The wood held its breath. Moonlight slivered through the tall trunks and silvered the undergrowth, turning each leaf into a small, watching eye. I stood motionless between two oaks. The rough bark a familiar comfort against my plam, and let the night do what it always did for me, listen.
She smells of lavender and night air, of sharp fear sanded smooth by pride. Emily Bennett was not a woman to be caught unawares. She is one of the powerful witches in these generation. That was why I had expected to hunt for her. Instead, she found me.
From the gap between branches, I watched her silhouette step from the path. She moved like someone who has learned the cadence of these woods. Her feet made no sound, Burt her pulse left a trail I could read as plainly as a page. Emily's head tilted slightly, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing as if some sixth sense reached out and touched my presence. She paused, then, with the careful deliberation of a child tracing a line, she followed. She followed deeper into the trees, closer to where I waited.
I let her come. There was pleasure in the patient dark, in the slow collapse of certainty. She stopped in a small clearing, shoulders squared, hands flexing. The moon painted her face in alabaster. She looked like an image carved of ice and resolve.
For a moment, I let myself be invisible to her. A shadow between shadows. Then I stepped from behind a cedar and closed the distance, the scent of wet earth and crushed ferns trailing where I walked. She never once moved her feet until the last breath before I stood no more than three paces away.
She turned so quickly that I might have counted it a reflex, if there had been any humor in the motion. She uses her witch power to made a sharp branch, as long as a sword fly towards me, aiming for my heart, but I catch it with ease.
"Oh, come now, child. You know you are no match for me." My voice slid across the clearing like a blade honed and calm.
"What do you want, Natalia?" Emily said. Her eyes were bright and dangerous. The way she said my name, there was no warmth in it. She spoke it like someone testing the edge of a knife.
I studied her as if I was reading the ledger of her loyalties. Young, fierce and certain for her cause. Certainties can be beautiful and ruinous.
"I want you to step away from working at the Founder's Council and stay away from Katerina." I said and my words were deliberate and slow, as if each syllable might bend the night to my will.
"Not because I thirst for betrayal, but because I would spare you the name of accessory when the blood is counted." I added and she laughed. Her laugh was a brittle and humorless sound.
"Because you asked? Because you're suddenly the arbiter of right and wrong?"
"No. Because I want to do the right thing. Katerina need too be stopped." Emily let out another cold and humorless laugh.
"Katherine need to be stopped? How about you? Have you forgotten everything you have done? The people that you have killed in the name of protecting the people that you called family?"
"This is my way for my redemption." I said and Emily's brow tightened.
"What trick is this? You want me to betray her? To betray everything we stand for? For what? Lies? Or for those human who has done nothing but damage to this town?" Emily said, and her voice shook now, anger curling into something like hurt.
"Do not mistake my candor for theatrics." I stepped closer, letting my silhouette block the moon.
"Katerina is no longer merely a predator, Emily." I said and my voice was low as a knell.
"She has become an instrument, deliberate, honed and dangerous."
"She does not wear the sun like a novelty, she parades in daylight to tempt the living, to make them willing offerings. Your gift was never meant to be a tool for seduction, yet she has learned to make it sing for her. Compulsion, which might once have been used to spare or protect us supernatural like us from being discovered, has become her method of ownerships. A quiet violence that leaves no witnesses who can remember to accuse her."
"Where she walks, bodies follow. Not the tidy casualties of a hunt, but the scattered ruins of lives she has rearranged for her pleasure. You have seen it. The missing mothers, the broken men, the children who wake with only the echo of her name."
"And do not think the danger is only immediate. You understand, Emily, what even a single drop of vampire blood can accomplish when uncoupled from restraint. Her blood is not common, its Petrova's blood. The blood of an old powerful family, the blood of one of the original witch's heritage, the blood that has born multiple powerful people, monstrous people, the blood of a doppelganger. That lineage is a kindling for things far worse than ordinary hunger. Is she is left to mingle her blood with the world's, if those who seek power learn to fashion it into tools, what is born will not be a mere monsters. It will be a new order of control. Quiet at first, insidious, then absolute."
"I warn you as plainly as I can, this is not only about vengeance of what she has done to me. But this is also about prevention. Stand with her, and you will not only watch the town burn. You will help ligth the match."
"You've forgotten one inconvenient truth. You share her blood." Emily's eyes went cold. I let the words hang a moment like a verdict before I answered.
"Think carefully, Emily." I said and my tone calm but edged with warning.
"You have until dawn to decide where your loyalty lies. And if you choose to stand in my way..." I paused, letting the weight of my words settle between us like a gathering storm.
"Then whatever happens next will not be by my mercy." I turned to leave, the hem of my dress brushing against the forest floor, but her voice stopped me.
"Why tell me this at all? Why warn me...why protect me?" Emily asked, her voice tight with confusion. I exhaled softly, my back still to her.
"Because despite your loyalty to her, I know you are not like her. You are still bound to nature, Emily. To balance, to life. You serve a force older and purer than any vampire's thirst. That is what separates you from her. You are still a witch." I said before I turned and meeting her eyes. The moonlight catching the silver in mine.
"I was once,too. Before I am who I am today. Before my blood was corrupted. Before the hunger made a home in me. But even now, beneath what I have become, I still remember my duty to protect what remains good in this world, even from our own kind." I said and Emily's gaze hardened on me.
"And what of you, Natalia? You speak of duty and righteousness, yet your hands are no cleaner than hers. You have done terrible things...things far worse than Katherine ever dared. Why should you be allowed to live?" Hearing her words made a ghost of a smile touched my lips, not of amusement, butr resignation.
"When your kind finds a way to end me, I will not resist. I will kneel, and you may take my head yourself."
And with that, I turned once more, disappearing into the dark embrace of the forest, leaving only the whisper of my words behind, and the promise that dawn would demand and answer.
***
By the time the horizon began to pale, I was already there again, at the same place where Emily and I had stood the night before. The air was damp with dew, and the forest still half asleep. I waited, listening to the slow awakening of the world, the low hum of insects, the rustle of branches, the faint, distant toll of the church bell from town.
I waited for hours.
But Emily Bennet never came.
A lesser soul might have doubted, might have wondered if the witch had fled, or turned against her duty to mother nature as a witch. I did neither. The absence itself was an answer, one I had expected.
I brushed the dirt from my gloves, eyes narrowing toward the path that led back to Mystic Falls.
So be it. If Emily wished to stand in Katherine's shadow, then she would meet the same fate.
The morning light crept through the canopy, glinting against my ring. The silence of the woods pressed close, but I felt to unrest. I had given her a chance to choose wisely. Now, mercy would be replaced with necessity.
"Then the blood should decide." I whispered, more to the wind than to myself.
With a measured breath, I turned and walked away, the hem of my dress brushing over fallen leaves, steady and deliberate. There was no haste in my step. After all, if Emily chose to defy and fight against me, I would not even need to sweat to bring her down.
And so I left the forest behind, the promise of dawn fulfilled, not with peace, but with purpose.
Tonight, the hunt will begin.
***
The night had fallen heavy over Mystic Falls, the kind of silence that precedes violence. The air itself felt charged, as if the land knew what was about to happen. I arrived at the edge of town just as the bells tolled the hour. A sound that would, by morning, be remembered as the beginning of blood and fire.
Sophia Nain stood beside me beneath the shroud of tall pines, her eyes reflecting the faint orange glow of distant torches. The Founder's Council was already in motion. Men armed with vervain, wooden stakes, and faith in their own righteousness.
"They've scattered across three fonts. Lockwood and Fell are covering the churchyard. Forbes is securing the eastern road. Salvatore is guarding Katherine." Sophia murmured.
"And Gilbert?" I asked, scanning the horizon.
"North end. Near the bridge." Sophia answered and I nodded once.
"Then I will start here. You take Fell's men. Keep them alive." I said and Sophia glanced at me, her expression cautious.
"You are not worried I will turn on you?" She asked and I allowed myself a faint, almost imperceptible smile.
"If that were your intention, you would not be standing before me now, and if I believe you will do that, you would not be standing before me now." I said without looking at her, my eyes are still scanning the area.
"Besides, the Council is not known for its foolishness. They are cautious men, too cautious, perhaps. But not blind. If they have granted you entry into their confidence, it is because they are certain of where your loyalties lie."
We parted ways in silence. Her footsteps fading behind me as I moved toward the northern edge town. The woods were thick here, the moonlight fractured through the canopy, but I could hear the chaos ahead, shouts, the crack of gunfire, the hiss of vampires moving faster than the eye could follow.
Johnathan Gilbert stood amid it all. His precious invention clutched in one hand. Its needle whirring madly as it reacted to the presence of the undead. He was firing wildly, his aim poor but his conviction unshaken. I reached him just as a vampire lunged from the shadows, fangs bared.
With a flick of my wrist, I froze the creature the mid air, the air around it bending with invisble force.
"ignis." I whispered a single word under my breath and it thrashed violently as it's body erupted in flames, turning to ask before it hit the ground.
"Good Lord..." Gilbert stared and his mouth slightly open.
"Save your prayers, Mr.Gilbert. They won't help you tonight." I said coolly.
The fighting grew fiercer. Katherine's minions moved like a tide of death, overwhelming every human who dares to stand in their way. I moved through them like smoke. The witch and the vampire within me working in tandem. I snapped necks with one hand and set others aflame with the other, my power burning through me like a wildfire.
And still, I kept the humans alive. Every time one stumbled, I was there. Every time another vampire reached for a throat, I intervened. My movements were swift, brutal and precise.
"What are you?" Johnathan Gilbert said as he watched me in awe, torn between fear and admiration.
"Something that nature was never meant to create." I said as I looked back at him briefly. Dark veins were around my eyes, and my eyes glinting with yellow beneath the flicker of firelight.
It was then, between one heartbeat and the next, that I saw her, Emily Bennett. She stood far off, beyond the flames. Her dark figure still and unmoving amidst the chaos. She made no move to defend the vampires, no spell upon her lips. Her gaze met mine across the battlefield.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Then, slowly, Emily inclined her head, a silently acknowledgement, a sign that she had made her choice. And as she turned and disappeared into the darkness, I knew where her loyalty had fallen.
The battle raged on. Screams and fire and gunfire tangled into a single cacophony. Then, out of the cornered of my eye, I saw movement near the Lockwood estate, a flash of familiar faces.
Stefan. Damon.
They were helping Katherine.