I cracked the branch over my knee and threw the shards into the river. “No,” I said. Though I’d never admit it aloud, the thought of living forever without a friend in the world frightened me. I wanted Damon and I to learn to be vampires together.
“No?” Damon repeated, his eyes snapping open. “You’re man enough to murder an old flame, but not your brother?” He shoved me to the ground. He loomed above me, his own fangs bared, then spit on my neck.
“Don’t embarrass yourself,” I said, scrambling to my feet. He was strong, but I was far stronger, thanks to my regular feedings. “And don’t fool yourself into thinking Katherine loved you,” I growled. “She loved her Power, and she loved what she could make us do for her. But she never loved us.”
Damon’s eyes blazed. He rushed toward me with the speed of a galloping horse. His shoulder, hard as stone, plowed into me, throwing me back into a tree. The trunk split with a loud crack. “She loved me .”
“Then why did she turn me, too?” I challenged, rolling to my feet as I rebuffed his next blow.
The words had their desired effect. Damon’s shoulders sagged, and he staggered backward. “Fine. I’ll just do it myself,” he murmured, grabbing another stick and running the sharp end along his chest.
I slapped the stake out of his hand and twisted his arms behind his back. “You are my brother—my flesh and blood. So long as I stay alive, so shall you. Now, come.” I pushed him toward the woods.
“Come where?” Damon asked listlessly, allowing me to drag him along.
“To the cemetery,” I answered. “We have a funeral to attend.”
Damon’s eyes registered a dull spark of interest. “Whose?”
“Father’s. Don’t you want to say good-bye to the man who killed us?”
Damon and I crouched in the cemetery’s hemlock grove behind the mausoleums that housed the bones of Mystic Falls’ founders. Despite the early hour, already the townspeople stood stoop-shouldered around a gaping hole in the ground. Puffs of air curled into the cerulean blue sky with the crowd’s every exhalation, as if the entire congregation were smoking celebratory cigars rather than trying to calm their chattering teeth.
My heightened senses took in the scene before us. The cloying smell of vervain—an herb that rendered vampires powerless—hung heavy in the air. The grass was laden with dew, each drop of water falling to the earth with a silvery ping, and far off in the distance church bells chimed. Even from this distance, I could see a tear lodged in the corner of Honoria Fells’s eye.
Down at the pulpit, Mayor Lockwood shuffled from foot to foot, clearly eager to get the crowd’s attention. I could just make out the winged figure above him, the angel statue that marked my mother’s final resting place. Two empty plots lay just beyond, where Damon and I should have been buried.
The mayor’s voice sliced through the cold air, his voice as loud to my sensitive ears as if he were standing right next to me. “We come together today to say farewell to one of Mystic Falls’ greatest sons, Giuseppe Salvatore, a man for whom town and family always came before self.”
Damon kicked the ground. “The family he killed. The love he destroyed, the lives he shattered,” he muttered.
“Shhh,” I whispered as I pressed my palm against his forearm.
“If I were to paint a portrait of this great man’s life,” Lockwood continued over the sniffles and sighs of the crowd, “Giuseppe Salvatore would be flanked by his two fallen sons, Damon and Stefan, heroes of the battle of Willow Creek. May we learn from Giuseppe, emulate him, and be inspired to rid our town of evil, either seen or unseen.”
Damon let out a low, rattling scoff. “The portrait he paints,” he said, “should contain the muzzle flash of Father’s rifle.” He rubbed the place where Father’s bullet had ripped through his chest only a week earlier. There was no physical wound—our transformation healed all injuries—but the betrayal would be etched in our minds forever. “Shhh,” I said again as Jonathan Gilbert strode up to stand beside Mayor Lockwood, holding a large veiled frame. Jonathan looked to have aged ten years in seven short days: lines creased his tanned forehead, and streaks of white were visible in his brown hair. I wondered if his transformation had something to do with Pearl, the vampire he loved but had condemned to death after finding out what she really was.
I spotted Clementine’s parents in the crowd, arms clasped, not yet aware that their daughter was not among the somber-faced girls in the back of the crowd.
They’d find out soon enough.
My thoughts were interrupted by an insistent clicking, like a watch counting or a fingernail tapping against a hard surface. I scanned the crowd, trying to trace the ticking to its point of origin. The sound was slow and steady and mechanical, steadier than a heartbeat, slower than a metronome. And it seemed to be coming directly from Jonathan’s hand. Clementine’s blood rushed to my head.
The compass.
Back when Father first became suspicious of vampires, he’d created a committee of men to rid the town of the demonic scourge. I’d attended the meetings, which had taken place in Jonathan Gilbert’s attic. He’d had plans for a contraption to identify vampires, and I’d witnessed him using it in action the week before. It was how he’d discovered Pearl’s true nature.
I elbowed Damon. “We have to go,” I said, barely moving my jaw.
Just then Jonathan looked up, and his eyes locked directly onto mine.
He let out an unholy shriek and pointed to our mausoleum. “Demon!”
The crowd turned toward us as one, their stares cutting through the fog like bayonets. Then something rushed past me, and the wall behind me exploded. A cloud of powder billowed around us, and chips of marble slashed across my cheek.
I bared my fangs and roared. The sound was loud, primal, terrifying. Half the crowd knocked over chairs in their haste to flee the cemetery, but the other half remained.
“Kill the demons!” Jonathan cried, brandishing a crossbow.
“I think they mean us, brother,” Damon said with a short, humorless laugh.
And so I grabbed Damon and ran.
With Damon behind me, I raced through the forest, jumping over felled branches and skipping over stones. I leaped over the waist-high iron gate of the cemetery, turning briefly to make sure Damon was still following. We zigzagged deep into the woods, the gunshots sounding like fireworks in my ear, the shrieks of the townspeople like breaking glass, their heavy breathing like low-rolling thunder. I could even hear the footfalls of the crowd pursuing me, each step sending vibrations through the ground. I silently cursed Damon for being so stubborn. If he’d been willing to drink before today, he’d be at full strength, and our newfound speed and agility would have already taken us far away from this mess.
As we cut through the thicket, squirrels and voles scattered from the underbrush, their blood quickening in the presence of predators. A whinny and a snort sounded from the far edge of the cemetery.
“Come on .” I grabbed Damon by the waist and hoisted him to his feet again. “We have to keep moving.” I could hear the blood pumping, smell the iron, feel the ground shaking. I knew the mob was more afraid of me than I of them; but still, the sound of gunshots caused my mind to whirl, my body to lurch forward. Damon was weak and I could only carry him so far.
Another gunshot cracked, closer this time. Damon stiffened.
“Demons!” Jonathan Gilbert’s voice sliced through the woods. Another bullet whizzed past me, grazing my shoulder. Damon flopped forward in my arms.
“Damon!” The word echoed in my ears, sounding so much like the word demon that it startled me. “Brother!” I shook him, then began awkwardly dragging him behind me again toward the sounds of the horses. But despite having just fed, my strength wouldn’t last forever, and the footsteps were coming closer and closer.
Finally we reached the edge of the cemetery, where several horses were tied to the iron hitching posts. They pawed at the ground, pulling on the ropes that tethered them so hard that their necks bulged. One coal-black mare was none other than my old horse, Mezzanotte. I stared at her, mesmerized at how desperate she appeared to be to get away from me. Just a few days earlier, I was the only rider she’d trusted.
Footfalls sounded again. I tore my gaze away, shaking my head at being so sentimental. I pulled Father’s old hunting knife from the top of my boot. It had been the one thing I’d taken when I’d walked through Veritas, our
