(Name me one vampire who didn't kill at least one person when they were new...)
Elena was having an absolutely mind-blowing dream. Her body glistened under the moonlight, lounging under the stars in a warm, tropical garden. Her keen ears could hear the quiet patter of waves stepping forwards and backwards in the eternal dance against the shoreline. The air around her was pregnant with the heavy odors of primrose, angel's trumpet, and moonflower, but Elena wasn't focusing on those senses—she was focusing on the two vampires pleasuring her body.
Damon Salvatore, his long hair damp and luscious, straddled her from the front, his erection sliding up against her belly; while Stefan—the other brother, leaned against her from behind, suckling gently on the side of her neck—bloodsharing. Damon was just about to enter her when she was rudely interrupted from her slumber by the annoying ring of her cell phone. God, could the timing be any worse? Apparently even in her dreams she was cockblocked.
She usually turned the volume on her phone off at night—and who calls at 4:00 am anyways, unless it was an emergency? She glanced at the phone quickly before answering it, expecting it to be Stefan (or Damon, she added, before dismissing the painful thought). It was a number she didn't recognize, but Elena answered anyways.
"This is Elena, right?" said a voice she didn't quite recognize, though she was sure it sounded familiar.
"Uh, yeah. Who is this?"
"I'm just your friendly neighborhood do-gooder trying to prevent problems before they start. Who do you think it is, dear? This is Kol, lovely Elena! Don't you recognize my sexy-as-fuck voice? And I just wanted to warn you that my bastard-dog of a brother just drug in little pretty Barbie-doll Miss Mystic Falls up to his room—she seemed drunk and upset. Just thought I'd notify you and your friends. Not that I'm trying to cause family drama or anything"
Elena rolled her eyes and hung up on him—but didn't go back to bed. She was worried about Caroline, and she couldn't get back to sleep even if she wanted to. So she picked up the phone and tried to make some more phone calls.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
All she could smell was blood—moist, warm, pulsing, scarlet…
It filled her mind like smoke fills a closed room, throbbing in her head like a heavy drum. The air seemed so dense it was almost difficult to breathe, and each breath burned like those of a desperate drowning girl finally giving in and inhaling lake water.
This was the first time in Caroline's vampire-life that she felt herself being completely ruled by the bloodlust; by that fanged beast she always worked so hard to keep under lock and key in the back of her mind.
But what was the point anymore?
What did she have to live for now?
Her evening had started off normally enough—with dinner at the grill with her mom. Yesterday was her mother's birthday, but of course the sheriff had to work—she ALWAYS had to work. So they had postponed a day and had actually had a really nice eat-out supper, complete with chocolate peanut butter explosion sundaes for dessert. Caroline was so appreciative of her mother's warm-hearted acceptance of her existence as a vampire, and after all she had gone through with Tyler, Klaus, and even the Salvatores over the past few months she really needed her mother to vent with every now and then.
But tonight the talk had been pleasant and vampires had barely even entered the conversation; instead they talked about Gossip Girl and clothes. It was an enjoyable evening.
They left the Grill at around midnight, and that was when her life seemed to fall apart.
The semi came from nowhere; on a small road that Caroline wasn't accustomed to seeing large trucks on. Even with her keen vampire senses, she was too preoccupied in conversation with her mother to get much of a warning that it was going to veer into their lane until it was too late. They had been talking about books, and how Caroline loved to read the classics even though her mother found them boring. It all seemed so insubstantial now.
Caroline could only recall this part of the night in images, and even those with difficulty. Broken glass. Starlight. Silence, except for her own screaming. Her mother's form was pinned motionless behind the wheel. Caroline shouted in vain until her lungs felt ragged and torn, but she could tell right away that her mother was dead, she couldn't hear her heartbeat, couldn't see the gentle rise and fall of her chest breathing in the cold night air.
It was too much. Too much. TOO MUCH!
So much loss and pain and blood in the last month, just too much for poor Caroline to bear. Reaching into her mind, she found the switch, turned it off…and gave her body over to the night, over to the bloodlust.
Paint the world red.
The trucker was still lying in the cab, alive but unconscious; he became Caroline's first victim as she pulled his form out of the cab and ripped her fangs deep into his jugular, tasting the bittersweet, life-giving taste of blood on her lips. With the switch off, it seemed sinfully, unfathomably easy to forget about the dead thing that brought her into the world lying lifeless in the ruined car behind her.
Caroline walked back towards the lights that marked the town of Mystic Falls. She felt hungry and ready for more bloodshed.
She killed three more people on the edges of town—two high school students who, as a human, she knew casually; at one time she believed she was even a lab partner in chemistry class with the boy. What was his name? Bradley? Brady? They were walking arm in arm back to their houses from a party. Both were wearing delightfully tacky holiday sweaters that on any other day would have made Caroline giggle.
Unfortunately for them, today was today. And today nothing was the same anymore.
They didn't even have time to scream before she was on them, drinking and sucking away their lives. It didn't take long before they were spent and limp in her arms, but Caroline was insatiable and sobbing, feeling her sanity falling away and leaving her exposed out in the chilly winter wind. But she couldn't stop trying to somehow make the mental anguish stop, to drown out the way her soul was screaming at her.
On the way to the grill, she found a liquor store, manned by only a single attendant, whom she quickly dispatched of, drinking him like she drank the others before turning to the store's stock, her real goal. Drowning herself in liquor seemed to be another effective way that Caroline could hide herself from the pain she was feeling crushed by, and she went through bottle after bottle—tequila, vodka, by the third bottle she didn't even know what she was drinking. Her vision was swimming, and it took all the effort she could muster to find her way across the street to the grill.
She didn't see people inside the glass windows; she saw heartbeats. Heartbeats with faces. Fangs bared and glimmering in the light of the moon and the stars, Caroline walked across the street and up to the doors, mind overcome with bloodlust. Eyes so dark that they flared like polished onyx.
She almost had her hands on one of the door handles, when suddenly she was yanked around from behind with a force that pulled her feet up off the ground; Caroline didn't even know who was holding her back but her instinct screamed at her to FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT and so she did, tooth and claw. Her opponent was stronger, but she tried her best to squirm out of his grasp, shrieking as loudly as she could, not caring that she was causing a scene. She felt eyes on her from everywhere.
Making no progress, she resorting to using her fangs and just gnashed out blindly until she found a soft spot. Her expression calmed down a bit as she relished the taste of blood on her lips—not human blood, she recognized numbly from a place seemingly very far away. But it was sweet. And fulfilling. So she just closed her eyes and sucked.
Klaus stiffened momentarily in surprise as he felt Caroline sink her fangs into his neck, but he didn't pull her away. Perhaps some of his blood would do her some good to chase away the worst of the bloodlust—it was frightening for him to see his Caroline this feral and undone. He liked her better when she was bright and pure, his perfect antithesis. A light that could burn away the dark.
Bloodsharing was personal, and it wasn't a very frequent occurrence that Klaus would actually let another vampire drink from his neck—such an exposed and intimate location. He felt vulnerable and exhilarated at the same time; a dazzling whirlwind of stimulation and pleasure. It was all he could do to stay on his feet, leaning back onto the building behind him for balance, unable to control the soft moans that escaped one-after-another from his lips. She just wouldn't let up; it went on minute after minute. He was so aroused, and his briefs were quickly becoming rather uncomfortable.
God, was he glad none of his siblings were watching this. They would never have let him live it down.
After a few minutes, she had actually drank enough that he was beginning to feel light-headed, and he was forced to hesitantly pull her satiated face away from his neck, taking care to see how she would react. This time, her eyes were a little clearer, and she looked at him with obvious recognition and more than a trace of guilt. But also bliss and satiation; she had never felt so full in her life.
Klaus was expecting a slap, a curse, a swift kick to the groin as she would continue struggling, but what he didn't expect was for her to burst into loud, wet, sobs as she came apart in his arms. Caroline pressed her face onto his chest, dampening his black jacket with her salty tears. Lost, alone, and gripping on to whatever she could grasp. Hell, she probably would have even clung to Damon if he was the one in front of her.
The bloodlust gradually left Caroline's eyes for no other reason than that her veins were filled to bursting; she didn't think she could drink another drop of blood if she had to. And her emotions were just as overflowing; she had to emote, she had to let out some of the rage and feeling or else she would be drowning in it.
She understood that it was Klaus who stood in front of her, and that in many ways Klaus was to blame for so much of this heartache—for the murder of Tyler's mother, for Tyler leaving Mystic Falls, for so much death, despair, and bloodshed. Everything he touches dies. Darkness shrouds him like a cloak.
But as much as she despised Klaus, he was the one who was standing in front of her now—the only one who came to pull her back from the brink she was prepared to leap off of to her death. Where was Elena? Where was Stefan?
Where was God tonight?
"I wish you would kill me," Caroline manages to voice. "I feel like I deserve it."
His answering voice is calm and quiet. "Hush now, Caroline, tears don't suit you well. I'm sure you will live to be regretting those words once your head clears. And besides, I could never kill you."
And this makes Caroline break up even more because she knows he's telling the truth.
Thanks so much for reading; if you like it please review! Hope to add another (smuttier) chapter to this soon! planning it to be a two-shot.