Disclaimer: I do not own the vampire Diaries or any of its characters.
Chapter 1
1864
It was the summer of 1864 a few weeks after the founders' celebrations in Mystic Falls and a year before the end of the American Civil war. I was 15 years old. My oldest brother Damon was just coming home from his duties as a soldier. My father had wanted him to be a soldier to improve the family honour. Or to put those phrases in different words: to improve his own honour. It was a bad time for Mystic Falls. There had been a number of deaths that had occurred in town. The authorities had said that they were animal attacks, but people were still suspicious.
I was walking around the grounds with Stefan. People often called our house the 'great' Salvatore House. Its real name was Salvatore Manor. My father was head of the founders' council so he was a very important man to the town. As Stefan and I were walking Katherine showed up. Katherine was a girl that Stefan was interested in. Damon also loved her but I didn't think that Stefan was aware of this. Yet. She greeted Stefan warmly when she approached us, her maid Emily Bennet was standing a few feet behind her. Katherine gave me one of her false smiles, which I returned just as falsely. I knew that she was seeing both Stefan and Damon. I didn't know what she was planning but I knew that she was up to something and that one day she would break both their hearts. Emily also smiled at me, but this was a true smile, which I also returned. I liked Emily. She had looked after me a few times when I was younger and she was always very kind. Unlike Katherine. Why she wanted to be Katherine's maid, I don't know.
Stefan and Katherine had just finished greeting each other when Damon returned home. I don't know whether I imagined it but I thought that I saw a look of satisfaction pass over Katherine's cold features. She looked unsurprised that Damon was here, which was odd because he wasn't due home until the next month. Emily noticed this too and we exchanged a suspicious glance with one another. As he approached the house, I ran down the driveway to greet him.
"Damon!" I exclaimed as I happily as he swept me into a hug, after putting his bags down.
"Fiona! I have missed you!" Damon said grinning.
"I've missed you too," I said back.
"How come your home so early? I thought weren't due home till next month."
"We weren't needed for the time being, so they let us go early," Damon replied, as we broke apart.
Stefan, Katherine and Emily walked over to us as we spoke.
"Stefan," Damon greeted Stefan warmly.
"Damon," Stefan greeted him back.
They embraced each other briefly, and then Damon turned to Katherine and Emily.
"Emily," Damon nodded at her.
"Welcome back Mr Salvatore," Emily said smiling at him. Damon turned to Katherine.
"It's good to see you again Damon," Katherine said battering her eyelids at him.
"It's good to see you too Katherine," Damon said flirtatiously, as he kissed her hand.
"I'll leave you to it", I said to them. I left my brothers to my beloved. Emily followed me, so that she could speak to me. It irritated me when I saw Stefan and Damon with Katherine. It wasn't the fact that they were in love with her; it was the fact that she was seeing both of them. What frustrated me more was the fact that I didn't know how to tell my brothers how she was using them.
X X X
Later that day as I was walking past my father's study, I heard him talking to the other members of the founders' council. They were having a council meeting. I never usually listened into meetings that my father had with the council, except there was a word that I heard my father say that made me stop and listen to what was being said. It was a word that I never thought I'd hear him say. Vampires. Strange. Why was my father talking about vampires? I crouched down by the door to listen to what was being said.
"So what is this device that's supposed to detect vampires?" I heard my father ask one of the council members.
"It's a special compass, that I have invented," a man replied.
I recognized the man's voice. It was Jonathan Gilbert, who was an inventor. Most of his ideas were crazy, but they were also clever.
"When you hold the compass it will point in the direction of where vampires are if they are close to you. It will help us find out who the vampires are in town," he continued.
"Do you have the vervain so that we can round them all up?" my father asked him.
"Yes, I have some here with me now. You had better all take some as protection," Jonathan replied.
There were sounds of movement as everyone took whatever it was that he was giving them. He had called it vervain and said it was protection against vampires. What the hell was going on?
"That's settled then. We shall go through with the plan tonight," my father continued, ending the meeting.
I heard them all get up to leave so I quickly ran upstairs into my bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind me. I sat on my bed thinking hard feeling confused. My father had been talking to the council about vampires and a plan to capture some that were in town, using some device that Jonathan Gilbert had invented. Even as I repeated what I had heard in my head, it sounded ridiculous. But I had heard them loud and clear, and my father had sounded really serious so he couldn't have been joking.
A/N: Hope your liking the story so far. Keep reading to find out what happens. Please review my chapters.