Katherine had the power of destruction and death, but even she had to allow her victims that choice.”
“She killed Rosalyn.” I knew it in the same way I’d known Damon loved Katherine. It was as if a cloud had lifted, only to reveal more blackness.
“She did,” Emily said, her face inscrutable.
“But that has nothing to do with what happens. If you choose, you can feed and complete the transition, or let yourself …”
“Die?”
Emily nodded.
I didn’t want to feed. I didn’t want Katherine’s blood inside me. All I wanted was to go back several months, before I’d ever heard the name Katherine Pierce. My heart twisted in agony for all I’d lost. But there was someone who’d lost more.
As if she’d read my mind, Emily helped me to my feet. She was tiny, but strong. I stood up and shakily walked outside.
“Brother!” I called. Damon turned, his eyes shining. The water reflected the rising sun, and smoke billowed through the trees in the distance.
But the clearing was eerily quiet and peaceful, harkening back to an earlier, simpler time.
Damon didn’t answer. And before I even realized what I was doing, I walked to the edge of the water. Without bothering to take off my clothes, I dove in. I came up for air and breathed out, but my mind still felt dark and dirty.
Damon stared down at me from the water’s edge. “The church burned. Katherine was inside,” he said tonelessly.
“Yes.” I didn’t feel satisfaction or sadness. I just felt deep, deep sorrow. For myself, for Damon, for Rosalyn, for everyone who’d gotten caught in this web of destruction. Father had been right. There were demons who walked the earth, and if you didn’t fight them, then you became one.
“Do you know what we are?” Damon asked bitterly.
We locked eyes, and instantly I realized that I didn’t want to live like Katherine. I didn’t want to see the sunlight only with the aid of the ring on my finger. I didn’t want to always gaze at a human’s neck as if contemplating my next feeding. I didn’t want to live forever.
I ducked down under the surface of the water and opened my eyes. The pond was dark and cool, just like the shack. If this was what death was, it wasn’t bad. It was peaceful. Quiet. There was no passion, but also no danger.
I surfaced and pushed my hair off my face, my borrowed clothes hanging off my soaked limbs.
Even though I knew what my fate was, I felt remarkably alive. “Then I’ll die.”
Damon nodded, his eyes dull and listless.
“There’s no life without Katherine.”
I climbed out of the water and hugged my brother. His body felt warm, real. Damon briefly returned my embrace, then hugged his knees again, his gaze fixed on a spot far away from the water’s edge.
“I want it done,” Damon said, standing up and walking farther away toward the quarry. I watched his retreating back, remembering the time when I was eight or nine that my father and I had gone buck hunting. It was right after my mother had died, and while Damon had immersed himself in schoolboy antics like gambling and riding horses, I’d clung to my father. One day, to cheer me up, Father took me to the woods with our rifles.
We’d spent over an hour tracking a buck.
Father and I headed deeper and deeper into the forest, watching the animal’s every move. Finally, we were in a spot where we saw the buck bowing down, eating from a berry bush.
“Shoot,” Father murmured, guiding my rifle over my shoulder. I trembled as I kept my eye on the deer and reached for the trigger. But at the moment I released the trigger, a baby deer scampered into the field. The buck sprinted away, and the bullet hit the fawn in the belly. Its wobbly legs crumpled beneath it, and it fell to the ground.
I’d run to try to help it, but Father had stopped me, holding on to my shoulder.
“Animals know when it’s time to die. Let’s at least allow it the peace to do it alone,” Father said, forcibly marching me away. I’d wailed, but he was relentless. Now, watching Damon, I understood. Damon was the same way.
“Good-bye, brother,” I whispered.
Though Damon wanted to die alone, I had unfinished business to attend to. I made my way from the quarry and began to walk back to the estate. The woods smelled like smoke, and the leaves were starting to turn. They crunched under the worn boots I had on my feet, and I remembered all the times Damon and I had played hide- and-seek as children. I wondered if he had any regrets, or if he felt as empty as I did. I wondered if we’d see each other in Heaven, being as we were. I walked toward the house. The carriage house was charred and burned, its beams exposed like a skeleton. Several of the statues around the labyrinth were broken, and torches and debris littered the once-lush lawn. But the porch light at the main house was on, and a buggy stood at attention beneath the portico.
I walked around the back and heard voices coming from the porch. Immediately, I dove under the hedges. Hidden by the leaves, I crawled on my hands and knees against the wall until I came to the bay window that looked into the porch.
Peering in, I made out the shadow of my father. A single candle cast weak beams of light around the room, and I noticed that Alfred wasn’t in his normal spot sitting at the door, ready to instantly greet guests. I wondered if any of the servants had been killed.
“More brandy, Jonathan? Laced with vervain.
Not that we need to worry anymore,” Father said, his words floating out the door.
“Thank you, Giuseppe. And thank you for having me here. I realize you have much on your mind,” answered Jonathan somberly, as he accepted the tumbler. I saw the concern etched on Jonathan’s face, and my heart went out to him for the terrible truth he’d had to learn about Pearl.
“Yes. Thank you,” Father said, waving off the thought. “But it’s important that we end this sad chapter of our town’s history. It is the one thing I want to do for my sons. After all, I do not want the Salvatore legacy to be that of demon sympathizers.” Father cleared his throat. “So the battle of Willow Creek happened when a group of Union insurgents mounted an attack on the Confederate camp,” he began in his sonorous baritone voice, as if telling a story.
“And Stefan and Damon hid out in the woods to see if they could find any rogue soldiers, and at that point …,” Jonathan continued.
“At that point they were tragically killed, just like the twenty-three other civilians who died for their country and their beliefs. It was a Confederate victory, but it came at the cost of innocent lives,” Father said, raising his voice as if to make himself believe the story he was weaving.
“Yes. And I’ll speak with the Hagertys about creating a monument. Something to acknowledge this terrible period in our town’s history,” Jonathan murmured.
I raised myself up on my knees, peeking through a spot at the corner of the window. I saw Father nodding in satisfaction, and cold seeped through my veins. So this was the legacy of my death—that I was killed by a band of degenerate soldiers. Now I knew I needed to speak to Father more than ever. He needed to hear the whole truth, to know that Damon and I weren’t sympathizers, to know that the problem could have been cured without so much bloodshed and violence.
“But Giuseppe … ?” Jonathan asked, taking a long drink from his tumbler.
“Yes, Jonathan?”
“It is a triumphant moment in our town’s history.
The vampires are destroyed, and their bodies will turn to dust. We rid the town of the scourge, and thanks to the burning of the church, it will never come back. There were hard choices and heroism, but we won. That is your legacy,” Jonathan said as he slammed his ledger closed with a definitive thump.
Father nodded and drained his own tumbler, then stood up. “Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand. I watched as the two men shook hands, then watched as Jonathan disappeared into the shadows of the house. A moment later, I heard his carriage being hitched and the horses riding away. I crawled to the edge of the
