Chapter 7: Springing the Past
Three hours later, Katherine wakes up to an annoyed Damon glaring at her. She arches a delicate brow at him to which he replies with a slight irritation, "You fell asleep and I had a raging boner." She smirks and her hand glides down to his boxers to caress his package. At her touch, Damon growls. "I just got rid of it."
Katherine drawls lazily and her hand withdraws. She stifles a laugh at his whimper. "What a pity. I was hoping to play."
He cracks a grin, using his signature smile which she knows means trouble. "We can... Just not here."
-A-
Mystic Falls Grill 5P.M.
A shrill, indignant cry coupled with a couple of catcalls and whistles breaks Katherine's concentration and she pauses her passionate making out with Damon, not moving from his lap. An amused smile forms on her lips, Caroline Forbes; she assumes, stomps over rather cutely to their booth, hands on her hips.
"Elena! What... What are you doing with him? And what happened to your hair?! Actually, come to think of it, I love your top. I don't think I've… ever… seen you wear it before!"
She stops to catch her breath and then remembers her initial objective. Before she could re-start her tirade, Damon interrupts her with a lazy smirk. "Hello to you too, Caroline."
Rolling her eyes, she ignores him completely and yanks 'Elena' out of his lap and the booth.
Katherine lets her, playing the role of Elena easily as she stumbles out as clumsily she allows herself, she plasters on her most innocent and confused expression.
"Caroline," she sighs. The blonde isn't deterred. It makes her more determined than ever.
"Don't Caroline me, Elena! You're supposed to be with Stefan. The younger Salvatore with gorgeous hair. Oh my god! Did he...compel you?" Blondie drops her voice to a whisper. 'Elena' notices Matt and Tyler coming closer out of the corner of her eye.
"Care... You're over-thinking this. I'm fine. He hasn't done anything to me. He has been a perfect gentleman." At this, Damon smiles smugly at her statement.
Caroline folds her arms stubbornly. "I doubt it. You, of all people, should know what he-"
Bright-blue eyed Matt Donovan comes along and steers a high-strung Caroline away from the booth whilst saying hi to 'Elena.' Katherine watches him give a wary side glance at her partner in crime.
Tyler grins, baring all teeth. "That was hot! Didn't think you had it in you."
"Tyler!" He walks away, responding to the call of an angry Caroline, leaving Katherine to slink back into the booth and rests her head on Damon's shoulder.
Without much effort, she hears the Lockwood kid mutter, "You need to chill, Forbes. That is nothing. Well, it's something. You know what, Care? Forget what I said, okay. Let's just play."
Katherine sighs happily. Playing innocent Elena Gilbert was far too easy, her friends don't even suspect a thing. A small frown forms on her lips.
Except her. The frown disappears almost instantly as her thoughts move back to what the Blonde had said before she'd gotten pulled away by the two jocks. Didn't Elena tell anyone she broke up with Stefan? Because Blondie seems to think she is still dating him, the younger responsible brother. Oops! Katherine smiles to herself. It might even do her a favor. She'll have me to thank.
-A-
A man watches them from afar, swirling his glass of scotch periodically. He knows the brunette as his student and Jenna's niece. He had begun observing Elena Gilbert the moment she walked in with his wife's murderer. They'd slid into a booth where she had slid onto her lap, and they had proceeded to make out passionately. He tightens the grip on the glass. This wasn't like her at all. She must have been compelled or something; it was the only rational explanation he could think of. He signals the bartender for another and continues to watch.
Her friends swing by and Caroline Forbes, the blonde, starts yelling at Elena. He and probably half the occupants in the establishment could hear the conversation. It seemed like he wasn't the only one that thought something is wrong with Elena. He waits till her friends walk past the booth and towards the pool table. Patiently, he bids his time.
Does Elena know he is not who he says he is? Does she know he is a vampire? These thoughts roll around his head as he continues to swirl the whiskey in his glass.
Ten minutes pass and the couple moves towards her group of friends. They take the next vacant billiard table and start conversing with the group. He can't hear the conversation this time. The bar is too far to hear past the endless chatter around him. They seem to be getting along, albeit a slightly begrudged Caroline. After a few minutes, what seems like a spat breaks out between the blonde and the vampire.
He gets up and stops mid-way across the grill when Caroline leaves the Grill in a huff. Matt Donovan runs after her. He nods at a passing Tyler Lockwood who murmurs a greeting to him. They are alone again, laughing, playing and more lip locking. He continues his stride and then stops in front of the pair. He smiles charmingly at them.
"Hello Elena. Mind if I join you two for a game?"
She looks up from her position, her cue stick inches away from the cue ball. Her expression changes to one of confusion before she recovers quickly and smiles at him, "Sure..."
The reaction was all he needed to know that she had been compelled. She had failed to recognize him. This was not Elena Gilbert.
-A-
Katherine focuses on the cue ball and breaks the rack with controlled ease, watching the billiard balls ricochet and scatter whilst she observes the two men size each other up. She hears the newcomer introduce himself as Alaric Saltzman, the new history teacher in Mystic Falls H.S. Damon returns the gesture.
"Oh... As in Stefan?" Damon nods and then smashes the cue ball at a striped ball, easily landing a shot in. "He's my younger brother."
Alaric leans in, watching the game and patiently waits for his turn. "I never seem to see any of your family, other than your brother of course."
Damon walks around her and towards the human, watchful and wary at the sudden interest in his background. "Oh... It's just the two of us now." She watches from a corner and eyes Alaric, who for some reason, seems to be on a mission to play twenty questions with Damon Salvatore.
"You've been here your whole life?" The questions come again, this time questioning his background heritage.
She sees Damon shrug noncommittally. "On and off. Travel a bit."
The persistent human must have really had a death wish because his next question was, "Really. Where? Around the states?"
Damon finally abandons the game for a bit to stare at him. The human laughs nervously and backs away a bit, raising his hands. "Nosy, I know. You can be the dark, mysterious guy that hangs around the school buildings. Chicks dig that, these days."
The game continues on with Katherine pretending to be her doppelganger and doing her best to ignore those two scrutinize each other. Somewhere during the game, the remaining balls still untouched are five striped, four colored, and a solid black in the center. Just as Katherine considers silence to be slightly unnerving with all the stares thrown into the mix, and it just so happens to be her turn.
Calculating the best position, she saunters confidently towards Alaric, pausing to give a sidelong glance at him and then back to the billiard table. The black ball stands obstructed in her line of sight from the stripes. She would have to curve the cue ball slightly. Her analysis concludes, and she side-steps right into the human's space. Slightly surprised, he shuffles away. She gauges the right amount of force needed to send the cue ball to ricochet off the side and smack the striped purple no.15 into the striped red no. 12 and sink them both in. That would give her and Damon a lead advantage.
She bends gracefully - not in a clumsy way her doppelganger seems to possess - and begins to aim, stalling in that pose until she hears an uncomfortable, almost silent swallow from Damon's blatant staring.
From his position, he could see her full cleavage and that little peek-a-boo with her black lace bra that he'd had the pleasure of removing from her body earlier in the day. His eyes narrow at her suggestive intent but his unusually active Adam's apple betrays his current state.
He sees her smirking at the involuntary reaction. Oh you sly vixen, teasing me in front of this busy-body nobody. You just wait after this game is over. I'll give you a real tease where I have you begging for mercy.
Katherine pulls back the cue stick from the white ball and right before she could send the cue ball to their victorious streak, the human pips a question out so suddenly it rips into the silence viciously.
"Mystic Falls is a rather special town, don't you think? Please be aware we have a strict curfew after eleven as another recurring animal attack has occurred continuously in the past few weeks. For your safety, we are doing everything we can to ensure the welfare of our citizens and we need your cooperation to stay indoors," Alaric reads solemnly from the newspaper.
He gestures to the article and comments, "Looks to me that these tiny puncture marks, so symmetrically placed, on the victims' necks can only mean vampires exist. You know, Elena, Jeremy did his extra credit research on local news and he chose vampires as his topic. Ironic isn't it?"
Her shot shoots off as planned but the ball veers off slightly to the right, only grazing the striped purple ball. The abrupt question startles her so much that she chuckles nervously at Alaric's statement.
"But that's absurd. Vampires don't exist." Katherine straightens up, shooting Damon an undecipherable look. "Everyone knows that," she finishes her sentence, eyeing him suspiciously. How much does he know? He's a nobody - an outsider. Only the Founding members know of these "animal attacks."
Alaric moves opposite of her and easily sinks two colored balls in a row. He looks at her and grins, "So you're saying... Your ancestor, Johnathan Gilbert, was a nutter when he wrote those fascinating stories in his journal."
Katherine opens her mouth to interject but Alaric doesn't allow her to continue. He does, however, keeps a wary eye trained on the older Salvatore who has moved to stand as a buffer between him and 'Elena.'
"Because I had the pleasure of reading the journal your brother used as one of his main sources and these stories somehow co-exists with my beautiful wife's intensive research on supernatural creatures - vampires."
Damon moves to sink the striped balls Katherine had completely missed, leaving them trailing behind the high school teacher. "Really?! I'd love to meet her. Is she here?" He questions the human to find Alaric's glare at him intensify and then the tone changes abruptly, taking a more serious accusing note. "She went missing."
Damon drawls his mock condolences, "That's such a shame. She would have been fun." He ignores Katherine's dark look as she moves behind the human to the other side of the table.
There seemed to be something going on between the two and the human seemed to hold all the answers and questions. In an attempt to clear the air, she asks if his wife had been able to find his missing wife. Alaric's eyes bore holes into Damon as he replies, "No, all they found was a large pool of her blood. There was no sign of struggle nor was there a murder weapon. The trail led to a dead end so it's been a cold case ever since."
He pulls a tattered photo out, all the corners were crinkled and yet the picture was devoid of any wrinkles. Katherine turns her gaze from the duo to have a glance at the picture and freezes. The picture captured the coy smile of a woman with silky black, straight long locks and a fringe depicting a playful, seductive Isobel Fleming. His missing wife was the very same vampire who found her in Chicago and was currently helping her to gain her freedom from the clutches of a paranoid Original.
Suddenly remembering that she was pretending to be Elena, Katherine slaps a hand over her mouth to cover the tiny gasp that escapes her lips and she looks up at the two men. Her eyes narrow as Damon's facial expression gets darker. He knows Isobel...and if he does, that means he must have been the one who turned her. How did Alaric guess? He's only been here for a couple of months.
-A-
Gotcha! Alaric smirks internally the moment he finds the vampire faltering in his tracks as he slaps the picture down on the billiard table, the game forgotten entirely. He hears Elena gasp and her eyes dart between him and Damon. He furrows his brows at her, and makes to ask what was wrong but she gestures sheepishly about needing to use the restroom and leaves.
He decides to put her out of his mind for now and turns to grin at Damon. "Shall we continue?"
"Hey man. You win this round. I'm actually going to get a drink," the dark-haired vampire replies and walks around and away from him. From this side of the Grill, he has an excellent vantage point where he could see the restrooms and the bar perfectly without any obstruction. He restarts the game to play by himself whilst surreptitiously watching everyone.
He spies Elena exiting the restroom and come to a stop in front of a colorful poster. He watches as she pulls the poster off the board and grins impishly as she strides towards the vampire, waving the poster around, gesturing wildly.
Damon knocks his drink back and slings his arm around her waist. Narrowed eyes follow the duo's exit from the Grill and he follows them from a relatively, safe distance. There seemed to be a public movie screening event as colorful picnic mats were strewn distractedly around. He sees some of his students milling around; Matt and Caroline are seated closely on a red checkered picnic mat.
He comes to an abrupt stop when the duo split to different directions. 'Elena' re-joins her friends while Damon heads into one of the darker alleys. Watching from where he was, he felt compelled to follow. To finish what he had started - avenge his wife.
-A-
Damon pretends to spew random nonsense into his phone while listening to a set of footsteps and the quick beating of a human heart. He scoffs internally at the human's attempts of stealth. He exclaims loudly, not bothering to face Alaric, "Are you really this stupid?"
He snaps his phone cover shut and shoves it into his pants pocket, eyeing the sharp pointy end of the stake. Beckoning the fool with his hands, he spreads his arms wide open and shuts his eyes. "Let's get this over with." The human just stands there, in a half-crouched stance. He cracks one eye open. "I'm offering you a free pass. Stake me... No, let's put it this way; Attempt to stake me whereby I kill you and then resume my hot date of which I'm clearly missing out on."
He feels sluggish movement coming towards him and waits impatiently for the strike to land. The moment the pointed tip makes contact, he grabs the homemade weapon with his eyes closed and shoves the teacher into the brick wall who scrambles back up, defenseless.
"Where's Isobel? What have you done to my wife?" The questions gush out from his tightly tense jaw, as if they had been waiting for a very, very long time for the right person to answer them.
Damon plays with the stake and replies casually, "What do you want me to say? That I killed her. Does it make you happy?" It earns a desperate nod so he keeps talking, "Yeah I did and I wasn't lying. My, was she delicious." He drawls the last word out, smacking his lips together for emphasize. It garnered the perfect reaction from Alaric who charges at Damon like a mad man yelling obscenities. Rolling his eyes, he grabs the collar of the shirt, slams him into another brick wall, and then stabs him in the heart with his own stake. He pulls out the stake, admiring the blood seeping out of the open wound and seep into the dead body's clothes. Smirking, he remarks dryly, "That is one pointy stake."
He dumps the corpse and the stake into a nearby green dumpster and exits the alley, whistling a merry tune.
Author's Note: I'm so so sorry for not updating sooner. My beta editor had exams and thus was too busy studying. I hope you guys would continue reading despite my spaced out postings. I really planned on completing this first series THIS YEAR (hopefully) before I throw myself into Sweet Cruelty which is somehow getting triple digits on traffic views than this one. That I find is rather odd, considering there's only three chapters - unless you guys are in it for the smut... Anyway, this story is going to have 14-15 chapters altogether. Yup... this chapter should start to tie into chapter 2 & 3 of Sweet Cruelty when Caroline was ranting at Elena... [And I dumped chapters 8 & 9 to my beta which leaves me with 4 outstanding chapters to write!] Stay tuned~
