A.N.: A blank Word document is a very intimidating thing, y'know?
Is it bad that I can imagine Giulia in the Suicide Squad?
Also, after his Argentine Tango (and his Jive) I am in love with Jay McGuinness. You're all invited to the wedding. I should probably listen to one of his songs?
Dangerous Beauty
08
Undeserving
"So…bit of an interesting night," Giulia sighed, relaxing into the pillows propped up against Damon's enormous headboard. Her dad had always referred to this room as the "honeymoon suite": reserved for the most special of occasions. Even her dad had never slept in here. This was Damon's room, just as the attic space was Stefan's. She rested her tumbler of bourbon on her stomach and propped her arm behind her head, crossing her ankles. "What're the odds Caroline is attacked by an endangered animal the one day Stefan says, 'Oh, hey, I promise I'll look after her'?"
"Worst babysitter ever," Damon sniffed. "At least when Zach left you with me he knew I'd let you get bumps and scrapes 'cause it'd toughen you up, not because I was careless."
"A werewolf-bite isn't the same as a splinter," Giulia said, glancing over at Damon. He was stretched out on the other half of the California-king bed, mirroring her body language, eyes on the faded text of his first-edition Gone with the Wind. It was almost like a comfort-blanket for him.
"Where is Blondie, anyway?"
"Asleep, in my old room," Giulia said. There had been murmurings about the K-word: she'd forced Caroline to 'fess up. "Her mother's working late this week, she needs somewhere safe."
"Safe?"
"Somewhere Katherine hasn't been invited into," Giulia said, sliding Damon a sly look.
"Don't look at me. This is a no-Piercing zone," Damon said, holding a hand up defensively. Giulia scoffed, wrinkling her nose.
"That's foul," she muttered, pursing her lips.
"So what does she look like these days?" Giulia asked.
"Um…you're aware of what a doppelganger is, right? Identical to one of your besties…er, ex-besties," Damon grimaced. "There's a daguerreotype of her in Stefan's room?"
"Yes, beetle-brain, I'm aware she is physically identical to Elena – I meant style-wise," Giulia said, giving Damon a look.
"What, want to know if you were spot on about those clothes you helped me pick out for her when we still thought she was inside the tomb?" Damon smirked. "Or – what, have you not…you've not seen her yet?"
"If I was more of a narcissist I'd be a little offended she's so far avoided the most interesting person living in this town," Giulia said, eyeing her cuticles with feigned nonchalance. Truthfully Giulia wasn't so much insulted by Katherine's avoidance of her as she was curious – why had Katherine so far avoided approaching her in any context, either threatening or coercive?
"I wouldn't take it personally," Damon shrugged. "She's only killed whoever she's interacted with."
"I know – and she couldn't even get that right with John Gilbert," Giulia sighed. "How hard could that have been, really? And she botched it."
"Alright – attempted to kill. She also went after Bonnie," Damon said, and Giulia grimaced. If she was a nefarious little slut bent on bartering three living souls and a hunk of mystical rock for her freedom, she would have done away with the biggest threat in her way – in her humble opinion, she was that obstacle. She knew too much, was too clever, too quick – too well-connected. Katherine had done her research into Elena, she believed she already knew everything there was to understand about the Salvatore brothers, vain enough to believe she had fashioned them herself… Giulia was an unknown entity.
"Now I'm depressed," Giulia said, pulling a dark face at Damon. "So, how was your day?"
"Well, she may look like Katherine, but Elena is really starting to act like her too," Damon grumbled.
"She's still pissed about Jem, huh?" Giulia sighed, shaking her head. She settled back into the mattress, yawning. "She really needs to get over it. Jem's okay; that's all that matters. Nobody cares about her ire."
"She does."
"Tell me about Duke."
"Serious lack of co-eds on campus," Damon complained. "Luckily, Isobel's T.A. was hot."
"Find out anything good – like our new lycanthropic neighbour?"
"Well, supposedly, six hundred-ish years ago some Aztec in the area of Virginia cursed someone – into a werewolf," Damon yawned. "The same curse caused vampires to be vulnerable to the sun. The Sun and the Moon Curse." Giulia scoffed.
"Okay, well, I'm crossing Duke off my list of potential colleges, if the professor of Occult's research-skills are anything go to by…" she muttered.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, for starters, Aztec were South America, as in the continent, not the tippety-topmost point of the 'South'. Natives in the area of 'Virginia' were the Manahoac, Monacan, Nahyssan, NOttoway, Occaneechi, Powhatan and Merherrin tribes, to name a few, although Cherokee dominated the area now known as Virginia as their hunting territory," Giulia said over her shoulder. "And B., the Curse of the Sun and the Moon is a complete hoax."
"And you know this how?"
"Because any witch with any kind of credibility could tell you it's impossible to create a curse of such magnitude. We know the werewolf curse runs in the bloodline, it's triggered by death at your hands, taking someone's life. George wrote that little detail in his diary. In any culture, murder is unnatural. The werewolf curse is Nature's way of punishing the individual for that crime – if it's even a curse at all."
"How could it not be a curse?
"Is vampirism a curse?
"You're getting into Original territory there," Damon said, holding up a hand. Giulia pursed her lips; it was her opinion both Salvatore brothers had had intimate dealings with Originals without even knowing it. Although…having re-read Stefan's journals from the early 1920s she believed he had been intimately knowledgeable about who his bed-partner had been. But at least Damon knew what she meant, had himself referenced the Originals, meaning he knew the story of the genesis of vampires, even if he might not believe it.
"My point is, there is no witch or even coven of witches so powerful they could curse every potential werewolf for the duration of their lives, throughout eternity. Turning on a full moon is punishment for murder, it's Nature's way of maintaining a balance – the same way burning in the sun, dying by fire and vervain-toxicity are vulnerabilities that ensure vampires aren't indestructible," Giulia said reasonably. "Nature must have balance."
"You've been going to too many of Miss Sheila's lectures," Damon muttered, nudging her leg with his toe.
"She knows her stuff. Witches have their limitations – you couldn't get into the tomb beneath Fells' Church until the same comet passed over Mystic Falls as in 1864," Giulia pointed out.
"Magic has its own rules, as Miss Sheila says. But none of that explains why you think this curse is a hoax," Damon said.
"Other than the gaps in the logic – I read it somewhere," Giulia said, smiling mildly.
"Where?"
"Veronica Salvatore's diary," Giulia said, glancing at Damon.
"That humungous old tome filled with gold leaf and paintings?" Damon frowned.
"Illuminated manuscript – and yes."
"Thought that was all written in some funky Renaissance Latin code."
"It is."
"And you – of course you broke it. So, what'd old Veronica have to say?"
"Well, it was a fabulous read. Not just pretty pictures. And the subject-matter is unusual for the time, when women were rarely educated and usually kept records of their daily prayers, their children's births, and natural remedies they used for cosmetics, ending unwanted pregnancies, medicines, that kind of thing. I mean, Vera does write about her children and marrying them all off, but that's mostly in her correspondence and in her ledgers of accounts paying for dowries and weddings," Giulia said, smiling warmly at the very idea of that illuminated manuscript. "D'you know – I can't look at Vera and believe she was married five times before she was twenty-three and survived childbirth twelve times. Ow. Anyway – besides a lot of contemporary accounts of the rise of the Borgia family (Vera was obsessed with politics) and some toe-curling descriptions and illustrations of her relationship with, erm, her sister Carafina and their lover, a nobleman named Isak… She writes stories about Isak's family, the genesis of the vampire species, and why Isak fled England in 1492, ending up in the Papal court."
"Vera and Cara had a ménage a trois with this Isak guy?" Damon grinned lecherously, then he frowned, "You never showed me any pictures."
"Utter vulgarity," Giulia said sharply, sniffing, hiding a private smile. To be a fly on the wall of their bedchamber! "Anyway, Isak revealed his dirty little secret in 1498, and after he killed her husband, Isak turned Veronica and her sister Carafina, not just so he could enjoy their bed-sport forever, but so the sisters could spend eternity together, safe… He gave them power for the first time, in a world where men controlled every part of their destinies… He also told them about the origin of the vampire species, and about what had prompted his departure from England in 1492."
"Is this relevant?"
"I absolutely think so. One of the stories he told Veronica was about the Original vampire family. Several brothers, and at least one sister lived in England in the latter half of the fifteenth century," Giulia said. "This sister was blonde, incredibly beautiful, and she seduced the younger son of a werewolf clan…he lived with her in a grand house in the English countryside. The story goes that these Originals were all set to break the curse, but there was a complication. The young girl who acted as part of the ritual to break the curse fled."
"What do you mean, part of the ritual?" Damon frowned.
"In order to undo the curse, there had to be sacrifices," Giulia said quietly.
"Mm. Sacrifices," Damon said, glancing at her. His pale eyes examined her solemn face before he sighed, "Already, not good.
"Nope. You said it yourself, witches are crafty with their spells – in order to lift the curse, the same ingredients used to create it had to be sacrificed," Giulia murmured. She had debated telling Damon what she knew about the 'Sun and Moon Curse', and decided on telling him just enough to help her keep the secret from Stefan and Elena. "The vampire-sister had seduced a werewolf, so he could be sacrificed as part of the ritual; the Original family were surrounded by vampires they had created as their court, so they could have their pick of vampires to sacrifice. But in order for the curse to be broken, the witch who performed the ritual had to drain the blood of the doppelganger."
"The doppelganger?"
"The witch who created the curse used a human girl as a sacrifice to give her spell its power. Five-hundred years later, seemingly the first known doppelganger appeared. Nature's way of ensuring the curse could be lifted," Giulia said, plucking at the flimsy fabric of her charcoal tank-top, wishing she had put a sweatshirt on; the days were blisteringly hot and yet it was still early-spring and the evenings, especially in the Boarding House as they had always been, had a bite to them. "According to Isak, the girl was a slut. She wedged herself between two Original brothers, trying to play one against the other…until she discovered her part in the ritual to lift the curse, and she ran. And then she died."
"How tragic," Damon said drily, not sounding the least mournful for the girl's plight. "Let me guess her name…Petrova."
"How do you know that?" Giulia asked, her eyebrows raised.
"How did you know that Katerina Petrova was Katherine's real name?" Damon countered.
"I'm not an idiot," Giulia said, shrugging.
"So…a vampire, a werewolf, a doppelganger…" Damon sighed heavily. "So…what does all this mean?"
"Well, Katherine came into town after all this business with Isobel; Isobel might've told Katherine about Elena…one glimpse at a picture, Katherine would have known a doppelganger existed…" Giulia sighed.
"So you're saying…that for this Sun and Moon curse to be lifted, Elena has to be sacrificed in some weird blood ritual?" Damon mused.
"Yeah. Good thing it's not a virgin sacrifice, otherwise –"
"Why aren't you telling Stefan about this?" Damon asked lightly.
"Because he'll strap on the hero-hair and trot off on his white horse to go and slay some dragons," Giulia rolled her eyes. "The best way to keep Elena safe is to keep the both of them ignorant. Otherwise they'll dig."
"Ignorance is bliss. So wait, we have to know the secret?"
"Darling, we're far from ignorant," Giulia said drily, sniffing.
"So Katherine knew the Lockwoods had the werewolf gene…she triggered Mason Lockwood's curse and brought him home," Damon said, gesturing with his tumbler of bourbon.
"Makes you wonder how long she's known about Elena," Giulia murmured.
"I turned Isobel two-ish years ago. John must've slipped her Elena's school photo or something before then – I turned her, she found Katherine and voilà," Damon bit his lip. "Inadvertently set the world's most self-absorbed, manipulative little slut vampire on a path to kill your daughter – how's that for Mother of the Year?"
"Selfishly I can't say I feel too sorry for Elena over the whole thing. Some boxes just shouldn't be opened."
"Did you know what you were looking for when we searched the Lockwood house?" Damon frowned.
"No. Not really," Giulia amended. "We sort of hit a mother-lode with those journals."
"So…a vampire, a werewolf, a doppelganger," Damon mumbled, staring up at his high ceiling. He glanced at her. "Surely there's some big mystical rock that binds the whole thing, isn't that like textbook witchy hoodoo?"
"This kind of magic is way too old to be hoodoo; that evolved in the Mississippi Delta from old African influences. And besides, hoodoo is considered 'good magic' compared to the darker 'voodoo'," Giulia said, deflecting. "This number of people being slaughtered, this is some ancient pagan shit."
"'Ancient pagan shit'. Witchcraft in Three Words, by Giulia Salvatore," Damon smirked.
"I'm just saying – there's no reason to ever slaughter some innocent person just to curse someone else," Giulia said, shrugging. She did wonder to what extent the Original who had been cursed had earned his punishment.
"Okay, so what is this curse, then, if breaking it won't let me frolic out in the UV rays butt-naked as the day I was born," Damon said, and Giulia smirked, laughing.
"It's a curse on one of the Originals, that's all Veronica wrote," she shrugged. "Isak wouldn't give her specifics. Anyway, I hardly think it matters, one way or another. What's important is that we not give anyone opportunity to try and lift the curse, hey?"
"My lips are sealed. They won't hear about it from me. Do kind of feel guilty about lying to my baby-bro, though."
"No you don't!" Giulia exclaimed, laughing. "You lied to him about the tomb for a hundred and fifty years! And, by the way – it was a moonstone. The witch who cursed the Original back when…" Giulia glanced at Damon. "She used a moonstone to bind the curse; Katherine gave it to George Lockwood as part of their deal, him setting up her 'death' in the fire that night. He believed the story put out into the world about the Curse of the Sun and the Moon; he kept the stone safe."
"So…where is it?"
"Tyler has it," Giulia said honestly. "He showed it to me tonight, when he took me down to the old cellar – a werewolf holding-cell if I've seen one. Claw-marks and chains. Tyler says his uncle's been creeping about looking for the moonstone. If Katherine got her hands on it I imagine she'd snatch Elena right on out of here with Caroline and her lapdog in tow."
"Speaking of – think we need to neuter Mason Lockwood," Damon mused.
"You're not going to kill him," Giulia sighed tiredly, rubbing her eyes.
"Giulia, his bite could kill me," Damon said exasperatedly.
"Well, avoid love-bites," Giulia said tartly. "Besides, most legends are rooted in truth; he'll most likely be able to transform only on full-moons. So just try not to make an enemy out of him and go on a bender at the local college on full-moon nights.
"I guess," Damon sighed. "I'm just not up for it lately."
"Elena's lack of personality better not be rubbing off on you, we already have one gormless Salvatore too many," Giulia said, pulling a face. "It is wrong that the seventeen-year-old is living it up harder than the decadently hedonistic Victorian vampire. Come on, embrace your inner Dorian Gray. Let's go and play."
"Don't you have term-papers to finish?"
"Shit!"
"Wait, wait, wait – tell me more about the diaries we found," Damon said, grabbing hold of her hand before she could dart off the bed.
"How do you know I've read them all?" Damon just gave her a look. Giulia sighed, shrugging a shoulder.
"I don't think George realised anybody but the affected members of his family would ever read these, because he…is not apologetic for what he did. In 1864, a beauty named Katherine became ward to Giuseppe Salvatore. George writes about her exquisite beauty, her smug manipulation of the townspeople, how she had placed herself between the inseparable Salvatore brothers…and how he scented exactly what she was the first moment they met. He knew she was a vampire," Giulia said, and Damon raised his eyebrows. "He knew each and every vampire she had turned; and for a little while, he let them go on killing, because the deaths they caused masked what he got up to every full moon. He was a soldier in the Confederate Army, he'd killed. He'd triggered the curse, and while everyone viewed him as the favourite son, charming, charismatic, every full-moon he endured the curse, the transformation, he killed. Ripped bodies to shreds and left the pieces scattered through the woods. Most of the murders were never reported, because they were the Lockwood slaves."
"Yeesh. Sounds like my little brother on a Ripper binge," Damon murmured. "Writing everything down so he can relive the kills, one by one."
"I know, right," Giulia said darkly, crinkling her nose. "But here's the part I really found intriguing. George writes about the Founders' Party."
"Ah, the infamous Founders' Party."
"He writes that Katherine confronted him, telling him she was a vampire, and letting him know she knew exactly what he was," Giulia said.
"So Katherine knew there were werewolves running around Mystic Falls in the 1860s."
"More than that, she conspired with George."
"What?"
"George Lockwood was using the vampires as a scapegoat for his own kills. He went to the Founders' Council about the vampires, he had a list of names drawn up of people he suspected were 'demons'," Giulia said. "And he wrote in detail about the deal he had brokered with the vampire Katherine."
"Wait a minute, she made a deal with George?" Damon scowled. "What kind of a deal?"
"He wrote that Katherine wanted to fake her own death. In return for his help, not only would Mystic Falls be rid of vampires, but George would obtain a very valuable moonstone," Giulia said, rolling her eyes. "She claimed its provenance went back to the genesis of the wolf-curse."
"Wait a minute…"
"George wrote that Katherine was instrumental in helping set up the vampires in 1864. She had it all planned down to the last detail. Katherine insisted on a head-count; there were to be twenty-seven vampires burned in the tomb. Names were to be recorded, too. But while the flames engulfed the church, Katherine slipped to the exit under the choir loft, where George freed her," Giulia said, stifling a yawn, and sighed. "He'd arrange for a carriage to take her out of Mystic Falls…but before he let her go, he made sure she held up her end of their bargain. The moonstone."
"She knew the Council were coming for the vampires."
"She practically lit the match herself," Giulia said quietly. "She murdered twenty-six of her friends just so she could fake her death."
"Why?"
"I've watched enough television to know you only fake your death for a handful of reasons. And the usual one is when you're running from something… Or someone. If the way she treated you is any indication of her regard for other people, Katherine's five-hundred years old, I'm sure her list of enemies is a long one…if she sacrifices her friends for her own survival, I'm sure the world's littered with people who want her dead."
"Add one more name to that list…" Damon sighed, and Giulia watched him for a little while. Like her own, Damon's face revealed little that he didn't want people to see.
"Want to tell me what's going on in there?"
"…I died for nothing."
"You died trying to save her, because you loved her…it's not your fault she's never deserved your love…"
A.N.: More Giulijah in the next chapter, I promise. I just wanted to get this chapter out of the way first, I felt Giulia needed to tell Damon about the Curse/doppelganger, and it shows her position on things.
