Stefan hadn't had a plan when he agreed to stay in Matt's place. He just knew he had to save Matt, and now he hoped Damon would come for him. Stefan's wrists ached with a dul , throbbing insistent pain that was almost impossible for him to ignore. He tried once more to pul against the ropes that were holding him to the chair, turning his hands from left to right as far as he could to try and loosen his restraints, but it was hopeless. He couldn't shift them.

He looked around dazedly. The room looked both serene and mysterious again now, as it had when he first kicked in the door. A good place for a secret society.

Torches burned brightly, flowers were arranged around the makeshift altar. The Vitales had taken the time to clean up after binding him and kil ing the pledges.

The ropes were crossed over his chest and stomach and wound around his back; his ankles and knees were tied to the chair legs, his elbows and wrists to the arms of the chair. He was Welltrussed, but it was the ones around his wrists that hurt most, because they lay against his bare skin. And they burned.

"They're soaked in vervain so that you'l be too weak to break free, but I'm afraid it must sting a bit," Ethan said pleasantly, as if he was explaining an interesting element of the secret chamber's architecture to his guest. "See, I may be new at this, but I know al the tricks." Stefan rested his head against the back of the chair and looked at Ethan with fervent dislike. "Not all of the tricks, I suspect."

Ethan was cocky, but Stefan was pretty sure he hadn't been a vampire for very long. If Ethan was stil human, if he had never become a vampire, Stefan guessed he would look more or less the same as he did now.

Ethan crouched down in front of Stefan's chair to look up into his face, wearing the same warm, friendly smile as when he'd tried to convince Stefan to join them. He looked like a pleasant fel ow, someone you wanted to relax with and trust, and Stefan glared at him. The smile was a lie.

Ethan was a kil er whose mask was less obvious than those of the other Vitale vampires, that was al .

"You're probably right about that," Ethan said thoughtful y. "I imagine there are al kinds of tricks you've picked up in, what is it, more than five hundred years?

Tricks that I don't know yet. You could be very useful to me in that way, if you decide to join us after al . There are lots of things you can teach us about al this vampire stuff." He flashed that appealing smile again. "I've always been a good student."

Vampire stuff. "What do you want from me, Ethan?" Stefan asked wearily. It had been a long night, a long few weeks, and the vervain-soaked ropes were hurting his arms, muddying his thoughts.

Ethan knew how old he was. Ethan knew what to offer him when they first talked about the Vitale Society. It wasn't a coincidence that he was the one in this room, then; Ethan wasn't looking for just any vampire. "What's your plan here?" Stefan asked.

Ethan's smile grew wider. "I'm building an invincible vampire army, of course," he said cheerful y. "I know it sounds a little ridiculous, but it's al about power. And power's never ridiculous." He licked his lips nervously, showing a flash of thin pink tongue. "See, I used to just be one of the ordinary little people. I was just like everyone else on campus. My biggest achievements were good grades on exams or the fact that I had the leadership of some secret col ege club. You wouldn't believe how lame the Vitale Society used to be. Just white magic and nature worship." He made a little self-deprecating grimace: See how silly I was once. I'm telling you something embarrassing about myself, so trust me. "But then I figured out how to get some real power."

One of the black-clad figures came up behind Ethan, and Ethan held up a finger to Stefan. "Hang on a sec, okay?" He rose and turned to talk to his lieutenant.

After tying Stefan up, Ethan had efficiently gone back to draining the pledges, one after another, dropping the bodies as soon as he finished with them. They had al gone through their transitions now and were back on their feet.

They seemed irritable and disoriented, growling and snapping at one another and gazing at Ethan with undisguised adoration.

Typical new vampires. Stefan eyed them warily. Until they had fed thoroughly, they would hover on the brink of madness, and it would be easy for Ethan to lose control of them. Then they would be even more dangerous.

"The pledges need to eat," Ethan said calmly to the robed woman behind him. "Five of you should take them out and teach them how to hunt. You lead the hunting party and pick whoever you want to go with you. The rest wil stay here and help guard our guest."

Stefan watched as the Vitales sorted themselves out.

Eight of Ethan's fol owers remained, stationing themselves by the sides of the room. Stefan had managed to kil one other during the fight, ripping her throat out, but the body had been tidied away somewhere.

Stefan gave a little involuntary moan. It was hard to think straight - he was so tired, and the vervain was starting to hurt him al over, not just on his aching wrists, but anywhere the ropes touched him through his clothes. Damon, please come quickly. Please, Damon, he thought.

"You're going to unleash nine newly made vampires on the campus?" he asked Ethan, his mind snapping back to the matter at hand. "Ethan, they'l kill people. People who were your friends, maybe. You'l draw attention to yourselves. There are already police al over campus.

Please, take them to the woods to hunt animals. They can live on animal blood." He heard a pleading note enter his own voice as Ethan only smiled absently at him, as if he was a child begging to go to Disneyland. "Come on, Ethan, it hasn't been very long since you were a human, too. You can't want to stand by and have innocent students murdered."

Ethan shrugged, patting Stefan lightly on the shoulder as he started to walk over to confer with another of his henchmen. "They need to be strong, Stefan. I want them at their peak by the next equinox. And we've kil ed plenty of innocent students already," he said over his shoulder.

"Equinox? Ethan," Stefan shouted after him in frustration. He looked frantical y at the door by which the pledges and their escort had left. It would take them a while to select victims. Not as many students were walking the campus alone at night these days. If he could get free, if Damon came now and freed him, they could stil stop the slaughter. If al these brand-new vampires were al owed loose on campus, there would be a massacre.

Ethan couldn't have changed the rest of the Vitale Society al at once, he realized. The number of murders they would have committed newly made as a group would have been impossible to disguise as a few disappearances. This must have been the first mass initiation. And who had made Ethan? he wondered. Was there an older vampire somewhere on campus?

Damon, where are you? He had no doubt that Damon would come if he could.

Despite their rift over Elena, things had changed enough between him and Damon that he knew he could rely on his brother to rescue him. He had saved him before, after al , when they fought Katherine, when they fought Klaus. There was something rock solid between them now, something that wasn't there a year ago, or in the hundreds of years before that. He closed his eyes and heard himself give a dry, painful chuckle. It seemed like an inopportune moment to start having revelations about his own family issues.

"So," Ethan said chattily, returning to his side and pul ing up a chair, "we were talking about the equinox."

"Yes," Stefan said, an acid bite to his tone.

He wasn't going to let Ethan see how he was yearning toward the door, expectant. He needed to keep his cool, so that Damon could have the element of surprise on his side.

He should keep Ethan talking, keep him distracted in case Damon came, so he fixed an expression of interest on his face and looked at Ethan attentively.

"At the time of the equinox, when day and night are perfectly balanced, the line between life and death is at its most weak and permeable. This is the time when spirits can cross between the worlds," Ethan began dramatical y, moving one hand in a wide sweep.

Stefan sighed. "I know that, Ethan," he said impatiently.

"Just cut to the chase." He might have to keep Ethan distracted, but surely he didn't have to feed his ego.

Ethan dropped his hand. "You remember Klaus, don't you?" he asked. "The originator of your bloodline? We're resurrecting him. With him at the head of our ranks, we'l be invincible."

Everything went stil for a moment, as if Stefan's slow-beating heart had final y stopped. Then he sucked in a breath. He felt as if Ethan had punched him in the face. He couldn't speak for a moment. When he could, he gasped,

"Klaus? Klaus the vampire who..." He couldn't even finish the sentence. His mind was ful of Klaus: the Old One, the Original vampire, the mad man. The vampire who had control ed lightning, who had bragged that he had not been made, that he just was. In Klaus's earliest memories, he had told Stefan, he carried a bronze axe; he was a barbarian at the gate, among those who destroyed the Roman Empire. He claimed that he began the race of vampires.

Klaus had held Elena's spirit hostage and tortured innocent Vickie Bennett to death for fun. He turned Katherine, first into a vampire, then into a cruel dol instead of a person, changed her until she was vicious and mindless, eager only to torment those she once loved.

Stefan, Damon, and Elena kil ed him at last, but it was nearly impossible, would have been impossible without the spirits of a battalion of unquiet ghosts from the Civil War tied to the blood-soaked battlegrounds of Fel 's Church.

"Klaus who made the vampire who made you," Ethan said cheerful y. "It was another of his descendants who I found in Europe this summer on my trip abroad. I convinced her to turn me into a vampire. She taught me some tricks, too, like how to use vervain, and how lapis lazuli can protect us from the sun. I put lapis lazuli in the pins we wear now, so al the members have it on them at al times. She was very helpful, this vampire who changed me. And she told me al about Klaus." He smiled warmly at Stefan again. "See, you should like me, Stefan. We're practical y cousins." Stefan shut his eyes for a moment. "Klaus was insane," he tried to explain. "He won't work with you, he'l destroy you."

Ethan sighed. "I real y think I can work it out with him, though," he said. "I'm very persuasive. And I'm offering him soldiers. I hear he likes war. There's no reason for him to turn us down; we want to give him everything he wants." He paused and looked at Stefan, stil smiling, but there was a note now in that wide smile that Stefan didn't like, a false innocence. Whatever Ethan was going to ask Stefan now, he already knew the answer. "Does this mean you're not interested in joining our army, cousin?" he asked with mock surprise.

Gritting his teeth, Stefan strained against the ropes once more, but they didn't budge. He glared up at Ethan. "I won't help you," he said. "Never."

Ethan came closer, bent down until his face was level with Stefan's. "But you wil help," he said lightly, a trace of self-satisfaction in his eyes. "Whether you want to or not.

See, what I need most of al to bring back Klaus is blood." He ran his hands through his curls, shaking his head. "It's always blood for this kind of thing, have you noticed?" he added.

"Blood?" asked Stefan uneasily. Young vampires were never sane, in his opinion - the initial rush of new senses and Powers were enough to bewilder anyone. He was starting to think, though, that Ethan's grasp on sanity might not have been that strong to begin with. He'd convinced someone to turn him into a vampire?

"The blood of his descendants, specifical y." Ethan nodded smugly. "That's why I was so delighted to find that you were right here on campus. I made a hobby of tracking down the descendants of Klaus this summer, after I'd talked the first one I met into changing me into what she was.

Some of them gave me blood wil ingly, when they heard what I wanted to do. Not al of Klaus's descendants are as ungrateful as you. I only need a little more, and then I'l have enough. Yours, of course," and his eyes flicked up toward the door that Stefan had been surreptitiously watching al this time, waiting for Damon, "and your brother's. I assume he'l be here any minute?"

Stefan's heart plummeted, and he stared openly at the door. Damon, please stay away, he thought desperately.
    
 

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