Mood: Accessory to Murder
Music: Dead Things by Emiliana Torrini
Okay kids, are you ready for this? It’s time we wrap this puppy up.
When we last left Elena she was running frantically through the darkened hallways of her high school to get away from a dark handsome stranger who radiates danger and has mastered the art of the sardonic smile. This is how we know Elena is a fictional character, the running away bit. And when Elena rejoins her friends she neglects to mention this stranger to anyone.
She splits her time between planning the school haunted house with her friends Bonnie & Meredith (Does no one else go to this school? ) and nurturing her frustration over the seemingly growing distance between Stefan and herself. At times she manages to combine the two activities. Like when she goes to Bonnie’s home to work on the haunted house. She manages to both worry about the survival of her burgeoning relationship while gabbing about costume plans. Here’s a shocker for you: Elena is going to look beautiful.
In order to put Elena’s mind at rest Bonnie tells her about a spell of sorts that they can do to show Elena her future husband. She goes through a ritual of silently setting a place at a table and at midnight calls “come in” to invite her future husband’s apparition to appear. The person before Elena at that moment is the dark dangerous stranger from before. Elena gets indignant at his very real intrusion and once again is able to resist his very considerable charms as she demands that he leaves. He goes and very likely is the one who steal her diary that night. Though she would later fail to put together his appearance with the disappearance of her diary. And once again Elena fails to tell anyone about him.
Back in sad sanguine sap land Stefan goes about feeding on forest animals in the hopes that it will quench his thirst so that he never accidentally blacks out and feeds on Elena. Elena. Katherine. FLASHBACK! (I love these)
Basically, what all these flashbacks have taught me is that Damon and Stefan are morons and that Katherine is really good at fooling enlightened men into thinking she is innocent against all evidence to the contrary
Halloween night Stefan comes to pick up Elena. And when he sees Elena in her costume it has the opposite effect on him that she was hoping. Her custom made gown authentic to the Italian Renaissance (Which by the way is beautiful and highlights her perfection perfectly) puts him in a mind of Katherine. The effect is not a good one. And the fitful menacing weather seems the perfect compliment to the silent drive to the high school.
I can’t tell you how many undead boyfriends I had to chuck by the wayside because they couldn’t get over their undead ex-girlfriends. It’s getting rather ridiculous. What does a girl have to do to keep her vampyric paramours interested? Open a vein?
At the haunted house everyone crowds around Elena and admires her. My hatred is renewed. And Stefan has to use his Powers to compel a pain-in-the-ass faculty member to go along with playing a sacrifice victim lying in a pool of karo syrup. I don’t really see what the problem was. Bonnie, who was in charge of that scene, must not have been on top of her game. I personally have no problem convincing men to let me smear syrup all over them.
When the poor faculty member ends up very much dead at the start of the haunted house all hell breaks loose. The would-be rapist Tyler is back and this time he rouses a good old fashioned mob with a desire to hold the mysterious “violent” outsider Stefan responsible for all the attacks that have happened since his arrival.
When Matt is able to talk to Elena after the police have arrived he tells her that Stefan made it out safely and asked him to take care of her, Elena knows something is wrong. She sneaks out of the gym and high-tails her ass to the boarding house and ascends the ladder to the Widow’s Walk.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a widow’s walk is I can probably guess you aren’t from the East Coast. A widow’s walk is a rooftop deck, of sorts. It’s more common amongst homes in older coastal communities. And when I mature into my old age as a creepy spinster I hope to retire to a home with one. Back to the story.
Up on the rundown widow’s walk with the wind blowing wildly about Elena comes to witness Stefan’s true nature as he feeds on a mourning dove. And for the first time in her life Elena reacts with what I believe is an appropriate emotion. Horror. And as she retreats in terror from the monster she loved she stumbles and falls off of the widow’s walk.
Look, I get being terrified. But if you are going to live in a “horror” novel then you should at least learn to be a little more aware of your environment. I never would have fallen off that roof in my retreat. That’s just pathetic Elena. But then again, not falling keeps the odds low that a strong virile vampire will save me. And in Elena’s case a virile vampire didn’t save her. Stefan did.
Fear gives way to shock and then shock to wonder. Then Elena is won over by the haunting pain she sees in Stefan. Women are suckers for that haunted soul shtick. And so a now calm Elena joins Stefan in his thrashed bedroom as he ruefully tells her the story of how he became a vampire.
Without going into too much detail here is the breakdown: Katherine greedily decided that she wanted both of the brothers for all time and secretly visited them both to feed them her blood. She gives them both rings to protect them from the sunlight and then acts like a spoiled child when neither brother will suffer the indignation of sharing her. In a fit Katherine runs away and the next time the Salvatore brothers see her she is a pile of ash beside her discarded ring and a note claiming she hopes that without her causing them strain that they will come together again. And, once again, because these boys are written by a woman they decided to blame each other instead of the woman who so clearly is/was playing them. They fight. They kill one another. They rise from the dead. They are at odds ever since.
We also learn that Stefan is a mourning dove munching pussy and Damon is a bad ass embracing his nature Hunter. And that Stefan actually feels shame and guilt for killing his brother and causing him to become the monster that he is. Frankly, if I hear any more of this “I’m damned” crap I am going to have to start writing fanfics in which Stefan gets the death he not-so-secretly wishes for.
After the the long flashback and Stefan’s pity fest he goes on to tell Elena that he is just as bad as his brother and relates how he thinks he is really responsible for the various attacks and killings. Elena then has to spell out for Stefan what we all have suspected from the beginning. That Damon is in town and the one responsible for the escalation in the attacks. And that he is simply toying with Stefan.
If I were Damon I would torment Stefan every century or so just because he’s annoying. Forget about the simple pleasure that siblings derive from such things anyways.
When Stefan begins to hope against hope that he is a shade less damned than he had previously thought, Elena surprises the dimwitted reader by abandoning all sensible thought and practically forcing her blood on Stefan.
Remind me if I ever have the great pleasure of actually becoming a vampire to pretend to be remorseful and struggle against my nature. Apparently girl’s drop their panties and bare their necks for you when you do so. Of course, it’s much easier to just take what you want. But sometimes the Hunt is a game.
When Stefan and Elena share each other’s blood they experience the blood-lovegasm. Much like the lovegasm, but slightly less chaste and a bit more psychic. And if you are wondering if she will now become a vampire too then I’ll just have to clarify that in The Vampire Diaries universe one must fist consume a somewhat sizeable amount of a vampire’s blood first. And then while the blood is still in your system you have to die. Dying is very important. I think that if Elena died now she would just die. Here’s hoping.
When Elena returns home Stefan sets out to find his brother and confront him. Every phrase out of Damon’s mouth raises sarcasm to the level of art. Every Syllable from Stefan seems petulant. History repeats himself and the two boys declare that they both will possess the same woman. And when neither backs down the two brothers again fight. And by “fight” I mean it is Stefan’s turn to go down like a shaken baby… with his throat ripped out. Talk about insult to injury. That’s like when my old Lab-Rottweiler mix hiked his leg on the neighbor’s yappy dog. I laughed both times.
The scene ends with Stefan barely walking out of the cemetery under his own power, but still an epic loser. He is swiftly attacked again and brought down. He loses consciousness. I prayed that something truly bad happened to him before I had to experience him express his remorse over something new. Unless that something new was falling in love with Elena.
The final chapter of this book doesn’t wrap up as fast as it should, though I think it’s shorter than most of the other chapters. I think I’m just projecting my desire to have this book over with though.
Elena is basking in the internal glow of her love for Stefan and feeling the after effects of the blood-lovegasm. She sleeps in late and experiences something like floating and pleasant lethargy. Much like how I wake every day. I feel cheated in that I didn’t get to swap bodily fluid with a sexy vital vampire the night before waking like this. But then again, neither did Elena. She only had Stefan.
When Elena goes to school she learns that Stefan has disappeared. His car was found abandoned and everyone thinks he has skipped town because he is guilty. This enrages Elena who actually does something I empathize with. She has a passionate outburst and storms out of the school into the crazy blustery weather to go confront Damon. This was the one and only time during this book that I said, “Fuck yeah, Elena.” and then it ended.
AND THEN IT ENDED. That’s it, kiddles. Book one of the Vampire Diaries, The Awakening is finally finished. Unfortunately, I’ve committed to read at least the next couple books.