“You’re being careless, you know,” Damon grunted. His tongue darted out of his mouth to lick his dry, cracked lips. “To feed whenever you feel like it. Katherine never did that.”
“Yes, well, Katherine died, didn’t she?” I said, my voice much harsher than I meant it to be.
“She’d have hated who you’ve become,” Damon said, sliding off the fence and standing next to me.
The scent of iron was more pervasive now, curling around me like an embrace.
“No, she would have hated you ,” I retorted. “So scared of who you are, unable to go after what you want, wasting your Power.”
I expected Damon to argue, to strike me even. But instead he shook his head, the tips of his retracted canines just visible between his partially open lips.
“I hate myself. I wouldn’t expect any different from her,” he said simply.
I shook my head in disappointment. “What happened to you? You used to be so full of life, so ready for adventure. This is the best thing that has ever happened to us. It’s a gift—one that Katherine gave to you.”
Across the street, an old man hobbled past, and then a moment later, a child on an errand rushed by in the opposite direction.
“Pick one and feed! Pick something, anything. Anything is better than just sitting here, letting the world go by.”
With that I stood, following the iron and tobacco scent, feeling my fangs pulse with the promise of a new meal. I grabbed Damon, who lagged a few paces behind me, until we found ourselves on a slanted lane out of range of the gaslights. What little light there was gathered onto a single point: a white-uniformed nurse, leaning against a brick building, smoking a cigarette.
The woman looked up, her startled expression turning into a slow smile as she took in Damon. Typical. Even as a blood-starved vampire, Damon, with his shock of dark hair, long lashes, and broad shoulders, caused women to look twice.
“Want a smoke?” she asked, blowing smoke into concentric circles that blended with the mist in the air.
“No,” Damon said hastily. “Come on, brother.”
I ignored him, stepping toward her. Her uniform was spattered with blood. I couldn’t stop staring at it and the way the rich red contrasted to the stark white. No matter how often I had seen it since changing, blood continued to awe me with its beauty.
“Having a bad night?” I asked, leaning next to her against the building.
Damon grabbed my arm and started to pull me toward the lights of the hospital. “Brother, let’s go.”
Tension coiled in my body. “No!” It took a swat of my arm to toss him against the wall.
The nurse dropped her cigarette. The ash sparked, then extinguished. I felt the bulge of my fangs behind my lips. It was just a matter of time now.
Damon struggled to his feet, crouching low as if I was going to strike him again.
“I won’t watch this,” he said. “If you do this, I will never forgive you.”
“I have to get back to my shift,” the nurse muttered, taking a step away from me, as if to run.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me. She let out one short yelp before I covered her mouth with my hand. “No need to worry about that anymore,” I hissed, sinking my teeth into her neck.
The liquid tasted like rotting leaves and antiseptic, as if the death and decay of the hospital had invaded her body. I spit the still warm liquid into the gutter and threw the nurse to the ground. Her face was twisted in a grimace of fear.
Stupid girl. She should have sensed the danger and run while she still could. It hadn’t even been a hunt. Worthless. She groaned, and I wrapped my fingers against her throat and squeezed until I heard the satisfying crack of bone breaking. Her head hung at an unnatural angle, blood still dripping from the wound.
She wasn’t making any noise now.
I turned toward Damon, who stared at me, a horrified expression on his face.
“Vampires kill. It’s what we do, brother,” I said calmly, my gaze locking on Damon’s blue eyes.
“It’s what you do,” 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. “You’re weak,” I growled.
“Maybe so,” Damon said. “But I’d 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.
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 Katherine’s 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—I’d lost my only connection to the man I’d 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 I’d 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 who’d attended barbecues at Veritas. But then I saw the headline: BRUTAL MURDER ABOARD THE ATLANTIC EXPRESS .
Lavinia. Of course.
I’d 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 couldn’t see my reflection—couldn’t 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 screamed yes .
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.
I quite liked it.