The Vampire Diaries: Stefan’s Diaries #3: The Craving (13 page)

A
nger was all I had left, and I let rage fuel me the way human blood had in my first weeks as a vampire. I couldn’t believe Damon’s indifference, couldn’t understand who he’d become. But him not helping didn’t change what I needed to do: save Lexi.

Across the street a gentleman upon a coal-black mare was talking amiably down to a shopkeeper. The moment the shopkeeper went in to get something I grabbed the horse’s reins and, breaking my vow for the second time in twenty-four hours, I compelled the rider to dismount and enjoy a nice long
walk
back home.

Though normally I’d be faster than a horse, I was hungry and drained, so with gentle whispers and a crack of the reins I was off uptown, loudly galloping upon the New York City streets. She was a fine beast and responded to my every gentle nudge, the slightest clench of my knees. With the wind in my hair and the leather in my grip, I almost felt like my old self again.

But the sky was beginning to lighten, in that hushed crystal blue of early morning, and I had to urge every last bit of speed out of the horse. Lexi’s life might depend on it.

As we mounted the long drive up to the Richards’ and took the small path to the family chapel on the right, I knew I had made the right decision. I could smell the old one’s presence, the miasma of old blood, death, and decay that followed around him like a shadow. My horse whinnied in terror.

I leaped off the horse before she had really stopped and gave her a gentle spank. “Go home,” I ordered. She reared up, as if unwilling to give up her newfound freedom, then turned and galloped away.

I ran into the great hall where I was wed, pushing aside a lone servant who stood in my way.

Lexi was there, tied to the altar like an ancient sacrifice. The smell of vervain burned my nose—her ropes had clearly been soaked in it. The sun had risen, and its presence came in the form of a bloodred puddle from an east-facing stained glass window. As the light slowly moved toward her feet she squirmed and gasped, trying to pull her legs out of the way. A wisp of smoke rose up where the deadly sun had just begun to touch her toes, and the strange smell of burning flesh filled the room.

“Lexi!” I yelled.

“Stefan!” she sobbed in pain and relief.

I thought fast. It would take me far too long to figure out how to remove the vervain-soaked ropes, and there was nothing I could cover the windows with, no tapestries or easily pulled-up rugs or runners. Without thinking of my own safety, I ran over and grabbed her small white hand, slipping my ring over her finger.

“But, Stefan,” Lexi protested.

“You need it if you’re going to keep chasing after and saving me,” I said, pulling all her ropes off. The vervain burned my fingers raw, but preserved her until she was free. Despite the pain in my fingers, I felt light and hopeful. I had done it. I’d saved Lexi. “Now let’s get you—”

But at that moment, a vervain-soaked net fell on us both, searing every inch of my body.

“Run!” I shouted, pushing Lexi out of the way.

She rolled to the floor, then reached for the edge of a pew to help right herself. As she extended her arm, though, it passed through a shaft of sunlight. Her eyes widened in wonder, clearly shocked that no smoke appeared and her skin didn’t burn. And then she disappeared, blurring with vampire speed away from the scene.

I put up my hands, trying to keep the netting off my face, but I twisted and cried out wherever the poisoned rope touched me.

The ancient vampire appeared, giant leather gloves on his hands and a big grin on his pale face.

“Hello.” The corners of his mouth pulled back too far, revealing a set of strong white teeth wedged in decaying gums. “So predictable, coming to rescue a damsel in distress.”

That foul odor of a slaughterhouse enveloped me like a hot wind in August: inescapable, absolute, and horrible. Despite the burning nets, I tried to turn away from it.

That only made him chuckle.

“Where is the one who is always near you and just out of your grasp, like a shadow? Where is your brother?”

I clenched my jaw. Knowing Damon, he was swilling his third whiskey, preparing to feast on a saloon girl or two.

Lucius studied my silent face, seeming to mistake it for bravado. “Well, it is no matter. I will get him eventually. Your brother is more like a real
vampyr
than you, no interest in anything outside his little world, no desire to do good. He may survive for a trifle longer.”

“What do you plan to do with me?” I demanded. Though in truth, now that Lexi was safe, I didn’t fear for my own safety. I wished only to have the chance to kill the monster, to stop him from exacting further revenge and preying on more humans.

But the vervain was drawing out my Power like a siphon, and I knew even scratching the old one would be a small victory.

The beast grabbed the net and threw me over his shoulder like I was nothing more than a bag of mice or feathers.

“My plans are not particularly spectacular,” he said as he lumbered down the church’s aisle. There were still rose petals on the floor, I noted, drying away into thin scraps of nothing. The flowers in vases were wilted, everything left to wither after the murder of the brides.

“But they will be enduring. Vampires can survive a very,
very
long time. Without food. Slowly starving over the centuries and still not dying.” The net shifted as he shrugged. “Well, eventually, perhaps. I’ve never seen it happen, but I suppose we’ll find out.”

He took a sudden left into the private chapel, stopping in front of a set of double doors—the crypt, I suddenly realized with mounting dread. Although the doors were solid, carved marble, Lucius had no problem throwing them open, dumping me out of the net, and tossing me into a tiny stone room, barely larger than the dozen coffins interred there.

For one brief moment, I relished the feel of the cool air rushing over my burned skin.

But then he let out a low growl. “When your hunger for blood eats you from the inside and makes you go mad, do not worry—I will be there, listening. Watching. And laughing.”

My last sight was of the ancient standing, outlined in a bright halo of the living world, waving. Then he threw the doors closed with a slam that echoed to the very heavens, and I was in utter darkness.

I raced to the doors and threw my weight against them. They didn’t even rattle. Trying to quell my rising hysteria, I took in the dank, musty room, searching for an opening, a secret exit, an out, even though a voice at the back of my mind screamed, “It’s a crypt, Stefan! Death is the only way out!”

I wove through the maze of coffins and sarcophagi. Even in my panic I noticed the ornate carvings and brass hinges. One of the marble tombs had the portrait of a young girl engraved in high relief. She had wide eyes and bow-shaped lips. I slumped over the carving, as though I could hug the girl resting beneath it.

At least Lexi was safe, I told myself. If nothing else, at least I could spend the centuries knowing that she was out there somewhere, living her life—protected by my ring. And maybe, just maybe, trying to find me.

“
So long
,” I whispered to Lexi in the silence of the tomb.

As if on cue, the doors to the crypt opened one last time, and a petite blonde came hurtling through, landing with a thud at my feet.

“Lexi!” I cried as the doors slammed shut behind her, plunging us into darkness again.

“Hey there,” she said weakly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“W
hat are you
doing
here?” I demanded.

Lexi raised a brow at me. “Same thing you are. Looking forward to a long, painful eternity together.”

“No, I mean why didn’t you run?” I asked, resisting the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her.

“Of course I ran, you idiot!” she snapped. “But I guess he expected I would. . . . I never even saw him come after me.” I could feel her shiver in the dark. “He appeared out of nowhere.” Her voice grew grim. “I wonder if that’s how humans feel when they meet us. If we ever get out of this, I swear I am going to be nicer to them in the future. Humans, I mean. That vampire—now
him
I want to kill.”

I put my hand on her forearm, softening. “I just pray we get that chance.”

“Come, let’s get out of here.” She turned and swung her leg, putting the heel of her boot smack into the middle of the doors.

There was a resounding thud, but nothing budged.

She delivered another roundhouse kick to the doors. And another. And another.

Again, nothing happened.

“Together!” she insisted. On the count of three we both kicked.

“Maybe there’s vervain in the stone . . . ?” I suggested.

Lexi looked grim. “Vervain doesn’t make things indestructible. But there are other things that can be done to lock something up. Permanently. What about the walls?”

For the next hour we ran our fingers over the white walls, ceilings, and floors, our highly sensitive skin picking out even the most minute gaps. We ripped open sarcophagi, ransacked the corpses for tools.

“No knives, no diamond crosses, no silver-plate Bibles, no pennies for Charon, no lucky stone, no
nothing
,” I growled, throwing my hands up in frustration.

“This doesn’t look good,” was all Lexi said.

Twenty-four hours later there was a service in the chapel. We could hear it with our Powers. It was a memorial to the Sutherlands, to the two brides who were killed, to the proud parents . . . along with a biting invective against the young men who did it, running off with the dowry money. Murderers, thugs, con men, robbers . . .

The only accusation that didn’t make the list was “demon.”

But none of the insults stopped us from screaming.

“Help!” I yelled. “In here! We’re in here!”

Lexi added her voice to mine, screeching in different high-pitched tones that nearly blew out my eardrums. At one point I could hear a hollow-voiced Hilda whisper, “Do you hear something?” And our hopes were raised.

And then nothing. The service ended, people filed out, and once again we were completely, utterly alone.

With sigh, Lexi gave me my ring back.

“Many thanks for its loan,” she said quietly, slipping it on my finger. “But I don’t think it will do me—or you—much good now.”

I hugged her tight. “Don’t give up yet,” I whispered in her ear.

But the words echoed hollowly within the crypt, having nowhere else to go.

T
here was nothing to indicate the passage of hours inside the windowless vault—not the barest suggestion of sunlight ever made its way under its doors. Days melted into weeks, maybe months. It felt as if an eternity had passed, and yet another stretched out endlessly before us.

Lexi and I had stopped talking. Not out of anger or hopelessness, but just because we couldn’t anymore. We didn’t have enough strength to force ourselves to scream when we heard someone approach, much less get up and fight the stone that kept us buried. There was no more strength to fight the darkness, no strength to stand up. If I’d still required my heart to survive, I’m not sure I’d have had the strength to keep blood pumping through my veins.

We lay silently next to each other. If anyone ever found us, a hundred years from then, we would look pathetic, like a sister and brother in some horrible fairy tale trapped in a witch’s basement.

Each passing second drained me of my Power. My eyes no longer parsed the darkness. The silence was absolute as sounds from the outside world faded into oblivion. All that I had left was my sense of touch—the feel of Lexi’s waxy hand, the rough wood of the battered coffin next to me, the cool metal band of my useless ring.

I felt almost human again, in the worst possible way. And as my Power retreated painfully, so with it went my immortality. I had never noticed its continual presence until it began to disappear, leaving meat and bone, brain and fluids, and taking away all that was supernatural about me with it.

Except for my hunger.

My vampire side reacted to starvation. My teeth ached and burned with need so badly that I would have shed tears if I’d had any. Blood weaseled its way into my every thought. I dreamed of how it had beaded up, jewel-like, on Callie’s finger when she’d cut herself. How smoky my childhood crush, Clementine Haverford, had tasted going down. How, as my father lay dying on the floor of his study, his blood had spread out around him like greedy, searching fingers, staining everything in sight a dark, delicious red.

In the end, everything comes back to blood. Vampires are nothing but hunger personified, designed expressly for the purpose of stealing blood from our victims. Our eyes compel them to trust us, our fangs rip open their veins, and our mouths drain them of their very life source.

Blood . . .

Blood . . .

Blood . . .

Blood . . .

The word whispered to me over and over, like a song caught in one’s head, filling every crevice of my brain and coating each memory with its tantalizing scent.

And then a very familiar voice began to talk to me.

“Hello, Stefan.”

“Katherine?” I croaked, barely able to get the words out.

I managed to turn my head just enough to see her sprawled voluptuously on a set of silk pillow cushions. She looked exactly as she had the night of the massacre, before they took her away and killed her. Beautiful and partially undressed, her pouty lips giving me a knowing smile.

“Are you . . . alive?”

“Shhhh,” she said, leaning over to stroke my cheek. “You don’t look well.”

I closed my eyes as her intoxicating scent of lemon and ginger swept over me, so familiar and so real that I swooned. She must have fed recently because the heat from her skin burned in the cold tomb.

“I wish I could help you,” she whispered, her lips close to mine.

“Your. Fault,” I managed to breathe.

“Oh, Stefan,” she scolded. “You may not have been as willing as your brother, but you didn’t precisely
object
to my . . . ministrations.”

As if to emphasize her words, she leaned over and pressed her soft lips to my cheek. Again . . . and again . . . dragging them down my parched neck. Very, very delicately, she teased me, letting the tips of her fangs just puncture my skin.

I moaned. My head spun.

“But. You. Burned,” I rasped. “I saw the church.”

“Do you wish me dead?” she asked, fire in her eyes. “Do you want me to burn, to collapse to the ground in a pile of ashes, simply because you can’t have me all to yourself?”

“No!” I protested, trying to push her off my neck. “Because you made me a monster . . .”

Her laugh was light and melodic, like the wind chimes Mother had hung on the front porch of Veritas. “Monster? Really, Stefan, one day you will remember what you knew to be true back in New Orleans—that what I have given you is a gift, not a curse.”

“You’re as mad . . . as . . . Klaus. . . .”

She sat back, alarm etching lines around her amber eyes. Her lower lip wobbled. “How do you know about K—? ”

The crypt doors exploded into a thousand shards of stone and wood, as though shot through with a cannon.

I covered my face, the light burning my eyes like acid. When I opened them again, Katherine was gone, and a blurry figure garbed in black wavered in the jagged doorway, haloed by the punishing light.

“Klaus?” Lexi whispered in a terrified voice, clutching my hand.

“Sorry to disappoint,” came a wry voice.

“Damon!” I struggled to sit up.

“Stefan, don’t you think it’s time you stopped just waiting around for your big brother to come and rescue you?”

Without ceremony he reached in, grabbed my wrist, and flung me out of the crypt. I flew into the opposite wall and fell down into a heap on the marble floor. Damon was gentler with Lexi, though not by much. Another weightless corpse, she flopped against me, legs askew.

Dust and shrapnel floated around us like fog. I blinked at the nondescript walls, trying to get my bearings.

“Here,” Damon said, holding out a silver flask. “You’re going to need it to escape.”

I put my lips against the mouth of the vessel. Blood. Sweet, sweet, blood . . .

A voice in the back of my mind shouted that it was
human
blood, but I silenced it with a splash of heady liquid. I drank deeply, desperately, groaning when Damon grabbed the flask away from me.

“Save some for the lady,” he said.

Lexi drank greedily as well. Blood dripped down her chin and around her lips as she sucked hard and silently. Her skin, which had been drawn, pale and wrinkled as an old woman’s, filled out and became pink and puffy.

“Thanks, sailor,” she breathed. “I needed that.”

Like a lamp filling a cellar with heat and light, I felt my own Power radiate through my limbs, returning my senses to what they were, imbuing my body with strength that I hadn’t experienced since before I started eating only animals.

As my vision cleared, I gasped. Behind Damon, a black-haired woman stood with one hand to her temple, the other gripped into a fist at her side. Her eyes were closed and her body shook with the slightest of tremors. It looked like she was in deep pain, being held in place while unknown tortures were applied to her mind and body.

Margaret.

And she wasn’t alone. There was a prone figure in front of her, writhing in pain, and I realized with a jolt that Margaret wasn’t being tortured—she was the one inflicting pain in another. In
Lucius.

In the super-vampire, so Powerful, yet still only a foot soldier of Klaus, the demon directly descended from hell. Lucius had murdered an entire family, captured me with ease, and caught Lexi like a troublesome mouse. The monster had his head in his hands and was screaming, terrible screams that seemed to send reverberations through the very chapel.

“Is that
Margaret
?” I asked, dumbfounded.

Damon pulled me up, propelled me toward the door.

“We can’t leave her!”

“She’ll be fine!”

“But—”

“Questions later. Running
now
.”

And so, with one last look at the woman who had brought Hell itself to its knees, I ran away from the site of my imprisonment and out into moonlight.