The Craving (The Vampire Diaries 16)

The man backed up a few steps, including Damon in his foul stare.

"Yes, you understand now," he said, nodding. But we didn't.

"I - " Damon began to speak.

"SILENCE!" the man roared. Suddenly he was pressed up against the bars, a blackened fingernail inches from Damon's throat. "Do you dare deny it?"

With a chilling deliberateness, he pushed an iron bar aside like it was a curtain. The metal screamed in agony. In a flash of darkness he had stepped through, and wrapped a giant hand around each of our throats.

"You took Katherine. I take your new life from you. An eye for an eye, as you people are fond of saying. Right?"

"I. . . don't know what you're talking about," I said, choking.

The monster threw back his head and laughed.

"Of course you don't. " He snapped his head back, suddenly fixing me with his eyes and a sneer on his lips. He didn't believe me. "Katherine never mentioned Klaus?"

Even after her death, Katherine continued to haunt us. I looked over at Damon. There was a pained, heartbroken look on his face. It was gone in an instant, but for that one moment I thought I saw through to my old brother. He was shocked by the fact that Katherine, the love of his life, had been involved with a creature as heartless as the one that stood before us. I felt for him.

Unbidden, half a dozen images of Katherine came to my mind. Her amber eyes that commanded attention. Her long black hair hanging in waves around her neck, as if she had just done something that might have disheveled it. Her tiny waist and mischievous smile. She had been irresistible. And Damon and I weren't the only ones to have felt her pull.

The man tightened his grip on my throat, and I could hear the groaning of vertebrae. In a moment we would be on the floor, our necks snapped as easily as that of the prisoner Damon had killed.

Then suddenly I was free. Damon fell to the ground beside me, also released from the stony grip that held him.

From outside the cell, the monster smiled viciously.

"I will see you two later," he promised.

And then, almost as an afterthought, he used a delicate finger to push the jail bars back into place.

"And remember, I am always watching. "

Chapter 21

Damon and I remained in the cell for several minutes after the man left, too stunned to even contemplate escaping. The guards didn't come back in with the keys. I didn't blame them.

I cursed, slamming the bars. It seemed that no matter what I decided to do, which way I turned, things got worse. And the Sutherlands. . . they had just been innocent bystanders, swept up in the path of destruction just because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. While my brother didn't actively cause their deaths, he was no less responsible. I turned on him, ready to tear him apart.

And then I saw the look on his face.

Damon's eyes had glazed over and he leaned against the wall for support. He'd worn the same dazed expression for weeks after he'd woken up as a vampire and discovered that Katherine was dead.

"What was that?" he whispered, finally looking at me.

But I had no idea what that was. All I knew was that it was more powerful, more dangerous, more deadly than any creature I'd ever encountered. Anger at my brother drained away and something like exhaustion set in. "I'm not sure, though I think he left me a message," I said, remembering the bloody scrawl on the side of the Sutherlands' home. "But what was that about Katherine? What was he to her?"

Damon shrugged. "I have no idea. She never told me about that. . . thing. "

"He said we took her from him. What the hell does that mean? What curse is he talking about? Did Emily cast a spell on someone?" I said. I began to pace, my mind racing.

"I'm guessing it means he believes we killed her. Which you did, brother," Damon said.

In a pique, Damon sat down, stretched his legs out, and put his hands behind his head, pillowing it against the stone. I would get no more answers out of him.

I slid down against the bars and buried my head in my hands, thinking of my time with Katherine. Had she ever said anything about her past? Let anything slip? But I had been so completely under her thrall that it was impossible to know what had been real and what she had compelled me to believe. Though I remembered biting her, I didn't have any memory of her feeding me her blood. But she must have often, as I had enough of her blood in my system to come back as a vampire after my father shot me. In a funny way, Katherine had made me. We were almost like her children.

My mind snagged. "Did Katherine ever tell you about her sire?" I asked, putting words to a horrible thought forming in my mind. "The vampire who made her?"