It was a natural phenomenon or rather, supernatural phenomenon: Vampires and other creatures of the night had always flocked to the sites of war, slaughter and destruction. The system worked in everyone's favor. Walking amongst the soldiers, and crouching low beside the critically wounded, it had been a picnic for the flesh-eaters, and a buffet for the blood-drinkers, and for the humans: a cheap and simple disposal system. No one bothered to wonder why a man with an arrow in his shoulder should suddenly die, or loose a hand. It was the outcome of war: Men were hurt, they died, and then a bonfire was lit to dispose of the remains.
Since he had first woken to this new life, Damon had been a willing participant of this ritual. Some instinct deep within him always and unfailingly drew him to sites of carnage. Even if he were a continent away, should the instinct say there was good eats, he would go to them.
Why else, he mused darkly, were there so many Americans missing after their little spat with Korea? All those dark nights, looming trees, and mass confusion had been perfect cover for the all-you-can-eat binge that many vampires, other than Damon, had enjoyed.
They had been the Korean devils in the night stealing away American soldiers to a God-knew what fate. The one consistency of any vampires hunt, however, was that the body was never found. The gory remains, the blood, the horror etched eternally in the dim glass of the eyes was removed from bearing witness to the supernatural. This was how it should -- and needed - things to be.
Stepping quickly into shadows, Damon's eyes slid to narrow slivers, as he watched the howling red firetruck speed through the streets to the burning house up the way. The occupants of the house were dead, very brutally dead. Their bodies disposed in little pieces throughout the building, and blood washed the walls from basement to attic. Lighting the fire had been Damon's only way to cover up the murder.
The Hunter, whatever he might have been, was out of control. This was the first time, in all of Damon's long history that he'd ever encountered or heard of such a creature. Even Klaus had been tempered by certain restraints. It was one thing to pursue a killing spree and mask it as a human murder, but another to viciously slaughter an entire town with no attempt to conceal the supernatural forces behind the deaths.
No matter how Damon argued the point, the simple truth was that he could no sooner walk away from this situation than he could part with his ring and walk in sunlight. The pledge he had given Bonnie would stand, but not just to repay her for his brother's life, but to protect his own interests. If the mortal world discovered the supernatural world, he and all of his kind would become actively hunted once again.
Pursing his lips into a dark frown, Damon skulked through the backstreets of Fells Church, returning to the scene of the fire, and the victims therein. Within the safe shroud of the morning's shadows, Damon studied the gathering crowds. The officials of Fells Church gathered tightly, near the trucks, and based on the circle about one individual, a plan was being devised to battle the blaze. This was all well and fine, Damon mused, but the fire needed at least another fifteen minutes to dispose of the truly damning evidence.
They could find scattered bones and remnants of clothing, finding such as that brooked no argument from Damon. It was, theoretically, feasible that a killer entered the house, hacked the people to bits, and then set the building ablaze. What was not feasible was the visible tearing of people into pieces, or the claw marks in the flesh made by a creature with four fingers and one opposable digit. There were no weapons, no tissue samples, no blood other than that of the victim, nothing to discern a mortal kill. Only the evidence that the murder weapon was a bipedal monster. Even in Fells Church, with the population's distinct blind spot towards the occult, it was a small leap to finding the truth.
Ironically, the kill was fresh. Damon had been skulking about in the early morning, having left Bonnie asleep in the horridly uncomfortable love seat in her living room. The blood was nothing to the sudden death shriek his heightened senses had heard. Shifting easily into animal form, he'd reached the small house too late to discover or follow the Hunter, much less stop him. All that was left behind stating the Hunter had been there was raw carnage.
Organs lay upon the floor haphazardly, large, small, intact or in chunks. The intestines spilling out like obscene jump ropes from the savaged trunks of human remains deposited on the stairwells. The worst thing, as far as Damon was concerned, was what the evidence was telling him. The Hunter was not feeding off his victims, at least, not physically feeding off his victims. The slaughter and obscenity at the murder scenes were either for a psychic death feeding or for gratuitous pleasure in creating violence, or far worse: due to extreme insanity.
'Please, let it be gratuitous pleasure.' Damon sighed silently. Those were creatures he could understand. After all, he himself took pleasure in the hunt and kill, and could at least begin to understand and target the best approach to deal with another hunter/killer.
If the Hunter were insane, or a soul-feeder, well then - "Not good." Damon suddenly muttered aloud, both in reference to the thought and the sudden dispatching of the human mortals towards the burning house. There hadn't been enough time yet, by Damon's reasoning. Leaning forward for a better view, he watched a phalanx of firefighters form up to approach the house, their positioning along the front of the house armed with the equipment of their trade reminiscent of medieval knights preparing to lay siege.
Damon shook his head ruefully once again vividly aware of the cost this entire situation would have upon him. He dropped his head, chin resting on his collarbone, and let his eyes close in concentration. With the sun rising in the morning, power moved sluggishly in him. This was the dormant time of day for he and his kind. To move about with the charm of the lapis lazuli was one thing, but to effect workings…. Damon gritted his teeth, harnessing what age and experience had taught him, and gathered up his centuries of power. Loosely, he built it inside the house, letting power fuel the fires hotter and hotter. It was a dangerous game for a vampire. Feeding power to a fire left the vampire open to the spark of the blaze. The sun was not the only light and heat source that could kill, after all. A pyre would do remarkably as well.
Again, his age and power aided him in the wisdom to control the connection between himself and the blaze. 'Firebug' he self-identified in himself, eliciting a slanting self-amused smile.
The firefighters approached the blaze cautiously, but breaking into the shell of the house met with the greatest danger such professionals could encounter - a backlash. Damon now relaxed his control, pleased with his workings, and acknowledging that no matter what else came of the blaze, the evidence was thoroughly destroyed.
A pity really, there was so much he and Bonnie might have learned by studying the remains -- the killer's weight, style and origins, as well as Bonnie's strength of stomach. Although, Damon sighed silently, the likelihood of learning anything useful about this predator from this scene was remote. All he had were more questions about what the creature was killing for. It made no sense.
It hunted Bonnie, in repeated targeted attacks, but it killed viciously around her. There was no connection, to the best of Damon's knowledge, between the victims and Bonnie, other than that they all lived in the same town.
It did not make sense. "Surprise, surprise." Damon muttered, stepping back further into the shadows. Fells Church lacked an abundance of back alleys or streets that were darkened with shadows, but there were the fire escape routes, backyards, and delivery paths for the commercial aspect of town that allowed for the creatures that went bump in the night. The open streets of daylight were for the living, at least symbolically. In truth, Damon simply wished to avoid being recognized.
So, he skulked in the dark, making his way in the sub-routes of society that seemed to scream out for he and his kind. The symbolism of the entire "their road, his road" was not lost on Damon, he just simply didn't worry at it as Stefan would. That he was a creature of the night was fine by him. His need to feed from blood held no moral dilemma for him, it was simply a fact of life. And it was a fact of his life he liked, for that it meant an eternal existence.
Chuckling softly, Damon slid his dark sunglasses back onto his face, even though the sun did not crest over the buildings he moved between. All paths, in Fells Church led to one of two places: the library or the cemetery. Bonnie, he knew from her blood, had once already tried the cemetery and that path bore no fruit. So now when all else failed, it was time to do research. And where else to accomplish such study but at Fells Church small civic library.
Small in size, Damon acknowledged silently, but not in lore. The books in that building contained more knowledge of the occult than he rather suspected the entire town, save perhaps the librarian, realized. And chief amongst such resources was Honoria Fells' journal.
If the Hunter could hunt and prey in this day and age, with such power and skill, surely one had visited this town in the distant past. And if there was to be a way to destroy this damned creature, it was written in that journal. 'Know your enemy', that was the credo all young students of the Renaissance learned in terms of warfare.
It was well past time Damon learned of his new enemy, before this threat launched humankind into a witch-hunt unlike any before.
------------------------------------------
The librarian was no challenge, at least, to Damon. A simple smile and a few soft words and the middle-aged woman was putty in his hands. So effortless was his conquest of her, that she easily ignored the standing mandate of keeping Honoria's diary secured and untouched, opening the glass case and lifting it out without a second thought.
Of course, Damon had graciously guaranteed that his usage of such an exemplary primary source would be purely for the academic need of a thesis paper. In some ways, he mused, it was true. This was, however, a living thesis. The theories he might resolve in study of the diary would only be backed as solid fact by further pages in the same book.
The diary was something he and Stefan had once discussed in passing, a conversation that took historical note. It was a time of peace, between them. In the moment after Elena's death and Klaus' murder of Vicki Bennett, there had been long periods of peace. Oh, the antagonism and contempt had been thick, even then, but neither raised a hand against the other.
It had been the most boring year of his entire existence.
However, despite that irrelevant line of thought, Damon now recalled Stefan's observations about the diary. It was written in an almost elusive code, truths buried amongst simple folk observances. The simple description of a winter storm took on new meaning when the words between the lines were read. The origins of Fells Church's werewolves, and of the Abati that had preyed on townsfolk, and, also of a dark sorcerer who had worked bloodmagic on the land, and more contained in the book. It was all there.
And, miracle of miracles, so was the Hunter.
'Sarah Rafferty had herself a bad night, last evening past. Thomas went out to the farm, first thing this morn, to check up on the poor lass, and found the barn in shambles.
Sarah, herself, was all right. But the lifestock was ruined. Thomas returned pale and shaken, but resolved himself into herding the townsmen together to dispose of the remains. He forbid all womenfolk to be there, saying that the mess was too ghastly for our constitutions. Myself, though, he did make allowance, citing that it was to comfort Sarah that I went.
The brutality was dreadful. I fair near fainted to see such horror. Yet, we must praise God that this nightmare came not to touch our Sarah. What, with Liam's recent death, and in such horrible circumstance, the lass can bare little more.
Such a battle was fought at that farm, of that Sarah and I are certain. She and her wee children would not live now, if not but for the grace of our Lord's hunters. For surely they caught such evil darkness at work and put an end to it, as they are wont.
The dead herds bled out not; the men crossed themselves many a time in seeing that. I can only pray that this town, built on such strange ground, does not draw more of these old nightmares. This plague, I suspect, is the cause of Liam's death, and it is my hope that the Hunter has put an end to him. I must believe so, as Sarah lives.
The child, wee Jonothan, felt nothing, but slept through the night with the peace of the Lord in his grasp. A shiny child, he is Liam's only son. He will do his mother proud, I feel certain, what with...'
Damon broke off, frowning down at the pages again. The intermediate rambling about the town folk, after burying truths in innocent Christian phrases were tiresome, but necessary given the period of time Honoria had lived in. Amazing, in a town so small that her psychic abilities had escaped unnoticed.
So, either this current hunter or another had been here before. And, in reading from the lines, it's rightful prey was Old Ones like Klaus. Damon frowned down, staring darkly at the handwritten lines of text. There were too many questions, far too many questions for his liking. Most of them, once addressed, only evoked further questions and precious few answers.
Too damn few answers, in all truth, were being found. 'Why is it killing people then? Is it confusing mortals with ancients?' Damon looked up, to the stain-glass window arching gracefully over the foyer entrance. The stained light, shining down onto the rich wood flooring was as red as the spilt blood this morning, it held the same fragility of mortality, the fallen rays. Only the source of that light was unchanging -- eternal.
Was that the clue? Eternal, the Hunter was given the sole task of destroying the old ones, the First of the vampires. Klaus had been destroyed by themselves, and in being denied it's true enemy, the Hunter went insane? Maybe that was the reason it seemed so fascinated with Bonnie, as she was one of the key reasons Klaus had been overcome.
'And maybe fishes walk on land.' Damon growled, sourly. How could a creature made by a higher good power corrupt so completely? No, the theorism wasn't enough. Flipping through the journal some more, he finally reached the last page, and even there Honoria had covered the inside and outside flap of the book with text. Absently, Damon's fingers ran down the soft paper that lined the inside of the cover, his finger tips softly touching the thick edges. One pass made, and he froze, sweeping his fingers up again in another confirming pass before digging short fingernails into the glue that held the page down to the books frame.
Slowly, cautiously, he peeled back the paper revealing a hidden square of fragile print. Covertly, Damon looked around and saw no one bearing witness. Shutting the journal, after folding the peeled back page in place, he set the diary aside, and fixed all his attention on the scrap of paper.
It seemed that Honoria was not as loath in sharing her secrets as it first seemed. It was just a matter of WHO she wished to share them with.