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I turned toward Damon, who stared at me, a horrified expression on his face.
"Vampires kill. Its what we do, brother," I said calmly, my gaze locking on Damons blue eyes.
"Its whatyoudo," he said, taking off the coat around his shoulders and throwing it over the nurse. "Not me. Never me. "
Anger pulsed like a heart at the very core of my being. "Youre weak," I growled.
"Maybe so," Damon said. "But Id rather be weak than a monster. " His voice grew strong. "I want no part in your killing spree. And if our paths ever cross again, I swear I will avenge all of your murders, brother. "
Then he spun on his heel and ran at vampire speed down the alleyway, instantly disappearing into the swirling mist.
Chapter 8~9
Chapter 8
October 4, 1864
As a human, I'd thought it was my mother's death that had shaped the men Damon and I would become. I'd called myself a half-orphan in the initial days after she died, locking myself away in my room, feeling as though my life had ended at the young age of ten. Father believed grieving was weak and unmanly, so Damon had been the one to comfort me. He'd go riding with me, let me join the older boys in their games, and beat up the Giffin brothers when they made fun of me for crying about Mother during a baseball game. Damon had always been the strong one, my protector.
But I was wrong. It is my own death that has shaped me.
Now the tables have turned. I am the strong one, and I have been trying to be Damon's protector. But while I have always been grateful to Damon, he despises me and blames me for what he has become. I had forced him to feed from Alice, a bartender at the local tavern, which had completed his transformation. But does that make me a villain? I think not, especially as the act had saved his life.
Finally, I see Damon the way Father had seen him: too imperious, too willful, too quick to make up his mind, and too slow to change it.
And as I had also realized earlier this evening as I stood just outside the dim glare of the gas lamp, the body of the dead nurse at my feet: I am alone. A full orphan. Just as Katherine had presented herself when she came to Mystic Falls and stayed in our guesthouse.
So that's how vampires do it, then. They exploit vulnerability, get humans to trust them, and then, when all the emotions are firmly in place, they attack.
So that is what I will do. I know not how or who my next victim will be, but I know, more than ever, that the only person I can look out for and protect is myself. Damon is on his own, and so am I.
I heard Damon steal through the city, moving at vampire speed down the streets and alleys. At one point, he paused, whispering Katherines name over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer. Then, nothing
Was he dead? Had he drowned himself? Or was he simply too far away for me to hear him?
Either way, the result was the same. I was alone--Id lost my only connection to the man Id once been: Stefan Salvatore, the dutiful son, the lover of poetry, the man who stood up for what was right.
I wondered if that meant that Stefan Salvatore, with no one to remember him, was really, truly dead, leaving me to be anyone.
I could move to a different city every year, see the whole world. I could assume as many identities as Id like. I could be a Union soldier. I could be an Italian businessman.
I could even be Damon.
The sun plunged past the horizon like a cannonball falling to earth, dipping the city into darkness. I turned from one gaslit street to the next, the soles of my boots rasping over the gravelly cobblestones. A loose newspaper blew toward me. I stomped on the broadsheet, examining an etched photo of a girl with long, dark hair and pale eyes.
She looked vaguely familiar. I wondered if she was a relative of one of the Mystic Falls girls. Or perhaps a nameless cousin whod attended barbecues at Veritas. But then I saw the headline:BRUTAL MURDER ABOARD THE ATLANTIC EXPRESS.
Lavinia. Of course.
Id already forgotten her. I reached down and crumpled the paper, hurling it as far as I could into the Mississippi. The surface of the water was muddy and turbulent, dappled with moonlight. I couldnt see my reflection--couldnt see anything but an abyss of blackness as deep and dark as my new future. Could I go for eternity, feeding, killing, forgetting, then repeating the cycle?
Yes. Every instinct and impulse I had screamedyes.
The triumph of closing in on my prey, touching my canines to the paper-thin skin that covered their necks, hearing their hearts slow to a dull thud and feeling a body go limp in my arms. Hunting and feeding made me feel alive, whole; they gave me a purpose in the world.
It was, after all, the natural order of things. Animals killed weaker animals. Humans killed animals. I killed humans. Every species had their foe. I shuddered to think what monster was powerful enough to hunt me.
The salty breeze wafting from the water was laced with the odor of unwashed bodies and rotting food--a far cry from the aroma across town, where scents of floral perfume and talcum powder hung heavy in the air of the wide streets. Here shadows hugged every corner, whispers rose and fell with the flowing of the river, and drunken hiccups pierced the air. It was dark, here. Dangerous.
