The blood bag was cold in my hands.
I'd stored five of them in the cooler under my bed—months of careful donations, preserved for emergencies. This qualified.
"It's not human," I told Vicki. "It's mine. Stored. I don't know if it'll work for transition, but—"
"It's the closest thing," Stefan finished. "Blood from a living source is preferred, but stored blood can complete the change. Yours might even be better, given the bond."
Vicki stared at the bag like it was both salvation and damnation.
"Will I still be me?"
"Yes and no." Stefan's honesty was brutal. "The hunger will be constant. Every human heartbeat will call to you. But with training, you can learn to control it. Many vampires live among humans without killing."
"Many. Not all."
"No. Not all."
I opened the blood bag and held it out to my sister.
She took it with shaking hands. For a long moment, she just stared at the dark liquid—the same blood that had healed her after the bonfire, that had created the bond now linking our minds.
Then she drank.
The transformation was immediate and visceral. Her eyes flooded with red, veins crawling across her face, fangs extending fully. She gasped as the blood hit her system, completing the change that Damon's murder had started.
When she looked at me, she was something new. Something ancient and hungry and powerful.
But beneath it all, still my sister.
"Matt." Her voice was different—deeper, with harmonics that hadn't been there before. "I can feel everything. Your heartbeat. Stefan's silence. The blood in your veins. It's so loud."
"Focus on my voice." I kept my tone steady, channeling calm through the bond. "I'm right here. You're still you."
The bond pulsed between us, and I felt her seize it like a lifeline. Her hunger didn't disappear, but it became manageable, contained by the connection my blood had forged.
Stefan watched with clinical interest. "Attack me."
Vicki tensed. I felt her predator instincts surge—Stefan was another vampire, a potential threat, something to be destroyed or dominated. But the bond held her in place.
"I can't," she said through gritted teeth. "He won't let me."
"Good. The bond is strong." Stefan circled her, testing. "Now. Matt, tell her to do something she doesn't want to."
I hesitated. "Like what?"
"Tell her to hurt herself."
"I'm not—"
"We need to know the limits. If the bond isn't complete, she could break free at the worst possible moment."
Vicki was trembling, every muscle taut with the effort of restraint. Through the bond, I felt her hunger battering against my control like waves against a seawall.
"Vicki." I hated myself for what I was about to do. "Bite your own hand."
She fought it. I felt her resistance, her horror, her desperate attempt to disobey. But her hand rose anyway, moving against her will, and her fangs sank into her own flesh.
Blood welled from the wound—dark, vampiric blood that healed almost instantly.
"Stop."
She stopped.
Stefan nodded, satisfied. "The bond is real. Strong. She'll follow your commands even against her own instincts."
"How long?" My voice was raw. "How long before it fades?"
"Based on what I'm sensing... twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Maybe longer, given how unusual your blood seems to be." He met my eyes. "After that, her loyalty will depend on what we've built in the meantime."
Two days. Maybe less.
Two days to teach a newborn vampire enough control to survive. Two days to convince my sister that the bond was love, not compulsion. Two days before the supernatural chain between us dissolved and she became truly free.
"We start now," I said. "Teach her everything."
Stefan nodded. "The boarding house has resources—animal blood, secure rooms, training space. We'll work around the clock."
Vicki stood, testing her new body. The movement was too fast, too smooth, wrong in all the ways that vampires were wrong. But she was trying. She was holding on.
"I can hear the mice in the walls," she said wonderingly. "I can smell the coffee Zach made this morning. I can feel the sunrise coming."
"You'll need to avoid windows during the day. At least until I can get you a daylight ring."
"How?"
"That's a longer conversation." Stefan gestured toward the door. "For now, let's focus on not killing anyone. The rest can wait."
We drove to the boarding house in Stefan's car. Vicki sat in the back, her hand pressed against the window, watching the world blur past with new eyes.
"I'm faster than the car," she said. "I could run beside it and keep up."
"Don't." Stefan's voice was firm. "Control first. Then we explore capabilities."
The Salvatore property was quiet in the pre-dawn darkness. Zach met us at the door, somehow unsurprised to see a newly-turned vampire in his living room.
"The basement is reinforced," he said. "In case she loses control."
"She won't." I stood beside Vicki, feeling the bond pulse between us. "I won't let her."
Stefan raised an eyebrow. "Confidence or wishful thinking?"
"Both."
The training started immediately. Stefan demonstrated feeding techniques—slow, controlled sips from blood bags instead of frenzied tearing. Vicki struggled, her hunger constant and overwhelming, but the bond kept her in check.
At one point, she tried to laugh at something Stefan said. The sound came out wrong—too sharp, too hungry, a predator's bark instead of a girl's giggle.
She stopped, embarrassed.
I squeezed her shoulder. "You're still you."
"Am I?" She looked at her hands—pale now, stronger than they'd ever been. "I killed someone to become this, Matty. Damon fed me to someone before he broke my neck. I don't remember their face, but I remember the taste."
The revelation hit like a punch. Damon hadn't just turned her—he'd made her a murderer first.
"That wasn't you. That was the compulsion."
"Does it matter?" Her voice was hollow. "They're still dead."
I didn't have an answer.
The sun rose as Vicki collapsed into death-sleep, her vampire body shutting down until nightfall. I watched her lie motionless in the dark basement, looking more dead than asleep.
Did I save her or doom her?
The question had no answer. Maybe it never would.
But she was alive—in whatever way vampires were alive. She was here. She was bonded to me.
And somewhere out there, Damon Salvatore was laughing.
Stefan found me in the kitchen an hour later, staring at cold coffee I couldn't bring myself to drink.
"You did well," he said. "The bond is stable. Her control is better than most newborns."
"She killed someone."
"Damon killed someone using her body. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
Stefan sat across from me. "In 163 years, I've turned exactly one person against my will. Every day, I live with that weight. But I also know the difference between choice and compulsion." He paused. "What happens to Vicki from this point forward—that's her choice. And yours. What happened before? That's on Damon."
The words didn't fix anything. But they helped a little.
"The bond fades in two days," I said. "What happens then?"
"Then we find out if love is stronger than blood." Stefan stood. "Get some sleep. Tonight, we push her harder."
I found an empty room upstairs and lay down without undressing. My body was exhausted, but my mind wouldn't stop racing.
Vicki was a vampire now. Bonded to me, but only temporarily. In forty-eight hours, the supernatural chain would dissolve, and she'd be free to become whatever she chose.
Monster or sister. Predator or family.
The choice wasn't mine to make. All I could do was show her that love mattered more than hunger.
Sleep came eventually, dragging me into dreams of blood and fire and a sister who looked at me with red eyes and desperate hope.
When I woke, the bond was still there—pulsing, alive, a thread connecting my heart to the monster in the basement.
Forty-six hours remaining.
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