Veins of Desire

03. All I Can Say Is I Was Enchanted To Meet You Part I

"This has Katherine written all over it," Stefan says as he and Damon stand in the Boarding Houses' living room after Jeremy's frantic call. The vampire is incredibly worried about Elena as well, and inwardly curses himself for having been so careless. He should have accompanied her back home last night. Then she wouldn't have been kidnapped.

"Katherine's in the tomb," Damon reminds him. "Trust me; I'm the one who shut her in."

Stefan shoots his brother a pointed look.

"Did you?"

Damon narrows his eyes at him. "Did I what, Stefan?"

The younger Salvatore shrugs his shoulders.

"Well, I know the hold that Katherine has on you."

"She's in the tomb, period," Damon repeats, voice laced with exasperation. Then he suddenly stops, eyes growing wide when something hits him. "But she did say something to me right before I shut her in. I thought she was lying."

Stefan's immediately whips around, an alarmed expression on his face. "What did she say?"

The raven-haired vampire gulps audibly before answering.

"Elena's in danger."

"What?" Stefan exclaims, eyes as wide as saucers. "And you didn't think you should ask her to elaborate?"

He really wishes to shake some sense into his brother. Why is he hearing about something so important just now, when it could already be too late?

"Everything she says is a lie!" Damon retorts defensively. "How am I supposed to know if she's gonna start spouting out the truth?"

"We have to go talk to her."

Damon shakes his head. "No, no. Let me tell you how that's gonna go: We're gonna go ask her for help, she's gonna negotiate her release which we're gonna be dumb enough to give her and she's gonna get out and kill us! This is exactly what she wants!"

Stefan grimaces. A part of him of course knows that Damon is right, but he can't really care about that when Elena is in danger right this moment. Every seconds counts, and as far as he sees it, Katherine is the only person who has any lead to who could have taken her.

"I don't really care."

Damon scowls as Stefan makes his way to the front door. "It's a bad idea, Stefan."

The the other vampire momentarily halts his steps and turns back around.

"It's Elena."

As if that explains everything. Well, to Stefan it does.

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It takes Elena over an hour to regain consciousness. An entire hour, in which Eleonora has been sitting next to her sister, whipping back and forth on the couch, scared out of her mind of what would be happening next. Neither the man nor the woman have returned in that time, but she's sure they're still somewhere in this abandoned, run-down house.

Once upon a time it might have been a pretty house, but those times are long since over. Now it just looks like someone started to renovate it but then ran out of money halfway through the process. Or patience.

The room they're in is hardly furnished, save for those two couches, a table filled with books in the back and lights - so many lights. There's a chandelier in the middle of the room that looks like it crashed down and no one bothered to pull it back up again and some vintage style bedside lamps scattered here and there on small end tables.