Chapter 10
Katherine breaks through the shrubs and trees at top vamp speed. Stopping at the base of a ruined home, she spins around to scan the area for pursuers. The light glistens across her face, and she tucks a stray curl behind her ear, while she listens to the sounds of the forest. Nothing but wildlife.
Good, she sighs. Looking around, she smiles as she realizes where her panicked mind sought shelter. The old Salvatore estate.
How many summer days were spent lounging in the garden while she watched Damon and Stefan playing with a football? They were always her favorite toys. Damon was fun to rile up and twist around her finger. He was so lovesick he would have done anything she asked of him, even betray his brother. Stefan was innocent and naïve to the ways of the world. He may not want to admit it, but the younger Salvatore truly loved her. And he was everything Katherine had wanted when she was human.
In her five hundred years of immortality, Katherine had numerous men love and worship her. She attracted the bad boys, the misunderstood men that needed something or someone to which to devote their lives, and she twisted them to her own uses, and they loved her more for it. Damon is a prime example of her power. By today's standards, human Damon was a lost puppy trying to find his place in the world. He was hated by his father, shamed into fighting for a cause he despised, dishonored for not dying for said cause, and the perfect plaything for Katherine.
Winding Damon around her finger was familiar and easy; Stefan on the other hand was different. Damon loved the vampire Katherine, but Stefan loved the human mask. He was the good brother, and Katherine was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. She found herself dreaming of what their lives could have been had she met him as a human. But just like the scattered stone and overgrown slab around her, Katherine's time in Mystic Falls crumbled. She'd let herself grow too attached to her toys.
She had missed them over the past hundred and fifty years, and tonight, she'd hoped to have some fun with them. Sure, that wasn't her initial intent. She'd planned to do a little eavesdropping, maybe find out what they knew about Mason and the twin witches. But adaptability is key to surviving in all situations. So when her favorite toys were dangled in front of her like bait on a string, she couldn't help herself. The mistake almost cost her a heart.
Katherine growls at the thought of her own doppelgänger killing her. Worse that Damon or Stefan had turned her without Katherine's knowledge. No, that's not right. Elena was at the boarding house. Katherine would have notice if she had followed Stefan and Damon. Another doppelgänger then? No, not possible. Katherine would know if another doppelgänger walked the earth. She's spent her whole existence running from Klaus and looking for a way to escape his wrath. Another doppelgänger would have popped up on her radar as Elena did. No, something else is going on here.
Like two Elenas? Katherine muses. Maybe Caroline and the witches aren't the only time travelers.
But that means the Elena that attempted to rip out her heart is at least two hundred years old. And she's a damn vampire. Is that what went wrong with her plan to escape Klaus? Did Elena turn to avoid the sacrifice? That would explain why Caroline is still alive and not sacrificed in Klaus' ritual as Katherine planned. She growls at the idea of competing for Stefan's attention for the next two hundred years.
No, Katherine Pierce doesn't lose. She wants her freedom from Klaus, and she wants Stefan. It's time to get back on track. She has her vampire, her werewolf, and her doppelgänger. Now where the hell is Mason with her Moon stone? Katherine pulls out her cell phone to call her werewolf lover and finds several missed calls from him. She'd placed her phone on silent during her trip to the boarding house. She dials Mason's number and smiles when he answers on the first ring.
"Kat, where are you? Are you okay?"
"I'm okay. I'm rattled, but I'm okay."
"What happened? I stopped by the B & B earlier, and the police have it taped off. Where are you?"
"I had a run in with a couple of witches," Katherine says.
"So, they killed all those people?" Mason asks with an edge of disbelief in his voice.
"Of course. You don't think I would do something like that, do you?" And the truth is that she wouldn't, but only for practical reasons. She finds no moral issue with slaughtering innocent humans, since they're going to die in a few years anyway. She compelled them all to kamikaze the witches, after all. But it's the twins that opted to kill rather than incapacitate. Katherine would never commit mass murder without dealing with the evidence or running to the other side of the planet. She didn't survive this long on the run by leaving trails to follow.
"No, I know you wouldn't, but why didn't you call me? I've been worried sick about you, darling."
"Oh, Mason. You're sweet." She smiles into the phone. Her werewolf has always been too sweet for his own good. "I didn't want to distract you from your task. Nothing is more important than finding the Moon stone."
"Don't worry. I got it," Mason says.
"You have it?"
"Yep, Tyler finally handed it over. He's scared of activating the curse, and he should be. We can't let him suffer through it like I have, Kat."
"We won't," she lies. "With the Moon stone, we can break the werewolf curse, and none of you will ever have to change again."
"I love you."
"I love you too, baby." Twisting Mason around her little finger was almost as easy as duping Damon so many years ago. Love sick puppies, both of them.
"Where are you? I'll bring you the stone, and we can get this done with," he says.
"My witch won't be here for another hour, but I'm certain we can find something to keep us entertained until then." Her voice slips into an alluring cadence that would send shivers throughout any warm-blooded man. "Meet me in the cemetery?"
"I'm heading there now."
Katherine hangs up and rushes to the cemetery. She wants to scout out the area before Mason arrives. She's still suspicious as to whether or not he ratted her out to the witches. Come to think of it, Mason didn't ask about the witches at all. That may be because of his eagerness to break the curse, but Katherine can't help but wonder otherwise.
During her inspection of the cemetery, Katherine finds several destroyed trees and headstones. The shattered pieces are scattered in a circle around a couple of melted headstones. It looks exactly as the park in the town square looked last night after the light show. The vampire growls as she connects the dots between the damage and Damon's odd behavior toward Caroline last night.
That was the time portal, and Damon was there when Caroline came through. Katherine seethes. Right under my nose.
Looking around, Katherine wonders who came through here. Maybe Elena? Or is someone else in town? Katherine rolls her eyes at the thought of everyone in Mystic Falls having a double from the future running around.
Even me. And that thought draws an evil smile the size of Texas across Katherine's pretty face. Here's hoping.
Katherine spins around when she hears footsteps at the edge of the cemetery. She blurs away from the destruction and towards the sounds of Mason's entrance. She doesn't want to explain to her werewolf any more than she must. The less he knows, the easier he'll be to control.
"Mason," Katherine calls, and he looks up with a smile of relief. The orange light from the setting sun basks the vampire in a golden halo that tugs at Mason's heart strings. He'd love to spend eternity with this beautiful creature, but the fates won't allow it. So he'll enjoy every second he has with her.
"Kat." His strong arms wrap around her tiny waist as he pulls her into a hug. For a moment, Katherine indulges in the love and safety that his embrace promises. She nestles her face into his chest and listens to his heartbeat. Had she been anyone else, maybe she wouldn't have noticed the slight change. But she's Katherine, and she's paranoid. Because paranoia keeps her alive.
"Are you happy to see me?" Katherine asks in a sweet voice. She pulls away from her lover's grasp, and Mason frowns at her.
"Of course I am. What's wrong?"
"Where's the moon stone?"
"It's here." Mason says, pulling it from a pant pocket.
Katherine's eyes widen as the last item on her list comes into reach. Once it's in hand, she'll reach out to Klaus and barter for her freedom. Everything is finally falling into place.
"That's wonderful, now we can break the curse," she says. Katherine steps closer and runs her hands along Mason's chest. Again she feels his heartbeat under her fingers and frowns. "Aren't you excited?"
"I'm thrilled." He tucks the stone back into his pocket and bends down to capture Katherine's supple lips. Her presence encompasses all his senses. Her scent is an odd flowery concoction that reminds him of wildflower patches on the Lockwood estate. The softness of her tan skin is like an invitation to Nirvana. The taste of her lips burns like the coldest Vodka in Russia. Pulling away, he looks down at the flush in her face and the calculating gaze in her deep brown eyes. He can hear the slow beat of her heart and wonders if all vampires have slower heartbeats. Has his changed? Is it slower than before?
"I'd give anything to spend my eternity right here. Forever in your arms," he whispers, and Katherine crinkles her nose.
"You're a werewolf, Mason. You'll never have forever."
Mason smiles and cradles Katherine's cheeks in his hands. He caresses the soft skin along her jaw with his thumb, and she studies him, unnerved by something she can't identify. He places a gentle, longing kiss on her lips. A last kiss goodbye. When he leans back, his eyes are a golden amber above dark veins. His fangs descend, and Katherine lurches back with a gasp, but Mason's unexpected strength holds her tight.
As he lunges for her neck, she twists away and throws her arms up in defense. His teeth sink into her arm, and she screams. Ripping her flesh from his fangs, Katherine knees him in the groin. When he keels over from the blow, she snatches his head and jerks it at an odd angle until Mason collapses with a broken neck.
"No, no, no." Katherine groans at the pain from the bite and stares as it tries to heal. "This can't be happening. This isn't possible. It's not even a full moon."
Katherine runs her hands through her hair and takes several deep breathes. She has to stay calm. She has to think of something, anything to stop this. Katherine Pierce will not die from a damn werewolf bite. She's only seen one vampire infected with werewolf venom. He didn't die quick or painless. It was a slow slide into rabid madness and insufferable pain until he's body finally fell cold and lifeless.
No, Katherine Pierce will not go quietly into the night. She will not give up so easily. She yanks out her phone and dials Lucy.
"Where are you?"
"Girl, I'm almost there. Hold your horses," Lucy says.
"I need you here, now."
"I'm coming as fast as I can, Kat. Surely, things haven't changed that much since we last spoke. I told you to hold up and stay away from those witches until I get there."
"What do you know about werewolf bites?" Katherine asks. She doesn't have time to play games.
"Werewolves?" Lucy gasps into the phone. "Kat, tell me you didn't get bitten by a werewolf."
"Lucy, I need a cure, and I need it now. You owe me your life. Here's your chance to pay up." Katherine hates to beg, but she's all about survival at this point. She'd climb onto her hands and knees for a cure.
"I wish I could. I really do. You know I'll do anything to keep you alive, if only to pay back my debt. But there is no known cure for a werewolf bite. I'm so sorry."
"There has to be something, Lucy." Katherine's vampire face slips as she snarls into the phone . "I promise you. If I don't get a cure tonight, I'll spend my last hours snuffing out the Bennet bloodline."
"No need to get nasty, Kat. I have an idea."
"I'm listening."
"I don't know of any cure, and the spirits will not be of any help for this. But I know that magic evolves over time. It changes. Witches discover or create new spells everyday. Maybe someone will eventually create a cure for werewolf bites. Sometime in the future."
"Lucky me." Katherine smiles. "Mystic Falls is littered with time traveling vampires."
Later that night, Caroline stalks into the grill with an aggravated sigh. She stops at the bar and orders Moscato wine after compelling the bartender not to worry about her age. When he pours a glass, Caroline snatches the bottle from his hand and tells him to put it on Damon's tab. Sitting in an empty booth, she chugs two glasses before Stefan joins her.
"If you're hoping to run into Matt, you'll be waiting all night. The hostess said he's not scheduled to come in until tomorrow night," Stefan says. He slides into the booth across from the grumpy blonde.
"What?" She glances around the bar. "Oh, I forgot. I guess he still works here, huh?"
"Wow. How quickly you forget the love of you life?" He says, raising a teasing eyebrow. Caroline offers a small smile as she remembers the small town quarterback.
"Matt Donovan was not the love of my life. He wasn't even my first love. Not really. I mean, I thought he was. I thought it was the real deal. That we could've really been something. But I know now that it wasn't. And I am so very grateful for that."
"Because you might not have your daughters otherwise?"
From across the table, Caroline watches the man that will someday be her husband. She notes his controlled expression, carefully molded into one of concern. She spies his hand resting on the table, so that when the moment is right, he can slip it onto her arm or over her hand to offer comfort. Whatever it takes for Stefan to convince Caroline that he cares for her and not just the information she can provide. The blonde vampire hides her smile behind a sip of wine. She knows her husband far too well.
"What are you doing here, Stefan?"
Taken aback by her abrupt question, Stephen knits his brow. "I came to find you. I want to help you find Jo and Lizzie."
"I just searched this town up an down, and I haven't found a clue to their whereabouts. It doesn't help that they could literally be sitting in the booth next us, and we wouldn't know it if they didn't want us to. So there's nothing you can do for me right now."
Stefan clears his throat while leaning against the back cushions and darts his eyes around the bar. He doesn't like the idea of two powerful witches being able to sneak up on him.
"But that's not why you're here, anyway." Caroline finishes her glass and pours another. "Spill it. What do you want?"
Stefan bows his head in resignation. "I want information. I just got side swiped by Elena showing up from the future. Damon and I were under the impression that she was dead in your time, not a vampire."
"I never said she was dead, even though technically…"
"I know, it's my fault for assuming. So I don't want to assume anything else. Apparently, I'm going to be face to face with my future self soon, and I want to be prepared. I need to know what to expect, Caroline. Be honest with me, do I lose all my hair? Do I become a woman? Do I die?"
Caroline throws her head back and laughs at the joke then decides to play along. Even now, Stefan has her wrapped around his finger without realizing it.
"No. No. Yes, but not for long. We resurrect you pretty quick, because no one wants to deal with Damon without Stefan," she says, and Stefan chuckles.
"You're kidding, right?" Stefan grimaces when Caroline shrugs. "You're not kidding. Wow. Okay, I'm going to need an explanation."
"It's complicated," she says and sighs. "Everything's complicated. And now everything's different. What I tell you many never happen, and maybe sometimes that's a good thing because we've been through some crap. Some horrible, awful shit. But we, all of us, have been through some amazingly wonder things too. I'd hate for you guys to lose all the good things because you want to avoid the bad."
"Caroline, that's for us to decide," Stefan says, taking her hand in his.
She glances down at the expected ploy to garner trust and sucks on her cheek. Ready to unleash one hell of rant for trying to manipulate her, she rolls her eyes up to meet his gaze but pauses when she finds true compassion and concern. It's then that Caroline realizes how much she misses her husband. If he were here, he would hold her and kiss her. He would let her cry and lose her shit, and then he'd put her back together. This Stefan may not be her husband, but he's still the caring man that made her fall in love in the first place.
"I hate this," she says. "I'm not any good at it. Explaining everything is too complicated. Last time I did this, every question I answered spurred more questions. Why aren't you asking Elena? I mean, she'll be useless for anything before sophomore year of college, but anything after…"
"What do mean, useless? Why can't she talk about anything before college?"
Caroline sighs and takes a sip from her wine before explaining. "Because she's Elena, and she doesn't know how to mourn someone. She couldn't back then and she can't now."
"What? Who died? What does that have to do with anything?"
Caroline cringes as she considers how to explain to Stefan that his current girlfriend and epic love breaks his heart. That she chooses Damon over him, and upon his death, Elena loses her mind. The only way for her to coupe with the loss was to erase every good memory of Damon. Which caused quite the problem when Damon and Bonnie magically reappeared four months later with tales of a creepy 1994 prison world. As weird as she feels about Elena and Stefan being together in this time, Caroline can't break his heart, so she opts for a partial truth.
"Someone dies. Someone important to Elena. Important to us all, really." Caroline tightens her hold on Stefan's hand. "Instead of mourning his death like a normal person, she had Ric compel her memories away. So her memories can't really be trusted."
Stefan considers this new information and glances down at Caroline's hand, now cradling his own as though her news should devastate him. He can't help but wonder who died, so he asks.
"Who died, Caroline?"
"It doesn't matter," she says. "He didn't stay dead."
"Oh." Stefan connects Caroline's earlier confession of his death to Elena's inability to move on. Apparently, Stefan dies during Elena's college years and devastated by his loss, she opts to erase her memories of their life together. "If this person was resurrected, why wasn't her memories returned to her. It's fairly easy for a vampire to reverse their own compulsion. And when does Ric turn, exactly?"
"Umm, senior year in high school? Like, literally a few days before Elena. Whew, that was a mess," Caroline says. She gulps her glass of white wine while Stefan tries to absorb the knowledge that the love of his life will die within the next year.
"Wait, if Elena turns her senior year in high school, how does Ric compel her in college?"
"Because Ric was turned with the original vampire spell, which technically made him an Original and thus able to compel other non-Original vampires."
Stefan frowns before grabbing the bottle of wine from the table. He takes a swig and hands it back to Caroline.
She offers a knowing half-smile as she fills her wine glass again. "See what I mean? When I say complicated, I mean complicated."
"Okay, tabling the Original conversation for now, why didn't Ric just reverse his compulsion and fix Elena's memories?"
"Because, due to a very strange series of events, Ric returned to human status before he could break the compulsion," Caroline says. She stops mid-sip when she spots a familiar expression on Stefan's face. "Which is completely unrepeatable. Trust me when I say there is no way that it would work for anyone else."
Stefan sighs and nods his head. Running a hand through his sculptured hair, Stefan can't help but feel a little overwhelmed by everything. The future sounds really complicated.
"Why isn't Elena telling you this? Shouldn't you be asking her, not me?" Caroline asks. Stefan shrugs and hesitates to answer, but Caroline's demanding glare pressures him into speaking.
"I don't know, Caroline. She's not the same Elena that I know," he says. "I stopped by the Gilbert house to see my Elena, and it's obvious how different they are. I filled Elena, my Elena, in on your Elena's arrival, and she was shocked to say the least. She said she was going to stop by the boarding house to drop off clothes and speak with her future self. And that really worries me."
"Why?"
"I guess I've always secretly wanted to spend an eternity with her, but I never thought she would do it. She's so pure, and I hate to think of her as a vampire, because I know what this 'life' does to people. Even the best of us are changed by it. What if Elena doesn't like the changes she sees in her future self?"
"Or worse, what if she does?" Caroline asks with gently tone. "You don't want her to change?"
"I guess not."
Caroline remembers how hard Elena's transition was for Stefan, but he wasn't this naive. Of course, by the time Elena turned, she'd already grown up so much form the girl she is today. Partly because of the hell Stefan put her through, but still.
"Even if she remains human in this time line, Elena will change. She's going to grow up and mature. Her dreams will change. She'll make difficult decisions that determine what kind of person she becomes. Just like you. Just like everyone else. Keep that in mind, and you'll be fine."
Stefan smiles at Caroline's wise words. "I can see that. You've changed a lot too."
"Well, two hundred years will do that to you," she says with a smile.
"I bet you're a great mom," he says, and Caroline blushes. "Tell me something good about the future. Like how you adopted two little girls. Did you just randomly choose two witches in an orphanage?"
Caroline's smile stretches across her entire face as she reminisces about her daughters. "No, they were family. Ric's actually."
"They're Ric's kids?"
Caroline snickers. "No, Jo and Lizzie are only about seventy five years or so. Ric's kids died over a century ago. See, Ric fell in love and married a woman named Jo shortly after he became human again. They had a gaggle of kids, including twin daughters, Helen and Charlie. Now, Jo was a witch from the Gemini coven, thus so where all her kids. Eventually, Ric and Jo moved to join the rest of her coven in Oregon, and that's where they raised their kids. Several generations later, Jo and Lizzie were born…"
"Twins again?"
"It's a Gemini thing. Every generation has a set of twins. Sometimes more than one set." Caroline frowns. "At least, they did. The girls are the last of their coven. That's how they came to live with us. Jo, Ric's wife, had a homicidal psychopath for a twin brother. He was so bad that they locked him away in this weird 1994 prison world to spend eternity."
"Prison world?"
"I don't know. You'd have to ask Damon about it. He's the one that spent four months trapped there with Bonnie," Caroline says as she gulps down another glass of her Moscato. "Anyway, somehow that freak escaped the prison and murdered his entire family, except the twins and their mother. She used a powerful crystal to escape and fled to Mystic Falls because she knew the Bennet coven or the Salvatore family would take her in. Of course Kai followed her here, and we managed to kill him, but not before he killed her. We saved Jo and Lizzie, but no one else in the Gemini coven survived. They were all alone, so we decided to adopt them."
"We?" Stefan asks, unable to help himself. She smiles at him before offering a coy answer and motioning to the ring on her left hand.
"My husband and I."
"I heard you married the wrong immortal," says a voice at the door and both vampires turn to face him. Mason smiles at them as he moseys on over and slides into the booth next to Caroline.
"What are you doing here, Mason?" Stefan snarls from his side of the booth. He doesn't like how close the werewolf is to Caroline, no matter how much stronger she is than him.
"I've come to deliver a message to this beauty," he says, flashing a smoldering smile at Caroline. She glares at his audacity and cocks her head to the side as though sizing him up.
"I'm sorry, but I don't really remember you that well. Are you important?"
"Klaus says to stay out his way. He'd hate for you to get bit." Mason flashes his amber eyes and long fangs.
Caroline scoots as far from him as she can, pressing her back into the booth wall. "You're a hybrid. That's not possible."
"Oh, but it is. Klaus paid me a visit last night. He gave me the gift of immortality without the werewolf curse. And all he asked in return were three things. Kill Katherine, give you his message, and protect the girls. So far, I'm three for three."
"You killed Katherine?" Stefan asks, disbelief heavy in his voice.
"She'll be dead soon enough. I ripped into her a couple of hours ago. She doesn't have long." Mason pauses with no small amount of sadness for the woman he loves.
"Where is Klaus now?" Caroline asks.
"He left town last night, shortly after giving me my orders. He's got big plans, and you're to stay out of his way, girlie."
"So Klaus gives you orders and you just fall in line?" Stefan says with a sneer.
"It's hybrid thing. They're all sired to Klaus, so basically they're slaves. And there's no way Klaus sent you to threaten me," she says. "In fact, he'd rip your heart out for even trying to scare me. So what did he really say? Something about trusting him? To let him do whatever he has planned with my kids?"
Mason chuckles at Caroline's ferociousness. "Something like that. The point is that you should go home, back to where ever you came from, and let Klaus do his thing."
When Mason dares to push a stray strand of blond hair from Caroline's eyes, Stefan snatches his arm from across the table and wrenches it down at an odd angle. Mason balks at the attack, surprising Stefan with his strength. The hybrid is quick to reveal his true face and aims to tear into Stefan's vulnerable skin. But Caroline's quick reflexes send her hand around Mason's heart before he can claim another victim.
"I think it's time to go." Caroline slips Mason's heart on to his lap with his grey and lifeless remains hunched over the table like a passed out drunk.
"Yep, let's get out of here and call your mom," Stefan says. "Maybe, she can help deal with him."
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