Warm Witch's Blood

Rose was five hundred sixty years-old.

It was a good life, when you think about it. It was five hundred years more than most people in her time period had gotten. She had seen more of the world than her family would ever get to see, but at the same time, it wasn’t truly a life. She had spent five hundred of those years running from everything. She was always in darkness, always running, never really living.

Now it was all going to end before she even got the chance. All because of one little dog bite.

Rose had spent her life running from vampires, not werewolves, but she knew enough to know the story. One bite from a werewolf would kill a vampire—nature’s own balancing act. Werewolves were natural—they were genetically predisposed to turn to beasts, and vampires were the abomination. One set to rival the other, and in a way to ensure the mutual destruction of the other. That was why a werewolf bite was so fatal. There was no cure, no quick fix—it just was what it was. In the battle of the species, she was the one who lost.

She was so tired of losing.

Then again, there was something to being old—you get to hear all the stories along the way. All the rumors and passed over thoughts that came with the idea of a cure found in various places. Most of them were follies, things that never would have come to pass, but it wasn’t as though any of them could be found in time in the first place.

If she was going to do one thing before she died, however, she was going to make sure that Damon knew at least some of his vampire history. Legends weren’t always just legends, after all.

She took the tumbler of blood from him as he returned to bed, and leaned into him a bit after taking a sip. “Have you ever heard the story of the vampire Slayer?”