All I Need (Vampire Diaries/Captain America Fanfic)

26. Who Needs Friends When You Have Power?

We left the store with directions for a bar where Marcel 'would most likely be'. I waited until we were out of the witch's earshot before turning to Klaus.

"So that's why you bought me here? To use me as leverage against the witches?!"

"Calm down," he said.

"Calm down? You could have killed me!" I said angrily.

"If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead," he said. "Give me some credit."

"Give me some warning!" I countered. We walked in silence for a few steps. "Who's Jane-Anne Deveraux?"

"She's a witch," he said, completely unhelpfully.

"Duh!" I said. "But who is she? Why is she important to you?"

He sighed. "If you must know, she's the witch that gave me, in your words, 'a bad spell'."

"Not likely," I said. "You had that spell back in the early 90's. If she's around the same age as the witch that we just met, she would definitely have been too young back then."

"OK, let me rephrase that," he said. "She's the witch that told me that, for the spell to work, I had to kill the doppelganger and keep you alive. She assured me it would work."

"Maybe she made a mistake?" I offered.

"A pretty big mistake to make. A mistake that killed an Original vampire."

"So you think she did it on purpose? To kill you?"

"I think that she knew what she was doing. Getting rid of the only known doppelganger and keeping the oldest witch known alive. It's not a coincidence."

"The oldest witch?" I asked, a look of confusion on my face. "Who's the oldest witch?"

He raised an eyebrow, as if to say 'seriously, love?'

"What, me? You think I'm the oldest witch?" I asked, almost laughing. "Earth to Original Hybrid, I'm a vampire remember?"

"You felt it, didn't you?" he asked, looking down at me.

"Felt what?" I asked.

He shrugged, looking straight ahead. "My mother, the Original witch, used to get this feeling whenever she entered a room that was owned by a witch. She could never describe it, but it meant something. Like, they knew she was there, and that they was on her side."

"I felt... something," I admitted, remembering the feeling of something cold running through my veins. "But it was the opposite of that. If anything, it was like they were saying 'we know what you are, leave now.'"

"Because you're a vampire," he said automatically. "But your mother's witch blood still runs in your veins. They know that."

I shivered, feeling something that I hadn't felt in decades: a yearning for my mother. I'd never known much about her. Aunt Emily had stories, but I'd never wanted to hear them. Back then, I thought that my father was God's gift, and that my mother had abandoned me by committing suicide. It hadn't even occurred to me that my father was the one that drove her to it.

"You have an answer for everything," I said, focusing my attention back on Klaus.

"I've been around for a long time, love," he informed me. "Eventually, everything becomes old news."

"Apart from the ritual," I reminded him. "Otherwise the curse would already be broken."

He smirked as we got to the bar. "After you," he said, opening the door. I entered. The bar was dimly lit but packed with people.