Forever Is Not Enough

A Father's Love

1864 - Mystic Falls, Virginia

Giuseppe stared down at Damon's corpse, watching the dim candle light dance on his pale skin. His head had fallen to the side, but his eyes were still open. He was so still. Giuseppe threw the stake on the bed next to his body and took a step backwards, trying to collect himself. He needed to get John, but he was afraid to turn his back on it. Damon had risen from the dead once; what was to stop him from doing it again? He kept his back to the wall and slowly exited the room, shutting the door behind him and hurrying off to John's room down the hall.

What he didn't know was the actual vampire in the house was very much alive, technically, and braced to kill anyone who stepped through the door. She considered leaving through her window, but she knew she couldn't leave without Stefan. She put her ear to the wall that divided her room and his, focusing hard. She could hear the sound of his steady breathing, and though she wanted desperately to see him, she knew he would only slow her down. So, as quiet and poised as a cat, she snuck down through the house. She saw Emily waiting at the bottom of the stairs, worry in her eyes. "Something is wrong," she whispered.

Katherine nodded, "Prepare the carriage. We're leaving."

Emily did as she was told immediately, turning to leave. Their carriage was packed with everything she might need should she have to flee on a whim. This had been her custom since the revolutionaries in France had run Katherine out of her home more than fifty years ago. She had been left with nothing - no money and no clothes. All she had was Emily and a stolen horse. They had seen to it they would never be put in that situation again.

In the meantime, John examined Damon's body. He did not have the reaction Giuseppe imagined. He expected there would be some kind of congratulation for defeating their foe, but John only looked down with wide eyes. Before his books had been burned and he had been left with only the bare bones of an idea of what a vampire was, he had read mainly about the killing of a vampire. In some legends, the demon would turn to dust, or contrarily to stone. It was a creature created by magic and it was his assumption that its death would be evidence of that.

Giuseppe stayed on one the side of the room, but John got up close, leaning on the bed to steady himself over the body. He braced the blade he carried in his hand tightly as though Damon's body would spring up at any second. "Were you bitten?" he asked.

"Of course not!" Giuseppe shifted uncomfortably, ready to strip down to nothing if that's what he had to do to prove that he was not going to turn into a monster. "He didn't even try!"

"Did he struggle?"

"For a moment, but it was much easier than I expected."

"Then the legends depicting them with inhuman strength were false." John pulled back the neck of Damon's nightshirt, looking for any bite marks. It was only a moment more before he discovered that the wound on his stomach had disappeared as well. "He had healed, just like I told you." He took a vial of vervain from his pocket and rubbed it on the boy's arm, but the skin reacted as if it was water.

"The demon is gone, then?"

"Perhaps it is expelled from the body before it dies. First the demon goes and then the body can't function any longer without it. Though, he certainly isn't how I pictured a dead vampire." John paused for a moment longer, evaluating Damon's body like a scientist. "Nothing happened after you staked him?"

"Well, he died," Giuseppe said.

John rolled his eyes. "Before that?"

"No, nothing."

"You're sure?"

Giuseppe nodded.

"Curious," John sighed. "The Council will want to know about this first thing tomorrow morning."