Rebekah's Daughter-Natalia Mikaelson (The Vampire Diaries)

Chapter 11

More than 24 hours had passed since Stefan and Damon were given the chance to leave and bring back the remaining two white oak stakes. Understandably uncomfortable about the time it was taking them, my uncle took it upon himself to go and retrieve them; I decided to accompany him. No one greeted us as we entered the Salvatore home so we felt free to look about. It took just a sweep of the parlor to find one of the stakes just lying out in the open. "If they were trying to hide this they did a terrible job," I commented as I grabbed the stake off the table.

"Yes, but the question is, where's the second one?" Uncle Nik asked as he looked around the room.

"No idea," I answered, "but why don't we go ask Stefan and find out?" I headed for the cellar where I could hear Stefan talking to someone else, Uncle Nik following right behind me.

As it turns out, due to his supernatural death-defying ring, Alaric has developed a vampire hating alter ego that takes control whenever regular Alaric is unconscious. Apparently, while everyone was out and about and killing my uncle Finn, this alter ego of his decided to create a game called 'Hide One of the White Oak Stakes'. I'm sure he thought it was a wonderful idea but for everyone else, not so much. Ever since they discovered that killing an Original also killed their entire vampire line, the rest of the supernatural crew in town has been hesitant on which of my family members they kill and have kept Alaric on lock down until his other half decides to cooperate, at least according to Stefan.

"So the fate of the entire vampire race depends on you finding the stake?" Uncle Nik asked Stefan, who just did a simple head nod in response. "And to get it, we need you to pass out," he gestured to Alaric, "which means that I feel completely justified in doing this," he ran to him and snapped his neck before he could blink an eye. "There, sleeping like a baby."

Satisfied with his part, Uncle Nik left to go home but I opted to stay with Stefan and see if the evil Alaric would emerge. "So when will he wake up?" I asked Stefan.

"Don't know," he replied.

"What do you mean you don't know? You've seen him come back before haven't you? How long does it take?"

"Coming back from the dead doesn't have a timer set that lets him know when to wake up," he said a little put out. "It seems that each time takes a bit longer than the last... now if you'll excuse me, I have to make a phone call." He walked out of the cellar and up the stairs.

"What in the bloody hell am I suppose to do now?" I asked aloud, turning to look around the room. On a small table next to the cot in the corner sat a few items I guessed to belong to Alaric. I walked over to it and picked up a book from a small stack, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nice to see someone still has a sense of humor around here, I thought. I grabbed the half empty bottle of booze that was also sitting there and went over to the single chair in the middle of the room, probably where Stefan sat as he kept the crazy, split personality guy company. I sat down, cracked open the book and threw back a drink as I began reading.

A while later Stefan came back down, grabbed one of Alaric's books, sat outside the door on the floor and began reading as well. I don't know about him, but I was not prepared to spend my entire night like this. I got up and walked over to sit on the opposite wall from him. He followed me with his eyes, a slight crease in his brow wondering what I was doing. I held up the bottle toward him as an offering and after a moment of debate he reached out and grabbed it.

"So let me ask you something," Stefan said.

"Shoot," I said from where I lay still across the hall from him in the cellar; I was laying on my back looking at him while he was leaning on his elbow. We stayed out here all night, except for when I went upstairs on the hunt for another bottle of alcohol, talking about random things and even playing a couple drinking games. Through some miracle I was able to convince Stefan to play flip, sip, or strip, at least until he got down to taking off his pants, then he refused to play anymore. We took it slow and took small steps like undoing a button to make it last but it had to come to an end sometime; I ended with all the buttons on my blouse undone to reveal my bra, my pants still on, although they were also undone, and bare feet, and Stefan was in nothing but his undone pants. I didn't feel like fixing my clothes so I just left them as they were, Stefan did his pants but apparently also didn't feel like getting dressed. After that game was over we moved on to playing quarters but an hour into that we decided that we should stop drinking in case we accidentally got drunk, but kept playing for the hell of it.