Chapter 4: The Crescent City Shadows
The warehouse district smelled like rust and old fish. I walked through it just past midnight, hood up, hands in my pockets, looking for something useful.
Three blocks in, I found it: a warehouse with boarded windows and a padlocked door that hadn't been opened in years. The building slumped against its neighbors like a drunk leaning on friends, and the "For Sale" sign out front was so faded I could barely read it.
Perfect.
I ripped the padlock off. The door groaned open, and I stepped inside.
Dust. Darkness. The smell of decay. But the structure was sound—concrete floors, steel support beams, a second level with an office that overlooked the main floor. No squatters. No signs of recent use. Just empty space waiting for someone to claim it.
I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. The beam cut through the dark, revealing old crates, a rusted forklift, and a door in the back corner that probably led to a basement.
I checked the basement first. Stairs that creaked but held. A large room with exposed pipes and a concrete floor. Cold. Isolated. Perfect for sleeping during the day without worrying about sunlight.
Not that sunlight hurt me—Esther's curse hadn't included that particular weakness—but old habits were hard to break. And staying underground meant staying hidden.
I went back upstairs and started planning. The office would be my research station. The main floor could store supplies. The basement would be sleeping quarters. And if I could compel the utility companies to turn on the water and electricity without asking questions, this place would be livable.
By dawn, I had a list. Blood bags from hospitals. A better laptop. Clothes that didn't scream "homeless vampire." Furniture. Weapons, maybe, though I could make those from my own blood if I had to.
I sat in the empty office as the sun rose, watching light filter through the boarded windows, and felt something I hadn't felt in weeks: settled.
This was mine. Not stolen. Not borrowed. Mine.
And from here, I'd learn everything.
Marcel's vampires moved like a military unit.
I watched them from a rooftop three blocks from the main square, binoculars pressed to my eyes. Six vampires patrolling in pairs, checking in with each other via phone every twenty minutes. They wore street clothes—jeans, leather jackets, nothing that screamed "supernatural enforcer"—but the way they moved gave them away. Too smooth. Too aware.
One of them stopped a human who was stumbling drunk down the sidewalk. Words were exchanged. The human laughed, clapped the vampire on the shoulder, and walked away smiling. Compulsion, probably. Send the drunk home safely before he became a liability.
I lowered the binoculars.
Marcel ran a tight ship. The forums hadn't lied. He'd taken control of New Orleans decades ago and built something that actually worked—rules that protected humans, kept vampires fed without causing a massacre, and maintained the masquerade. The supernatural world stayed hidden. The human world stayed ignorant.
Impressive. And dangerous.
Marcel was clearly strong, smart, and established. If he found out about me, he'd see me as a threat. And at 30% strength, I wasn't ready for that fight.
I spent the next week observing. Learned the patrol patterns. Identified the key players—Marcel's inner circle consisted of about eight vampires who seemed more loyal than the rest. One of them, a guy named Thierry, was clearly the lieutenant. He gave orders when Marcel wasn't around, and the others obeyed without question.
I also learned where Marcel lived: a compound in the French Quarter, renovated plantation-style building with balconies and courtyards and enough vampires inside to make a frontal assault suicide.
Noted.
But what really interested me wasn't Marcel's vampires. It was the tension between them and everyone else.
The witches hated Marcel. I picked up on that fast. Twice, I saw witches cross the street to avoid vampires. Once, I overheard an argument between a vampire and a witch outside a bar—something about "ancestral magic" and "respecting boundaries." The vampire had backed down, but not because he was scared. Because Marcel's rules said so.
The werewolves were worse. They stayed out of the French Quarter entirely, sticking to the bayou. Smart. Marcel's vampires outnumbered them twenty to one.
New Orleans wasn't a supernatural community. It was a powder keg with three factions holding matches, and Marcel was the only thing keeping it from exploding.
What happens when he's gone? I wondered. What happens when someone stronger shows up?
Klaus, probably. Klaus would show up, kill Marcel or take his kingdom, and turn everything into chaos.
Unless I got there first.
The magical disturbance hit me on my ninth night in the city.
I was walking through the French Quarter, hood up, blending into the late-night crowd of tourists and locals, when it slammed into me like a freight train. Power. Massive, raw, wrong in a way I couldn't explain. It pulled at something deep in my chest, at the bloodline connection I'd only started to understand, and made my teeth ache.
I stopped in the middle of the street. A couple tourists bumped into me, muttered apologies, and kept walking. I didn't move. Couldn't move. The power was coming from—
There.
A church. St. Anne's, according to the sign. Modest building, old stone, the kind of place that had been standing for two centuries and would stand for two more. But the magical signature pouring out of it was anything but modest.
Something incredibly powerful was inside.
I walked closer, senses on high alert. The church doors were locked, and I could feel wards humming in the walls—protective spells designed to keep people out. Or keep something in.
Who the hell is in there?
I reached out with the bloodline connection, trying to get a read on the power source. It felt... young. Untrained. Like someone had handed a nuclear reactor to a teenager and told them to figure it out.
A witch. Had to be. But more powerful than any witch I'd ever encountered, and I'd met plenty before Esther and Mikael shoved me in a coffin.
I stood outside the church for twenty minutes, just... feeling. The power pulsed like a heartbeat. Alive. Contained. Angry.
Whoever you are, I thought, you're either going to be my greatest ally or my worst enemy.
I marked the church's location on my mental map and walked away. Now wasn't the time to investigate. I was too weak, too exposed, and Marcel's vampires were still patrolling nearby.
But I'd come back. Soon.
By the time I returned to the warehouse, my head was pounding.
The magical disturbance had done something to me. Made the bloodline connection active in a way it hadn't been before. I could feel vampires now. Not clearly—not names or locations—but presences. Dozens of them scattered across the city, all tied back to me through a thread I didn't understand.
I sat in the basement, back against the wall, and tried to process it.
The Originals had been created with my blood. That made every vampire in existence part of my... what? Sireline? Family? It was too weird to think about. But the connection was there, undeniable, and it had been there the entire time I was at the bottom of the ocean. I just hadn't been awake enough to notice.
Now I was. And now I could feel them.
It was overwhelming. Like standing in a room full of people all talking at once, their voices blending into white noise. I couldn't pick out individuals yet—that would take practice—but I could sense the weight of them. The sheer number. Hundreds? Thousands?
How many vampires were out there?
I didn't know. And right now, I didn't care. What mattered was that the connection existed. And if I could feel them, maybe I could control them.
Hemokinesis. Blood manipulation. That was my power, the one thing Esther hadn't been able to take from me. I'd been too weak to use it properly since waking up, but if I could tap into the bloodline connection...
I held up my hand and focused. Tried to pull at the blood in my palm, to shape it, to make it move.
Nothing.
I tried again. Harder. Concentrating until my head throbbed and my vision blurred.
A single drop of blood welled up on my fingertip.
I stared at it. Then laughed. It sounded bitter even to my own ears.
Pathetic.
But it was progress. Proof that the power was still there, buried under a thousand years of atrophy and weakness. I just had to dig it out. Train it. Master it again.
I wiped the blood away and stood. My body ached—not from injury, but from pushing too hard. I needed more blood. More strength.
And I needed answers about that church.
Outside, rain started falling again. I listened to it drum against the warehouse roof and thought about the witch inside St. Anne's. About Marcel's kingdom. About the Mikaelsons, wherever they were, oblivious to the monster they'd created.
New Orleans was a powder keg.
And I was the match.
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