When I come to my head is in Jack's lap. I can tell he has been crying. I quickly sit up. "Where is our daughter?"
"Klaus and Elijah went after the witches hoping to find her at the cemetery," Jack informs me.
"We have to go. I can feel it, I can feel that our baby is still alive," I tell him.
I grab Jack's hand and vamp speed towards Lafayette Cemetery. Jack and I look around the cemetery hoping to find our daughter.
"The tombs are empty. The grounds are deserted. She's NOT HERE!" Jack shouts.
I try to calm him down. "Trust me she is here. We'll keep searching."
"We're wasting time!" Jack insists.
"The Harvest was here! The Reaping was here! They're about to perform a ritual which will feed their ancestors for centuries! Ancestors who are buried HERE!" I shout at him. I notice an angel statue on top of a tomb. "This statue we've passed by this three times, all whilst going in the same direction." Then it hits me. "They've fabricated some kind of illusion." I vamp speed to the top of the tomb with the angel statue and try to get a better view of the cemetery. Looking out, there seems to be an infinite number of tombs, stretching out to make the cemetery appear to be endless, my eyes widen in horror.
Jack and I wander through the illusion. Jack uses a stone to mark the tmbs as we pass them. "I can see them, I can feel them, but they're not real," Jack states.
I run my hands through my hair. "This is all my fault. This is the world that I created. All the enemies that I have created. What did I expect? That my child would be born into a happy life? That we could live and thrive as some- as some sort of family?" I pause for a moment wiping a tear from my eye.
Jack shakes his head. "No this is not your fault. You wanted better for our daughter. You wanted to give her the world. And you will once we find her."
I get up and start to break through the illusion destroying the tombs. When we reach a room full of candles, we stop and catch our breath.
Jack sighs. "We've passed through here twice already. We're running out of time."
I punch through a wall in frustration. "Then we move faster."
"Or smarter." I turn around when I hear Elijah's voice. Nik and Elijah walk into the tomb.
I think hard for a moment before leading my brothers and Jack through the maze of tombs. After a few moments we turn a corner and suddenly see Genevieve holding a knife above my baby's head.
Elijah picks up an urn and lobs it at the witches, which slams against Genevieve's hand and knocks the athame onto the ground. The four of us run toward them, so Monique and Abigail hold each other's hands and channel the ancestors' power to throw us backwards while Genevieve goes to find the athame.
"La mère, le père, le frère, la sœur... La mère, le père, le frère, la sœur," Abigail chants.
"You fools! To come against us in our place of power in our strongest hour? You don't face three, you face us all!" Monique shouts.
I can see that hundreds and hundreds of the dead witches have come together to protect them as they complete their sacrifice. That doesn't stop me as I try to fight the witches. Jack and I run in opposite directions as Nik and Elijah rush straight towards the witches.
I get cornederd by the spirits of Papa Tunde's twin sons. They telekinetically throw me into a tomb, shattering it. I pull myself out of the tomb and rush back towards the Harvest girls. I see a wrought iron fence, and break off one of the spikes. I throw it forcefully toward Abigail, which impales her through the stomach and kills her, breaking the connection that she and Monique had to the ancestors.
Monique quickly runs to grab the athame to finish the sacrifice herself. Klaus, Elijah, and I vamp-speed toward her, but she uses her magic to block us using a wall of fire.
I hear Jack shout, "Noooo!" Genevieve is using a pain infliction spell to prevent his interference.
Just as Monique is about to sacrifice the baby, she's hit with the Devil's Star, which embeds itself in her stomach. Her body becomes covered in cuts, and she coughs up blood before falling to the ground. I turn around and see that Marcel was the one who saved the baby. Before I can say anything, Marcel vamp speeds to the baby, and then vamp speeds away with her. I don't hesitate as I follow after him.
I enter the compound to find vampires dead and strewn across the courtyard. They all have werewolf bites from the fight earlier.
Marcel is holding my baby in his arms as he sits by the fountain, waiting for me. "I was too late. There should have been more time."
I look around the room at all the carnage. "Looks like the wolves came back and finished what they started." My baby stirs and coos, and Marcel stares down at her. "You took my daughter so I would heal you and your friends." Marcel looks at me weakly, but I just laugh and shrug before holding out my wrist to him. "Here."
Marcel pulls away from me. "This bite, all this..." He looks over at Diego's dead body, "I know it didn't come from nowhere. This is the last note in a song that I started a century ago when I brought your dad to town. And for that, I am sorry."
I look at him sympathetically and kneel in front of him. "We both know there are things I should be sorry for as well. But you saved my child's life, Marcel. For that, you deserve this." I hold out my wrist and Marcel bites into it. "We will take down whoever brought this upon us, I swear it." Marcel looks at me in shock. My eyes are on my daughter. "May I?" Marcel hands me my baby and I look down at her in awe. "Shhhh. Oh! Hey! Hey there."
Marcel looks over my shoulder at my baby and laughs as she smiles.
I take my baby girl up to the nursery. I sit in the rocking chair holding my precious girl in my arms. It isn't long before Jack and my brothers show up. When they do my brothers waste no time in discussing what to do next.
"We should have felt our mother's hand in this. We should have known she would not be bound by anything as obvious as death. And now she has control of the witches. They will never stop," Nik explains.
"No," Elijah states.
"Nor would I expect the Guerrera wolves to back down. Jackson and the child are wolf royalty, and as such, they are a threat to Francesca's claim to the leadership," Nik explains. He pauses for a moment.
"They will never be safe," I butt in. "I have made enemies every day of my life. Well, the worst of them are within these borders, brothers. I have brought into the world a weapon they can use against me."
"Then we will arm ourselves! Sister, we have fought every adversary in this town, and we have won. And we'll fight them again, no matter who they are! We will make this home a fortress," Elijah offers.
"I will not have her live her life as a prisoner," Jack states.
"Then we leave here, together. All of us," Elijah reasons.
"There's a third option. We spent close to a thousand years on the run from Mikael, our own father. I will not have my daughter spend her years running like we did. Wherever we go, however far we run, those who seek power and revenge will hunt us. Elijah, you and Nik know how unloved I felt as a child and how fearful I was everyday spent with Mikael. Even now our mother wants to see me suffer." I pause for a moment trying to compose myself. "I made a promise to my baby, and to myself, that she would not grow up like I did. That she would grow up safe, and loved. And yet, here she is, on her first day in this world, with a grandmother who is bent on sacrificing her," I start to stutter as I cry, "and a world full of people who want to use her against this family." My brothers and Jack look at me devastated by the situation we find ourselves in. "I think the only thing to do is... send her away... while we stay behind and clean up the mess that we've made."
"No! This is insane. You heard Genevieve so long as she lives, that baby will be hunted," Nik objects.
"Not if no one knows she lives," I state.
Jack looks confused. "What are you going to do?"
"Whatever it takes to save our family," I tell him.
I hand my daughter over to Jackson. I need to make some calls. Make it known that our little girl didn't survive. I stand out on the balcony overlooking the courtyard as Cami rushes in.
"Else? The baby?" Cami asks.
I feel the tears come to my eyes again. "She died. A few hours after the Guerrera attack."
Cami gasps and covers her mouth with her hand before she bursts into tears. "This is-This is all my fault!"
I look at her through the tears blurring my vision. "It's not."
"No! If I hadn't hesitated, I could have uncovered Francesca's plot in time to stop it!" Cami insists.
"And how would you have stopped the coven of witches in league with her?" More tears flow. "No. If anyone is to blame, I am."
"I am so, so sorry," Cami tells me.
Nik steps out onto the other balcony. As he starts talking to Cami I head back to the nursery. Jack is sitting in the rocking chair holding our daughter.
"Did Marcel play his part?" Jack asks.
I nod my head. "He managed to locate a stillborn baby in a hospital in upstate Louisiana."
"Did he agree to your brothers terms?" Jack asks.
"He has agreed to allow me to compel him to forget what he knows of my child. In exchange, he wants vials of my blood," I explain.
"Are you sure the witches will believe this. Your brothers said that the fourth Harvest girl will resurrect. That is they can sense that our daughter is alive and they will hunt her," Jack states.
"The witches will buy what we sell. We just have to sell it properly," I tell him.
I begin to pack a bag for my daughter. I grab clothes and a few stuffed animals. I include a letter that I wrote for my little girl a few weeks ago. Back when everything was good, well as good as it could have been.
Dear Karina...or Margareta...or Verna. To my little girl. Your dad just asked if this was a love letter. I guess it kind of is. I only knew my mother for a small part of my life. I have no idea what she must have thought when she carried me. So, I thought I'd write to you, so you can know how happy I am at this very moment. How much your father and I can't wait to meet you... And, I want to make you a promise of three things that you will have that I never did: a safe home, someone to tell you that they love you every single day, and someone to fight for you, no matter what. In other words, a family. So, there you go, baby girl. The rest, we're going to have to figure out together. I love you. Your mom.
"They will be watching us. All of them. The three of us leaving together will draw too much attention. I will go alone. Take your mourning public when I am gone," I tell Jack.
"It's not gonna be too hard after all grief, is grief," Jack tells me.
Jack kisses our daughter's head before handing her over to me. I look at Jack with tears in my eyes. "I promise jack I will fix this. I will make New Orleans safe for our little girl. She will come back to us."
Jack wraps his arms around me and our baby. He kisses my forehead before letting me go.
I take our daughter to my car and place her in her car seat. I turn around when I feel a presence.
Nik is standing there. He smiles at me softly as he holds out his hand. "I thought my niece would like this."
I feel tears come to my eyes as I see Nik handing me a little wooden knight. "You've kept this after all these years?" I ask in disbelief.
I remember the night Nik gave this to me. I was only a little girl. There was a storm raging outside of our house. I was laying in bed scared. Nik showed up to comfort me. "Hush now. It's just a storm. Don't be afraid. I won't let it hurt you." He leaves for a moment and when he returns he has the little wooden knight in his hand. "I carved it for Father. It's a brave knight. Now you can be brave, too."
"Will you stay with me 'til the storm ends?" I ask.
"I will always stay with you, Ellie. No matter what," Nik assures me.
"I knew how much the knight meant to you. I think that my niece should have it, so she knows I will never leave her either," Nik explains.
I sob as I pull Nik into a hug. As pig headed as he may be he is my twin brother and I will always love him.
I drive down the back country roads with my daughter in the backseat. After a while I stop. I hold my daughter as I lean up against the hood waiting.
A cr pulls up and Bekah gets out. He smiles when she sees the baby and I. I smile to. "Hello, sister."
Bekah gently touches the baby, and stares at her in wonder. "Oh, she looks like you."
I laugh slightly. "It must be the hint of the devil in her eyes." I pause for a moment. "I need a witch you can trust to cast a cloaking spell."
Bekah nods. "I'll get one."
"No one can ever find her," I tell her as I start to tear up.
"I know what to do, El." We both look down at the baby. "Perhaps we'll get a white fence. I think that would be lovely."
I laugh through the tears. "What you've always wanted Bekah." I look down at my baby girl. "This city would have seen you dead. But, I will have it your home. And every soul who wishes you harm will be struck down, just as sure as my blood runs in your veins. You will return to me."
I kiss my daughters head before handing her over to Bekah. "Bekah, there is no one I would trust more with my daughter's life." I hug Bekah tightly for a moment. "Be happy, sister."
Bekah smiles at me. "She will be happy, Else. I promise." I smile slightly as I wipe a tear from my face. "What's her name?"
"Jolie," I inform her. She smiles once more before leaving with my daughter.
As her car starts to drive away I start to sob. I feel myself fall to my knees not knowing what to do with the emptiness I feel in my heart.