Bloodlust

Tension coiled in my body. "No!" It took a swat of my arm to toss him against the wall.

The nurse dropped her cigarette. The ash sparked, then extinguished. I felt the bulge of my fangs behind my lips. It was just a matter of time now.

Damon struggled to his feet, crouching low as if I was going to strike him again.

"I wont watch this," he said. "If you do this, I will never forgive you."

"I have to get back to my shift," the nurse muttered, taking a step away from me, as if to run.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me. She let out one short yelp before I covered her mouth with my hand. "No need to worry about that anymore," I hissed, sinking my teeth into her neck.

The liquid tasted like rotting leaves and antiseptic, as if the death and decay of the hospital had invaded her body. I spit the still warm liquid into the gutter and threw the nurse to the ground. Her face was twisted in a grimace of fear.

Stupid girl. She should have sensed the danger and run while she still could. It hadnt even been a hunt. Worthless. She groaned, and I wrapped my fingers against her throat and squeezed until I heard the satisfying crack of bone breaking. Her head hung at an unnatural angle, blood still dripping from the wound.

She wasnt making any noise now.

I turned toward Damon, who stared at me, a horrified expression on his face.

"Vampires kill. Its what we do, brother," I said calmly, my gaze locking on Damons blue eyes.

"Its whatyoudo," he said, taking off the coat around his shoulders and throwing it over the nurse. "Not me. Never me."

Anger pulsed like a heart at the very core of my being. "Youre weak," I growled.

"Maybe so," Damon said. "But Id rather be weak than a monster." His voice grew strong. "I want no part in your killing spree. And if our paths ever cross again, I swear I will avenge all of your murders, brother."

Then he spun on his heel and ran at vampire speed down the alleyway, instantly disappearing into the swirling mist.

Chapter 8~9

Chapter 8

October 4, 1864

As a human, I’d thought it was my mother’s death that had shaped the men Damon and I would become. I’d called myself a half-orphan in the initial days after she died, locking myself away in my room, feeling as though my life had ended at the young age of ten. Father believed grieving was weak and unmanly, so Damon had been the one to comfort me. He’d go riding with me, let me join the older boys in their games, and beat up the Giffin brothers when they made fun of me for crying about Mother during a baseball game. Damon had always been the strong one, my protector.

But I was wrong. It is my own death that has shaped me.

Now the tables have turned. I am the strong one, and I have been trying to be Damon’s protector. But while I have always been grateful to Damon, he despises me and blames me for what he has become. I had forced him to feed from Alice, a bartender at the local tavern, which had completed his transformation. But does that make me a villain? I think not, especially as the act had saved his life.

Finally, I see Damon the way Father had seen him: too imperious, too willful, too quick to make up his mind, and too slow to change it.

And as I had also realized earlier this evening as I stood just outside the dim glare of the gas lamp, the body of the dead nurse at my feet: I am alone. A full orphan. Just as Katherine had presented herself when she came to Mystic Falls and stayed in our guesthouse.

So that’s how vampires do it, then. They exploit vulnerability, get humans to trust them, and then, when all the emotions are firmly in place, they attack.

So that is what I will do. I know not how or who my next victim will be, but I know, more than ever, that the only person I can look out for and protect is myself. Damon is on his own, and so am I.

I heard Damon steal through the city, moving at vampire speed down the streets and alleys. At one point, he paused, whispering Katherines name over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer. Then, nothing

Was he dead? Had he drowned himself? Or was he simply too far away for me to hear him?

Either way, the result was the same. I was alone–Id lost my only connection to the man Id once been: Stefan Salvatore, the dutiful son, the lover of poetry, the man who stood up for what was right.

I wondered if that meant that Stefan Salvatore, with no one to remember him, was really, truly dead, leaving me to be anyone.

I could move to a different city every year, see the whole world. I could assume as many identities as Id like. I could be a Union soldier. I could be an Italian businessman.

I could even be Damon.

The sun plunged past the horizon like a cannonball falling to earth, dipping the city into darkness. I turned from one gaslit street to the next, the soles of my boots rasping over the gravelly cobblestones. A loose newspaper blew toward me. I stomped on the broadsheet, examining an etched photo of a girl with long, dark hair and pale eyes.

She looked vaguely familiar. I wondered if she was a relative of one of the Mystic Falls girls. Or perhaps a nameless cousin whod attended barbecues at Veritas. But then I saw the headline:BRUTAL MURDER ABOARD THE ATLANTIC EXPRESS.

Lavinia. Of course.

Id already forgotten her. I reached down and crumpled the paper, hurling it as far as I could into the Mississippi. The surface of the water was muddy and turbulent, dappled with moonlight. I couldnt see my reflection–couldnt see anything but an abyss of blackness as deep and dark as my new future. Could I go for eternity, feeding, killing, forgetting, then repeating the cycle?

Yes. Every instinct and impulse I had screamedyes.

The triumph of closing in on my prey, touching my canines to the paper-thin skin that covered their necks, hearing their hearts slow to a dull thud and feeling a body go limp in my arms. Hunting and feeding made me feel alive, whole; they gave me a purpose in the world.