Mysteries: Part One
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this story. They belong to L.J. Smith.
Damon Salvatore's ears pricked forward eagerly. He smiled a wicked, crooked grin before dropping from the tree he had been perched in. He slowly crept forward towards the young couples camp site and crouched in the brush, listening to the crack of the fire and the couples conversations.
Damon was a monster of the night, unlike his brother. He found hunting animals amusing, but it didn't satisfy him. It wasn't like watching someone take their last breath as a relative screamed bloody murder. He loved watching the life drain out of them. He loved to see them suffer. He was like a cat with a mouse. The cat played with the mouse, torturing it, before ending its misery and killing it.
Stefan, on the other hand, hated killing. Damon didn't see how he lived just by eating animals. Stefan always had disapproved of Damon's feeding habits. Stefan thought that if he didn't kill then he wasn't a beast. He thought that killing poor, innocent creatures was better than killing humans. To Damon, there really wasn't any difference. Both die, weather at the hands of a creature of the night, or by a natural death. Neither lived for eternity.
Damon slowly crept forward, his eyes set on the small blonde. Funny, as he stood there, moving in for the kill, the woman suddenly reminded him of Elena. Elena was just like Katherine, only neither of them could have her. She was human and she would soon die. Stefan would slip into depression and Damon will move on.
Damon shook his head and his dark hair fell in his eyes. He angrily pushed it out of his face. He had to focus. He was there to kill, not to drown in his own thoughts. He had to clear his head of everything except for feeding. He could already feeling himself getting weak, so he needed to focus on the present. He couldn't get any weaker. He couldn't.
He walked into the clearing. The woman nudged her husband with her knee. He straightened up and smiled broadly at Damon.
"Howdy, what can we do for you?" he asked. Damon remained cold and didn't answer. The man glanced at his wife before trying again. "Are you lost? Deaf? Blind?" Damon cocked his head and sneered.
"I'm none of the above," he said coldly as a blonde figure dropped down from behind. He frowned and stared at the familiar figure. He shook his head. He must be hallucinating.
"What can we do for you?" the man asked. Damon put his hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket.
"You'll see," Damon said before pouncing at the same time as the blonde figure.
The blood was sweet to Damon. He eagerly drank from the man as he screamed for his wife and the wife screamed for him. Damon closed his eyes and indulged it. This was what he had needed. This was what made him strong. Already, he could feel the blood making him stronger. His muscles were contracting and retracting. It felt damn good.
Damon dropped the lifeless body on the ground and threw a piece of brush on the fire. He watched as smoke rose above the trees. The death of the couple would be all over the news tomorrow. He turned. Now all he had to do was deal with the intruder.
He found himself face to face with a girl with golden hair to her waist. She wore a black dress over jeans with shocks and a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. She smiled warmly at Damon. He smiled at the drop of blood by her mouth.
"Katherine," Damon said plainly.
"Hello, Damon," she said with a crisp British accent. He stared at his long lost love longingly. God he'd missed her.
Elena Gilbert awoke to the sound of screaming. She frowned and slowly got up. She glanced at Stefan asleep before slipping on a pair of flip flops and slipping downstairs. She passed Mrs. Flowers on the couch, sound asleep. She smiled and slipped out into the darkness.
Elena hurried across the yard to the woods. Was she the only person who had heard the screaming? She glanced up and down the street, but no one was out. She frowned. If she could hear the screaming, surely everyone else could. Come to think of it, the squeaky stairs should have woke up both Stefan and Mrs. Flowers. What was going on?
She pushed the thoughts from her head and headed into the woods. She stumbled over the thick brush before entering a small clearing where a fire burnt.
A man about twenty stood across from a blonde girl who seemed oddly familiar. Elena cocked her head before going to stand next to Damon. Neither acknowledged her presence.
"What are you doing here?" Damon asked.
"Didn't you miss me? I thought it was I you were pining for to come back. Think about it, Damon, you were the one who begged for me to change you. It only seemed fitting for me to return," the girl said.
"I would never pine for you, Katherine. After all, you were the one who staged your own death, not me," Damon said.
Katherine. Katherine. Elena racked her brain for where she had heard that name before. It hit her. Katherine was the girl Stefan had talked about. She was the one who had caused the brothers to start hating each other in the first place. She was the one who started all of the fighting and hating. She was her twin.
"Damon," Elena said aloud. Damon didn't turn. She frowned. Why was he ignoring her?
"I staged my death so that you and Stefan would be able to work together. I had my reasons and I shall not repeat what is in the past. But, perhaps I should for I would hate for the past to repeat itself. After all, it looks as though it very well might happen," she said.
"I hope that you realize, Katherine, that this is the twenty-first century, not the seventeen hundreds," Damon said, rolling the dead man over onto his stomach.
"I realize that. But, do you realize that times are changing? History is about to repeat itself, Damon, weather you know it or not. People change and so does the technology, but history may, and will, repeat itself," she said, walking right through Elena.
Right through! Elena let out a scream. She was a ghost. There was no way she could be a ghost. Maybe it was a flaw. Maybe it was just something Katherine could do. Or, perhaps they were ignoring her on purpose.
She desperately tried to catch Damon's attention, but he ignored her, so she had no clue rather or not she really was a ghost. Ghost didn't exist, but then again, maybe they did. She'd thought that werewolves and witches and vampires were made up, but they weren't. maybe ghosts were real. She allowed the tears to silently roll down her face.
Damon allowed Katherine to walk away. He sighed and glanced at the dead couple. Katherine had made no sense, but then again, it was Katherine.
Damon turned in time to see a rock fly at him and suddenly a cold sensation over took him. He easily backhanded the rock, but the sensation…it was something else. As suddenly as the sensation had come, it disappeared. He frowned and watched as a stick somehow lifted into the air. He shook his head. Maybe he'd drank too much. But, somehow, he couldn't shake the feeling that he should investigate.
You need to help me! Please, Damon, I don't know what's wrong with me. I tried to get your attention, but both you and Katherine ignored me. Please, help! –Elena
Damon stared at the writing like it was a foreign animal or something.
"Elena?" Damon asked. The sensation was back and he knew that was Elena. "Shit."
