Valor | Marcel Gerard

Chapter 11

Oliver was a goner.

Or, he would have been, if Hayley hadn't asked Andra to spare him.

She agreed to it out of respect for Jackson, who hadn't been a traitor. Maybe he would want to talk to Oliver himself, maybe it would be more satisfying for Oliver to return to the Bayou with his head hung in shame, or maybe the Crescents had a particular trial that needed to be stood before deciding anyone's fate. Who was she to interfere?

Cami was more than happy to have Landon come to her apartment, especially given that was one of the days that Davina was going to have coffee with her. It left Andra and Ryan available to enact their plan, which was sure to go smoothly.

Oliver was essentially the Alpha, leading all the wolves who worked for the witches, but answering to the Harvest girl, Cassie, and her right-hand man Vincent Griffith. He was always surrounded by wolves, except when he was on his way to the meetings with the witches, where he was the only one allowed to hear what they had to say.

Andra and Ryan ambushed him in an alleyway as soon as the sun went down. The elder of the two perched himself on the rooftop with a rifle loaded with wolfsbane darts, shooting him down right as he passed where Andra was waiting to drag him behind a dumpster. She took off his ring, hurling it up to Ryan, who put it into the Subsume and held a thumbs-up, letting her know it'd worked.

"What are you doing?" Oliver slurred, waking up as he saw Andra leaving.

"I got what I came for," she said. "You should warn your people. They'll be turning into wolves this full moon. They shouldn't be in the city."

"But–"

She slammed her foot down on his arm, causing him to groan in pain. "But nothing. Let me guess, the witches promised they'd get rid of the big bad vampires, of the Originals, and like a fool, you believed them, despite knowing that if they could do it, they would have done it already. Either the witches in this city are stupid or they're just incompetent because if I was a witch, the Originals would have been dead long ago. You didn't want to bow down to Klaus so you bowed down to them instead. How do you like being on a leash, Oliver? The only reason I'm letting you live is because it's not my place to enact judgment. That... I will reserve for Hayley and Jackson. What they will do to you after how you let her baby die... I don't even want to think about it."

"Okay," said Ryan a few days later, once they'd delivered the Subsume to Klaus and Elijah for its destruction, "if you were a witch, how would you take down the Originals?"

She shrugged. "Literally walk in when they're not home, find the white oak stake by its magical signature. Wave my hands hard enough to snap their necks when I see them and just boom, boom, boom. Stab, stab, stab."

He hummed. "Not bad. Seriously, where is that damn white oak stake? Nobody can find it, not even Davina. She said Marcel asked her to look and she said she felt a block, like someone cloaked it." He was silent for a moment. "I bet I could find it."

Andra snorted. "No, you can't."

"Give me twenty dollars and I will."

"If you need twenty dollars as an incentive, you're not a very good finder, are you?"

"I could do it. It's made out of the same material as daylight rings, right? Twenty dollars could pay the shipping fee to get one of my magical artifacts down. The Magimundi, you remember it."

"Ah... the little double-edged hairpin that will find something else made of the same exact material if you tap one end to the compound."

"Yeah! Tap one end to the daylight ring and some wood, and it will tell me where it is."