The stake missed.
My aim was true—months of training, seven out of ten accuracy against moving targets—but Vicki was faster. She twisted at the last instant, the projectile grazing her shoulder instead of piercing her heart, and the wound closed almost before the blood could fall.
"MATT!" Elena's scream cut through the auditorium as Vicki's grip tightened on her throat.
I had seconds. Maybe less.
The blood bag on my ribs was nearly empty, but I pulled everything I had left, shaping it into tendrils that lashed toward Vicki's limbs. Not to kill—to restrain. To slow her down long enough for something, anything, to change.
The tendrils wrapped around her arms, her legs, her torso. For one desperate moment, I thought it might work.
Then she flexed.
My constructs shattered like glass, the blood splashing uselessly across the stage. Newborn vampire strength—I'd seen Stefan demonstrate it during training—was beyond anything I could control at Stage 1. Vicki was too powerful, too hungry, too far gone.
"You can't stop me, Matty." Her voice was wrong—layered with Damon's compulsion, stripped of anything human. "Nothing can stop me now."
I reached for her blood.
It was instinct, desperation, a technique I'd never tried. Instead of controlling external blood, I tried to reach inside her—to manipulate the blood flowing through her undead veins, to seize control of her from the inside.
Something responded.
I felt her—cold, empty, hungry—for one brilliant instant. My power touched her vampiric blood, tried to command it, tried to force her body to obey my will.
The connection shattered.
Pain lanced through my skull like someone had driven a spike through my temple. I collapsed to my knees, vision swimming, blood streaming from my nose. Too much. Too advanced. Stage 1 couldn't do what I'd attempted.
Vicki turned back to Elena, fangs descending.
Stefan moved.
I heard the sound—wood through flesh, the wet crack of a heart being pierced—before I saw it. Stefan's arm extended, stake driven true, and Vicki's body went rigid.
Her eyes found mine.
For one instant—one heartbeat, one fraction of eternity—I saw my sister. Not the monster. Not the vampire. Just Vicki, scared and confused and sorry for everything.
"Matty..."
She turned gray. The veins beneath her skin went dark, spreading like cracks in old stone. Her body began to collapse, desiccating, dying, becoming something that had never been alive.
I caught her before she hit the ground.
She weighed nothing. A husk. A shell. Everything that had been Vicki Donovan crumbling to ash and memory in my arms.
"I'm sorry." The words choked out between sobs I couldn't control. "I'm sorry. I tried. I tried everything."
She couldn't hear me. She was gone.
Elena scrambled away, hand pressed to her throat where Vicki's fingers had left bruises. Stefan stood frozen, stake still in his hand, looking at what he'd done.
Somewhere in the darkness, Damon began to clap.
"Entertaining." His voice echoed through the empty auditorium. "Truly. The blood mage trying to save his sister. The noble vampire forced to kill. The doppelganger nearly drained. It's like watching Shakespeare, if Shakespeare were interesting."
I didn't respond. I couldn't. Everything I had was focused on holding Vicki's body, on the impossible weight of absolute failure.
"You tried so hard, Matt." Damon emerged from the shadows, still applauding. "All those preparations. All that training. And in the end, your sister died anyway. Just like she was always going to."
Stefan stepped between us. "Leave, Damon. You've done enough."
"I've done exactly what I intended." Damon's smile was sharp enough to cut. "A reminder. To everyone. That I always get what I want, one way or another."
He vanished into the darkness, leaving us with the body and the grief and the silence.
Elena was crying. Stefan was trying to comfort her. Someone would call for help soon—the screaming had been loud enough to alert people at the party.
I stood, Vicki's body in my arms, and walked out of the auditorium.
No one stopped me. No one tried.
The cemetery was quiet at midnight on Halloween. The fog machines from the party had drifted this far, giving the graves an appropriate shroud. I found the empty plot next to my father's marker—the space reserved for family, for Donovans, for the people who should have lived longer.
I dug the grave myself.
It took hours. My hands blistered, bled, healed slowly thanks to my abilities, then blistered again. The shovel hit rocks, roots, the stubborn Virginia clay that didn't want to yield.
I kept digging.
When the hole was deep enough, I laid Vicki inside. I couldn't look at her face—gray and wrong and nothing like the sister I remembered—so I focused on her hands instead. The same hands that had held mine during thunderstorms when we were children.
I filled the grave. Patted down the earth. Found a rock to mark the spot until I could get a proper stone.
Then I sat beside her and waited for sunrise.
The dawn came pink and gold, painting the cemetery in colors that felt obscene after so much darkness. I'd been awake for over thirty hours. My body was beyond exhausted, running on grief and stubbornness alone.
"I couldn't save you," I told the fresh earth. "I tried everything. I found powers I never knew existed. I made alliances with vampires. I trained until I could barely stand. And none of it was enough."
The grave didn't answer.
"But Caroline's alive because of me. Elena's alive because Stefan was there. Other people made it through Halloween because I put vervain in their food and made them protection bracelets." I pressed my hand against the dirt. "You didn't die for nothing. I won't let this be for nothing."
I pulled the vervain pouch from my pocket—the same dried herbs I'd been cultivating since June—and buried it in the loose soil.
She'd be protected in death. No vampire could defile her grave.
"I love you, Vicki. I'm sorry I couldn't do more."
I sat there until the cemetery started to fill with visitors, then stood and walked home.
The trailer was empty. Quiet. Exactly as broken as I felt.
I collapsed onto my bed and didn't move for sixteen hours.
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