Disclaimer: Once again I must remind you, who probably don't need to be reminded, that I don't own The Vampire Diaries.
Chapter Seven- Alone
Spots danced before Stefan's vision. He didn't understand how anyone could have known where they meant to go. Out of all the witches in New York, someone knew that they were going to that one. He struggled to stay awake, but his eyelids kept getting heavier and heavier as more vervain infiltrated his body. He felt himself slowly and painfully drifting to sleep. In a way, he wanted to pass out, he wanted the pain to stop, but he knew he had to fight it with all his strength. He fell to his knees, low grunts of pain escaping his mouth. Beside him, he could feel Katherine falling. His vision finally blacked out and his conscience slipped away.
The first thing Stefan noticed when he regained his senses was that he was alone. He couldn't feel Katherine's steady aura of control anywhere. For a second, he couldn't think. He needed to know if she was okay. Fear arose within him, but it wasn't fear for his life. It was for Katherine's. He grunted in exasperation at himself. He wanted to keep his emotions out of his conscious mind, but doing so was getting harder by the minute, and weakened by the vervain it was almost impossible.
He glanced around the room, hoping to recognize the place. Stefan had spent a long time in New York and he knew a good part of the older and most important buildings, but he definitely didn't know that one. It looked like an old cottage, the kind that can be found in abandoned rural areas. Groaning in frustration, Stefan tried to get up, ignoring the pain that climbed up his spine as he shifted positions. To his surprise, he wasn't tied down. He stumbled around the room and, to his great surprise, he found a blood bag on a table.
Suspicious but too thirsty to care, Stefan sank his fangs on the plastic and drained the bag, enjoying the red, refreshing liquid down to its last drop. Finally being able to think, he wondered why he was still alive, why they hadn't been captured and tortured for information. Maybe, he reasoned, they hadn't been attacked by an Original. He could only hope. His last experience with Klaus had been less than enjoyable.
As he started to get up from the floor, the door creaked open. The clarity that came from the outside camouflaged the slender frame that walked in, making it impossible for Stefan to make out who it was.
- Hello, Stefan. I believe Katherine told you about me. I'm Kalina. - She said.
He didn't feel that it was safe to answer, still suspecting a trick. Just because she knew that his name was Stefan and that they were looking for a girl called Kalina didn't mean that she really was the witch. His mind flashed with images of the mysterious girl interrogating Katherine while he slept the vervain poisoning off, peacefully. He wished he knew something about the witch, something that she wouldn't have thought of getting from Katherine so that he could know if it was safe to trust her or not. He hadn't been tied down and he had received a blood bag, which were points in the girl's favor. But he knew he couldn't trust her, not before he had more conclusive clues.
- I see you already drank the blood bag. I believe it was satisfactory? - The girl insisted.
But Stefan wouldn't say a word. In his days as the Ripper, he had learned to trust his gut feeling, and it was saying that that girl couldn't be trusted. He hoped she kept trying to get to him, trying to convince him that she was Kalina so that he could catch her on some lie or actually be convinced that she was the witch they were looking for. He sighed, ready to hear what she had to say and remain silent.
