"Are you a vampire?" I asked. I had so many questions, but I supposed that was the most important one, even though the red eyes and the stake made me think that there was no other way to explain. "Are you a vampire?"
"Everything you know, everything you've been taught is about to change." Stefan told me as he put the stake down. Did he seriously just avoid the question? It was not the time for that. "Can you handle that?"
"That doesn't answer the question." I replied. I was already pretty sure of the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it. I wasn't sure why. I supposed that I just wanted him to be honest with me when I asked if he was a vampire. I didn't know what kind of lie he could give me because it seemed to be pretty obvious that he was one. I had a lot of questions, but this was the most important one.
"Yes." He answered. You know there was one thing that I hadn't considered. He could kill me. I decided that it might be a good idea to leave.
"I need to leave." I replied as I ran outside and to my bike. Before I could get on it. I found him standing in front of me. "How the fuck did you do that?"
"Mary, there are things that you need to know." He explained as he grabbed my arm. He actually seemed to be more afraid than I was. It also occurred that he could have already killed me and hadn't yet. It was still probably a good idea to get the hell of there, though. "You can't tell anyone about this."
I jammed my elbow towards him, breaking free of his grasp and got on the bike and drove home as fast as I could. I had to put the helmet on while driving, which was not easy, and probably very unsafe. I ran upstairs and went to check on Elena, who seemed to be fine. I then went back into my room and took some deep breaths.
"Mary…" Stefan replied. How was he in my room? I mean I had left my window open, but…actually that was probably it. Why did I leave my window open? I tried to leave my room, but he stood in front of the door. I was terrified to be honest. I didn't want to die in my own bedroom "Please don't be afraid of me. I would never ever hurt you."
"What about Vicki and Tanner and those other people?" I questioned. I mean the fact that people had died as a result of this made me a lot less trusting of him.
"That was Damon." He told me. Okay. Damon did make a less more sense there because there was definitely something off about him. It also made him predatory in a way that I hadn't considered. He didn't want to rape me. He wanted to eat me. It also explained why he was biting Caroline. Why was he biting her shoulders though? "I don't feed on human blood. That's not how I choose to survive. Whatever you do, you can't tell anyone about this?"
"How can you ask that?" I responded. Granted, I didn't know if anyone would believe me.
"Because knowing this is dangerous." He pointed out. How was it dangerous? Was there a vampire government that would come after me like in Twilight? Yes, I read those books. I had to give Stefanie Meyer props for creating a whole new breed of vampires, even if some of her choices seemed like very poor decisions.
"Stefan, you need to go." I told him. I was a little overwhelmed and him being there wasn't helping. "If you're not going to hurt me, then you will leave me alone."
"I didn't want you to find out like this." He stated before he stroked my hair before leaving through the window. I immediately closed and locked it. I took more deep breaths before collapsing onto my bed and falling asleep. Also how did he want me to find out? Okay, he probably wanted to tell me on his own.
I didn't sleep that well. It turned out that finding out that vampires were real caused nightmares. The problem was that I probably wouldn't have any time for a midday nap because I wanted to talk to Stefan now that my emotions were more in check than before.
In the morning, I dressed myself in a sweater and skirt. I didn't have that many pairs of jeans and they were in all in the laundry, so I was stuck wearing a skirt. I decided to text Stefan to meet at the Grill because I wanted to know more. There were so many different kinds of vampires in fiction, and I had to know what was real. It was also a good place to get brunch on a Sunday.
"Thanks for meeting me." I told him. I was still nervous. I wished that I had something to drink but Vicki wasn't there, and I was pretty sure no one else would give me any.
"I'm just glad that you're still willing to talk to me." He stated.
"So, I've seen The Lost Boys and Near Dark like 50 times." I told him. I also liked From Dusk till Dawn and 30 Days of Night. I loved a good monster horror movie. "Every vampire work is different. I want to know what's real."
"I'll tell you anything that you want to know." He promised. I hoped that he was prepared to answer a lot of questions.
"Well, you eat garlic and you're somehow unaffected by sunlight." I noted. The sunlight thing was the most consistent. I couldn't believe that wasn't true.
"We have rings to protect us." Stefan explained. Okay, that would explain why he didn't want to take it off.
"Well what about crosses, holy water, and mirrors?" I inquired before a waitress came and refilled my glass of strawberry lemonade. Since I couldn't have anything else, I figured that I might as well have some sugar.
"Decorative, drinkable, and reflective." He told me after she left. Okay, there was some more things that I needed to cross off the list.
"Well you said that you don't drink human blood." I said. He had to drink blood. That was literally the one thing that all of them had in common. "Do you drink some other blood?"
"Yes, animal blood keeps me fed, but not as strong as Damon." He explained. Okay, so he was like the Cullens then.
"Well why would you let him get involved with Caroline?" I questioned. She may not have been one of my best friends...or my friend at all, but she didn't deserve that.
"I couldn't stop him. He's stronger than me." He pointed out.
"He was hurting her." I argued. I wasn't sure why I was arguing there. Maybe it was because I felt there had to be something that he could do to prevent it.
"No, he was feeding on her and compelling her not to tell anyone." He corrected. "If he wanted to kill her, he would have."
"That doesn't make it okay." I declared.
"I know it's not okay." He told me. It was good that he at least understood what an abusive relationship was. "Just give me today. I will tell you anything that you want to know. If you still want to tell people after that, you can."
"Okay, you have today." I agreed. He didn't seem to understand that I probably couldn't tell anyone because I was pretty sure that no one would believe me.
We ended up taking my bike out to the woods for reasons that I couldn't figure out. He said that there was something that he wanted to show me. Also did he not have a car? Granted, he was probably fast enough that he didn't need one, but I thought that vampires liked luxury vehicles.
"Stop here." He told me as we arrived at some old ruins. "This is the place."
"Why did you bring me to the middle of fucking nowhere?" I asked in exasperation. I tended to swear when I was frustrated…and all of the time. In all honesty, this was probably the most stressed out since I got turned into a girl.
"This hasn't always been nowhere." He pointed out. "It used to be my home. 50 years before the boarding house was built, I lived here. Damon and I were born here."
"How old does that make you?" I questioned. I probably shouldn't have been surprised that he was old. I also wondered some things about the ethics of vampires dating teenagers…not that I was interested in dating him.
"I've been 17 since 1864." Stefan replied.
"So, 162." I stated, doing the math in my head. I was pretty good at math.
"161." He responded. That meant that his birthday was coming up later in the year. I hoped that he would tell me the date so I could get him a gift.
"Are there any more vampires in town besides you and Damon?" I queried. There was no way that they were the only vampires. In most cases, they weren't that rare, they were just good at hiding.
"None that I know of." He told me. "You know Damon and I used to be best friends."
He told me a story involving Damon teaching him how to play football. It also involved Katherine showing up. It sucked that their relationship was torn apart by a girl. I hoped nothing like that ever happened to Elena and I.
"I can't believe that you knew Katherine in 1864." I admitted. "Damon made it sound like it was last year or something."
"Damon wanted you to think that I wasn't over her." Stefan told me. Damon seemed to be someone else who thought that I was interested in dating him. "He wanted you to think that I was still heartbroken, but I'm not."
"He did it all because you loved the same woman 145 years ago?" I asked in disbelief. What was so special about her? Was she the hottest woman on the planet or something? Did they live in a town without women?
"She wasn't just any woman." He replied. He then told me about how both he and Damon and had asked him to the first Founder's Party, where they had signed the registry. "She chose me. I didn't care that I had gotten something that my brother had wanted or that he would hate me for it. I just cared that she was mine. Damon doesn't get mad, though. He gets even."
"So that meant that he stole from you." I deduced.
"She was neither of ours to steal." He responded. I realized I shouldn't have been surprised that she was a vampire. He told me about how he first found out. There was actually having sex at the time. Well now I knew that he wasn't a virgin. She used some sort of mind control to get him to keep it a secret. I guess that meant that Katherine wasn't that much better than Damon. So far, I didn't have a very good view of vampires. Stefan seemed like he was okay, but Damon and Katherine were definitely not okay. "She controlled my mind and Damon's and compelled to keep it a secret from each other."
It was at that moment that I decided to take everything in. I had basically been obsessed with vampires before the accident, along with werewolves, witches, and zombies. Now that I knew that one of those was real, I needed to figure out how I really felt. I also wanted to figure out if the rest of them were real. I did know that I felt strangely safe around Stefan, despite my fear. I was pretty sure that I could trust him, and I understood his reasons for not telling me what he was. I had a feeling that he would do whatever he could to protect me. I then saw him bend down to pick up a ring with a blue stone off of the ground.
"Is that Damon's ring?" I questioned as he nodded. He was still wearing his, so it was either Damon's or a backup ring of some kind. It probably didn't hurt to have backups in case he ever lost it.
"I took it from him, but now I have to give it back." He explained.
"There's no reason to give it back." I argued. It was probably a good idea to hinder Damon's ability to kill people in whatever way possible.
"Mary, if I don't give it back, he's promised to retaliate in the only way that he knew that he could hurt me." Stefan stated. What did that even mean?
"What would that be?" I asked.
"By hurting you." He replied. Okay, that was definitely not something that I wanted. It meant that Stefan did had to give it back. I also hoped that Damon would agree to not hurt me in exchange for his ring. I wasn't sure if I could believe that he would.
"How did Katherine die anyway?" I asked curiously. "Do stakes still kill vampires?"
"Yes, but she wasn't killed like that." Stefan responded. "The town founders wanted to kill all of the vampires at once, so they rounded them up and sent them to Fell's Church to burn."
"Damon's story, it was true, wasn't it?" I asked. So, she really had died in a fire like Damon said. "He said that you and him went to Fell's Church to save someone, who I'm assuming is Katherine. He also said that you were shot on sight. That means you're dead, but how does someone become a vampire?"
"You have to die with vampire blood in your system." He explained. "Damon and I had Katherine's."
"Did you ever do that mind control thing to me?" I then questioned. I knew that would definitely make me trust him a lot less.
"No." He answered as I breathed a sigh of relief. "That necklace that you're wearing contains an herb called vervain. It protects you from compulsion. I wanted to give it to you so Damon couldn't control your mind, but I also wanted to prevent myself from doing it as well. It means that whatever happens here today, whatever you decide, you'll have the freedom to make your own choices. We should get back."
It seemed a little odd that he felt he would need the necklace to not control my mind. Couldn't he do that by just not controlling my mind.
We walked back to my house, and I couldn't help but notice that's Matt truck was there. Why was Matt at the house? We walked in through the side door to find that he, Elena, and Vicki were in the kitchen. The refrigerator looked like it had been torn apart with a bunch of different plates of food that had each been partially touched. One of them was my chicken wings. Who had touched my chicken wings? I was going to kill them.
"What the fuck happened here?" I questioned. I had to try to remain calm but I was really upset about my food.
"She's really messed up." Matt replied in concern. I assumed that he meant that Vicki was on a bender. She really needed to go to rehab, but there was also the fact that the two of them didn't have any money and they didn't have any parents either. They weren't dead. They were just gone.
"Everyone, back up." Stefan replied as he looked over Vicki. His demeanor seemed to suggest that something was seriously wrong with her. Was it more than just drugs? Was she being mind controlled? He looked to Matt and Elena. "Take her upstairs and get her away from the light. She is going to be fine."
The two of them did so and I still wondered what was going on. I decided that the best thing that I could do would be asking him.
"Do you know what's up with her?" I replied.
"She's not on drugs." Stefan responded. Why was she acting so neurotic if it wasn't drugs? Was she just insane? "She's in transition."
"What does that mean? What is transition?" I questioned. I could tell that it didn't sound like a good thing.
"It means that she's becoming a vampire." He told me. Yeah, that definitely wasn't good. "Damon must have found her, gave her some blood and killed her. She's not a vampire because she wouldn't be able to walk in the sun if she was."
"Well how does she become a vampire?" I responded in fear, knowing that I wouldn't like the answer.
"She has to drink human blood." He answered. Yup, I didn't like that.
"Well what is going to happen to her if she doesn't?" I replied, pretty sure I wouldn't like that answer either.
"She'll die." He told me. It looked like I was 2-for-2. "I don't know how long it's been. She could only have a few hours."
"Why did you let her go with my sister when she's hungry for blood?" I asked angrily. I didn't want her to attack Elena.
"Because I don't think she knows what's going on yet." He declared. "Soon her memories that were erased will start to return and she'll know that she has to make the choice."
"How did you make the choice?" I questioned. He looked like there was something that he didn't want to talk about. I knew that Elena couldn't bear to lose anyone else, even if they hadn't been together long and also that Matt didn't deserve to lose her because she was all that he had. Not to mention, I didn't really have anyone else who could get me alcohol, even though that was of lesser importance. "So all she has to do is drink human blood?"
Before he could say anything, Vicki came running down the stairs and bolted out the door and away. We rushed outside, but she was already gone. Did she have superspeed even though she wasn't a vampire yet?
"She was fine before she suddenly took off." Elena explained. I didn't know why felt the need to say that. I clearly saw what had happened.
"I'm going to go look for her." Matt announced as he headed to his truck. "Let me know if she comes back here."
"I can track her." Stefan whispered to me.
"Go then." I instructed. Hopefully, he would be able to get her the help that needed.
I wanted to go with him, because if he found her, he would need someone to give her some blood, but I needed to make sure that someone was here to keep Elena from going out looking for her and I didn't know where Jenna was.
I went inside and began to clean up the kitchen. I was still upset about my chicken wings, but I would just have to deal with that because I couldn't do anything about it at the moment.
"So how long has you been you know…attracted to girls?" I asked my sister.
"Since before the accident." She answered. "I was cheating on Matt with Savannah but then she died. I thought that maybe I should just avoid girls at point, but I couldn't, and Vicki was interested, so I went with it. I just don't know what's wrong with her. Maybe it was a bad idea to start dating her. She took me to meet some of her friends yesterday and they were total losers, at least they were before they were killed."
"Matt said he'd call if he finds her." I responded. I couldn't help but wonder if I could convince her to let Vicki go because it might not be easy for them to have a relationship.
At that point, I heard a knock on the door. I opened it before seeing it was Damon. I tried to close it, but he grabbed it first.
"Elena, go upstairs." I ordered. She didn't know what was going on, but she listened. I tried my best to hide the fact that I was shaking.
"You're afraid of me." Damon noted. "I'm guessing that Stefan spilled the beans. Can I come in? Oh wait, of course I can, I've been invited."
That explained why Stefan didn't want me to let him in. He stepped into the house. I didn't know what he was going to do. I wondered if I should try begging. Maybe it would work, and he would spare me.
"I'm not going to kill you now if that's what you're worried about it. It wouldn't serve me greater agenda." He explained. I didn't know if I should be relieved by that because it still left the possibility that he could try to kill me later. "I'm just looking for my brother."
"He's out looking for Vicki." I spat. Even though she had no choice but to become a vampire, I still hated him for it.
"Don't look at me like that. That girl is going to thank me." He countered.
"Did you thank Katherine?" I challenged.
"How much of the story did Stefan tell you?" He questioned.
"He told me enough." I told him.
"I doubt that." The older brother responded as he turned to leave. "Tell Stefan that I'm looking for him and just a tip, you might want to be more careful about who you invite in."
As soon as he left, I locked the door immediately, even though I wasn't sure if that could keep him out.
Stefan eventually came back without her. He told me that he couldn't stop her from feeding, which wasn't what I wanted in the first place, but I wondered who she fed from.
"So, what happens now?" I asked him.
"We need to come up with a story." He suggested. "I'll find her and teach her the right way to do things, but I need some time."
"Just tell me what you want me to do." I replied. "I'm a part of this whether I want to be or not."
"You don't have to be part of this." He declared.
"Yes, I do." I responded. "The past few months have been miserable for me, and you've been the one good thing in my life since I was turned into a girl…wait did I just tell you that? I haven't been able to tell anyone that."
"As much as I would like to discuss this right now, I should probably try to find her." He declared before he left. I hoped that that revelation wouldn't scare him off.
So Mary ended up telling Stefan. As you may have noticed, the compulsion specifically said that she couldn't tell anyone that she knew and she didn't know Stefan at the time. Unfortunately, they weren't able to discuss it more. Please don't forget to review.