The room fell silent and all pairs of eyes in it focused on Damon Salvatore as he tentatively took a drink of the whiskey in his hand, then sat down the on the piano bench, twirling the glass tumbler nervously on his knee.
"I knew Jonathan Gilbert, more intimately than I let on before. He wasn't just some crackpot inventor who lived in our town, he was a kind, generous, and intelligent man-"
"Where you two….well, you know…" Kol asked with a raised eyebrow
"No," Damon smirked, shaking his head, "Nothing like that. I had known Jonathan Gilbert since I was a boy, after my mother died. And to make a long story short, he was there for me so many times throughout my life when my own father wasn't. He was a quiet benefactor and good friend to me."
"Why didn't you say anything before?" Kaspar asked as he took a seat on the couch next to Liliya
"Because I like to keep some aspects of my human life a secret…because, I don't like to remember something when I've missed it for so long…" Damon answered bluntly, emotion quickly emerging in his eyes, "and because I didn't believe that anything I knew about Jonathan Gilbert would have been any use to you at the time. The only thing I knew about his work was the fantastical drawings I would see him working on when I was a boy and later, as a young man, when I asked, he would only tell me that he was working on instruments to help the Confederate Army in Atlanta—"
"When was this?" Misha suddenly asked, sitting forward in a nearby chair
"I don't know…a—around 1863?" Damon replied, taking another drink
Kaspar and Misha quickly exchanged glances
"The vampire plague started in Atlanta around that time," Kaspar whispered
"Katerina…" Misha nodded knowingly and his younger brother raised an eyebrow in agreement
"Wait…" Kol interjected, "What does this have to do with Katerina?"
"Katherine arrived in Mystic Falls around 1864, a year after the outbreak of a vampire plague that originated in New Orleans spread up through the south, claiming to be an orphan from the Battle of Atlanta," Misha explained, "I had been living in New Orleans, keeping up Elijah's business interests there, when I came across Katherine in French Quarter. I sent word to Elijah and he asked me to keep a distant eye on her…so I did. I followed her and her friend, Pearl to Mystic Falls and obtained employment. I always thought she was there because of the Salvatore brothers, but now, I wonder…"
"That maybe she knew about Johnathan Gilbert?" Kaspar suddenly realized, "And his inventions. They had to have been used against her in Atlanta by soldiers there. She must have made her way to Mystic Falls to find out what else he had up his sleeve…but, if that was the case, why didn't she just kill him right when she arrived in town and take the inventions?"
"Because her friend Pearl had fallen in love with him," Misha replied, rubbing his hands together, remembering the evenings he saw his employer leave home to court the beautiful Asian woman who worked at the Mystic Falls General Store, "And because, Katherine probably sensed that Johnathan Gilbert was already dying."
# # # # # # #
Jeremy sighed and stood from where he had been sitting in the center of the mass of Gilbert journals sprawled out around him on the kitchen table, pulling his vibrating phone out of the back pocket of his cargo pants with his free hand to see his sister's name flash through the gorilla glass.
It was the second time she had called in the last hour.
He didn't like ignoring her calls, but maybe Misha was right. She was better off where she was and definitely better off not knowing what was going on in Mystic Falls, until it was absolutely necessary.
Jeremy reluctantly hit silent as Bonnie appeared and hurriedly descended the back stairs into the Bennett kitchen and came to meet him where he stood.
They had decided to "divide and conquer" over an two hours ago and she had disappeared upstairs to do her own research through spell books and Emily Bennett's grimoir.
"Find anything?" Jeremy asked hopefully as he slipped the phone back into his pocket
"Oh, yeah…" Bonnie replied as she took a seat at the kitchen table and opened the grimoir on the table as Jeremy quickly retook his seat next to her, moving journals out of the way as he leaned forward and watched Bonnie flip quickly to the back of the book and, to his amazement and amusement, began peeling the last twenty or thirty pages apart, revealing paper hidden behind the already installed pages
"These are journal entries—a historical record made by Emily of the year vampires came to Mystic Falls," she added, seeming to answer his silent question as she continued to pull apart pages and pile them on the table in front of him.
"Amazing…" Jeremy mused as he leafed through the pile
"Witches were clever. Gran said that they would hide pages behind pages to keep spells and other information and communications they didn't want falling into the wrong hands, secret. Now, most of these entries look like they are about her day-to-day life in Mystic Falls, but as I kept reading, I found the entries concerning Johnathan Gilbert and his inventions—"
"Anything helpful about the compass and our vampire hunter?" Jeremy inquired
"Honestly, I didn't get that far…the first entry stopped me dead in my tracks," Bonnie admitted as she handed him the last stack of fifteen pages, pulling one out of the center and placing it on the top, "Here. You need to see this."
Jeremy quickly skimmed the page with his eyes, suddenly stopping as they widened, then narrowed as he kept reading until he reached the bottom.
Finally, in a stunned voice, he began reading aloud, "May 13, 1863—'Today, Jonathan Gilbert came to me again, this time demanding to know my ancestral heritage and how I may be aligned through blood to a witch named Ayanna, who he claimed once lived in the area that is now our town of Mystic Falls. He then rambled on for some considerable time about supernatural beings, who he also claimed once thrived in the area, and wishing to know if I was aware of the existence of such beings and insisting that I help him. In doing so, he reiterated that this witch who came before knew how to conquer such beasts and, as her kin, I was also endowed with such powers. It was then that he also informed me that, per the U.S. military under General Hobalt in Atlanta and General Jackson in New Orleans, he he had been working on devices that would single out such unnatural beings, but needed my assistance to make them truly work. My services would be exchanged in return for his discretion concerning my witchcraft lineage. When I discredited such notions of witchcraft and went even further to ask as to what supernatural beings to whom he may be referring and what gave him credence to make mention of such things, he confided in me that he had seen them in visions—visions that showed the beginnings of the first vampires and werewolves on this land in another time and place—of a village ...and a family with seven children… and a large white oak tree wreathed in flames…'"
# # # # # #
"Johnathan Gilbert was dying?" Kaspar whispered, confused
Misha opened his mouth to answer, but found himself too overwhelmed by emotion to answer.
He could only cast his eyes over to Damon for an explanation.
The vampire took in a breath then downed the rest of his drink before setting it hard on the piano top behind him.
"Yes," Damon choked out, "He was terminally ill in 1864 and had been for some time. Not many people knew—"
"But you two did," Kaspar interjected, looking from the vampire to his brother
"I was his manservant," Misha finally managed to speak up, "I tended him every day—laid out his clothes, prepared his meals—and I also administered his medications. None of them worked, of course—none of them cured what truly ailed him, but they did keep him calm and out of pain. He didn't wish for anyone to know the true nature of his condition. Back then, it could have landed him in the madhouse."
"What exactly was wrong with him?" Kol asked
"The first time I saw it, I was nineteen," Damon suddenly spoke up, "He was out riding and had come upon me walking through Harper's Woods with my fishing pole on the way to the quarry. He rode beside me for some time, just conversing. He asked me about Stefan, if I had read the books he had given me, and whether I was going to take the scholarship to Yale that I had been offered," Damon smiled in fond remembrance, then the smile faded, "Then, suddenly, he went silent and fell from his horse onto the ground, convulsing wildly. He stayed like that for several moments before he finally came to…and he, looked different…his face was pale and his eyes were dark like he was in a other space and time..." Damon paused for a moment, then continued, "The first time I ever heard mention of vampires was from Johnathan Gilbert's lips that day, when he pulled me down to him and whispered in my ear, 'there is a vampire behind you. A boy…' Then he passed out."
"Where were you?" Kol immediately asked, his eyes narrowing with interest, "Where was this Harper's Woods exactly?"
"Um…about a three miles outside of town," Damon said, bringing his thoughts back to the present, "near the cliff face by quarry…there was a crossroad with a stone marker and a tree—"
"He saw Henrik," Kol whispered in stunned awe, "A centuries after he died. That's where he was buried…at the crossroads."
"So Johnathan Gilbert was epileptic…" Kaspar breathed, "And more than that...a psychic epileptic."