The Bourbon Diaries ✢ The Vampire Diaries FanFiction ✢ TVD FanFic ✢ TVDU FanFic

Chapter Fifteen - Gabe Morelli

Present day

Outskirts of Albemarle, NC

There was enough space in the safe house to keep them all comfortable. There were enough weapons in the safe house to keep them all protected. There was enough food in the safe house to keep them all fed. What there was not enough of in the safe house was bourbon. It was fully stocked, yet given the amount of glasses Stef had just knocked back in a row, it might not last her the night.

"Stef, sit down and eat something," Gabe told her from the dining table.

"I don't eat beef bourguignon, Gabe," she replied, shuffling around the living room to the rhythm and blues record Gabe had decided to play as dinner music.

"This isn't beef, it's mushroom," Gabe corrected. "You forced me to alter a perfectly good recipe and now you're not even eating it."

"Save some for me," she said, her shoulders shimmying into a low backwards bend. Her flexibility was impressing everyone at the table, even if her poorly paced dancing represented 'blues' far better than it did 'rhythm'. "I'm having an aperitif."

"You've had five aperitifs," Gabe said, standing to take his empty plate to the kitchen. As he passed her, he removed the needle from the record, bringing her dancing to an end.

Stef shot Gabe a sour expression and then walked over to the dining table to join the others. She sat next to Phoenix, opposite Raid, placed her drink down and spooned two ladles worth of stew from the pot onto her plate and then picked at it with a fork. "Finally a guaranteed vervain-free meal," Stef commented to Raid and Adam. "By this time tomorrow, it'll be completely out of your system."

"And then what?" Adam asked, placing down his cutlery after his final bite. "You compel us again to leave the country? Compel us to forget everything?"

"Not exactly." Deciding she hadn't yet had enough to drink for this conversation, Stef swallowed what was already in her mouth, put down her fork and picked up her drink. "I plan to place a protection spell on you both."

Phoenix nearly choked on his food, placing a napkin over his mouth as he tried to locate his voice mid-cough. "Stef, are you serious? You remember what that involves, right?"

How could she forget? Her eyes flicked up at Raid; her first and only experience of feeding directly from the vein. Stef tried to keep her face as expressionless as possible. "Maybe it's about time I made some sacrifices too."

This alerted Raid. "Sacrifices? What do you mean, sacrifices?"

"Nothing to worry about," Stef said dismissively, glad that Gabe was now returning from the kitchen so she could direct her attention onto him. "So, Gabe, you mentioned you had an encounter with Gideon? How exactly did you persuade him into Splits?"

Gabe walked to the nearby bar area, deciding to pour himself a bourbon before Stef consumed it all. "I didn't need to persuade him into it. He's not happy about the rivalry between vampires and witches and doesn't consider you to be a threat like Dimitri does." Gabe took a seat at the head of the table and a sip from his drink. "Fact is, you've been a vampire-witch for three and a half years and not once have you attempted to use your powers to the detriment of the witches. Gideon understands the position you are in, divided as you are. It wasn't that long ago that the two supernatural councils were created for this region, and he had to sacrifice his relationship with a vampire in order to take the position of leader of the Witches Council. Then, not only did he lose Zakariah in the hope of healing the rivalry between vampires and witches so they could finally return to one another, but the vampires then turned Zakariah into his own rival, as leader of the Vampire Council. It has taken almost a decade for Gideon to forgive them for that."