by L. J. Smith
Damon cocked his head and sniffed the air. “Hold on,” he said. “Always best to power up before a fight.” With that, he turned and sped off in the direction of several drunken revelers. Of course. Damon was going to drain the blood of some degenerate. I felt a surge in my veins and wondered if I, too, should do the same. Damon was right: Wasn’t feeding just one way to prepare for the battle to come? But Samuel had already turned me into more of a monster than I’d been in twenty years, and I wasn’t about to let him turn me into something worse.
Before I could start to second-guess myself, Damon returned.
“Brother,” Damon said curtly. The scent of hot, fresh blood wafted from his mouth, and it was all I could do to keep my fangs from making an appearance. “Shall we?” he asked, indicating the warehouse where Samuel had hosted one of his famous dock parties.
I stepped onto a rotting crate and peered through a filthy window. A dozen people wandered about the room, wearing well-tailored clothes and looking like they had made a wrong turn on the way to a ball. I knew they must be Samuel’s vampires. In the center of the warehouse was a pile of bodies. Blood still dripped from some of the wounds on their necks, like a fountain in the center of a town square.
All of a sudden, one of the vampires turned toward me, fangs flashing. I jumped down, hoping I hadn’t been seen.
“Let me see.” Damon pushed me aside so he could look in the window. But it was too late. The window and door were suddenly smashed open, and two vampires barreled out, pinning me to the dock as I desperately writhed under their crushing weight. For being newly turned, they were surprisingly strong, and every time I seemed to loosen one of my limbs, it would be pinned down all over again.
I heard a crash as another vampire jumped down through the broken window. The sound was followed by a snarl. I twisted my head to see Damon and Lord Ainsley locked in combat. Lord Ainsley was growling and gnashing his fangs as Damon struggled to wrestle him to the ground. Damon ended up flat on his back instead.
“Hold off, Ainsley!” Samuel’s voice echoed as all the vampires looked up expectantly, as though he were a priest who’d just ascended an altar at a church service. “And hold off on the brother, too. They’re mine.”
He placed the heel of his boot on Damon’s chest and leaned his weight into his foot. Damon gasped, and I heard the crunch of a rib breaking.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” Samuel said, glancing at the vampires around him. More vampires had circled the two who’d pinned me down, and I could no longer see Samuel. All I could see were eight bloodthirsty vampires glaring at me, their newly formed murderous drive practically glowing in their eyes. “Damon here is a vampire who might have made quite a good foot soldier at one point. He’s smart. Devious. Charming. We could have been quite a team if he hadn’t made some unfortunate blunders in his youth. He set his sights on women he didn’t deserve. As if my long-ago love, Katherine, would ever truly have taken him seriously! But he persevered, only to kill carelessly. Not to mention choosing the wrong teammate.” At this, Samuel kicked Damon’s ribs and stalked toward me, leaving him gasping for breath.
A shaft of moonlight fell on Samuel, giving him a sort of spotlight. At that moment, I had a feeling those eight vampires would have been easier to fight off than Samuel alone. He looked tall, refreshed, and utterly triumphant. He was the hunter, and I was the felled prey. Samuel had two choices: kill or compel. I wasn’t sure which would be the worse fate.
He knelt down until his face was only inches from mine. “I’m done playing games.” Samuel cupped my chin and forced me to look him in the eyes. I squeezed mine shut.
“Patrick!” Samuel barked, and one of the young vampires pried my eyelids open with his stubby fingers. I writhed, looking up at the stars, trying as hard as I could to pinpoint the constellations, anything that wasn’t Samuel.
“Look at me!” Samuel ordered, grabbing a fistful of my hair and pulling my head up from the wooden dock.
“No!” I averted my gaze and focused on a spot of dried blood on Samuel’s cheek. What could I do to resist his compulsion? I tried to think of anything—Katherine, Mystic Falls, Cora, Violet—anything to take me to another time and place. I knew I had to resist looking in his eyes, but I felt my head being turned without my control, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before…
A blur raced toward Samuel, and a jolt caused him to release his grip. Damon had regained his strength and fought off Lord Ainsley. He jumped on Samuel’s back, but before he could get a good hold on him, five more vampires piled on top of Damon and pulled him off, leaving Samuel free to reinstate his death grip on me.
“Your brother won’t help you now, although your familial ties are admirable,” Samuel said. “As you know, I had a brother once. And then you two murdered him. And I’m afraid I’m the type of man who holds a grudge. Terrible character flaw, I know, but luckily, I have an eternity to attempt to correct it.”
I bit the inside of my lip and continued to look up at the sky. But then, I felt a burning sensation on my skin and realized one of the young vampires was holding a match to my cheek as Samuel continued to hold me down. I involuntarily jerked my head and locked eyes with Samuel.
“Good.” Samuel smiled. “Just stay there, and the fire will be over before you know it. But if you resist, then we’ll have to add more flames. It’s your choice.” I could smell my burning flesh and feel the flames heading toward my hairline. In the center of Samuel’s eyes, I was entranced by two tiny figures.
“That’s it,” Samuel repeated, his voice sounding like he was talking underwater. “Now, your brother was never good to you, was he? Always disappointed you? Always caused trouble?”
I couldn’t break my gaze. In Samuel’s left eye, I immediately recognized Damon. Or, at least, Damon’s body, consumed by flames. And in the right eye was a version of me. I was with a woman—whether I was kissing her or feeding from her neck, I wasn’t quite sure.
Was that the past? Was it the future? I didn’t know, but I was transfixed, wanting to see more. Samuel was still speaking, but I barely listened. All that existed in my mind was an image of Damon, dead.
“You may have turned your brother into a vampire, but he’s been the one to kill you, countless times. He’s destroyed your soul. And the only thing left to do is destroy him.” I nodded, almost unbidden as the image in Samuel’s eyes began to morph and suddenly, Damon was the one bent over the woman, his lips on her neck, brushing away her red hair. And I knew who the woman was. Callie.
The flames were getting hotter, and all of a sudden, I was no longer on the dock. I was back in New Orleans, on a hot, sticky September night. I was about to kiss Callie, when she staggered into me, a knife sticking out of her back. I’d lunged toward Damon, but I’d been too late. Callie was dead, but I still wanted more than anything to destroy Damon. I knew it wouldn’t bring her back to life, but it would give me the closure I so desperately craved. So Damon despised me for turning him into a vampire? Fine. Then let me kill him and be done with it.
But going after innocent people just to torture me? To prove some point about what happened in the past? I had wanted to kill Damon, then, back when he’d stabbed Callie. But I hadn’t. I’d held off. Deep down, I’d thought maybe something would change. Deep down, I’d thought I’d regret killing my brother. But some people didn’t deserve a chance. I thought of how Cora had killed Violet. She’d cried, but she’d realized that the creature she killed wasn’t truly her sister. Why couldn’t I do the same?
Samuel must have sensed my vulnerability. He knelt down next to me and whispered in a low voice, “Kill Damon.”
“Kill Damon,” I repeated. It felt as if a cloud had lifted from my mind, and everything suddenly clicked together with unflinching clarity. It was so simple. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to realize what I had to do to finally feel free. I had to kill my brother.
If Damon were dead, I wouldn’t have to wonder who he was torturing, or being torture
d by. I wouldn’t have to worry about his moods, or his temper, or his tendency to laugh in the face of death. Most important, I wouldn’t have to worry if Damon was going to turn on me and kill me at any given moment. If Damon were dead, I wouldn’t have to worry at all.
I looked Samuel directly in the eyes, a smile forming on my face.
Samuel handed me a stake. “You know what you have to do.”
I did. The whole time I’d been in London, I’d been fighting the wrong enemy. The enemy was Damon. Now I had a new mission: Destroy my brother.
15
I frantically searched the docks for my brother—my prey. Damon had overtaken two young vampires. One was lying on his back, his head at an unnatural angle, while the other had a stake protruding from his chest.
Adrenaline throbbed in my veins. But it was odd: It was as if my body was pulling for Damon. For the past few weeks, whenever I saw Damon in the middle of a battle, I’d feel my Power surge as though it could leap from my veins to his. I wasn’t sure if it ever worked.
No, that was wrong. I didn’t want to help Damon. I glanced again at his victims. These would be my brother’s last murders. I would make sure of that. More vampires were circling Damon, but none had attacked. It was clear they were bound to whatever Samuel said and wouldn’t go in for the kill until given the instruction by Samuel.
“Stand clear!” Samuel commanded. The vampires stepped even farther away, opening up a path to my brother. I walked steadily toward Damon, hatred surging in my veins and overriding any instinctual inclination to help him. Yes, he had been my brother, but that was a lifetime ago. It was time to finally cut the filial ties. I’d be better off. With each footstep, I came up with new reasons to hate him. He worked tirelessly to steal Katherine from me. He killed Callie. He forced me into marriage in New York. He killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people. He promised me an eternity of misery for turning him into a vampire, when all I’d wanted was my brother by my side.
We were face-to-face. I saw his blue eyes flicker toward me.
“Brother?” Damon asked.
Hatred flared in me. I hated the way he said it, so territorial and possessive. As if being brothers allowed infinite betrayals. How dare he stand in front of me, so cocky and self-assured? How dare he not apologize for the hell he’d put me through ever since Katherine had come to Mystic Falls?
“Stefan?” he asked tentatively. There was a note of something I hadn’t often heard in his voice. It was fear.
“You deserve to be frightened,” I said quietly. “Because this battle is personal, and I won’t forgive you for anything. Not until I’ve drained you of every last drop of blood in your body.” Before he could respond, I lunged at him, wresting the stake from his hands.
“Brother?” Damon asked again, this time in confusion, attempting to wriggle out of my grip. “You’re being compelled. Stefan, this isn’t you. This is Samuel, the one you’ve been fighting for weeks. Don’t let him win, don’t let him do this to you.”
“No, Damon. That’s where you’re wrong. This is all I’ve thought about for the past twenty years. Now I finally have my chance.” I raised the stake and was about to plunge it into Damon’s chest when he shoved me away, sending the stake flying from my grasp. I pushed him back and we began wrestling on the pier. A remote part of my brain registered that we used to wrestle like this as children, testing our strength on the grounds of Veritas. But we weren’t children anymore.
“Stefan, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Damon said, an edge of panic rising in his voice. “If you’re going to kill me, kill me as Stefan Salvatore, not as one of Samuel’s minions.” His face was red, and sweat was beading on his temples.
“This is who I am, brother.” The stake was still a few feet out of reach. Around us, the ring of vampires watched the fight. Blind rage overtook me. I’d rip Damon’s heart out with my hands if I had to.
“Come on, Stefan. Show your brother who’s the boss.” Samuel’s smooth voice rose over the crowd. He reached down and handed me the stake. I pulled it back and aimed it at the center of Damon’s heart. I couldn’t wait to see his blood, rich and red thanks to all his hundreds of conquests, spill onto the pier. I couldn’t wait for his limp, lifeless body to be thrown into the Thames.
“Good-bye forever,” I growled. I used the stake to pop off one of the buttons from Damon’s shirt, then gently scratched Damon’s skin. Blood spurted from the wound.
“If you do this, you’ll regret it for eternity, and that’s a promise,” Damon said, pushing me off him. He’d been holding off on truly fighting me, I realized, thinking that he’d be able to talk me out of killing him. It just showed how little he knew me.
I quickly jumped on him, pinning him back down. He was stronger than me, but I had adrenaline and twenty years of hatred surging in my veins. There was no way he’d get away from me again. I pushed Damon’s shoulders into the dock.
“Stefan, don’t do this. I swear, you’ll hate yourself more than you already do if you go through with it.” I wasn’t listening. I closed my eyes and pulled the stake back until a crack of lightning lit up the night sky, illuminating Damon’s face. Just then, fire sprang up from a spot on the dock and quickly formed a ring around us. I heard shrieks and whirled around in confusion and anger. Why was there a fire? I had important work to do.
That’s when I saw Cora running toward us, her hair loose and wild around her face. Behind her was Lady Alice. It was a shock to my system to see anyone other than Damon. It didn’t feel like they belonged in this world, in this place of battle.
Lady Alice lifted her hands to the sky and began chanting a low, guttural ah sound over and over again.
“Samuel?” I called in confusion. The fire had circled around Damon and me, and I couldn’t see an easy way to escape without burning myself and losing my grip on Damon. Was this a trap? Were both of us destined to die? I couldn’t tell if Lady Alice had set the fire or was trying to stop it. Based on our last conversation, I assumed the former.
“Put down the stake,” Damon breathed, bringing me back to the task at hand. He was struggling against my grasp, and I knew it would only be a few seconds before he wrestled free.
“No.” I shook my head and clutched the stake tighter. But I looked over my shoulder, and Samuel was no longer watching us. Instead, he was pinned against the wall by an invisible force. Lady Alice was pointing her finger toward him.
“Stupid witch!” Samuel yelled. “You’re ruining everything.”
“No, I’m making things right,” she said. “I believe in an eye for an eye.”
Samuel squirmed under whatever spell Lady Alice was using to keep him glued to the building. He seemed far less powerful than I’d ever seen him before. Lady Alice turned her face toward the sky and began chanting again, a loud sound that matched the sound of the thunder rumbling all around us. All of the sudden, the flames that had encircled us leapt like a fireball through the sky and against the wall of the warehouse, silhouetting Samuel.
“Exuro in abyssus,” Lady Alice yelled. The sky lit up with hundreds of lightning bolts, but the driving rain stopped. Then, the warehouse burst into flames, igniting Samuel’s body like a firecracker. The vampires on the dock fell to their knees under an invisible force. Was Samuel dead? Had Lady Alice just saved us all?
Samuel’s charred body fell to the pier in a heap. The fire quickly spread, killing every one of Samuel’s vampires in its wake. Alice continued to chant until all of them had been burned to an unrecognizable state. The scent of smoldering flesh permeated the air.
I stood shakily. Several feet away, my brother was lying on the ground, his chest exposed and bloody.
Kill him.
I wasn’t sure where the voice was coming from. It was like the half-remembered dialogue in a nightmare. Kill Damon? I couldn’t. Even the thought made my stomach turn in revulsion.
I looked down. Flecks of blood were on my hands, and there was an indentation where I’d gripped the
stake. What had just happened? Had I actually tried to kill my brother? Samuel’s compulsion must have been broken with his death. I turned to look at Damon, guilt filling my conscience. I was a monster capable of almost anything, but I could never have killed my brother. Damon leaned over and grabbed the stake, throwing it in the Thames. I pulled the sleeve from my shirt, intending to use it to stanch the blood from Damon’s wound. I moved toward him, and our eyes locked. There was something flickering in Damon’s eyes that I’d never seen before. It was terror.
In the distance, police bells sounded. The entire pier was on fire. My head was pounding in the smoke, my feet felt disconnected from my body, and I couldn’t comprehend how I’d gotten so close to killing Damon.
Then suddenly everything faded to black.
16
I woke on a white eiderdown blanket. The sun-dappled mahogany table next to me was laden with several vases of flowers. I turned over on the pillow, trying to get my bearings. The room was far too luxurious to be my simple abode at Abbott Manor, and yet the bed and the night table were delicate, not at all like the rough-hewn furniture at Veritas. Suddenly, warm water was being dabbed on my forehead. I blinked. Above me sat a woman wearing a white gown. Was she an angel? The image swam into focus, and I realized it was Lady Alice.
“The fire,” I croaked as images from the night before sprang back into my mind. My throat hurt.
“Shh, just keep quiet. You swallowed quite a bit of ash. This is a rosemary poultice. It should calm you a bit,” she said.
I struggled to a sitting position. “What happened? Why are you here?”
“You had a nasty run-in with Samuel and he tried to make you kill your brother,” Lady Alice explained matter-of-factly as she picked up a tin cup and brought it to my lips. I turned away, unsure what she could possibly be giving me—or what she’d possibly think I’d deserve.