I, Immortal (The Vampire Diaries Jumpchain Self Insert)

Author's Note: Lots of reasons for this hiatus, and you are not obligated to care.

Wyld

I showed Esther's head to Lauren. Davina sat in her chair quietly and watched us. "Courtesy of the Mikaelsons, their mom's head in a box and a threatening letter." I could not help but smile grimly despite being shaken. "It's a very Mikaelson thing, to make such a show of brutal force to try and cow your enemies."

"Yes it is," Lauren agreed. "Let me see the note, please?" She pulled it to her with a spurt of telekinesis. "We have rejected our mother's offer. Give us Rebekah." Lauren read aloud.

"We agree we're not giving the Mikaelsons their sister's body, right?" I asked.

"Is there a reason not to kill Rebekah's body and wipe out most of them immediately?" Lauren asked.

"Well it'd kill Kol and Elijah. Finn and Rebekah would still be witches in stolen bodies. There's no way Kol's not the current Mikaelson MVP with the linking spell and his Cure suppressing their vampirism. We'd also slaughter all remaining vampires in the world, removing most of their potential allies. So um, I can't see a downside." I paused. "Your thoughts?"

"They have a backup plan, but it can't be half as dangerous as what they can do with an active Kol and vampiric minions," Lauren nodded. "Davina, your thoughts?"

"Be nice," I recited automatically at Lauren.

"Well..." Davina was clearly uncomfortable being put on the spot and kept looking away from Esther's head. "What do you need to bring back Klaus?"

"What?" Lauren asked.

"You'd need a ton of power, like a sacrifice, right?" Davina asked. "Ms. LaRue told me Jeff killed Klaus. You're sure there's a backup plan if the Mikaelsons die. Would Klaus's death have broken your linking spell?"

"Klaus was never linked to begin with," I said. "But it would've broken it if he'd been part of it anyway."

"Familial sacrifice," Lauren said thoughtfully. "Normally you need as much of the deceased's body as you can get, strong connections to the deceased, tons of power. Necromancy isn't my specialty, but if you had four siblings die that would provide a kick, especially if they can exploit the sire lines dying."

"Esther was a master of body swapping. I'd have jumped to a new body if I was hit by the Anchor curse. If Kol has studied her grimoire then he'll probably be in the body of another witch." I nodded. "Esther's written necromancy spells as well. Kol might not even be in his own body anymore. If all the Originals are outside of their old bodies right now then it'd be an acceptable risk to see if we killed Rebekah's old body."

"Can they break that linking spell without Rebekah's body?" Davina asked.

"Maybe, but it'd be very difficult and take time," I answered. "I used Rebekah's body to anchor it and linked the family with the blood of Elena Gilbert. Um, that's complicated, but Elena's blood is a useful agent in spells, and some of the blood was in all four surviving siblings at the time." I paused. "Oh! Also their father, Mikael. If they had the blood of all of them at the same time it might be possible, but it was one of my more intense spells."

"They might have saved some of Rebekah's blood, and Finn's. Probably none of Mikael's." Lauren commented. "We have to assume they've broken the spell until we confirm otherwise, but I really don't think it has happened."

"Confirming that's not overly hard." I pointed at Lauren. "It's implausible, but if they managed it we need to react accordingly. We've gotta check."

"You're going to see my mirror world," Lauren said to Davina after a moment of looking annoyed. "The last thing we need is to explain to your coven why we let you die in a hostage situation."

"One moment." I held out my hand to Lauren. "On that note, we need to get Vicki to a safer area."

"Yeah." Lauren held my hand and closed her eyes as she began a psychic shout directed at Vicki.

"Are you sure the mirror world is safe?" Davina asked.

"Huh." I frowned. "No, but it's a smaller risk and any hostiles in there are less likely to be working with the Mikaelsons."

---

Vicki and Silas arrived at the edge of the room. "Come in," Lauren said to Vicki, and I poked a Vicki shaped exception in the ward so she could walk in without risking anyone else entering.

"What about me?" Silas asked.

"Dude, you think we trust you?" Vicki asked.

"I've been nothing but helpful." Silas pointed out.

"I'm another psychic and..." I paused for a moment, looked at Davina, and said "Don't listen to me." I turned back to Silas. "I've seen your lunacy on a television show that may not exist. I want to get Amara back for you, but I'm not letting you run wild in the world Katherine's stuck in until we've made a deal with her."

"It's not exactly good for our reputation if we sellout people we made deals with the moment they stop being useful," Lauren added.

"Stop ignoring me." I compelled Davina and she blinked.

"What was that?" Davina asked me.

"If you stick with us they'll explain it to you, but trust me it takes a long time to understand it." Vicki cut in. "Ready to go to a slightly less hot New Orleans?"

"Ready." I said and Lauren pulled out her potion and began chanting. "Just step into the light," I told Davina.

---

Lauren and I investigated Rebekah's body while Davina and Vicki stood around. Vicki looked bored, Davina looked uncomfortable.

"She's still linked to the others," Lauren decided. "Well, if she's not linked then they did something unbelievably tricky." She turned to Davina. "You have questions."

"Um, if Travelers have overrun this place, why did you leave Rebekah's body here?" Davina asked. "I mean, that's not a strong protection spell." Davina pointed at the chalk and salt circle we had around Rebekah's body.

"It's cloaked, but we keep having to move so we can't do anything that sturdy to protect it," Lauren sounded defensive. "Anything else?"

"Is she alive or dead?" Davina asked after another second of looking uncomfortable.

"More dead than alive, but not all the way dead," I explained. "Vampire bodies are complicated, and can withstand a removed soul pretty well, but a lot of Rebekah's vampiric nature is suppressed by the link to Kol's cured body. She doesn't breathe or anything, but the link also keeps her from fully dying. If her soul returned to her body she'd get a bit more lively."

"Can we just kill her like anyone else?" Vicki asked.

"I'd use White Oak just to be sure, but I think the link to Kol makes her vulnerable anyway," I said. "I really didn't anticipate Kol using the cure when I linked them, so I'd probably do the full Dracula ritual. White Oak through the heart, cut off the head."

"Do you do this a lot?" Davina asked.

"Kill people?" I asked. "Not when I can avoid it, but Mikaelsons are a bit of a special case."

"Here in New Orleans we tell stories about the Mikaelsons, usually we call them the Old Ones," Davina said softly. "People say they ruled like kings before they disappeared while the city burned. Most of the stories are horrible."

"Young Padawan," I began. "I expect most of the stories you've heard are true. Then again, the Mikaelsons are also notorious liars. They've murdered, raped, stolen, tortured, betrayed and done every other crime you care to mention. The day I killed their brother he was threatening my life and the lives of everyone else in the vicinity."

"That's one way to put it," Lauren frowned at me.

"What does that mean?" Davina asked curiously. The girl's eyes were bright, eager; she deserved some truth.

"There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to criticize the rest of us." I quoted.

"Angela and Diabola, Jeff? Really?" Lauren asked. Vicki and Davina looked very confused.

"So we both read that as kids." I smiled. "Davina, no one's the villain of their own story. Well, not many at least. The Mikaelsons are victims. Esther turned them into vampires without warning or consent. The day I killed Niklaus I was possessing the body of an innocent and I only got so close to him because he had no idea who I really was."

"Bonnie is a bit of a bitch anyway," Vicki offered.

"It would be righteous to rid the world of vampires, in my estimation, Original and otherwise. Every vampire lives with heightened emotions and a terrible hunger for human blood. But..." I struggled to find the worlds. "It doesn't mean we're the good guys if we do it, or make someone else a bad guy for wanting to stop us."

"Hey!" Vicki looked annoyed.

"One of my best friends' is a vampire." I gestured at Vicki. "As it happens, she'd survive the vampire purge because she died and I brought her back already. I'm not going to kill her, and because of that, she'll probably kill people because her every instinct is rewired to make her into something dangerous."

"That's awful." Davina frowned.

"You know I've seen the future. I've seen your future." I said. "I've seen you make friends with vampires. I don't know how much Ms. LaRue told you about what I told her. Marcel Gerard would have saved your life, and I killed him when I killed Klaus."

"What my boyfriend is getting at is that life is really complicated, and he feels bad about it." Lauren cut me off. "We don't kill Vicki for the same reason almost no one spends all their money on charity. We can't make everything about doing the right thing, or else we'd go crazy and never do the right thing at all."

"Wow, way to make me feel like crap." Vicki snarled at Lauren.

"I'm in a bad mood," Lauren admitted readily.

"So if we're not going to kill Rebekah yet in case it plays into the Mikaelson plan, but the Mikaelsons are planning to get her back, what do you think you should do?" Davina asked me.

"Well..." I trailed off. "There's a way to make sure they can't bring back Klaus, if that's their plan."

"Really?" Lauren asked.

"What do you mean?" Vicki looked between us.

"He's talking about putting Klaus in another body so they can't access his spirit to bring him back as a fully powered Original." Lauren explained.

"Do you have a better idea?" I asked.

"Could we use one of the Human Faction's supply of Talismans?" Lauren asked.

"Talismans, like a Dark Object?" Davina asked.

"Object made through Dark Magic, so Dark Object, yeah." I nodded. But do any of them even work that way?"

"They don't have to," Lauren explained. "When I worked with Esther she sacrificed one talisman to make another. We just need to find one kind of like what we need and we can trap Klaus's spirit. Then we can kill Rebekah, destroying the vampires without worrying about having to fight Klaus again."

"Huh." I nodded again. "How long would it take?"

"I don't know." Lauren admitted after thinking for a minute.

"We can use my body," I began.

"No!" Lauren shouted. "We are not going with your half-backed plan that risks putting Klaus's soul into one of the strongest creatures on Earth."

"We can keep it dormant," I said. "My spirit's far stronger than his. We just need a spell to keep two spirits in one body with the host's spirit in charge instead of the invader. You can't say we can't do that."

"Vicki!" Lauren whirled on the brunette vampire. "You know that this is a hundred times safer if we experiment on you instead, right?"

"Hell no!" Vicki shouted.

Lauren looked surprised. "What?"

"I'm not letting Klaus Mikaelson ride around in my body," Vicki insisted. "Screw that. Jeff's game, but I'm not. Every time you try and use body swaps something new and horrible happens. I'm out."

"I'll do it," Davina said.

"Really?" I asked.

"You said the vampires are dangerous. People are going to keep dying if you don't win, right?"

"Jeff..." Lauren gave me a look.

"Tell me your real feelings on this." I compelled Davina.

"I'm scared and I think I'm in less danger if you trust me, and this seems like the best way to get you to trust me." Davina answered and gave a shudder. "I hate when you do that."

"Well." Lauren grinned. "I think this is a good idea."

"Lauren..." I shook my head.

"She's up for it and she's about as dangerous as a baby compared to what you are. Do you want to betray Vicki and make her think she agreed?" Lauren asked. "Maybe spend precious time hunting down a Traveler you wouldn't feel guilty about compelling?"

"Guys, this is insane." Vicki glared at Lauren and then at me. "You put Klaus in a body, and he's gonna take it over. Sure, maybe you can cast a spell to keep it from happening naturally, but do you think that'll slow down Esther or Kol when they do something crazy? This is not going to stop Klaus."

"Vicki, time for your idea." I said.

"We talk to Esther," Vicki answered. A vein was throbbing in Vicki's forehead and I doubted she had ever looked more stressed, possibly besides the time I had seen her being tortured. "We still don't know why her children really killed her."

"She is a witness to her own murder." I pondered.

"Can we put Klaus's soul in Davina anyway?" Lauren asked.

"Be. Nice." I hissed. Clearly I had made a mistake in anticipating Lauren's reaction to Davina.

Lauren

I drummed on Esther's head as Jeff drew symbols in salt and chalk. Davina and Vicki were off getting herbs for the spell.

"I wonder if they did something to Esther's ghost," I asked conversationally.

"You know, you're really mad lately," Jeff said.

"Wow, you must be psychic." I continued the morbid drumming on Esther's head.

"We can dump Davina when we get back to Earth," Jeff offered. "I didn't realize how badly this was hurting you."

"It wasn't hurting me until we got her in the group." I paused. "Now she feels like a threat. I wasn't exactly in the best mood anyway. Attacking your pet Sabrina makes me feel better."

"Sabrina's a blonde like you..." Jeff swallowed. "Not the point."

"Not at all," I agreed.

"Is there anything I can do to make you feel better generally?" Jeff asked cautiously. "I mean, it's obvious we can rid you of particular enemies and annoyances, but I think some of the problem is that so much has built up lately."

"Well," I muttered. "We could kill off the Mikaelsons. If we ended our vampire problem we could focus on more important things."

"You know if we want to kill the Mikaelsons the last thing we want to do is keep working with Esther," Jeff pointed out. "She wants her family alive."

"You don't think she'll learn better after decapitation?" I asked, then I sighed. "She won't learn any better from this."

"What is being murdered to the Original Witch? She's been dead most of the last thousand years. She wants to punish, persuade, and manipulate her children into some semblance of a family. If the coven of Jeff and Lauren get slaughtered along the way, what's it to her?" Jeff ranted. I was not the only one who was angry today.

"Do you think they can kill us at this point?" I asked.

"Definitely," Jeff answered. "I trust your instincts, but I've also watched a show called The Originals for two seasons. They may be cowards, but they're ruthless and insightful. Perhaps not as resourceful as the teenagers of Mystic Falls, but problematic none the less."

"Can Esther keep them well-behaved, if we help her win?" I wondered.

"She's insane." Jeff paced. "Damn that bitch. We don't owe her this. We could have crawled out of the Prison World without her, eventually."

"We didn't, though." I sighed. "Esther's one of the only people we've worked with who doesn't have reason to murder us, yet. Kill Rebekah's body, let the Other Side collapse, rid the world of vampires, and we've only solved about half our problems. Why would a siren help us win against the Coven of the Thirteen if that's how we fulfill our debts?"

"Can't we just point out Esther is a bitch?" Jeff asked. "We brought Bonnie's grandmother back from the dead even if I am to blame for killing her, and we even cured her of being a vampire! We helped the Shanes, we made Katherine immortal, we put Damon in Finn's body! Can't we take a hit to our credibility and break it off with Esther?"

"We're back." Vicki showed up with Davina in her arms. "There's a lot more herbs in New Orleans than I expected. How did finding Katherine go?"

"I did a tracking spell while you were with Esther, and unless it's being spoofed she's in Anchorage, Alaska," Jeff hissed. "I have half a mind to let Silas in here to track her down himself and ask her nicely to come back."

"I wonder how frozen the coast is in the Prison World," I mused. "She might be able to walk to Russia some parts of the year as an Immortal."

"That's all we need; Katherine Pierce riding Amara's body into Eurasia when Silas wants a deal." Jeff stomped his foot.

"C'mon, one disaster at a time, please. Please?" Vicki's eyes were a bit bloodshot; something to worry about later.

"Don't worry." I suddenly giggled. "Everything's going to work out."

"You're in a good mood all of a sudden." Jeff frowned at me. "You just had an idea."

"As a matter of fact I did." I nodded. "We give the Mikaelsons Rebekah's body."

"What?" Jeff asked.

"The Mikaelson children demanded the body. Obviously they need to get to it. Rebekah's body is in the Prison World. We let them inside and shut the door on them." I explained.

"They'll never go for it." Jeff frowned. "No way."

"Not if we tell them, but don't you think they're scheming about how to get someone into the Prison World if we don't cooperate? They need Rebekah to break the linking spell; until that spell's broken they are vulnerable." I paused. "Actually, I know exactly how we get them to go in."

---

Jeff and Davina forged a connection between me and Esther and I saw through her eyes. Esther was staring mournfully at a small redheaded woman I failed to recognize.

"Oh," Esther said after a moment's confusion. "Hello, Lauren."

"You died again. Someone gave us your head and demanded Rebekah's body. Was someone trying to get us fighting your children or did the obvious thing happen?" I asked.

"Freya," Esther answered simply.

I thought for a moment. "The kid you gave to your sister to raise? Weren't you off on a crusade to rescue her?"

"I succeeded," Esther explained. "Rebekah broke her out of her sleep for a time with the a mighty spell and the sacrifice of a vampire. Freya turned her siblings against me and executed me hours ago."

"Ah." I answered. I considered for a moment that Jeff and Esther had agreed to link the Mikaelsons to feel the agony of every supernatural death in the world as a control tactic, but decided not to bring it up. "Do we give them Rebekah's body?"

"Of course not." Esther pointed to the small woman she had been stalking. "She's happy again like that! If she gets her old body again my children will break the linking spell and return to their lives of vampirism."

"Ah, so that is where Rebekah's soul ended up." I examined the small woman. "Who is she possessing?"

"A deeply flawed candidate," Esther answered. "Ms. MacLachlan was an untapped druid in Scotland. Her coven has the practice of giving their second child up for adoption and then kidnapping them for sacrifice on their sixteenth birthday."

"Unsettling." I nodded. "What did she do?"

"Do?" Esther stared for a long moment. "Don't try to make me feel guilty for what must be done to save my family."

"As a matter of fact that is bugging me. If we used the link and killed them now we'd rid the world of almost every vampire and tear a hole in whatever war effort they're preparing against us. It would save a lot of lives if we ended it tonight." I said.

"No." Esther said simply. "I'm not giving up on my children and you owe me, Lauren. You are going to bring me back to life and we are going to take over where I left off."

"What's to stop them from killing you again?" I asked. "Got some ingenious plan this time?"

"I have watched my children for a thousand years on the Other Side. I raised all of them and gave birth seven times. I will save them with or without you."

"My God, you're serious." I frowned. "You really don't think you need my help."

"It will be much faster if we can continue working together. Move against me and even your invincible boyfriend won't be able to save you." Esther answered.

"Damn it." I shook my head. "Things will only get worse from here if your children survive."

"I raised them well." Esther smiled. "They are good tacticians."

"If you say so," I sighed. "Try to be in Lafayette Cemetery at midnight so we can raise you more easily." I paused. "Are you up for hearing my idea of a plan?"

---

"So basically, we need you to tell the Mikaelsons you stole the Ascendant and a potion to activate it from us and you need their help to get Amara," Jeff explained to Silas.

"Interesting." Silas nodded. "So you're going to let me chase my girlfriend and the psycho who is possessing my girlfriend's body through the magical purgatory dimension you created. How do I know you won't just trap me in there?"

"Do you care?" Jeff asked. "It's the size of a planet and Amara's in there. Hospitals are full of blood that refills every day. DVDs work and there aren't any crowds or lines. Also, the Ascendant will be on the same end as you are."

"Why won't the Mikaelsons just break out once they have Rebekah?" Silas asked.

"That's Esther's job." I smiled. "She wants her family stuck with her. She just needs to hold onto it." A few Dark Objects found in New Orleans, some White Oak and Doppelganger Blood, and a spell on the Ascendant had ensured that Esther would be able to win that encounter when the time came; her children could not have predicted everything we had prepared for them.

"They won't all go," Silas mused. "I'm not psychic enough to get them to do that."

"They'll have to send Kol and Freya in to break the spell on Rebekah. The spell is too big, too dangerous to them to try and half-ass it by only sending one of them. Finn's not part of the group, and you can get Elijah to follow along," Jeff explained. "That's assuming they don't need to bring Rebekah's spirit along, which they well might depending on their exact plan.

"Why would he be that dumb?" Silas asked.

"One," Jeff lifted a finger, "It's his nature to be dumb;" He lifted a second finger; "Two, you're going to tell him that Katerina is in Amara's body and you're off to rescue Amara. Elijah's in love with the ghost inside your girlfriend when he's not trying to kill her."

"You're suggesting I take a road trip with Captain Suit and screw up my chances of getting my girlfriend back?" Silas glared at me.

"I made a deal with Katherine that she could have an Immortal body. You want to sign up with me, you make a pitch to her." Jeff smiled. "The last time someone hunted her she ran for five centuries. I think it will be faster if you two work together."

"So we have Freya and Kol and Elijah in your world until they figure out how to break out. What if they don't bring Rebekah?" Silas looked at me. "She's not skilled at magic and doesn't have a reason to follow us if they don't need her ghost yet."

"What about her?" I asked. "She's not a skilled witch, not an Original Vampire, and sure as hell not a brilliant strategist."

"Isn't underestimating Mikaelsons like, the easiest way to get killed in The Vampire Diaries?" Silas used air quotes around the series title.

"Yes, but Rebekah's track record of brilliant wins is sketchy." Jeff answered. "She's the most desperate of them to find some form of self-actualization. If we have to leave one in the same dimension as I am she's easily my first choice."

"Finn is also not on our radar, unless Freya's made a last minute deal since she woke up." I added. "I doubt Finn and Rebekah working together is particularly dangerous, either. If you can, get Rebekah to come, but don't worry if she's the one they're reserving."

"Okay." Silas eyed the pack. "Why don't you think I'm going to mess this up for you again."

"We think we've narrowed the things that can go wrong down to about a million." I shrugged. "They're witches who want to get to the same place you want to go. Once you bring them the Ascendant and a blood potion they'll owe you a favor. You're not a witch anymore, so you need a witch to help you. Why would you screw around when this gets you everything you want?"

"I guess I can work with this." Silas sped off.

"Besides," I said to Jeff. "So what if he tells them everything? They still need to go to the Prison World to get Rebekah." The two of us chuckled to each other.

Wyld

In my experience it is very rare for a plan to actually work without unleashing more unintended problems and side effects, but so far as I could tell everything was fine. The Ascendant was in Esther's magical possession, Rebekah had gone with Freya, Elijah and Kol into the Prison World in order to return to her true body, and Esther sent a telepathic message to report she didn't need our help. For now things were working out just fine.

I sat in the U-Haul full of grimoires and general "stuff" I had gathered with Lauren; we had carried it into a parking garage controlled by the Guerrera-Slash-Correa family under the assumption they'd be nervous about selling us out. Vicki played with her sword while I cast a handful of cloaking and boundary spells to account for the change in location. Lauren was dropping Davina off with her coven and asking about arrangements for our journey back to Virginia.

"So," Vicki said after I was done with my spells, "We're after um, I think they're called the Empty Chair? Whatever people Lauren hates."

"The Coven of the Thirteen, the Empty Chair, or the Immortal Family are all names I heard for them." I shrugged. "Honestly they weren't in the television shows I watched and I might have created them without meaning to when I filled out my jumpchain."

"Oh yeah, drawbacks." Vicki nodded. "I remember you talked about how we were stuck in the Prison World and everyone was trying to kill us because you wanted more jumpchain powers."

"Wanted is a strong word." I frowned. "Remember I didn't think this would happen. But yeah. In order to survive in The Vampire Diaries I thought I had to be immortal, and you can't do that with a normal power budget. It takes two thousand points to be a True Immortal and a fully powered witch, plus four hundred for a soulmate, and you only start with one thousand."

"So you got more points for being hunted by Lauren's enemies." Vicki nodded.

"Actually, Lauren got those points. We don't have the same drawbacks," I said after a moment's thought. "It's been a while since I did the game."

"If you say so," Vicki said after a moment of looking annoyed. "So like, does this mean..." Vicki shook her head. "Never mind, I don't care. We have to fight these guys anyway, right? Doesn't matter if you overly complicated your nerding out."

"It shouldn't matter," I said after a moment's thought. "I don't think there's anything about a drawback that says you can't have help when you solve it or anything like that. I just wanted Lauren to have the best powers and there were fiddly bits with the rules you don't actually care about that made her build different."

"I've been meaning to ask you something," Vicki said quietly. "If the jumpchain thing is real, what exactly does that mean for me?"

"I don't know." I sighed. "Remember, going by the normal rules it's more like It's a Wonderful Life where you talk to an angel who explains what is happening. If I happen to talk to someone at the end of this, supposedly after ten years, I'm going to ask about taking people with me. I remember that some people used really strict rules for taking companions along and some people thought those were dumb and ignored them; if some random deity or demon is using the jumpchain as a baseline for how to mess with me then I don't know what they'd do about you."

"Can't you just pretend to know everything again?" Vicki sighed and threw her sword into the cement wall of the parking garage.

"I'm almost out of things to pretend to know everything about," I admitted. "Besides, would you want to never see Matt again? If we go into another story, like Star Wars or something, we couldn't just go back home for visits."

"I mean, what's the point of going to Star Wars?" Vicki asked. "I mean sure, fight Darth Vader, become a Jedi I guess, but why is it a chain of jumps if you're already this strong? Can't you get anything you want already?"

"Good questions." I nodded. "So right now, I'm maybe the strongest creature in the world by a fair amount. I'm the strongest witch besides Lauren, and I am virtually impossible to kill. With me so far?" I asked.

"Duh." Vicki snipped.

"Now, we've dealt with strong people before. Does it really matter if Lauren and I are the strongest witches if we're dealing with an entire coven of witches who are strong? We've spent nearly a year dealing with Travelers and Mikaelsons. Life is hard and stressful. Now, let's say we go to Star Wars; how many witches are in Star Wars?"

"Like, zero?" Vicki asked. "Is that a trick question?"

"There's weird force users who are kind of witches, but those aren't like Bonnie and Esther. Think about it like this, if I go to Star Wars with the jumpchain I could be a Jedi and a witch. The second time you jump you're going to be weirder to the locals than the first time you jump. If I have control over where I jump, I can go to places that would grant me more strength without having as much risk."

"That sounds like a big if, since you didn't have much choice about coming here." Vicki smiled.

"Yes." I breathed. "Right now I'm in something shaped like a writing prompt about what you do with getting power, but I don't know what I can control if I do it again. Like, Star Wars might be a bad example; imagine if I could go and be Superman."

"Wow." Vicki said after a moment. "Yeah, I've seen cartoons and movies; Matty watches Smallville sometimes. Is there a jumpchain for that?"

"There are a lot of jumpchains. I know there was one for at least one Superman cartoon. Let's even say that it'd be too hard to be Superman, that you'd need to take drawbacks as dangerous as the Prison World to do that; what if you could be a mad scientist like Lex Luthor instead?"

"So I get it now," Vicki said thoughtfully. "You aren't sticking around here if you could get that."

"How could I?" I laughed. "Imagine if I could go to a second jump and become able to solve world hunger with science. Then for a third jump, what about becoming like Sherlock Holmes? I'd be an immortal witch mad scientist detective, and I've gone into a world where no one else is like that. No alien invasions to worry about like Lex Luthor and Superman do, no Original Vampires to worry about like we have to in this setting. The premise of a chain of jumps is all about mixing and matching like that to do what you want."

"So you're just dumping me if you get the chance." Vicki said.

"Um..." I found myself caught. "Wouldn't you?"

"Huh." Vicki frowned at that.

"Think about it. Think about adventures you saw on cartoons as a little girl. What's your biggest escapist fantasy, Vicki? There's jumpchains for medical dramas or Hollywood millionaires, ones where you can meet your own soulmate, ones where you can become a wizard or James Bond; what would you do?"

"So you're just going to leave Lauren?" Vicki asked.

"I bought her with the jumpchain powers. I think she's coming if that's real." I paused. "If it was a choice, her or going on..."

"You wouldn't leave her." Vicki cut me off. "You'd stick in this crappy world for her, but not for me, right?"

"I didn't say that." I muttered. "Vicki, you..."

"I can't take it anymore!" Vicki shouted. "You two have been bitching at me like some kind of burden or pet who is half an inch from murdering everyone and you can't even lie about wanting me around anymore. Screw you too!" Vicki disappeared in a blur of super speed.

"Shit." I said to the empty U-Haul.

 

Lauren

"I got a demon in my soul and a voice in my head/It's saying go, go, go! I can sleep when I'm dead." Every bar in New Orleans seemed to play blues music, but this one was playing Halestorm. Vicki might have been cloaked from tracking spells, but she was not a subtle vampire.

"There's a sonic revelation bringing me to my knees/And there's a man down below who needs my sympathy." I stepped over a headless corpse and read the sign saying "Rousseu's." Vicki looked up from another body and another head fell off from the force of her pulling back.

"You've been a busy girl," I gestured at the bar.

"I got a ringing in my ears getting ready to burst/Screaming 'hallelujah, motherfucker take me to church." Broken windows, smashed bar stools, and a dead band were not a pretty sight, not that I was one to judge.

"Stefan wiped out a whole mining camp once. This is what, four?" Vicki leaned back.

"This is all you needed to flip your humanity switch, Vicki?" I asked. "And I'm counting eight bodies."

We glared at each other as the music went on. "I like it louder than the boom of a big bass drum/I need it harder than the sound of guitar grunge/I like to crank it up, make it thump, I'm evil to the core/ Headbanging in the pit and throwing my horns."

"I didn't flip my switch, dude. The band wouldn't stop with their New Orleans shit. I needed to put in my iPod." Vicki gestured at the stand where her music player was hooked up to a stereo system I was surprised to see had no blood on it.

"You massacred a Best Buy, Vicki." I shook my head. "New Orleans witches matter. We can't just murder the locals."

Vicki started twirling to the music as it began repeating variations of "I like it heavy." "So what?" She asked. "The dude grabbed my ass."

I clenched my fist and the stereo exploded in a shower of sparks that made me feel a bit better. "We can't just bring people back if they're humans; only supernaturals go to the Other Side. These people are dead." I shook my head. "What the hell did you take today?"

"Hell if I know." Vicki spat blood on the ground. "Better customer service on the street corner then in the Best Buy, so he kept his spleen."

"You didn't have to prove us right just because you were pissed at us." I argued.

"You didn't have to piss me off just because you felt like shit," Vicki countered.

"I'd ask you to come home with me, but I have no clue where that is anymore. Want to run with me far enough that witches won't be ready to kill us, though?" I asked.

"Seriously?" Vicki asked. "What part of 'I need some space' isn't written in blood on the walls? You juiced me up enough I'm not gonna die to locals, right?"

"You wanna risk fighting a coven that just lost most of their old vampire problem and isn't keen on letting new ones setup shop?" I asked.

"Sounds better than being stuck in a car with you and your boyfriend for another couple days." Vicki groaned. "You got a hangover cure spell?"

"Vous n'êtes plus saoul." I said and waved my hand.

Vicki shook her head. "Seriously, you do? What the fuck, man."

"You'd be surprised how many witches had to deal with husbands who tried to drink themselves to death." I shrugged. "People complain about Prozac and forget that it used to be whiskey."

"Lots of people still like getting drunk." Vicki sighed. "I actually feel a lot better."

"You can be mad at me again in the Carolinas." I ordered.

"Seriously?" Vicki pointed at a headless body. "You really think we're doing this?"

"Sul opraem chele kouzlo." I muttered the Traveler spell. "Now you're Daylight Ring won't work. Want to run around New Orleans like that?"

"You're a bitch." Vicki sighed. "Okay, I'm coming with you." She was a blur of motion and stood next to me. "But I'm gonna be complaining the whole drive."

"I'm looking forward to it." I lifted my hand. "Invisique." We became invisible. "Follow me. Jeff's waiting."

Wyld

I watched the fuming girls enter the van. "Rough night?" I asked.

"Suck a dick," Vicki muttered.

"Haven't found a spell to give Lauren one and she'd freak if I asked Jeremy." I responded.

"Not. Now." Lauren hissed.

"I don't come with an off switch," I explained.

"I could snap your neck," Lauren suggested. "It takes you a bit of time to sit back up."

"I guess I lied about having an off switch." I sat in the back across from Vicki while Lauren started backing out of street parking and changed the subject. "I called your coven mate, Alexis, and told her we can't meet her in New Orleans. She told us she was waiting in Atlanta."

"Real precognition is bullshit," Lauren laughed.

"Who the hell is Alexis?" Vicki asked.

Lauren answered. "My dad's cousin or something, I'd need a family tree in front of me to tell you exactly how we're related. If my father was like the minister of my coven, then Alexis was like one of those ladies who is on all the committees at a church I guess. Jeff called my coven's official phone numbers yesterday and got in touch, and she's the one who came to meet him."

"Wouldn't you be the one to handle calling your coven?" Vicki leaned back and closed her eyes.

"The last my coven knew I was being abducted by the Coven of the Thirteen. If I popped back up the logical thing to assume is that they succeeded." Lauren explained. "Jeff's a fairly new witch, and getting in touch with established covens isn't weird. My coven was always up for new recruits."

"So that means Lucien Castle was always up for recruits," I speculated."

Lauren looked thoughtful. "I guess it does. That's a lot to figure out. My aunt Alexis was working for a thousand year old cannibal."

"What was she like?" I asked.

"My dad did a lot for Alexis over the years. When I got older she started acting a bit scared of me, but she told me it wasn't anything bad, just that I had so much potential it was like I was really loud to her oracular talents. She hated being touched, going out in public, stuff like that." Lauren sounded a bit wistful.

The pre-paid cellphone rang and I flipped it open, marveling at the relative shortage of smartphones back when The Vampire Diaries started. "May I ask who's calling?"

"Jeff, it's Vincent." I heard the smooth voice on the other end. "What the hell is going on?"

I considered how best to answer for a moment. "Nothing good," I said after the pause. "There's a pile of Traveler heads in my hotel room, so you're welcome."

"Some of our people are missing; either you didn't get all the Gypsies in New Orleans or a few of those heads aren't the bad guys," Vincent said. "City Hall is calling us about new vampire attacks."

"Best Buy and some bar, right?" I looked at Vicki and she nodded. "Yeah, that's taken care of."

"Do I look like a mushroom to you?" Vincent asked. "I will not be kept in the dark and fed shit."

"Truth is we fucked up, Vincent." I sighed. "Right now the Ascendant is either in the hands of Esther or her children, and they're probably locked up in the Prison World. If they crawl out of that incredibly useful slice of hell I want to be as far away from New Orleans and Mystic Falls as possible. I'm not telling you where we're going because the fewer people who know the fewer people Elijah will think to kill."

"I thought you wanted to build something with New Orleans covens. You kept asking after Davina, gave us stuff, traded for knowledge and power. You gotta give me something besides leaving." Vincent sounded confused, which was good for me.

"Take care of Davina. Play with the grimoires and White Oak we gave you. I'm sorry, but the next step in my plan is something you'll want to stay as far away from as possible; because the next big step is going after the Coven of the Thirteen," I struggled to give the 'right' answer to his questions.

"Damn." Vincent said after a minute. "You and your crazy girlfriend move fast."

"I wish I could help you with the missing witches, I really do." I considered talking about the seer from Lauren's old coven I was meeting. "I might be able to find out something, but it might be a dead end. I'll call you when I know more."

"You call us if you need help. The Thirteen have been a plague on New Orleans before." Vincent said. "Good luck, kid."

"Good luck, man." I answered and hung up.

"Do they know it was Vicki?" Lauren asked.

"Not yet. Maybe they won't find out, maybe they will." I shrugged. "These covens won't leave the city if they can help it, so worst case and they want blood we just have to stay far away."

"They shared a city with Marcel and the Mikaelsons; they can't think vampire attacks are a big deal, right?" Vicki asked quietly.

"They had to share a city with vampires for centuries and just had the vampires die out. I think they'd do pretty much anything to keep new vampires out of the city." I answered.

---

Eight hours later we sat outside a gigantic hotel in Atlanta and gathered our nerves.

"Do you think Alexis had a reason for wanting to meet us in Atlanta or is it just a convenient place?" Lauren asked me.

"You're trying to second guess someone who you told me sees bits of the future. I wouldn't make a habit of that," I answered.

Vicki was ravenously tearing into my blood supply. We had gotten very used to blood banks that nobody was actually using in the Prison World; this could become a problem.

We crammed ourselves into the U-Haul and prepared a fresh protection spell for Lauren, the last spell of protection was relying on a mystic diagram and pile of bones in the Prison World and we couldn't check or protect that now, so we went with a simple spell to return her to life so long as I was alive. The spell should last a solid week without further maintenance and didn't cost that much power, though I would need to sleep soon. I could resist a lot with immortal stamina and a lot of blood, but I still needed to sleep.

Lauren's body waited in the van while she trailed me and Vicki as we went into the hotel. The front desk told us an Alexis Peel was waiting for us and gave us the room number.

"Welcome, Mr. Foxworth and Ms. Donovan." Alexis was an inch taller than me and quite beautiful with curly brown hair. I expected someone who looked more like Lauren.

"Foxworth." I frowned. "Oh yes, that's right." The name of the person I had "jumped" into. Jeff was not my real name either, for that matter, but it had felt natural. I wondered if I had ever told that to Lauren.

"Vicki's fine," Vicki told Alexis.

"Is anyone accompanying you or are we alone?" I asked.

"You're no danger to me," Alexis gave me a smile that made me wonder if that was precognitive humor or just a fact she believed. "Quite the opposite."

I frowned and tried to read the seer's mind, only to fail. "Psychic walls of some kind, really?" I asked. "It's almost as if you don't trust me."

"You do pretend to be an oracle when you are nothing of the kind," Alexis answered.

"If I explained what's actually going on in my head all it'd do is make people think I'm crazy, and the fact is I'm accurate enough I'm either a crazy psychic or somehow sane." I shrugged. "I guess I didn't expect to fool the real deal."

"Believe me, he's telling the truth." Vicki laughed hoarsely. "If he didn't know his shit he'd be dead a hundred times over."

"Perhaps." Alexis looked at me. "No one is that lucky, and no one is that good."

"So my reputation precedes me." I sighed. "Not sure if that's good or bad."

"I heard a rumor you killed Klaus Mikaelson and every soul he ever turned." Alexis looked at me.

"Apparently this included your benefactor, though I didn't even know he existed beyond a name and a title. In fact, I was under the impression he was a werewolf with a bright future from the limited amount I knew about the name at the time." I answered truthfully.

"Curious." Alexis frowned. "How is that even possible?"

"I don't know if being psychic means you've got Lauren's instincts and I can't read your mind, so let's just bowl this one down; I read his name on a document written in the future. The reference was vague, associating him with powerful vampires and werewolves. He was also called 'the Beast' with glorious capitalization. I only learned who he was and that he was connected to Lauren much later."

Alexis looked surprised, which probably took some doing when someone had precognitive gifts. "Lauren, the little blonde girl, the Hole in the World, the Child of the Eye."

"The what now?" I asked.

"I had visions of this conversation before it happened, Wyld," She said. "It could have gone a thousand ways, but I thought I might be going insane, or perhaps someone was sending me false visions."

"Welcome to the club," Vicki laughed.

"So, let's lean into the skid of madness. Lauren managed to survive, beat the Coven of the Thirteen back, and is now after murdering them all so she has less to worry about. If you've seen alternate timelines, or this future, or something else worth hearing my usual online username, well..." I considered what it meant to be talking to someone with a preview of the conversation.

"Wyld, the Jumper and the Bridge." Alexis sighed. "I suppose you are real, then. You are a demon and a warlock, perhaps an abomination or perhaps the herald of a new age. I never saw you until almost a year ago, and then you were everywhere in my visions. Lucien tried to find out who you were, but nothing we found made any sense."

"Not a surprise." I smiled. "I don't understand myself. I don't know why I came here, or why I have the powers I do, or why everything about my life is shaped like a fantasy or story since I arrived."

Alexis frowned very seriously. "You're about to bring in Lauren, now." Being a real seer was a bit more tactical than I expected, or perhaps she had seen what I had been about to say next in a longer vision earlier. "If I trusted Lauren to siphon my mental shields she would have learned about Lucien before she disappeared. That girl scares everyone." She definitely did foresee this conversation.

"Have you seen me refer to her as my soulmate?" I asked cheerfully. "Not as in 'I'm infatuated with her' but as in 'I have reason to believe we're cosmically destined for each other.' I don't want to come across as mean or untrustworthy, but if you're afraid of letting Lauren take your defenses down you should be afraid of what her friends would do if you refuse such a reasonable request."

"The future may not be easy to read, but did you think I came unprotected?" Alexis glared at me.

"I certainly hoped we wouldn't have a fight, but it's been a really long day." I sighed. "Lauren, get your ass out of the U-Haul and into this room. Not saying we'll have to fight, but there's no reason for Lauren not to be here anymore."

"Do all your social encounters go this catastrophically?" Alexis asked.

"Not really," Vicki answered. "Usually he remembers to bribe people sooner than this."

"She knows the future, Vicki; Alexis knows what we can bribe her with and hasn't asked about it yet. Either she doesn't care about it or doesn't trust me, and if a psychic doesn't trust me that is a wake up call for my life choices but..." I rambled.

"-Stop." Vicki frowned. "This is actually going really badly considering this woman sees the future and agreed to meet at all."

"Weird psychic visions might not say everything about it, but yes." I noted that the window didn't look out over the parking lot, so I could not see where Lauren was. "If I had to guess, you're not actually that experienced with oracular talents, are you?"

"They're new," "Alexis" smiled. I found myself coughing up blood. "You are an amazingly hard person to find, Jeff."

"Run," I told Vicki via telepathy. "Find help."

Vicki smashed into an invisible wall at the door and growled at the boundary spell before I saw a chair leg that had materialized in her chest.

Lauren

I returned my spirit to the area of the van and U-Haul, but didn't insert myself back into my body. Several children in what looked like private school uniforms had surrounded the U-Haul. There was a boundary spell on my vehicles, bound to my own life-force, but the problem with a boundary spell on a vehicle is that you cannot stop the vehicle from being moved with a spell, even if you can keep it from being entered.

The "children" placed hands on the U-Haul and lifted. Another broke the piece of metal connecting the U-Haul to the van. The Coven of the Thirteen was the only faction I'd ever known to use child vampires. I noted bullets were loose on the ground; the vampires had tried to shoot into the trailer without success, as the boundary spell could prevent their penetration.

I sized up my body, found no damage, and entered it. My real eyes broke open. A sleeping spell was clawing at my body, but it was not strong enough to penetrate my defenses.

If I had to guess, Alexis had probably been possessed by the time Jeff had made contact with my old coven. Lucien might have been able to keep her safe, but he had failed to keep my parents safe, so maybe his death had not mattered.

"Do you guys really need to hear what I did to the last of your kind I met?" I shouted at the wall, but I doubted they even heard me.

I controlled my breathing. Jeff was probably disabled by a spell, based on the blood he'd been choking on. If I could get to Jeff, the spell would no longer matter, but if I were one of my enemies I would be hiding his body somewhere inaccessible and cloaked as quickly as possible. In fact, my enemies didn't even have to cloak the U-Haul, as I had already done that.

Jeff had told me that he had found a tactical teleportation spell when he was working with Davina, but I had no idea what it was or if it would work to get me through the walls without the vampires noticing. I could open the trailer, but that would put me face to face with a small army of hostile vampires. There were illusion spells and cloaking spells to prevent them from noticing as I escaped, but it would take time to improvise that and I was dealing with experienced witches who were watching me.

The last time I was this close to defeat from these witches I had created the Prison World as an escape hatch, but I did not have a power source big enough for that and my old Ascendant was gone.

'Think,' I told myself. 'There is a way out of this. You are the Greatest Witch Ever. You are surrounded by grimoires and artifacts. You can win this.'

I heard a massive crash outside as the trailer dropped. Whatever the immortal children were doing was almost already almost done.

Okay, offensive spells. I could snap blood vessels in the brains of the vampires, leaving me wherever they dropped me. That would leave me stuck, but not wherever they were taking me. The U-Haul had no windows, so most offensive spells were useless, but drawing on nature to harm the undead was relatively easy. I felt a voice of doubt in my head, maybe it was better to play panicked and terrified until I thought of something better?

The side of the U-Haul range loudly as something was smashed into it.

Without some preparation I could not make an illusion powerful enough to hide my escape. I had left all of my doppelganger blood and most of the White Oak with Esther, but maybe the long dead White Oak was enough power to do something important.

I eyed my father's talisman, a piece of his infant body removed for imperfection that I had used to channel his spirit. I picked it up.

"Daddy," I said. I knew he told me that he would not be watching over me, he was trying to find peace, move on, maybe he even had, but...

"I'm here." My father's ghost was in the U-Haul, or at least across the veil in the Other Side that corresponded to the U-Haul.

"I thought of calling you for a reason." I said, feeling surprisingly calm now that I was not alone. "I had a hunch, witchy instincts, something like that. Why are you here?" I heard screams outside, which made me wonder just what on Earth the vampires were doing.

"I wanted to warn you about Alexis, but I couldn't reach you. The Thirteen did something to stop me, though of course they couldn't stop you." Daddy had some kind of pride in his eyes.

"I love you, but do you have anything that can help right this minute?" I asked.

Daddy nodded. "I have a friend with me. I push on his ghost, and you pull, and his ghost can manifest as long as I keep pushing."

"Just tell me Klaus isn't there with you," I asked.

Daddy laughed. "No. My contract with Lucien hasn't expired just because we both happen to be dead."

"Mr. Castle, I presume?" I looked him over. "I thought you would be taller."

"There is a reason we stopped bringing Uncle Lucien to the house when you were three," Daddy mused.

"Alright. All I need to do is pull, right?" I asked.

"It required setup and dark magic on this end, but all we need is you to pull now." Daddy agreed.

Lucien smiled and took my hand while Daddy took his other hand. I pulled.

"Love, all you need to do is cloak and run while I kill those nightmares that Kol made." Lucien squeezed my hand and felt real, magic letting his ghost take visible form.

"Invisique," I whispered and then I opened the door with telekinesis. I felt I was fairly accustomed to the strange by now, but this was a stretch even for me. Several vampires were trapped under the trailer and all of them were twitching violently as the ones not trapped rushed around with spears. At the center of the mess was Jeff, with the lower half of his neck blasted open. It looked like the trailer had been dropped because he attacked, not because the enemy had reached their destination.

Jeff's left hand opened and closed and air rushed in and out of his lower neck like a tracheotomy from hell. Something was clearly blocking Jeff's throat, so he'd made another opening. Behind Jeff a tall girl who looked perhaps eight or nine was collapsed with her arm on fire. Jeff turned on a dime, exposing a bloody spear in the back of his chest. Spear wielding vampires were trying to herd him towards the U-Haul, but some of them started to notice Lucien and I heard shouts and saw grimaces.

Lucien launched forward like a rocket, taking off the head of one of the "children" in a heart beat. A moment later Lucien was forced back to back with Jeff as he avoided the spears with all his speed, either because he knew about some dark spell on them or because they were pretty sharp.

"Nice to meet you, Wyld." Lucien said to my boyfriend. "I thought you were a goner."

Jeff did not respond, as his throat was ripped open. Lucien ripped the spear out, along with what looked like the immortal's ruined heart, but Jeff barely winced.

"Vodus." I said, and a spear held in the hand of a boy stuck under the trailer went through the heart of one of his fellow vampires. "Phasmatos Incendia." I pointed my hand at another and she burst into flames.

Lucien bolted into the opening I made and decapitated another of the twitching vampires. "I thought Alexis was exaggerating a bit when she described how we could meet." Lucien remarked. Jeff waved his right hand and his blood burst from the hole in his throat onto the spears, which proceeded to melt as Jeff managed some kind non-verbal spell.

"That's. Enough!" A handsome young man stormed forward with his hands held up.

"Not even close." Lucien blurred forward, but one of the vampires speared his head. I felt a flash of excitement as I eyed the witch who had come to the defense of the monster children. There was a very small chance he was a local trying to stop the battle, but he wasn't targeting the vampires, so I felt it was fair to touch him and begin siphoning. In the moment it took to touch him, he waved his hand and the trailer flew through the air and landed on its side and on top of Jeff with a very loud crash.

The strange warlock collapsed and twitched from my siphoning. I used a burst of power to toss the trailer off Jeff through telekinesis and then I whispered a sleeping spell into the warlock's ear before I turned back to Jeff, who had been impaled by three spears in the time it took me to knock out the enemy warlock.

I walked invisibly through the child vampires and examined Jeff. Jeff was clearly conscious but looked like a single giant wound in the process of healing; bones snapped back into place and he twitched weakly as he failed to breathe.

I siphoned through Jeff's hand and drained the spell that was choking him. Jeff gasped loudly and the kid vampires started shouting.

"You are bound to actually win a fight sometime." I laughed and took Jeff's hand and continued to draw on his power. I began a chant that snapped leg bones and necks, fueled by the immense power in my boyfriend's body even as his healing slowed down. I pulled the spears out of Jeff with more telekinesis and he got to his feet before bursting forward onto one of the collapsed vampires and began to drink fresh blood. I had enough power to finish the fight.

---

We hid inside a boundary spell in an Atlanta office building's basement. Alexis's body was to one side, badly burned and deceased, but death was a small inconvenience to me; the inconvenience was enough reason to interrogate the living captive first.

"Howdy." Jeff said after I woke the captive warlock. "This is Lauren, the bitch that's been kicking your ass since you killed her parents. I'm her comparatively nice boyfriend. Time to talk."

"You can't make me talk. This witch's head is full of me. There's no room for your compulsion in there, abomination." What was clearly a member of the Coven of the Thirteen glared at Jeff.

"Actually, you have a spell preventing me from reading your mind on your host body. Possessed people can be compelled. Lauren can siphon that spell right out." Jeff replied.

"You're an idiot." The man glared at him.

"True." I nodded. "He's an idiot, but you're a liar. I can feel the mind spell on you."

"What you call a mind spell is a link in my chain of possession. If you siphon it you learn nothing." The warlock told me.

"He might be right," I said after a moment. "I think he's lying, but if he's not lying and I siphon him then we won't be holding him captive anymore."

"Mind games on your captors. I guess I can't blame you for that." Jeff shrugged. "Think this one will break before we turn him into a vampire and throw him into a swamp like we did that kid vamp in Los Angeles?"

"No one would be stupid enough to throw away a valuable hostage like Gerald." The warlock sneered. "You know how much our children mean to us."

"I got carried away." Jeff answered. "I told him we'd do it if he didn't cooperate. He didn't cooperate. I compelled him and dumped him into some swamp under a cloaking spell and general anti-vampire precautions. I don't think he's getting out."

"You'll give Gerald back!" The warlock snapped. "You have no idea what we can do to you."

"Your default state is to possess bodies and use them to commit atrocities. I'm going to resist that as hard as I can." Jeff shrugged. "I've read Animorphs; I know being a meat puppet sucks pretty hard."

"No wonder fate put us together." I put my head on Jeff's shoulder. "There's a complete collection of Animorphs books in my house. I loved those growing up."

"I started reading them when I was four." Jeff laughed. "Well, my mom started reading them."

I frowned at what I remembered of the plot of those books. "I'm not sure I trust your mother's judgment anymore."

"Hey, that's your mother in-law you're talking about." Jeff answered.

"Technically we're not engaged." I paused. "We're off topic." I frowned at the struggling warlock. "Never been siphoned before, right? You can't cast spells right now. Not enough magical juice."

"You will let me go unless you want to dig a much deeper hole than you're already in." The warlock looked up at me.

"I don't think so." I answered. "Vicki!"

Vicki pushed in a cart full of random instruments she'd found in the basement that looked scary. Box cutters and a few rusty tools, mostly,
and a couple blunt objects. Jeff had called Vicki back with a telepathic message before she had gotten far or actually figured out where to go to find help.

"I'm not sure this will work." Jeff looked at the cart. "I mean, torture is really good at getting people to tell you what you want to hear, but it's hard to even remember the truth when you're being tortured, and you won't tell it if you think it'll make torturers mad. This doesn't seem like a reliable technique."

"You're just being a pussy." I frowned.

"I remember reading that when the military did studies on volunteer soldiers they had trouble remembering if they were married or not after being tortured. I say we call the bluff and try necromancing Alexis or sucking the spirit back into this body if your siphoning breaks his possession spell like he claimed." Jeff shrugged.

"You're not being practical." I shrugged. "We can do that after we torture him for information."

"Psychic deep dives are harder on fractured minds." Jeff reported. "Or maybe I'm just not skilled enough at it, but we don't have a better psychic."

The warlock looked absolutely stunned at the conversation. "Don't you want to ask how to stop the war?"

I ignored him."Vicki?" I asked. "Break our tie?"

Vicki's face went all veiny and fanged. "Sorry, Wyld." She teased. "I gotta go with Lauren. She lifted a rusty wrench. "Matt really liked 24."

---

Wyld

I sat looking at the unconscious body. Pieces of fingers and toes, severed at the joints, were scattered around the basement. Vomit covered the young man's shirt and he had defecated shortly after that. The smell was truly atrocious.

"I recognize him, you know," I told Vicki, who looked far less sick than I felt was reasonable under the circumstances.

"Really?" Vicki asked. "I assume some kind of cameo on the Vampire Diaries?"

"The Originals, actually." I sighed. "Name's Kaleb I think. Host body to Kol for a season or so. New Orleans witch; and I'm guessing the Thirteen captured him while we were in New Orleans."

"Poor guy." Vicki shrugged. "I expected the fingers to grow back with vampire blood when I started on them. Guess I took things too far if we want brownie points from New Orleans."

"I'd rather loose a few digits than never wake up after being possessed." I shrugged. "We might still get a few brownie points."

"Back." Lauren said, jerking from the circle of Kaleb's blood we had drawn in the center of the room. "Lucien's fine and Esther is pretty sure our captive was lying about not being able to siphon the compulsion shield without freeing the body."

"What was the point of this, then?" I asked in a flash of anger, pointing at the mess we had made.

Lauren blinked. "Duh, they wanted him captured."

I frowned. "What?"

Lauren shrugged. "I'm pretty sure they expected to at least capture you. Note the committal of Alexis, multiple attack spells. I think they were prepared to lose me again, but thought they could have you to trade."

"And why is this guy sacrificed?" I frowned.

"He ran in after the tide turned against the primary agents they sent. The Coven didn't commit their full forces to this. They expected us to interrogate this dude, and they thought they'd learn more about what we knew before they reclaimed his spirit. If we traumatize the hell out of him and confuse his memories of the interrogation, that hurts their plans."

"Interesting." I nodded. "So you want to fuck him up badly enough he's not even sure what we asked?"

"Pretty much." Lauren nodded. "Don't get squeamish now."

"Lauren. This is..." I paused. "Are you sure?" I finished.

"Jeff, you saw their idea of minions; a bunch of elementary school and middle school kids turned into vampires. You know what they do. Seriously, I'm not even going to remember us doing this a few years after we win, If we want to win we can't afford pity." Lauren glared at the unconscious witch.

"I guess you're right." I closed my eyes. "We were going to feed his soul to demons anyway."

"We are definitely going to do that." Lauren nodded. "We can interrogate him in a stolen car. I think it's time to go to the Armory and ask them for the monster in their basement."