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"You forgot something about vampires," Cristian said, and smiled down at her, that same teasing, brotherly smile. "Dad would be so disappointed. " He let go of the bar and it crashed down toward Meredith's chest; she was unable to support its weight.
She grunted as it fell, managing to slow it enough to keep it from cracking her rib cage, but with no breath or energy to focus on anything except protecting her chest from the dead weight of the bar. She couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and she turned her head to look at him, her heart beating hard, and made a muffled, breathless moan. No one would hear her. She could die right here, at the hands of her brother.
Cristian went on. "A vampire, as you should know from our training, Meredith, is completely focused on his or her sire when they're first turned. "
Maybe she could shift it, this weight pressing down on her, driving all the breath from her lungs. She couldn't breathe. Black spots swam in front of her eyes.
"All that matters to me is Klaus, what Klaus wants," Cristian told her. "If you were a good hunter, you would have remembered that bond trumps everything else. I don't know how you could have imagined my human family" - his voice curdled on the word, like there was something disgusting in it - "would matter to me more than that. "
Meredith pushed at the bar helplessly, dizzy now with pain. She tried to signal Cristian with her eyes, desperately: fine, whatever, be Klaus's if you must, but don't kill me like this. Let me up so we can fight as we've been trained.
Cristian was kneeling beside her now, his face so close to hers. "Klaus wants you dead," he whispered, "you and all your friends. And I'll do whatever I can to make him happy. " His gray eyes, just like her mother's eyes, held hers as he
took hold of the bar she was clutching and pushed it down onto her chest.
Everything went black for a moment. Red flowers bloomed and burst in the darkness, and Meredith realized muzzily that it was her brain sending out random signals as it began to shut down from lack of oxygen.
She was beginning to float, as if she was suspended in a black sea. It would be good to rest. She was so tired.
Then a voice snapped through the darkness in Meredith's mind, her father's voice. Meredith! it said. It was impatient, firm but not unkind, the exact tone that had gotten her out of bed to run laps before school, encouraged her to practice a tae kwon do form when all she wanted to do was go out with her friends. You're a Sulez, the voice said. You must fight!
With a nearly superhuman effort, Meredith opened her eyes. Everything was blurry and she felt so slow, as if she was trying to move underwater.
Cristian's hand had relaxed on the bar. He must have thought all the fight in her was gone.
Meredith took every bit of strength she had gathered and pushed the bar up and away from her, tumbling her unwary vampire brother over with the bar on top of him. She had one glimpse of Cristian's startled, infuriated face before she ran as fast as she could, legs weak, heart pounding, gasping for breath, straight out of the weight room, out of the gym, and onto the paths of campus.
She had to slow as she approached her dorm, her legs sore and her lungs burning now that that original surge of adrenaline had worn off. Meredith tried to push herself onward, but she was stumbling now. At any moment, Cristian might grab her. He could have caught her by now, of course.
Just outside the dorm, she gathered her courage and spun around. No one was there. He had intended to kill her alone and in secret, and he would no doubt try again. Meredith unlocked the door and staggered in, flopping down to sit on the bottom step of the staircase.
She was still gasping for breath, and she choked on a sob. Meredith had wanted to know her brother, but he was already gone; he was Klaus's family now.
As she rubbed at her strained muscles, Meredith realized dully what she was going to have to do. She was going to have to kill Cristian.
Chapter 33
Damon licked a trace of blood carefully from the back of his hand and smiled at Katherine. They'd come across a couple walking through the woods just after dawn and fed together, and now it was midmorning, sunlight streaming down through the trees and casting black and golden shadows on the path. Damon felt full and content, ready to go home and sleep away the brightest of the daylight hours. A slight unease crossed his mind as he remembered the expression of panic on his victim's face, and he pushed it away: he was a vampire; this was what he was supposed to do.
Dabbing delicately at the corners of her mouth, Katherine cocked her head at him, as dainty and quizzical as a little songbird. "Why didn't you kill yours?" she asked.
Shrugging defensively, Damon slipped his sunglasses out of his pocket and over his eyes. He wasn't, to be completely honest, sure why he hadn't killed the girl this morning, or why he hadn't killed any of his victims since the blond jogger he'd hunted down more than a week before. He could remember how good the kill had felt, the rush as her life passed into him, but he wasn't eager to repeat the experience, not when the lingering aftertaste was guilt. He didn't want to feel anything for them; he wanted to take the blood and go. If that meant letting them live, that was fine with Damon.
Shielded behind the sunglasses, he said none of this, but merely smirked at Katherine and asked, "Why didn't you?"
"Oh, we're all keeping a low profile. Too many deaths and this campus will panic again. Klaus wants to keep the humans happy and easy to hunt while he finishes off your girl and her friends. " Katherine eyed Damon as she smoothed her long golden hair, and he kept his expression carefully blank. Whatever Katherine wanted from him, she wasn't going to get it by bringing up Elena.
"Of course," Damon said, and added, "You know, you came back from death much saner and more practical, my dear. " Katherine dimpled at him, and mock-curtsied gracefully.
They walked peacefully together, listening to the chirps and calls of sparrows, finches, and robins overhead. The quick rattle of a woodpecker drilling a tree sounded a little way away, and Damon could hear the rustle and patter of small, furry creatures in the undergrowth. He stretched luxuriously, thinking of his bed.
"So," Katherine said, breaking the comfortable silence between them. "Elena. " She said it again, stretching the syllables of the word out as if she was tasting them: "E-ley-na. "
"What about her?" Damon asked. His voice was careless, but he felt an uncomfortable heat at the back of his neck.
Katherine fixed him knowingly with her jewel-blue gaze, and Damon frowned at her behind his sunglasses.
"Tell me about her," she said softly, her expression coaxing. "I want to know. "
