Chapter 3
Damon felt his lips twitch involuntarily and he stood to pull out the chair Klaus had abandoned. She'd recovered from their earlier encounter and had even managed to put on a smile. The girl had spunk.
"You ok eating in the kitchen?" he asked.
"Sure, this is great" she said as she took the seat.
He brought her a huge plate of pasta covered in a heavenly smelling pesto sauce.
"Dig in" he said.
She paused for a beat before picking up her fork and taking a big bite. The noise she made in her throat would have been inaudible to anyone else. Lucky him, he heard everything and the little 'mmm' had his stomach clenching. He wondered if she would make that sound when he kissed her. Don't go there he told himself. He turned back to the oven and produced a tray of garlic bread. He'd barely set it down when she snatched a piece.
"Good?" he asked as he sat back down.
"Yes really good. I didn't realize I was so hungry. Thank you" she replied between bites.
It was strange, to look at her and see Katherine's face when this girl was so plainly not Katherine. The features were the same but her chocolate colored eyes were warm and her face was expressive. He doubted she'd ever successfully deceived anyone in her life. Not to mention she'd just thanked the vampire who'd kidnapped her from her bed in the middle of the night. The heart she so plainly wore on her sleeve was kind, considerate, and reminded him of his little brother. She caught him staring and held his gaze.
"Please Damon" she begged him "just tell me what's happening. Why am I here?"
"You're a doppelgänger" might as well jump right in he thought.
"What does that mean?" she interrupted.
Her voice sounded strained and he did his best to keep his temper in check.
"I'm getting there. Give me a damn minute." he said through clenched teeth.
She fell instantly silent.
"The woman who made me what I am, and just to be clear, I am a vampire." he made sure she was looking at him when he said the last word.
She nodded very slowly.
"Anyway, the woman who turned me had your face. Not just a passing resemblance, she was identical to you. And really, as far as faces go, you could do a lot worse than Katherine Pierce."
He took in her features again. She had the dark brown eyes, small nose, pouty lips, and olive skin. Her chestnut locks were straight in this life but physically, everything about her was the same. He allowed himself a moment to wonder whether her petite frame would fit as snugly in his arms as her ancestor had.
"Damon?" her voice was quiet but it brought him back.
"Sorry" he ran his hand over his face "Where was I?"
"You were telling me someone else had my face" she said.
He nodded and then frowned when he looked down at her plate. She'd only eaten half of it and once again he found himself strangely concerned for her well-being.
"Finish your food" he told her.
She obediently picked up her fork and resumed eating.
Satisfied, he continued. He explained about the original Jonathon Gilbert and the untimely end of his family. When he stopped she opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand.
"Wait. We're just getting started" he said and stood to pour another drink.
He took a long swallow of bourbon before he started talking again.
"The night my brother and I turned into vampires, Jonathon Gilbert came to our house and found Katherine draining our father of blood. Our bodies were on the floor and he assumed we were dead."
He started to pace the kitchen as he talked.
"Little did anyone know, Katherine had been compelling us to drink her blood and then forget about it for weeks. That night she told us that she loved us both and we would be together forever. We tried to stop her when she went for our father but she broke our necks. When we woke up, daddy dearest and Katherine were dead on the floor. The blood that pooled around my brother and I turned out to be too much to resist, and so the blood of our father and the blood of your ancestor made us what we are.
"Oh my god…" he heard her whisper.
"Still not done yet." He went to pour another drink but thought better of it and just grabbed the bottle.
When he turned around, her jaw was slack and her eyes were wide.
"Are you ok? Do you want me to stop?" he asked.
"No!" she exclaimed "Can I ask a question though?"
"Of course." he said with a wave of his hand.
"So to become a vampire you have to drink vampire blood?"
"Uh-huh and then you have to die with it in your system. When you wake up, you drink human blood and bam, you're a vampire."
She sat quietly for a moment before she said "Ok. I'm ready to hear the rest."
"I hope so. There are no happy endings here" he said bitterly and continued with the story.
"Lucky for us Katherine had already outfitted us with our handy daylight rings" he held up his left hand to show her the ornate silver ring he wore.
"So after we buried our father and our lover, we left Mystic Falls. Sometimes we did the brother thing and sometimes we went our separate ways for a couple decades." He paused take another pull off the bottle.
"My diet makes my brother squeamish after a while."
"Your brother doesn't hurt people?" she interrupted again but he decided to indulge her curiosity this time.
"Nope. He and Caroline are on the bunny diet. Well Caroline cheats with blood bags but to my knowledge she's never killed anyone."
"Like actual bunnies?" she said and wrinkled her nose.
"Yes like Peter Cottontail bunny rabbits."
"Gross." she cringed.
"You'd rather they ate people?" he asked with raised brows.
"No but...never mind. Go on" she still looked disturbed by the bunny comment and he fought back a laugh.
"My brother and I don't always get along. In fact sometimes he's an insufferable martyr, but he's my brother and we managed just fine until the Gilbert's came back into our lives nearly twenty years ago." The last part came out laced with resentment.
"The Gilbert family tradition of hunting vampires started the night Katherine killed Mrs. Gilbert and her unborn child. The first Jonathon commissioned a witch to make him a stake that would steal a vampire's essence and transfer it to whoever used it to kill said vampire. He used that stake to kill dozens of vampires before he realized it was driving him nuts and by then it was too late. Apparently human brains aren't equipped to deal with supernatural powers. Every vampire he killed made his body stronger and his mind weaker. After he killed Katherine he left the stake with his remaining family members, walked off into the woods, and no one ever saw him again."
He stopped and examined her. She looked entranced.
"And?" she said.
Her voice was desperate and it made him smile.
"Patience. This is where you come in and I'd like to not scar you for life." however long that life may be his demon taunted.
The bourbon was getting to him and making it harder to control his dark side so he moved to the other side of the kitchen to put some distance between them.
"Me?"
"You" he told her softly.
She went quiet again and waited for him.
"Now we're in this century. Your uncle is carrying on the vampire hunting legacy while your dad goes to college and meets your mom. Your mom and dad get married baby makes three and all that jazz. Your uncle was not overly excited about the vampire hunting thing and when your grandfather died, he stopped hunting completely. I won't lie to you, Elena. I started hunting down Gilberts the night Johnathon killed Katherine and I've killed dozens of your relatives over the last century or so. But when Grayson quit hunting, I decided it was time to let bygones be bygones and left your family alone for nearly ten years. Everything was fine until Isobel Gilbert knocked on my door about two years after you were born. She was an expert parapsychologist and obsessed with vampires. So obsessed she would give up her life with her husband and child to become one. I suspect she knew who your family was before she married into it and as soon as she had access, she searched me out and asked me to turn her."
"No." Elena suddenly stood up.
"Elena" he said gently.
"You're lying!" she cried, her voice shook with anger and for the first time he caught a glimpse of the ferocity underneath her calm exterior.
"I wish I was but I'm not. I swear to you, I had no idea who she was. She was charming, beautiful and, to be honest, had she been anyone else I would have killed her but there was something about her that drew me in." he paused for a moment "apparently it runs in the family."
His last comment was lost on her as she gaped at him in disbelief.
"And my dad?" she asked.
"When he found out what I'd done, he came looking for me and your mom. I'm not sure who he hated more at that point, me or Isobel. He went on an undead killing spree with the stake until he found us here. Just like his ancestor, he was out of his mind by the time he got to us. He came after me and he nearly had me but Stefan…." He trailed off and took another swig from the bottle.
The anger on her face dwindled and she sat back down.
"What happened to Stefan?"
"The idiot threw himself in front of me and my little brother took a stake to the heart for me. Your dad though, he was not a quitter I'll give him that. He pulled the stake out and went for me again. With Stefan dead, there was no fight left in me. I was ready to die right there but your mom walked in at that exact moment. They took one look at one another and…" he trailed off and took another pull off the bottle before he told her the last part.
"I'm so sorry Elena, they killed each other" realizing he was thoroughly wasted and he might actually fall over, he sat back down in front of her.
"How?" she demanded quietly.
"I don't think you want that in your head." he warned
"How?!" she shouted
"He staked her but before she died, she ripped his heart out." he said it quickly and then took down the rest of the bottle in a single swallow.
He could practically hear her mind spinning but decided to rip off the proverbial Band-Aid and tell her the rest.
"I can't keep living knowing that Stefan died for me, Elena. He's the good brother who saves teenage girls and I'm the monster who kills them. He should be here and I can't stop until he's back in the land of the semi-living. My witch is on some stupid island finding me the answers I need. The cell service is a shitty in the middle of nowhere so I didn't catch it all, but I know I need doppelgänger blood to bring him back. There's something else but I lost the signal. I probably won't be able to get her for at least a couple of days."
"How did you find me?" she asked
"Witches are handy like that. A friend of Bonnie's did a locator spell with a lock of Katherine's hair I had. You come from her Petrova blood line so I was able to search for her only living relative. You"
"How did you know I even existed?"
"You can thank Klaus for that. He turned Katherine by accident about five hundred years ago. Regular immortality was just not good enough for my old buddy. Long story short, he wanted to be a vampire/werewolf hybrid and he had to kill the doppelgänger to do it. Katherine being Katherine, she convinced a vampire to feed her his blood and when Klaus killed her, she came back a vampire. Since Klaus found out after he killed her that she'd had a baby when she was a teenager, he knew there was another one out there. Don't ask me where it all started but as long as there are Petrova's, there will be doppelgängers."
"Why?"
"Who knows? I think witches make this crap up as they go along" he frowned down at the empty bottle in his hand.
"So it must've come from my mom's side, right?"
"Yep" he told her and watched her face as she absorbed it all.
Finally she looked back up at him, her doe eyes filled with sincerity.
"I'm sorry, Damon."
He was sure he was losing his mind when he heard her small voice and felt her warm fingers touch his hand.
"What?" he asked, bewildered.
"You lost your brother and I'm sorry" sympathy was written all over her face and he couldn't stand it.
He yanked his hand back and got up. After everything he'd just told her, she was sorry his brother was dead? He felt her compassion tugging at his heart and it made the vampire in him angry. The alcohol was coursing through his system and he hadn't 'eaten' in a few hours. The monster was trying to claw its way out and it didn't want to feel anything. It wanted to tear out her artery and revel in it.
"Do you have any more questions?" he asked coldly.
Damon knew he was drunk and stupid but he was pissed at her for making him feel like this. His humanity had been hanging by a thread for years but being here with her, he almost forgot he was a monster.
Her eyes were wide as she shook her head 'no'.
"Then it's time for bed" he told her, his voice hard.
She looked at the clock and realized they'd been talking for hours. He grabbed her arm and wrenched her to her feet. His fingers dug painfully into her arm as he pulled her up the stairs and she cried out in pain.
"Let go! You're hurting me!" she yelled and tried to pull free.
There was a whoosh before her back connected with the bedroom door. She looked around but she didn't see him. There was another flurry of movement and she was suddenly in her room, her back now pressed against the opposite side of the door. It was dark and though she couldn't see him, she could sense that he was there somewhere. All her training, all the hours spent on weapons and hand to hand combat, none of it meant anything here with him. She felt like a mouse cowering in a corner, trying to hide from a hungry cat.
Then his voice was coming from everywhere all at once, filling the pitch black room with his spite.
"That's what I do, Elena. I'm a vampire. I hurt people."
The utter lack of emotion in his voice sent shivers down her spine.
"I might need you alive but I don't have to kill you to hurt you" he taunted.
Every instinct told her to scream and run but she gritted her teeth and held it in. She wouldn't let him have the satisfaction. She tried to think of a way to talk him down or a way to hurt him somehow, but nothing came to mind. There was no next move. She was trapped in a dark room with a vampire. A very drunk, angry vampire.
There was a gust of air to her right that made her gasp and suddenly the room was filled with light. She could see him now, on the opposite side of the room. She pressed herself into the door and wished she could just disappear into the wood. His movements were predatory as he advanced on her. His cool blue gaze never left hers and it seemed to freeze her in place.
"You have no idea what I'm capable of, Elena" he mocked her "your uncle really should have explained it all to you."
Anger flared behind her eyes at the mention of her uncle but before she could say anything he was in front of her, his face only millimeters from hers. He grinned down at her evilly.
"I've got to hand it to him though. You are a tough little thing" he murmured and brushed a lock of hair out of her face.
Elena's hand itched to slap the smug smile off his face but she managed to remain perfectly still. One wrong move and she feared he might snap so she stayed motionless and quiet. She could feel his cool breath, thick with the odor of bourbon, on her cheeks. When she finally looked back at his face, the vampire who wanted to hurt her was gone. The moment she met his eyes, he closed the short distance between them. His lips barely touched hers, just hovering over her mouth for what seemed like forever. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe. She wasn't sure if he was going to kiss her or kill her. Maybe both she thought.
The next second he was gone and she was alone and breathless. Elena shrank down to the floor with a sob. She couldn't understand him. She could swear she saw some good in him, some kindness. Then in a flash it was gone and he was ruthless. She dragged herself to her feet and collapsed on the bed, falling asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.
Caroline stood at the bottom of the stairs with that judgy look in her eyes.
"Don't start with me" he snapped as he brushed past her.
"You are such an ass" she said to his back.
"Goodnight Blondie." He said dismissively as he zipped away scrounge up a blood bag from the basement.
He'd denied himself earlier, not wanting to freak her out with blood in an antique crystal tumbler. Instead he got shit faced and terrified her. Again. It was probably best for both of them if he just stayed the hell away from her. He would let Caroline take care of her. Even as he told himself he would leave her alone, he knew it was a lie. Just knowing she was upstairs, locked up in a room not six feet from his was driving him wild. She was lucky she'd escaped the kitchen with her clothes and throat intact. It was in his nature to take what he wanted and never apologize for anything, but tonight she had coaxed whatever shred of humanity he had left into making an appearance. He finished the blood bag and went for another. Usually it was easy to turn off his emotions, like flipping a light-switch, but he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he wanted her alive for reasons other than his own selfish needs.