The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation: Unseen (27 page)

Then he looked up and his eyes flashed golden in the darkness, and Stefan knew this was him. Those eyes were full of cold intelligence and pure malice, the eyes of something slimy and primeval that had watched from under a rock for countless millennia as civilizations rose and fell.

Solomon stepped closer to them, closer to Elena, and Stefan went cold with dread.

His worst fears were being realized, and there was nothing Stefan could do about it. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. All he could do was watch as everything that mattered to him was about to be destroyed.

“A pretty girl,” Solomon said, his voice dry and rasping, and reached a hand out to touch Elena’s face.

Stefan wanted to scream with rage, wanted to strike Solomon and knock him back, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move.

Almost gently, Solomon traced a finger over Elena’s cheekbones, over her soft lips, across her delicate chin. And everywhere he touched, Elena began to bleed, tiny droplets coming through her skin and running down the surface of her face. Stefan could smell the richness of Elena’s blood everywhere, and his canines throbbed and lengthened against his will.

“Lovely,” Solomon said approvingly. He stroked his fingers through Elena’s blood, smearing it in feathery patterns across her face. “Perfect.”

There were footsteps coming toward them, and Solomon looked up, his golden eyes sharp. Stefan’s hopes rose for a second. Maybe this was someone who could help them.

“There you are,” Solomon said approvingly, and Stefan’s heart sank again. Even though he couldn’t see her yet, he knew who it was. Trinity. Whatever was left of her, fully in thrall to this wicked Old One.

Please, not Elena. Let her live
, he prayed to the God he had believed in unquestioningly as a human. A stream of blood ran down Elena’s chin, dripping to stain her shirt. She was terribly pale.

Beyond Elena, he could see Solomon, his golden eyes following Trinity. She hesitated directly behind Stefan, then passed him by. A moment later there was the sound of skin striking skin and a steady trickle of liquid hitting the stone floor.
Blood
, Stefan realized with horror, smelling the coppery, rich scent. Trinity had hurt someone, but he didn’t know who.

Solomon smiled. “Come here,” he ordered.

Trinity walked straight to Solomon and stood before him, her hands folded in front of her and her face upturned to his in a parody of an obedient child. Golden eyes gazed into golden eyes, and Solomon’s smile broadened.

“Hunters,” he said slowly. “Your old friends. Which shall we kill first?” He looked from one side of the group to the other, slowly, and then nodded. “Jack, of course.” His gaze narrowed on the hunter, next to Stefan. “I don’t trust him.”

Trinity came back toward them, her shoulder brushing Stefan’s as she stretched to reach Jack’s throat. She gave a soft sound of satisfaction as her teeth pierced his vein. Stefan could smell her now. She stank revoltingly of old blood and sweat.

Solomon stretched out a hand toward Elena again, his fingernails long and black with filth. Tracing one across Elena’s collarbone, he sighed theatrically. “So pretty,” he said again. “I’d like to keep you, little Guardian, make you mine.” Where his finger traced, Elena’s skin split open, blood pouring out over her collarbone, down across her chest, staining her shirt with gore. “Sadly, though, I think I should get rid of you now. Your blood is too much a danger to me,” Solomon finished quietly.

Staring helplessly straight ahead, Stefan wanted to die. He would gladly die, if it would protect Elena.

Elena’s arm quivered.

At first Stefan thought it was an illusion of the dim, wavery light. But then Bonnie blinked, a slow, definite blink. They were still touching, he realized. They were working together, in the same way that they had managed to work together to locate Solomon.

Elena’s eyes flicked to meet Stefan’s, clear, brilliant blue despite the blood running down her face. In them he could read her message:
Be ready.

It was so cold that the first touch of warmth spreading inside him felt like fire. He knew without questioning that it came from Elena.

Trinity was feeding from Jack beside him, making thick slurping noises. Solomon glanced away from Elena for a moment, watching whatever horror his puppet was perpetrating, and then turned his gaze back to her, drawing a knife from a sheath at his waist. Stefan recognized it: It had once been Trinity’s. A hunter’s knife.

The burning warmth filled his body. Stefan knew he would only get this one chance, and that only if he were very lucky. Solomon pressed the knife slowly against Elena’s throat. Suddenly, Stefan sucked in a breath, all his muscles screaming in protest as he forced them to move at once. Lunging forward with a massive effort, Stefan raised his machete and brought it across Solomon’s neck.

Solomon’s body fell slowly and as it landed, the ice beneath him cracked. For a long moment, everything was silent. Then Trinity fell backward to the ground and began to sob.

Stefan couldn’t look away from Solomon, a small skinny body on the cold stone floor. He looked so inconsequential. How many people had he sent out to the world to dance at his command? Jack had been right: Solomon left no trace, because he didn’t need to be there to destroy.

When Stefan finally tore his eyes away, he saw that Trinity was kneeling next to Jack, his head cradled in her hands. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, her eyes their normal, untroubled blue. “Oh, my God. I don’t … it’s all like a dream. A nightmare.”

“It’s okay, Trinity,” Jack reassured her. Blood was still streaming from the bite on his neck, but he wiped it away. “It’s all going to be all right.”

And then Elena was in Stefan’s arms, whispering, “We did it, we did it,” kissing his face and holding him so tight he thought she might never let him go. The open cut on her collarbone was barely beginning to clot. Stefan automatically bit his own wrist and held it out for her.

“Drink,” he said. She bent to suck at his wrist, and he watched her affectionately. “
You
did it,” he told her. “You and Bonnie.” He could feel the glorious, thankful strength of Elena, and he lost himself in it, feeling his own triumph and relief echoed back to him.

We’re free at last
, he told her silently.
We can finally live in peace
.

#TVD11StakingSolomon

N
ow here
, Damon thought smugly,
is the good stuff
.

It had taken awhile to find it. At first, Lifetime Solutions’ offices seemed disappointingly reputable. There was a room full of caged lab rats, none of them growing fangs or second heads. The notes on their treatments were incomprehensible to Damon, just lists of experimental medications and reactions in highly technical jargon. The papers in the filing cabinets were similarly dull, and he hadn’t been able to bypass the passwords to investigate the computers properly.

Everything seemed boringly, incomprehensibly normal. If Damon hadn’t found a business card from this company in the pocket of one of those strange vampires, he would have dismissed it as completely ordinary.

Now he was standing in what was clearly the CEO’s office. Bigger and more richly furnished than any of the others, with wide floor-to-ceiling windows and a large seating area. Damon had gone through the desk drawers, the cabinets at one side of the room, the coat closet in the corner. Nothing.

Nothing except that the top drawer of the desk seemed shallower than it ought to be. Damon jiggled it, then carefully tilted the drawer back and slid it forward. Just as he’d thought, there was a small keyhole at the top of the back of the drawer. A secret, locked compartment. Interesting.

The lock wasn’t much of a challenge; lock picking was a skill Damon had learned centuries ago. Inside the compartment was a thick notebook bound in brown leather.

Damon quickly flipped through the pages, growing ever more curious. It seemed to be some kind of journal: part philosophical musings, part the record of a series of experiments.

There must be a way to improve with science what can be imperfectly wrought by magic
, Damon read.
My subjects begin to develop, then die without warning, their hearts bursting under their new stresses. Is there a way to strengthen the circulatory system and allow improved capacity? Multiple surgeries will be necessary.

Subject K4 showed promise, but the side effects of the adrenaline and stimulants were too great. Subject proved ungovernable and prone to uncontrollable fits of rage. After dismemberment of lab assistant, subject was destroyed.

“Subject K4 didn’t want to bow down to you, did he, Doctor?” Damon muttered. The back of his neck was prickling uneasily as he read: There was something very, very wrong here. He flipped forward a few pages and read on.

After the deaths of the first batch of test subjects and the disaster of Subject K4, the doctor had adjusted the dosages and streamlined a course of surgeries, not just on the circulatory system but on the muscles, digestive system, brain, and even facial structure and teeth.

And, gradually, his experiments began to survive.

A high dose of iron and protein is necessary to combat the anemia that results from the new bone density. Is the traditional blood diet less mystical and more practical than previously thought?

Blood diet. Damon suddenly realized what he was reading. This person was trying to
make
vampires.

Trying, and apparently succeeding. As the doctor fine-tuned the surgeries and medications for his experiments, the pages Damon was reading became a record of triumphs.

As I had suspected, there is no reason but mysticism for the limitations of the natural vampire. By rerouting the circulatory system and adding a large dose of melanin to the initial medication, I have made my subjects impervious to the traditional methods of controlling their population: Subjects can walk easily in the sun and are not harmed by wood to the heart.

Nonphysical methods of identification proved more difficult at first to bypass. Test subjects were readily identified as unnatural by humans with highly developed senses: so-called “psychics” and “seers.”

Auras
, Damon thought.
He’s talking about people who can read auras, like Elena.
The doctor had eventually found a way around this, too. Through intensive meditation and a high dosage of serotonin inhibitors, the lab-created vampires had managed to learn to hide or disguise their auras.

This
, Damon thought, absently tapping the page with one finger,
could be useful
. He read on.

Finally, after so many trials and errors, the experiment has been an unqualified success. My subjects have all the advantages of the natural vampire: They do not appear to age or contract illnesses, they are stronger and faster than humans, they have highly developed senses. And yet I have been able to circumvent the disadvantages that keep natural vampires from being the perfect predators: Unlike their wild cousins, my subjects are not endangered by wood or sunlight. The time has come to move on to Stage B of the experiment.

Stage B? Damon flipped forward again and blinked in surprise at what he found. In the next stage of his experiment, the doctor had used the technique on himself. It made sense, Damon supposed. Certainly if he had created the ultimate predator, he wouldn’t want to remain prey.

This didn’t really explain why the doctor’s lab-manufactured vampires had been coming after Damon, though. He kept reading.

To take dominance in the natural world, it is necessary to eliminate competitive species. The vampire has survived unchanged for too long; in some cases for thousands of years. These targets must be eliminated for my bold new world to be possible. The greatest threat to my new creations is their inspiration: the traditional vampire.

Turning one more page, Damon found two lists of names.

The first was Old Ones, he recognized immediately. First names only—the Old Ones came from a time before people needed more than one name.
Klaus, Celine, Benevenuto, Alexander—
Old Ones he knew Stefan and his friends had killed, each one crossed out in black ink. Other names he didn’t recognize—
Chihiro, Gunnar of the North, Milimo, Pachacuti
—were crossed out in red.

Only one name remained unmarked:
Solomon.

“You’ve been busy, Doctor Jekyll,” Damon muttered, tracing over the red-crossed names with one finger.

The second list was much longer—and much worse. Many of these crossed-out names were vampires Damon knew.

Anne Grimmsdotir
: a quiet, fierce girl who had wandered the North since the days of the Vikings. She didn’t talk much, but she was graceful and quick.

Sophia Alexiou
: beautiful, elegant Sophia, whom Damon had spent a Mediterranean winter with once, more than a century ago.

Abioye Ogunwale
: Sharp-tongued and stubborn, he’d always been a gambler. He’d won Damon’s favorite boots in a card game, back in the seventeenth century.