Original Vampires, Welcome to New Orleans (The Originals Seasons 1 and 2 Fanfic)

Chapter 7: The Sacrifice

'Hayley!' Elijah yelled. He and I ran into the church, covered in blood from our most recent tussle. The two of us stopped in our tracks, and as everything came into focus, we noticed that Klaus was sitting at the foot of the steps at the very front of the church aisle, holding a body in his arms.

It was Hayley.

'No,' I gasped softly. I could only stumble behind Elijah, and he fell to his knees, touching her face gently. She was motionless, eyes closed, her throat slit.

'She's gone,' Klaus replied weakly. He looked at us both after a moment of silence. 'You've been bitten. Both of you.' He raised his wrist to his lips and bit his own wrist, extending the wound to us to heal our werewolf bites.

We'd partaken in Klaus' blood, and were still injured, but for the most part, healed. Klaus laid Hayley's body on the altar tenderly.

'How?' Elijah asked.

'I was bested.'

'You were bested?' Elijah replied sharply. He turned and walked down the steps. 'You... were bested!' He turned back. 'My invincible brother. Klaus said nothing, only stood, looking between the two of us.

'They took the baby,' he replied. 'There's still time. We can save her.'

We walked quickly through Lafayette Cemetery.

'The tombs are empty, the grounds are deserted. She's not here!' Elijah yelled in frustration.

'This is the only place they can be. We'll keep searching.'

'They are not here, Niklaus. We're wasting time,' I replied. He turned to the two of us.

'The Harvest was here, the Reaping was here, they are about to perform a ritual which will feed their ancestors for centuries, ancestors who are buried here.' Klaus stopped and looked up. 'This statue,' he said, pointing at a small statue of some kind of bird or angel on top of one of the graves. 'We've passed by it three times all the whilst going in the same direction.' Elijah also paused, looking at the graves near him.

'They have fabricated some kind of illusion,' Elijah replied slowly. Klaus vamp-sped up to the top of the grave.

'That's one word for it. Before him, a stretch of confusingly identical graves stretched for miles over the landscape.

The next morning...

'It's ingenious,' Klaus said, reaching out to touch one of the graves. 'I can see them, I can feel them. And yet they are not real.'

'There has to be a way,' Elijah said frustratingly. 'Even if we could just push through -'

'What we need to do is focus.'

'My only focus is that child and her safety, do you understand me?' Elijah said, whirling to face his brother and me. 'This, all of this, this is the world that you created, Niklaus.'

'Elijah, please, just listen to me -'

'No, Lilliana, stay out of it.'

'Elijah -' I said, trying to plead with him once more, but he turned to me.

'I said to stay out of it.' The need to plead with him instantly disappeared, and I kept silent.

'Brother -' Klaus said, but was interrupted by Elijah again.

'All of your scheming, the enemies you have made every single day of your miserable life, what results would you expect? That your child would be born into a happy life, that her mother would be alive to know her daughter, that we could live and thrive as some sort of family?'

'That was your fantasy, brother, not mine!' Klaus screamed.

'No, brother! This was our hope. This was our family's hope. And now she is gone. Do you understand? I let this person in. I let her in. I don't let people in. The only other one I let in was Lilliana. You knew that, and you've taken her from me. I needed her, and you've broken me,' he replied with tears in his eyes. He moved away from his brother, sitting down with a bump in front of a grave. I knelt in front of him, taking his blood-covered hands in mine, and giving them a gentle kiss. He looked at me, tears still shining in his eyes. 'I hurt you,' he said softly.

'Not literally,' I replied.

'I abused the bond; I'm sorry,' he said.

'You were angry. She means a lot to you, I can tell. You cared for her from the first moment we met her in this very cemetery.'

'I don't care for her like I do for you,' he said. 'I'd die inside if anyone did to you what they did to Hayley.' Klaus sat next to us.

'You can tell your niece how much you cared for her mother when we save her,' Klaus replied.

We ran into the witches' alcove.

'We've passed through here twice already,' Elijah said. 'We're running out of time.'

'Then we move faster,' Klaus said, his back turned to us.

'Or smarter,' a familiar voice said, and we turned to see Hayley standing there, more alive than we had seen her mere hours before. Elijah stepped toward her.

'Hayley. How are you here?'

'I woke up in the church. I felt this hunger. I knew what I needed. I can feel her. I can feel my baby. She's here.' She walked past Klaus, who spoke next, the realisation hitting him.

'You died with the blood of the child still in your system.'

'She needs to drink the blood of the child if she's to survive,' I said, coming to the same realisation.

'To be reborn a hybrid,' Klaus said.

'I don't care about me,' Hayley replied, her mind only on one thing, it seemed. 'I'm gonna go find our daughter.' She stormed out of the room, the three of us following her. When we came upon the sacrifice, the witch, Genevieve, along with two of the resurrected Harvest girls, Monique Deveraux and Abigail, were about to kill the newborn baby.

'No!' Hayley cried out. Elijah grabbed something, and threw it at Genevieve, causing her to drop the dagger. The two girls clasped their hands and used the power of their ancestors to throw us back. I could vaguely hear the girls chanting, but I was too angry to care. We fought them, and part of the ancestors disappeared when Klaus threw a metal pike into Abigail, sending her flying into a wall, killing her instantly. Elsewhere, Hayley and I tried to stop Genevieve, but were unsuccessful as she used a spell to give us both massive headaches. The ancestors disappeared entirely as Monique ran to grab the fallen dagger and stood over the baby.

'No!' Hayley screamed. We tried to get to the baby, but Genevieve still held us back. Klaus and Elijah ran for her, but Monique held them back with a wall of fire. Suddenly, a star-shaped weapon flew into Monique, and she dropped the dagger, a dozen cuts opening on her body. She promptly dropped to the ground and died. We turned to see Marcel there, and he vamp sped, grabbed the baby, and left.