Of Monsters and Men ₰ The Originals

Chapter Forty | Ash, Dust and Death

     The air is ashy grey, and so smoky that I need to lean against several trees to catch my breath as I make my way to the central clearing. Where were the rest? Elijah? Hayley? Oh God, his daughter?

     "Hayes . . . Hayes." I croak through the barren desert that is my throat. Finally I reach the circular ground, and nearly go blind as my vision captures the entirety of the sun with one look. Blinking out the yellow shades and hues, I stumble upon the very epitome of death.

     Wounded, dying and dead are strewn everywhere. The ones that are not as harmed have already started to bury their dead or treat their wounded. And there I see her, crouched on the ground as tears stream down her cheeks as she closes an elderly woman's eyes for the last time. "Hayley?" I say. She gets up and embraces me briefly, but lets go when I groan. "What happened to you?" She asks, looking down at my abdomen. I wave her off, "doesn't matter, it'll heal. How's your daughter?"

     She begins to nod, "yeah, she's fine ― wait," she pauses, frowning. "How do you know it's a she?" I bite my lip, faltering slightly. "Well, Klaus told me." Hayley blinks several times but I cannot decipher what she truly is feeling, good or bad. "Oh, okay."

     At the corner of my eye, I see Elijah limping towards us, looking worse for wear with soot dotting his skin. As he reaches us, he pulls up his shirt and we stare at the chemical burns that make the wound shiny and raw, taut like plastic. "Wolvesbane." He mutters.

     "It must have been in the gas tank." Hayley deduces, before punching a nearby object, the flakes of dust falling lightly onto the ground as she did so. Elijah steps forward to attempt to console her, but she holds him off. "No, no. I need to find the bastard that did this."

     Much to my displeasure, the blond werewolf walks in our conversation. "It has to be the vampires behind this!" My eyebrows go up of their own accord, and my mouth forms an 'o' of surprise. "Excuse me? We're right here!" The werewolf crosses his arms, narrowing his eyes. "Who else would it be?"

     "Tell me something: why the hell do you always blame us for everything shitty that happens to you?" I snap. "How about the time Marcel made us slaves to the moon? How we depend on it just to become human once in a while?" He says. "Do you know how terrible it is to be human one day and a wolf the next, feeding on raw animals?"

      "Whilst I admit that what Marcel did was positively devious, you can't blame one man's crimes on his entire species. Talk about being a prejudiced fool. In fact, I saved your friend's life in a fire. Jackson, wasn't it?" I say, placing a finger on my chin thoughtfully, my eyes dead serious,"me, a vampire, saved two werewolves. Both of your leaders. What have you done for your pack, for your leaders, except gallivant across the woods without clothes?"

      He steps threateningly towards me, and whilst I do not move, I vaguely recognise that my behaviour is in no way helping Elijah's peace treaty, so I don't fuel him any further. "Stop fighting Oliver and Melissa!" Hayley exclaims in impatience, "we have a more important fight to see to, and if my theory is correct, it is Marcel who's behind this."

      Oliver grins smugly at me and I roll my eyes, giving up. There was no way to get prejudiced people to get the stick out of their arse. "I need to go talk to him." Hayley decides. I snap my eyes to her. "Are you sure that it's safe?"

      "I need to help my people." She looks at me dead in the eye, succinctly getting her point across. Her green eyes shone with a certain kind of responsibility I rarely saw from her. Even though we were not on best terms, I was gruffly proud of her. I watched her grow up.

      "Okay," I agree simply. For a second she looks taken aback, but regains her composure quickly. Elijah nods at our conversation. "I need to go with her, just in case." Oliver snorts in derision, but all of us ignore him and his lamentations. "But Hayley, you need someone to look after your people. They've literally just been bombed. We need to help the injured and ―"