CHAPTER THREE
"Don't piss off the diabolical ones."
~"Katherine Pierce"
"Vampire Diaries" Episode: "Monster Ball"
xxxxXxxxx
Elena watched the as black car pulled out from behind her Mini Cooper and headed back down the drive to the road. She had tried listening in on the two men's conversation, but with how high up in the attic she was, the fact that the two agents were standing close together and speaking in low voices, and that her attention was split in two places she was only able to pick up snatches of what they said. Completely irrelevant things about finding a place to stay, and a few choice things about her.
She turned when she heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. She walked away from the window to Stefan's large on suite bathroom. She found him standing over the marbled vanity, hand in the stream of the faucet which turned the water bright red. As more of the blood was cleaned off she saw that the wound was long, with a shine from the pieces of jagged glass that were still in his palm. And that it was taking too long to heal, especially for a vampire.
"Hey," Elena grabbed a cream colored hand towel from off a brass ring next to the sink, reaching into the vanity's drawer for a pair of pliers she had found in there once before. "Let me help you-"
Stefan heard Elena's voice like he was running through a tunnel, the water that poured over his hand in the sink sounded like rain sliding off a distant roof. Then the water started to poor inwards, into cracks of a murky darkness.
"Stefan?"
He felt himself drown for just a moment, the pain exploded into whiteness, then he was in a room, he saw shapes tied down. One of them was Damon, he was looking down at Damon, but the images was blurry.
["What did you do to me?" Damon's green eyes were stained in blood and agony.]
"Stefan-" Elena set a hand on Stefan's shoulder, and his reaction was like she had torn off his daylight rind and thrust him into a flood of sunlight.
He jerked back with a choke of a sound, his injured hand shot out and wrapped around her neck.
"Stefan!" Elena choked out a Morse code gasp of his name at the pressure on her carotid artery, she felt the glass from his palm poking through the flesh of her neck. "You're not drowning, you're here, please!-you're hurting me!-"
Stefan released her neck and Elena fell back with a hacking cough, she gripped at the soreness around her throat, looking up to him and saw that he looked worse than she felt.
"Elena-" The pressure he had used on her throat had pushed the glass fragments more into his skin, dripping blood down his palm like reaching octopus tentacles. He stared at his hand like it was a knife that had just slashed someone's throat.
"No-" Elena ducked down to pick up the towel she had dropped on the floor, drops of Stefan's blood dripped down the vanity and onto the cloth in small patters.
"I'm sorry-" the look on Stefan's face was guilt, horror and pain swirled together like his emotions had been run through a blender, along with the rest of him.
"No Stefan it's okay," Elena wrapped his hand tightly in the towel, trying to stem the bleeding.
"I keep seeing these things," Stefan's voice was heavy, almost lost. "I can't turn it off-"
"It's okay," Elena repeated in a whispered reassurance, reaching out with her free hand to grab the pliers off the vanity. She released her grip on his hand and the towel spilled open like a blooming carnation that had been plucked from a vase of blood. She pulled out a shard of glass the size of her thumb from his skin, dropping it in the sink. "It's going to be okay, alright?"
"Elena, I saw Damon."
The pliers stilled above his hand as Elena turned her gaze up to him, startled. "What?"
"It's not just the drowning anymore," Stefan said as she pulled a glass shard only slightly smaller than the previous one next to the life line his palm, blood oozed out along the crease. "I keep seeing snatches of things, a room, these lights, Damon's there and-" Stefan made no noise earlier while Elena removed the glass fragments, but as she reached for the last visible piece, he winced audibly.
"Stefan you went through so much pain in that safe, and now with Damon-" Elena set the bloody pliers in the sink and turned the water. "You haven't been sleeping, you're always on edge-" she rewrapped the towel around his hand like a makeshift bandage.
"I'm fine," Stefan insisted.
"Stefan you're not fine-"
Stefan waved her off with an angry jerk of his head, turning his eyes back to her. "Why is this so hard for you to believe? You had a bad feeling about me all summer when I was missing, but I can't experience the same phenomena? Do you even want to find, Damon?"
"How could you even ask that?" Elena defended "Of course I do! I love Damon too, but I'm worried about you, Stefan!-" Elena gripped both sides of his face with the flat of her palms, his dried blood ringed under her fingernails. "I can't save him and lose you in the process."
The look in Stefan's eyes showed all of his 162 years. "Then you have to trust me. He's my brother, Elena. I'll save him even if I have to loose myself in the process."
Elena's face fell into a sadness. She loved Damon very much. But standing here with Stefan, her love for Damon and his love for Damon was like trying to compare a droplet of water to an entire ocean. She placed a hand over his bloody one. "We'll find him."
Stefan didn't blink as he watched her do this. The wound on his hand had finally stopped bleeding and started to heal itself. He unwrapped his hand and dropped the bloody towel on top of everything else bloody in the sink, pushing past Elena to exit the bathroom.
She watched him for a second before following him out through his bedroom and down the three flights of stairs. As they descended the steps they started to pick up Liz and Caroline's voices arguing against each other, the sound reaching its apex when they hit the first floor landing.
"-you should've told us mom are you that stupid!" Caroline stood only inches away from her mom, her voice hostile.
"Caroline!" Bonnie exclaimed, trying to reign her friend in.
"I didn't have a choice!" Liz argued back to her daughter.
"What's going on?" Elena reached the ground floor a second after Stefan did. She looked to Liz, then Caroline. But Liz was the one who spoke.
"The security cameras at Whitmore had an exterior shot of Damon entering the building the night that other Vampire attacked him-" Liz could see Caroline was fighting back a 'his name is Jessie' that she wanted to say, because Caroline had already yelled it enough Liz was sure everyone in town had heard her. "By the time I found out about it, it had already been seen by Campus Security, I had to do damage control-"
"One of us could have gone up there and compelled them into giving us back the tape mom!" Caroline snapped, almost sounding like the bratty kid she had been before, had the situation not been as serious as it was.
"Wes put the entire campus staff on vervain," Liz said to her daughter. "One of my deputies found a huge supply in the college kitchens, there was no way any of you could've taken it from them by force. I had to do what I could to minimize the attention-"
"Yeah except your minimization attracted the attention of the FBI," Stefan said to Liz, the hostility clearly evident in his voice.
Liz Forbes turned to Stefan, feeling his anger like it was a living thing. The stories about the anger of Damon Salvatore were legend, but Stefan was not immune to such emotions, especially when it concerned the people that he cared about. "The APB on Damon was local Stefan, I made it small on purpose so it would look like we were doing our job without gaining too much of a spotlight, there was noway it should've crossed FBI jurisdiction."
"Then how did they find out about it?" Bonnie asked confused.
"That's what I want to know," Liz said, "I'd like Caroline to stay here longer," this remark was directed at Stefan as well. "I don't want her staying alone so long as those FBI agents are in town."
"Mom I can handle myself, and I've got classes!" Caroline argued, getting madder than she should have, but the entire last week of Stefan coming back home damaged, losing Jessie, Damon going missing, it was all starting to boil over.
"She's right Caroline," Stefan insisted, despite his anger from earlier, he knew that the sheriff was just looking out for her daughter. "It's better if you're here with us, safety in numbers applies to vampires as well as humans."
"Thank you," Liz said to Stefan with a nod. "Caroline said she heard them talking about finding a room in town, I'm going to meet up with them again, see what else they know, I'm not about to expose all of you to a federal witch hunt." There was a time when Liz Forbes was part of the Council of Mystic Falls created solely for the purpose of hunting down and exterminating Vampires, but she had since realized that even concerning the supernatural, not everything was as black and white as people wanted to believe.
"I'll check in with you tonight okay?" Liz set a hand on Caroline's shoulder, then hugged her. "Be careful-" Liz addressed the remark to all of them. With the acceptation of Stefan she had known all of the other kids since they were born, and had grown extremely protective of them.
"You too, okay?" Caroline said to her mom, watching her give her one last look before she left.
"Seriously!" Caroline said once her mom was out of earshot. "This is crazy!" "I can't just sit here while the FBI in town, and that psycho psychics professor who killed Jesse is busy running around free!" she looked to each of her friends in turn. "I say we follow my mom, and make those guys leave!"
"Caroline, that's too dangerous," Bonnie argued. "If you try and attack outsiders in broad daylight, you risk exposing all of you."
"I'm not talking about eating them like Damon, Bon!" Caroline argued right back. "There are three vampires here, and only two of them, all we have to do is compel them to get the hell out of town and I didn't mean the Damon remark," Caroline said the last part all in one breath, looking over to Stefan. "I'm sorry-"
"It's alright Caroline," Stefan reassured his friend. "But I think it's better if I check them out alone first-"
"What?" Elena returned. "No, Stefan, you're still not okay-"
"What if something triggers one of your flashbacks?" Bonnie cut in. Ever since she had become the anchor for the Other Side she became like a supernatural Empath, channeling all the emotions of those beings on both the purgatory and human planes. And the feelings radiating around Stefan was like trying to walk through a brick wall. "If you can't get control of it the way Katherine showed you in time before you try to attack someone- "
"Those guys already think I'm a vulnerable mess," Stefan insisted, not commenting on the 'attacking' part that Bonnie had said, because it was true. "I can use that to my advantage, slip under their radar and find out what they really know-"
"Stefan-"
"As long as Damon is still missing Elena," Stefan cut Elena off. "I'm never going to be okay, and if I don't everything I can to try and find him, then I'm going to lose my mind for real."
"Hey," Jeremy's voice came from the back door that led off the kitchen. His hoodie was drawn up over his head and white ear buds were in his ears, he had left an hour ago to go on a run. He caught sight of everyone at a standstill kind of pose watching each other like there was a loaded bomb in the room. He lowered the ear buds form his ears. "What's going on? Why was your mom here Caroline?"
"I have something I have to do," Stefan told the youngest Gilbert. "I need you to stay indoors until I get back."
"Stefan you're not doing this alone!" Elena insisted.
Stefan stared at his ex-girlfriend/current/always dear friend. "I should be back in a few hours-"
"Stefan if there's something going on you're going to need someone to watch your back," Jeremey insisted, moving to stand closer to Bonnie. Stefan had become like the older brother he never had and he wasn't about to let him walk into something potentially dangerous alone.
"No I need you all to stay here until I call, if there's a threat in town you I'm not going to expose everyone to it."
"I'm a hunter," Jeremy volleyed back. "I can handle myself."
"So can the rest of us," Elena agreed with her brother.
"Let him go," Bonnie said, causing everyone to look at her in bewilderment. "He's right, the FBI was just here," Jeremy's eyes went wide at the homophone, she glanced at him with a silent 'later' look. "If we all go wandering into town together it'll look too suspicious, it's better if Stefan does this alone."
Stefan gave Bonnie a nod laced with gratitude and walked out the door, the others watching him.
xxxxXxxx
Damon's head felt heavy, like molasses had been poured over the folds of his brain and left to harden. The world was a blur of undefined shapes. Wes leaned over him, and Damon was too out of it to tell him to go to hell or eat his face off like he wanted to. "What did you do to me?" Damon's words came out slurred, like the molasses in his brain had melted and trickled over his vocal chords.
"Vervain-" Wes reached up and adjusted the roller clamp controlling the flow rate of an IV bag containing saline with large pieces of Vervain floating in it. "A constant drip to keep you calm," Wes followed a second set of IV tubing going in Damon's other arm up to another bag, one that was a red so dark it was almost black. "Augustine blood tends to make my test subjects a little jumpy, I can't risk any injuries."
"Isn't that nice of you." Damon's words slurred deeper and his breathing was in puffs, he felt like he was floating in a murky ocean.
"It's completely self-serving." Wes returned with a smile on his face that was too wide to look like anything but someone who enjoyed pulling things apart to see how they worked, living things included. "I can't ruin months' worth of research because of one strung out Vampire." He held a syringe in his hand filled with a clear liquid. He flicked out the bubbles and injected it into Damon's forearm.
Damon hissed as the minimal pain on his over sensitized nerves stung like hell. The air was thick with the scent of blood, Damon could smell it like a fog cloud heavy with vapor; he hadn't eaten anything since he'd been brought here. Every time that he was dragged out of his cell and was brought to the lab he had always been pumped full of blood from an IV. At first it burned, like the vervain going up his arm should have, and his body convulsed from the foreign thing, rejecting it like a bad organ donation. But after the fourth day without any other kind of blood, his body took it in because it was starving for food, even without ingesting it personally, the blood felt warm, thick, like he had freshly swallowed it.
That wasn't the sense he was getting from the blood smell in the air, it smelled like something was wrong with it.
Damon felt worse than when he had gotten drunk from the entire top shelf at a bar in New Orleans. "You know I'm going to kill you." His words were slurred to hell and his eyes were so dilated that the grow bulbs overhead made his pupils sizzle from the absorption of the light. "It's just a matter of when."
Wes smiled so widely Damon could see it decay at the ends. "I like you Damon, the Augustine's were right, you are a perfect candidate for this." He moved away from Damon, and the sound of a steel door opened from somewhere off to the right. Then there came the sound of whimpering, and the smell of blood grew thicker, overpowering.
Wes came back to the table Damon was strapped down to, and he wasn't alone. He pushed a young brunette girl in front of him, in a dirty looking white sun dress and bare feet.
"No, please!" Tears streaked down the girl's face, she tried to struggle from Wes' grip but her hands were bound in front of her by a length of rope.
Wes reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a silver Beretta handgun, aiming it at the girl's chest. "Remember what we talked about? You move before I tell you too, you die."
The girl whimpered again, trying to hide her face into her chest in the absence of being able to cover it up with her bound hands; her breathing so rapid it sounded like running footsteps to Damon's heightened ears.
Damon felt as Wes reached over and undid the metal collar around his neck, then the leather strap that was over his head and he couldn't control how his head listed to one side without the support. The girl watched all this with a silent terror in her eyes.
"What are you doing?" Damon slurred out.
"You handled the Typhus so well earlier Damon. Plus all this beta testing with my new improved Augustine Blood" Wes said. "I figured you deserved a little reward." He kept one hand trained with the gun on the girl, and reached into his lab coat again, coming out with a switchblade which he opened with a slice of a noise, reaching out to grab the girl's arm.
She jerked away from his reaching hand. "No, please, leave me alone!"
"It's okay sweetheart," Wes placed the gun right up to her chest. He snatched her arm, and Damon finally saw the source of the smell, a four inch barely clotted scab on her left forearm.
"No-" The girl sobbed, she tried to pull her arm out of Wes's grip, shaking her head in between sobs. "Please, just leave me alone; don't hurt me again!-"
"Shh," Wes stroked her tangled hair like he was placating a child afraid of monsters under the bed. "It's going to be alright." He brought the blade down on her arm, slicing through the scab.
The girl cried out, blood started leaking out of her arm. "No please!" she sobbed louder as Wes jerked her arm and hovered above Damon's face.
"Have a drink on me Damon," Wes shoved the girl's bleeding arm in Damon's mouth. Damon's reaction was purely instinct, he had been starved for days, even with the blood from the IV, the hunger craving was overpowering. His fangs retracted and he bit through the girl's arm, she screamed horrendously.
The blood poured thick and warm down his throat, but the warmth quickly turned rancid. When Elena had first turned she said she couldn't keep blood bags down, that they tasted like "hot garbage", This was worse than that, the blood was like acid, vomiting its way up his windpipe. His fangs released from the girl's skin and she fell back with a cry and he fell back on the table, still gagging.
Wes grabbed the girl like she was a gathering of dirty laundry, shoving her into the hands of two Vampires that had dragged Damon from his cell. They dragged the girl away, her screams echoed down a hallway.
"It's working," Wes's eyes were dilated in the bright light, manic. "You're transitioning Damon," his smile was just as manic as his eyes. "It's only a matter of time." He leaned over Damon, not close enough for Damon to lunge at him. "You're going to solve the world's Vampire epidemic, starting with your home town." Wes side stepped around Damon's perceived reach, moving behind his head, securing the strap back across his forehead. "Your girlfriend Elena," he tightened the strap harder, making Damon grunt. "That little blonde Caroline- I'll make sure their first in line-"
"You're dead!" Damon grunted out around the pain corroding him, his throat was withering, no matter how many times he coughed, he couldn't clear it.
"Oh you're right, I'm sorry-how rude of me-" Wes touched his hand to his head like he had a momentary lapse of adle headedness. "I forgot about Stefan-don't look so shocked, it's amazing how much you can learn when you have the right kind of connections." He leaned down so that he was right by Damon's face. "Those other two will be tests on your new persona and strength, but the real proof that this is all worthwhile will be watching as you rip your brother's throat from his neck."
Damon lunged up hard, the strap snapping like a twig from his head. Wes pulled back, but not fast enough before Damon's fangs tore a chunk out his earlobe. Wes cried out and Damon fell back in agony at the now unbearable taste of human blood.
Wes grabbed at the torn, bleeding chunk of his ear, he grabbed the roller clamp and opened the Vervain drip completely. Damon writhed and screamed, then slowly sank down into listlessness, his head was forced back down and strapped to the table with a new piece of leather, the metal collar shoved back onto his neck, choking his windpipe. He faded on the edge of consciousness, an image of Elena filtering into his mind, her dark curls, her worried eyes. The image shifted, a third person overview, of Stefan, walking, moving somewhere, to a place Damon couldn't see, his brother's eyes hard, fractured around the edges.
"Stefan-"
The world blacked out completely.
xxxxXxxx
"You've got to be kidding me-" Katherine was leaned over as far as she could over the bar at the Grill without actually climbing over it. She shot a look at Matt Donovan that would've compelled him to eat his own tongue had she still been a vampire.
"I'm sorry Katherine," Matt said wiping off the counter with a wet bar rag. "I can't make special exceptions, especially since we're not even friends." He removed a brown paper bag from the counter out of her reach that she had flirted a new young waiter into preparing for her. "You either pay for the food or I can't give it to you." This had been a regular occurrence for weeks now, but it still weirded out Matt to see Katherine Pierce ordering take out from the Grille.
Katherine jerked a hand on his wrist in a death grip. "It's deep fried chicken by product on two day old wheat toast! How far back can it set you, 99 cents?-"
"I could lose my job-"
"I saved your life," Katherine snapped.
"You stabbed me in the chest!" Matt interjected.
"Exactly," Katherine retorted, tilting her head at him so her thick curls tumbled sideways. "Which in turned saved your life, you owe me!"
"Look, I'm grateful for that, but I had to buy a brand new bottle of Patron to replace the one you stole from the inventory, so unless you have cash or credit I can't help you." Matt jerked his hand out of Katherine's grip, with a bit of a wince, though it wasn't Vampire strength anymore, it was still strong.
Katherine released Matt's wrist and slammed her hand on the bar top, angry that it didn't indent from the pressure. Spending 500 years as something, and only three months as something else wasn't an adjustment that was easy to handle, especially considering she only had a handful of months to spend as anything at all. She pulled up from off the bar and stormed away with a click of heels.
"Where are you going?" Matt asked her, backing up towards the inventory boxes of alcohol he had yet to go through. Technically he was still underage to do it, but the bartender was out in the alleyway getting stoned, so there was no one else to perform the task.
Katherine turned back to him in a whole body move. "To the ladies room, I'm a real girl now Mattie, its part of my new character flaw. Is that going to be another problem for you?"
Matt held up his hands in surrender, and was glad when Katherine went with it and continued on her intended path.
Matt bent down by one of the boxes, pulling out glass bottles Kettle One Vodka, adding them to the second lowest shelf on the bar.
It was just a little past noon, so the Grille wasn't too crowded yet, only a few high school seniors grabbing lunch off campus. But after another minute, one of the boys at the table threw down some money and the group left in a whirl of laughter.
Matt grabbed an empty bin from behind the bar and went too bus the now empty table. He picked up the 20 dollar bill, which was just enough to cover the food, without a tip. "Thanks a lot guys," He stuffed the money in the pocket of the black apron around his waist and started placing dirty dishes and napkins inside the bin.
The door opened behind him.
"Excuse me?"
The voice that came behind him was familiar, newly familiar. He turned around and saw one of the two FBI agents that had been there earlier stop just inside the door, dressed down from his suit in jeans, plaid and a canvas jacket.
"Agent Miller?" Matt hoped he didn't sound as surprised as he was. After the two Agents had left the Grille he had tried calling Elena to let her know what was going on, but his cellphone battery had died, and there had been too much commotion in the front of the house from the delivery vans to try and use the phone behind the bar without being overheard.
Agent Miller stepped more into the bar. "It's Matt right?" The dude was well over 6 feet tall, which became more apparent and more intimidating as he came closer.
"Yeah," Matt set down his bin on the table. "Is there something you needed?"
"I just need to ask you a few questions," the FBI agent. "About Damon Salvatore's disappearance."
"I'm working," Matt gestured towards the table he was busing. "My boss will kill me if I don't get this done."
"I understand-" Agent Miller held up a hand. "Tell you what-how about you box up a burger for me? The works plus fried onions and bacon. We can talk while you do that, sound good?"
Agent Miller's voice was calming enough, and Matt didn't want to flat out refuse, having no idea how that would sit with a Federal Agent. "Yeah sure, I'll tell the kitchen to get that started for you, just have a seat okay?" he gestured to one of the many empty tables around the one he was cleaning.
"Thanks," Agent Miller offered him a brief, but sincere smile, dropping into one of the wooden chairs.
Matt dropped off the dirty dishes in the kitchen, dumping them into the deep welled aluminum sink half full of soapy water. He headed towards the back storage room where he had been charging his cellphone, this time intent on actually calling Elena to let her know that the FBI was still asking about Damon. He rounded the portioned corner and ran smack into Katherine coming out of the restroom.
"Ugh!" Katherine made a growl of displeasure and being rammed into. "Careful, I'm fragile now remember?" She wiped at the front of her shirt like something had spilled on it. "Where are you going in such a rush?" Katherine swiveled her head before Matt could answer, noticing Agent Miller sitting, back towards her. "Who's your friend?" Her voice had lowered an octave, and she looked on a little too appreciatively at the man.
Matt grabbed her arm and yanked her back down the hall in front of the men's room door until they were both out of sight of the dining room.
Katherine jerked out of his grip with a scowl. "What is wrong with you?"
"That man is with the FBI," Matt normally withheld information from Katherine Pierce, he didn't disclose it to her, but things had changed, he didn't like it, but they did. "Him and his partner have been asking about Damon going missing-"
Katherine's eyes turned somewhat startled at that new information, like she wasn't used to the humanity pushing through what she could normally mask. "Did you ask him what he knows?"
"He's a federal agent," Matt emphasized again. "It's not like he's just going to let me walk up to him and start questioning why he's here."
"Of course he's not going to let you ask him Matt, you just do it!" Katherine returned like Matt was stupid. "If he knows anything about Damon then we can't just let him walk away!"
"You're only saying that because you want to stay on Stefan's good side," Matt cut in. "I don't know what your new deal is with him, but we both know you never cared about Damon, so how about you quit pretending?"
"You know nothing about me Matt," Katherine hissed, her voice low and piercing like a knife blade. "Or about Damon and Stefan before they became modern and contemporary. So don't give me any more of your Dr. Phil on set psychology."
"Alright fine," Matt cut her off. "Whatever you're about to try isn't going to work anyway. You're not a vampire anymore, you can't compel people to do what you want. "
"I was a woman long before I was a vampire Mattie Blue-Blue," Katherine retorted like Matt was a child. "And I never needed compulsion to get what I wanted." She smoothed out the invisible wrinkles in her tight low cut black top, and tight black skinny jeans, hiked up her breasts, and ran preening hands through her mass of curls. She pushed past Matt and walking back out to the dining area.
"Katherine, no!-" Matt made a move for her arm, but she dodged it and walked over to Agent Miller's table, her stride getting slinky the closer she got; Matt followed closely behind her.
"Hey there handsome-"Katherine dropped her voice down lower, like molasses unfreezing from a maple tree in spring. She set her hand on the man's shoulder, pleased at all that she felt underneath his jacket. Her actions made him turn up to face her. "Mind if I join you?-"
Katherine's voice stalled out, the smile evaporated off of her face. Matt watched as it practically crashed onto the floor.
["Hey there," she slunk her hand down the man's chest. "Back for more handsome?"
He reciprocated her action with firm hands all down her body, she allowed it because he was solid and tall, and sexy, and who said you couldn't play with your food before eating it?
Something stabbed her in the leg and she came up gasping, to a knife at her throat.
"Hey yourself."]
"Shi-," Katherine cursed, low, but everyone still heard her. "Sorry, wrong table."
"Ms. Gilbert?" Agent Miller creased his eyes at her.
"And wrong girl!" Katherine pointed at Agent Miller and started to back away. "But don't worry I get that a lot, Small town you know?" the last words were said in a whisper. "Can't understand why though, I mean, I have way better style-"
"Sorry Agent Miller," Matt apologized, trying to do damage control. "She's still trying to work off what she had last night," he grabbed her arm, a little too forcefully, "Come on Katherine-"
Agent Miller's face first showed confusion at what everything that was happening in front of him, but then, a flash of recognition as hot as a lightning bolt came across his eyes. He stood up, and a flash of silver came from his jacket, belonging to a 5 inch blade bowie knife.
"Whoa!" Matt held out his hands at the sight of the blade, "Dude, what are you doing!?"
Agent Miller pointed the knife at Katherine, walking down towards her. "What the hell-?"
Katherine moved so that she backed into Matt, but a hard yank grabbed her by her arm and turned her around, right into the blade of the knife centimeters away from her carotid artery.
"Katherine!" Matt stared at the 'FBI agent' wielding a hunting knife at Katherine's neck. The air was tense like a vat of gun powder about to hit an accelerant. He had no love loss for Katherine Piece, but that didn't mean the sight of an over 6 foot tall man brandishing a knife at her didn't affect him at all.
Agent Miller stared at Katherine like someone who had seen a ghost jump back into a body. "How are you alive?" The blade of the knife pierced the skin of her neck, sending drips of blood on her skin.
Katherine gasped at the pain. "You know what they say about Kat's having nine lives?" She reached behind her for something to use as a weapon. Without her Vampire strength she had to make do with a dirty plate Matt had neglected to clean from the table behind her. She picked it up and smashed it into Agent Miller's face; it cut gashes across his forehead, but wasn't a lethal blow. In actuality compared to her now human height and build, he should've easily taken her, but it actually stunned him enough for her to grab a chair and break it apart hard over his head and then he dropped into a heavy heap on the floor.
"You probably should've tried harder." Katherine threw away the remaining splinters of the chair to the ground, breathing hard.
Matt stared down at the unconscious FBI agent and back up to Katherine. "What the hell was that about?!"
"Shut up, and help me tie him up before he wakes up!" Katherine barked.