He was perched on one of the fence posts, his tan raincoat fluttering behind him like ragged wings. Meredith thought he looked like the gravestone angels in the cemetery; the moonlight made his hair look like a halo. Wearing a crooked smile, the man hopped down to the ground gracefully and started to stride towards her.
"Are you a ninja?" she asked, peering up at him with narrowed eyes. Her eyes unnerved people, she knew; it wasn't for their colour or shape but because they saw too much, according to what adults said when they thought she was out of earshot. When the man laughed at her, Meredith frowned, her gaze getting darker.
"Why would you say that, little one?" The man had quit laughing, but his voice was still bubbling with amusement as he crouched in front of her.
Meredith instinctively took a step back. "On the cartoon I watch, there's a ninja, and he always comes when the cherry blossom petals are in the wind."
"Sorry, sport. I've been a great many things, but not a ninja." The man cocked his head to the side and watched her intently. "I'm . . . a friend of your grandfather's, though. How's he doing these days?"
Meredith raised her chin and took another step back. "I'm not supposed to talk about him." No one had ever specifically told her that, but it was understood. Grandfather wasn't well. The last time they had gone to visit him in the hospital, he had snapped at Meredith like a security dog behind a fence. Go away. She had seen dogs like that before when she went with her father to his workplace on Saturdays, and he had always told her the dog itself wasn't mean or bad, but that it had been trained to act that way. She wondered what had happened to her grandfather to make him react the same way.
The man gave her what was probably supposed to be a warm smile, but it just looked like a baring of teeth to her. "You can tell me. I'm a friend, remember? It's okay."
"I'll go get my mom," Meredith insisted, "and you can ask her." She took three big steps backwards before turning around to run to the door. Around her, the night seemed to crystallize: the petals she trod on disappearing in the thick grass, the breeze pulling at her hair, the sound of her own breathing rasping in her ears. Then the ground flew away from her and there was nothing to step on, nothing to grab, nothing but crisp evening air and her fear, eating her voice away like acid and freezing her limbs.
The man turned the little girl around roughly in his arms, his blond hair shining like knives in the moonlight. He curved one hand around her mouth, and she coughed on the dirt that crumbled loose from his fingers.
His glacial eyes seemed distant as they locked onto Meredith's throat, and she went still in his arms, her eyes wide and unblinking. Her breath shuddered in her lungs, a fine tremor running through her body. After a moment, the man set the quaking girl down, smoothed her jacket into place, and patted her head. "No, not yet. Not yet. I have other plans for you." The breeze picked up, tossing petals and tendrils of Meredith's hair in her face, and when she could see again, the man was gone.
Two months later, Meredith's grandfather tried to kill her.
Ten years later, it was still ridiculously simple for Meredith to slide from her parents' sight. After the attack on Sue Carson, they had been overly cautious, but had also started giving her a glass of wine at supper to calm her nerves so she could sleep. Meredith didn't need it, but she didn't argue; it made things easier for her. After she shut her bedroom door at night, her parents wouldn't consider interrupting their daughter's hard-won sleep for anything less than an emergency, so it was easy for Meredith to slip out of her window and into the night.
Meredith kept her nightly jaunts to herself. Bonnie would have freaked out if she'd known; Matt, being the unyieldingly good guy he was, would have insisted on accompanying her. With a twinge, Meredith realized that those were the only two people—outside of family, of course—who would really care if something happened to her. Sure, there was Caroline—and Alaric, a voice at the back of Meredith's mind said primly—but Bonnie and Matt were her closest friends now.
So much had changed. Mere months before, Elena would have not only demanded to be included, she would have organized the entire thing—and made sure their outfits matched. Now Fell's Church had happily fallen back into its sleepy small town ways, and Elena was little more than a memory, one many people didn't think was worth keeping.
It was Meredith's third night of solitary searching, and it was shaping up to be as fruitless as the first two. She had spent much of the first night in and around the cemetery; her efforts the second night took her to Mrs. Flowers' boarding house, where she had found nothing but the kindly old woman who insisted that Meredith have a cup of tea before heading home. Now she was focussing on Robert E. Lee High School. With only the exterior lights on—a security measure intended to discourage vandalism—it was obvious that the custodians had gone home for the night. It was equally obvious that the lights did nothing to dissuade the graffiti artists, most of whom were better at art than spelling. Marginally. She popped her trunk and grabbed the baseball bat, making sure the accompanying glove was easily accessible; she wasn't an athlete by nature, but a wooden bat was a handy weapon and, if stored along with a baseball glove, one she couldn't get in trouble for possessing.
As she went around to the back of the school, Meredith had to admit she had no idea what she was looking for. This vampire was nothing like Stefan or even Damon. He was old, the closest thing she'd felt to ancient, with all the cruelty and cunning that came with surviving for century upon century. He would be able to sense her long before she'd ever spot him. She wasn't even properly armed, but she didn't plan to kill him. Not yet.
The football field was still well lit, which made Meredith roll her eyes. Despite growing up with Matt, she didn't understand the small town obsession with sports. She knew the theories well enough: in the absence of war, in times where people were supposedly civilized and diplomatic, athletes were the new soldiers, proving their country's—or town's—superiority by defeating the opposition. A nice theory, but she had no great love for Fell's Church, and planned to leave before the ink was dry on her last scholarship cheque.
"'Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,/ And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown'," a voice rang out, high and clear.
Meredith turned around and saw a familiar man perched on one of the football uprights, his tan raincoat falling behind him like a pale shadow. His posture was much the same as it had been that night a decade ago, but she'd never mistake him for an angel again. As she watched him leap lightly to the ground and stroll towards her, she tried to keep her recollections of that night, of the fear that had paralyzed her, out of her mind. "I bet you have all Aaron's lines memorized," she said blandly, trying to examine her surroundings without being obvious. There was no good escape route, and the bat in her grip might delay the ancient vampire, but nothing more. Her friends had always said she was the smartest among them, but she clearly hadn't thought her sleuthing through.
"I like to have a large repertoire," he smiled, taking an overdramatic bow. "Should I bother asking after your grandfather, Miss Merry Death? Or does such a fetching young lass as yourself have time for the ravings of a crazy old man anymore?"
"My family is none of your business," Meredith snapped, willing herself to be as sharp and cold as ice. She thought she felt her scars from her grandfather's attack twinge, but she told herself it was just her imagination. Her body didn't seem to believe that her imagination wasn't quite that good. She tightened her grip on the bat and kept it parallel to her right leg, though she knew the vampire must have seen it by now.
"On the contrary, sport. Your grandfather was a good vintage. It runs in the family, you know. Makes me surprised the older Salvatore hasn't partaken from you—although with him, I'm sure it's not for lack of trying." The vampire stepped forward slowly at an angle, making Meredith move with him. "I could have killed you all those years ago. Imagine the headlines! 'Girl found dead in family's own yard'. Your parents would have been devastated. Especially after the fuss with your grandfather. They'd have practically been run out of town by the gossip alone."
"As opposed to the torch and pitchfork method you're used to?" Meredith tried to slow her breathing, but her primitive brain, the part of her that recognized wolves in sheep's clothing, was kicking in and screaming at her to run, hide. Get away. Suddenly her grandfather's snarls made more sense.
The vampire shrugged effortlessly. "Pitchforks leave interesting scars, nothing more. And I come from a time when people knew the value of fire more than you will ever be able to fathom." A sharp smile sliced across his face. "That bat, by the by? Won't do anything to me, sweetheart."
"Why are you here?" Meredith cursed herself for acting like a heroine in a bad horror movie: He clearly hadn't survived centuries by divulging his plans.
"Like I said, I have other plans for you." It took Meredith a moment to realize what he was referring to, and when she had refocused, the vampire was already right in front of her, hoisting her up with one grimy hand wrapped around her throat. "'The eagle suffers little birds to sing,/ And is not careful what they mean thereby'," he quoted again, wrenching Meredith's head to the side. "'Knowing that with the shadow of his wings,/ He can at pleasure stint their melody'."
The vampire's thumb was digging into her windpipe, making her cough, but Meredith still tried to fight back. She didn't think she could get enough momentum behind the bat to make it worth her while, so she dropped it to the ground and balled her right hand into a fist. She would probably have only one shot before he bit, so it had to count. But her fist got tangled up in his raincoat, softening the blow, and Meredith's only remaining defence was to not give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream when he tore her throat open. When she caught a glimpse of his fangs in the moonlight, she didn't think she'd be likely to succeed on that front either. Panic scoured her veins, making her nerves shriek and her ears ring. She didn't want to end up like her grandfather, a prisoner in her own head. Anything would be better that, even dying. . . .
"Mere? You out here?" Matt's voice practically shone in the air.
The vampire dropped Meredith to the ground so quickly that a jolt of pain shot up her tailbone and made her temporarily numb. "Another time, little one," he whispered. "I don't plan on sharing you. Give my regards to your abuelo." The hem of his raincoat slapped Meredith in the face as the vampire took off.
Meredith fell on her side in a shaking heap, her head haloed by the zero of a yard-line marking. Her heartbeat felt like a gong, reverberating through her entire body, and she struggled to sit up when she saw Matt running over to her, wielding a baseball bat of his own. "Hey," she croaked, lurching to her feet on her own.
"What's wrong? What happened?" Matt's eyes blazed with concern, but Meredith still saw echoes of her attacker in their blue depths, in the golden sheen of her friend's hair. "What were you doing out here by yourself? You know it's not safe—"
"You carry a baseball bat with you all the time?" Meredith asked, nodding at Matt's hand in hopes of distracting him from his tirade. He was the one who had taught her and Bonnie about the legal loopholes surrounding baseball bats in trunks, and she wondered if he was regretting it now.
Matt straightened up proudly. "If it's in your trunk along with a glove, it's perfectly legal," he insisted. Then he relaxed a fraction and took in Meredith's appearance. "So what happened? Bonnie called me and said she'd tried calling you but got no answer, so I told her I'd go out looking for you so she wouldn't freak out, but you weren't at home. Then I spotted your car out front and—"
Meredith picked up her bat and shrugged, stretching gingerly to make sure she hadn't been hurt. "I just wanted to think for a while, so I thought I'd do some practice hits."
"In the football field? In the middle of the night?" Matt's arched eyebrows glinted in the artificial light.
She cut Matt off by hugging him. It wasn't her style and he knew it, the embrace shocking him enough that he stopped questioning her. "I'm fine, Matt. I just needed to get out of the house and have some space to myself for a while." She felt bad for lying, especially to Matt. If she were in his place, she would have kept up the interrogation—Why were you on the ground then? Where's the ball?—but Matt let it go, as she knew he would. "Don't tell Bonnie, okay? She'll freak at me." She didn't like doing that either, putting Matt in a precarious position between friends, but she had no other choice. Like the vampire, Meredith had plans of her own. She wasn't a girl with cherry blossoms in her hair and fear in her throat anymore. And she certainly wasn't going to end up like her grandfather.