An Elemental Difference - FIRE - Book 2 (Stefan Salvatore)

Chapter 54 - She'll be the end of us all.

LOCKWOOD MANSION

As the girls began their sleepover and as Damon made a deal with the devil, Stefan entered Tyler's bedroom. The teen stood at his window; he hadn't moved from there since he arrived home. The blood and guts of Brady are still on his skin and clothes.

"Seem's a silly question, but are you okay?" Stefan was the first to speak after many minutes of silence.

Tyler furrowed his brow, his gaze on his reflection in the spotless window pane. Finally, after many hours, he turned to face his friend, swallowing heavily, "Since Mason was killed, I've never felt so alone." He laughed lowly, bitterly, "And I thought growing up as the son of an asshole mayor and two-faced mother, I'd known what loneliness was. Then Jules appeared, and I thought, 'This is it, Tyler, you're finally not going to feel so alone. Jules can help you like Mason was going to.' Only for her and her band of merry followers to be a bunch of psychopaths. And then..." Tyler reached up to wipe his tears, only to freeze at the blood he saw there, "...and then I saw a girl who I'd known for most of my life, a girl I wished would give me 2 seconds to whisk her off her feet. I saw that girl rip someone apart like a bug under the boot. And now..."

Tyler looked down at himself, laughing deliriously, "And now, I am covered in the blood and guts of a werewolf who tortured the girl I think I might love." His tearful eyes met Stefan's, "How fucked up is that?"

"Tyler," Stefan hesitantly began moving towards the teen, "You're in shock-"

"-how the fuck can I not be Stefan!" Tyler shot back at the vampire furiously. "I know the wolves are bad; what they did to Caroline was wrong - so, so wrong - but to be exploded into nothing but blood-" he gestured to his hands and face, to his clothes "-and pieces. For all those wolves to be incapacitated so easily by Aella when we worried for weeks about one! It's not right."

Stefan froze, his brows narrowed at what Tyler wasn't saying, "What are you talking about, Tyler? Aella i-"

"-too powerful!" Tyler snapped, rushing to Stefan, grabbing his shirt, and shaking him like a rag doll. "Aella is too powerful!" Stefan tore himself away, but Tyler ranted like a madman, "If it's not the wolves we have to worry about, what if it's not even Elijah or Klaus we should be afraid of? What if the one person that could be the reason for our own destruction is Aella?"

"You're in shock, Tyler," Stefan shook his harshly. Any thought of Aella being anything other than good was preposterous. "Aella only wants to help; all she ever wants to do is help. What she did tonight, she was saving me and Damon. She was stopping Brady from torturing and killing Caroline. You know how protective she is; her powers are linked to her emotions, her love for us."

Tyler returned to his place by the window, standing stoically, "Yeah, well, I don't want to be in her way when that love when those emotions get too much for her, and she can't control what she has inside her anymore."

Stefan couldn't handle it anymore and marched out of the Lockwood Mansion. Still, his powerful vampire hearing couldn't ignore Tyler's parting words, "She'll be the end of us all."

GILBERT HOUSEHOLD

Aella turned the spoon in her cup of hot chocolate; her marshmallows had melted into the chocolaty goodness, the best time to drink such a drink, but she did not move, her attention fixated on the few splinters that Jenna had missed as she'd cleared up.

Reaching over, she picked one up, one side its usual wooden color, the other side darkened from her best friend's blood. Aella's hand shook, and her eyes gently closed as the feeling of pure anger began to boil in her blood. The cries of Caroline as Brady shot her, taunted her, hurt her.