AN: All thanks for this chapter should go to my best friend and beta who called me over and over playing clips of Delena convos from S1 over the phone until I got off my ass and posted this. ;p She rocks.

Thanks for the subscribing and reviewing. I really appreciate it. I don't post a lot - or at all, really - on messageboards or forums, so if you like the story and think you know someone else who might, encourage them to read. You'll have my undying love and affection. :D

Chapter Two - Won't Get Fooled Again

The sun was high and bright in the sky when Damon arrived at the high school and smoothly rolled the Camaro to a stop in the first open parking spot he found. Through dark sunglasses, he watched students pour through every door, eager to put as much distance between them and the week of involuntary learning they'd just endured. Weaving his way through the throng was like swimming upstream and Damon made a face, mildly annoyed.

A flash of long ebony hair in the periphery of his vision pulled Damon up short at the top of the concrete staircase at the school's front entrance. Elena, her back to him and oblivious to his presence, trekked across the student parking lot, bound for the black SUV she shared with Jeremy. Reaching the vehicle, she turned to dig the keys out of her bag, giving Damon a glimpse of more than just her profile. Instantly, he groaned at her determined expression; or as he liked to call it the "I have a stupid plan that's going to piss Damon off" face. Great.

Damon hovered at the top of the stairs, now torn between two purposes. On the one hand, Ric and Jeremy were waiting for him inside. Jeremy's idea had proved not entirely without merit and while it all felt a little too junior detective for Damon to really take seriously, it was the only lead they had.

But on the other hand…Elena. Past experience had taught him nothing good ever came of that look.

The girl permanently at the forefront of his thoughts had unlocked the SUV by now and had tossed her backpack into the backseat along with the leather jacket the afternoon sun had rendered completely useless. The long-sleeved, white, v-neck shirt had ridden up in the back, exposing just a hint of smooth skin above the waistband of her dark wash jeans. Quickly - and regrettably - Elena remedied that by tugging the hem back into place and climbed into the driver's seat. Automatically she secured her seatbelt and then turned her eyes toward the high school, tapping her slender fingers on the steering wheel with obvious impatience.

As a human Caroline Forbes had attracted more attention than the average high schooler. Now as a vampire the reigning Miss Mystic Falls was even easier to pick out in a crowd. Damon didn't need his heightened senses, all he needed to do was follow the sightlines of all the drooling males she left in her wake.

"Caroline," he began in a conversational tone, as if she were standing at the foot of the short flight of stairs rather than halfway across the parking lot. The blonde paused, then looked over her shoulder, scanning the crowd until she found him. Rather than speak, she raised her eyebrows. Damon cocked his head. "Don't screw this up."

Caroline huffed in annoyance, her hands gripping the strap of the messenger bag slung over her shoulder. "I'm not an idiot, Damon."

"Try and keep it that way," he suggested. Caroline pursed her lips and glared at him venomously. If they'd shared a psychic connection, Damon had no doubt the thoughts she would be sending his way would be anything but kind. The smirk never left his face as he watched the vampire he'd unwittingly created join Elena in the SUV. Within seconds, they fell in line with the other departing vehicles and disappeared.

A familiar, restless unease settled over Damon as he made his way into the nearly empty high school. Lately, it had started whenever Elena left his sight and wouldn't abate until they were together again. He walked pensively through the halls, staring at the alternating pools of light and shadow that stretched across the floor, the thick soles of his boots making little noise. He was annoyed that he couldn't pinpoint when the sensation had started. Definitely not when he had first returned to Mystic Falls. Elena had been nothing but a Katherine clone then. Fascinating, but human and of little interest beyond her resemblance to the woman he'd spent his entire undead existence trying to find. Even after Katherine's duplicity had been revealed and Damon starting seeing Elena as something other than a poor imitation and worthy of his consideration, he'd been able to get through the day without monitoring her every breath. Now he was lucky to get through five minutes.

Damon turned a corner and headed toward the social studies classroom at the end of the hall. With a dark scowl, he concluded that his sudden preoccupation with Elena's every waking move had probably started when her solution to whatever threat they encountered had been suicide. During the course of his life, Damon had met plenty of people with a death wish, but no one had ever rivaled Elena Gilbert in sheer stubborn will to make it reality.

Alaric and Jeremy were busy at the front of the room when Damon finally graced them with his presence. They barely acknowledged him, their attention focused instead on the large map of the south eastern United States drawn on the whiteboard. A large, self-important black star represented Mystic Falls, while the surrounding towns had a smaller, simpler black spec to signify their existence. Other symbols littered the board in varying colors.

"Look at all the pretty colors," Damon crossed his arms and took in what had to have been the sum total of an entire afternoon's work. "Well, Ric, considering how much you suck at the vampire hunter thing, high school teacher was definitely the way to go. You color inside the lines so well."

Aside from a pointed glare, Alaric ignored Damon and consulted a list scribbled messily on yellow legal paper. He added a blue X near Savannah and two red X's in the heart of Kentucky. Damon cocked his head and eyed the vast array of markings critically..

"I thought this was supposed to help us find Stefan."

"Yeah, I thought so, too," Jeremy admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. At first, his light bulb moment had seemed prophetic. A Google search had yielded a something of a pattern of missing people leading west, away from Mystic Falls. Then they'd widened the search and the names had poured in. "There's been a lot more people going missing or dying in the past few days than I expected."

"Clearly," Damon replied drily. "What do the symbols mean?"

"The X's? Death," Alaric muttered without looking up from his notes. "The question marks should be self-explanatory. Although, I am a high school teacher, so I'd be happy to, you know, teach you."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Let me guess, blue means boy and red means girl?"

"Very good, class," Alaric muttered with a sarcasm that Damon refused to acknowledge.

"I thought we'd find a pattern or something, but…" Jeremy sighed and took in the random assortment of X's and question marks. "If it's there, I can't see it.

Damon studied the white board until the symbols blurred and he was lost in the past when Stefan had been the unpredictable, insatiable monster that put Damon's notoriety to shame. If Alaric and Jeremy knew – if Elena knew – what they'd most likely find at the end of their little quest, he doubted they'd be trying so hard now. Within the myriad of colored markings, Damon found what might be a pattern and decided it was time to find out just how predictable his little brother really was. He gestured to the board.

"Get rid of the guys," he ordered.

Alaric paused with the blue marker in hand. "What?"

"Just humor me," Damon grabbed an eraser and began removing the blue X's and question marks. When the board was a sea of uninterrupted red, he leaned against Alaric's desk and gestured at the yellow pages. "Now, go back through your little notes and take out anybody over fifty unless they're with a group. Circle all the brunettes."

What had taken all afternoon to build took only minutes to destroy. Following Damon's orders, Alaric and Jeremy reconfigured the board, erasing and circling until the random chaos of symbols resembled three distinct spokes, an unfinished wheel. The two men stepped back and all three observed their work in silence.

"Well, that clears things up considerably," Alaric observed. "You really think they're only targeting women?"

"Nope. I doubt Klaus is that choosy," Damon paused, considering. In life he'd known most of Virginia like the back of his hand. In death, every detail of the south was permanently imprinted on his brain. Stefan had stayed closer to Mystic Falls, but Damon knew what his brother favored, where his basest instinct would drag him. "But Stefan's just getting back into the game. He's going to go for what he likes, what he's been denying himself all these years."

"Denying himself?" Alaric glanced at Damon, brows raised. Jeremy frowned and circled back around the desk to his laptop. "Why do I get the feeling you're not just talking about human blood?"

"Holy shit," Jeremy breathed before Damon could decide on a response. Referring to the notes, he clicked through one screen after another, his eyes growing wider and wider until he looked up sharply. "Check this out. These girls all look like Elena."

"What?" Alaric joined Jeremy behind the desk, but Damon didn't move. He didn't need to see the photos of the dead and the missing brunettes, the looks on both Jeremy and Alaric's faces confirmed his suspicions. Silently, he cursed his brother. Alaric looked up. "You knew we'd find this, didn't you?"

"I had a pretty good idea," Damon admitted with irritating nonchalance, while inside, his stomach churned. He'd been hoping this time would be different, but as usual Stefan had been annoyingly true to form.

"So, do we tell Elena now?" Alaric asked refusing to whither beneath the hard gaze Damon turned on him. "She's gonna find out anyway and I think she definitely deserves to know this."

"Yeah, and she'll be pissed we didn't tell her," Jeremy added.

"I'll tell her," Damon promised, the dread growing exponentially at the prospect. Alaric's apartment had been a mess. Blood and empty blood bags all over the floor. He gave himself over to Klaus. Katherine's explanation had instantly made sickening, perfect sense. Stefan had fallen off the wagon, this time at the demand of a sadistic Original in order to save his brother's life. Still, he'd delayed in telling Elena on the slim chance that he was wrong. Alaric and Jeremy's research shot that notion to hell. Damon sighed. This was going to suck.

"Three trails," Jeremy murmured. "Which one do we take?"

Damon's attention was focused on the trail heading south through North Carolina to the coast, the one with the highest concentration of symbols. Every red X was circled.

"All of them," he said, his jaw set tight. "We take all of them."

Elena and Caroline's after school field trip was a short one, just across town to Alaric's apartment building. The teacher hadn't stayed in the converted historical site since Klaus had relinquished control of his body. Caroline was no more enthusiastic to return and made the point undeniably clear the entire way there, but she dutifully tagged along. Elena suspected that despite the absence of any obvious bad guys, Damon had given Caroline explicit instructions to keep the human in her sights. To her surprise, Elena wasn't annoyed, but oddly grateful. Since Jenna's death, she really hadn't relished the idea of being alone and whether Damon knew that or not, his concern was…touching in a totally platonic, friend looking out for a friend sort of way.

The fact that the phantom sensation of Damon's lips against hers still made Elena's breath catch and her stomach flip had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Mystic Falls was notoriously – some might say stupidly – trusting in the bright light of day and the front door to the building was unlocked. No doorman needed compelling, so Elena and Caroline entered without incident. The sun streamed through the stained glass inlaid on the front door, painting the floor a vivid shade of red that looked a little too much like blood. Hastily, Elena darted past Caroline and hurried up the stairs.

Dust motes danced in the late afternoon sunlight pouring through the window at the end of the hall on the eerily silent second floor. The door to Alaric's apartment was shut, locked, just like Elena expected. A sudden bout of nerves made her stomach flip, but she swallowed and looked back expectantly at her bodyguard. Another bonus to Caroline being attached like glue to her side: her own special skeleton key.

"Elena, are you sure this is, like, really necessary?" Caroline trailed behind her, halfway down the hallway. "I mean, I was here. With Damon and Alaric. We didn't find anything."

"So you say," Elena murmured, frowning at the door knob.

Caroline was at her side in an instant, her features set in a near perfect imitation of confusion while very real worry lines marred her porcelain skin. "You don't believe us?"

Only the fact that Elena was used to vampires whizzing by her at top speed kept her from flinching. "I believe there was nothing Damon wanted to tell me. I don't believe you guys didn't find anything."

Caroline looked around the empty hallway, everywhere but directly at Elena. "H-how do you know?"

Elena offered her friend a knowing smile. "Because you're a really bad liar, Caroline."

Caroline's shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes. Without further protest, she twisted the ornate bronze knob, causing the lock to snap with a loud pop. The door swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. Before Elena could set foot inside, a sickly sweet odor assaulted her nostrils.

"What is that?"

"It's blood," Caroline said softly, slipping silently through the doorway into the dark apartment. A second later, dim light cut through the gloom. Elena tugged her sleeve down over her hand like a makeshift mask and covered her mouth, then followed. At first, despite the stench, nothing seemed amiss. The curtains were drawn tight against the sun but nothing else gave away the true nature of the apartment's recent occupants. Then Elena noticed the dining room chair, pulled out from the table and standing alone. A nearly black stain had coated the upholstered seat and had run down the leg where it had pooled and dried on the hardwood floor. Empty liquor bottles littered the counter by the sink in the open kitchen. With wide eyes, she took in the whole of the loft and tripped over the true source of the smell.

"Oh, god," she recoiled and nearly gagged. Empty and nearly empty blood bags littered the floor in a trail stretching from the kitchen counter halfway to the door. Thick smears of blood had congealed on the floor. A single, perfect handprint humanized the carnage.

"Um, obviously Alaric hasn't had time to clean," Caroline stood in the center of the room, twisting her hands together and looking guilty and embarrassed as if she somehow bore some responsibility for the mess.

"What happened here?" Elena asked in horrified awe. Placing her boots carefully, she stepped around the scattered pools of blood and crouched beside the handprint.

"Klaus," Caroline spit out the name like a curse. She joined Elena and surveyed the mess before offering a helpless shrug. "Damon put the pieces together right away. He took one look at the empty blood bags and started swearing in, like, Italian or something. I couldn't follow it all, but I know I heard Katherine, Klaus and Stefan's names in there."

"Stefan," Elena murmured, placing her hand next to the bloody print on the floor. Anxiety unfurled in her gut and crawled up to wrap like a vice around her lungs. The assurances Stefan had given her, which she'd clung to since he disappeared-that Klaus wouldn't kill him-echoed dully in her head. What hadn't occurred to her were the plethora of fates worse than death for an all but immortal vampire.

"He gave himself over to Klaus."

Elena had been trying to figure out Katherine's cryptic words ever since she'd delivered them along with the cure for Damon. Now, seeing the blood bags on the floor, the truth seemed unavoidable. Tears burned her eyes and for a moment, Elena thought she'd lose it right there on the floor. Swallowing the helpless feeling threatening to choke her, she stood and moved quickly to the far opposite side of the room. "Klaus made Stefan drink all that blood."

"That's what Damon and Alaric guessed, too," Caroline nodded. "That's a bad thing, isn't it? I mean, Stefan never told me exactly why he sticks to bunnies, but I always figured there had to be an actual reason."

"It's a drug to him," Elena pulled back the curtain and peaked out the window. The heart of the town was bustling with the after school crowd and people heading home from work, blissfully unaware of the true, terrifying nature of the world in which they lived. A couple walked across the grassy square, grinning and holding hands. Elena's heart twisted painfully and for a moment she was out there, with Stefan. Instead of the anonymous girl, it was Elena's hair that the gentle afternoon breeze blew in front of her face and Stefan who chuckled as he brushed it aside and leaned in to kiss her.

"Elena?" Caroline pulled her from the sweet fantasy and back to the horror that was Alaric's apartment. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she replied quickly, pressing her lips together in something she hoped was reassuring. Elena was definitely not fine. Far from it. Her nerves were frayed from what felt like an unending stream of death and violence. Just when she thought she might have a second to catch her breath and grieve for Jenna and John and everybody who'd been lost in the past few months, a new catastrophe reared its head. Pushing the emotion down to the pit of her stomach, she cleared her throat. "Um, when Stefan drinks human blood he's… not the same person. He's…uncontrollable. A m-monster."

"A vampire," Caroline supplied with a rueful shrug. "He told me."

"No, it's different. You…Damon…you can handle it without turning into something out of a horror movie," Elena frowned, suspicion dawning slowly. "Why didn't anybody tell me about this?"

"Um, because…well, Damon told us not to," Caroline admitted, looking guilty once more. Elena bristled and crossed her arms.

"Us? Who else knows?"

"Um, well, me and Alaric," the blond admitted, gazing at the ornately carved crown molding. "We were here. And then, um, well, Tyler showed up because we told him to meet us back here after he'd finished scouting outside of town. I think Jeremy-."

"He knows, too?" Elena was incredulous now. Tendrils of betrayal wrapped around her heart. The gratitude she'd felt toward Damon for thinking of her safety soured as she realized nothing had changed since the night he'd nearly died in her arms. He'd confessed he loved her, that he wouldn't change a thing about the course that led him to her, but apparently he still thought she was just a stupid, untrustworthy human. Trying very hard not to shoot the messenger, she struggled to keep her voice neutral. "And I suppose Jeremy told Bonnie."

Caroline protested ignorance. "I don't know about that-."

"You know what, nevermind," Elena ran her hands through her hair in exasperation. The four walls of the loft space felt like they were closing in on her and Klaus seemed to be lurking in every growing shadow. Katherine had been a prisoner here, then Stefan. With sudden clarity she understood why Alaric had only returned for clothes and the barest essentials, leaving the evidence behind. No amount of scrubbing or bleach could remove the taint of evil from the apartment. "This room should be burned."

Avoiding the carnage on the floor, she walked around the sofa, armchair and end table and out the door, Caroline following quickly at her heels. The air in the hallway was lighter and Elena paused to draw a deep, cleansing breath that fanned the spark of righteous anger and betrayal burning in her chest. "I shouldn't be surprised. It's Damon's style. Keep the truth from Elena because she might do something crazy, like coming up with a plan that actually works and doesn't involve confronting the enemy blind with guns blazing."

"I think he just wanted to make sure-," Caroline tried, but Elena didn't want to hear it.

"Don't make excuses for him, Caroline," she cut her friend off and retraced their path back down the hallway to the single flight of stairs. The old, polished wooden staircase creaked with every step and she turned at the bottom to wait for her friend. Elena blinked to find Caroline right behind her, having followed her with the otherworldly silence of a vampire. In her surprise, she blurted. "Why did you go along with him? Are you really that afraid of Damon?"

"No," Caroline answered immediately. They exited the apartment building together and returned to Elena's black SUV. "But he made a lot of sense at the time."

"I'll bet he did," Elena muttered, her thoughts as dark as the paint on her car as she pulled away from the curb and headed to the Salvatore house.

"You're going to confront him now, aren't you?" Caroline asked with a sigh.

"Damn right I am," Elena confirmed, all the while cursing her own naivety where the elder Salvatore was concerned. In a way, she was grateful that Damon had reminded her of his true nature. The anger and betrayal gave her focus and helped her keep the helpless despair at bay. Not to mention the confusing and dangerous attraction their brief kiss had stirred within her. Biting her lip to banish the ghost of sensation there, she muttered. "I thought we were done with secrets. Apparently, Damon needs a reminder."