Compulsion [J. Murphy]

C H A P T E R T E N

Italic is trigedasleng. Some spells don't exist in The Vampire Diaries, so they're just Latin.

It hasn't even been five miles yet and the grounders are already gunning for us.

I quickly look around to get a count of how many there are. There's no way I can count them with them running circles around us and them wearing the exact same clothes.

I can help with that.

"Nou sen yu fut daun nowe!" (Don't take another step!) I turn around to see Murphy with his hands up and a grounder standing in front of him with their spear ready to strike him down.

"Incendia," I call out siphoning a bit of magic from the talisman ring on my finger. A fire pops up where I wanted it to, making the grounder jump back. In this small window of time, I grab Murphy and use our speed to go to my house. We didn't make it very far though.

The grounders catch up with us quickly, bearing their fangs at us and I do the same. They look shocked as they see me do this. Of course, they probably haven't heard of a vampire-witch hybrid. We're not a very common breed since the witches like to kill their siphon spawns.

They circle us once more, but this time there seems to be more of them. A knife is thrown and it finds itself in my shoulder. It starts to burn, vervain.

I pull the knife out and throw it at the closest grounder to me. It hits them in the heart and they start to scream as they fall to the ground, no one makes any moves to help them.

The other grounders advance on Murphy and I. They throw a rope around Murphy's neck and he screams out in pain when they tighten it and the burn starts to get worse.

I make a move to help him but a rope is thrown around my own neck. I try to break the rope but they throw two more ropes around my wrists, holding me in place. I tug against them, trying to throw them off me. New ropes find their way around my feet and the ground is sweeped from under my feet.

And not in a good way.

I fight against them but for every rope that breaks, three more take its place. A grounder walks up to me with a needle and I try to bite him when he gets near me.

He shoves the needle in my neck and injects it.

The burn starts in my neck and travels through my whole body as the vervain works it way through my bloodstream. I scream out in pain until it becomes too much and I'm consumed by darkness.

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