Stephen Salvatore's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Damon drove Stephen home from the graveyard and did not stop watching him. In the days after, he stayed close. He sat in the motel room. He waited outside doors. Stephen understood the problem now. Elena held the journal that might hold his cure. But he could not visit her with Damon at his heel. One careless word and his brother would learn what he was hunting. So Stephen made a plan that used the one thing Damon trusted most: his schedule. He waited for the next feeding. Damon handed him the flask at noon, as always. Stephen drank and let his shoulders drop, playing the calm, fed brother. "I'm going to the girl's house," he said. He kept his voice flat. "She was crying at those graves. I want to know what she knows about this town. Might help me stay steady." Damon studied him. Stephen made himself meet the look without flinching. "I'll come," Damon said. "You'll scare her." Stephen shrugged. "I just drank. I'm fine for hours. You can watch the street." It was a gamble. Damon believed a fed vampire was a safe vampire. That belief was the crack Stephen needed. Damon parked across from the white two-story house and killed the engine. "One hour," he said. "Then I knock." Stephen walked up the path alone, past the mailbox, and climbed the porch steps. Elena opened the door before he knocked. The girl from the graveyard, dark eyes steady, brown hair loose. She did not smile, but she stepped back to let him in. "You came," she said. "I wondered if you would." "Your brother's in the car," she added. She had seen it. "He watches you like a jailer." Stephen almost lied. Instead he told a small truth. "He does. That's why I have an hour." Elena led him to a table and set down the journal. The cover was cracked leather, the pages soft with age. She turned them slowly. Her ancestor's writing filled the margins. Sicknesses. Remedies. One page named a cure for a hunger that never ended. Stephen's breath caught. He read fast, memorizing. A plant. A ritual. A place beyond the town. "This is real," he said. "It's what my family wrote." Elena watched his face. "You needed this badly." A knock hit the door. Hard. Too soon. Damon. Stephen shut the journal. Elena grabbed his hand and pressed a folded page into it, torn quietly while he read. "Take this," she whispered. "Go." He slipped it into his coat and opened the door with an easy face. Damon stood on the porch, eyes moving past him to Elena, to the table, to the leather book. "Time," Damon said. But his gaze stayed on the journal too long. Stephen had the cure's first page in his pocket. He also had a brother who now knew exactly where it lived.