Stefan’s Diaries: The Craving Chapter 27

There was nonhing to indicate the passage of hours inside the windowless vault not the barest suggestion of sunlight ever made its way under its doors. Days melted into weeks, maybe months. It felt as if an eternity had passed, and yet an separate stretched let on endlessly before us.Lexi and I had halt talking. not out of anger or hopelessness, provided just because we couldnt anymore. We didnt have enough strength to force ourselves to anticipate when we heard someone approach, much less get up and fight the stone that kept us buried. There was no more strength to fight the darkness, no strength to stand up. If Id still needed my heart to survive, Im not sure Id have had the strength to keep blood pumping through my veins.We lay taciturnly next to each other. If anyone ever found us, a hundred years from then, we would look pathetic, like a sister and brother in some horrible fairy tale trapped in a witchs basement.Each passing second drained me of my Power. My eyes no long er parsed the darkness. The silence was absolute as sounds from the outside world faded into oblivion. All that I had left was my sense of touch the feel of Lexis pliant hand, the rough wood of the battered c despatchin next to me, the cool metal band of my useless ring.I felt almost gentle again, in the worst possible way. And as my Power retreated painfully, so with it went my immortality. I had never noticed its continual presence until it began to disappear, leaving meat and bone, brain and fluids, and taking onward all that was supernatural more or less me with it.Except for my hunger.My vampire side reacted to starvation. My teeth ached and burned with need so badly that I would have shed tears if Id had any. Blood weaseled its way into my every thought. I envisage of how it had beaded up, jewel-like, on Callies finger when shed cut herself. How smoky my childhood crush, Clementine Haverford, had tasted going down. How, as my buzz off lay dying on the floor of his study , his blood had spread out around him like greedy, inquiring fingers, staining everything in sight a dark, delicious red.In the end, everything comes back to blood. Vampires are nothing but hunger personified, designed expressly for the purpose of stealing blood from our victims. Our eyes compel them to trust us, our fangs prodigal open their veins, and our mouths drain them of their very life source.BloodBloodBloodBloodThe word mouth to me over and over, like a song caught in ones head, filling every crevice of my brain and destination each memory with its tantalizing scent.And then a very familiar voice began to talk to me. nether regiono, Stefan.Katherine? I croaked, barely able to get the words out.I managed to turn my head just enough to fit her sprawled voluptuously on a set of silk pillow cushions. She looked exactly as she had the night of the massacre, before they took her by and killed her. Beautiful and partially undressed, her pouty lips giving me a knowing smile.A re you alive?Shhhh, she said, leaning over to crack my cheek. You dont look well.I close downd my eyes as her intoxicating scent of lemon and ginger move over me, so familiar and so real that I swooned. She must have fed productive because the heat from her skin burned in the cold tomb.I wish I could help you, she whispered, her lips close to mine.Your. Fault, I managed to breathe.Oh, Stefan, she scolded. You may not have been as willing as your brother, but you didnt precisely bearing to my ministrations.As if to emphasize her words, she leaned over and pressed her soft lips to my cheek. Again and again dragging them down my parched neck. Very, very delicately, she teased me, letting the tips of her fangs just puncture my skin.I moaned. My head spun.But. You. Burned, I rasped. I axiom the church.Do you wish me dead? she asked, fire in her eyes. Do you want me to burn, to collapse to the ground in a pile of ashes, simply because you cant have me all to yourself? No I protest ed, trying to push her off my neck. Because you made me a monsterHer laugh was light and melodic, like the wind chimes Mother had hung on the mien porch of Veritas. Monster? Really, Stefan, one day you will remember what you knew to be true back in unused Orleans that what I have given you is a gift, not a curse.Youre as mad as Klaus.She sat back, alarm etching lines around her amber eyes. Her lower lip wobbled. How do you know about K ? The crypt doors exploded into a thousand s firmlys of stone and wood, as though shot through with a cannon.I covered my face, the light burning my eyes like acid. When I opened them again, Katherine was gone, and a muddled figure garbed in black wavered in the jagged doorway, haloed by the punishing light.Klaus? Lexi whispered in a terrified voice, clutching my hand.Sorry to disappoint, came a wry voice.Damon I struggled to sit up.Stefan, dont you think its time you stopped just waiting around for your big brother to come and rescue you?Without ceremony he reached in, grabbed my wrist, and flung me out of the crypt. I flew into the opposite wall and fell down into a heap on the marble floor. Damon was gentler with Lexi, though not by much. Another weightless corpse, she flopped against me, legs askew.Dust and shrapnel floated around us like fog. I blinked at the nondescript walls, trying to get my bearings.Here, Damon said, holding out a silver flask. Youre going to need it to escape.I put my lips against the mouth of the vessel. Blood. Sweet, sweet, bloodA voice in the back of my mind shouted that it was human blood, but I silenced it with a splash of heady liquid. I drank deeply, desperately, groaning when Damon grabbed the flask away from me. make unnecessary some for the lady, he said.Lexi drank greedily as well. Blood dripped down her chin and around her lips as she sucked hard and silently. Her skin, which had been drawn, pale and wrinkled as an old womans, filled out and became pink and puffy.Thanks, sailor, she br eathed. I needed that. worry a lamp filling a cellar with heat and light, I felt my own Power branch out through my limbs, returning my senses to what they were, imbuing my body with strength that I hadnt experienced since before I started eating however animals.As my vision cleared, I gasped. Behind Damon, a black-haired woman stood with one hand to her temple, the other gripped into a fist at her side. Her eyes were closed and her body shook with the slightest of tremors. It looked like she was in deep pain, organism held in place while unknown tortures were applied to her mind and body.Margaret.And she wasnt alone. There was a given up figure in front of her, writhing in pain, and I realized with a jolt that Margaret wasnt being tortured she was the one inflicting pain in another. In Lucius.In the super-vampire, so Powerful, yet still alone a foot soldier of Klaus, the demon directly descended from hell. Lucius had murdered an entire family, captured me with ease, and caught Lexi like a troublesome mouse. The monster had his head in his hands and was screaming, terrible screams that seemed to send reverberations through the very chapel.Is that Margaret? I asked, dumbfounded.Damon pulled me up, propelled me toward the door.We cant admit herShell be fineBut Questions later. Running now.And so, with one last look at the woman who had brought Hell itself to its knees, I ran away from the site of my imprisonment and out into moonlight.