A/N: Hello everyone – and thank you to the people who reviewed last chapter, I'm sorry I didn't get around to replying personally to everyone. Hopefully another chapter will suffice instead? ;)
Chapter Eight: Battle lines are drawn
"Mmmm, no vervain," Katherine moaned in delight as she let Stefan drop to the ground, his blood hot and syrupy as it rolled down her throat. Tilting her head back to smile up at the panorama of the stars just visible peeking through the night cloud, Katherine used her fingers to wipe the blood from her chin, licking the digits languidly as she dropped down beside dearest Stefan.
"K...Katherine?" Stefan clamped his hand to his neck and struggled feebly, too disoriented to manage to stand or scrabble away from her.
"Yes Stefan?" Smiling sweetly and feeling very pleased with herself Katherine pulled Stefan's hand from his neck, turned the palm up and raised it to her lips, lapping the blood from his hand as a kitten might lap at a saucer of cream. Stefan was not drinking vervain, or apparently keeping any on him. He was so dreadfully helpless right now that the sheer notion of the power she had over him made her head reel. Damon might have thwarted her and Giuseppe would no doubt insist his beloved son bathe in vervain come tomorrow, but tonight Stefan was hers.
"What are you?" Stefan choked out, jerking his sticky fingers from her grip, eyes wide and face twisted in abject horror. "What manner of fiend are you?"
Katherine lost her smile. "That is hardly the way to speak to your sweetheart, Stefan."
"S –sweetheart?" A surge of adrenaline shot through Stefan and he scrambled back from her, scuttling like a crab, but only ended up backing himself into the spiky wall of the maze hedge. "You," Stefan almost hissed. "You attacked Damon." His eyes widened. "My God! This morning; he was trying to warn me about you...he..."
Katherine lunged forward grabbing Stefan's face between her slender palms and holding his head (and thus the rest of him) entirely immobile. Swiftly she straddled Stefan's legs so she was almost in his lap and forced his head up so he had no choice but to look her straight in the eyes. "Yes Stefan...Tell me what Damon told you. What does your brother know?"
Stefan's facial muscles relaxed from rigid anger and fear into a slack mask of numbness as her compulsion took effect. His body relaxed underneath her, eyes becoming fixed and deadened. "He told me I was a fool. He said I shouldn't trust you...that you were not as you seemed. He said that I should pay attention to what was happening, with the attacks on slaves in the town. He gave me an herb..."
Katherine tensed as her fingers absently started kneading into Stefan's cheeks, "An herb? Vervain?"
"Yes," Stefan murmured drowsily. "He said that I would need it...but it was just a weed and Damon has been behaving so strangely lately that I...I threw it away."
"Good boy," Katherine's smile returned.
So Damon knew about vervain just as Giuseppe did, and like a good brother he had tried to protect Stefan, but just like Giuseppe, he had not trusted Stefan with the truth. Wasn't that interesting? Was it possible that Damon had kept Stefan in ignorance because he suspected Katherine would kill his brother should Stefan find out the truth and turn on her? Clearly Damon knew she was a vampire, which was more than Giuseppe did. How long had he known; since they met? Was that even possible? If he had known all along why hadn't he moved against her? Surely he had to know that even the scantest evidence would be enough to damn her in his father's eyes. Yet, Damon had not made a move against her directly. Why? Could she have been premature in trying to have the elder Salvatore boy killed; had she seen an enemy when none existed? Simply knowing about vampires did not always equate to hatred, after all. Damn Emily, the witch might have been right along.
"Stefan dear one," Katherine cooed still holding him enthralled. "You must not fear me. You love me. What you feel for me will not change just because you know my secret. Do you understand?"
"I..," Stefan stammered woozily, "I...yes, Katherine. I understand. I...am less afraid now."
"Good," Katherine relaxed her grip on his head and stroked his cheek with her knuckles. "Now listen carefully. You must keep my secret. Please love, this is very important. You must tell no one what I am. Not your father and not Damon. They would not understand. They would only see the worst."
"But Katherine...if you explained..." Stefan frowned a little. "Damon...Damon knows...something already...and he..."
"No Stefan," Katherine spoke firmly, pushing the compulsion. "You must not tell Damon about this. Do not tell him I bit you. Do not tell him I...asked you not to tell people about me."
"...Very well," Stefan nodded dully. "I will not tell Damon."
"My dear Stefan...you are so good to me." Katherine smiled and caressed his cheek again before moving forward to kiss his forehead. "Now, if your father should give you vervain, or talk to you about the demons in this town; you are to take what he gives you and listen carefully to everything he says. But remember, dear heart, you and I love each other, you want to protect me. You wouldn't want harm to come to me..."
"No," Stefan interrupted earnestly, "Never."
"Yes good," Behind her unblinking eyes Katherine could feel a dull ache throb to life. This was more complicated than the usual compulsion to erase a memory or lull a stupid human into docile acquiescence as she fed. The effort it took to drill her commands into Stefan's mind was making her hungry, the mouthful of Stefan's blood she had already ingested nothing more than a tease to whet the appetite.
"So you must be my special protector, my darling Stefan, and you must tell me everything you hear. Everything your father and any other in this town tell you about the demons. Do you understand? But above all, you must remember, you are mine and I am yours. I love you Stefan. I need you. You will not let me down, will you?"
"I will not fail you Katherine." Stefan's face was as open as a blank page and he looked so young, so perfect in that moment, that Katherine's fangs unsheathed from her gums involuntarily. She smiled and inhaled, her nostrils flaring at the scent of the blood caking Stefan's throat wound. She jerked his chin to the side to expose the wound and ducked her head. Just before she bit down Stefan, relaxed and trusting as a new born baby, spoke again.
"I love you Katherine."
"Good," she purred as her teeth broke open the thin scabs half formed over the puncture wounds and fresh blood welled up thick and rich. "That is exactly what I wanted to hear." Shoving Stefan down onto the ground, Katherine pounced and this time Stefan did not struggle at all.
Stefan was hers now and there was nothing his father or his brother could do about it.
Giuseppe paced the floorboards of Damon's room, his hands clasped behind his back and impatience simmering in every taut muscle of his body. Damon lay in his bed, the physician having examined him and found that the bite marks on his neck and shoulder and some trivial abrasions around his ribs were the sum total of Damon's injuries. The physician had left a half hour ago and now Honoria sat by Damon's bedside carefully swabbing the bite marks with distilled vervain essence.
"Well?" Giuseppe asked, unable to keep the sharpness from his voice, as he completed a final circuit of the room.
Honoria, quiet and steady in her motions, began to dress the wound on Damon's neck with vervain treated gauze. "All is well Giuseppe." She smiled thinly and swept a hand over his son's disordered dark hair, falling across his pallid brow. "He does not react to the vervain. The demon taint has not spread to his blood."
"You are sure?" Giuseppe stepped close to the bedside so he could cast a critical eye over his son. Damon was weak from blood loss but his breathing and pulse were strong. Pursing his lips Giuseppe noted the scraped skin of Damon's knuckles and the already bandaged bite on his shoulder, shallower than the one on his neck but more ragged, as if Damon had managed to deflect the first rush of the demon's attack.
Giuseppe rolled his lips together in thought. "Damon fought off one of the fiends." Rubbing a hand over his blunt jaw Giuseppe found himself dealing with a highly unaccustomed feeling of pride towards his eldest son. "My boy beat off a demon."
"He is a credit to you Giuseppe," Honoria rose from her perch at Damon's bedside. "The good Lord has seen fit to return your eldest from the war so that he might help this town in its hour of greatest need."
"Perhaps," Giuseppe admitted gruffly eyes still locked on Damon as he slept, the low light of the bedside candle casting his pale face mostly in shadow. Giuseppe barely noticed as Honoria bid him goodnight and slipped from the room. The senior Salvatore had much to think about.
Giuseppe did not love Damon, had not in fact loved his first born for many years. Perhaps not since Stefan was old enough to prove to be Damon's superior in every way. Certainly he had not felt any warm regard for Damon since Francesca's death. That Damon had always seemed to blame him for her death only served to justify Giuseppe in his disregard of his eldest. A son should respect and obey his father, not look on him with sullen reproach and an incipient judgement that bespoke nascent hatred. Therefore if Giuseppe held his boy in contempt then it was merely an act of reciprocity. All the same Giuseppe had maintained the faint hope that Damon might make something of himself, that he might yet bring pride to his family and his name. Giuseppe had hoped that the war might be the means of doing that, but it had been over two years since Damon had enlisted and his son was still a private, and had yet to distinguish himself in battle or in any other way. When Damon had stumbled back home, weeks ago, crazed and dishevelled, Giuseppe had lost what little hope had remained that he would ever respect Damon as a man or as his son. Yet if Damon could fight one of the demons plaguing this town and live...perhaps then there was some worth to the feckless boy after all?
Giuseppe's internal musings were cut off abruptly when Damon blinked open his eyes, muscles tensing as he woke suddenly.
"Damon?" Giuseppe moved forward dragging the hardback chair by the writing desk over to his son's bedside before perching on the edge, elbows on knees and fingers pressed together in a steeple under his nose.
"Ugh...not you," The look his eldest son gave him, a complex tincture of resentment, disdain and animosity did much to erase the tiny speck of good will for Damon Giuseppe had felt return to him; ungrateful, feckless boy. "What do you want...Father?"
Giuseppe suppressed the answering urge to strike the disrespect right off his son's face. "What attacked you?" He demanded. It was essential to discover how much his son knew.
Damon blinked at him, face blossoming into a look of pitying surprise, "Seriously?" He croaked throat hoarse. "What do you think attacked me? A rabid squirrel? Or wait...a misplaced mountain lion! That's the story you and the rest of the Secret Friends are peddling, right?
"Damon I am warning you..." Giuseppe growled large hand clenching into a fist as his lowered his arms. He smoothed his palms over his pants legs in an attempt to maintain his composure. Damon watched him with a cold smirk.
"Yep," His son's teeth flashed in a sharp edged grimace, "That's the old man I remember. Great role model Papi; gotta love the tough love approach to parenting."
Giuseppe grabbed him by the hair, dragging his head up off the pillows, heedless of the fact that the rough treatment would simply rip open the wound on his neck. "You will tell me now boy, or so help me, I will show you my wrath."
"Seen it, felt it, got the deep rooted psychological scars to prove it," Damon clamped one hand around Giuseppe's wrist, while propping himself up on his other elbow. The effort of holding himself up in bed causing his arm to shake, even as he managed to pry his hair free of Giuseppe's grip. "It was a fucking vampire. Happy now?" He demanded as he flopped back down onto the mattress, glaring.
"Vampire?" Giuseppe posed the question cautiously. Johnathan Gilbert had posited a name for the demons infesting their town but it was not commonly used. What difference did a name make, these creatures were all spawn of ultimate sin and the devil, come up from hell to test the resolve of the righteous. They were demons who walked as men. That was all Giuseppe cared to know of the specifics. Yet the question remained: how did Damon know that word?
Misinterpreting the intent behind his question Damon rolled his eyes and flapped his hands in irritation, "Yes vampires, or demons, or hellspawn, bloodsucking fiends, nosferatu...the bogie man. The undead. Vampires." Damon shot Giuseppe a dark look, "Damn it. Now I sound like a reject from a Hammer Horror movie. Great."
"You know about the fiends plaguing this town?" Giuseppe pressed ignoring the rest of his son's statement, which made no earthly sense to him, but then again, very little Damon said or did made sense to Giuseppe.
"Obviously, one of them just tried to give me a back woods tracheotomy."
"How did you get away? Did you see its face? Answer me Damon. Did you see the creature's face?" Once more Giuseppe made to grab him and this time Damon swept up his own arm to knock his hand away.
"No," He ground out mulishly and Giuseppe knew he was lying. "It was dark. He came at me from behind. I was drunk. I didn't see anything."
"Liar," Without a moment's hesitation Giuseppe raised his hand and slapped his son around the face, swift enough this time to manage the blow before Damon could react to stop him. He then rose from the chair and grabbed Damon by the shoulders, pushing him hard into the mattress. "You said 'he'. You knew he was a man. Did he speak; what did you see? This is no time for your impertinence, Damon. Lives are at stake." Giuseppe shook his stubborn stupid boy hard, even as Damon tried to push his arms away, fingers shaking as he clawed at Giuseppe's forearms. "Tarnation boy, this creature is a servant of the devil himself. I am trying to protect you from an eternity of damnation."
Damon stared at him breathing fast and shallow, anger and bull headed defiance ablaze in his too wide eyes. "Screw you."
He bucked suddenly, spine bowing up from the bed so he could twist and throw Giuseppe off him. He stumbled almost falling back into the chair he'd dragged towards the bed. Damon fumbled for a moment, hand yanking open the drawer of his night table and drawing forth a snub, sharp edged knife. His son sucked in a harsh breath, wild with anger and shaking with exertion. The blade of the knife caught the madly flickering light of the candle and reflected it back into the room.
"Get out," Damon growled, "Before I send you straight to hell."
Giuseppe struggled to regain his composure, swiping a hand through his iron grey hair and down his vest. He was almost trembling with the desire to shake Damon until he could force sense into his unruly child. How could Damon not see he was trying to protect him? What would make his boy to withhold this information? Was the boy possessed; was Honoria wrong? Had the demon wrought his foul magic on Damon after all?
"Tomorrow," Giuseppe sucked in a harsh breath of air of his own. "You will tell me Damon. You may be happy to damn your own worthless soul, but I will not allow such a thing to befall Stefan or the rest of my house." Staring down into Damon's eyes, as blue as Francesca's, Giuseppe made a promise. "If you will not see sense willingly, if you will not obey your father, then I will make an example of you boy. Mark my words. I would sooner you dead than a demon's plaything."
Then he turned and stormed out of his eldest son's room, ignoring the way his hands shook, or the palpitations of his belaboured heart.
The night was growing old, midnight had come and gone and the main house was quiet as Katherine snuck in from the carriage house. She had left Stefan asleep in her bed after having her way with him, but now she had business to attend to with his brother.
She smiled, licking her tongue over her teeth. Stefan's blood warmed her; she felt full as a tick, although the metaphor did not hold overmuch appeal to her vanity. Daintily ascending the stairs Katherine slipped up to the elder Salvatore boy's door. She could hear the rhythmic sound of his breathing from within, the rustle of cotton and the creak of old springs as he tossed and turned in his bed. She turned the door handle, jerking it a little to pop the lock and slipped inside.
Evidently the noise of the door being forced open had woken Damon, Katherine had a moment to take in the view of the elder Salvatore boy struggling into an upright position, the sheets twisted deliciously around his legs and trailing low on his hips, and then she was in motion. She was across the room, on the bed, and slamming Damon back down into his mattress with one hand slapped across his mouth before the man could do more than blink.
"Hello Damon," leaning down she nipped at his earlobe just above the white bandages covering his vampire bite. She sat back, lazily straddling his waist, and withdrew her hand from his mouth. "I think we should talk."
"You tried to kill me," Damon glared up at her, his initial heart hammering reaction to being ambushed in his own room abating swiftly. "You sent Frederic to kill me. Frederic! The guy was a moron." He looked up at her fearlessly that oddly familiar look of contempt still evident in his lovely blue eyes. Strangely enough Katherine found his lack of fear oddly arousing.
"Is he dead?" Katherine asked mildly as she wrestled Damon's arms up and above his head, holding him pinned by the wrist with each hand. She shifted her body wriggling her hips and arching her back so she was stretched out above him. Her dark nightdress showed off a rather indecent amount of décolletage, of which Damon's eyes took in their fill.
"Yep," Damon chirped into her cleavage not bothering to make eye contact, "Looks like you're short a boy toy." He chuckled mirthlessly and murmured almost too low for Katherine to hear, "At least this one wasn't a surfer."
Katherine ignored him in favour of shifting her body again, almost nonchalantly clenching her thighs around Damon's hips. He noticed, but then again how could he not? Katherine had never had a man resist her for long. She smiled when Damon flicked his eyes up to her face, expression a pained mix of annoyance and burgeoning arousal.
"Give it a rest, Katherine." He growled trying to pull his arms free of her grip. "I'm over my evil slut lust stage. So let's just skip to the part where you kill me or get the hell out of my room because, seriously, you are not getting dick from me."
Katherine reared back, clawed her fingers and tore off the bandage covering his neck in one impossibly fast move. The vervain stung her fingers as she did so but only for a brief second before the dressing was lying on the floor and Damon's neck wound was exposed to the air. He tried to stop her as her hand arced down toward his throat but he wasn't fast enough. With no small amount of savage glee Katherine raked her nails over the puckered puncture marks and ripped open the scabbed wounds.
Damon cursed vicious and low and tried to fling her off him but she was stronger, faster, and far more agile than he was. In short order she had been pressed face first into his pillows, as she rode his back, one hand at the back of his neck and the other twisting his right arm harshly behind his back.
"Now Damon," she breathed into his ear once again, enjoying the hissing of his angered breathing, "Do you really want me to kill you? There are so many far more enjoyable things we could do together."
Thrusting her fingers deep into his dark tangled hair Katherine scraped her nails lightly over his scalp even as her other hand twisted his arm a little harder, just inches short of breaking his wrist. Damon refused to make a sound, but she felt the lithe muscles of his back tense and bunch in pain. Impishly she lowered her face to the taut triangle of sweat dappled skin between his shoulder blades. She licked the salt from his skin, enjoying the taste of him. Damon tried to suppress a shiver and failed.
"You want this," she told him, triumphant. "You know what I am and you're not afraid. You haven't told that fool of a father of yours. You didn't tell Stefan..."
"Stay away from my brother," Damon reacted then, trying to throw Katherine once more, heedless of the vice-grip she had on his arm or the scoring marks her nails left down his scalp. His eyes blazed with protective fury. "I will end you if you hurt him."
Katherine sneered, lips pulling back from her fangs as she whipped Damon around so he was on his back again, handling his body like so much warm meat. She curled her nails around his throat, digging the nail of her pinky finger into one of the still oozing fang marks on his throat. "Don't be a fool." She snapped not even sure why his stubbornness had irked her so much, except for the fact that she found the idea of stringing both Salvatore boys along very appealing. "You can't stop me. Not now." She squeezed down on his throat a little more. "You had your chance tonight in the parlour, Damon. You didn't take it. Now let me tell you how this is going to work."
"...How what is...going to work...?" Damon choked out around her fingers clenching down on his throat. He stared up at her angry and confused.
"Our new partnership of course," Katherine beamed down on him. "You and I Damon, are going to take over this town." Releasing his throat Katherine tapped his cheek affectionately, staining his skin with his own blood coating her hand. "If you do everything I say, I promise I'll leave Stefan alone. Betray me and I'll kill him." Katherine paused to wait on whatever reaction Damon intended to give to her ultimatum.
"Rot in hell," He spat and once again tried to fling her off him. Katherine simply moved with his body, as one might try to stay seated on a bucking horse.
"I'll take you with me when I do." Katherine promised coolly. She really was becoming more and more fond of this new plan. It was clearly going to be so much more entertaining breaking Damon to her will than she had imagined. He fought so hard and so rough, when he inevitably succumbed it would be all the sweeter. A broad and purely predatory smile bloomed upon her face.
"Now, kiss me like you mean it." Grabbing his face between her hands in much the same way she had to Stefan early Katherine darted down to seal her lips over his.
