The Vampire Diaries: Stefan’s Diaries #3: The Craving (10 page)

B
y the time we reached the Sutherlands’, our horse’s lips were covered in foam and its eyes were rolling back until they were ringed with white.

“Not much of a racehorse,” he said carelessly, leaping down and giving it a pat on its neck. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it dropped dead from the exertion.”

I stepped out of the carriage, a putrid smell assaulting my nose as if the Thayers had taken up residence next to a slaughter yard. “I think he may already be dead,” I said gingerly. I took a deep breath and steadied myself. I had to be ready for whatever came next, be it Damon taking action against the Sutherlands or having to spend the night with my new bride. If that happened, it would be hard to keep my own promise of no more compelling humans. . . .

Steeling myself, I headed for the door.

“Not so fast, brother,” Damon said, putting a hand on my chest. Then he slipped it inside my waistcoat as lightly as a pickpocket, and pulled out the check Winfield had written me. “I’ll be needing this,” he explained happily.

“Oh yes. Money without the
tracks
,” I said bitterly. “Much less obvious than robbing a bank vault. So tell me, what about the cab driver? A dead man in the middle of the road—what about
those
tracks?”

“Him? No one will notice him,” Damon said, obviously surprised by my interest. “Look around, Stefan. People die in the streets here all the time. He’s no one.”

Damon had become the type of vampire who had no problem with killing even when it didn’t directly benefit him, and he committed murder at the drop of a hat. When I killed in my first days, it was always for thirst, or self-protection. Not for sport. And never simply for the
kill
.

“Besides, it really,
really
irritated you,” he added with a grin. “And isn’t that what it’s all about?”

He gave a little bow and indicated I should enter our new home first. Looking up at its beautiful gray walls and growling gargoyles, I wished no one had ever invited me in, that I had been forced to remain outside forever, a poor creature relegated to the park.

And then somebody screamed.

Damon and I both rushed in, practically tearing the door off its hinges in our effort to get through.

Margaret was standing in the living room, white as a sheet, her hand over her mouth. And it was very obvious why.

The entire place was spattered in what my spinning mind could only assume was black paint, until its smell hit my nose with the force of a truck:
blood.
Human blood. Gallons and gallons of it slowly dripping down the walls and congealing in pools on the floor. It threw me off guard, my vampire senses reeling from the sheer quantity.

Damon held one hand over his face, as if trying to stifle the sensations, and pointed with his other hand.

At first all I saw was a pair of stockinged legs askew on the rug, as if someone had too much to drink and fell down. Then I realized they weren’t attached to a body.

“No . . .” I whispered, sinking to my knees in horror.

The bodies of Lydia, Bridget, Winfield, and Mrs. Sutherland were scattered around the room in pieces.

The family I had married into to protect, the innocent humans I was trying to keep safe from Damon’s psychopathic tendencies, were all dead. But they hadn’t just been murdered—they had been torn apart and brutalized.

“What did you do?” I growled at Damon, fury turning my eyes red and beginning the change. “
What did you do?
”

I was going to rip his neck out. It was as simple as that. He was a monster, and I should have killed him long ago, long before he had a chance to destroy other people’s lives.

But Damon looked just as shocked as I felt. His ice-blue eyes were wide with unfeigned surprise.

“It wasn’t me,” he said. Margaret shot him a look that could have killed. The way he spoke it was as if he
could
have been him, just as easily—just not this time.

“I believe you,” Margaret said softly, shaking her head in abject grief.

I was surprised. Why, after all the questions, all the glares, all the arguments,
why
did she believe him now? Why, when she—again rightfully—assumed he was just after the money and had fled the moment the documents were dry, did she believe he wasn’t the murderer? But oddly I believed him, if for no other reason than the callousness of his tone.

As if she could read my thoughts, Margaret turned her eyes to me. “I can always tell when someone is lying,” she said simply. “It’s a . . . gift, I suppose.”

I thought about what Bram had said—how Margaret had hurt him just by looking at him. I touched my ring, thinking of the witch, Emily, who’d cast a spell over it to protect me from the sun. Was it possible that Margaret had powers, too?

I opened my mouth to ask her, but tears were leaking from her eyes. Now was not the time for an interrogation. Taking a deep breath I rose and went over to what was left of the bodies, trying to discover a clue or reason for the massacre.

The other half of Mrs. Sutherland’s body was sprawled on its belly next to the couch. One arm was stretched out, as if she were trying to get up, trying to crawl to her youngest daughter.

Bridget’s throat had been torn out and all of her limbs had been snapped in half. Her face was untouched, however. In death she looked like the little girl she really was, the soft rose of her cheeks slowly fading to an icy white, her lips opened slightly as if she were asleep. Her eyes, wide and green and clear as a china doll’s, were still open in shock. I gently put my hand over her face and pulled her lids down.

Lydia was frozen with a hand over her face, like an ancient Roman tomb carving, dignified even in death. I turned away from her ruined torso, the white bones of her back sticking through her cracked chest.

Winfield looked like a big, slain animal, a buffalo brought down in its prime. There were surprisingly neat gashes down his side, like something had been trying to butcher him.

Finally, I went over to Margaret and put my arms around her, turning her head so she wasn’t staring at the scene of carnage anymore. She clung to me, but stiffened in surprise when my hand brushed the skin on the back of her neck.

After a moment she pulled away. Shock seemed to slowly settle down over her features. She sank into a chair and regarded the room again, this time with a blank face.

“They were like this when I arrived,” she began slowly. “I stayed at the Richards’ longer than everyone else, looking for the two of you, trying to find someone who had seen you leave. Bram and Hilda and the usual gang had left earlier, planning some silly antics for your wedding night. A shivaree or something. I just assumed you two took off for Europe with your dowry.”

“Europe,” Damon said thoughtfully. I glared at him.

“The door was open,” she continued, “and the stench . . .”

We fell into silence. I didn’t know what to say or do. In ordinary, human circumstances, my first move would have been to get Margaret away from the house and call for help.

“Did you call for the police?” I asked suddenly.

Margaret met my gaze. “Yes. They’ll be here soon. And they’ll think it was you, you know.”

“It wasn’t,” Damon repeated.

She nodded, not bothering to look at him. Her skin was milky pale, as if some of the life had gone out of her when her family had died. “I know, but you are not innocent, either.”

“No, no, we are not,” Damon said in a distant voice, looking at Lydia’s cold body. For a moment, his features softened and he looked almost like a human in mourning. Then, he shook his head, as if snapping himself out of a reverie. “Margaret, I’m sorry for your loss,” he said perfunctorily. “But Stefan and I must run.”

“Why should I leave with you?” I challenged, the blood making my head spin, my thoughts whirling dizzily in my brain.

“Fine, stay here, get arrested.”

I turned to Margaret. “Are you going to be all right?”

She gave me a look as if I was mad. “My entire family is dead.”

Her voice quavered on the edge of sanity. I put my hand out and touched her shoulder, wishing I could say or do something. No one deserved this. But words wouldn’t bring her family back.

As Damon and I turned to go, the telltale
clip clop
of a police wagon pulling up in front of the house sounded, along with the firm orders of a chief directing his men.

“Out the back,” I said. Damon nodded and we ran through the dining room and kitchen to the door that opened on the courtyard. My hand was just about to touch the doorknob when Damon grabbed me, finger to his mouth. He pressed himself up against the wall, indicating I should do the same. My predator’s senses picked up what Damon had already figured out: There was a man, no, a pair of men, waiting silently outside with guns drawn, exactly prepared for us to escape that way.

“I’ll just quickly dispose of them,” Damon said.

“No! Upstairs,” I whispered. “Window.”

“Fine.” Damon sighed, and the two of us started to creep quietly up the servants’ staircase.

An explosive
bang
from the front hall made us freeze in our tracks.

“You, upstairs, you and you, to the parlor!” A stern voice was barking orders. From the sounds of footsteps, an entire fleet of policemen was beginning to sweep through the house.

Damon and I gave up any attempt at being quiet, storming up the stairs as fast as we could. There was a casement window at the top, which he threw open triumphantly, prepared to jump to freedom.

Below, in the side yard, a dozen armed policeman stood, aiming rifles at the building. And with his drama, Damon had neatly alerted them all to our presence.

Bullets began to fly.

Though they would not kill us, they would slow us down. I threw myself to the floor, feeling the sting of lead graze my neck.

“Coal chute,” I suggested. Without bothering to wait for an answer I streaked back downstairs with vampiric speed, my brother close behind. Police now swarmed all over the rooms on the main floor, but even those who caught a glimpse of us running to the cellar didn’t quite know what they saw: blurry shadows, a trick of the eye.

The darkness of the basement proved no problem for us, and in a split second we were in the coal room, behind the furnace. I forced open the tiny slanted door that led to the driveway and leaped out, turning to give my brother a hand.

And that’s when I felt the gun at my neck.

I turned around slowly and raised my hands. A small crowd of New York’s finest stood there, along with most of the neighborhood, who had come to watch the manhunt.

Damon and I could, with little difficulty, have taken them all. And it looked like my brother was itching for a fight.

I shook my head, whispering, “We’ll draw far more attention resisting arrest right now.” The truth was, it would be far easier to escape later, when we didn’t have a crowd gawking at us. Damon knew it as well as I did.

Damon sighed a dramatic sigh and pulled himself out of the chute, leaping neatly to the ground.

An officer strode forward bravely—but only once his men had our arms behind our backs and jostled us a bit, letting us know who was in charge.

“You two are under arrest for grand larceny, murder, and anything else I can find that will have you hanging from a tree in Washington Square for the death of the Sutherlands,” the officer said through even, square teeth.

They dragged us out, pushing more than was necessary. With shoves and a final kick each we were thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, and then the door was slammed behind us.

“They were good people,” the chief hissed in Damon’s face, through the bars.

Damon shook his head back and forth. “I’ve had better,” he whispered to me.

Through the bars of the wagon I stared back at the house I’d called home for the past week. Margaret stood framed in the doorway, her black hair stark against the glowing lights of the house. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she said something so softly that even my sensitive ears barely heard it.

“Whoever did this will pay.”

T
he New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention was a slablike stone structure that rose heavily from the street like an old tombstone. The interior was a portrait in gray, with grim-faced policemen and haggard criminals.

And us.

Vampires caught in a human system for a bloody crime we didn’t commit. The twistedness of it all was remarkable, but it did nothing to alleviate our current situation.

With our hands tied behind our backs, a young policeman marched Damon and me up several flights of worn wooden stairs and into the chief’s office. He commanded a small square of the larger floor. Sketches of wanted men lined his walls, one man’s eye struck through with a large nail. The chief himself was a grizzled veteran with a full black beard, except for where a smooth, diagonal scar cut through his skin.

He looked at our rap sheet and let out a low whistle. “The whole Sutherland family? That’ll be in the papers tonight.”

I flinched at hearing such insensitivity coming from the lips of a normal human. What sort of monsters did he deal with that the death of an entire family was no more than a news item?

“We didn’t do it,” I said.

“No, of course you didn’t,” the chief said gruffly, running a finger along his scar. “No one who ends up here has ever done it. But the courts will get it sorted out, and everyone will get what they deserve.”

We were unceremoniously dumped into a holding cell that was larger than the entire one-person jail back home, where Jeremiah Black spent many a night sleeping off his drunken stupor. I never expected to see the inside of a cell myself.

“
We didn’t do it
,” Damon whined, imitating me and shaking his head, as soon as the guard left. “Could you make us sound any more ridiculous?”

“What, are you afraid of us coming off as sissies?” I asked. “Would you rather I just bared my fangs at him?”

A rasping chuckle came from the corner of the cell, where another prisoner sat slumped against the wall. His hair receded from his forehead in a deep V and he had the arms of a dockworker.

“Nice clothes,” he said with malicious growl, eyeing our formal suits and clean-shaven cheeks. “What are
you
in for, rich boys?”

“Killing a family,” Damon answered without pause. “You?”

“Beatin’ in the heads of the likes of you,” he answered back just as quickly, cracking his knuckles.

He took a swing at Damon, but my brother reached up and, with hands faster than the human eye, deflected the blow, and pushed the man against the wall with a loud crack.

The giant didn’t so much topple as just crumple straight down, falling into an unconscious puddle around his own feet. None of the officers came running, and I wondered if fighting in the cells was an ordinary occurrence.

Damon sighed as he stepped around the man. He sat down on the floor in a moment of exhaustion that was almost human, almost like the old brother I used to know. “Why is it we
always
end up locked behind bars with each other?”

“Well, at least this time you’re not being starved,” I answered drily.

“Nope. No chance in that,” Damon said. His eyes surveyed the police standing on the other side of our bars, taking in each person. Then he leaned his head up against the wall and gave the peeling paint a grudging sniff. “And I think there’s more than a chance that there are a couple of rats in here for you, too.”

I sighed, sliding down the wall and sitting next to him. I did not understand this new Damon. His shifts in mood were frightening. One moment he was the soulless vampire who killed without remorse, the next he was someone who seemed like my old childhood companion again.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“You’re looking at it,” he said, getting up and indicating the dead man at our feet. “
Guard!
Man down in here.”

When the guard approached and saw the body on the ground he seemed annoyed, but not surprised. The guard didn’t lean too close—he had survived long enough to know not to. But it was close enough. Damon flared his eyes.

“
Forget we were ever here. Forget what we look like. Forget who brought us in, our names, and everything about us
.”

“Who’s us?” the guard asked, hypnotized but slow on the uptake.

“The man I came in with,” Damon snapped, pointing at me. The guard nodded faintly. “
Forget everything about us. And then—send over the other guard, all right?
”

The guard wandered back to his post, somewhat dizzily at first, then cocked his head as if he had just remembered something. He went to one of the guards on patrol and pointed at the jail cell. Not at Damon,
through
Damon. It was like Damon didn’t exist anymore in his reality.

“One down,” Damon muttered. He looked tense. Again I wondered how many people he really could control at once.

The second guard approached. He had a scar across his face that twisted one eye shut, and he smacked his billy club as he walked. But before Damon could compel him, he said the absolute last thing we expected.

“Your lawyer is here.”

I looked at my brother. He looked back at me in equal surprise. He raised an eyebrow as if to say:
Did you arrange this somehow?

I very slightly shook my head. Damon straightened his shoulders as a clang sounded and the door to the stockade opened. The smell of rotten eggs and death filled the room as another man walked in—the lawyer.

He was huge. Larger than the prisoner Damon had knocked out, with long arms and a huge chest. His hands were monstrous, with stubby fingers that gripped a leather portfolio.

He came into the room slowly, with the careful tread of someone or something too large and dangerous for its surroundings, like the pace of a panther around its tiny circus cage.

His clothing was of a foreign cut, comfortable, rich linen and silk that allowed his massive body to move easily beneath its folds.

And his eyes . . .

They were small and blue, but not the clear blue of my brother’s. They were mottled, milky almost, and too ancient for the rest of his body, moving quickly but incorrectly, like a bird’s or a lizard’s gaze, but with a powerful intelligence behind it.

This man was not human.

He didn’t feel like a vampire, not exactly. But there was something just below his surface waiting for a chance to explode. The Power radiating from him was greater than anything I had experienced. And my instincts told me that even though he had come under the auspices of being our lawyer, this man was not here to help us.

He surveyed us in the jail cell and smiled slightly.

“You may go,” he said to the guard behind him. His voice didn’t even rise, but quietly reverberated in a way that carried to the far end of the empty holding cells. And yet they went. Quickly, and with something like relief on their faces.

We were left alone with this beast.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, smiling in a way that made me sick.

“Who are you?” Damon asked, clearly trying to sound bored. But I could hear the fear in his voice.

“Who am I?” the man repeated in a heavy accent. “Does it help to know the name of the one who will kill you? It didn’t seem any comfort to your wives.”

The words fell like stones to the floor, heavy and final. The man casually put a giant hand up to rest on a bar.

“You killed the Sutherlands,” I whispered.

“Yes.” He smiled and pursed his lips. “It was fun.”

“You tore them apart like paper dolls,” I said, even though I knew he could tear me apart, too, could scatter my limbs like the petals that had lined my wedding altar. “You . . .
broke
them.”

“Young vampire, you must know the hunger of the beast,” he said with a smile that wasn’t at all amused. “There are other hungers, for other things, that once awoken cannot rest until they are satisfied.”

The whites of the man’s eyes glowed red, and there was a hush in the air, like great Power was being summoned. I could practically smell the fear coiling off Damon in large strips.

But I began to grow angry.

Rage boiled in my stomach and shot out through my body. This man had butchered an innocent family and
enjoyed
it. This was what my new life as a vampire meant—layers and layers of evil, and even more horror and destruction, just when I felt I had reached the very bottom.

“Why?” I demanded, coming forward as far as the bars would let me. “What did they ever do to you?”

“
Why?
” the beast asked. He leaned forward, mocking my bravado. As he neared, mere centimeters from my face, a sickening stench of old blood and decay swept over me. It was like a thousand years of death and dismemberment followed him around, a trophy from each corpse he was responsible for.

“
Recompense.
” He said each syllable carefully.

“Recompense?” I echoed.

He bared his teeth. “Yes, recompense. For taking Katherine. And destroying any chance to break the curse.”

Katherine
? What did she have to do with all of this, with this abomination in front of us? With the Sutherlands? And what curse?

I looked over at Damon. She had always shared more details of her life, of being a vampire, with him. But my brother was wide-eyed and gaping like a fish, even more stunned by hearing her name than I was.

I thought about the blissful, ignorant weeks I spent as her slave and lover, never imagining that she would lead me straight into hell.

The man backed up a few steps, including Damon in his foul stare.

“Yes, you understand now,” he said, nodding. But we didn’t.

“I—” Damon began to speak.

“
SILENCE!
” the man roared. Suddenly he was pressed up against the bars, a blackened fingernail inches from Damon’s throat. “Do you dare deny it?”

With a chilling deliberateness, he pushed an iron bar aside like it was a curtain. The metal screamed in agony. In a flash of darkness he had stepped through, and wrapped a giant hand around each of our throats.

“You took Katherine. I take your new life from you. An eye for an eye, as you people are fond of saying. Right?”

“I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, choking.

The monster threw back his head and laughed.

“
Of course you don’t.
” He snapped his head back, suddenly fixing me with his eyes and a sneer on his lips. He didn’t believe me. “Katherine
never
mentioned Klaus?”

Even after her death, Katherine continued to haunt us. I looked over at Damon. There was a pained, heartbroken look on his face. It was gone in an instant, but for that one moment I thought I saw through to my old brother. He was shocked by the fact that Katherine, the love of his life, had been involved with a creature as heartless as the one that stood before us. I felt for him.

Unbidden, half a dozen images of Katherine came to my mind. Her amber eyes that commanded attention. Her long black hair hanging in waves around her neck, as if she had just done something that might have disheveled it. Her tiny waist and mischievous smile. She had been irresistible. And Damon and I weren’t the only ones to have felt her pull.

The man tightened his grip on my throat, and I could hear the groaning of vertebrae. In a moment we would be on the floor, our necks snapped as easily as that of the prisoner Damon had killed.

Then suddenly I was free. Damon fell to the ground beside me, also released from the stony grip that held him.

From outside the cell, the monster smiled viciously.

“I will see you two later,” he promised.

And then, almost as an afterthought, he used a delicate finger to push the jail bars back into place.

“And remember, I am always watching.”