Chapter 19
He had grabbed her, knowing that he didn’t have to be that delicate with her anymore, and had brought them upstairs. Once she had regained her footing, however, she fought him for dominance by trying to push him down. She failed, of course, and he pushed her against the wall before claiming her mouth.
Bella pawed at him until she had a full fist of fabric and proceeded to tear off his shirt as they kissed, reclaiming each other one step at a time. “Have you been faithful?” She asked while they kept kissing, digging her sharp nails into his shoulders, sending waves of pain and pleasure through his body.
What kind of bizarre question was that? Of course he had been! “Have you?” He knew that she had, despite it being hard for her, especially in the beginning after her transition.
She growled, then, dragging her nails through his skin. “I want you inside of me, now!”
“You should have worn a skirt, love,” he said amused before grabbing her and threw her onto the bed. Klaus got rid of her shoes and peeled off her pants before she flipped the both of them over, and she ripped off his pants. “Love, I know you have super strength now, no need to use it on me.”
“Fuck you,” she growled as she kissed him, hard. She felt like a nun the last year. Kol had no qualms about finding someone to have fun with – it was a secret between her and Kol so Davina wouldn’t find out, she helped herself. “I want you inside of me, now, we can do gentle later.”
He ripped off her panties and sunk right into her after flipping them back on the bed, nearly rolling off of it. They were close to the edge, on the brink and edge, both needing to reclaim each other and falling into their own personal and shared oblivion first.
Being a vampire was fantastic, especially when you were as insatiable as her and Klaus. For ten whole hours they didn’t talk about the last year, but only paid attention to each other, breaking the bed and a table in the den and cuddling in the bath. Bella loved being back in Klaus’ arms and feeling his hands on her. Sex as a vampire was beyond anything she’d ever experienced; every touch, stroke, and nibble were heightened, and she felt like wax in his hands.
Unfortunately, they had to stop having fun after they both got hungry and Klaus excitedly pulled her to the cellar, not caring that the both of them were naked. “We’ve made an adjustment in our diet, love,” he said proudly. “No longer are we feeding on our staff, even though we paid them quite generously. We now are snacking on healthy criminals instead.”
“Why?”
“Because blood is blood and there are criminals aplenty. Some of these hooligans don’t even have a family anymore; you don’t need to be that careful when feeding.” Klaus pulled one of them out of the jail and pushed him into Bella’s arms. “Enjoy, my darling,” he smiled at her. He’d been wanting to see her face ever since he turned her. He couldn’t ever forgive himself for having missed her ‘firsts’. First feed, first kill, first everything. At least she had behaved herself and allowed him to be the first she’d have sex with.
She loved him still, despite his treatment of her. He never stopped loving her. And seeing her vampire face for the first time was glorious. She was so beautiful and so glad that that didn’t change when she fed or hunted. Klaus was used to normal feeding noises, but she actually moaned at some point, and he had not expected that.
Pulling the man out of her hold and back into the cell, he pushed her against the wall and kissed her, hard, as he plunged into her, resuming their previous 10-hour affection for each other.
Bella barked out a laugh as he fucked her against the wall. Who knew that Klaus Mikaelson couldn’t control himself? She melted into him so quickly; she’d do anything for him, to feel his hands on her, to feel his lips on her skin. She had missed him so much, she hadn’t realized that, or perhaps Bella had ignored the nagging feeling as she was focused on killing Cold Ones, but now that she was back, she didn’t ever want to leave again.
She felt the familiar knot building up in her stomach whenever Kol was in need for her blood. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was disruptive to say the least. Also served as a precursor to make sure that he wouldn’t desiccate. Now that they were back in New Orleans, and he was with Davina, it was to stop him from killing her. Unfortunately, it appeared that he needed to have her blood more often now. Perhaps it had to do something with the proximity of Davina.
“We need to get dressed,” Bella moaned as Klaus still moved inside of her. She didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t want to tell him to stop, but she was worried about Kol now. Davina could seriously hurt him if she’d try to stop him herself. “Klaus, please,” she whimpered as she tried to stop from flying apart against him, but he sent her flying. Again.
“I will not allow my brother’s needs to be disruptive to our life,” Klaus said in a low, threatening voice, sending pleasurable sensations all through her body. “He’d just have to break up with the witch if he doesn’t want to kill her.”
“He’s your brother. He has every right to be happy like you and Elijah,” she softly kissed him as he pulled out of her. “Feed. I’ll get dressed and fill a glass with my blood. He’ll be here soon.”
“Bella.”
She could hear a disapproving tone in his voice, and she returned that sound with a glare before pushing him back and running upstairs to get quickly dressed. She was in the courtyard just in time when Kol walked in, clearly agitated and angry. She filled a glass with her blood and handed it to him, gently caressing his cheek. “It’ll be alright,” she said soothingly.
“No, Bella, this isn’t a matter of me desiccating,” he threw back the glass of blood and took a deep breath, feeling the unwanted feelings getting less. “This is a matter of whether or not I’m going to kill my girlfriend!”
“We knew this was going to be a possibility,” she said calmly, pulling him onto the couch and put her arms around him, holding him like she’d done quite a few times over the last year, for comfort, calming him. “Maybe you should ask Klaus if you could live here with Davina, that way you’re close by and you don’t have to cross a busy city when you feel like you were feeling just now – saving a lot of innocents in the process.”
“It’s not just Davina… I know I’ve never wanted to control my bloodlust, but now it’s impossible to…” Kol sighed, slightly shaking as Bella’s blood made his way through his system, also shaking off the bad feeling he had in his body; the sense of dread. Davina didn’t understand, despite him trying to explain the situation as well as she could. She wanted to destroy the ancestors for him, but he doubted that even that would lift the spell. Destroying them would only take away most of their power, they were ghosts. They couldn’t be destroyed.
She gently ran her hand through his hair before she tugged it to make him sit up. “We’re going to make this work,” she said determinedly as she nodded towards Klaus, who was watching them from the walkway. “And we can start with having you move in. I’m sure there’s an empty room around here. Like that one on the corner there, with its own den and bedroom, just like what we have upstairs.”
“Absolutely not!” Klaus growled as he made his way downstairs.
“Tough,” Bella said, getting to her feet and standing between Kol and his older brother, her lover. “The time that you treat your brother as anything less than is over.”
“It’s not that!”
She rolled her eyes at him. “We’ve gotten close in the last year, yes, but that’s it. We’re friends. Good friends. He needs my blood on occasion, but that’s fine. It’s nothing sensual, Klaus.”
“Just kill the witch and get it over with.”
“And then what? Banish him from New Orleans?” Bella huffed. “Even with Davina dead, there’s still the problem that he can’t leave this city without my blood.” She smiled at him before tiptoeing and kissing him. “He’s not a bad person, Klaus. Just like you’re not a bad guy.”
He looked around Bella to look at his younger brother. “What do you think?”
Kol shrugged. “Do you wish for me to slaughter half of New Orleans when I’m in need for a top up?”
“Kol,” Bella warned him.
“What? Do I need to admit that I would love to stay here? That this is my place too? That I’ve earned my place by now and that Nik owes it to me for me to stay here after all the things that he did?”
“I did?!”
“Hey!” Bella smacked Klaus on his chest. “It’s decided then; Kol is moving in.”
~o.O.o~
Breakfast was interesting. This was the first time that everyone was back together since Bella and Kol had left for Europe. Even Myriam was there; she was spending more time with Elijah than at the club, where she had hired an excellent manager to free up some of her day. Bella was surprised to hear that, seeing as Myriam had always been so hands-on when it came to the club. But it was good that she finally decided to let her hair down. It was a little sad, though, as Bella had figured she’d go back to work at Myriam’s as a bookkeeper but she didn’t need one anymore.
Everyone was more curious as how Bella and Kol had fared in the last year. It was so much fun to retell their stories, the way they lost count when killing Cold Ones and even how they stopped at Klaus’ former favorite artist retreat Belaga. While Gaspar Cortez had burned the entire village all those years ago; the village had been rebuilt and had turned into a tourist trap. Bella decided to eat everyone. Kol and Elijah saw the humor in that; Klaus didn’t like it – despite not having been to Belaga in so long.
And then it was time to reveal something Klaus would love even more. “We traveled through the States to round up the remaining Cold Ones and returned to Forks.”
“Forks?”
Bella slowly nodded. “It was strange to return there; Kol made sure I stopped by the cemetery to visit my dad and then we went to the reservation.”
“Get this, instead of driving straight onto the reservation, she stopped at the border, and we had a picnic,” Kol rolled his eyes. “I would have stepped on there if I wanted something.”
“They’re a tribe of shifters who are capable of tearing apart a Cold One. Despite them being asses and listening to a lovestruck teenager instead of doing what they were made for, I respect them too much to do just that. On top of that, I wouldn’t survive it if they’d take me apart. You might have.”
“Love, not everyone deserves your compassion and respect,” Klaus said amused as he took a bite out of his pastry. “You don’t owe those wolves anything.”
“No, but I didn’t particularly have a death wish, either, Klaus,” she stuck out her tongue to him. “Anyway, we went there because I wanted to give them a chance to do what they were built to do; kill Cold Ones, maybe throw Emmett at them or something so that they’d feel adequate.” Bella saw the shocked faces of Klaus and Elijah. “Don’t worry; they refused like I knew they would. However, I’ve given them a new task and should they fail it, I promised them that we would kill every single one of them. Every Quileute, innocent or not.”
“You should have seen her, Nik, it was glorious,” Kol grinned. “She is your queen, no doubt about it.”
Freya smiled knowingly. “I told you that Bella had an errand to run, didn’t I? She found the new White Oak tree.”
“You did?” Klaus said surprised. “Did you burn it down?”
“No,” Bella smiled widely. “A pack of shifter wolves trained to kill vampires is guarding it. Should something fall off it, I instructed them to burn it and they will.”
“You should have burned it to the ground.”
“And then what? Only have it to reappear in a few hundred years in a space we can’t control? We know where it is now. It’s safe. I’m sure Freya can come up with a spell that will protect the location from locator spells and whatever, but tearing it down didn’t seem the wisest decision.”
“Bella, you don’t understand that—” Elijah said slowly, eying her carefully.
“I don’t understand what? That that tree could kill you all a hundred times over? I do. And you can do whatever you want with it when I’m gone.”
“It’d be good to have the tree around,” Freya said with a small smile on her face. “The magical properties of that tree are astronomical; I could get a piece of it and use it to cast more extensive and more powerful protection spells for our family.”
“I don’t care,” both Elijah and Klaus said as they got to their feet. “That tree is going to burn. And Kol, you’re unbelievable, how could you have allowed her to arrange this?”
“We know where it is now. Bella’s right, it could pop up again in a place we’re not privy to. Where we can’t control it because we won’t be able to find it. It’s safe.”
Sometimes Kol talked a lot of sense and usually, both he and Elijah ignored him. But Bella was right, Kol was a member of their family, they were brothers for god’s sake, and it was time to take his opinions into account too. “And you’re sure those wolves will continue to protect it?”
“Yeah, they feel pretty bad for screwing me over,” Bella said with a shrug. “But one call from me and they will burn it to the ground if you want to.”
Klaus sucked in a breath. Maybe it was alright to give in just a little, have her decide something and lay down the law. She had a good head on her shoulders, and she knew those wolves better than he did. “I suppose that for now, we’ll have them guard the tree, but if anything goes wrong…”
“We’ll burn the tree,” Bella smiled at him. “Have a little faith.”
Maybe leaving the decision up to her was a mistake. “Having faith doesn’t keep us safe, love.”
“And you can take your paranoia too far.”
“She’s right, Niklaus,” Elijah said calmly after having given it some thought. “And usually when that happens, we all suffer. I’m not saying I agree with keeping the tree whole, but perhaps it is time that we try something different, change with the times, sort to speak.”
Bella finished eating her beignet and then grinned. “So, have I earned a Cullen to kill?” She rubbed her hands together in glee, causing Kol to snicker.
“I’d say that you have. It’s the icing on the cake!”
“Yes! Exactly!”
“We could make it into a game as well, release one and then chase it.”
“I’ve done too much chasing,” Bella whined playfully. “Remember Egypt? Ugh. No, just take me to them and I’ll kill them all.”
“Where’s the fun in that, love?” Klaus pulled her into his lap, still not liking it that she had struck a great friendship with his idiot brother. “They’ve earned it to be tortured, to be pulled apart one bone at a time… to be sliced apart with a blunt knife.”
Bella thought for a moment before she put her arms around his neck and softly kissed him. “Blunt knives won’t penetrate their skin, no matter how much force you put behind it. Sharp things. A million sharp things… a wall of tiny sharp things and then throw one of them into it… Oh! Like a giant cheese grater!” She could already imagine what it’d look like, skin being shaved off as the venom went everywhere, unable to move – with a little help from Freya’s magic – and their cries filling the room; it would make her heart sing with joy, it would be a real turn on, too.
“Bella,” Kol glared at her. While he had learned how to tune out most of her emotions over the previous year, it was quite obvious that his brother hadn’t had much of them up close. Knowing that the two of them had quite the night, he just had to warn her a little; Elijah would not appreciate another round of smashing and moaning.
“Before we’re going to end your nightmare for good, can I ask a favor?” Freya asked Bella as she wiped her hands on a handkerchief. “Alina has fallen hard for Peter, and he is equally smitten with her.”
Bella wanted to save Peter. He was a good guy, but she knew that she couldn’t control herself once she started killing Cold Ones. He was still a Cold One, and that could prove problematic. She also wanted to see Alina again but wasn’t sure how that was going to work with her dating Peter. “I can’t promise I won’t kill him.”
“No, that’s alright,” Freya smiled reassuringly. “While you were away killing my brother’s enemies and your own, I’ve been working on a spell to turn around his vampirism. He won’t turn into a human as that would kill him, but he’d become like you.”
“You can do that?”
“I’m confident that I can, yes. I’ve wanted to try for a while now, as a present to him, but Niklaus convinced me that it was best to ask you first, seeing as you’re who you are.”
“Aw, thanks! That’s sweet, and yes, do that. I can kill Cullens whenever.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Bella smirked as she ran her hand through Klaus’ hair. “Your brother and I have a lot to catch up on anyway,” she said in barely a whisper before she blew in Klaus’ ear. Before she knew it, he had brought her back up to the bedroom.
“For the love of god, I hope that will end soon,” Freya muttered as she rose to her feet. “I’m going to call Peter with the good news and prepare for the spell. The sooner he changes, the better.”
“Can I look at the spell, please?” Kol asked his sister.
She let out a breath of relief. “Yes, brother, please! I can’t wait to see if your brilliant mind can make the spell simpler or even better!”
“And?”
Bella pulled away from Kol, who was holding her anxiously and walked towards Peter. She was well aware that everyone was looking at her as if she was going to snap and kill him. It didn’t work that way, really. She merely didn’t want to show restraint when she saw a Cold One, it had been a choice, although also not so much because she felt like crap around them.
She hadn’t touched him yet, and Cold Ones couldn’t see her unless she made her presence known. “You can see me?”
“Of course,” Peter smiled at her.
“Why wouldn’t he be able to see you?” Klaus was curious. While she and Kol had shared some of their shenanigans over the last few days, this was something they had conveniently left out.
“We discovered that the reason why she’s so good at what she does, is that she’s invisible to Cold Ones,” Kol grinned. “Seriously, Nik, the first time she actually played with that was during the massacre of the Volturi. Aro screamed like a little child when she killed his mate.”
Bella hit him on the arm before turning around again and went back to Peter. “Wife.”
“Right. We don’t speak about mates.”
Interesting. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Klaus demanded, carefully watching the love of his life approaching a former Cold One, still in the middle of transitioning from that to a regular vampire.
“Eh,” Bella shrugged, waving her hand. “Not important.” Bella started to circle around Peter and poked him in certain areas. “How are you feeling, Peter?” His skin was still a little bit hard, no wonder, really. His eyes hadn’t changed and she couldn’t smell the blood in his body. Peter wasn’t sparkling, so that was a plus.
“Lighter,” Peter replied as he eyed her carefully before looking at Freya. “Are you sure this worked?”
“You still need to recover for a few days,” Freya explained. “Magic is wonderful, but even that has its limitations. The venom inside you is slowly turning into plasma and your skin will get softer as it does. What’s important if she kills you or not.”
Bella smirked as she ran her hand over the base of Peter’s neck. “I haven’t decided yet,” she replied with a shrug. “Tell me, Peter, what are your intentions with my Alina?”
“Oh, not you too,” Peter sighed as he buried his face in his hands. “Myriam already said it was fine that I was dating Alina.”
“Dating?” Bella let out a snort. “Oh, you poor bastard, who said anything about dating?” She then turned to Freya with a big smile on her face. “Oh, he lost his gift, didn’t he?” Bella let out a giggle when Freya nodded and put her hand over Peter’s crotch.
Klaus held his breath. While he didn’t particularly care for both Alina and Peter, he could feel the curiosity rise within him. It wasn’t his, it was Bella’s. One look at Kol and he knew that he felt the same. Damn his brother, though, he had more experience with having to deal with Bella’s emotions up close. Klaus had been fine once he had figured out how to tune out certain emotions at long distance, but this feeling was more than curiosity. It was a morbid curiosity and he wouldn’t be surprised if Bella ripped off Peter’s cock.
It did feel like she was in control over herself, but knowing Bella, this could easily change. Both he and Kol were ready to leap to Peter’s defense and rip the little spitfire off of him if necessary.
“Now that you’re no longer in danger of hurting her with this thing here, what will your intentions be with my best friend?” Bella knew that they probably wouldn’t have had sex yet; despite Alina being a vampire, Cold One venom still hurt like crazy. To Bella it was a silly sensation but that was because it was her duty to kill them all. Even Kol, an Original vampire, got burned a couple of times.
Peter smirked at her, despite his gift being non-existent, he knew what she was aiming at. “Treat her like my equal and fuck her mercilessly.”
“Good boy,” Bella removed her hand from him and gently pat his cheek. “Don’t worry, the urge to kill you isn’t there. At least the effect that Cold Ones have on me isn’t here.”
Klaus exhaled at the same time Kol did as relief washed over them. It was hard not to be jealous about the relationship between Bella and Kol. They had spent a whole year together and, if he had to be honest, he’d been afraid that she’d stray and settle for his brother. Unlike himself, Kol didn’t have the pressure of having to keep their family together, to make sure they were safe. Granted, Kol would fight his hardest to do so if either Klaus or Elijah asked him, but he was the wild one.
Somewhere over the years, Klaus had lost that. Hayley pointed that out during their trip, actually. While she appreciated it that he did everything in his power to keep everyone safe, he needed to loosen up. He was truly free now, as was Bella, and it was about time that they started to enjoy their lives. Bella already had a head start due to her time in Europe, with Kol, killing Cold Ones and even some of the disgruntled vampires from his former sireline and now Klaus felt the pressure to catch up.
He’d already made the first step by having Hayley and Hope return home and invite Hayley over for a drink that evening and talk about the last year. For the sake of inclusion, he also invited Davina, something Kol was probably going to love.
Kol was faster than he was when the urge to kill rose inside of Bella and he directed her away from Peter. “We’re not going to kill Peter.”
“No,” Bella swatted his hands away from her. “I was merely thinking that we should take a Cullen… preferably a screamer… and take it to the scrap yard. You know, they have those machines to turn cars into a thin slice of metal? I want to do that with a Cullen. And once it’s flat, I want to run a knife over their body and slice them like they’re a chunk of cheese.”
“What?” Klaus let out a snort. “Love, isn’t it a lot easier to just kill them?”
“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing in the past year? No, they deserve to die with pain. To choke on their own venom. I want them to know that I, Bella Swan, will be the death of them and that I’m going to make it painful.”
“Sure, love, we can do that,” he replied, fascinated by this side of her. He had never known that there was a little psychopath hidden inside of her. “What about tomorrow?”
“What about today? Now?”
“You know they can’t travel in daylight!”
“This is New Orleans. Weirder things happen than a sparkly person. No, I want one now. I want to kill all of them, but one will do, for now. I want them to stew a little in fear.”
“Now, now, there’s no reason to be a brat about it,” Klaus said patronizingly as he grabbed her arm and pulled her closer before repositioning his arm and lead her out of the room. He had different plans and with her wanting to change them wasn’t sitting well with him. Klaus hated it that ever since she returned she was even more bossy than she’d been previously, she was still angry with him for leaving with Hayley, wasn’t she? “Hayley is coming home today, with Hope.”
“I’m not being a brat about it, but fine. I’ll kill them all today in the same boring way that I have killed their kind over the last few months and get it over with,” Bella said grumpily. “I wanted to have my fun with them because of what they did to me, but yes, let’s forget the fact that you like to torture your worst enemies as well. Where are they? Let’s finish this nightmare.”
He wanted to pull out his own hair. “Just because I do it doesn’t mean you’re going to!”
Bella stopped walking and pulled away from him. “Oh, what? Is it because I have boobs? Is that it? I should sit still and be pretty all day? Like I did when you tried to screw Aurora over by literally screwing her?”
“With your permission!”
“Oh, so I’m right,” Bella barked out a laugh. “Oh wow. Nice, Klaus. Very gentlemanly of you. I can’t believe you’ve rounded up the Cullens and haven’t killed them yet in the time that I’ve been away only for not allowing me to kill them?”
“You didn’t hear me when I said that Hayley was returning today.”
“So what? You want me to be pretty? Is that it? There is time for both and if you’re not taking me to them then I will find someone who will. Or better yet, I’ll find them myself.”
Klaus was too late to hold her back as she sped off and when he turned to see if their little spat had been witnessed, he saw the smirk on his brother’s face. “What, Kol?” he barked.
“Let’s just hope that her bursts of anger will go away once she’s killed them all, you looked about ready to kill her,” Kol replied with a shrug. “Don’t worry, brother, in time, you’ll learn to deal with her emotions. Until then, I shall try to find her and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
~o.O.o~
Of course she hadn’t gone and find the Cullens in a city like New Orleans without Kol, but she really needed to get out of there before she’d do something irreparable to her relationship with Klaus. He was such a stick in the mud, sometimes. The freedom she had enjoyed with Kol had been exhilarating and she knew that she had to dial her opinions back to whatever level they were before, but Klaus hadn’t even wanted to give her one Cullen.
Only because of fucking Hayley coming back today. With Hope. Klaus’ daughter. He had had the entire year to be a family with them and sure, she appreciated it that Hayley wasn’t actually there when she and Kol returned, but now that she was coming back Bella couldn’t help but feel as if she was yet again going to be pushed aside. Or ‘managed’.
She had gone to the only place she felt somewhat safe in New Orleans other than the compound, and that was her old stomping grounds Débauche. Myriam wasn’t there, she was with Elijah and the new manager didn’t want to let her inside. If it wasn’t for Frank, she wouldn’t have been able to get in anyway.
And, no wonder, Kol found her and they drank. A lot. “I envy you,” Kol eventually said after a very long silence and a bottle of bourbon empty. “Nik has this thing where he tries to control and manipulate people he cares too much about, he wants to keep them safe and close. All I’ve ever felt with him was that I’m a burden.”
“Don’t be stupid, he loves you.”
“Now he does. He didn’t have a choice in listening to me when I was in that witch’ body. He didn’t have a choice to accept me when I offered to help because Mother was batshit crazy. I proved my worth and he didn’t like me dying again,” Kol replied calmly. “And to be honest, he was incredibly pissed off when I took you to Europe.”
“I wasn’t going to wait around for him to come back, you know. I would have gone on my own.”
“And he would have come after you and hunt you down. I think that me coming with you worked in all of our best interests,” Kol smiled at her. “He doesn’t like to be abandoned.”
“Well, he abandoned me!” Bella threw back another shot. “Look, I understand his need to disappear, to make sure that his daughter was safe, but… damnit, I thought I was over this already.”
“Klaus knew you were safe,” Hayley’s voice came from behind them. “Granted, the way that he turned you was not okay and I made sure he knew that, but he left you in safe hands. None of his enemies knew about you.”
Bella squeezed her glass so tight that it exploded.
“Oh,” Kol sucked in a breath as he held up his hand to stop Hayley from approaching for her own good. Hybrid or not, Bella was just as strong, if not stronger. He sincerely doubted that Myriam would love to redecorate the walls of the bar if Bella would hurt Hayley. Not to mention, Nik would kill Bella in return.
“I don’t like Klaus and he knows it,” Hayley continued from her spot, taking her cue from Kol at this point. “We had a one night stand and Hope’s the product of that. I have to at least tolerate him because of Hope. It took a lot of fighting and backstabbing to get to the point where we are at now; talking about what’s best for her. Especially now that she’s getting older. You were there when we fought when I came back.”
“He did what he did to keep his daughter safe,” Bella muttered. “You were going to take her away.”
“And I did what I did to keep Hope safe too,” Hayley countered. “We both had our daughter’s best interest at heart, even if that meant taking her away from her father. Which, in hindsight, had been a very bad idea because like Kol said; Klaus doesn’t like to be abandoned.”
“Then why does he do it to other people? This wasn’t even the first time he left me because when I was living here, he just stopped coming round one day without explanation and that broke my heart. If he does it to other people to protect them, to keep them safe, he really needs an attitude adjustment.”
“Klaus likes to be in control,” Hayley said, taking a few steps closer as Kol relaxed somewhat. “So with him leaving you with his siblings, safe, he knew that you were safe. He took me and Hope because I had just lost my husband and I really wanted to kill things and Hope wouldn’t be safe on her own, she’s a baby.” She slipped into the chair next to Bella. “Thing is though, he can’t control women like us. It’s a constant struggle on both sides of the issue. You, me, Rebekah… even Cami. We like to march to our own drum and that’s hard for him to accept because we’re not this perfect image he has of us.”
“I’m tired of being handled. For the first time in a very long time I’ve enjoyed myself, my freedom, and I come back to this?”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Yeah, last night. I just… I don’t know, really.”
“Did he tell you about our trip? What we did?”
“Of course he did. You went to all the Kingfisher buildings and gutted them. Burned them down, to erase every trace of Lucien and everything he tried to pull.”
“What else?”
“What else was there?”
Hayley smirked and motioned to the bartender to keep pouring. “He destroyed six cars because of this bond between you two. Uncontrolled anger was the cause of most destruction, but there was this one time where he was driving and he got so turned on and horny that he couldn’t remember how to work a seat belt and tore off the steering wheel to get out of the car as quickly as possible.” she took a swig of her bourbon and shrugged. “When I asked, he muttered something along the lines of you being a tease on the hood of a car.”
“Oh,” Kol grinned and quickly took a sip from his drink.
“Nothing happened between you two, right?” Hayley eyed them suspiciously. “Because it was kinda intense.”
“We didn’t have sex with each other, no,” Bella shook her head. “Kol was a gentleman and kept refusing me and eventually I decided to wait until I got home. To Klaus.”
“We’d take down these buildings together, but sometimes he was so uncontrollably angry that he started to smash everything in sight, kill everyone in sight, so I took a step back while he let off some steam inside the building,” she then looked at Kol. “How did you fare?”
“I joined in with the killing, it was fun,” he grinned. “Eventually I managed to separate my own feelings from hers and not getting taken over by them, to keep a clear head.”
“He managed to do the same on our way back to New Orleans, but I suppose it’s easier to get it under control when you’re not on top of it,” Hayley shrugged. “Upon our return, he stayed at the Infirmary for a while just to make sure that he was still sane. He needed a break, I guess.”
Bella threw back her glass and shifted a bit uncomfortably. “It’s not as if I can help it what happened, you know.”
“No, but your life isn’t the only one that changed. You can show at least a little bit of restraint when it comes to dealing with your emotions.”
“Bella has excellent control over her emotions,” Kol said defensively. “When there are no Cold Ones around she’s the nicest person ever. She knows the Cullens are in New Orleans somewhere. Subconsciously she feels them and that makes her angry. She holds a lot of anger and resentment towards them and I don’t blame her,” he continued as he downed his glass. “It was liberating to exert all that anger onto the rest of them, but once the Cullens are gone she no longer serves a purpose as a Singer and she’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Kol nodded. “A Singer exists solely to kill Cold Ones, her strength comes from her anger and rage. Once they’re all gone, she’ll be able to deal with everything else in a more rational way. All of her anger is on a big heap right now, difficult to sift through.”
“Keep talking as if I’m not here,” Bella said angrily and threw back another shot.
“It’s either sex or anger with her these days,” Kol grinned. “It’s driving Klaus nuts.”
“We wouldn’t be in this situation if he’d just let me kill one of them today. But noooo, the mother of his child is coming home today, can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Bella said mockingly before looking at Hayley. “Best way to describe this feeling is as if there’s ants underneath your skin, crawling around, taking a nibble, it’s annoying and I want it gone.”
“Klaus told me about your idea, I love it,” Hayley grinned. “Let’s go get one and do it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, fuck Klaus, right? I’m kinda curious myself what would happen if you’d put them into a car crusher and shit like that. I love a good torture!”
“Sounds like we’re going to break out the popcorn,” Kol emptied his glass before paying the bartender for the damage. “Which one will we be taking?”
“Rosalie, I never liked the dumb bimbo.”
