Blood Will Tell

by L. J. Smith

  Anything was funny if you had to think about it in this situation. What was being demanded was perhaps the ultimate submission, that she give her very blood to one of these creatures; that she remain still while skewered like a grub on the toosharp canines of an insectivore.

  She could feel the flow of blood, yes, and she could feel a sort of pleasure in being rid of it, as if medieval theories about leaches and cupping were true and she was overbloated with it. The warm flow was almost pleasant, relaxing. But she was far too aware of her own entire powerlessness, as if she were bound hand and foot, unable to have any say in the control of her own body. And she was far too aware of the—inhuman human—who held her. He was drinking her blood, for God’s sake! She had been relegated to the ranks of FDA products. They could measure her blood donation in terms of nutritional value—how did you decide what made up a single serving . . . ?

  I gave my word, she thought, using the last of her discipline to keep herself from screaming. I gave my word. To save Fell’s Church. To save other girls from just this kind of . . . rape of their veins. Tears rolled down the sides of her face and fell into her hair, unheeded. And still she lay in Stefan’s arms, unmoving.

  There was no rending pain, at least, so she supposed she was not resisting enough to merit that. But the only thing remotely like pleasure was the desperate thought that soon . . . it must be soon . . . this would end.

  And then . . . oh God, she would have enough to think about. Starting with how to look Stefan in the face.

  Maybe you shouldn’t look at him. Maybe you should just pack up your things and run from this town . . .

  Stefan

  Meredith’s blood was as complicated a flavor as the color of Meredith’s eyes. Blackberry wine was Stefan’s first thought. But it lingered and changed on the palate, becoming dryer, less sweet, more smoky with a hint of bramble. It ended with an aged, mature taste that was entirely individual, entirely indescribable because it was Meredithflavored—and it left him yearning for more.

  And it packed quite a kick.

  Meredith’s life force was strong. As strong, in its own way, as Elena’s had been, because Meredith herself was so strong in both body and mind. She also had something vampires loved in donors, a wisdom that had nothing to do with age. All that combined in the blood to make a heady wine indeed, and tempted Stefan to drink more than he should.

  He tried not to give in to temptation, but instead to make this last, this bliss that could only be given by those strong in nature, but ready, for whatever reason, to lend their strength and sweetness for a few moments to the hunter.

  Elena had been one of the elect. Fearless, adventurous, trusting: she had loved to love, and to “romp in Cupid’s sunny grove” as one of his own dreadful adolescent poems had put it. She had liked to tease him; to taunt his canines with featherlight touches until he was half out of his mind with need, before allowing him to breach her veins. Then she would give herself entirely to him, to the experience, glorying in giving all she could give to him, as if she could pour herself out entirely into his veins, so that they were completely intermingled together: one. She had been an artiste; but not out of experience. It was entirely out of love that she had gained her inspiration. She could have made Stefan grovel before her, worship her, abase himself. Instead she had joined her strength to his strength and suffused them both with joy.

  Elena. . .

  . . .was not Meredith.

  And Meredith had not called for him.

  Later, thinking about it, Stefan would count it as one of the few times in his life when he had showed good sense, when he had resisted although every nerve and muscle and sinew inside him was begging him to ignore the gadfly of a thought that told him that something was wrong. That he was failing Meredith.

  Meredith was supremely disciplined and compassionate. Perhaps no one else could have remained in the inhuman clutches of a fairytale monster for so long and given so much, without panicking and attacking the monster. Elena had, of course. But Meredith was not madly in love with him, in love with the idea that she could give herself to him with every drop of her blood. And Elena—had thought of him as human. Cursed, but human.

  She’d been wrong, of course. Damon’s desire to make her his consort, half of a mated pair of inhuman hunterassassins, had been much more logical. But when had Elena ever been logical?

  And now he was torturing Elena’s best friend.

  The thought came to him quite simply and, if not quite in words of one syllable, it was very simple to understand.

  Meredith was too smart and too disciplined and too logical to struggle, and so he wasn’t causing her agony, but it certainly was nothing like the kiss. Meredith was experiencing, in all its raw ugliness, the truth behind the mindillusions that vampires usually used to seduce their victims.

  He broke his promise about not reading her mind. He allowed himself to sense just a little of what she was experiencing.

  She didn’t like it.

  Panting, stunned, Stefan pulled his head up.

  Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Meredith—oh, my friend, my dear, dear friend . . .

  The tie of blood was strong enough to allow him to speak without words. But, of course, that was because he was a monster.

  He stared down at her, and then, in one motion, he rolled away and was on his feet, frantically licking the evidence of what he’d been doing from his lips and teeth. His canines would not retract immediately, but he put all his energy into blunting those razorsharp tips and drawing some of their length back into his jaws.

  He couldn’t remember feeling so ashamed, so caught, since Elena had innocently stumbled upon him feeding.

  He was pacing without thinking, the way that a distraught panther paces its cage. He could feel the sting of tears inside his nose and behind his eyes, but what good would it do to cry? He paced, shuddering, until Meredith had finished buttoning up her blouse. And as he did, involuntarily, from the sweetdry aftertaste of Meredith’s blood dissolving into his body, he unwillingly saw more of her thoughts.

  He really couldn’t help it. As the molecules from her donation fitted into place in his own oxygen receptors, random phrases bubbled up in his mind. Homo sapiens raptor. Top of the feeding chain. Why hadn’t they taken over the world already?

  She could never entirely trust; could never entirely relax with; and she could certainly

  never fall in love with a being like Stefan Salvatore.

  He stopped his pacing; Meredith had finished with her blouse. He was conveniently near the door. He looked at her. His thoughts were tangled in such loops and knots that the only words he could force out were, “God,” and “So sorry.”

  Meredith’s cool, incisive intelligence had stripped him bare. She had put him in his place, along with the fox, the cobra, the tiger, and the shark. He knew now that she would never look at him without seeing a deadly snake in the grass and feeling, along with Emily Dickinson, “zero at the bone.”

  He fumbled with the lock as he heard Meredith’s footsteps on the wooden floor. He had lost Elena, and now he had lost his only links to Elena; because of course he couldn’t face Bonnie or Matt ever again. He opened the door for Meredith with a feeling that as he saw her back retreating from him he would see all three . . .

  “Wait.” It was just one word, spoken hoarsely, but it froze Stefan like a troll caught by sunlight. It took him a moment before he could compose himself enough to look back into the room.

  Meredith was standing up, but she was farther from the door than before. She was standing by the window, looking out as if she were seeking answers in Mrs. Flowers’ kitchen garden.

  “Wait,” she said again, as if to herself. “Stefan, do you think—that he can get into our thoughts as well as our dreams?”

  Stefan felt a bound of hope in his chest, followed by the inevitable fall. “I don’t know. He would have to be very powerful. And we would have to be very vulnerable—“

  “—such as when I’m conc
entrating all my energies on relaxing and letting myself be controlled by something from the outside?”

  Stefan studied Meredith for longer this time. He noticed that her eyes did not skitter away from his gaze. She wasn’t afraid to look at him.

  “Is it all right if I come back in?” he asked, as if it wasn’t his own room and she nodded without hesitation. She wasn’t afraid to be alone with him.

  But despite the warmth that kindled inside him at such signs he had to be rational.

  “Meredith, what you were thinking—I caught some of it. I couldn’t help it. And you were right. I’m not human. I’m not the same species as you are. I’m a carnivore that would live only off humans if . . . if I could live with myself that way.”

  “And I am a . . . a xenophobe.” She glanced at him as if to see if he knew the English word. “Someone afraid of aliens, that’s the dictionary definition. But it really means someone afraid of humans from other countries, or people who are just too different.” Very suddenly, she put her hands to her face, which wasn’t like Meredith at all.

  Meredith was always in control. Her voice, muffled, went on, “I’m ashamed of myself. I know you, and yet I could think all that . . . crap.”

  And she didn’t swear, not even mildly. Stefan began to speak to her to explain that she was the one who was right, and that he was just as alien and dangerous as she had thought, when she took her hands away from her face.

  “I know you, Stefan Salvatore. And if you say that everything I was thinking is true then I have some thinking to do. I can’t help but be prejudiced on the side of ordinary humans. But I also owe an apology to the one of your . . . species . . . who is willing to die to save mine.”

  She walked toward him, her hand held out. Stefan stood mute. Then he took her hand, but instead of shaking it, bent and kissed it.

  But he was thinking about Elena, and about just how rare she had been. Without him controlling her mind, she had accepted him. Without him controlling her mind, she had seduced him—for that had been, in truth, what had happened. Without the slightest fetter around her mind or body, she had given him her blood, and had delighted in it.

  Elena had been like a force of nature: take her or leave her for the passionate, cynical, idealistic, selfcentered, generoustoafault, girl that had been her mortal self. A wild tropical storm in rising in a millpond. An orchid in a field of daisies; a gryphon in a herd of sheep. Elena had never been like anyone but herself. And she had absolutely gloried in the moment when she could drop all her defenses and submit entirely to the fate of the quarry caught by the hunter—because the hunter had been her heart’s desire, and because in all other things he was her slave, to cherish or spurn or destroy as she pleased. And Stefan had gloried in that.

  They had been a pair of mad little things, in love in a way that was senseless and probably hopeless from the start. First love—for he now realized that before Elena he had only experienced infatuation—on a planetary scale. But it had changed him, he would swear, from a creature who gloomily enjoyed his doom; a zombie that could only remember and remember the time of his humanity, into an approximation of a human being—for the little time that he had had her.

  Maybe I’m insane, he thought, shame always ready to leap for his throat. I helped her—after the first time when she had it all her own way—to do those things. If what they had done equated to madness, as it would seem to, then he had aided and abetted her . . .

  Stop it, Stefan!

  The voice was so sharp it was almost like having Damon mock him, urging him to renounce the role of martyr. Stefan flushed, full of new blood, full of anger—

  And then in shock, glanced upward.

  There was no mistaking that voice—or that indignation. Bonnie had been right, his inamorata was here, watching over him. He looked at Meredith to see if she had heard anything and saw that she hadn’t.

  Who was he to flout one of Elena’s edicts?

  Meredith’s dark eyes were on him. He said, apropos of nothing, “You rigged the drawing of the twigs. You made sure you’d be first.”

  She didn’t admit it aloud, but he could still pick up thoughts from her mind.

  Rigorously, he tried to shut his own mind to it.

  “You wanted to see if it was bearable.”

  This time she answered him. “If it would be bearable for anybody except Elena. I think Bonnie will be fine, if you control her mind, and keep it light and romantic.”

  “Like the kiss?”

  She flinched, making him flinch. Then she straightened herself and met his eyes again directly, sparing him nothing. “A little lighter than the kiss,” she suggested.

  He wasn’t hurt by her reaction; his mind was elsewhere. “And Matt?”

  “If I can stand it—but, no, Matt isn’t sensible. You’re absolutely right. I’ve got to stop Matt even if it means hitting him over the head. He’ll try to give—and he’ll be humiliated and mortified when he can’t.”

  Stefan looked away. “You were humiliated and mortified?”

  “We’re being completely honest with each other, aren’t we?” He nodded.

  “Stefan—it isn’t flattering.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I felt—well—disposable. As if, when you were done with me, you would crush me like an aluminum can and toss me in the waste basket. I kept wondering if I’d be evaluated by the FDA. I didn’t feel like a person anymore.”

  Stefan could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He wanted to cry. But that was as unfair to Meredith as anything else that had happened. She would end up comforting him, the perpetrator.

  “Don’t—Stefan, it’s not that bad. We did it for a reason, a reason we’d both agreed on beforehand. So just saying “food” is all wrong. I guess I was thinking of the other girls—and boys—out there who saw a sudden dark shadow in the night—”

  “And then found themselves being served raw. We do what we do, Meredith. We prey on your species. To us—to most of us—you are meat. And for a lot of vampires, you’re disposable, a lot of them kill when they feed But you’ve known that all along, Meredith. You knew how different we were. You knew we were that bad. How could it have come as such a surprise?”

  Meredith

  Meredith thought, partly because knowing something is not the same as experiencing it. And then she thought, because I was hoping I was wrong.

  “Stefan—please. Whatever your race is, you are not. And some of what I felt was sheer fear and unfamiliarity.”

  “No, you were right the first time. It’s not something you should have to get used to. Under any circumstances. I’m a—”

  Meredith’s cell phone chimed.

  Like an automaton she picked up. “Yes? Matt? Yes, we’re just finishing up here. I know time is running out. We’ll hurry.”

  She put the phone down and looked at Stefan.

  “The rest of my dinner getting impatient?”

  Meredith just couldn’t deal with the selfhatred behind that comment. She turned away. Then, without looking at Stefan, she said, “Matt was right, you know. Time is running out.”

  Meredith brushed her hands together to show that she was done. Then she picked up her purse. “I have to think a little, Stefan. Then maybe we can talk again.”

  “Right,” Stefan said dully. She knew he knew without either of them having to say it, that their relationship would never be the same. That they might not have any relationship even if somehow they both survived this night.

  He reached to help her into her windbreaker, but she took it from his hands and put it on herself. Her eyes were ashamed and apologetic, but she did it anyway. Somehow she didn’t want to be catered to by homo sapiens superioris right now.

  “Stefan, I’m—I’m sorry. But no matter what, I’ve got to turn Bonnie over to you now.”

  Bonnie, the smallest, youngest, most fragile of any of them. Stefan opened his mouth, but Meredith was already turning to unlock and open the door by herself. She turned back to
say only one thing.

  “It’s the biggest cliché in the human world, Stefan, but please be gentle with her.

  And it’s not such a big cliché, but if you aren’t, and we survive tonight—well, then it’s going to be me coming after you. The meat bites back!

  Stefan didn’t smile. Silently, he nodded.

  He could never have guessed what he was promising with that one small gesture.

  Bonnie

  Bonnie was excited. She was devoured by curiosity, prickling with fear, too impatient to stay in the car, and . . . well, just excited.

  She and Elena had taken up boys before Meredith or even Caroline had. Bonnie had been a flirt since kindergarten. And by the time they had hit puberty—well, it was Elena—not Bonnie—that got nicknamed “Ice Princess” for throwing away her boyfriends just before they proposed marriage. (Or, if not marriage, eternal devotion.) Bonnie wasn’t an ice princess, she was a firebrand.

  And she’d had been hearing Elena boast about Stefan for what seemed like years.

  And now Bonnie was going to get to experience what Elena had said was the ultimate, and she was going to do it safely, for of course Stefan was safe. Stefan was safe as . . . as a deer. Sometimes he was like a deer caught in the headlights, sometimes he was like the rare wild fawns that would let you feed them because they didn’t know what you were.

  She couldn’t wait.

  She was tramping around the car for the sixtysixth time (oh, surely they’d be done soon! Elena said it was just a matter of teaspoonsfull, and Meredith wasn’t the romantic kind to stretch things out—!) when she ran into something.

  She’d been staring at her feet, so she had to look up to see what it was. And then she had to look up some more. And then she had to decide whether to scream or not.

  “Tracking a woozle?” Damon asked her. He seemed perfectly serious. “The next time we go around, there will be seventy of them.’”

  Bonnie was not about to be distracted—especially by WinniethePooh. “You—you—”

  “Yes, it is I.”

  “You left us.”