Even from the distance, standing where I am, among the dead vampires and dead humans, I could sense the unraveling, the brittle edge of panic rolling through the air like smoke before a storm. The town was burning with the scent of gunpowder and blood. All my senses are on high alert, and with my vampire hearing, I could hear the Salvatore brothers and Katherine's voice. My head snap towards the voices, and there I saw them.
They were helping Katherine to escape.
No one realize or see that they were escaping and we are losing the main purpose of tonight, or it is more right to say, my main purpose for tonight, the end of Katherine and I will not allow this to happen.
Through the haze of battle, I caught sight of her at last. A flash of dark curls and a gown torn from flight. Her daylight ring glinting wickedly under the dying moonlight. And there beside her, the Salvatore brothers, who are loyal, foolish, blinded by affection that happened because of Katherine's compulsion were willing to give up their life just to save her. They were trying to help her reach the carriage hidden beyond the edge of the woods.
"Fools." I murmured, almost fondly, though my voice was cold as the wind that swept through the burning fields. A few men follows me close from behind.
They didn't hear me and a few men following them. They didn't see the rifles fill with vervain laced wooden bullet that they carried and a stake that is hidden at their back. Suddenly, the men behind me shout, and their voice broke the air.
"There! The Salvatore boys! They are with her!" One of the men said and then game the sound, sharp and merciless.
Gunfire.
"Don't shoot!" I screamed but I was too late, the fire was already released and the Salvatore brothers falls on the ground, blood coming out from their chest.
The night shattered as I saw their dying body, gasping for air before their chest stop moving.
"What were you doing?!" I said in anger before I use my witch blood to sent all the men flying, crashing to the trees.
My eyes then fall onto Katherine. She froze on her spot, looking at the Salvatore brother's dead body. Her face twisting in fury, not grief. She turned and ran. Left them there, bleeding into the soil they'd once sworn to protect.
I walked, not ran, through the chaos. The forest swallowing the cries of men and monsters alike. When I reached the brothers, the earth was already dark with their blood. Stefan's hand clutched at his brother's shoulder, as if even in death he refused to let go. Damon's eyes were half open and glassy, reflecting the pale shimmer of the moon.
For a long moment, I simply stood there, watching. The scent of vervain and gunpowder mixed with the iron tang of loss.
"You poor, foolish souls." I whispered as I kneeling between them.
"Even now, she owns your hearts. Even in death, you'd follow her."
I closed their eyes with a soft touch, though they did not deserve my pity, but their actions and betrayal on their people and father, are not what they can control. They are still under Katherine's compulsion and they are still believe the idea that they are madly in love with her. Eventhough I am angry that they might somehow manage to help her escape, some remnant of the witch and human I used to be, still believed the dead should be granted peace.
And then, I rose.
Through the smoke and trees, I could feel her.
Her fear pulsed through the air. It was sharp, erratic and intoxicating. She was fast, but I was patient. She still has vervain in her blood, it weaken her, so my hunt for her was like a beast. I stalked her like inevitability. My hunt was slow and deliberate, by letting her believe for a while that she might still able to escape. I let her heart race, ler her lungs burn.
Fear, after all, is the sweetest confession of the damned.
I trailed her for half an hour, each step a measured echo of her own. The woods were thick with the scent of decay and dew. The kind of silence that holds its breath before a storm. I could hear her muttering prayers under her breath, half in Bulgarian, half in English. Desperation has no language.
When I finally spoke, my voice carried easily through the trees.
"Katerina." She stopped dead. The name. Her true name froze her in place.
Slowly, she turned. Her gown was torn, streaked with blood. I know the council had tortured her when they captured her, the blood on her gown tells me everything.
The dawn hadn't yet broke, but the first trace of light kissed her face, painting her in silver and shadow. For a moment, she looked almost human. Almost.
"Natalia..."
"Please. You don't have to do this." Her voice trembled.
"You've run long enough." I said as I stepped forward, calm and unhurried.
"Don't do this, I'm sorry-" Shw whispered again but I cut her words short. I have no intention in listening to her reasons.
"Sorry?" My tone sharpened. The word slicing through the air like frost.
"You murdered Naomi. You destroyed everything that we built together all those years. Do not insult me with your fake regret."
Her eyes filled with tears, real ones this time. But I had seen them before. The same tears she used on men before tearing out their throats. The same tears that she used to make me feel sorry for her.
I was upon her in a breath, my hand closing around her neck, lifting her effortlessly from the ground. She clawed at me and her fear was palpable, but her strength was useless.
"You should have thought of that before you betrayed me." I said softly and coldly.
"Before you made me turn against my own blood." I said before I released her. When I released her, she crumpled to the ground like a marionette with cut strings. She was gasping for air.
I was about to hurt her more, to make her suffer more but suddenly the woods stirred behind us. From between the trees I could see torches flared brightly. Soon, their faces came to light. It was the Council's members, Lockwood, Forbes, Gilbert, Fell and Salvatore. Their faces grim, their hands steady, their hearts full of righteousness they didn't not understand.
Katherine screamed as the vervain water hit her skin. Smoke curled where it burned. The ropes, soaked in vervain bit deep into her flesh.
I didn't flinch.
"You are willing to break your promise for someone who was not your blood." Katherine said through her gritted teeth.
"She was not your family! I am!" All eyes are now on me.
"And yet, she act more like a family. All you ever do was use me. The moment you choose to betray me is the moment you lost that blood privileage."
"Take her." I added.
They dragged her and it was a struggle. Katherine was cursing at me, all through the forest to the old church that stood silent and waiting. I followed them close, my eyes didnt leave Katherine's face that filled with fear.
When we arrive at the church, we were not alone. Some of the men that work for the Council was there, Sophia Nain was also there and inside the church, Katherine's follwers had already been trapped. Their screams echoed when the fire took hold, a terrible symphony that clawed at the heavens.
Katherine's voice rose above them all, high and shrill, until it broke. And then, silence.
I stood there and the flames reflecting in my eyes. The heat of the fire kissing my face like a cruel benefiction. I felt no satisfaction. No peace.
Only the faint, hollow echo of something that used to b e my soul.
Because as the fire devoured her, I knew the truth. The real monster hadn't burned with Katherine. It stood outside the church, cloaked in smoke and ash.
The witch with fangs, the savior turned executioner, watching the light die. And her name was Natalia.
The heat of the dying flames painted Giuseppe Salvatore's face in strokes of orange and ash as he pushed through the ring of watchers toward me. His gait was all coiled fury and fatherly grief. When he stopped before me, the words tore out of him was raw and ragged.
"My sons are dead. You should not have let this happen." He said, the accusation was a blade. I met his eyes without flinching. The smoke tasted of iron on the air. The church's skeleton groaned behind us.
"With all due respect, Mr.Salvatore. our agreement was precise. I was to help you unmask the vampires in this town, not keep a watchman's hand on your heirs." I answered. My voice was smooth and controlled.
"Their deaths are an irreparable loss. I do not ask for excuses. I ask why you permitted them to-" He stopped and his nostrils flared as the rest of the sentence choking in him.
"You ask why I permitted them to die." I repeated, softer but no less severe.
"Listen well. The choice your sons made was not theirs alone to command. Compulsion severs will. It makes men act as though all reason were their own. If you believe they were guarding her by their own light, you are deluding yourself. I have warned you about compulsion on the night I introduce myself. You should have heed my warning seriously." I said and I can see Giuseppe's lips went white.
"Sophia told me she felt a power in you that night. She said-"
"That I dwell in darkness." I finished for him, cutting the accusation short with a tilt of my chin.
"I do not court darj magics, Mr.Salvatore. I have no appetite for needless abominations. I am an instrument of balance, not of wanton ruin." I said and he stared at me. I could see grief and suspicion warning in his eyes.
"Then tell me why did they die? Could you have kept them safe?"
"I could have kept them from Katherine's influence, but, I couldn not keep men from following what they believed to be love." I said.
"Blame her cruelty, not the hand that brough her to fire." I paused and for the first time, I let a fragment of plainness touch my tone.
"I am sorry for your loss. That is not a plea, it is a fact."
"I want them back." He murmured the wish of a child's denial. He swallowed, a shudder of a man whose world had narrowed to names that no longer responged.
"You will not have them returned." I said quietly.
"And no bargain will change that flesh and bone. Do not ask me to perform miracles for your grief." I stepped closer then, the air between us colder.
"You are a man of duty, Mr.Salvatore. Bury your sons properly. Give them the rites they deserve. Let the living remember them as they were, not as tools in some undone bargain."
He opened his mouth, searching for retort, but found only silence. I turned away before he could summon vengeance or forgivenes. The ash clung to my booths and the hem of my dress and I walked from the church's shadow. The weight of his stare following me like a second gravestone.