Chapter 26
Finally alone, Stefan gentled his Power and sent it questing through the woods. He was aching with hunger, but he hadn't let himself feed in front of the hunters. They didn't need him rubbing their faces in the fact that they were allied with their natural enemy.
He kept his Power warm and coaxing, beckoning come to me, come to me. Soon he heard a light step approaching through the undergrowth. A doe stepped delicately into the clearing, her big eyes fixed on Stefan.
"Yes, that's right," he murmured. He stretched out a hand, and the doe came to him willingly, nuzzling his fingers with her soft nose. She gazed up into his eyes and gradually grew still, until the only motion in the clearing was the steady rise and fall of her flanks. Stefan lowered his face to her neck, his canines lengthening, and drank.
Long before he was satisfied, Stefan pulled away. Taking any more would leave the deer weak, and he didn't want her vulnerable to other predators because of him. "Go on," he said, slapping her lightly on the side. Shocked out of her trance, the deer started violently and leaped away, crashing through the undergrowth as she went.
Just as Stefan raised his hand to wipe the blood from his lips, his phone rang.
He fished it out of his pocket, still feeling warm from feeding, and looked at the display. Damon.
He let it ring again, thinking of not answering, but stopped himself. Katherine was dead, and whether or not that was Stefan's fault, he owed it to Damon to talk to him. Stefan had tried several times to reach Damon right after Elena had confirmed what he guessed about Katherine's death, but this was the first time his brother was returning his calls.
"Stefan." Damon's voice sounded crisply determined, as if their last conversation had never happened. "I've been following up some leads on those vampires I keep meeting up with, and I wanted-"
"Damon," Stefan broke in. "Are you all right?" He tried to put weight behind his words, knowing that Katherine's death would have changed Damon, damaged him.
And if whatever had killed Katherine was still after Damon, he was in danger. Katherine had been old and strong and clever, not an easy target. Stefan rubbed a hand across his face and leaned back against a tree, suddenly worried about his brother.
He heard Damon sigh tiredly. "I will be," he said quietly. "I've got their trail now."
"The hunted becomes the hunter," Stefan quipped, and Damon gave a short answering huff of laughter. "Damon, why did you tell Elena I wouldn't help you?" Stefan asked.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Because you wouldn't help me?" Damon said dryly.
"Did you want her to be angry with me?"
Damon was quiet for a moment, and then he exhaled, a long, weary gust of breath. "Fine," he said. "I may have not been completely fair when I spoke to Elena. Katherine's death wasn't your fault."
"I didn't know things were so bad over there," Stefan said, meeting Damon's almost-apology with one of his own.
"It's probably better that you're not here. I'd only have to protect you." There was an edge of humor in Damon's voice, and Stefan relaxed, only to feel himself tensing again at his brother's next words. "What's going on with Elena?" Damon asked. "I can feel her pushing herself, all anxious and frustrated. It's very distracting, like an itch." His tone was light, but Stefan heard real worry behind it.
Stefan sighed. His head ached, and the lingering taste of the doe's blood was suddenly sour in his mouth. Stumbling a little over his words, he tried to explain about Trinity, about Elena's refusal to help Stefan and the hunters kill her. "I just want to protect her," he finished miserably. "Why can't Elena understand?"
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. "Listen, little brother," Damon said finally, his voice unusually gentle. "Don't be an idiot."
"Thank you, Damon." Stefan's canines prickled with irritation. "Always a pleasure to hear from you."
"She's not a child; she's a Guardian, you halfwit," Damon snapped. "She loves you-how much she loves you I can feel pounding through this connection between us, even when I don't want to. She's never going to stop. But she's made to protect the innocent, and if she thinks this Trinity is one of them, then maybe you should listen to her. She might know something you don't."
Stefan felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Had he been underestimating Elena, ignoring her instincts, so sure that he knew what was right? "I have to go," he said absently into the phone, and hung up.
Wiping the last traces of the doe's blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, he headed for home.
Damon shook his head and tucked his phone back into his pocket. Stefan never had been able to take advice gracefully, not even when they'd been human. Damon had wanted to tell Stefan about Lifetime Solutions, just in case something happened, but he wasn't going to bother calling back. He'd just have to be careful.
He put the whole conversation out of his head and focused on the office building in front of him. At first glance, there was nothing special about the gray-and-glass building; it was practically designed to blend in anonymously. Only the discreet sign showing an infinity symbol and the words LIFETIME SOLUTIONS confirmed that Damon had found what he was searching for.
And it hadn't been easy to find, not at all. It had taken Damon days of searching, calling in favors, even consulting a witch, before he finally found his way here-to an inoffensive-looking office building on the outskirts of Zurich.
No legitimate business would be this hard to find-which made Damon sure that something extremely shady was going on behind these walls. Something that led straight to the seemingly unkillable vampires.