Valor | Marcel Gerard

Chapter 2

He still took her captive.

"Oh, this is so painfully unnecessary," Andra groaned, boredly flopping against the bed in the room he'd put her in, having just woken up after he'd dragged her there the night before. "You picked the worst room!"

"Hey," Marcel said from outside, having returned from seeing Davina, the girl refusing to give Elijah back despite him wishing to make peace with Klaus after last night's fiasco. "I'll toss you in the dungeon if that's what you prefer."

"You didn't need to kidnap me!" she exclaimed. "I would have come quietly if you asked me to spend the night. I never say no to sharing a bed with a handsome fellow."

"You think your little quips are cute but I assure you they're not."

"I just mean you are a terrible kidnapper. A blow that would have killed me were I not what I am, delivered to my head to get me here. Terrible technique! And then you made a mistake, choosing this room. It's ugly and it is filled with objects. I assure you I can still make weapons out of all these things with my bare hands." Sitting up from the bed and reaching for one of the vanity drawers, she yanked it out, chipping the backboard and detaching it from the metal rod that held the drawer in place. With one hard push, she broke it off, then used the metal to scrape the piece of wood, doing her best to carve it as loudly as possible. "There, I have a weapon now. Some food would be nice!"

"If you're intending to kill the first person I send in with food, I'll happily let you starve."

"I need something to do! I've already told you I've no intention of killing vampires unless they hurt me. I only wish to enjoy myself and do everything but the job I was assigned. I always scope out the towns I mean to settle into, to see what I am working with. My only goal at the moment is to have a life where I can attend ridiculous parties and even have a mundane job I despise. It is quite unnecessary for you to keep me here. I recommend you let me out before I start a fire and burn you all. I'll rise from the ashes like a phoenix but you, dear Marcel, will be burnt to a crisp as you were meant to in 1919."

The door swung open, and she smiled, seating herself back on the bed with the makeshift stake on her lap, waiting patiently for him to speak.

"How the hell do you know that?" he said gruffly.

"I know everything about you," she purred, getting up and striding closer and waving the stake in the air. "I know everything about this city. I studied before I arrived, and even though I hadn't seen the sun since 1812, it was all too easy to find out about your history here with the Mikaelsons, who I have been familiar with since the start of the eighteenth century. I still have contacts that can tell me all that I need to know, but what I presently do not have is a way to find the one person I wish to be with– my brother. Help me, and I'll get out of your hair. If you can't find what I seek, then let me go, allow me to live my life, and we can be on good terms."

He wagged a finger. "That's it. The job you were assigned has to do with the Originals, doesn't it? That's why you don't want to do it. You make it seem like you were scoping out danger but you were assessing the targets."

"And what do you plan to do? Tell them about me? Hand me over? I'd simply tell them about how you and Rebekah had a witch summon Mikael here in 1919... presumably after you were unable to get my help with it. See how that doesn't work out in your favor?"

Marcel was only getting more agitated. "Who sent you? Nobody is supposed to know that, no one alive–"

"Please, darling," she said, playfully pouting, "you think you're the only one in the world who has hired a hitman? I have been a mercenary since long before you were born. For nearly three hundred years, would have been five hundred to this day if I had not been incapacitated. I knew Mikael very well."