Perzys Āeterña | Hope Mikaelson

Chapter 23

It had become too much.

Hope had wanted to leave immediately, declaring she was starving and needed a bite. Rhysaenya was the only one brave enough to follow her. She left a note with Cleo, begging them to contact Hope's family, to find some way to locate the real Aurora, kill her, and come to their aid as soon as possible.

She couldn't let The Watcher win this way.

"It feels so nice not to care!" said Hope, three bodies in the back seat, completely drained of blood. "See, I don't care that Raf is dead. He was my ex, my friend, and I feel nothing. It's the best. You're quiet. Didn't get enough to eat?"

"I don't drink blood," said Rhysaenya, trying to remain calm. She wanted to hate Hope for doing this to her, for making the decision to turn her humanity off without caring how the rest of them would feel having to bring her back from it. She bestowed that burden on Rhysaenya personally.

And yet she couldn't blame her. It was either do that and give them a hard time getting her back or let The Watcher take over her body and probably destroy the supernatural world. Not to mention she'd had enough. Watching Sofya die was a hard pinch, watching Sebastian die was a firm smack, coming back to find the school abandoned after an attack was a good punch and kick, but having dealt the killing blow to Rafael, a good friend and an ex she didn't harbor ill will toward was a train running into her at full speed. Maybe a plane had crashed onto her, too.

She didn't fault Hope for giving up. She just wished she'd had more of a heads up. She wished Hope had told her what to do to bring her back. Rhysaenya never even knew vampires before she met their little group. How was she going to draw anyone's humanity back on?

Hope snorted, noticing how she gripped the edge of her seat, trying to calm herself. "But you did once. Don't you like it?"

"I shouldn't. So I don't. I agreed to help you sate your hunger. I'm simply not hungry."

"Why are you here?"

"You asked me to bring you back. I'm not leaving your side."

"Hmm... then we might as well make the most of it. There's a hotel coming up on the next exit. We could get a room."

Rhysaenya stared at her. "Hope, if you don't care about anything, you shouldn't care to have any kind of sexual relations with me. I don't want our first time together to be like this. How about we discuss what your plan is? Assuming you have one."

Hope laughed. "Easy. Find the last artifact, get it, find Aurora, get The Watcher's location from her, kill Aurora. I'm going to get The Watcher and I'm going to kill her once and for all."

"Great. Let's get to that."

"I need a drink first."

Rhysaenya threw up her hands as Hope pulled off of the freeway. "How does this help anyone? You just had a drink."

"From a few mouthy blood bags. I want a real drink."

The bartender knew immediately that they weren't old enough when he saw their Salvatore School ID cards. He eyed Hope suspiciously, and she simply challenged him with a raised eyebrow. "Is there a problem or something?"

"Several," said the man. "None worth wasting my breath on."

"I didn't come here to talk, either," said Hope. "I came here to drink. Grab us a bottle of tequila. I'm gonna need a chaser."

Rhysaenya didn't know what a chaser was. The bartender, compelled, brought them two shot glasses to go with their bottle of El Jimador, which Hope got to pouring right away.