Chapter 3: Ghost in the Modern World
The Bangor library smelled like old paper and desperation. I sat in the corner, laptop open, third cup of coffee cooling beside me even though I didn't need caffeine. Habits from a life I barely remembered.
Google was a revelation.
Type a question, get a thousand answers in half a second. The last time I'd needed to research something, it involved dusty books and monks who'd rather stab you than share information. Now? Everything humanity had ever known was just... there. Waiting.
I started simple. Current events 2011. Wars in the Middle East. Something called the Arab Spring. A president named Obama—that one stopped me for a minute. The world had changed. Not just technology, but everything.
Then I went deeper.
Supernatural activity New Orleans. The results were mostly garbage—ghost tours, voodoo shops catering to tourists, conspiracy blogs that made my eyes hurt. But buried in the noise were forums. Dark web sites that required three proxy servers and a password I had to compel out of a hacker I'd found in Portland.
The supernatural community had gone digital. Vampires posting encrypted messages. Witches trading spell components on black market sites. Werewolves tracking pack movements through coded GPS coordinates.
And everywhere, whispers about New Orleans.
Marcel Gerard's name came up repeatedly. A vampire king who'd taken control of the French Quarter, established rules that kept the peace—or at least kept the body count manageable. Former slave turned immortal turned ruler. The forums either loved him or hated him. No middle ground.
The Mikaelsons were mentioned too, but less frequently. Klaus had been spotted in Mystic Falls, Virginia. Breaking his curse. Going full hybrid. The supernatural world was buzzing about it like he'd just dropped a nuclear bomb.
My jaw clenched. Klaus's hybrid nature came from me. Esther had used my blood to create the Originals, and when she'd turned Klaus into a hybrid, she'd tapped into the werewolf potential buried in my DNA. He was walking around with power that should have been mine, and he probably didn't even know I existed.
Yet.
I spent three days in that library, absorbing everything. History. Technology. Pop culture that made no sense—why did people care about "Charlie bit my finger"? I watched YouTube tutorials on using smartphones, driving modern cars, even something called "social media" that seemed designed to make humans voluntarily surrender their privacy.
The world had gotten stranger. Faster. More connected. And I was a ghost trying to haunt it without leaving fingerprints.
The ATM beeped cheerfully as it dispensed two hundred dollars.
I stood in front of it at 2 AM, hood pulled low, and watched the machine count out bills I hadn't earned. The security camera above the ATM had captured my face for exactly three seconds before I'd compelled it to loop the previous hour's footage. The bank's system thought I was account holder Robert Chen, who lived in Augusta and definitely hadn't authorized this withdrawal.
Robert would get his money back. Banks had insurance for this kind of thing. And I needed cash more than I needed a clean conscience.
Compulsion made everything easy. Too easy. Walk up to someone, catch their eye, tell them what to do. They'd smile and nod and hand over whatever I wanted. Money. Information. Car keys. Their memories would fog over, and I'd disappear before they even realized something was wrong.
It was addictive. The power. The control. After a thousand years of being helpless, having people obey my every word felt like breathing after drowning.
But it also felt like something Esther would do.
I pocketed the cash and walked away, hands shoved deep in my jacket. The street was empty except for a homeless guy sleeping in a doorway and a couple stumbling out of a bar three blocks down. Small city life. Quiet. Safe.
I'd been practicing this for two weeks now. Blending in. Acting human. My 19-year-old mind from 2010 helped—I remembered smartphones, social media, the basic shape of modern life even if the details had changed. But there were gaps. Slang I didn't recognize. References that flew over my head. Memes that made me feel ancient despite looking like a college dropout.
"Yolo," someone had said to me in a coffee shop yesterday. I'd stared at them, waiting for the rest of the sentence. They'd laughed and walked away. I still didn't know what it meant.
I found my current car—third one this month, stolen from a mall parking lot in Lewiston—and drove to the motel on the edge of town. Twelve dollars a night, cash only, no questions asked. The room smelled like cigarettes and mildew, but it had a bed and a door that locked. Good enough.
I lay on the bed, laptop balanced on my stomach, and pulled up the map I'd been building. Red pins marked vampire activity. Blue for witches. Green for werewolves. New Orleans was a rainbow of supernatural chaos, more concentrated than anywhere else in North America.
The Mikaelsons weren't there yet. According to the forums, Klaus was still in Mystic Falls, playing whatever game he played. But they'd go to New Orleans eventually. The city was a power vacuum waiting for someone strong enough to fill it, and Klaus had never met a throne he didn't want to sit on.
I just had to get there first.
I closed the laptop and stared at the water-stained ceiling. My strength was coming back slowly—20% now, maybe 25% on a good day. I could fight if I had to, compel large groups, move faster than humans could track. But I was still weak compared to what I should be. An Original could kill me without breaking a sweat.
That had to change.
I'd been feeding on animals mostly. Deer. Raccoons. Whatever I could catch without attracting attention. It kept me functional, but animal blood was like drinking through a straw when I needed a firehose. Human blood would fix that. Criminal blood, specifically—murders, rapists, people the world wouldn't miss. I could justify it that way. Make it almost noble.
But that meant hunting. And hunting meant risk.
Tomorrow, I decided. Start tomorrow.
I fell asleep thinking about New Orleans. About Klaus and Elijah walking streets they thought were safe. About Esther and Mikael, wherever the hell they were, believing I was still at the bottom of the ocean.
They were wrong.
And soon, I'd prove it.
Boston had a serial killer problem.
I learned about it from a news article buried on page six of the local paper. Three bodies in two months, all found in the same neighborhood, all with their throats cut. Police had no leads. The community was terrified.
Perfect.
I found him on my second night in the city. A man in his forties, average height, forgettable face. He was following a woman home from her shift at a convenience store, keeping to the shadows, one hand in his jacket pocket. Knife, probably. He had the walk of someone who'd done this before. Confident. Casual.
I stepped out of the alley ahead of him.
He stopped. Blinked. Looked me over—skinny kid in a hoodie, no threat—and smiled. "Wrong place, kid. Walk away."
"No," I said.
His smile faded. "What?"
I met his eyes. Compulsion rolled out like a wave. "Drop the knife. Kneel."
He did. The knife clattered on the pavement, and he sank to his knees, confusion and terror warring on his face. He was awake. Aware. Watching himself obey and unable to stop.
Good.
"You've killed three people," I said. "Maybe more. That's why you're here. That's why I'm going to drain you dry and leave your body in a dumpster where nobody will find it for a week."
"Please—" His voice cracked. "I'm sorry, I'll stop, I—"
"You won't."
I bit down. His scream cut off as I crushed his throat with one hand, and the blood flowed hot and rich and human. God, I'd forgotten how good it tasted. Better than animal blood. Better than anything. Power flooded my system, my cells drinking it in, my strength climbing with every swallow.
When I finished, he was empty. Pale. Dead.
I left him in the alley and walked away, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. The woman he'd been following was long gone, safe without ever knowing she'd been in danger.
That was the first one.
Over the next two weeks, I fed my way down the East Coast. Drug dealers in Providence. A pimp in New York who'd beaten one of his girls to death the week before. A domestic abuser in Baltimore whose wife had a broken jaw and cigarette burns on her arms.
I wasn't a hero. I was a predator removing competition. But it felt good anyway. And my strength kept climbing.
By the time I reached Richmond, Virginia, I was at 30%. Functional. Capable. I could take on most vampires now, maybe even some of the weaker Originals if I got lucky and they didn't.
Time to go to New Orleans.
The drive from Richmond to New Orleans took sixteen hours. I did it in one go, stopping only for gas and to dump the current stolen car when the owner reported it missing. By hour twelve, exhaustion was pulling at me—not physical, vampires didn't get tired like that—but mental. The kind that came from spending two months alone, hiding, hunting, waiting.
I was so sick of waiting.
New Orleans appeared on the horizon as the sun set, all amber light and urban sprawl. The skyline wasn't impressive—no skyscrapers, no glass towers—but there was something about it. An energy. A pulse. Like the city was alive in a way other places weren't.
Or maybe that was just the supernatural community humming beneath the surface.
I parked outside the city limits, in the lot of an abandoned gas station, and stared through the windshield. Rain had started falling, light and warm, turning the pavement into a black mirror. Somewhere out there, Marcel Gerard ruled his kingdom. Somewhere out there, witches were fighting over power. And somewhere out there, if my instincts were right, the Mikaelsons would eventually show up and turn everything sideways.
I wasn't ready to face them. Not yet. Not at 30% strength with no allies and no plan beyond "make them suffer."
But I was ready to watch.
I pulled out my phone—the same cracked one from the beach house, somehow still working—and typed out a note to myself: Establish base. Observe Marcel. Find the power source. Stay hidden.
Simple. Clean. Achievable.
I started the car again and drove into the city, letting the rain wash over the windshield as New Orleans swallowed me whole.
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