For What You Are

“No way!” Jayne exclaimed. “You knew Lexi?”

“You knew Lexi?” Stefan repeated in surprise. “I get that your making an exception in our case, but don’t you generally kill vampires on sight?”

“But you don’t just kill Lexi, she’s and amazing…person.”

“Vampire?”

“Yeah, well, I overlooked that.” Jayne looked around as she found herself suddenly caught between Damon and Stefan.

“Welcome to the party,” Damon started.

“Well it ain’t a very good one until I see a stake in Katherine’s heart.”

“Way to dampen the mood,” he muttered as Stefan said, “Excuse me.”

“Think he spotted Elena?” Jayne asked Damon.

“Nah, she’s at home caring for her invalid of an aunt.”

“What happened to her?”

“Stabbed herself with a knife,” Damon shrugged. “Katherine’s doing. Another reason why we should kill her.”

“Because harming the people Elena loves will of course hurt Elena and nobody wants that,” Jayne muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Vampire,” Damon reminded.

“Slayer,” Jayne said, nonchalantly placing her stake at his heart in an instant. Damon looked around in astonishment as he tried to figure out where the weapon had come from. “So, when’s Katherine going to be here?”

“Well, i can’t exactly tell you the entire plan, we are surrounded by a lot of vampires who’s loyalties don’t exactly lie with us.”

“But the alliance-”

“Doesn’t extend to Katherine,” Damon interrupted. “Our alliance is to remain discreet, and to not reveal each other. That is it. We aren’t even really friends.”

“Yeah, i figured,” Jayne commented. “Well, I’ll be hanging with Hailey. Call me when you need me.”

“Will do,” Damon replied with a salute. Jayne actually doubted if he actually would, but still left to look for Hailey.

“She isn’t here,” a voice said from behind me.

“Who are you?” Jayne asked, her hand hovering over her stake. What are you would’ve been a better question even though Jayne’s vampire sense had already alerted her to the undeadness of this guy.

“I go by the name of Quentin Ferloc,” he said, remaining in the shadows of the building.

“Aha,” Jayne responded, scanning her memory for when she’d heard that name. It was pretty recent… Ah! “You’re one of Kale’s friends right?” One of the ones that she wasn’t ‘supposed’ to kill, but she would if they, like Sarah, were trying to kill her.

“Yes,” he replied. “But you were looking for Hailey right? She’s side by side with Carol Lockwood. Bit of a lost cause to hang with her if you ask me.”

“Well, i wasn’t asking you was I. Where are all your friends?”

“Off doing what they do best.”

“What?!” Jayne asked, instinct kicking in as she began to do what she did best. Pushing Quentin back into the tree she had two stakes crossing each other at his neck. “Doing what they do best eh?”

“It’s not killing,” he said, looking down at the stakes with fear in his eyes. “Honestly. It’s just investigating.”

“Investigating what? How to drain a human in five seconds flat?”

“No,” Quentin breathed. “It about-Kan-Kanuea!”

“Kanuea’s dead!” Jayne replied. “I read that a thousand years ago. What the hell do you need her for anyway?”

“The curse. To stop us from being confined to the darkness.”

“The Sun and the Moon Curse?” Jayne scoffed.

“That one doesn’t exist. You and I both know that whatever people want the moonstone for it’s not to get rid of that curse.”

Well, he’d certainly done his research. I knew the moon stone was for that Klaus werewolf vampire thing but it seemed Quentin didn’t. However he knew it wasn’t for the NightMoon Curse. So named by Kanuea herself – the ancient witch – to keep vampires confined to the night and werewolves bound by the moon. Of course, back then it was known as the Faremakria curse. Jayne didn’t even know what the language was. She doubted anyone in the world did.

Realising that her stakes were beginning to cut into Quentin’s throat, she stepped back and looked him up and down as he rubbed at his throat finding red droplets on his hands.

“Kanuea is dead,” Jayne said as the cut she’d made healed. “You and your investigations are useless.”

“Hey, don’t tell me that,” he replied, staring curiously at the blood on his hand. “I’m not head of the investigatory party. Go find Kale if you’re that desperate to have us call it off.”

“Well…fine.”

Jayne began to stalk off and find Kale but before she had taken even two steps away, a muffled cry came from behind her. Spinning around she saw Quentin staring at her with wide open eyes and an open mouth. Jayne searched for some sort of weapon in his body but could see none.

Yet Quentin was pinned to the tree and opened and closed his mouth silently four times before the word, “Klaus,” escaped him.

And then he died.

Even Jayne who had dealt out innumerable deaths in all her time was horrified at the manner in which he died. Cuts from an unseen blade adorned his entire person, the skin flailing from his lifeless body. His eyes were entirely bloodshot, red liquid dripping from his tear ducts and onto the ground. It took an entire minute for whatever held him against the tree to let him go.

Jayne’s eyes darted around as she tried to ignore the smell of vampire blood that was rising from the disfigured body. Quickly, she ran back to where Damon was before only to find that he had disappeared.

“Dammit,” she muttered, running back to Quentin’s dead body and picking it up before running back to the river across the other side of town. Dropping the body on the river bank, she tried not to breath in the blood. It didn’t seem right, but she still looked though his shredded pockets even though she didn’t find anything.

“I’m sorry you had to die like that,” Jayne muttered for the first time in her life. Setting light to one of her super matches and dropping it on his body, she watched as he burned.

As the flames turned to glowing embers and his body turned to ashes, Jayne walked away, breathing deeply and realising that her beautiful dress was covered in vampire blood.

All her mind could scream at her was WRONG WRONG WRONG as she felt the need to taste it. She was disgusted with herself at the motive. Part of her wanted to wash it from her, but the other… The idea that it was from a dead person reinforced the whole absolute wrongness of it. But Jayne knew that she could only last a bit longer.

She needed to drink vampire blood to survive. And she’d been denying the urge for almost 50 years. Jayne thought she’d been getting stronger. But she hadn’t. It wasn’t like she was a vampire who had to have blood constantly. At least not anymore.

From the moment she’d awoken side by side with Kara underneath that burning message to kill vampires, she’d felt the need. But after initially needing it all the time, she’d moved on and tried to deny it. But when eventually it came forth, it came forth in a blinding urge that there was no possible way to deny.

Jayne ran away back to her house where she took a shower and tried to wash the blood off. When she was entirely clean, she still felt dirty but not because of the blood, because of the blood lust. She felt like a character she’d once written for Shakespeare, however much her circumstances were different.

Staring out the window back towards the Lockwood mansion, she wished that Katherine was dead and that the problems to do with her were over. Because it seemed more were arriving on the accumulating pile.

Kara. The Favour. Kanuea. Klaus.

And tomorrow she was going to Germany.