Red Right Hand: 2/?
Title: Red Right Hand
Chapter Title: The Tower
Fandom: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Pairing: Klaus/Stefan
Wordcount: ~3100 for this chapter, 6000 total
Rating: T
Summary: Ever since that night, Klaus has been invading Stefan's dreams and memories. But when Stefan seeks assistance from a witch, he learns some dark and disturbing information about things bigger than him or Klaus.
The lamps burned brightly in the grand ballroom of the Salvatore mansion as dancers whirled round and round the floor, a constantly changing sea of color and movement. Stefan, feeling strangely out-of-place at the fancy party, watched them dispassionately from the doorway.
“Do you not feel like dancing this evening, Mr. Salvatore?” came a familiar voice in his ear that caused an involuntary shiver to dance up and down his spine.
He swallowed audibly and replied without turning around, “Though it is a lovely party, to be sure, Lord Niklaus, I must confess that my heart does not lie on the dance floor this evening.”
“It is of no matter,” murmured Klaus mischevously, “For I have something much more interesting for us to do.” He took Stefan’s hand in his and led him slowly around the corner and up the stairs. The lamps flared in the narrow stairwell, and Stefan watched in confused amazement as Klaus’s dimly lit form suddenly flickered and changed into that of Katherine Pierce, then back again just as quickly.
“Wait, this isn’t right,” Stefan said confusedly as they reached the top of the stairs and started toward his bedroom.
“Don’t be such a Puritan,” Klaus murmured, flicking open Stefan’s bow tie and tugging off his jacket.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Stefan started, “Katherine -”
“You wound me, Stefan,” Klaus said, his voice filled with mock hurt, “Am I not enough to occupy your thoughts for the evening?” He placed one hand on the side of Stefan’s face and began to lightly kiss the side of his neck, then slid his other hand down from Stefan’s cheek to remove the tie altogether and fiddle with the buttons on Stefan’s shirt.
“But I swear, it was Katherine at this party, not you,” Stefan insisted, fighting through the fog clouding his brain to try and recall it properly.
“Your mind plays tricks on you, Stefan,” Klaus murmured, “Pay no mind to the phantoms it conjures. You and I are flesh...and blood,” at which point he skimmed his fangs over the vein pulsing in Stefan’s neck, though drawing only a few drops of blood. “We are all that matters.”
Stefan’s head spun even faster, wiping his mind of any and all coherent thoughts, and his heartbeat began to race, until he could stand it no longer, at which point he placed his fingers beneath Klaus’s chin, tilting his head up to meet him in a kiss.
Klaus returned the kiss passionately, and the next thing Stefan knew, they were on his bed, Klaus straddling him and slowly removing his vest.
“Do you love me, Stefan?” Klaus asked, discarding the vest and unbuttoning Stefan’s starched dress shirt.
“You know I do,” Stefan answered earnestly, though he had the strange sensation of reading lines from a script.
“And would you die for me?” Klaus asked, now slowly slipping his hands under the shirt and running them tantalizingly over the bare chest beneath.
“Gladly,” Stefan swore as he reached down to take Klaus’s hands in his.
“Then would you trust me with your life?” Klaus asked, looking directly into Stefan’s eyes.
“Of course I would,” Stefan said sincerely, though the niggling feeling that something was off was still prodding a distant portion of his brain.
Klaus’s eyes turned red, and his fangs dropped once more from his mouth as he said, ‘Then trust that I do this so we can always be together,” before biting his own wrist and bring it to Stefan’s mouth. Stefan was surprised, but drank the blood at Klaus’s insistent urging. He had thought that drinking blood would be a truly disgusting experience, but this was...not pleasant, but not repulsive either.
When Klaus withdrew his wrist, “Klaus, what -” was all Stefan got out before Klaus was sinking his fangs into Stefan’s neck, which caused him to cry out in pain. Klaus linked his fingers through Stefan’s, and Stefan clung to his grip when the pain became more intense. The seconds passed, he felt his heartbeat slow as Klaus drained more and more of his blood, and finally Stefan could no longer keep his head upright, instead letting it loll to the side.
Through his now blurry vision, he could see the outline of a dark-haired woman staring curiously at him from across the room.
“Katherine?” he whispered, fighting to stay conscious.
Her form flickered then appeared closer to him, the shock apparent on her face as she asked, “Stefan, my God, what are you doing?”
“Elena?” he asked despairingly, shame filling him. He tried to push Klaus away, but his limbs no longer obeyed him, and the last thing he saw before everything was plunged into darkness was the horrified expression on Elena’s face as she whispered, “Why, Stefan, why?”
Stefan bolted upright in bed, shaking all over. He instinctively raised a hand to his chest before remembering there wasn’t supposed to be a heartbeat there. As he shook his head to try and clear away the cobwebs, Stefan forcefully willed his mind to return to the present from the strange dreamworld it had concocted for him. He was in an abandoned house in Paris, he reminded himself, three thousand miles away from Elena and the horror she would feel at finding out what he had become.
The dreams had been coming with increasing frequency ever since the night he had drunk Klaus's blood...the same night he had snapped and nearly taken his relationship with Klaus to a new and disturbing level.
Ever since then, Klaus had become the bane of his sleeping hours as well as his waking ones. It had been bad enough when the dreams were just Klaus standing there, staring at him, his eyes burning blue with liquid fire. When it was those dreams that came, Stefan would spend every night trying to kill him, and every night Klaus would just laugh; he’d stab him, shoot him, set him on fire, and always Klaus would remain, laughing.
But recently, Klaus had begun invading his memories, weaseling his way into some of Stefan's most intimate moments. The night Katherine had tried to turn him before they were interrupted by an unsuspecting housemaid was only Klaus’s most recent excursion into Stefan's subconscious.
He had appeared in Stefan's bed in Mystic Falls on that rainy night which should have been the first he spent with Elena, had conjured himself into the first time Stefan had declared his love for Katherine, and had even shown up at the lavish Rockefeller party after which he and Lexie had drunkenly decided to give it a go.
Wherever there used to be memories of the women he had loved - Katherine, Lexie, Elena - now there was only Klaus. The worst part for Stefan was that he could no longer retreat into his memories for comfort, for his tormentor now resided there also.
Stefan knew all too well that this could not go on much longer. There had to be a way to get Klaus out of his head, and he was very much afraid that unless he found it soon, he would most certainly go mad.
Having made up his mind to act, Stefan threw off the covers and, being careful to remain quiet, left his bedroom to make his way down what must have once been an impressively decorated hallway to the master bedroom in which Klaus slept. He was relieved to find the vampire sound asleep, sprawled haphazardly over the silk duvet, which was by this point permanently stained brown with blood.
Strange, Stefan thought as he carefully picked up Klaus’s scarf from where he had thrown it on an antique armchair, in sleep Klaus looked so harmless, almost...human. While his cruel blue eyes were shut, Klaus’s fair hair and pale skin made him appear more angel than devil. Only the blood-stained bedclothes he slumbered on so peacefully gave any clue to his vast capacity for violence.
Stefan mentally brushed away these idle musings and slipped from the room before Klaus could wake and ponder the cause of Stefan’s nocturnal visitation. He crept slowly back down the hallway, then the stairs, and finally out the door into the cool night air.
Though ordinarily Stefan would have enjoyed a nighttime stroll through the City of Lights, tonight he had urgent business to attend to, and so consequently traded the pleasure of a stroll for the expediency his supernatural speed afforded him. He watched the picturesque houses speed by as he crossed the Seine, sparing only a fleeting glance at the great cathedral of Notre Dame when it whizzed by on his right, and penetrated the heart of the Third District.
It had been many years since Stefan had been to Paris, but he knew some things didn’t change. He was hoping the kind of people the Third District attracted was one of them.
“You seem a little lost, cheri,” came a voice from the darkened doorway of one of the many small stone houses.
“Only a fool would choose to get lost in the Third District after midnight,” Stefan responded dryly.
“Since you do not seem to be a fool, may I ask what brings you here?” the woman asked, though she remained in the shadows.
“What brings anyone to the Rue Montmorency in the middle of the night," Stefan replied, "I am in need of information of a very...particular sort."
"Particular, you say?" she asked with a low laugh. "Yes, I think I may be able to help. Come inside." The woman turned and retreated back into the darkness, with the crack she left open in the door spilling a shaft of pale light onto the cobblestones.
Stefan took the hint, entered the building, which appeared to be a shop for the buying and selling of occult objects, and left a small stack of bills on the dust-covered counter.
"My name is Jacqueline Dupont. My family has been running this shop since Nicholas Flamel lived in that house over there, you know," she said as she rummaged through a box of strange items on the top shelf.
"Flamel, the alchemist?" Stefan asked, intrigued.
"My great-great-grandfather, Antoine Dupont, was Flamel's assistant," she explained, still removing various objects from the box, though for what she searched Stefan did not know, "And when he died, my great-great-grandmother used his research to start this shop. She dedicated her life to offering the citizens of Paris...alternative solutions to their problems. It's mostly tourists these days, though, dropping in after eating an overpriced meal in Flamel’s basement to pick up a crystal or talisman and whisper to their friends about seeing a real, live witch.”
“Ah, here they are!” she exclaimed, pulling a small velvet bag from the very bottom of what Stefan was beginning to suspect was not a normal box.
“Here...what are?” Stefan asked, slightly apprehensively.
“You wanted information, cheri. These are your best hope of finding it,” she replied, beckoning him to a small room in the back of the shop.
Stefan followed, seating himself opposite her at a small table at the wave of her hand. Jacqueline pulled a stack of ancient looking cards from the bag and carefully laid them on the table.
“Tarot cards?” Stefan asked skeptically.
“Oh, they’re not just for the tourists,” she said. “Yes, you can pull out the Knight of Cups now and again and tell some lonely women she will meet her tall, dark stranger, but don’t be thinking there isn’t real power in these cards. You channel it correctly, there’s no better way of getting information of the...particular variety you requested. Now then, what is it you’re wanting to know?”
“There’s a man,” Stefan began, “A very powerful man who has...a hold on me.”
“You wish to break this hold?” she asked, flicking cards between her fingers.
“Yes,” Stefan assented, “But first I must know exactly what I’m dealing with. I’ve been having these dreams...”
“Oh, dreams can be very powerful,” she said, “And sometimes very revealing.”
“I also brought you this,” he said, producing the scarf. “It’s his - I was hoping it might help you get a reading.”
“It certainly can’t hurt,” she agreed, examining the scarf carefully, then placing it on the table before handing him the cards. “Now, close your eyes, take these in your hands, and think only of him.”
Stefan did as she asked, and as he moved the cards back and forth in hands, his mind filled itself almost unbidden with thoughts of Klaus. Klaus staring unblinkingly at him with those piercing blue eyes. Klaus standing unrepentantly over a dead body, his gleaming pale skin stained red with blood. Klaus kissing him, touching him, seducing him, every night in his dreams.
Stefan was astonished to find that when he opened his eyes, the cards were no longer lying in his hands, but floating a few inches above the table. They spun rapidly in a circle until a few distributed themselves on the table in a cross pattern and the rest stacked themselves neatly on the side.
Jacqueline raised an eyebrow at him and said, “Those must have been some powerful thoughts, cheri, to make the cards do that. But what do they say, I wonder?”
With a flick of her wrist, she turned over the first card. “Ah, the Five of Swords. You have won a great battle, but at a terrible cost. Now you must live with the consequences.”
Stefan was surprised, but decided to keep his thoughts to himself for the moment; despite the recent seemingly supernatural theatrics, he was still holding out judgement on Jacqueline’s true abilities.
She continued to the second card, which he noticed contained a beautiful woman in Renaissance dress leading a lion on a gold chain, and murmured, “Strength. Now you fight another battle, this time within yourself. There is a primal, dark side that of yourself you seek desperately to suppress.”
“Enough psychoanalysis,” Stefan said impatiently, though he would have sworn he felt a small chill pass over him, “It is not myself but another that I come here about.”
Jacqueline merely sent him a withering look and snapped her fingers, at which point the third card flipped over instantly, revealing a horned man consumed by flames. The gold embossed script read: The Devil.
“The Devil. So he is a force of pure evil, then?” Stefan asked her.
“Nothing is that simple, cheri,” she answered, with a shake of the head. “Each card contains shades of both dark and light, and the Devil is no different. He is extreme, yes, tempting, intense, sometimes cruel. But with that kind of power always lies the capacity for good as well as evil.”
“I doubt there is good anywhere in him,” Stefan said bitterly.
Jacqueline waved her hand over the next card, which floated up and fluttered back down again to display a couple in an intimate embrace, the caption below naming them as “The Lovers”. “Are you so sure?” she asked with an amused, little smile.
“What do they represent?” Stefan asked, trying not to let the strange panic he was feeling show in his voice.
“Oh, they can mean many things,” she responded with a flippant wave of the hand. “Sometimes they are duality - two sides of a single nature which must be brought into harmony. Other times...a rather more literal interpretation is necessary.” She glanced at him pointedly before moving on to the next cards, which turned themselves over in quick succession.
Her expression visibly darkened as she examined them. “This isn’t just about the two of you anymore,” she told Stefan ominously, though her eyes never left the cards. “Eight of Wands - something’s coming, and fast. Three of Swords - heartbreak. The Hanged Man - All will be turned upside down.”
“What do you mean?” Stefan asked, alarmed. He had only come to learn about what was happening with Klaus; the idea that there was a bigger picture took him entirely by surprise. “What’s coming?”
As if in response, a wind blew through the room, extinguishing the wall lamps so only the candle in the center of the table shed any light, and flipped over the final card. A wave of fear seized Stefan as he took in the images depicted on the card: a tower struck by lightning, twisted bodies falling from it, their mouths arranged in screams, and everything completely covered in fire.
“I have to go,” he muttered quickly, nearly turning over his chair in his haste to leave the place. But as he turned to leave, Jacqueline grabbed his hand and said urgently, “Dark things are brewing, Stefan Salvatore.”
“How do you know my name?” he demanded, wrenching his arm from her grasp.
“I know many things, about you, about the one called Klaus whose influence drove you to seek my help,” she said, renewing her grip on his sleeve, “There are whispers in the shadow world, dark whispers. Something is coming, something bad, and you can stop it.”
“Me?” Stefan asked in surprise. “What hope can I have in going up against Klaus? He is much stronger than I am, and besides, it would violate the promise I made to him.”
“It is not your purpose to defeat Klaus,” she explained seriously. “Has it not occurred to you that yours is not the only nature fighting with itself? Klaus would have you believe that he is supremely powerful, that he feels nothing, and wishes only destruction, but I think we both know that isn’t entirely true.”
“So, what, you’re saying I have to reform Klaus?” Stefan asked with a dark laugh, “If that is the case, we may as well capitulate now to this coming dark power.”
“Your purpose shall become clear to you soon,” she said mysteriously, “But for now, you must go. There are matters that require your immediate attention.”
Stefan once more began to leave, but as he did, Jacqueline called after him, “Oh, and Stefan? Klaus did not send you the dreams; they are entirely the product of your own subconscious. Interesting, is it not?”
Not sure how to process this latest revelation, Stefan left the shop and once again availed himself of his vampire speed, this time to head back toward the mansion. Though he didn’t know exactly what he planned to do, or even if he believed the witch’s dark portents, the shivers that wouldn’t stop running up and down his spine had him thinking the sooner he returned to Klaus, the better.
Read Chapter 3.
Chapter Title: The Tower
Fandom: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Pairing: Klaus/Stefan
Wordcount: ~3100 for this chapter, 6000 total
Rating: T
Summary: Ever since that night, Klaus has been invading Stefan's dreams and memories. But when Stefan seeks assistance from a witch, he learns some dark and disturbing information about things bigger than him or Klaus.
The lamps burned brightly in the grand ballroom of the Salvatore mansion as dancers whirled round and round the floor, a constantly changing sea of color and movement. Stefan, feeling strangely out-of-place at the fancy party, watched them dispassionately from the doorway.
“Do you not feel like dancing this evening, Mr. Salvatore?” came a familiar voice in his ear that caused an involuntary shiver to dance up and down his spine.
He swallowed audibly and replied without turning around, “Though it is a lovely party, to be sure, Lord Niklaus, I must confess that my heart does not lie on the dance floor this evening.”
“It is of no matter,” murmured Klaus mischevously, “For I have something much more interesting for us to do.” He took Stefan’s hand in his and led him slowly around the corner and up the stairs. The lamps flared in the narrow stairwell, and Stefan watched in confused amazement as Klaus’s dimly lit form suddenly flickered and changed into that of Katherine Pierce, then back again just as quickly.
“Wait, this isn’t right,” Stefan said confusedly as they reached the top of the stairs and started toward his bedroom.
“Don’t be such a Puritan,” Klaus murmured, flicking open Stefan’s bow tie and tugging off his jacket.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Stefan started, “Katherine -”
“You wound me, Stefan,” Klaus said, his voice filled with mock hurt, “Am I not enough to occupy your thoughts for the evening?” He placed one hand on the side of Stefan’s face and began to lightly kiss the side of his neck, then slid his other hand down from Stefan’s cheek to remove the tie altogether and fiddle with the buttons on Stefan’s shirt.
“But I swear, it was Katherine at this party, not you,” Stefan insisted, fighting through the fog clouding his brain to try and recall it properly.
“Your mind plays tricks on you, Stefan,” Klaus murmured, “Pay no mind to the phantoms it conjures. You and I are flesh...and blood,” at which point he skimmed his fangs over the vein pulsing in Stefan’s neck, though drawing only a few drops of blood. “We are all that matters.”
Stefan’s head spun even faster, wiping his mind of any and all coherent thoughts, and his heartbeat began to race, until he could stand it no longer, at which point he placed his fingers beneath Klaus’s chin, tilting his head up to meet him in a kiss.
Klaus returned the kiss passionately, and the next thing Stefan knew, they were on his bed, Klaus straddling him and slowly removing his vest.
“Do you love me, Stefan?” Klaus asked, discarding the vest and unbuttoning Stefan’s starched dress shirt.
“You know I do,” Stefan answered earnestly, though he had the strange sensation of reading lines from a script.
“And would you die for me?” Klaus asked, now slowly slipping his hands under the shirt and running them tantalizingly over the bare chest beneath.
“Gladly,” Stefan swore as he reached down to take Klaus’s hands in his.
“Then would you trust me with your life?” Klaus asked, looking directly into Stefan’s eyes.
“Of course I would,” Stefan said sincerely, though the niggling feeling that something was off was still prodding a distant portion of his brain.
Klaus’s eyes turned red, and his fangs dropped once more from his mouth as he said, ‘Then trust that I do this so we can always be together,” before biting his own wrist and bring it to Stefan’s mouth. Stefan was surprised, but drank the blood at Klaus’s insistent urging. He had thought that drinking blood would be a truly disgusting experience, but this was...not pleasant, but not repulsive either.
When Klaus withdrew his wrist, “Klaus, what -” was all Stefan got out before Klaus was sinking his fangs into Stefan’s neck, which caused him to cry out in pain. Klaus linked his fingers through Stefan’s, and Stefan clung to his grip when the pain became more intense. The seconds passed, he felt his heartbeat slow as Klaus drained more and more of his blood, and finally Stefan could no longer keep his head upright, instead letting it loll to the side.
Through his now blurry vision, he could see the outline of a dark-haired woman staring curiously at him from across the room.
“Katherine?” he whispered, fighting to stay conscious.
Her form flickered then appeared closer to him, the shock apparent on her face as she asked, “Stefan, my God, what are you doing?”
“Elena?” he asked despairingly, shame filling him. He tried to push Klaus away, but his limbs no longer obeyed him, and the last thing he saw before everything was plunged into darkness was the horrified expression on Elena’s face as she whispered, “Why, Stefan, why?”
Stefan bolted upright in bed, shaking all over. He instinctively raised a hand to his chest before remembering there wasn’t supposed to be a heartbeat there. As he shook his head to try and clear away the cobwebs, Stefan forcefully willed his mind to return to the present from the strange dreamworld it had concocted for him. He was in an abandoned house in Paris, he reminded himself, three thousand miles away from Elena and the horror she would feel at finding out what he had become.
The dreams had been coming with increasing frequency ever since the night he had drunk Klaus's blood...the same night he had snapped and nearly taken his relationship with Klaus to a new and disturbing level.
Ever since then, Klaus had become the bane of his sleeping hours as well as his waking ones. It had been bad enough when the dreams were just Klaus standing there, staring at him, his eyes burning blue with liquid fire. When it was those dreams that came, Stefan would spend every night trying to kill him, and every night Klaus would just laugh; he’d stab him, shoot him, set him on fire, and always Klaus would remain, laughing.
But recently, Klaus had begun invading his memories, weaseling his way into some of Stefan's most intimate moments. The night Katherine had tried to turn him before they were interrupted by an unsuspecting housemaid was only Klaus’s most recent excursion into Stefan's subconscious.
He had appeared in Stefan's bed in Mystic Falls on that rainy night which should have been the first he spent with Elena, had conjured himself into the first time Stefan had declared his love for Katherine, and had even shown up at the lavish Rockefeller party after which he and Lexie had drunkenly decided to give it a go.
Wherever there used to be memories of the women he had loved - Katherine, Lexie, Elena - now there was only Klaus. The worst part for Stefan was that he could no longer retreat into his memories for comfort, for his tormentor now resided there also.
Stefan knew all too well that this could not go on much longer. There had to be a way to get Klaus out of his head, and he was very much afraid that unless he found it soon, he would most certainly go mad.
Having made up his mind to act, Stefan threw off the covers and, being careful to remain quiet, left his bedroom to make his way down what must have once been an impressively decorated hallway to the master bedroom in which Klaus slept. He was relieved to find the vampire sound asleep, sprawled haphazardly over the silk duvet, which was by this point permanently stained brown with blood.
Strange, Stefan thought as he carefully picked up Klaus’s scarf from where he had thrown it on an antique armchair, in sleep Klaus looked so harmless, almost...human. While his cruel blue eyes were shut, Klaus’s fair hair and pale skin made him appear more angel than devil. Only the blood-stained bedclothes he slumbered on so peacefully gave any clue to his vast capacity for violence.
Stefan mentally brushed away these idle musings and slipped from the room before Klaus could wake and ponder the cause of Stefan’s nocturnal visitation. He crept slowly back down the hallway, then the stairs, and finally out the door into the cool night air.
Though ordinarily Stefan would have enjoyed a nighttime stroll through the City of Lights, tonight he had urgent business to attend to, and so consequently traded the pleasure of a stroll for the expediency his supernatural speed afforded him. He watched the picturesque houses speed by as he crossed the Seine, sparing only a fleeting glance at the great cathedral of Notre Dame when it whizzed by on his right, and penetrated the heart of the Third District.
It had been many years since Stefan had been to Paris, but he knew some things didn’t change. He was hoping the kind of people the Third District attracted was one of them.
“You seem a little lost, cheri,” came a voice from the darkened doorway of one of the many small stone houses.
“Only a fool would choose to get lost in the Third District after midnight,” Stefan responded dryly.
“Since you do not seem to be a fool, may I ask what brings you here?” the woman asked, though she remained in the shadows.
“What brings anyone to the Rue Montmorency in the middle of the night," Stefan replied, "I am in need of information of a very...particular sort."
"Particular, you say?" she asked with a low laugh. "Yes, I think I may be able to help. Come inside." The woman turned and retreated back into the darkness, with the crack she left open in the door spilling a shaft of pale light onto the cobblestones.
Stefan took the hint, entered the building, which appeared to be a shop for the buying and selling of occult objects, and left a small stack of bills on the dust-covered counter.
"My name is Jacqueline Dupont. My family has been running this shop since Nicholas Flamel lived in that house over there, you know," she said as she rummaged through a box of strange items on the top shelf.
"Flamel, the alchemist?" Stefan asked, intrigued.
"My great-great-grandfather, Antoine Dupont, was Flamel's assistant," she explained, still removing various objects from the box, though for what she searched Stefan did not know, "And when he died, my great-great-grandmother used his research to start this shop. She dedicated her life to offering the citizens of Paris...alternative solutions to their problems. It's mostly tourists these days, though, dropping in after eating an overpriced meal in Flamel’s basement to pick up a crystal or talisman and whisper to their friends about seeing a real, live witch.”
“Ah, here they are!” she exclaimed, pulling a small velvet bag from the very bottom of what Stefan was beginning to suspect was not a normal box.
“Here...what are?” Stefan asked, slightly apprehensively.
“You wanted information, cheri. These are your best hope of finding it,” she replied, beckoning him to a small room in the back of the shop.
Stefan followed, seating himself opposite her at a small table at the wave of her hand. Jacqueline pulled a stack of ancient looking cards from the bag and carefully laid them on the table.
“Tarot cards?” Stefan asked skeptically.
“Oh, they’re not just for the tourists,” she said. “Yes, you can pull out the Knight of Cups now and again and tell some lonely women she will meet her tall, dark stranger, but don’t be thinking there isn’t real power in these cards. You channel it correctly, there’s no better way of getting information of the...particular variety you requested. Now then, what is it you’re wanting to know?”
“There’s a man,” Stefan began, “A very powerful man who has...a hold on me.”
“You wish to break this hold?” she asked, flicking cards between her fingers.
“Yes,” Stefan assented, “But first I must know exactly what I’m dealing with. I’ve been having these dreams...”
“Oh, dreams can be very powerful,” she said, “And sometimes very revealing.”
“I also brought you this,” he said, producing the scarf. “It’s his - I was hoping it might help you get a reading.”
“It certainly can’t hurt,” she agreed, examining the scarf carefully, then placing it on the table before handing him the cards. “Now, close your eyes, take these in your hands, and think only of him.”
Stefan did as she asked, and as he moved the cards back and forth in hands, his mind filled itself almost unbidden with thoughts of Klaus. Klaus staring unblinkingly at him with those piercing blue eyes. Klaus standing unrepentantly over a dead body, his gleaming pale skin stained red with blood. Klaus kissing him, touching him, seducing him, every night in his dreams.
Stefan was astonished to find that when he opened his eyes, the cards were no longer lying in his hands, but floating a few inches above the table. They spun rapidly in a circle until a few distributed themselves on the table in a cross pattern and the rest stacked themselves neatly on the side.
Jacqueline raised an eyebrow at him and said, “Those must have been some powerful thoughts, cheri, to make the cards do that. But what do they say, I wonder?”
With a flick of her wrist, she turned over the first card. “Ah, the Five of Swords. You have won a great battle, but at a terrible cost. Now you must live with the consequences.”
Stefan was surprised, but decided to keep his thoughts to himself for the moment; despite the recent seemingly supernatural theatrics, he was still holding out judgement on Jacqueline’s true abilities.
She continued to the second card, which he noticed contained a beautiful woman in Renaissance dress leading a lion on a gold chain, and murmured, “Strength. Now you fight another battle, this time within yourself. There is a primal, dark side that of yourself you seek desperately to suppress.”
“Enough psychoanalysis,” Stefan said impatiently, though he would have sworn he felt a small chill pass over him, “It is not myself but another that I come here about.”
Jacqueline merely sent him a withering look and snapped her fingers, at which point the third card flipped over instantly, revealing a horned man consumed by flames. The gold embossed script read: The Devil.
“The Devil. So he is a force of pure evil, then?” Stefan asked her.
“Nothing is that simple, cheri,” she answered, with a shake of the head. “Each card contains shades of both dark and light, and the Devil is no different. He is extreme, yes, tempting, intense, sometimes cruel. But with that kind of power always lies the capacity for good as well as evil.”
“I doubt there is good anywhere in him,” Stefan said bitterly.
Jacqueline waved her hand over the next card, which floated up and fluttered back down again to display a couple in an intimate embrace, the caption below naming them as “The Lovers”. “Are you so sure?” she asked with an amused, little smile.
“What do they represent?” Stefan asked, trying not to let the strange panic he was feeling show in his voice.
“Oh, they can mean many things,” she responded with a flippant wave of the hand. “Sometimes they are duality - two sides of a single nature which must be brought into harmony. Other times...a rather more literal interpretation is necessary.” She glanced at him pointedly before moving on to the next cards, which turned themselves over in quick succession.
Her expression visibly darkened as she examined them. “This isn’t just about the two of you anymore,” she told Stefan ominously, though her eyes never left the cards. “Eight of Wands - something’s coming, and fast. Three of Swords - heartbreak. The Hanged Man - All will be turned upside down.”
“What do you mean?” Stefan asked, alarmed. He had only come to learn about what was happening with Klaus; the idea that there was a bigger picture took him entirely by surprise. “What’s coming?”
As if in response, a wind blew through the room, extinguishing the wall lamps so only the candle in the center of the table shed any light, and flipped over the final card. A wave of fear seized Stefan as he took in the images depicted on the card: a tower struck by lightning, twisted bodies falling from it, their mouths arranged in screams, and everything completely covered in fire.
“I have to go,” he muttered quickly, nearly turning over his chair in his haste to leave the place. But as he turned to leave, Jacqueline grabbed his hand and said urgently, “Dark things are brewing, Stefan Salvatore.”
“How do you know my name?” he demanded, wrenching his arm from her grasp.
“I know many things, about you, about the one called Klaus whose influence drove you to seek my help,” she said, renewing her grip on his sleeve, “There are whispers in the shadow world, dark whispers. Something is coming, something bad, and you can stop it.”
“Me?” Stefan asked in surprise. “What hope can I have in going up against Klaus? He is much stronger than I am, and besides, it would violate the promise I made to him.”
“It is not your purpose to defeat Klaus,” she explained seriously. “Has it not occurred to you that yours is not the only nature fighting with itself? Klaus would have you believe that he is supremely powerful, that he feels nothing, and wishes only destruction, but I think we both know that isn’t entirely true.”
“So, what, you’re saying I have to reform Klaus?” Stefan asked with a dark laugh, “If that is the case, we may as well capitulate now to this coming dark power.”
“Your purpose shall become clear to you soon,” she said mysteriously, “But for now, you must go. There are matters that require your immediate attention.”
Stefan once more began to leave, but as he did, Jacqueline called after him, “Oh, and Stefan? Klaus did not send you the dreams; they are entirely the product of your own subconscious. Interesting, is it not?”
Not sure how to process this latest revelation, Stefan left the shop and once again availed himself of his vampire speed, this time to head back toward the mansion. Though he didn’t know exactly what he planned to do, or even if he believed the witch’s dark portents, the shivers that wouldn’t stop running up and down his spine had him thinking the sooner he returned to Klaus, the better.
Read Chapter 3.