” Rebekah let out a snort. “But it’s worth finding out about, right? After we deal with the newborns today?”

“We have school tomorrow,” Bella replied as she fastened her seatbelt. “On top of that, I’m already extremely nervous for going to Seattle which is way out of my 2 hour circle of freedom around Forks. Where would we go to meet a Gemini witch?”

“Not that much further away than Seattle,” Kol mused. “Portland.”

She liked this about the Mikaelsons. Despite them being old and seemingly knowledgeable about everything, they made mistakes too. Such as the Travelers and the Gemini Coven. Then again, mistakes were easily made if the two covens were intertwined in history. Didn’t she write to herself about the Gemini in that letter? She’d have to check. “No.”

“Yes,” Kol smirked. “Live a little. The Volturi won’t know what happened to them if you take care of them. How does going to Volterra during Spring Break sound?”

“I don’t have the money to actually get a flight out there, you know,” Bella countered grumpily. Yes, she did. It was in her college fund, courtesy of the stupid Cullens. “Besides, I’m not ready to face them yet.”

“You will be after today,” Kol smiled at her. “Myriam brought you Laurent’s head to siphon the magic out of.”

“Ew?”

“Yeah, you could use me instead,” Kol nodded. “I told her you wouldn’t like the idea, although it’s slightly poetic. Using a Cold One’s magical essence to take out Cold Ones.”

“I wouldn’t mind using their magic against them but a decapitated head?” Bella retorted, shaking her head. “That’s gross.”

“The venom has dried already, so it won’t hurt you.”

“No.”

Myriam was indeed not happy that Kol and Rebekah had told Bella the news already, but she could add that the Gemini coven and its members were skilled at invisibility and illusion spells and that finding an actual member was going to be difficult. The Gemini had a habit of exiling members who couldn’t practice magic the normal way and many centuries ago had ousted a distant cousin of Bella’s and that they had absolutely no ties to the Gemini. It was going to be even more difficult to find someone because of that but she had no doubt that Kol and Bella could find someone who’d be willing to talk to them.

The further away from Forks they got, the more nervous Bella grew. They were going to take care of an army of newborns, and likely Victoria herself, in Seattle, with the six of them. During breakfast, Klaus mentioned that they had counted at least 50 newborns roaming around the warehouse district of Seattle and Bella was not sure how they were going to defeat them all without getting hurt.

“You need to relax,” Rebekah said from the back seat as they were near Seattle. “You’ll be of no use like this, a ball of anxiety.”

“What if the Volturi Guard is here? Taking care of this problem themselves? And what if they spot me?”

“You’re no longer a silly little human. You’re a witch, and thus, you’re in the clear. And once they see that, they’ll report back to their masters and they’ll leave you alone. You’ll likely get a formal apology too.”

“But I can’t actually do magic without taking it first, and if something happens and we all get split up…”

“You’ll grab hold of a Cold One and you use them instead,” Kol replied. “But don’t worry, nothing will happen and we’ll leave Victoria to you. I have every faith in you that you can do this.”

Bella slowly nodded. “And you said that too when I went to Jake.”

“You wanted to go!”

“You could have said that I wasn’t ready.”

“But you are. It’s just your mind that’s saying that you’re not.”

“It’s okay to be nervous for your first real fight with a bunch of Cold Ones, but you’re going to be alright, Bella. We’ll always keep an eye on you,” Rebekah said encouragingly and squeezed her shoulder. “We’re not going to turn back. Or would you rather have your father and his cops take care of this?”

“No.”

“Then be brave when we leave this car, Bella. You’ll be alright. Besides, with you being nervous isn’t good for any of us, especially not Kol.”

“Bekah!”

“What? You and Nik are always more sensitive to others, especially to those you care about so, suck it up, Bella, we’re going to need Kol in his right mind for this.”

Kol sighed as he parked the car. Bella had never seen them fighting before, and while they couldn’t actually rip out hearts or snap necks to take care of the newborns, it wasn’t going to be pretty. And should anything, anything, happen to Bella, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to contain himself.

He really liked her, but she wasn’t ready yet, was she? Especially after her encounter with him from two years ago. It wouldn’t be a good thing, would it?

“See? He’s already overthinking things because you’re anxious. Man up, Bella,” Rebekah said chipper as she got out of the car. “We have newborns to kill!”

Bella cautiously eyed Kol. “Is your sister always happy when it comes to this?”

“Not usually, but Cold Ones are quite easy to kill and doesn’t really need any thinking, just brute strength,” Kol explained with a sigh. “She has some anger issues to resolve. Boy trouble. Again.”

“Should anyone I know be fearing for their lives?”

“Nah,” he smiled at her. “It’s some boy from Mystic Falls that she liked. No one important. Are you ready?”

“No? It’s a bunch of raging newborns we’re going up against.”

“And unlike us, you can fight them from a distance by dropping them like flies then all we need to do is rip off their heads and start a big fire,” he replied, encouragingly squeezing her leg. “Come, we’ll find you a good vantage point.”

“Wait, what? You’re going to stay with me, right? I want to stay with you guys.”

“Are you sure?”

Bella nodded as she got out of the car. “I’d like to stay near you.”

“So I can fill you up, huh?”

“Feel me up?” Bella blinked at him. “Kol Mikaelson, you’re a pervert.” When she saw the look on his face, she smiled widely. “No, to feel safe. I don’t want to be alone, no matter how fast you are. Or how good your hearing is. I am with you. This is my mess and I want to be there. With you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Stop asking me that. Accept this somewhat sense of bravery and let us do this.”

They walked to the area where the warehouse was where Klaus, Kol and Elijah had located the newborns in just a few days earlier, and the plan was to attack them from both sides. The front and the back. Myriam would be with Kol and Bella, while Rebekah, Elijah and Klaus went from the other side.

Bella trusted the Mikaelsons. She trusted that they knew how to handle things, but she wasn’t sure if she could do this. However, this false sense of bravery that had ignited inside of her for the sake of the heightened emotions of the vampires around her made her move forward. She didn’t HAVE to stick around with Kol. She only had to siphon a little because he was so powerful and it would stick with her for a good 30 minutes. But she felt safer with him.

And she was going to make it easier for everyone to fight the newborns by hopefully incapacitating most of them. It’d be like a bulldozer or something. Or they’d be the one getting flattened.

“Shut the doors, darling. I know that they’re strong enough to kick it in, it’s a psychological thing that would give us some more time,” Kol whispered in her ear before launching himself at a group of newborns, as did Myriam and Bella was left standing by herself.

Bella quickly shut the doors and magically reinforced the walls so that nobody could escape and then felt a little lost for a moment until a newborn ran up to her. Startled, she jumped back and knocked the newborn out like she had done with past!Kol. And almost as if she hadn’t done anything else in her life, it clicked. She shattered the newborn with her magic and continued with the rest of them until she was grabbed and pushed against a wall and her air knocked out of her lungs.

“Well, this just makes it easier for me to kill you,” Victoria breathed in her face. “New friends? What happened to Edward? Doesn’t matter, you don’t deserve to be here.”

Bella could feel her anxiety wanting to take over, but instead, she determinedly grabbed hold of Victoria’s arm, feeling the magic of the Cold One makeup course through her veins. It was a similar rush than when she absorbed some of the magic of the wolves, but it was less chaotic. But it was more powerful. Bella could feel that, too. “Edward won’t care if you kill me, Victoria,” She said as she took a breath, stalling so she could get some more. The rush of the magic felt so good, she didn’t want it to stop, but she also knew she was getting it from Queen Bitch, and that was bad. “So Eddie won’t get hurt if you’d kill me, like he killed your mate, James.”

“I don’t care,” Victoria hissed. “You’re dead.”

“Edward tore him to pieces and turned him into ash,” Bella said in barely but a whisper. “Edward turned him into nothing.”

“Shut your mouth!”

“Guess what?” Bella smirked as she projected her siphoned magic from Victoria out in the open, and she could feel herself unload the magic, losing control over it as she shattered Victoria, and all of the still fighting newborns along with her.

She wasn’t sure how the Mikaelsons survived but she was glad that they did. This wasn’t control. Again. She was absolutely positive that no person should have this much power.

Bella could still feel it coursing through her veins and when Kol approached her, she held her hands up and backed away. “Don’t touch me. I lost control, this is bad, this is…”

“A job well done, darling,” Kol said kindly as he took another step towards her. Oh, they were in trouble alright. She had gotten used to the magic from him, and she could handle that, but Cold One magic, and shifter magic, was something else. Bella looked like she was jonesing for more, or perhaps she was still dealing with the magic.

He’d been wrong in telling her to siphon from a Cold One. They truly needed help, because while he knew a lot about witches, siphoners were different. He could teach Bella spells, like he had, and some sort of control, but they needed to find the experts on this. He could tell that his family was afraid of her, but he had to push that aside. She needed help. “How about we go to Portland tonight?”

“We have school tomorrow,” Bella replied as she scratched her arms. “And I’m fine. I think it’s just because they’re Cold Ones and they’re practically bound together with some shitty magic that I might have over done it and… I’ll just not touch them. Or the wolves. Ever again.”

“Wait for it,” Myriam muttered under her breath, loud enough for the vampires to hear, but not for the human in their midst.

Bella paused for a moment as she took a step away from Kol, observing the ash in the warehouse and realizing that she was responsible for it. Innocent lives. Lives that Victoria had manipulated into doing her bidding. Lives that could have been saved. Likely. “What would happen if we could have saved a few?”

“We’d have destroyed them anyway, Ducky,” Rebekah replied as she warily looked at her brother’s special interest. She wasn’t going to explode, was she? “You’ve heard the stories, newborns are exceptionally volatile in their first year, there is no option to leave them be. Had they been our kind, perhaps. But not Cold Ones. They were gone as soon as they died and went into their painful transition. You ended their suffering.”

“You did a good thing, Bella,” Klaus added with a nod.

“And don’t worry about school,” Myriam smiled. “You’ll graduate, whatever it takes, but, and no disrespect to Kol’s abilities to teach a witch, you’re out of your depth with this. Maybe the Gemini coven has their ways to deal with a magic overload, or perhaps they have records of other siphoners from before they were kicked out,” she said as she calmly approached Bella and gently took her arm. “Which I doubt, because you’re a siphoner surrounded by different kinds of magic and supernaturals around you, but maybe they can help you. I’ll cover for you at the school and with your dad, but you and Kol need to find expert help to make you understand your ability to siphon magic more. There’s only so much we know as your type is rare.” Myriam then hugged her and gently squeezed her. “You’re alright, Bella. You didn’t kill anyone, just relieved them from their misery, and you’re going to find out more about your kind of witch in Portland. With Kol. We wouldn’t normally force you to do anything, but this is important, do you understand, Cherie?”

Bella slowly nodded. “You don’t want me to do things that I will regret later.”

“Or have the power consume you, power trips are a bitch to wean off from,” Myriam grinned. “Absolute power consumes you.”

“But I won’t!”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say. Let’s go home, you can take a nice relaxing bath at our place while I go and get some of your essentials and then you and Kol can leave in the morning.”

Fortunately, by the time they reached Forks, Bella was feeling back to her usual self, but the Mikaelsons still wouldn’t allow her to go back home. Simply out of convenience.

The next morning she and Kol went to Portland to go to the head of the Gemini coven, Myriam had his address from some person and when they arrived at the spot almost three hours later, it was empty. It was a big, empty field. “Great,” Bella said as she leaned against the car. “Now what?”

“They’re supposed to be here,” Kol said as he leaned back against the car as well, causing both of them to stare into open space. “Do I need to remind you that they’re good at invisibility spells and illusions?”

“You think they hid an entire house? That’s insane.”

Kol eyed her before laughing and shaking his head. “They likely used the entire coven to obscure it, you could do it on your own.” He then looked behind him and shrugged. “There’s a car coming, maybe it’s a member of the coven.”

“You really think we’d get that lucky?”

“Why not?” Kol shrugged as he watched the car round the corner and let out a groan. “Well, I was wrong. The bad news is that at least two of them aren’t particularly fond of me. But that’s alright, I don’t particularly like them, either.”

“And the good news?”

“They brought a vampire hunter who knows a lot about the occult. And if they’re here, something’s here,” Kol replied. “Stay behind me, Bella.”

Bella looked at the people getting out of the car after the car rolled to a halt, the one who was on the phone immediately disconnected the call, while the two models had constipated looks on their faces. One had a backpack and a teddy bear was attached to it. What was going on? All three men didn’t look too happy to be seeing Kol, like he had suggested, but what were they doing here?

Speaking of Kol, he looked tense. Perhaps even annoyed. Slightly afraid. It was obvious that he had a history with these men.

“Oh, great, it’s the happy homicidal maniac,” the dark haired model said sarcastically.

“How about you lot get back into your car and back to Mystic Falls?” Kol replied venomously. “I was here first.”

“No, you weren’t,” the other model replied. “I was here four months ago, nothing’s changed. Just a wide open space. Grass. So unless the coven is made out of grass, there’s nothing here.”

“Why are you here?”

“That’s none of your business,” the other one retorted angrily. “What matters is that you’re here, and you need to go.”

“Just because nothing is here doesn’t mean something isn’t here,” Bella said as she tugged on Kol’s shirt to remind him that she was still here. “Come on, they’re just going to have to wait until we’re done.”

“Oh, no, no no, missy,” the dark haired one replied. “We’re here for time sensitive business.”

“Like what?”

“We believe the Gemini coven have a device called the Ascendant. It’ll help free our friend from a prison world of their making,” the man who got off the phone earlier replied, eyeing his friends. “Alaric Saltzman, these two are Damon and Stefan Salvatore.”

Bella blinked at the two brothers. She had heard the stories and then let out a snort. “Is your friend safe?”

“For now, yes.”

Bella nodded then in conclusion. “Then Kol and I are going first,” she said resolutely before pulling Kol along with her and started to walk across the grass until they bumped into a barrier of some sort. Placing her hand on the barrier, she could feel the powerful magic run through it and she sensed that it was a cloaking spell.

Deciding not to take it down, she grabbed hold of Kol’s hand and pulled him along as she stepped through the barrier, revealing a big house, and Kol not with her. Panicking a little, she turned around to see Kol was flat on his ass in the grass with a frustrated look on his face, before looking defeated. “I’ll be fine,” she said to him with a smile, but the look on his face told her that he couldn’t hear her.

She took her phone out to send a message to him when a man appeared from seemingly out of nowhere. “I didn’t know I had guests.” Bella nearly dropped her phone before putting it in her back pocket and looked up. “You must be a witch if you can walk through the barrier like that.”

“I’m Bella Swan, sir, and I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I could really use your help.”

“Swan?”

Bella nodded.

The man sighed and nodded before pointing towards the house. “Come on in, let’s talk. Your vampire friends can stay away.”

“Just one of them, he’s my friend and-”

“An Original. The one who loves witches, I know,” the man smiled at her. “But he also has a temper and I don’t trust him to control it during our conversation. Come, I’ll make you some tea.”

One Comment:

  1. So good. Bye bye Vicky.

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