Vampires had taken up residence in my loft.

Klaus was here. "Rise and chine, Nightwalker Nation. If it was your aim to get my attention, then I must say, you've been wildly successful. I am now singularly focused on your impending suffering. And to whomever sent this coin and took my daughter's mother, it's time to show your face."

Klaus proceeded to kill many of the vampires in various ways.

"Man, don't look at me," I told them. "Y'all lost your chance to trade loyalty for protection."

"This would mark your very last opportunity to confess," Marcel told them.

"Look, I don't know anything," a vampire told us.

"Well, that's a pity for you, then," Marcel told him.

Greta picked up the coin. "It's me you're looking for. Perhaps we should talk."

*****

Klaus had taken Greta hostage and was now draining her of vervain. We heard them down in the dungeon. "You know, for someone who organized this little summit, you're woefully short on details. So I'm going to ask you one last time. Where are you keeping Hayley? You knew we'd have this little chat. No doubt you binged on vervain till your throat was red and raw, and now sadly, drip, drip, drip. All over the floor it goes."

"'Sein Mangel an vision, wird sein untergang sein'."

"'His lack of vision will be his downfall'."

"That's what he always said about you."

"He?"

"You and I have a friend in common."

"Oh, I sincerely doubt that."

"It's true. August Muller. I don't blame you for forgetting It was a long time ago. Rostock, Germany. Spring. 1933. Do you remember him now?"

"As an elephant considers a gnat, merely a trifle."

"That trifle is my Bodhidharma, my Guru Nanak, my Jesus! August is the touchstone to everything that I believe, and the reason that I and my friends have taken your sweet Hayley."

*****

"Your daughter is dangerous. A menace, a threat."

"My daughter is a child."

"A child born of werewolf blood, who can create hybrids at will. Her defect must be corrected."

"Her defect is my defect! Say that again, I'll pluck out your eyeballs and eat them like olives off my fingertips."

"I'll call it what it is, a dirtying of my species. Which diminishes the pure and superior nature of vampires."

"Make your point."

"Your daughter will purify herself, submitting to the same spell that your mother, Esther, once used to bind you. Once her werewolf side is sublimated, Hope will no longer be capable of creating her abominations."

"And what if I don't agree?"

"It's a simple choice. Your daughter's werewolf nature or her mother's worldly life. Clock is ticking."

*****

Klaus was now upstairs with me and Marcel to talk. "The man was a forgettable artist, a virulent fascist and a murderous slob who slaughtered werewolves by the pack."

"And what did you do to him?" I asked.

"What makes you think I had any piece of this?" Klaus asked.

"Oh, I don't know," I told him sarcastically. "A couple hundred years of history."

Klaus sighed. "That hideous Greta woman with her reverence for a dilettante who made no mark upon the world. I will not entertain her hateful ask and bind my child."

"All right, look, shouldn't Hope get a say in this?" Marcel asked.

"This fate which she demands, the curse which I bore for a millennia, I can't put my daughter through that," Klaus told us. "It's a pain worse than death. No, I will see that woman roast upon a pyre before I give in to the demands of these cultists."

"Look, all right, we got your back," Marcel told him. "We do, okay?"

"But if they kill Hayley, and Hope isn't given a chance to save her, she will not forgive you," I told him.

"And if I impose this shame upon my daughter and then they kill her mother anyway?" Klaus asked. "I won't forgive myself."

*****

I heard Greta talking downstairs to Josh. "Look at you. The vampire supplicant delivering poison in a bad."

"It's a hangover cocktail I keep behind the bar. Electrolytes, five B vitamins, a little glutathione."

"Klaus told you to show me pity?"

"No, my choice. Guess I'm hoping showing you a little kindness convinces you to let Hayley go. She's a good soul, Greta. And none of what happened was her fault."

"Not directly. But we had years of peace, Josh. All of which ended because her loathsome daughter sullied the evolutionary pool. Poppy was a good soul, too, wasn't she?"

I walked into the dungeon. "Josh. Have you gone insane?"

"She's no good to us dead, and the drip will only help clear the vervain from her system," Josh pointed out. "And honestly, Noah, she--she's kind of got a point."

I gave him a look. "Choose your next words very carefully."

"Come on, Noah," Josh told me. "Look, I don't now exactly what your new deal is with Klaus, but think about it. Binding Hope means a safe Hayley, no more hybrids, and..."

"And the Mikaelsons go back to where they came from, right?" I asked. "Oh, believe me, I have gamed this out already."

"Okay, so not that I'm in any position to give advice here, but maybe, just maybe, you side with the community on this one," Josh told me.

"A question," I told him. "How do you feel about your skull, Josh?"

"I'm pretty attached to it," Josh answered.

"Then stop engaging with the enemy and keep your opinions to yourself," I told him. "Before Klaus rips your head off."

*****

Downstairs in the dungeon, Greta was talking to me. "You shouldn't underestimate the movement. We will not fail."

"You know, history is littered with eugenicists who overstate their sway," I told her. "The Khmer Rouge, the Hutu, the Turks in Armenia. All of whom left death and suffering in their wake and all of whom buckled under the weight of their own hatred. Still, if you're feeling confident, tell me the names of your co-conspirators."

Greta smirked. "Sorry. Tank's not quite empty yet."

"You know, from what I heard, August was very weak and very small," I told her.

"And yet he spawned a crusade that lasted a hundred years," Greta replied.

"I don't see a crusade," I told her. "I see a lone woman grasping to justify her last gasps of hate."

"And I see a man who knows that's a lie," Greta told me. "But what you can't figure out is how many of us there are, Noah, and just how deeply we have infected your world."

*****

I walked into the courtyard to talk to Klaus, Marcel and Josh.

"Noah, I have a question," Klaus told me. "Would it be wrong of me to assume there are traitors in my midst?"

"So, what?" I asked. "Now we've moved from 'blameless Klaus' to 'paranoid Klaus'?"

"Well, if that zealot claims to have friends, I'll choose to believe her," Klaus told us. "It's been two days since you pledged your allegiance, and your first response to Greta's demands was to question me."

"It was to find a way out," Marcel told him. "It's gonna take hours to get her clean, and in the meantime, Hayley sits some damn place. We're just looking for a way to get them to give her back."

"I'll tell you how they'll give her back," Klaus told us. "Breathless, in a wooden box. These people respond to strength, not capitulation. Do you all understand that reality? Can I count on you not to blink in the face of their hatred?"

"Always," I answered.

Klaus left.

Marcel looked at me and Josh. "You see that? You see, the problem with our relationship. We think we've signed up to be his partners, he thinks that we've pledged allegiance to the king."

"Yeah, well, uh, not to risk my skull again, but you probably should've told Noah and Klaus you called Freya with Greta's demands," Josh told him.

I looked at Marcel, unsurprised. "Of course you did."

Marcel sighed. "There's nothing to say until Freya calls back and tells me if Hope intends to bind herself."

*****

Klaus had gone to Mystic Falls to stop Freya from binding Hope, and came back

"Klaus Mikaelson has been quite the busy boy today," I told him. "First you're up and back to Mystic Falls, now you're abducting werewolves from the bayou."

"If Greta's greatest fear is abominations, then I intend to give her that horror in a never ending nightmare," Klaus explained. "I have a quart of Hope's blood and I will use every last drop of it to create more hybrids." He looked at Marcel. "You went behind my back. You put my daughter's life at risk and you betrayed me."

"I did what was right," Marcel told him.

"What was right for whom?" Klaus asked.

"For your daughter," Marcel answered. "For my city."

"This isn't about what was right," Klaus told him. "Your city rejected you. So did my sister. Now all you want is for them to take you back. You just need to be loved, Marcel, that's your weakness. That's how I knew what you'd done without you having to say a word. And that's why I know, no matter what you promise when you claim to be an ally, you--you will always falter."

I rolled my eyes, looking at the wolves. "Drink up. And when you go back out into the world, be sure to tell everybody Greta Sienna is responsible for your fate."

*****

I heard Greta talking to Josh in the dungeon. "I've made a mistake. I don't want to die."

"So come clean about Hayley."

"The second I talk, they'll kill me."

"Look, you're clean of vervain, okay? So if you confess without being compelled and Hayley's still alive..."

"Oh, she is. Very much so."

"Then Klaus isn't without compassion. Where is she, Greta? You tell me. You tell me where she is, and I will vouch for you with Klaus, Marcel and Noah."

"Please tell them."

"What?"

"Tell them."

"Tell them what?"

"Tell them I am so very much stronger than they could ever imagine!"

I heard Greta breaking free and attacking Josh, rushing downstairs to try to stop her from escaping, but she had already disappeared into the tunnels.

*****

Klaus, Marcel and I were talking.

"Will he survive?" Klaus asked. "Josh?"

"Yeah," I answered. "He's lucky to still have his face, but, I think so."

"Does he have any idea where Greta's gotten off to?" Marcel asked.

"Do you remember that part where I said he's lucky to have his face?" I replied.

Klaus chuckled, hesitating. "What I said earlier, I was angry."

"Yeah, well, you weren't wrong," Marcel told him. "I'm off my game. Your sister really did a number on my head."

"Absent Elijah, my temper gets the better of me," Klaus admitted. "It did today. And it did a century ago, with August." He recalled from what I had said about him earlier. "I am far from blameless, Noah. Although he got nothing less than what he deserved. In fact, I think I took it easy on him. But the rest never saw it coming. Some of them were guilty of hate. But most were innocent. And they all became victims of that part of me I'd been forced to suppress. So you see, in the end, I was the match that lit the fuse. My mistake was that I humiliated them, and in doing so, I empowered them with the most potent form of hate, that which has fueled my rage for a millennia. Shame. I gifted them shame."