Life asked Death, “Death, why does everyone love me, but hate you?”
Death replied, “Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth.”
“Edmund Burke once said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”
“And you would know all about that, huh, professor.” A smirk graced the brunette’s lips as the words left her mouth.
“My dear, Andrea,” the man seated across from her said. “Why, of course, I would know all about that. It is my area of expertise after all.”
The Labonair and the Professor sat in the courtyard for awhile longer, taking each other in.
It wasn’t odd for her to be seen in such close proximity with the strange man. She thought he was hot and today was no different. He always kept her on her toes with the knowledge that spewed from his lips, igniting her own passion for wisdom and other things.
Just as she was about to dive into another scintillating topic, she felt a prickle at the back of her neck.
Now, Andrea knows the full moon will be high in the sky tonight. She is accustomed to the heightened emotions that come with such a sacred time. She almost always felt empowered and excited when it was time to transform into a creature of the night. She had fully embraced the loup garou way of life. But this? This was different.
This was the feeling of being stalked by an apex predator. This was the feeling of something truly terrifying being released into the world.
“Do you feel it?” Shane asked.
His words startling her out of her thoughts, her gaze laced with uncertainty. She watched as he smiled knowingly, welcoming the change in the air. There was something in the way the breeze moved that just seemed unnatural. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she knew that something had changed.
All of a sudden, a blood curdling scream could be heard coming from around the corner from where they sat.
Without a second thought, they rushed to the scene.
And what a scene it was.
Gruesome.
Haunting.
They saw a few familiar faces of some students as they mourned. They saw Annabelle Zhu and Rebekah Mikaelson comforting Jeremy Gilbert and Stefan Salvatore as they mourned the brutal deaths of their siblings. Siblings that had been impaled on tall steel rods for the entire campus to see.
“Here lies a rapist and his accomplice,” was written in blood on the ground below letting the world know that two depraved souls had been reaped from this earth. Never to be seen again.
Caroline was happy.
She lived a full life.
Centuries had long since passed since she turned into the bloodthirsty hybrid she is today. She learned a great many things. One being that she had a natural affinity for creation.
So there she sat, in a museum surrounded by onlookers who wished they could be in her place. With a canvas in front of her, she painted a scene from one of her many memories.
A scene from the day she was reborn.
To be quite honest, it was kismet for her to be thinking of such as today was the day that she would stop living for herself.
An overwhelming presence, one that should have invoked sheer terror, came to be observing her from within the midst of her audience.
And wild eyes finally turned to face the devil.
With a wave of her hand, the crowd left her. After a minute or so, they were the only two left.
“Are you ready, my dear?” He asked, his eyes shifting from human to monster. Hers flashing in return. “At long last, it’s time to pay the piper.”
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