Raven Cromwell ~ The Vampire/Witch Hybrid ~ A Vampire Diaries Fanfiction

Chapter 15 ~ The Awakening

Dirt began to lift and spill out over the sides of the grave, until Raven's body was almost entirely visible. Trees started to uproot nearby and bend outwards, away from the grave-site. Her eyes opened and she bolted upright gasping for air, but was unable to get any.

Everything stopped moving. The forest became quiet again.

Raven began to climb her way out of the grave and stood up, dusting the remaining dirt off her shirt. She tried to scream for help but was unable to make a sound. After looking down, she realised that to her horror, the stake still remained in her chest.

It was uncomfortable but she wasn't in any major pain. Her skin was still a dull desiccating grey and her body was stiff and weak. With all of her remaining strength, Raven managed to pry the stake out.

It was at this moment, that she felt her heart start beating again. She had been technically dead up until this point. The hole in her heart closed over and her chest healed as Raven looked down in disbelief. She took her first breath and began coughing violently.

Blood and small specs of dirt, crawled up her throat and dribbled down her chin. She did her best to wipe this away and began walking in the direction of light, still carrying the stake.

Virginia was asleep, it was 4am and the roads were desolate.

Raven stumbled into the middle of the road and lay down, just like Damon taught her. She needed blood if she was going to get home quickly and she definitely needed blood if she was going to get revenge on Rebekah. She lay in the road for what felt like forever until finally...a truck came.

Except the driver was tired after a long shift and didn't see Raven in the road. His front tyres ran over Raven's torso, crushing her ribs. Raven waited in agony for her ribs to heal but they didn't. She was paralysed and had to feed in order to heal.

The driver rushed out of his truck, shaking, and ran over to Raven. He crouched down on his knees and gasped at the sight of her, covered in blood with stone coloured skin. He gently moved her body out from underneath his truck and leaned in close to her mouth to listen for any signs of life. To his relief, Raven breathed lightly, but before he had time to celebrate, she crunched down on his neck.

Blood gushed out and down Raven's throat, healing her broken ribs and returning her skin back to it's bright and healthy colour. She felt a huge surge of power. Power that felt different. Power that felt new.

Raven drank and drank from this driver until he stopped struggling. His body became limp and heavy. Knowing she had gone too far, Raven stopped and listened to his heart.

Nothing.

Luckily, she had just the place to bury him. Dragging the driver's corpse over to the grave, she slumped him in and spent the next hour covering him in dirt.

Once the earth beneath her feet was flattened, Raven returned to the driver's truck. With her wooden stake she popped one of the tyres, making it look like the man had to stop driving and had possibly gone to get help in the woods.

Over the horizon, the sun started to come up. Raven's forehead began to sweat and her skin started to itch. Her ring was gone.

Raven knew vampires couldn't function in the sun and would often burst into flames so she tried hiding under the truck but the sun still got to her because of the angle it was parked. So she stood up confidently and faced the sun. She'd already died once in the last 24 hours and miraculously survived. Maybe today was just fate. Raven was fated to die.

Bracing herself for sheer pain, Raven stood strong. This was it.

Samantha and Jonathan had warned her about Mystic Falls and she had promised them she would be safe but she was about to break that promise.

Raven's eyes shut tightly and she waited... although her skin didn't catch fire. It just became unreasonably hot and itchy. Sweat formed on her brow and almost sizzled in the heat but it didn't flame. She slowly began to walk up the road, searching for signs that looked familiar and soon enough, the Salvatore House was in sight. It was early morning and the house seemed quiet.

She thought of shouting them awake but then she thought that, that particular welcome, may include hugging and she was in no position to be hugged right now. Doubts, that they didn't even know Raven was supposedly dead, entered her mind but she chose to believe otherwise. She chose to believe that Stefan and Damon knew of her recent passing and had mourned her.

So with this assumption, she went for a nice relaxing bath...quietly. She then threw out her shirt with the massive gaping puncture hole in it and hoped that the blood would wash out of her jeans.

Raven then got dressed into some black leather pants, heels, a wine-coloured blouse and a black leather jacket, paired with bouncy curled hair and red lips. It might have only been 8am, but she deserved some alcohol after this whole ordeal so she poured a glass for herself and sat in the living area by the fire, waiting for the boys to wake up.

Raven swirled her glass, her toes warming by the fire, when she heard movement upstairs. Footsteps came slowly down the stairs and out into the hall. Stefan appeared shirtless fixing his joggers around his waist before stopping dead in his tracks. She heard Stefan stop walking and stood up to face him.

"Hello Stefan" she smirked before placing her glass down.

Stefan ran towards her and hugged her tightly, confirming the thought that they believed she was dead.

"You're alive! How are you alive?" Stefan exclaimed, pulling away from the hug.

"It's a long story" she laughed.

20 minutes passed until Damon appeared downstairs. He looked at the glow of the fire in confusion. It was unlike Stefan to light it of a morning and he knew he had put it out the night before. It was then he heard a familiar laugh.

"We buried you!" he said, shaking his head.

"You did indeed and I spent all night climbing out of that grave" she sighed.

Damon vamped towards her and wrapped his arms around her, his hand clutching the back of her neck. Once he realised how affectionate he was being, he quickly pulled away "How is this possible? You don't even have your daylight ring" he asked.

Raven glanced down at her fingers "Yeah, turns out I don't burst into flames without my daylight ring...I just sweat and itch. Do you know where it is though?"

Damon smiled, pulling it off his finger "Yeah, I kept your ring and Klaus kept your mother's grimoire"

"Bourbon?" she outstretched her hand with a glass "We're celebrating after all"

Damon smiled and took it off her "I don't have to torture Rebekah now" he sighed with relief.

"No, I'll do that" she said with intent.

Stefan and Damon looked concerned "What? She did kill me" Raven confirmed.

Stefan looked at her baffled "Then how are you still here?"

"Magic" Raven said before finishing her glass.

Damon laughed a little before realising Raven was deadly serious "You're the hybrid now?" he frowned.

Raven nodded "Klaus said all I had to do was die and my magic would return. Rebekah hated me for some reason and wanted to kill me anyway, so she did and well...I guess my magic came back" she shrugged, zipping up her jacket.

Truth be told, Raven had been supressing her excitement all the way home. She was finally one step closer to connecting with her heritage, connecting with her birth mother.

"Where are you going?" Stefan pressed.

"To kill Rebekah" Raven said quite candidly, walking off down the hall.

"You can't kill an original without-" Damon began before getting cut off.

"-the white oak stake?" Raven waved it around "I stole it from the side of your fireplace"

"Or maybe you meant...'you can't kill an original without' every vampire they've ever turned, dying. If that's the case... well I know, thanks to Caroline, that none of us were turned by her. Therefore, free range to kill" she continued before vamping away out the door, leaving Stefan and Damon staring blankly at each other.

Raven was alive...and she was a hybrid.