Chapter 10

Back at the mansion, Elijah made the calls he had to make, including to Klaus. As he did so, he walked up the stairs to check the bedrooms. The electrical power suddenly came back on, along with the small hall lights. As he entered the first bedroom, he was furious and disgusted with what he found. The bedroom had been ransacked, but worse, it had been vandalized with smears of feces! This was not the kind of thing he expected from vampires, but then again, some of the Heretics might be young thugs.

He had moved to his own damaged bedroom when he heard voices. He turned off the ceiling light and stood waiting to see who was in the house. At least two young men were coming up the stairs and then along the hall, which was dimly lit by small "night lights."

"Elijah, are you here?" came a voice.

He immediately recognized it as belonging to Dodge. What the hell is he doing here? he wondered. Why would he even think I was here? Has he been following me?

He heard the men stop and look into one of the bedrooms and they sounded surprised when they saw its condition. He left his room and went out into the hall, making his way to the bedroom now lighted by a ceiling light. He moved so silently that he actually startled them when he came up behind them. Since he knew Dodge was a Heretic, he had to assume the other man might be also.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. He had considered killing them before they realized he was right behind them, but then he hoped to learn something from them.

"Looking for you, Elijah," Dodge said. His expression told Elijah that he was pleased to see him. "This is Martin. I told him about meeting you and he wanted to see you."

"I really wanted to meet you," Martin said. "Man, you are famous!" He held out a hand.

Elijah did not shake hands. "So, you have been following me? I do not appreciate that."

"Famous dudes get followed," Martin told him. "At least we aren't sneaking around taking pictures of you."

"If you take my picture I will smash your phone," Elijah warned. "What do you know about the vandalism of this house?" He was glaring at Martin.

"Nothing, dude."

"Nothing? Reconsider your answer."

"I mean, I know some of our people came here. Julian and some others. Like, they partied for a couple of nights. But, they didn't do that!" He swept his arm to indicate the smeared excrement. "Someone else did that."

"How do you know? You were here?"

"Um…when Julian was here, yeah. But our people wouldn't do that. I swear."

"Who took the paintings?"

"I'm not sure. Someone liked the one with the cowboys, I guess. It disappeared."

"Yes, it is gone. And others. Who killed the man and woman who lived here?"

"I don't know. They were dead when I got here." There was no question that Dodge and Martin could smell the odor of dead bodies, but they didn't pay any attention to it.

"Fresh-killed?"

"Yeah."

"When was that?"

"Six nights ago. Look, Julian is in charge now that Lily is gone. What our 'family' does or doesn't do is under his orders. We're vampires like you. You kill people. We kill people. Same difference, right?"

"No. The Heretics and my family are not at war. Your people killed servants belonging to us and defiled our house, stealing from us." Elijah found it ludicrous that Martin thought himself equal to the Mikaelsons. He felt the urge to behead him. And Dodge, too, just for being annoying. On the other hand, there was serious business to attend to in New Orleans and he didn't want to start a conflict here in Mystic Falls.

Elijah saw the headlights of a car out in the driveway and, although there were no flashing lights, he thought it likely that the sheriff had arrived. "Head downstairs," he said, moving so that he was not between them and the door. When they hesitated, he took hold of Dodge's arm and pushed him toward the door. The man looked at him and grinned. Even before Elijah could removed his gloved hand, Dodge put his own right over it.

"Do not aggravate me, Dodge. I am not in a good mood." He tightened his grip so that the man winced and the grin disappeared.

As Dodge moved into the hall, he asked, "If you were in a good mood, would you be interested?" He was attracted to the handsome Original and was not yet ready to give up.

"No."

"I heard you Originals sometimes swing both ways."

"Perhaps you heard wrong. Beware, I am nearly in a killing mood," Elijah warned. "I am assuming you are not willing to die just to see what I might do with you."

"I don't guess so," Dodge said in a disappointed tone as they reached the stairs.

"Let it go, Dodge," Martin said. "You and me, we got something going."

Dodge looked once more at Elijah and smirked at him and raised a finger.

The Original ignored it and followed them down the stairs. He was wary of both of them. Out of long habit, he just did not trust people who were witches. They could actually hurt him. His own family, particularly his mother and his brothers Finn and Kol, had once liked magic, Finn in particular. Esther's control of magic had been downright dangerous, until she was really dead. Elijah had long hated both of his parents and Finn as well.

As he reached the lower floor, the sheriff entered the foyer where the chandelier was now lit. The two Heretics walked right by him and out the door.

"Should they have been detained?" Matt Donovan asked Elijah. The sheriff's situation in the town was not good, since he was a normal human. He did the best he could, but it was a dangerous and frustrating problem for him.

"I have questioned them already and I do not believe either of them killed our caretakers. Come, I will show you." Elijah led the way to the kitchen. Several lights in and around the house were on. He spent the next hour going through the house with Matt, and while they were doing so, the coroner's office came and took the bodies. They asked few questions, since they had seen plenty of deaths from vampire attacks. In addition, because Martin had sworn that the excrement was not from the Heretics, Elijah suggested Matt take a sample for DNA. Perhaps some humans were responsible.

When Elijah was left along, he then spent another hour taking further inventory of missing and damaged things. He phoned his brother and gave a report. He was not surprised to hear Niklaus rant and rave about what had been done to the place he had spent time and money making into a beautiful home.

"I have called for the emergency cleaning service. I shall stay here for a day or two to take care of things," he told his brother. "I plan to stay with the Salvatores, if they will have me. The electricity has come back on. Everything looks worse with good lighting."

At the Salvatore house the brothers and Caroline finished the pizzas, except for several slices they saved for Elijah, should he return. They were watching a movie on the laptop when the electricity came back on. Caroline was especially cheered, since she did not have the good eyesight in the candlelight that the two vampires had. In addition, the house had been cooling down, except near the fireplace. As Stefan paused the movie, she looked around the study more closely.

"This is quite a room. Are some of these antiques?"

"Quite a few. A previous resident did most of the decorating," Damon told her.

She looked at her wrist watch and said, "I wonder if Elijah is coming back."

"He might or he might stay at the mansion," Stefan said, stretching. "There certainly are enough bedrooms there."

"But would he want to stay, considering the smell and the way the place was trashed?"

"Who knows?" Damon said, getting himself a refill of his drink. "I'll leave the front door unlocked in case he comes back after we've gone to bed. Are you sure you don't want to go to your own place?"

"I would really rather stay here. Unless you don't want me to."

"I said you could stay. That's not a problem. You can use the room you already used. I'm guessing it was clean."

"It was. I could use fresh towels, though."

"There's a linen closet. It has a brass owl emblem on it," Stefan informed her. "Do you want to see the rest of the movie?"

"Yes. I'll go upstairs afterward." She wondered why there was an owl emblem, but did not ask. Instead, she joined the brothers to look at the small screen again.

Although the hour was not really late when the film was over, she was weary and sore from the afternoon's events and she was ready to sleep. She went to where her suitcase sat and picked it up. Remembering that it was full of dirty clothes, she asked, "Is there any chance I could borrow a tee shirt from one of you gentlemen? All my stuff needs to be laundered. I expected to be home today."

"No problem," Damon said. "Come on upstairs. Stefan, I'm going to my room. Take care of things down here before you go up."

" 'K," the younger brother said, staring at something else on his laptop.

Caroline, looking at everything she could see in the better light, followed Damon up the stairs. The first upstairs room they came to was his. The door was open and a light was now on.

"If you don't want to sleep alone, I have a very comfortable and large bed," he said, waving a hand at the room. He gave her a charming smile.

"I'll be fine in the other room, thank you." She returned his smile. She realized that on this night, she had the opportunity to sleep with another vampire, but she was too tired to do it. And besides, she didn't know how violent Damon might be with the biting part. She stood in the doorway while he went to a dresser and retrieved a clean, folded tee shirt. His bed was nicely made, she noticed. If there was no maid, had he made the bed? Her ex-boyfriend had never considered making a bed. He reasoned that it was just going to get messed up again.

Damon handed her the shirt. "I hope you'll be comfortable. The heat is on again, so you shouldn't get cold."

"There's a comforter on the bed. I'll be fine. Thank you." She went down the hall to the door to the room she had shared with Elijah and flipped the light switch just inside the door. She also noticed the door in the hall that had the owl thing on it. After leaving her bag on the bed, she went for a fresh towel and wash cloth. Returning to the room, she pulled the curtains closed. She had no idea if anyone was close enough to the house to see in the window, but she liked privacy when undressing in a lighted room. She remembered that her phone needed charging and she got it out of her pants pocket. The charging cord was in her bag and she plugged that in. By morning she would be able to use her phone again. She had felt very disconnected from the world without it.

When she finally climbed into the bed with just the bedside lamp on, she lay there thinking about Elijah. She could almost smell him on the pillow, although he seemed to lack the smell of male sweat. She wondered if vampires had almost no scent at all. Scent or not, she certainly could remember how it had been there with him, how contact with his body had felt and how he had pleased her. She found herself wishing he would return. She had not locked her door. Perhaps he would come to her again. Before she turned out the light and drifted off to sleep, she heard the wind whistling outside her window, causing her to snuggle under the covers to feel warm and safe.

Elijah decided that he had done all he could at the mansion. A couple of cleaning people had already arrived and more were due. They could do their work without any supervision by him and he decided he was ready to leave. Not wanting to sleep in the vandalized house, he would go back to the Salvatore house. Then he remembered that he did not have a vehicle. He could have walked either around by the road or by tromping through the snowy woods to Damon's back yard. When he went out the front door to check the weather, he found that the sky had clouded over again, the wind had picked up and new snow was falling. The reprieve from the storm had been short.

Going back into the house, he went to the man in charge of clean-up and asked for a ride. The fellow, who knew Elijah from past jobs, readily agreed and they went out into the cold. In a few minutes, Elijah was dropped off in front of the Salvatore house and walked to the front door. The porch light was on and there was still a light on in the study. Before ringing the doorbell and perhaps waking people, he tried the doorknob. The door was not locked. Had they expected him to come back? It even crossed his mind that some of the Heretics had come back to the house.

He quietly entered, closing the door behind him. In a moment, Stefan appeared at the study door, a cautious look on his face.

Elijah held up a hand in greeting and said, "I have assumed I am still welcome to spend the night."

"Yeah. We thought you might. I see it's snowing again," the young man said, seeing flakes on the Original. "Damon and Caroline have gone to bed. Not together, I don't think."

Although Elijah did not plan to waken Caroline, he was pleased she was not in Damon's bed.

A/N Another chapter done. I hope you liked it. It is awful what some people will do to vandalize and destroy other people's property. Anyway, I am working on another chapter. Thanks for reading.