Dear readers, I changed "ancestral vampires" to "vampire lords" and I will make an extra chapter explaining it.
At the Salvatore mansion, Stefan was pacing back and forth, clearly irritated, when the door opened, revealing a Damon completely covered in mud.
"What do you think you were doing?" Stefan shouted angrily at his brother, lunging forward and grabbing him by the collar. "Not where you got the fog from, but why you scared Elena!"
"First of all… what are you talking about? I still haven't felt like tasting your Katherine knockoff," Damon replied with a provocative smile. "And what fog?"
"Don't play with me. You made a fog in the cemetery to scare Elena, she fell and got hurt. And crows? Seriously? Did you make some deal with a witch to help you torment Elena? Have you really sunk that low?"
"Man… I was literally under a tree," Damon growled, his voice hoarse. "Someone snapped my neck and threw a tree on top of me… I'm going to find those bastards… oh, I will, hahaha."
Damon laughed maliciously, thinking of thousands of ways he could get revenge on whoever had thrown a tree on him.
Stefan loosened his grip on his brother's collar, but he didn't step back. His eyes were narrowed, analyzing every microexpression on Damon's face, as if trying to find a lie hidden between his teeth.
"Someone broke your neck?" Stefan said slowly, his anger giving way to something more uncomfortable. Doubt. "You're telling me you were out long enough for someone to bury you under a tree… and you don't remember anything else?"
Damon cracked his neck, still stiff, and wiped mud off his jacket with an irritated gesture.
"I remember the fun part: waking up pissed." The crooked smile appeared, then quickly faded. "Because some son of a bitch broke my neck and left me under a tree, literally. Zero gothic theatrics."
Stefan took a few steps across the room, running a hand through his hair.
"That doesn't make sense. That was one of your tricks. I don't know which witch is helping you… but it was one of your tricks."
Damon frowned.
"My tricks? Are you stupid?" He laughed shortly, without humor. "Stefan, I never needed tricks to scare people. My natural charm does the job."
Stefan stopped abruptly.
"I'm not joking. I felt your presence in the middle of the fog. You were there."
Silence fell heavily between them.
Damon blinked once. Then again.
"…No. I didn't know." He brought a hand to his temple, uncomfortable. "I would remember. I always remember the good parts."
A chill ran up Stefan's spine.
"Then someone messed with your memory."
Damon stared at him, his smile gone now.
"They erased parts of me?" His voice came out lower, dangerous. "That's not just an offense. That's impossible. This is our domain, brother. Only vampires mess with other people's memories."
Stefan took a deep breath.
"I saw the fog. I saw the crows. I believed it was you because it was your style." He clenched his fists. "But if you don't remember… and I believe you… then we're looking at something else."
"Someone else? Interesting," Damon corrected, his eyes shining with cold fury. "Could it be the same bastard who broke my neck and dropped a tree on me?"
Stefan nodded slowly.
"Forget that damn tree," Stefan snapped, irritated. He was talking about something serious and his brother only talked about the tree.
Damon stepped forward, mud still dripping onto the expensive carpet of the mansion.
"No. Nobody throws a tree on me and gets away with it." The smile returned, now sharp as a blade. "I'm going to get revenge."
Stefan held his brother's gaze.
"And whoever it is, they're messing with the wrong thing."
Damon laughed low, a dark promise in the sound.
"They broke my neck, threw a tree on top of me, and worse, used my reputation to do something I didn't do." Damon smiled irritably.
He snapped his fingers, determined.
"Great. It's been a while since someone gave me a good reason to be creative."
Nik POV
"Geez… that's scary," I muttered, feeling a shiver down my spine as I looked at my bedroom.
They're multiplying… how annoying.
On my bed now, lying there and taking up my space… Caroline and Bonnie.
First Bonnie steals my space, now Caroline. What did I do to deserve this?
Okay, having a hot blonde in my bed is wonderful, but the problem is that she's not in my bed with me, and we're definitely not sleeping together.
My room literally turned into the meeting point of the badly assembled group.
"So, Nik, you're the one who knows about the creatures from the other side. What else exists?" Bonnie asked, curious. "You said there were vampire lords with superpowers… what else is out there?"
Caroline also looked at me expectantly. She was getting more and more curious about the supernatural world.
"Well, there are alpha werewolves," I said, bored.
"Wait, there are werewolves too? Is an alpha like an evolution of a normal werewolf? Do they get stronger?" Caroline asked excitedly, already jumping off the bed and stopping right in front of me, almost sitting on my lap. "Tell me more."
"Well, they don't get stronger," I said, remembering when I found out from my mother that this world was also the Teen Wolf world. "They actually just fully dominate the curse, gain the ability to control the transformation, and to turn humans into semi-werewolves."
"What do you mean, semi-werewolves?" Bonnie asked, even more curious, climbing off the bed too. "I thought only vampires could turn humans."
I laughed, and that was the irony. Yes, only vampires could truly turn humans. Alphas didn't turn humans into werewolves.
"In theory, yes. Basically, all werewolves exist because of an ancient curse that affected several bloodlines due to the revenge of an evil witch," I began to explain, not saying who the witch was — the Hollow. "The curse created a demon wolf that, on every full moon, takes control of the person, makes them feel pain, and kills everything in its path."
I paused and continued, and they stayed quiet, listening.
"When alphas bite a human, they pass on the werewolf gene, but not the demon. The demon is tied only to the families that were cursed. So, in theory, alphas created another supernatural species. And that species reflects the person's inner truth. Cold people become snake-men and stuff like that."
I remembered my mother's lecture and got annoyed.
The fact that werewolves literally created hundreds of new supernatural species was extremely irritating.
"I get it, but aren't vampires the same thing? Aren't they people bitten by werewolves?" Caroline asked with explosive curiosity.
"No… vampires have an origin similar to werewolves, but instead of a witch wanting to punish people, it was a witch wanting to protect her children," I said with a certain irritation toward my grandmother, who created vampires.
"How romantic…" Caroline said with a happy smile. "She must have loved her children a lot."
Wrong. She's still trying to kill her children and every vampire in the world.
"But how did a protection spell turn into something as profane as a vampire?" Bonnie asked angrily, stomping her foot on the table. "Something more beautiful should have come out of the spell."
"Because it wasn't a spell, it was a curse," I said with a sigh. "A curse made to protect. But a curse is still a curse, and even when it's made with good intentions… it never ends well."
Bonnie crossed her arms, clearly uncomfortable. Caroline looked more confused than scared, which was somehow worse.
"When the witch cast the spell," I said, choosing my words carefully so as not to reveal too much, "she didn't just create a vampire. She created a magical concept. Something that needed to exist to sustain immortality."
I tilted my head, feeling the weight of what I'd known far too early in life.
"The curse generated an internal mystical demon. Not a demon with horns and fire, but an entity tied to instinct. It exists to protect the vampire…"
Bonnie's eyes widened.
"So it… thinks?"
"Not like you and me. It's an instinctive being," I replied. "It has no morals, no empathy, no fear… but it loves. It loves its host with all its sicknesses."
Caroline's eyes widened in surprise.
"But isn't that good?"
"If it were human love, yes. But it's a distorted love, focused only on the host's well-being, and screw everything else." I pointed at her. "The vampires you see as monsters usually never looked inside themselves and always fought their instincts — the demon — instead of accepting it as part of who they are."
Bonnie grew thoughtful.
"And the strange powers? Fog, crows, deeper mind control…"
"Those powers came with the curse… however," I said with bitter irony, "the vampire only gains access to them when they accept the demon as part of themselves and make peace with it."
Caroline frowned.
"Doesn't that sound dangerous?"
"No. Dangerous is ignoring the demon and letting it keep trying to protect the vampire, causing destruction to the vampire and to the world." I gave a crooked smile. "The power of vampirism comes with acceptance."
According to my mother, since Esther copied my mother's spell and modified it into a curse, nature understood vampires as a lesser version of Silas. And the demon is literally a copy of Silas — obsessed with protecting the host.
The universe is really ironic.