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↳ 008

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𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐃 within her lungs and her heart began to beat, Colette Copeman woke with an insatiable hunger. It started like a horrible burning within her stomach and as she regarded her newly pink flesh and the softness of her once charred, broken body, she noticed she could still taste blood in her mouth.

Her gums were sore and ached as she worked her jaw open. She was naked like the day she was born. The water around her was dark and cold and even in the firelight, she could notice the pink hue surrounding her like a broken halo.

She ran her hands over her face and they came off slick and when she looked at her fingers, she saw them stained with her own blood. She would always be covered in blood. She had grown up hearing myths of creatures returning from the dead with a taste for flesh and blood, she just didn't think they'd be real but now seeing how her body had healed and there was fresh breath in her lungs, she didn't have a choice but to believe.

Do you trust yourself? Do you trust your mind?

On the other hand, she thought she had just woken from a horrible drunk stupor but why get in the car? Why would the car be burning?

Why was she surrounded by flames and the stench of decay? Had death finally played her frightful hand?

She heard a low moaning and her ears picked up the distant, soft sound instantly. She could even hear the rumble of cars from the highway at least a mile away, and the hum of owls cooing in the trees.

She was no longer human, she knew that. She was no longer something normal and dainty and young. She would be eighteen for eternity.

Unless this was a dream, of course.

She crawled across the wet ground and out from the shallow water. She pulled herself up near the bank where the broken car still burned and moaned. She could see through the darkness, her eyes predatory, and she saw the crumbled body shaking against the forest floor of mud and broken branches and leaves.

Over the smoke and gasoline, she could smell something sweet and pungent through the air. She smelled it against her own hands and she knew it was blood and just the thought of it sent something rumbling through her like a bomb about to go off.

She was hungry. She was starving. She would simply waste away without a taste.

Before she could continue on towards the quivering body, her head began to ache. A splitting agony from the base straight to her eyes and she saw images and flashes of things she had been sure she'd forgotten.

Things she didn't even know she had known.

Jeremy Gilbert getting his neck broken in front of her. Damon Salvatore biting into her neck before a football game. Mr. Tanner's dead body. Blood. Blood everywhere.

Caroline forcing her memories of Stefan away, how she had overheard her and Elena talking about bodies. Dead bodies.

Naya making the flowers bloom in front of their homes when they were children. Naya splitting her palm open and the pair watching it heal.

Everything started and ended with blood.

Colette grasped her head and the scream that bubbled up from her throat was rancid and raw in her mouth, like a wounded animal crying out to be put out of its misery. She was the animal. She was the open wound. She was the wrongdoing born from the fire and water.

She had choked on her own blood because of Naya. She had died because of her. Naya had fed her the blood, forced it down her throat with a smile. This was her plan all along. To get her here, to have her become this beast with a howl caught in its throat and flesh between its teeth and claws. She wanted her forever.

Naya holding a knife to her stomach, threatening to bleed herself dry. Naya sobbing over her mother's body, broken and battered from a fall from the top of the stairs. Naya with bloody hands and her father's ruined body behind her in the kitchen. Naya telling Colette that her father had killed her mother so she killed him.

Her parents were gone for over a year now and she didn't know. She didn't know anything anymore. How come she didn't know?

Naya with Tommy. Tommy with fangs. Tommy with black eyes.

Naya and Tommy. Together.

Colette clawed at her own face, wanting to bash her head in against the broken rocks and slick metal from the burning car. She wanted to find her footing and step into the flames and allow them to eat her alive so the memories wouldn't.

Tommy controlling Stella and Adam. Naya and Tommy working together, speaking secretly in his bedroom and in hers. Always touching. Always communicating. Always behind Colette's back.

She crawled across the ground, dragging her body up to the charred body so close to death she could almost smell it. She knew who it was, she knew her by smell and touch and sound. She would always know her.

Even through death.

She felt her gums ache and burn and something bubble up underneath her eyes. She brought a hand up to her face, feeling the veins under her eyes pulsing and rising to the surface, pumping and throbbing. She reached up to her teeth and felt the fangs push through and she felt a scream in her throat but it was lost by the insatiable hunger building in her gut and she couldn't stop herself.

And she didn't want to stop herself. Her fangs grew to their full length and she reached out to the body and grasped the girl by the shoulder, pulling her up with a wretched yank. She could smell the fear wafting out of her charred, burnt pores. Colette liked her best like this. Not pretty. Not perfect. Unable to speak. Unable to fight back. 

She wasted not a second more.

She tore Naya's throat open and drank from her deeply with a horribly nasty smile.

Naya could barely scream, she was so weak and Colette relished in the fact that she couldn't fight back as she broke from her neck and felt her blood run down her chin in sweet rivulets. She tasted like something she had never had before. It wasn't metallic or coppery but something sensually sweet and sour like fruit. Like something completely forbidden.

She felt a hand come up weakly to her face once she'd bent over to drink more. She felt the hand pat gently for the girl beneath her had no strength. Colette didn't care. She didn't care one goddamn bit.

Naya with bloody hands. Naya with a knife. Naya kissing down Tommy's chest, Colette in the doorway shocked. Tommy, a creature of the night for years.

How long had he been eighteen? Nineteen? How old was he?

He infiltrated the family. She knew this, she knew their blood did not mix. Or perhaps it did. She didn't know, it didn't seem like she ever knew the truth.

The truth was pulled from her like someone pulling teeth.

Pliers wrapped around molars and incisors. Someone ripping back the tool and bringing with it roots and blood and bone. Her mind was tearing itself apart like a wolf to a corpse.

Colette pulled back from Naya's bloody throat and watched as her friend looked up at her with big eyes, unstaring. Colette felt a grin come to her lips as she placed a hand to Naya's unrecognizable face, gripping her cheeks and forcing her to look up at her. She dropped her body with a wet thud and stood, naked against the flames licking at her back.

Naya, the pesky little witch. Naya, her so-called brother's whore. Tommy, her so-called brother fucking her so-called best friend.

So many things were wrong. Everything was wrong and ugly but the only beautiful thing here was the blood running down Colette's neck and between her breasts and down to her navel. She ran a red finger up the trickling droplet and caught it before it could travel further. She brought her middle finger to her lips and sucked the cherry colored ichor off with her tongue.

She tasted memories and rage and she let it fill her until she felt her belly grow heavy with the thoughts and the soft lullaby of honey suckled blood.

When she would open her eyes again, she would be far from the wreck and with only one thought on her mind.

Vengeance and answers.

Okay, maybe two thoughts. Two horribly delectable thoughts meant only for an excuse to sink her fangs into something else tender and rotten. Rotten things were always the sweetest.

She licked her stained lips and stepped into the forest, padding across her watery grave and past the inferno that had nearly taken her body and soul. Naya had drank the blood and she would awake with the sun's awful glare and Colette couldn't wait to begin her hunt.

But first, before her vengeance and before her answers, slumber struck her from behind with a deafening blow.

Everything would have to wait until sunrise and she would be alive to this world once again.

AUTHOR'S NOTE━━ok ok so another short one but this is like leading into everything that's going to happen once i start getting into season 3 for real now!!!

hope u guys r liking it so far ahhhhh im honestly really happy/proud w how it's been going so far?? so i hope u guys think the same eee ily ily ily

vote/comment and maybe....maybe i'll let colette kiss someone soon ;))