Stefan's Diaries 1 - Origins (9 page)

“What?” I gasped.

“Remember. Not a word of this to anyone.

Even Damon. Not until he comes to his senses.

Except I think his senses may be taken with our Katherine,” Father muttered, half to himself as he let go of my arm. I stiffened at the mention of Katherine’s name, but when I turned around, Father’s back was toward me as he headed into the house.

I walked back through town, wishing I’d ridden Mezzanotte instead of coming in the carriage.

Now I had no choice but to walk home. I turned to my left, deciding to cut through the forest. I simply couldn’t interact with any more humans today.

18

That night, Damon invited me to play cards with some of his soldier friends, who were camped out for the moment in Leestown, twenty miles away.

“I may not agree with them, but damn, can they play a good hand and drink a good pint,” Damon said.

I’d found myself agreeing, eager to avoid Father and any questions about vampires. But by the time twilight rolled around and I hadn’t seen any sign of Katherine or Emily, I wished that I hadn’t agreed to accompany Damon. My mind was still jumbled, and I wanted a night with Katherine to reassure me that my desire was leading me in the right direction. I loved her, but the practical, sensible side of me was having trouble disobeying Father.

“Ready?” Damon asked, clad in his Confederate uniform, when he stopped by my bedroom at twilight.

I nodded. It was too late to say no.

“Good.” He grinned and clattered down the stairs. I glanced wistfully out the window toward the carriage house, then followed him.

“We’re going out to the camp,” Damon yelled as we passed by Father’s study.

“Wait!” Father emerged from the study into the living room, several long branches filled with tiny, lilac-like purple flowers in his arms. Vervain.

“Wear this,” he commanded, tucking a sprig into each of our breast pockets.

“You shouldn’t have, Father,” Damon said tersely, as he plucked the sprig out of his pocket and shoved it into his breeches pocket.

“I’ve given you latitude, son, and given you a roof. Now all I ask is that you do this,” Father said, slamming his meaty fist into his palm so hard, I saw him wince. Thankfully, Damon, usually so quick to pounce at any sign of weakness, didn’t notice.

“Fine, Father.” Damon shrugged easily and spread his arms as if in defeat. “I would be
honored
to wear your flower for you.”

Father’s eyes flickered with rage, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he simply broke off another sprig and tucked it into Damon’s coat pocket.

“Thank you,” I mumbled as I accepted my own branch. My statement of thanks was less for the flower and more for Father showing mercy on Damon.

“Be careful, boys,” Father said, before retreating to his study.

Damon rolled his eyes as we walked outside.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” I mumbled, shivering in the night air. The summer-like day had become a chilly fall evening, but the mist that had been everywhere last night had lifted, giving us a been everywhere last night had lifted, giving us a crystal-clear view of the moon.

“Why not? He’s hard on us.” Damon snorted as he led the way to the stable. Mezzanotte and Jake were already bridled and stamping their hooves impatiently. “I had Alfred get everything ready. Thought we’d need a quick getaway.”

Damon swung his leg over Jake’s back, then galloped him down the path and turned in the direction opposite of town. We rode in silence for at least a half hour. With just the sound of the hooves and the sight of the moon peeking through the dense foliage, it felt like we were riding into a dream.

Finally, we began to hear sounds of flutes playing and laughter and the occasional gunshot.

Damon directed us up over a hill toward a clearing. Tents were set up all over, and a piper played in the corner. Men were walking around, and dogs were stationed at the entrance. It was as if we’d arrived at a mysterious, hidden party.

“Hello, sir?” Two Confederate soldiers came up to us, their rifles pointed toward us. Mezzanotte took a few steps back and whinnied nervously.

“Soldier Damon Salvatore, sir! Here on leave from General Groom’s camp down in Atlanta.”

Immediately, the two soldiers relaxed their rifles and tipped their hats at us.

“Sorry ’bout that, soldier. We’re gearin’ up for battle, and we’re losing our men like flies, before they even hit the battlefield,” the taller soldier said, stepping up to pat Jake.

“Yes, and not because of typhus,” the other, smaller, mustachioed soldier said, obviously pleased to share this information with us.

“Killings?” Damon asked tersely.

“How’d you know?” the first guard asked, stroking his rifle. I glanced at the ground, unsure what to do. I felt that Damon was getting us into a dangerous situation, but I didn’t know what I could do to fix it.

“My brother and I are coming from Mystic Falls,” Damon said, jerking his thumb back as if to prove that was the direction we came from. “The next town over, past the forest. We’ve had some of our own trouble. People are saying it’s some type of animal.”

“Not unless it’s an animal that only goes for the throat and leaves the rest of the body untouched,”

the mustachioed soldier said knowledgeably, his tiny eyes flicking back and forth between us.

“Hmm,” Damon said, sounding suddenly uninterested. But then he changed the subject.

“Any good games of poker going on tonight?”

“Right there in that clearing by the oak trees.”

The small soldier pointed a little ways off into the distance.

“Have a good evening, then. I thank you for your help,” Damon said with exaggerated politeness. We walked in the direction the soldier pointed, until Damon stopped abruptly at a small circle of soldiers, huddled around a fire and playing cards.

“Hello! Soldier Damon Salvatore on leave from General Groom’s boys,” Damon said confidently as he slid off his horse and glanced around the faces lit up by the campfire. “This is my brother, Stefan. Can we be dealt in?”

One ginger-haired soldier glanced at an older, grand-fatherly type whose arm was in a sling. He shrugged and gestured for us to sit on one of the logs set up around the fire. “Don’t see why not.”

Adrenaline seeped through my veins as we settled down and took our hands. Mine was good: two aces and a king. I immediately threw in some rumpled notes from my pocket, making a bet with myself. If I won money, then everything would be fine with Katherine. And if I didn’t, then … well, I didn’t want to think about it.

“All in,” I said confidently.

After we settled the game, I wasn’t surprised to emerge as the victor. I smiled as I took the pile of money and carefully put it in my pocket. I grinned in relief, finally feeling sure in my love for Katherine. I imagined what Katherine would say.

Smart
Stefan, maybe.
Savvy
Stefan. Or maybe she’d simply laugh, showing her white teeth, and allow me to take her into my arms and twirl her around and around the room….

We played several more hands after that, during which I lost the money I had won, but I didn’t care. The first hand had been the test, and now my heart and mind felt remarkably light.

“What are you thinking?” Damon asked, taking a flask from his pocket. He held it toward me, and I took a long swig.

The whiskey burned going down my throat, but I still craved more. It didn’t seem that any of the other soldiers were up for another hand. The five we were playing with had drifted off to chew tobacco, drink more whiskey, or tearfully talk about their sweethearts back home.

“Come on, brother, you can tell me,” Damon encouraged. He took the flask, swigged from it, then passed it back toward me.

I took another, deeper drink and paused.

Should I tell him? Any hesitation I had earlier had disappeared. After all, he was
my brother.
“Well, I was thinking about how different Katherine is than any other girl I’ve met …,” I began evasively. I knew I was treading into dangerous territory, but part of me was dying to know whether Damon also knew Katherine’s secret. I took another sip of whiskey and coughed.

“How’s she different?” Damon asked, a smile curving on his lips.

“Well, I mean she’s not,” I said, sobering up as I frantically tried to backtrack. “I just meant that I noticed that she is—”

noticed that she is—”

“That she’s a vampire?” Damon interrupted.

My breath caught in my throat, and I blinked. I glanced around nervously. People were drinking, laughing, counting their winnings.

But Damon was simply sitting there, the same smile on his lips. I couldn’t understand how he was
smiling
. And then a new, darker thought appeared in my mind. How did Damon know that Katherine was who she was? Had she told him? And had it been the same way, in the misty predawn, in bed?

I shuddered.

“So she’s a vampire. What of it? She’s still Katherine.” Damon turned to look at me, urgency in his dark-brown eyes. “And you won’t say anything to Father. He’s half crazy as it is,” Damon said as he scuffed his boot against the ground.

“How did you find out?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

Suddenly, a shot was fired.

“Soldier down!” a uniformed boy who looked to be about fourteen yelled as he charged from tent to tent. “Soldier down! Attack! Out into the woods!”

Damon’s face paled. “I need to help. You, little brother, go home.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling torn and suddenly frightened.

Damon nodded tersely. “If Father asks, I drank too much at the saloon and am sleeping it off somewhere.”

Another shot was fired, and Damon took off into the woods, blending into the sea of soldiers.

“Go!” Damon yelled. I ran in the opposite direction to the now-abandoned camp and dug my heels into Mezzanotte, whispering in her velvety ears and imploring her to go faster.

Mezzanotte rode through the forest faster than she ever had before; once across the Wickery Bridge, she turned, as if she knew exactly how to head home. But then she reared and whinnied. I held on with my thighs and saw a shadowy figure with golden-brown hair, arm-in-arm with another girl.

I stiffened. No women would be out after dark unaccompanied by a man in the best of circumstances, but
definitely
not in these times.

Not with the vampire attacks.

The face turned, and in the reflection on the water I saw a pale, pointed face.
Katherine. S
he was escorting little Anna from the apothecary. All I could see were the dark vines of Anna’s curls, bouncing over her shoulders.

“Katherine!” I yelled from the horse, with a strength I did not know I possessed. Now, instead of wanting to hold her, I wanted to use my arms to restrain her, to make her stop carrying out the awful thing she was about to do. I felt bile rise in my throat as I imagined finding a jagged branch and ramming it into her chest.

Katherine didn’t turn around. She held Anna’s shoulders tighter and led her into the forest. I kicked Mezzanotte hard on the flanks, the wind whipping against my face as I desperately tried to catch up with them.

19

I galloped through the woods, kicking Mezzanotte to jump over logs, to dash through underbrush, anything to make sure I didn’t lose sight of Katherine and Anna. How
could
I have trusted Katherine? How could I have thought I
loved
her? I should have killed her when I had the chance. If I didn’t catch up to them, Anna’s blood would be on my hands, too. Just as Rosalyn’s was.

We reached an uprooted tree and Mezzanotte reared up, sending me tumbling backward onto the forest floor. I felt a sharp stab as my temple cracked against a stone. The wind was knocked out of me, and I fought for breath, knowing it was only a matter of time before Katherine would kill Anna and then finish me off.

I felt gentle, ice-cold hands lifting me up to a sitting position.

“No …,” I gasped. The act of breathing hurt. My breeches were ripped, and I had a large gash on my knee. Blood flowed freely from my temple.

Katherine knelt beside me, using the sleeve of her dress to stave off the bleeding. I noticed her licking her lips, then mashing them firmly together.

“You’re hurt,” she said softly, continuing to apply pressure to my wound. I pushed myself away from her, but Katherine clasped my shoulder, holding me in place.

“Don’t worry. Remember. You have my heart,”

Katherine said, holding my gaze with hers.

Wordlessly, I nodded. If death was to come, I hoped it would come quickly. Sure enough, Katherine bared her teeth, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the agonizing ecstasy of her teeth against my neck.

But nothing came. Instead, I felt her cold skin near my mouth.

“Drink,” Katherine commanded, and I saw a thin gash in her delicate white skin. Blood was trickling from the cut as though through a brook after a rainstorm. I was repulsed and tried to turn my head away, but Katherine held on to the back of my neck. “Trust me. It will help.”

Slowly, fearfully, I allowed my lips to touch the liquid. Immediately I felt warmth run down my throat. I continued to drink until Katherine pulled her arm away.

“That’s enough,” she murmured, holding her palm over the wound. “Now, how do you feel?”

She sat back on her heels and surveyed me.

How did I feel? I touched my leg, my temple.

Everything felt smooth. Healed.

“You did that,” I said incredulously.

“I did.” Katherine stood up and brushed her hands together. I noticed her wound, too, was now completely healed. “Now tel me why I had to heal you. What are you doing in the forest? You know it’s not safe,” she said, concern belying her chiding tone.

“You …. Anna,” I murmured, feeling sluggish and sleepy, as one might feel after a long, wine-infused dinner. I blinked at my surroundings.

Mezzanotte was hitched to a tree, and Anna was sitting on a branch, hugging her knees to her chest and watching us. Instead of terror, Anna’s face was full of confusion as she looked from me, to Katherine, then back to me.

“Stefan, Anna is one of my friends,” Katherine said simply.

“Does Stefan … know?” Anna asked curiously, whispering as if I wasn’t standing three feet from her.

“We can trust him,” Katherine said, nodding definitively.

I cleared my throat, and both girls looked at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked finally.

“Meeting,” Katherine said, gesturing to the clearing.

“Stefan Salvatore,” a throaty voice said. I whirled around and saw a third figure emerge from the shadows. Almost without thinking, I held up the vervain from my breast pocket, which looked as useless as a daisy clutched in my hand.

“Stefan Salvatore,” I heard again. I glanced wildly between Anna and Katherine, but their facial expressions were impossible to read. An owl hooted, and I pressed my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming.

“It’s okay, Mama. He knows,” Anna called to the shadows.

Mama.
So that meant Pearl was also a vampire. But how could she be? She was the apothecary, the one who was supposed to heal the sick, not tear out human throats with her teeth.

Then again, Katherine had healed me, and she hadn’t torn out my throat.

Pearl emerged from between the trees, her gaze tightening on me. “How do we know he’s safe?” she asked suspiciously, in a voice that was much more ominous than the polite tone she used at her apothecary.

“He is,” Katherine said, smiling sweetly as she gently touched my arm. I shivered and clutched the vervain, Cordelia’s words echoing in my head.

This herb could stop the devil.
But what if we’d all gotten it wrong, and vampires like Katherine weren’t devils but angels? What then?

“Drop the vervain,” Katherine said. I looked into her large, cat-like eyes and dropped the plant to the forest floor. Immediately, Katherine used the tip of her boot to cover it with pine needles and leaves.

“Stefan, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Katherine laughed, turning toward me. But her laughter wasn’t mean. Instead, it sounded melodic and musical and slightly sad. I collapsed onto a gnarled tree root. I noticed my leg was shaking and held my hands firmly against my knee, which was now completely smooth, as if the fall had never happened. Katherine took the motion as an invitation for her to perch on my knee. She sat and looked down on me, running her hands through my hair.

“Now, Katherine, he doesn’t look like he’s seen a ghost. He’s seen vampires. Three of them.” I glanced up at Pearl as if I were an obedient schoolboy and she were my schoolmarm. She sat down on a nearby rock slab, and Anna perched next to her, suddenly looking much younger than her fourteen years. But, of course, if Anna was a vampire, then that meant she wasn’t fourteen at al . My brain spun, and I felt a momentary wave of dizziness. Katherine patted the back of my neck, and I began to breathe easier.

“Okay, Stefan,” Pearl said as she rested her chin on her steepled fingers and gazed at me.

“First of al , I need you to remember that Anna and I are your neighbors, and your friends. Can you remember that?”

I was transfixed by her gaze. Pearl then smiled a curious half smile. “Good,” she exhaled.

I nodded dumbly, too overwhelmed to think, let alone speak.

“We were living in South Carolina right after the war,” Pearl began.

“After
the war?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

Anna giggled, and Pearl cracked a tiny sliver of a smile. “The War of Independence,” Pearl explained briefly. “We were lucky during the war.

Al safe, al sound, al a family.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes for a moment before continuing. “My husband ran a smal apothecary when a wave of consumption hit town.

Everyone was affected—my husband, my two sons, my baby daughter. Within a week, they were dead.”

I didn’t know what to say. Could I say I was sorry for something that had happened so long ago?

“And then Anna began coughing. And I
knew
I couldn’t lose her, too. My heart would break, but it was more than that,” Pearl said, shaking her head as if caught in her own world. “I knew my
soul
and my
spirit
would break. And then I met Katherine.”

I glanced toward Katherine. She looked so young, so innocent. I glanced away before she could look at me.

“Katherine was different,” Pearl said. “She arrived in town mysteriously, without relatives, but she immediately became part of society.”

I nodded, wondering who, then, was killed in the Atlanta fire that brought Katherine to Mystic Falls. But I didn’t ask, waiting for Pearl to continue her story.

She cleared her throat. “Still, there was something about her that was unusual. All the ladies and I talked about it. She was beautiful, of course, but there was something else. Something otherworldly. Some called her an angel. But then she never got sick, not during the cold seasons, and not when the consumption began in town. There were certain herbs she wouldn’t touch in the apothecary. Charleston was a small town then. People talked.”

Pearl reached for her daughter’s hand. “Anna would have died,” Pearl continued. “That’s what the doctor said. I was desperate for a cure, wracked with grief and feeling so helpless. Here I was, a woman surrounded by medicine, unable to help my daughter live.” Pearl shook her head in disgust.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“I asked Katherine one day if she knew of anything that could be done. And as soon as I asked, I
knew
she did. There was something in her eyes that changed. But she still took a few minutes of silence before she responded and then—”

“Pearl brought Anna to my chambers one night,” Katherine interjected.

“She saved me,” Anna said in a soft voice.

“She saved me,” Anna said in a soft voice.

“Mother too.”

“And that’s how we ended up here. We couldn’t stay in Charleston forever, never growing old,” Pearl explained. “Of course, soon we’ll have to move again. That’s the way it goes. We’re gypsies, navigating between Richmond and Atlanta and all the towns in between. And now we have
another
war to deal with. Seeing so much history really proves to us that some things never do change,” Pearl said, smiling ruefully. “But there are worse ways to pass the time.”

“I like it here,” Anna admitted. “That’s why I’m scared we’ll be sent away.” She said that last part as a whisper, and something about her tone made me achingly sad.

I thought of the meeting I’d attended that afternoon. If Father had his way, they wouldn’t be sent away, they’d be killed.

“The attacks?” I asked finally. It had been the one question that had been nagging at me ever since Katherine’s confession. Because if she didn’t do it, then who … ?

Pearl shook her head. “Remember, we’re your neighbors and friends. It wasn’t us. We never would behave like that.”

“Never,” Anna parroted, shaking her head fearfully, as though she were being accused.

“But some of our tribe have,” Pearl said darkly.

Katherine’s eyes hardened. “But it’s not just
we
or the other vampires who are causing trouble. Of course, that’s who everyone blames, but no one seems to remember that there’s a war going on with untold bloodshed. All people care about are vampires.” Hearing Damon’s words in Katherine’s mouth was like a bucket of cold water in my face, a reminder that I wasn’t the only person in Katherine’s universe.

“Who are the other vampires?” I asked gruffly.

“It’s our community, and we will take care of it,”

Pearl said firmly. She stood up, then walked across the clearing, her feet crunching on the ground until she stood above me. “Stefan, I’ve told you the story and now here are the facts: We need blood to live. But we don’t need it from humans,”

Pearl said, as if she were explaining to one of her customers how an herb worked. “We can get it from animals. But, like humans, some of us don’t have self-control, and some of us attack people.

It’s really not that much different from a rogue soldier, is it?”

I suddenly had an image of one of the soldiers we’d just played poker with. Were any of them vampires, too?

“And remember, Stefan, we only know some.

There could be more. We’re not as uncommon as you may think,” Katherine said.

“And now, because of these vampires we don’t even know, we’re all being hunted,” Pearl said, tears filling her eyes. “That’s why we’re meeting here tonight. We need to discuss what to do and come up with a plan. Just this afternoon, Honoria Fells brought a vervain concoction to the apothecary. How that woman even
knows
about vervain, I have no idea. Suddenly, I feel like I’m an animal about to be trapped. People have glanced at our necks, and I know they’re wondering about our necklaces, piecing together the fact that all three of us always wear them….” Pearl trailed off as she raised her hands to the sky, as if in an exasperated prayer.

Quickly, I glanced at each of the women and realized that Anna and Pearl were wearing ornate cameos like the one Katherine wore.

“The necklace?” I asked, clutching my own throat as if I, too, had a mysterious blue gem there.

“Lapis lazuli. It allows us to walk in daylight.

Those of our kind cannot, usually. But these gems protect us. They’ve allowed us to live normally and, perhaps, even allowed us to stay more in touch with our human side than we would have otherwise,” Pearl said thoughtfully. “You don’t know what it’s like, Stefan.” Pearl’s matter-of-fact voice dissolved into sobs. “It’s good to know that we have friends we can trust.”

I took out my handkerchief from my breast pocket and handed it to her, unsure what else I could do. She dabbed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that you have to know about this, Stefan. I knew from the last time that war changes things, but I never thought … it’s too soon to have to move again.”

“I’ll protect you,” I heard myself saying, in a voice that didn’t quite sound like mine.

“But … but … how?” Pearl asked. Far off in the distance, a branch broke, and all four of us jumped. Pearl glanced around. “How?” she said again, finally, when all was still.

“My father’s leading a charge in a few weeks.”

I felt a tiny pinprick of betrayal as I said it.

“Giuseppe Salvatore.” Pearl gasped in disbelief. “But how did he know?”

I shook my head. “It’s Father and Jonathan Gilbert and Honoria Fells and Mayor Lockwood and Sheriff Forbes. They seem to know about vampires from books. Father has an old volume in his study, and together they came up with the idea to lead a siege.”

“Then he’ll do it. Giuseppe Salvatore is not a man to have his opinions easily swayed,” Pearl stated.

“No, ma’am.” I realized how funny it was to calla vampire
ma’am
. But who was I to say what was normal and what wasn’t? Once again, my mind drifted to my brother and his words, his casual laughter when it came to Katherine’s true nature.

Maybe

it
wasn’t
that Katherine was evil, or uncommon at all. Maybe the only thing that was uncommon was the fact that Father was fixated on eradicating the vampires.

“Stefan, I promise that nothing I’ve said to you was a lie,” Pearl said. “And I know that we will do everything in our power to ensure that no more animals or humans are killed as long as we’re here. But you simply
must
do what you can. For us. Because Anna and I have come too far and gone through too much to simply be killed by our neighbors.”