"My, my you boys grew up mighty fine young men didn't you?!" Joseph Deveraux fondly said when presented with two very angry Salvatores. Damon and Stefan stood one side of the dining room table while Elena and Deveraux took the other. Elena had made each brother promise not to kill Deveraux until they heard him out. Both brothers glowered at Deveraux with equal dislike and scepticism.
"Have we met already?" Stefan asked intrigued by Deveraux's last statement.
"I met your family way back when you were just a newborn, Stefan."
"How old are you!?" Damon asked incredulously.
Deveraux gave a vague answer but it could be deduced that he was a lot older, and therefore more powerful, than anyone thought. Deciding this could be a long conversation everyone sat down. All eyes were on Deveraux. "I met your father when I was just a young man. I was a simple pedlar passing though Mystic Falls. Or so everyone thought. Guiseppe knew nothing of my supernatural nature and though I hate to speak ill of the dead, I didn't like him very much."
Damon smirked and nodded his appreciation at Deverax's opinion of their murderous father.
"Your late mother on the other hand: she intrigued me. And I her. I am staggered by how like her you are Damon. Those eyes," Deveraux continued. "I digress. The demon you have now in your midst was alive and well back then too. Legend said that the key to its destruction was a woman with hair the colour of ebony and eyes the colour of ice."
Deveraux had his audience fascinated and went on to explain how he worked with Mrs Salvatore in secret to help her understand the demon. It resided in the subconscious only in dreams. Deveraux had believed she was the one to defeat it. His disappointment at their failure was monumental.
"In the end your mother and I gave up. She felt like a failiure until one day when I realised that she had given birth to the two people who could truly rid us if this demon."
Damon clapped his hands in a mocking applause. "The fact that you expect us to believe this crap just proves how dumb you really are."
Elena tensed unable to read Damon's intentions. She worried about his next move. She looked at Stefan, silently pleading with him to diffuse the situation.
"Damon, what if he's telling the truth?" Stefan offered
"Ok. Tell me something about my childhood that nobody knows, not even my brother," Damon instructed coldly.
Deveraux fixed Damon with a glance and beckoned him to come closer. Damon, figuring this was the only way to get answers, went to Deveraux's side. Deveraux beckoned him closer until in whispering distance and said something inaudible to everyone else except the eldest Salvatore. Damon held up his hands in defeat. "Okay so unless he's Yoda, he's telling the truth."
Everyone in the room was shell shocked. Stefan itched to know what Deveraux had told Damon but figured he'd never know and didn't even waste breath on asking. It was at that moment Damon's phone rang. It was not pretty news.
"Matt, wake up. Open your eyes," said Sheriff Forbes leaning into Matt's car window.
"What the hell happened?" Asked Stefan getting out of Damon's car. Deveraux, who followed in a black SUV, was looking grim. "It is the demon. This was always my worst fear."
"He's not dead." Damon bit into his own wrist and tried forcing the blood down the unconscious boy's throat. Stefan held Elena as she clung to him in a worried embrace.
"That won't work. The damage has been done in the dream not in the physical world. I fear the only way to help him is by destroying the demon," Deveraux proclaimed.
"I'll get him to a hospital," Liz Forbes announced.
Stefan and Damon sat on the sofa in the Salvatore mansion. Deveraux faced them. It was just the three of them in the room. Deveraux thought it important not to have an audience plus Elena wanted to be with Matt. The Salvatores eyed up the glasses of Vervain water in their hands.
"Remember, the key to killing the demon is finding it to begin with. If anybody can see the cursed thing it's you two. Be careful, boys it probably knows who you are."
Damon sniffed the glass. Rarely had he encountered such a high concentration of the vampire poison. His eyes watered at the smell. "Bottoms up, brother."
Stefan chinked his glass with Damon's and they bravely downed the lot.
Stefan came to his senses. It was Mystic Falls. The way it used to be when he grew up. He watched the scene play out when he forced Damon to turn. His dream self's hand was on the back of Damon's head forcing him towards the girl until he cracked. Stefan winced as he watched. Suddenly, the dream version of himself broke free of the memory and advanced menacingly towards Stefan. As easy as that he'd found the demon.
Damon had been wandering around dream Mystic Falls for what felt like hours. Stefan was nowhere to be found and neither was the demon. His temper was fraying like a dangerous live wire.
He stopped at a cross roads. One direction was his childhood home the other was the place his life changed forever. When did Damon ever take the easy route? He turned up towards the spot where he turned. As he approached he could hear the creek bubbling by. He remembered sitting by it wringing blood out of his shirt after being shot. He stuck close to the tree line. He had nothing to fear for the moment but broadcasting his presence didn't seem like a great idea. A twig broke underfoot and he inwardly cursed his carelessness. Suddenly the smell of blood hit his nose. Not the sweet human scent but rather vampire blood. His brothers blood. When Stefan had rounded the corner he'd been presented with the biggest demon of his life. Himself. When Damon rounded the corner he saw his father. Stefan was on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Guiseppe loomed over him. Damon knew in his heart of hearts that it wasn't his father he was looking at but hate and fear still boiled inside him.
"Come to me, son. Let us talk, you and I."
In the outside world Deveraux was powerless. He could simply watch while two slumbering vampire battled a demon in their minds. When blood began to seep from a deep wound on Stefan's neck he knew that battle had commenced.