The Compelled (15 page)
T
he sky above the ocean was a beautiful pink that reminded me of the magnolia trees when they were in full bloom back in Mystic Falls. It was the perfect contrast to the deep, moody blue of the Atlantic.
Damon and I glanced at each other. I still hadn’t said anything about the fact that I’d almost killed him. I knew I’d been compelled to do it, but there was something deeper than that, too, and it shamed me. In that moment, I’d
wanted
Damon’s death. And a tiny kernel in the depths of my being still did. Of course I’d never act on it, but being reminded it was there was unsettling, and a large reason why I couldn’t continue to spend time with him.
“I guess this is it,” Cora said, glancing at the huge ship silhouetted against the sinking sun. She was dressed in a
sky-blue dress, with a mink stole she’d found in the closet of the house on Bedford Square. Behind her, Damon was pulling a steamer trunk filled with everything she could fit from the house, including a large chest of gold coins. She was a wealthy woman now, and I had no doubt she’d have no problems settling in America. Cora clutched her ticket in her hand: first class, one way, on the White Star line. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
I shook my head sadly. I didn’t want to follow Cora, trailing behind her like a cloud always ready to break and unleash a torrent of terror.
“Small town life was never right for me,” Damon said. “I need to get a proper taste of Europe.” Damon picked her up and squeezed her tightly. “Be good. I don’t want to hear any reports of funny business in America. No killing vampires, no dressing up and infiltrating your way into charitable societies, and no becoming friends with any other creatures of darkness, you hear?”
Cora raised an eyebrow. “Oh, like you’ll just be waiting around for news from me. I know you’ll be far too busy capturing the hearts of all the ladies of Europe. I just hope you eventually settle down!”
Then Cora turned to me. “Stefan, thank you for everything,” she said seriously. “And remember, no more apologies.”
“I’ll try,” I said. Of course, that would mean that I’d
have to stop doing things I regretted. Maybe I could.
“And both of you, take care of each other,” she said sternly.
“We will,” I said hollowly. Right now, it seemed the best way to take care of each other was to be as far away from each other as possible.
“Take care of me?” Damon protested. “I think I need a bodyguard to make sure he doesn’t go off the rails. He was terrifying! I’ll tell you something, brother,” he said, slugging me companionably on my arm. I guess Damon wasn’t as mad at me as I’d thought. Had we really moved past our petty differences? “You’re stronger than I thought. Why not use it? Just think, the two Salvatores could put on a real show, the kind that Gallagher and his circus could only dream of,” he said.
“I’m afraid I’m only up to doing battle once every twenty-five years,” I joked.
“So that would be, what? 1913? Cora, put it on your calendar. Wherever we are, we’ll make sure you come to witness it,” Damon joked.
“I’m planning to be
quite
at peace in 1913, thank you very much,” she retorted. “After all, I’ll be a middle-aged lady by then. The lot of you wouldn’t even look twice at me.”
“I’ll make an exception,” Damon said, bowing deeply.
I imagined her twenty-five years in the future. She’d
have a husband and children. I wondered if she’d name one of them Violet and tell them stories of their long-lost aunt’s beauty and bravery. I wondered what else she’d tell them about the events that had made her the woman she’d become.
“But you’ve got me thinking,” Cora said spontaneously as the ship belched out three long, low horn blasts, a signal that departure was imminent. “Why
not
meet in 1913? Wherever we are. I’ll make sure if I move to always keep my address updated at the Mystic Falls post office. Somehow, you’ll always be able to find me!” she said excitedly, her eyes full of hope that there was a future for her; a future for all of us. I nodded slowly. Maybe a meeting twenty-five years in the future would be enough for me to keep hope.
“Is it a deal, brother?” Damon asked, his face twisted into a smirk. I nodded slowly. For once, we weren’t fighting over a girl. Instead, we were both able to let her ago, and she—and we—were all better off for it.
“Until then, gentlemen!” Cora said. She pulled out her pocket watch and reverentially touched it, then turned and walked up the gangplank. When she reached the end, she whirled around and blew us a kiss before disappearing into the ship.
“Well, we did it,” Damon said, sounding as proud as if he were a parent sending his daughter down the aisle for
her wedding.
“She did it,” I said. “She’s quite a girl.”
“We always do agree on the essential truths,” Damon said. “So now, where to? I’ve heard there’s a wicked poker game that takes place at the Mouse Trap, just down the port. Shall we go all-in, like old times?” Damon asked, wiggling his eyebrows. “You need to win some money to pay me back for the fact that you almost killed me.”
I shook my head. “I’m leaving, too,” I explained.
Surprise crossed Damon’s face. “With Cora? Was that your plan?” he asked accusingly.
“No. I don’t know where I’m going. I’ll take whatever ship comes. Africa? Australia?”
“Are you sure? Because Europe is ours for the taking. We could have parties and balls and marry princesses from the Continent. We’d ensure that the Salvatore name would matter. That’s my plan. Come join me.”
I shook my head. For a split second, Damon looked disappointed. But it quickly passed.
“Probably for the best,” Damon said, pressing his lips into a straight line. “I wouldn’t want you cramping my style.”
I held out my hand for Damon to shake, but he ignored the gesture.
“Maybe in 1913,” I teased. Damon jammed his hands in his pocket and turned away without responding.
I watched his figure retreat down the pier, and then, when he was only a speck in the distance, I lifted my eyes to the horizon. The sun was sinking slowly. I glanced at the ships rocking in the sea, trying to decide which one to take.
My stomach rumbled, but I ignored it. There would be plenty of rats aboard whatever steamer I chose. I could live on rodents. It would be penance, and it would feel good after so much temptation. I’d taken money from the house, so I wouldn’t have to worry about paying my fare. I wouldn’t need to rely on compulsion. I wanted to start my next chapter with a clean slate. I would live a simple, and welcome, existence.
Cora’s steamer lurched away, chugging toward the horizon. People on the deck blew kisses at the crowds that had congregated on the dock to wave good-bye. I tried to make out Cora, but I couldn’t see her. I waved, still, bidding farewell to this chapter of my life as much as I was to Cora.
And then, once the ship had disappeared beyond the horizon, I turned and walked toward town, shoulders squared, head up—just another man seeking a new life far away.
I
n one of my schoolbooks there was a painting called
The Fountain of Youth,
an Edenic image of young, beautiful people in the middle of an endless party. As a child, I’d glanced at it again and again, enchanted by the idea of immortality.
Now I knew better. Immortality wasn’t idyllic or enchanting. But it was powerful.
If I had to live forever, I had to make it count. And that was why I needed to get as far away as I could from temptation—and from Damon.
So that’s why I boarded a ship bound for New Zealand. I had no idea if I’d stay for a month, a year, or a century, and I liked it that way. I liked not needing a plan. I liked only depending
on myself. And I liked the way it was so easy to slip into conversation with a stranger and no longer feel like I was hiding a horrible secret.
I was Stefan Salvatore.
I still craved blood. The desire was relentless, all-consuming, a second heartbeat pounding away in the center of my being. I wondered what it would feel like if I could just give in to my dark side, like Damon. I wondered what would have happened if Lady Alice hadn’t come and saved both of us. When it mattered, in that final moment between life and death, would I have had the self-control to break the compulsion and pull myself off him?
I didn’t think so.
And I vowed that for the rest of eternity, I’d never be in the position to find out.
THIRSTY FOR MORE?
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D
ear Diary,
I’m so scared.
My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry, and my hands are shaking. I’ve faced so much and survived: vampires, werewolves, phantoms. Things I never imagined were real. And now I’m terrified. Why?
Simply because I’m leaving home.
And I know that it’s completely, insanely ridiculous. I’m barely leaving home, really. I’m going to college, only a few hours’ drive from this darling house where I’ve lived since I was a baby. No, I’m not going to start crying again. I’ll be sharing a room with Bonnie and Meredith, my two best friends in the whole world. In the
same dorm, only a couple of floors away, will be my beloved Stefan. My other best friend, Matt, will be just a short walk across campus. Even Damon will be in an apartment in the town nearby.
Honestly, I couldn’t stick any closer to home unless I never moved out of this house at all. I’m being such a wimp. But it seems like I just got my home back—my family, my life—after being exiled for so long, and now I suddenly have to leave again.
I suppose I’m scared partly because these last few weeks of summer have been wonderful. We packed all the enjoyment we would have been having these past few months—if it hadn’t been for fighting the kitsune, traveling to the Dark Dimension, battling the jealousy phantom, and all the other Extremely Not Fun things we’ve done—into three glorious weeks. We had picnics and sleepovers and went swimming and shopping. We took a trip to the county fair, where Matt won Bonnie a stuffed tiger and turned bright red when she squealed and leapt into his arms. Stefan even kissed me on the top of the Ferris wheel, just like any normal guy might kiss his girlfriend on a beautiful summer night.
We were so happy. So normal in a way I thought we could never be again.
That’s what’s frightening me, I guess. I’m scared that these few weeks have been a bright, golden interlude, and that now that things are changing, we’ll be heading back into darkness and horror. It’s like that poem we read in English class last fall says: Nothing gold can stay. Not for me.
Even Damon…
The clatter of feet in the hallway downstairs distracted her, and Elena Gilbert’s pen slowed. She glanced up at the last couple of boxes scattered around her room. Stefan and Damon must be here to pick her up.
But she wanted to finish her thought, to express the last worry that had been nagging at her during these perfect weeks. She turned back to her diary, writing faster so that she could get her thoughts down before she had to leave.
Damon has changed. Ever since we defeated the jealousy phantom, he’s been…kinder. Not just to me, not just to Bonnie, who he’s always had a soft spot for, but even to Matt and Meredith. He can still be intensely irritating and unpredictable—he wouldn’t be Damon without that—but he hasn’t
had that cruel edge to him. Not like he used to.
He and Stefan seem to have come to an understanding. They know I love them both, and yet they haven’t let jealousy come between them. They’re close, acting like true brothers in a way I haven’t seen before. There’s this delicate balance between the three of us that’s lasted through the end of the summer. And I worry that any misstep on my part will bring it crashing down and that like their first love, Katherine, I’ll tear the brothers apart. And then we’ll lose Damon forever.
Aunt Judith called up, sounding impatient, “E
le
na!”
“Coming!” Elena replied. She quickly scribbled a few more sentences in her diary.
Still, it’s possible that this new life will be wonderful. Maybe I’ll find everything I’ve been looking for. I can’t hold on to high school, or to my life here at home, forever. And who knows? Maybe this time the gold will stay.
“
Elena!
Your ride is
waiting
!”
Aunt Judith was definitely getting stressed out now. She’d wanted to drive Elena up to school herself. But Elena knew she wouldn’t be able to say good-bye to her family
without crying, so she’d asked Stefan and Damon to drive her up instead. It would be less embarrassing to get emotional here at home than to weep all over Dalcrest’s campus. Since Elena had decided to go up with the Salvatore brothers, Aunt Judith had been working herself up about every little detail, anxious that Elena’s college career wouldn’t start off perfectly without her there to supervise. It was all because Aunt Judith loved her, Elena knew.
Elena slammed the blue-velvet-covered journal shut and dropped it into an open box. She climbed to her feet and headed for the door, but before she opened it, she turned to look at her room one last time.
It was so empty, with her favorite posters missing from the walls and half the books gone from her bookcase. Only a few clothes remained in her dresser and closet. The furniture was all still in place. But now that the room was stripped of most of her possessions, it felt more like an impersonal hotel room than the cozy haven of her childhood.
So much had happened here. Elena could remember cuddling up with her father on the window seat to read together when she was a little girl. She and Bonnie and Meredith—and Caroline, who had been her good friend, too, once—had spent at least a hundred nights here telling secrets, studying, dressing for dances, and just hanging out. Stefan had kissed her here, early in the morning, and disappeared quickly when Aunt Judith came to wake her.
Elena remembered Damon’s cruel, triumphant smile as she invited him in that first time, what felt like a million years ago. And, not so long ago, her joy when he had appeared here one dark night, after they all thought he was dead.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and it swung open. Stefan stood in the doorway, watching her.
“About ready?” he said. “Your aunt is a little worried. She thinks you’re not going to have time to unpack before orientation if we don’t get going.”
Elena stood and went over to wrap her arms around him. He smelled clean and woodsy, and she nestled her head against his shoulder. “I’m coming,” she said. “It’s just hard to say good-bye, you know? Everything’s changing.”
Stefan turned toward her and caught her mouth softly in a kiss. “I know,” he said when the kiss ended, and ran his finger gently along the curve of her bottom lip. “I’ll take these boxes down and give you one more minute. Aunt Judith will feel better if she sees the truck getting packed up.”
“Okay. I’ll be right down.”
Stefan left the room with the boxes, and Elena sighed, looking around again. The blue flowered curtains her mother had made for her when Elena was nine still hung over the windows. Elena remembered her mother hugging her, her eyes a little teary, when her baby girl told her she was too big for Winnie the Pooh curtains.
Elena’s own eyes filled with tears, and she tucked her
hair behind her ears, mirroring the gesture her mother had used when she was thinking hard. Elena was so young when her parents died. Maybe if they’d lived, she and her mother would be friends now, would know each other as equals, not just as mother and daughter.
Her parents had gone to Dalcrest College, too. That’s where they’d met, in fact. Downstairs on top of the piano sat a picture of them in their graduation robes on the sun-filled lawn in front of the Dalcrest library, laughing, impossibly young.
Maybe going to Dalcrest would bring Elena closer to them. Maybe she’d learn more about the
people
they’d been, not just the mom and dad she’d known when she was little, and find her lost family among the neoclassical buildings and the sweeping green lawns of the college.
She wasn’t leaving, not really. She was moving forward.
Elena set her jaw firmly and headed out of her room, clicking off the light as she went.
Downstairs, Aunt Judith, her husband, Robert, and Elena’s five-year-old sister, Margaret, were gathered in the hall, waiting, watching Elena as she came down the stairs.
Aunt Judith was fussing, of course. She couldn’t keep still; her hands were twisting together, smoothing her hair, or fiddling with her earrings. “Elena,” she said, “are you sure you’ve packed everything you need? There’s so much to remember.” She frowned.
Her aunt’s obvious anxiety made it easier for Elena to smile reassuringly and hug her. Aunt Judith held her tight, relaxing for a moment, and sniffed. “I’m going to miss you, sweetheart.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” Elena said, and squeezed Aunt Judith closer, feeling her own lips tremble. She gave a shaky laugh. “But I’ll be back. If I forgot anything, or if I get homesick, I’ll run right back for a weekend. I don’t have to wait for Thanksgiving.”
Next to them, Robert shifted from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. Elena let go of Aunt Judith and turned to him.
“Now, I know college students have a lot of expenses,” he said. “And we don’t want you to have to worry about money, so you’ve got an account at the student store, but…” He opened his wallet and handed Elena a fistful of bills. “Just in case.”
“Oh,” said Elena, touched and a little flustered. “Thank you so much, Robert, but you really don’t have to.”
He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “We want you to have everything you need,” he said firmly. Elena smiled at him gratefully, folded the money, and put it in her pocket.
Next to Robert, Margaret glared down obstinately at her shoes. Elena knelt before her and took her little sister’s hands. “Margaret?” she prompted.
Large blue eyes stared into her own. Margaret frowned and shook her head, her mouth a tight line.
“I’m going to miss you so much, Meggie,” Elena said, pulling her close, her eyes filling with tears again. Her little sister’s dandelion-soft hair brushed against Elena’s cheek. “But I’ll be back for Thanksgiving, and maybe you can come visit me on campus. I’d love to show off my little sister to all my new friends.”
Margaret swallowed. “I don’t want you to go,” she said in a small, miserable voice. “You’re always
leaving.
”
“Oh, sweetie,” Elena said helplessly, cuddling her sister closer. “I always come back, don’t I?”
Elena shivered. Once again, she wondered how much Margaret remembered of what had
really
happened in Fell’s Church over the last year. The Guardians promised to change everyone’s memories of those dark months when vampires, werewolves, and kitsune had nearly destroyed the town—and when Elena herself had died and risen again—but there seemed to be exceptions. Caleb Smallwood remembered, and sometimes Margaret’s innocent face looked strangely knowing.
“Elena,” Aunt Judith said again, her voice thick and weepy, “you’d better get going.”
Elena hugged her sister one more time before letting her go. “Okay,” she said, standing and picking up her bag. “I’ll call you tonight and let you know how I’m settling in.”
Aunt Judith nodded, and Elena gave her another quick kiss before wiping her eyes and opening the front door.
Outside, the sunlight was so bright she had to blink. Damon and Stefan were leaning against the truck Stefan had rented, her stuff packed into the back. As she stepped forward, they both glanced up and, at the same time, smiled at her.
Oh.
They were so beautiful, the two of them, that seeing them could still leave her shaken after all this time. Stefan, her love Stefan, his leaf-green eyes shining at the sight of her, was gorgeous with his classical profile and that sweet little kissable curve to his bottom lip.
And Damon—all luminescent pale skin, black velvety eyes, and silken hair—was graceful and deadly all at once. Damon’s brilliant smile made something inside her stretch and purr like a panther recognizing its mate.
Both pairs of eyes watched her lovingly, possessively.
The Salvatore brothers were hers now. What was she going to do about it? The thought made her frown and made her shoulders hunch nervously. Then she consciously smoothed the wrinkles in her forehead away, relaxed, and smiled back at them. What would come, would come.
“Time to go,” she said, and tilted her face up toward the sun.