Первородные: Восхождение

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE WEREWOLVES POURED out of the banquet hall first, looking worse for the wear but with their rage still unquenched. Elijah waited for the last of them to leave, then crept inside. He was half sure he would find all of the witches dead, but he hoped against hope that some had survived.

There were more alive than he had expected, and he wondered what had lured the werewolves away. There was still more fighting to be done here if that’s what they wanted. But then he realized what might be waiting for them elsewhere, and he clenched his jaw in frustration.

Klaus would almost certainly need his help soon. He would have taken Vivianne to their house to regroup. Elijah would join them, but he would have to fight his way in through the wolves.

Elijah could see casualties scattered around the hall, but the witches didn’t look beaten. The ones who were left standing, in fact, looked downright warlike. A few of them chanted in the center of the long, candlelit room, and even as Elijah watched, more were gathering to join in.

He grabbed the arm of a short blonde witch as she made her way toward the circle, but she shook him off angrily and moved on. A few others passed Elijah without a glance, so focused on their spell that they didn’t care about the presence of a vampire. He could not understand the words they were chanting, but all of their energy and attention was devoted to this one spell, and he could feel their power building in the hall like static. Whatever they were doing, his instincts told him it was something bigger than simple revenge on the werewolves.

Thunder rolled in the distance, and several heads turned toward it. Elijah had not expected a storm that night, but it looked to him like the rest of the hall’s inhabitants knew it was coming.

He caught a tall young witch with a prominent Adam’s apple by his crisp, purple coat. The young man tried to shake free, just like the blonde girl, but Elijah was ready this time, and he held on tightly. “I don’t want trouble,” he explained, seeing the witch begin to whisper something under his breath. “There’s no need for that.”

The man hesitated, but the prospect of an angry vampire was enough to get him to agree with a nod.

“What are they doing?” Elijah demanded, jerking his head toward the growing circle of witches.

The young man glared at him with renewed hostility. “They are cleaning up your mess,” he said, and Elijah relaxed his grip on his collar just a little. “They are doing what needs to be done.”

“That’s vague,” Elijah growled warningly. “You can do better than that.”

“They’re cleansing the city,” the young man explained reluctantly. “We’ve had enough of you, the werewolves...all of it. The foundation of this place is rotten; there’s nothing that can be saved here. We’re going to raze New Orleans to the ground and start over.” Thunder pealed again, much closer this time, and the witch grinned morbidly. “Nothing will be left but the swamp.”

“The storm that’s coming,” Elijah realized. “That’s your work?”

“No ordinary storm,” the young man sneered, pulling free of Elijah’s unresisting hand. “What’s coming now is a hurricane like this city has never seen. And I’m going to help,” he added, straightening his coat and joining the chanting throng of witches.

Elijah didn’t know if Ysabelle’s protection spell would guard against a hurricane, but they had no better place to weather the storm. He turned and ran.

Outside, he could tell that the clouds were rolling in unnaturally fast. Elijah tried to outrace them, plunging between the trees at breakneck speed. But the first drops of rain struck his back just as he saw the werewolves around his house.

Elijah gritted his teeth, remembering his last fight with these same wolves and the seemingly endless pain that had followed. But their backs were turned to him now, giving him the advantage of surprise, and they were trapped in their human forms. He threw himself on the nearest werewolf, tearing his throat out before the body could hit the ground.

They turned and howled, rushing toward him in an indistinct, snarling mass of brandished torches and yellow eyes. Elijah was a blur, breaking limbs, snapping necks, and avoiding teeth and fire alike. They could not hope to kill him, but they could slow him down, and he couldn’t allow that.

Without the levelheaded influence of Vivianne, her mother, or her aunt, the witches would make good on their threat to level the city. If their house could not survive the hurricane, he wanted to stop the werewolves before they were completely vulnerable again.

He snapped and hacked his way toward the small porch, unable to guess how many werewolves he’d maimed or killed. He did register Louis’s broad shoulders and meaty lips at one point, and paused long enough to snap his burly neck with his bare hands. The Navarros had caused him more than enough trouble, and their clan should feel the price of that. Elijah had done his best for years to be understanding and accommodating, but if they could not appreciate his efforts they could start losing sons.

He noticed Armand near the back of the pack, shouting with the rest, but keeping a safe distance from the actual fighting. He would have his turn, but not now. Instead Elijah spun, his fist crashing into a redhead’s jaw and breaking a young woman’s silk-covered thigh with a vicious kick. She screamed and fell, and Elijah stepped over her writhing body and onto the porch.

Another howl went up when the werewolves realized they could not reach him anymore, and Elijah smirked. However long it lasted, Ysabelle’s spell was a work of art. Then an arm shot out from the front door and dragged him inside, and he found himself staring into his brother’s blazing eyes. Their blue-green fire, along with the jutting set of his jaw, showed that Klaus was livid. Elijah was supposed to be the one who was angry at Klaus, but his brother had a knack for rewriting history. Klaus always liked to see things his own way.

“About time,” Klaus complained, and Elijah inhaled and exhaled deeply to keep from hitting him. “We’re surrounded, and Viv had all these ideas about talking to them.”

“It could work,” Vivianne sniped sullenly from the living room, and both vampires turned incredulously toward her. Her silver gown made her look unearthly in the dark room, like the ghost of some long-forgotten queen. “They’re only here because of me in the first place,” she began, and Elijah decided he had already heard enough of that.

“They’re not,” he informed her tersely. “They’re here because Klaus killed a few dozen of them nine years ago. They’re here because our father killed dozens more a lot longer ago than that. They’re here because it’s in their blood to hate us, and because Armand was humiliated and Louis is dead. This is much bigger than you now, Mademoiselle, so you’ll help us fight or the three of us may well die tonight. But if not all three of us, then certainly you.”

Vivianne blanched and bit her bottom lip, but did not reply. Elijah could see that Klaus had not had the heart to spell things out quite so bluntly. It must be true love, which, bizarrely, made him feel better about the entire wretched misadventure. His brother was the only family he had left now, and their predicament might almost be worth it if Klaus had found a partner as worthy as Rebekah had.

The thought of Rebekah nagged at his mind for a moment—her ship had been leaving that night. The witches’ hurricane seemed to be coming in from the ocean, and Elijah hoped that she had made it to open water in time. But there was nothing he could do to help her now. She had chosen to strike out on her own, and she would have to handle hurricanes and worse without her family to back her up.

“There’s an arsenal in the cellar,” Klaus informed him brightly, his mood improved since Elijah had taken his side against Vivianne. “We can pick them off from inside the house for a while, although we’ll need a better plan while we do.”

“They won’t wait outside forever,” Elijah agreed. “And the house might not last the night, so that plan will have to come to us in a hurry.”

Vivianne’s head snapped up. “What do you mean about the house?” she demanded. “Klaus told me it was protected.”

“Against weapons and intruders,” Elijah reminded them both grimly. “I doubt the spell will hold against the weather, and your people, my lady—your other people—are raising that against us as we speak.”

A crash of thunder punctuated his words, and the other two flinched. “The weather?” Klaus said incredulously.

“The witches,” Vivianne understood. “They could do that.” Her black eyes searched Elijah’s face, and he could see her hope fading fast. “Are you sure?”

“I have it from the source,” he confirmed. “We must deal with the werewolves now, before the hurricane hits us.”

Klaus whistled appreciatively. “A hurricane,” he repeated, grudgingly impressed. Then his manner shifted, and Elijah knew he was preparing for the fight at hand. “I have some ideas, brother,” he said. “But you’d best not run off again to play politics.”

“Politics are done,” he assured his brother. “We have done what we could, but now we fall back on your skills rather than mine.”

Klaus grinned, and Elijah found himself grinning as well. “I knew you’d come around,” his little brother said, and Elijah cuffed him affectionately on the shoulder.

“An arsenal in the cellar, you say?” he asked, feeling confident despite the circumstances. They were on familiar ground now, and they had each other’s backs. “Show me.”