S02 E07 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖙𝖜𝖔

1821, NEW ORLEANS

"Isn't she exquisite..."

The word exquisite came about with the last kill.

The latest throat was ripped –– perfectly centre –– and he smiled.

It was a twitch of emotion in a face that was otherwise stoic. A tilt of his head and a moment of clarity. The ripple of something that was darkly divine in his bottomless, hopeless eyes.

Exquisite.

The man beside him frowned.

Exquisite, notably, was not the kind of word he would've used.

It didn't feel like the appropriate descriptor for this scene, nor the time or the place or the person. But, his brother had always had a pointed, insistent smile and that look in his eye — agree with me and no one will get hurt.

So, he'd just sighed.

He wasn't often in the business of agreeing with his brother. In fact, many times it had seen his own downfall at the end of a dagger and back of a coffin door; but, due to current circumstance, he was feeling quite inspired in his complacency.

For a lack of better words: Elijah Mikaelson knew better than to disagree with Klaus while he was having one of his tantrums.

That was the reason his jaw had slackened when he'd walked into the room. His brow had furrowed too, all as his nostrils had flared with the smell of a massacre—

Blood, specifically, and a lot of it.

He'd been becomed in, lured into the palm of Klaus' hand as a bloothbath struck one of New Orleans' finest supper clubs.

Klaus had a woman on either arm, leant back in a chair and chin raised. He was surrounded and submerged in the pleasantries of the New Orleans social scene, despite the occasion.

Curtains, heavy with cigar smoke, were pulled tight over windows, candles hushed but the room still thrummed startlingly with the sound of life.

From Elijah's first look, the supper club was carrying on with business as if there was no interruption. He was used to this picture presented to him (at least, in the parts of the room where the ink didn't bleed and the paint didn't peel). Waiters in jackets dutifully darted between round tables, a band strummed a conversational piece in the far corner, and Elijah found himself momentarily having to step aside out of a patrons way as they made a toast to their own good fortune.

It was a celebration, the table declared. A celebration of life.

The room was full of it: like a cup determined to runneth over. Glee, joy and accolade, all accompanied the distinctive glaze over their eyes and smiles. It made Elijah bristle with knowing and an unpleasant taste sour his mouth...

But forty compelled humans wasn't the spectacle Klaus was enraptured by: he was transfixed by the crater in the centre of civility.

  "Look at her..."

Klaus' voice was hushed as he murmured it; and Elijah did.

He looked at her.

A break in the crowd, a woman stood under candlelight.

He saw the blonde hair first; a halo crowning the divine angel capable of so much sin –– and then second, as it often did when it came to his brother's antics, came the blood.

His eye twitched slightly as he watched the woman drink a waiter dry, jaw locked down on the stretch of skin just above his collar. From here, Elijah's tender ears could hear the rip of muscle, jugular and the grind of teeth against bone. Her hands gripped the half-drained corpse against her, with such force, skin split under her fingernails––

She drank and drank and drank.

And not a single human around her noticed.

  "What a sight..." Klaus said, "What a view..."

Klaus, meanwhile, watched every second.

A wry, amused chuckle fell past his lips.

Elijah looked back at him, tearing his eyes from the corpses that already littered the space she'd made for herself. He saw the look in his brother's eyes, the wicked spark that had, he was sure, inspired his Elijah's own invitation to this evening.

What a mess..., he countered to himself.

  "Isn't it marvellous?" He said, "Something so beautiful... yet so divinely wicked... so pure at sight and so devilish by bite..."

   Elijah's eyebrows raised. His sarcasm was second nature: "With imagery like that, Niklaus, perhaps you should consider poetry."

A smile picked at the corner of his brother's mouth.

It almost took Elijah aback.

Klaus had been moody all too often, had taken to stalking the city like a storm cloud, a gust of wind away from a torrential downpour. It was more noticeable now.

(Old age, Kol had remarked before he'd been unfortunately disposed, It's made him mad beyond redemption.)

For weeks, Klaus' temper had been thinner. His face had been twisted and gaunt, even in slumber, and he'd taken to ruthless cruelty far quicker than normal.

And yet, now, Elijah watched his brother smile, chuckle and shake his head.

The candlelight dancing across his eyes; across a specific shade of blue that Elijah was sure had stained so many last thoughts and plagued so much grief.

  "I have no use for love poetry," Klaus dismissed, "And I don't mean to say it doesn't serve you, of course well. I know you take pleasure in such things... And don't get me wrong, dear brother, I'm quite partial to a show––"

  "So I see," He said, clearing his throat, "I assume this is why you invited me here."

And Elijah, again, couldn't help but look back towards the blonde woman in the middle of the room.

Klaus just mused to himself, "Am I really that transparent?"

Elijah just gave him a tight, tempered smile.

Despite their exchange Klaus never once looked away from her. He took a long drink from the glass on his table, the women still lingering on his arm. They fussed over him and batted their eyelashes, tousled his hair and offered their necks, and Klaus ignored their every movement.

  "I find this to be some kind of artistry of it's own," Klaus said after he'd leant back into his chair, "If you'd humour me, Elijah... There's a masterpiece forming before our eyes."

And he gestured to the epicentre of such brutality, but Elijah refused to look again. Instead, he just stared at the uncanny smile on his brother's face and felt a muscle clench at the back of his chest.

Uncomfortable, Elijah shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  "Now this is what our kind are all about," Klaus continued, "No time for foolishness or games, just the thrill of the kill..."

(Our kind. Elijah supposed it was not untrue. He did not need to be schooled on how blood and slaughter were particularly interwoven into their design. Vampirisim, after all, was not humanism.)

(Even so, he still, very delicately, raised an eyebrow.)

  "I leave for seven hours," Elijah said, "And you've driven yourself dizzy over a blonde?"

(Likely thing for him to do.)

He was exasperated by the affair, but didn't sound like it.

He joked and shook his head in a doting manner.

Klaus, once again, snickered light to himself.

Punctuation of his sentence came in the form of a thud; it was a resonating sound, of which Elijah Mikaelson was not a stranger too. Even above the music that was still playing and the laughter that still stained the air, Elijah heard the body crumple to the floor –– at the sound, the table beside them erupted and glasses clinked in good fortune.

But he turned to watch the blonde push the dead corpse to the floor. She lifted a hand, wiping the blood from her red lips; a mess of lipstick and cruor muddied her porcelain skin. A childlike grin stretched across her face, alongside the gilded glaze of gluttony and over indulgence.

She raised a delicate hand and becomed her next victim to her.

Like a siren luring sailors to the slaughter.

Elijah grimaced.

  "Have some manners," was Klaus' lightly scolding reply, but Elijah could only wonder what exactly his brother's definition of 'manners' was.

(He also wondered, with one hand clenched on the back of his brother's chair, if this woman knew she was tonight's entertainment for the self-proclaimed ruler of New Orleans.)

  "So this is your evening?" Elijah questioned, "You've compelled a fledgling a room full of unassuming meat for her choosing?"

  "Is this not a place for dining, Elijah?" Klaus replied, "Wouldn't it be rude not to eat?"

  "You sound like Kol."

Elijah said it because he did.

Those were words he would've expected from their younger sibling; they were as childish as the woman's smile. Flawed, infantile comparison and reasoning.

It was the kind of humour that had gotten Kol in a coffin with nails stronger than Elijah's own patience.

Stronger, so it seemed, than Klaus' own unusual, good mood.

Klaus' smile wavered. Elijah watched his mood sour slightly at the comparison; there it was –– the same shadow that had hung over them for weeks, the temptation of a temper that he'd inherited from a man that he didn't even share genetics with.

It was a momentary lapse. Just a second.

However, this time when Klaus grinned, the ruthless tyrant shone through.

He shrugged the women from his frame and leant forwards, outstretching a hand.

  "In that case, I'll do you one better," Klaus said to his brother.

Then, as the whole room paused in a lull of quiet, Klaus called to the woman in the centre of everything:

   "Lila."

Somewhere in a chest that was withered from time and exhausted by a millenia, Elijah felt his stilled heart drop. In the faster movement since entering the club, the eldest surviving Mikaelson's head snapped to stare at Klaus ––

For the first time this evening, Klaus was staring back with amusement. His lip twitched as it formed the letters of his closing statement:

"Be a sweetheart and come say hello."

　　AUTHOR'S NOTE ! . . .
a short flashback to new orleans, just to set us up for the inevitable!
and jfc,, i'm hypnotised by the pretty blonde lady too klaus, you're not special
the next installment will be very soon! (and a lot longer lol)

WORD COUNT ! . . . 1650
WRITTEN ON THE 8TH OF DECEMBER 2024