The blood bag ripped open too fast, spraying crimson across the basement floor.
Vicki lunged for it instinctively, dropping to her knees, lapping at the spilled liquid with desperate hunger. Stefan watched from the doorway with ancient patience, while I stood beside him, feeling useless.
"Control," Stefan said calmly. "Slow breaths. Let the hunger exist without acting on it."
Vicki's head snapped up, veins crawling across her face, fangs extended. For a moment, she was all predator—no sister, no humanity, just the monster Damon had made her.
Then the bond pulled taut between us, and I saw her fight through it.
"I'm trying." Her voice was raw. "It's so loud, Stefan. The hunger. It never stops."
"It never will. But you can learn to live with it."
Three days of this. Three days of watching my sister struggle against her own nature while the bond kept her from killing anyone. Three days of Stefan's patient instruction and my constant presence, the supernatural chain between us the only thing standing between Vicki and massacre.
She was getting better. Marginally.
The first day had been horror—Vicki wild with hunger, attacking anything that moved, barely controllable even with the bond at full strength. Stefan had locked her in the reinforced basement, and I'd sat outside the door all night, feeling her rage pulse through our connection.
The second day brought the first breakthrough. She'd managed to drink from a blood bag without tearing it apart, taking slow sips while Stefan coached her breathing. The bond had helped, my commands layering over her instincts, but the victory was hers.
Now, day three, and she was almost functional. Almost.
"I can hear your heartbeat," she told me during a break, both of us sitting on the basement stairs while Stefan prepared the next training session. "It helps me focus. Like... an anchor."
"Is that the bond talking?"
"I don't know." She looked at her hands—pale, stronger than they'd ever been human. "I can't tell where I end and the bond begins anymore."
The confession worried me more than her hunger. The bond was supposed to be temporary—a bridge while she developed her own control. If she couldn't separate herself from it, what happened when it faded?
The answer came that evening.
We were practicing restraint—Stefan approaching Vicki from different angles, testing her ability to resist the predator instinct to attack. She'd been doing well, controlling herself through willpower and the bond's reinforcement.
Then something shifted.
I felt it through the connection—a loosening, like a knot starting to slip. Vicki's eyes went black-veined without warning, and she lunged at Stefan with killing intent.
"Vicki, STOP!"
The command hit her mid-leap. She crashed into the wall instead of Stefan, the bond barely catching her in time.
"It's weakening," Stefan said, helping her up. "The bond. I can see it in how she responds."
He was right. Her compliance to my command had been sluggish, fighting through layers of resistance that hadn't been there before. The supernatural chain was degrading.
Twenty-four hours. Maybe less.
"Can you renew it?" Stefan asked.
I didn't know. The bond had formed when Vicki drank my blood during her transition—a desperate, instinctive act that I hadn't consciously controlled. Could I do it again?
"Vicki." I cut my palm with the pocket knife that had become my constant companion. "Drink."
She approached slowly, hunger warring with uncertainty. Her fangs extended as she took my hand, and I felt the pain as she bit into the fresh wound.
My blood flowed into her, and something clicked.
The bond renewed—I felt it strengthen, the chain tightening between us. But this time, there was a cost. Exhaustion hit me like a physical blow, my vision swimming, my legs suddenly unreliable.
"Matt!" Stefan caught me as I stumbled. "What happened?"
"Renewal." I forced the word out through a fog of fatigue. "It takes... something. From me."
The implication was clear. I could maintain the bond, but each renewal would drain me further. Eventually, I'd have nothing left to give.
She has to learn to control herself. Or I have to let her go.
Stefan helped me to the couch while Vicki watched with red-rimmed eyes. The bond was stable again, but we both knew it wouldn't last.
"We'll continue training," Stefan said. "Push harder. If she can develop enough control before the next fade..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
Later that night, after Stefan had gone to hunt and Vicki was practicing her breathing exercises, I found my old laptop in the truck.
"Want to watch something?" I asked.
Vicki looked up from her meditation. "Watch what?"
"Home videos. Mom saved a bunch before she..."
I didn't finish. She nodded.
We sat together on the basement floor, watching grainy footage of a family that no longer existed. Our mom, younger and less broken, pushing a toddler Vicki on a swing. Me at maybe seven, proudly showing off a fish I'd caught. Birthday parties with homemade cakes. Christmas mornings with secondhand toys.
Vicki cried without tears—vampire biology made real crying impossible—but the sound was the same as I remembered from childhood. The hitching breaths, the small wounded noises.
"I miss her," she whispered. "Even though she left. Even though she was terrible at the end. I miss who she used to be."
"Me too."
She leaned against my shoulder, cold where she'd once been warm, dead where she'd once been alive. But still my sister. Still Vicki.
The bond pulsed between us, a reminder of its temporary nature.
Three renewals now. Each one harder than the last.
I closed the laptop as dawn approached. Vicki retreated to her lightproof corner, and I sat alone in the basement, bandaging another cut, wondering how many more I could survive.
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