Chapter Text
My father desired eternal youth.
Then, in his search, he found her. A woman who also wanted to become a vampire. Fascinated by the creatures' power, their work in the Augustine Society was successful. They were the ones dedicated to hunting down and capturing the creatures of the night. From that marriage, Miranda was born (1972). In time, her mother was bitten by a vampire and abandoned her husband. This caused my father to cling to Miranda, and their lives changed completely.
My father became even more obsessed with the creatures. When Miranda was eight, he remarried a young, radiant, and wealthy woman, with whom he had another daughter named Jenna (1980). Then, consumed by the pain of being abandoned, he poisoned her gradually until she died. Jenna never recovered from her death and never connected with Miranda the way she later connected with me. She felt alone. Miranda never understood her younger sister; Raised by our father as his favorite daughter, she learned everything about vampires and their existence. Jenna was sidelined, ignorant of the secret they both shared.
And finally, I was born (1985). After murdering the beautiful, wealthy woman, my mother, Eve, appeared in his life. She was fleeing her hometown when she encountered my father and the Augustine. She was never a fan of vampires, but it broke her heart to learn what was happening there. My father soon began poisoning her, as he had done with Jenna's mother, but he never managed to kill her. She was pregnant with her second child when she decided to tell me the truth.
"Your father is a murderer, Clemmie," she said, trembling in bed with a high fever; she didn't look well. "Stay away from him. Neither you nor your sisters are safe."
"What will happen to Miranda?" I asked, because my relationship with her was better than Jenna's. I loved them both, in my own way.
"You must protect them," she said, looking around fearfully, as if someone were searching for her. At that moment, I thought she was afraid of my father, but it turned out to be something more complex than that. "But I have to go, my puppy."
"Where will you go? Can I come with you?" I asked with all the innocence of a five-year-old.
"No, no, my baby," she cried, holding my face and showering it with kisses. "It's better if you don't know anything. Someday I'll find you. I promise."
She left me a letter to explain me the truth. She asked me to read it when I was angry and older, because otherwise I wouldn't understand. I did as she said.
She abandoned my father just like his first love had. Later, I learned that the baby she was expecting had died because of him, in the attempt to kill her. The memory of being abandoned again enraged him, and I paid the price.
I grew up afraid to confront my father. While Jenna was the black sheep, I was the weak, sick sheep of the flock. Miranda was the star.
One day, I was playing with my dolls in the backyard. Our property bordered a section of the Mystic Falls woods. It was nighttime, and the moon illuminated everything. For some reason, I felt the need and curiosity to venture into the woods of my town. I don't remember what happened next, only that I was unconscious in the middle of nowhere. My father had found me, lying on the ground in the woods, bleeding profusely, and it was through him that I learned I had been missing for two days. I thought he would comfort me, although the truth was I was so confused and injured that I couldn't clearly understand what was happening.
"Silly girl," he said, in the few words I could understand, "what the hell were you doing in the woods?!" He slapped me while I was still on the ground and dragged me back to the house.
Jenna was so worried that she convinced him to take me to the hospital. I was hospitalized for a concussion for three days, and I had also lost blood. My rational side told me I had probably encountered a vampire, but I didn't remember anything to prove it. I was on an IV, and Jenna lived at the hospital with me, reading me books and distracting me so I could draw.
"Don't you remember anything that happened to you?" I saw real concern in her eyes. I hadn't seen those eyes since my last encounter with my mother. "Didn't Dad say anything to you?"
I shook my head as I drew. "He was just angry because I left home."
She was silent. She gently combed my hair and kissed my forehead. I wanted to cry, but I swallowed my tears. I had stopped crying after my mother left. Miranda visited me the same day I was discharged. There was a significant age difference between us; she was already an adult with a partner and a planned future. She had already finished high school, and I could barely wipe my nose and speak without stumbling.
"Are you ready? Did you gather all your things?"
She meant my drawings, crayons, toys, and clothes. She was tall and beautiful, and sadly, I resembled her as much as I resembled my father. Jenna was more like her mother. I wished to look like mine. Even so, I felt that physically resembling Miranda was a way to connect with her, and since she was much older, she was the only maternal figure I had at the time.
"Yes," I said, my backpack ready. "Did Dad come?"
"No, he's still angry that you left home that day," she said, looking at me with reproachful eyes while gently holding my hand. I trembled. She reminded me of Dad and his anger. I looked down at the floor. "What were you thinking, Clementine?"
I didn't know what to say. There were never any right words with Miranda. For her, if Dad said something, it was the truth.
When Miranda married Dr. Grayson Gilbert, it was a day of celebration. I was still very young (7), but from my mother's words, I understood that Grayson had to be just like my father for him to love his son-in-law. They were the perfect couple, and when they had their first daughter, everyone celebrated. I hoped that little girl wouldn't grow up with this family's fate.
My father lived long enough to see the girl and her new brother, Jeremy, grow up. Then he died, of unknown causes, or so everyone thought.
When I was 17 and still living with my idiot father, who was already becoming senile, I asked Miranda if I could live with her. Jenna lived in the university residence and was studying; she wouldn't be able to take care of me, and I wouldn't force her. I thought Miranda would agree, that she would understand my situation better than anyone; after all, she loved our father very much.
"But why? Don't you think Dad's old enough not to bother you? Why don't you take care of him instead? He's slowly losing his memory; you could try to be nice to him. It's not his fault, Clementine."
I was furious. I couldn't believe what she was saying. I hated the way she pronounced my name. She made me hate my name, and I wanted to shut her up.
"Are you serious?" I scoffed, a laugh catching in my throat. "You have the perfect family now, and you've stopped caring about your sisters. Fine. You know perfectly well what Dad is like, but you don't care because you've never been the victim in his life. Stop being a hypocrite and hiding behind your husband's fame. We all know very well that he's just like him."
Miranda slapped me. I was surprised. I hadn't expected it, and it stung worse than any blow from Dad. She was unfazed, unaffected, and didn't back down from her action. I couldn't believe it. I knew she defended him, but I never thought she'd go so far as to side with him against me. How... How could this be? I felt sick and suffocated.
"Ha," I barely managed to mutter, a lump in my throat. "Now I know who you really are, sister."
I left and never saw her again. I decided to leave home. I didn't tell Jenna what happened because I didn't want to worry her.
However, the reason I left home was because I read my mother's letter.
And to have read it, I must have been angry. And I was angry at Miranda, at my father, at her, at all the women he had victimized, at the Augustine, and at the vampire hunters. I wanted to kill them all.
So I went to a party in the neighboring town of Mystic Falls, where no one knew me, and in a drunken state, a guy I was dancing with started dragging me away from the place to the parking lot. In a dark hallway, hidden from everyone else's view, he started kissing and touching me, and I didn't want it. And the anger returned to me like a bottomless pit, and I fed on it. Somewhere inside me, an immense strength surged that managed to push him away. I just wanted him gone, and I wanted to be alone. Until I saw blood coming from his head.
When I got home, I read her letter and her last words to me. It said I was a werewolf, like her, and that I had to kill someone to awaken the gene. That she had never awakened it, which is why my father never suspected her supernatural gene.
I wish I had known that before killing someone. I would have preferred to kill my father instead of some unknown man, although I wasn't entirely bothered by it.
The next full moon was the worst. By then I was living with my grandmother Beth, whom my father didn't get along with at all, so I never saw him. Besides, I had already turned 18. I didn't want to hurt my grandmother, whom I adored, so I hid in the woods so as not to hurt anyone. I didn't want to kill.
The first few hours of the night were torture. Fever, bone pain, cough. There wasn't a part of me that didn't hurt. I went through it alone. And when the moon was at its peak, my skin turned into fur and my bones changed shape and anatomy. My mother used to say that our human side loses consciousness upon transforming and forgets everything that happened during the transformation. You'll never remember what you did that night; your mind disappears, and your wolf takes over.
For some reason, I didn't forget anything from that night. Nor the next, or the one after that. My mind remained human. I never lost control. I never killed anyone again, at least not unconsciously. I felt it was a miracle, something good and blessed in my entire miserable life. I could be a normal person. The only annoying and tedious thing was locking myself away every full moon so no one would know my true nature or see my pain, but I could live like everyone else.
That motivated me to go to university. Jenna encouraged me and paid part of my tuition along with my grandmother. I never heard from Miranda again, nor from her children.
Despite everything, I wanted revenge against my father. I felt I could finally do something against him, after so many years under his shadow and power. My plan was more elaborate than simply killing him.
Thanks to my mother, before she left, I learned that he worked for the Augustine. She told me what they did to vampires; later, in her letter, she told me that vampires and werewolves didn't get along, but she admitted that no being should have to go through what the Augustine vampires were experiencing. When my mother told me about my father's true work, I started to put two and two together. My father had introduced Grayson Gilbert, a vampire hunter, to the Augustine; they both began working together. I was still estranged from Miranda; after all, our argument led to us not speaking for years. I never forgave her for defending our father. And so, I began my revenge.
I had spied on my father all those teenage years and knew in great detail what he did for a living and where he practiced his profession. But I especially knew about the plan he had with Grayson Gilbert. I had spied on his messages enough to know things I shouldn't have.
A vampire was hiding in Grayson's medical clinic, on whom they both experimented by applying electric shocks of 3,000 to 4,000 volts. I couldn't steal the key to get in because I would never set foot in my sister's house again. So I took advantage of a full moon to break into the clinic. I smashed the glass with my animal body, taking advantage of the fact that my consciousness would remain awake, and remembered the way to the basement.
It was locked with a code and a double lock, and the door was metal. I used all my strength to tear it down. I groaned in pain amidst the blows and the blood from the broken glass, but I knew I would soon recover thanks to accelerated healing.
Inside, the air was cold, damp, and thick. There was little lighting; the fluorescent tubes flickered. I was lucky to have the night vision of a beast. I soon found what I wanted.
In the center of the room, there was a restraint gurney with leather straps and shackles, and the vampire was being chained. I saw a camera recording everything in a corner and proceeded to throw a tool with my mouth toward it to stop it from recording. Luckily, it shattered.
I couldn't transform at will back then. So I approached the vampire and broke his shackles with my fangs and claws. I noticed a peculiar, herbaceous scent emanating from them, and from the way his skin was injured beneath them, I guessed it was a poisonous plant. He didn't wake up even after being freed.
I began to touch his body with my muzzle, but he didn't respond. So I pushed him off the stretcher, and he crashed to the floor. He let out a groan and then opened his eyes in surprise. He saw that he was free, and then he saw me.
A she-wolf. How much surprise was on his face? I couldn't count it.
I stroked his cheeks with my muzzle and then looked toward the stairs. My signal was clear, and I moved forward, leaving him behind. I noticed he was barely keeping up, still badly injured. I left him in the street. He was sweating, his fangs bared.
"Thank you," he murmured, his breath ragged.
He was handsome, and I was curious. With short jet-black hair, dark eyes, light olive skin, and a strong jawline, he physically appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He vanished from my sight in a second, but I tracked him by scent until dawn.
I found him covered in blood in an abandoned corner where the morning sun didn't reach, holding a corpse in his arms. He looked at me, his eyes expressionless, expectant.
The moon set, leaving us alone. My body became human again. And from the pain, I fainted.