The Good Daughter

Nine

"Do you suffer, Niklaus? As my wife and child suffered?" Chains rattled violently. I crept toward the balcony. There was a small crowd gathered around a large salt circle. "Yeah you do."

In it was Nik and a man.

Fighting.

Why were they fighting?!

Nik was in no state to defend himself. The man kept hitting him over and over.

"I do believe your suffering is at an end."

"Kill him!" Several from the crowd shouted.

How could Marcel let this happen?!

"Do you hear that? The people have spoken. Now honor would dictate a request for your last words but you deserve no such privilege. Instead I want the last words you ever hear to be my solemn vow. I will find your daughter and the girl you've so desperately tried to hide from the world, and when I do, I will eradicate your malignant bloodline from. this. earth."

I was grateful for the shadows that hid me. Apparently I was target to this man.

Nik glowered at him as the man raised the sword in his grasp. Then Nik struck, using the very chains that bound him to send the man crashing to the ground.

Nik bit him, the man screamed, fighting uselessly. Nik had the advantage.

He then began picking people off from the crowd faster than they could react, drawing the sword from the dead man's grasp. "Well come on. Who's next?!"

He was always one for the dramatics.

Marcel entered the circle behind Nik and snapped his neck, much to the shock of the crowd.

What were they doing? It had to be some sort of deal. Nik rarely lets his guard down like that. He was the one who taught me how to fight, how to defend myself.

Marcel hummed. "That is a nasty bite. The good news is, we have the cure. See keeping Klaus alive does come in handy. I keep him for his blood in case the wolves get out of line. I keep him as collateral in case his family comes back. I keep him because I can. I put him down, I kept him down and I am the only one that can stop him from coming after all of you." He took a breath. So this was a show of power. He must have something Nik wants in order to get him to agree to this. "New Orleans is mine. You are all welcome to visit. Enjoy yourselves, but you follow my rules. You behave. And you never ever question me. Does anyone have a problem with that?"

I was tempted to speak, just to mess with him.

"Alright then." Marcel grinned. "Let's go celebrate."

Well... that was certainly something.

The crowd began shuffling out. As if this had been a show they'd come to see. Entertainment. I wanted to go down and help Nik, show him a bit of kindness that he didn't deserve.

Marcel waited until they were gone before hooking his arms under Nik's shoulders and dragging him across the now broken circle.

"It worked." The guy from before, the one who'd annoyed me and followed behind Marcel like a lost lamb, spoke quietly, glancing down at Nik like he'd suddenly wake. "I can't believe it."

"Say what you will about Klaus, but he knows how to handle people like Alastair. He and I made a deal." I fucking knew it. "Klaus doesn't want people to track down his family. I don't either. He's got Rebekah linked to him. He dies, so does she."

Marcel disappeared through the doors I knew led to Nik's prison.

There was a third man.

A witch.

I really had to learn people's names. I couldn't keep referring to them as 'the man' in my head. He frowned down at Alastair, clearly deep in thought and then he followed Marcel too.

I crept in the dark, avoiding noise spots purely out of instinct. One did not sneak out of the compound by alerting their overly protective vampire family of what they were doing. It was strange, seeing it so abandoned.

Not filled with the dull sounds of Originals going about their day.

It was as if the city herself had quieted.

New Orleans was hurt.

Grieving.

Like me.

Marcel and his lackey emerged from the passageway and toward the exit. I took the opportunity to slip down the hall.

"Beware the sleeping giant. For when he wakes, the earth will shake." The witch was talking, and the rattle of Nik's chains told me he was in fact waking. "Here's to holding off earthquakes."

Nik's gaze found mine over the witch's shoulder just as the witch set down burning sage.

My curiosity was piqued. Why would the witch want a private audience with Nik?

"Vincent." He shifted himself into a sitting position, clearly in a lot of pain. "I never figured you for Marcel's lackey."

"I'm nobody's lackey Klaus, as far as I'm concerned this is justice."

"And will it be justice when I escape and come for you both?"

"Look, we could've handed you over. Instead Marcel fed you blood, I took the spell off them chains, we gave you a fighting chance."

Nik glowered. "And what chance will you have? While I remain here, my enemies will flock to New Orleans causing all manor of mischief. One day, most likely some fool's effort to reach me, I will escape, and I will seek my own justice."

"Yeah." Vincent let out a sigh. "I had a friend once... Cami." Who the fuck was Cami? He stood and I barely caught the way Nik's expression softened, if only for a brief moment. "She uh, she believed with all her heart that you had some good left in you. And I don't understand why it is that you are so hellbent on proving her wrong."

Vincent let the silence rest.

I moved into a shadowy corner as he turned and left.

"You can come out, little one."

"Who's Cami?"

"Someone I once knew."

"Was she... important? I've heard her name several times."

He hesitated. "She was."

"I thought you didn't believe in love." I took a tentative seat just outside the salt circle.

"Camille struck a chord in me. I could not keep her from my thoughts."

"So she's your Tyler."

His gaze was on the dirt floors. "I apologize for that."

I gasped dramatically. "You. Apologizing. I'm shocked."

A sad smile stretched across his lips. "The earth has tilted on its axis."

A beat.

"Did they..." God I was nauseas even thinking about it. "Did they suffer?"

He watched me for a moment. "They did not." Why was it such a relief? "You know Elijah is swift."

At least they couldn't be used against me anymore. "I'm leaving."

"What?"

"With my humanity back, Marcel will drop the boundary soon, since it was thankfully relatively uneventful. Freya seems like she's got things handled." I wanted to visit their graves. "And as far as my... ripper is concerned, she was the one you made the deal with, not me."

That pathetic group better have buried them. Whether or not there were bodies to do so.

"You would spend eternity in your coffin."

"For what?!" A chill fell down my spine. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Leave me here and I will ensure it."

The ripper would never let him do this. I had to be more like her. I swallowed, steeling myself. "I'm still leaving. We'll see if it takes you more than ninety years to find me this time."

It took everything in me to get up and walk away.