The Vampire Diaries: Evensong: Paradise Lost Read online

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  Evensong

  Part One:

  Paradise Lost

  by L. J. Smith

  Dedicated to my readers, worldwide. Thank you, friends,

  for your many messages of kindness and appreciation.

  Please let me know what you think of this fanfic!

  @drujienna, [email protected], http://www.ljanesmith.net

  https://www.facebook.com/ljsmithauthorofvampirediaries

  Foreword by L. J. Smith

  First of all, I would like to say that this is an episodic adventure fanfiction story. It is not one of the official books in The Vampire Diaries series, nor is it meant to replace these books. This fanfic takes place in an alternate world from the official books that follow Midnight.

  What on earth is an episodic adventure story? It’s a literary journey produced in sequential parts. These parts are not meant to stand alone, but they do each have an ending which relates back to the beginning and to the episode’s major theme. In other words, this is just Part One of a story which will come out in many different parts. This is good or bad, depending on your POV.

  I would also like to explain a little about this fanfic. It all began with a simple “what if” question, and one that I think you will be able to guess just a short way into the story. And then . . . well, as J.R.R. Tolkien famously said, “the tale grew in the telling.” Almost before I knew it, Part One: Paradise Lost, was as long as any book in the original trilogy of The Vampire Diaries.

  I can’t even tell at the moment how many different parts there will be to this story, although I have known from the beginning how it will end. I also know such things as this: later in the work you will be seeing a very Gothic wedding—the bride wears black—held just at midnight in a half-ruined chapel in the woods behind Dalcrest College. And, no, I’m not going to tell who is marrying whom or why.

  I have many readers who have written to me about how strongly they feel regarding which characters should get the most airtime in any Vampire Diaries fiction. I’d like to promise those on every side that this is a long, complex story. If you don’t see enough of your favorite pairing in a particular episode (Bamon fans take note!), chances are that it will be coming up in the future. This is not because I can’t make up my mind about who should end up with whom, but because I enjoy the chaos of the love quadrangles and more (quintangles? higher polygons?) that ensue when these particular characters get together.

  Another thing: I have assumed that most people who read this work are already familiar with the characters and events of The Vampire Diaries. Still, I have provided some background information just for those readers who may never have picked up one of the books before. I’m aware, too, that most of the fanfics in Amazon’s The Vampire Diaries section are based on the TV show. This one isn’t. It’s based on the books, which first came out back in the early 1990s. So if it shocks you to hear that Elena has fair hair and comes from the town of Fell’s Church, or that Damon and Stefan are both around half a millennium old and were born in Renaissance Italy, this probably isn’t the series for you. Or maybe it is. Maybe you’d like to see what the TV show was based on.

  I would like to give my thanks to my agent, John Silbersack of Trident Media. You are reading this story because of his efforts, and if it is any good, he made it better.

  My most sincere gratitude as well to Amazon and Kindle Worlds for giving me a place to house this fanfic and for welcoming me so warmly.

  I would also like to thank Julie, Christina, Toni, Frini, Jesa, Jan, and Usok of Usok Choe Designs. Without them, I would never have been able to write a page of Evensong.

  I do actually mean it when I say write to me to give your opinion of this episodic literary adventure. Please email me at [email protected]. I may even write back to you! Or else visit me at http://www.ljanesmith.net, like me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ljsmithauthorofvampirediaries or follow me on Twitter @drujienna.

  Lisa

  Evensong

  Part One:

  Paradise Lost

  by L. J. Smith

  “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make

  a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…”

  ― John Milton

  “Hey, mister?”

  It was long after sunset. Damon Salvatore sat in a back booth of the most seedy and disreputable joint in all of Pine Grove, which was the most seedy and disreputable village to be found near Dyer, the little town that embraced Dalcrest College. He was reading the Dyer County Herald.

  “Mister?”

  Damon dipped his newspaper and looked over the top of his Ray Ban sunglasses at a young woman—a girl—a sort of moppet. She had dark olive skin and unnaturally brilliant scarlet hair in heavy, helter-skelter curls. You could mistake her for maybe sixteen if you fell for her round, ingenuous blue eyes or missed her ability to seem shorter and slighter than she actually was.

  She brought to mind someone he cared about, who was genuinely small and fragile and had soft strawberry curls and a heart-shaped face. On the strength of that resemblance, he spoke to her.

  “Yeah?”

  The girl of sixteen, going on twenty-two, going on ageless, put her head on one side endearingly.

  “Hey. Do you like to play pool, mister?”

  “Nope.” Damon retreated back behind the Herald. He was scanning the obituaries column—it was his way of keeping score.

  There was a stainless steel hipflask on the rather sticky table, monogramed DS. Damon opened this and took a sip of dark, satiny Black Magic wine. Ah. Good year.

  Bad week, though: no mention of cause of death, no mention, no mention in the obituaries. A murder, but not one of his, since it had happened the night before last and he could vividly recall not killing anyone then. A young woman, too. Weird that there was nothing about the murder in the headlines, but then this was werewolf country, which was why Damon was keeping score in the first place.

  Aha! “After a brief illness”—but definitely one of his. He vividly recalled the three heavy, hairy bodies striking him from three directions at a few days ago in the Dyer woods. He also remembered the recoil in his arm as he drove a silver-edged switchblade into the largest wolf’s brindled chest while two-inch-long fangs gnashed together just beyond his nose. Plus, he recognized the thirty-something face of the human that had appeared when the werewolf collapsed dead in the obit.

  So “a brief illness” now encompassed death by a silver blade, he mused.

  Something stirred at the bottom of his newspaper.

  “Mister?”

  It was the moppet again, peeking upward.

  “I just thought,” she said artlessly, twinkling her baby blue eyes, “that since you were sitting back here by the pool tables all alone, you might want to teach me something. My name is Kenzy.” She smiled like sugared sunshine.

  “Really,” Damon murmured, noting with disappointment that she was neither a vampire nor a ’wolf on the prowl for meat. He couldn’t teach the little hustler a proper lesson. But maybe . . .

  “Okay, let’s play!” he said, flashing a very brief—if dazzling— smile in the gir
l’s direction. With Kenzy following him, skipping, if he didn’t miss his guess, he went to gather a cue stick and a cheap plastic drinking cup. An empty cup. And, from his front jeans pocket, a quarter.

  He picked a table and put the quarter and the cup on the side rail less than an inch apart. Instead of racking up the balls that Kenzy was gathering, he took three, and then three more from her.

  “Pay attention. There will be a pop quiz afterward,” he told her briefly, as he deposited the six balls in the center of the table in a sort of butterfly shape. Without a pause, he casually dropped the cue ball in front of him, bent over and struck it sharply with the stick. It shot toward the colored balls, hit the middle two with a most satisfactory clunk and sent them flying in six directions, one to each of the six pockets of the table. The cue ball came back toward him, much diminished in speed. Damon tapped it from behind and it bounced up onto the quarter, then hopped into the plastic glass as if drawn there by magic.

  “And you,” he said solemnly to Kenzy, who was staring with a glazed expression at the empty table, “can keep this shiny bright quarter for your very own!”

  He turned back toward his dim booth and had almost reached the Herald when he heard the belly laugh.

  The “moppet” was uncoiling, standing up straight. Her wide, innocent eyes were transforming into a shrewd, direct gaze. Something had apparently been unsnapped because suddenly she had soft curves on top.

  Moreover, as she continued to chuckle, the fullness of her lips made her look broadminded and good-humored.

  “I was gonna tell you what you could do with your shiny bright quarter, but I just couldn’t keep it together,” she confided. “Damn; and I thought you were one of those stuck-up college kids. I hustle them all the time.”

  “Me, a college student?” Damon crossed his black jacketed arms over his chest and looked at Kenzy through the Ray Bans, frowning. He was seriously annoyed for the first time that night.

  “You were reading a newspaper!”

  “Oh. But that was just to—never mind. I guess it’s true; I’m a martyr to my own intellectualism.” He tried on Stefan’s brooding aura of loneliness and got another warm, deep chuckle for his pains.

  “Nah, you’re nothing like them,” Kenzy said. “Can we start this conversation over, please? I’m Kenzy, and my answers to the quiz are: I’ve seen both those tricks done, but never in combination—and never so fast. I mean, damn fast!”

  Damon looked her over, his eyes gravitating without volition to the sturdy, rounded throat that stood like a pillar now that the young woman wasn’t crouching. His canine teeth began to ache pleasantly.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m Damon, and, yes, I’m pretty fast.” He tried for a modest smile, but couldn’t hold it, and went straight on to stunning without regret. “Shall we sit down?” He flashed a folded bill over his head as they did so.

  The surly barkeeper seemed to have preternatural sight for any kind of money, and no eyes for anything else. He called, “What’ll it be?”

  “My friend would like . . .” Damon glanced at Kenzy.

  “Oh, a rum and Coke,” she replied. “You’re not having anything?” she added when the bartender had come and gone.

  “I’m leaving my options open,” Damon said lightly, touching the flask with just the faintest quirk of his lip.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was smiling a genuine sharp-toothed smile. Kenzy had turned out to be broadminded indeed. She was interested in unique experiences. He hadn’t even had to Influence her in order to get her to tip her head back so that the sweet, sturdy column of her neck was bared.

  It was definitely good to be back in the world of the upright and walking. In fact, it seemed almost ridiculous to think that only a few weeks ago he had been pretty much deceased. Undeath was a capital improvement, and for really savage kicks he had a large pack of werewolves to play with.

  Nothing, he was certain, was going to prevent the next few weeks from being delicious.

  * * *

  Bonnie McCullough chewed her lower lip nervously. She was trying to do her Algebra 101 homework. Sort of. It was only the beginning of the third week of school and the homework shouldn’t have been so intimidating, but she couldn’t keep her mind on it.

  Something awful is going to happen tonight, she thought.

  She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain. Almost certain. She had been a witch for long enough to listen to her instincts in many cases. Between her grandmother’s advice and old Mrs. Flowers’ generous help, Bonnie had even got something of an education in the craft.

  But she didn’t know what to do now. If her terrifying intuition did happen to be wrong, it would spoil the night for everyone. And one thing that Bonnie had not learned—and suspected she could never learn—was to have the sort of confidence in her own opinion that Elena and Meredith had.

  At least, she thought, some of her natural optimism returning to her, Elena would be out of danger. Bonnie knew that because she’d just gotten off the phone with Elena and Elena was on her way to Stefan’s room. Stefan would die before allowing any harm to come to his beloved.

  Now the only people that Bonnie had to fret about were Meredith, Matt, Caroline—and, well . . . him. The one she sometimes had trouble even naming in her own mind because it gave her inner shivers and made her eyes fill.

  Damon, she thought in a sort of mental whisper.

  * * *

  Meredith Sulez sat with her back to Bonnie’s back, at a small desk that was the mirror of her roommate’s. She was trying to concentrate on her letter to her fiancé, Alaric Saltzman. It was a snail-mail letter because the village in the remote highlands of Scotland he was investigating had no Internet capabilities. Even to get on the telephone he had to visit the post office. There was always a little cluster of elderly people who amused themselves by listening to the half-shouted conversations of those who dared to touch that dangerous marvel of cutting-edge technology: the pay-phone.

  So far the letter went like this:

  Dear Alaric,

  If you are reading this in front of other people, STOP! It’s really quite private . . . sweetheart.

  I hope you’re safe and well. It’s the start of week three for us, and we are all fine. Dalcrest College is very different from what we thought it might be when we so nobly gave up our scholarships in order to stay near Fell’s Church and the many supernatural threats that seem to concentrate themselves there.

  *sigh*

  Honestly, though, I wish you’d come and investigate our hometown again. I’m sure it could use it, even if it seems quiet at the moment. And you might have a look at this college, too.

  What is Dalcrest College like? How is it different from what we expected?

  Well, for one thing, the campus began as an institute of higher learning back before 1900. The first dormitories were part of an old mansion that was bequeathed to a professor who had always wanted to start her own college.

  I’m actually living in one of those dorm rooms now. All the girls are—and yes, this place is so old-fashioned that the dormitories are not coed. Some of the boys’ dorms are built in what used to be the big house’s stables.

  In the classrooms, though, everything seems quite ordinary and modern. I don’t know what I expected. Huge cobwebs and black candelabra hanging from the ceilings? (Actually, there are some candelabra in what used to be the entryway and great rooms of the old mansion. But they’re not black and they’ve been converted to electric lighting.)

  Of course, you already know about the one thing that’s quite odd. At least you should if you got my previous letter (to which I am still waiting for an answer . . . dearest.) The campus is nestled snugly between the town of Dyer and Dyer Wood. The wood, of course, is where we . . .

  She read the last paragraph over thoughtfully. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be too specific. Alaric might be older than her, and have graduated from Duke, but sometimes he had a ridiculous boyish habit of being careless with
pieces of paper.

  Besides, something was bothering her. The room was too quiet. Usually Bonnie hummed like an amiably off-tune bumblebee, or sang quite loudly—still off-tune—to the music in her ear buds, or else drummed her fingers when confronted by a difficult quadratic equation. Right now she was doing nothing of the kind. If she thought that Meredith didn’t know she was worried, then she had another think—

  “I do not need a cup of soothing chamomile tea,” Bonnie said in tones of withering dignity.

  Meredith turned around to see Bonnie’s small stiff back, the shoulders hunched too tightly.

  “I don’t even like soothing chamomile tea,” the petite redhead was going on, but Meredith crossed the few paces between the desks in their room and laid gentle hands on those fragile-looking shoulders.

  “What about a backrub?” she suggested.

  Bonnie just clutched at her strawberry curls. “I’m not that worried—I mean I am—and I’m sorry! There! Now I’ve started trouble and I don’t even know anything for certain!”

  Meredith tried to begin a gentle massage of the slender neck bowed in defeat. The muscles were so tightly cramped that she couldn’t do anything to them without kneading hard with her strong hands and hurting Bonnie at first.

  Instead, she flopped on her bed, gazing at the lacy homemade curtains that framed the darkness of the dorm room’s window. She narrowed her eyes as she examined the curtain rod.

  “Bonnie?”

  A sniffle.

  “Bonnie, talk to me! Come on, girl,” Meredith said, bringing all her powers of persuasion to bear. “You’re a witch and I’m a hunter-slayer and there is absolutely nothing that you can say that would startle me.”

  “I know,” Bonnie replied wretchedly. “But that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? You’ll believe me, Elena will believe me, Stefan will believe me . . . but I don’t know whether I believe me!”

  “Well,” Meredith said sensibly, “then you have to let us decide what to do about the prophecy on our own.”