All three of them were murderous.
Even Maddy had dropped all intentions of being friendly.
"I'm gonna kill him," snarled Damon as he rinsed his mouth out with water.
Stefan was mildly panicked that they were so vengeful, and wrestled Damon into a nearby bench before he could rush after Mason. "Listen to me! Sit— sit!"
"No, we're not listening," said Maddy hotly, though she sank down beside Damon, tapping her foot anxiously on the ground. "I warned him, I was nice, we tried to apologize, and he just did something that could expose all of us, not just Damon. Mason just threw us under the bus, Stefan, we're not going to sit down and play nice. I gave him an out, he didn't take it."
Stefan pursed his lips. "Okay. I don't like it, but... we need to put him down."
"Yes, thank you," said Damon, wiping his mouth. He caught sight of Mason moving into the nearby forest with two large trash bins. "Woods. Trash duty. Come on."
The three siblings moved together, with Damon in the lead and Stefan and Maddy on either side of him. Mason didn't seem to notice they were following him, which struck Maddy as odd, but she made no comment about it. She wanted to eviscerate him, and in her rage, she was blinded to the fact that something was wrong.
They found him alone in a clearing, putting branches into the cans. The three siblings split so that he was surrounded, and unable to go anywhere.
"Hi there, Mason," said Maddy, starting to remove her earrings and the rings on her fingers. "Cute little thing you did down there, giving my brother a mouthful of vervain."
Mason was frozen, as if he hadn't expected them to figure out it was him.
"Don't look so surprised," said Damon lowly. "You knew this was inevitable. Go ahead, run. I'll give you a head start."
Strangely enough, Mason didn't run. He dropped to the ground, and not even a full second later, a shot rang out, and the two younger Salvatores saw Damon had been pierced in the chest, opposite his heart.
They didn't have time to react. Another series of shots, and Maddy and Stefan found themselves on the ground, wheezing and bleeding as the wooden bullets wiggled deeper into their flesh.
"Thank you Mason," Maddy heard the familiar voice of Sheriff Forbes saying. She could hear five sets of footsteps (or was it six?) approaching them.
She whimpered when a needle was shoved into her neck, and she groaned when she felt vervain being injected directly into her bloodstream. Her vision blurred for a moment before everything went dark.
She could feel her body being moved, but she was so nauseous, she couldn't tell where she was being taken. Distorted voices were coming from every angle, and as her body swayed, she grew dizzier and dizzier until it all stopped, and she felt herself being dropped on the ground, which made her cough.
Someone kicked her side. There was a gunshot, and a loud yell from Damon. Another gunshot, and Maddy had to bite back a scream of her own as she felt another bullet piercing her side.
"This is how it's gonna work," said Liz Forbes. "Answer me, and you don't get shot, understand? How many of you are there?"
"Liz, please," Damon begged.
He was yelling just seconds later when she shot him again. Maddy decided she ought to talk. Even if it was pure bullshit.
"Just us three!" she gasped, opening her eyes. It was dark, and she could see three deputies with Liz. They were in some sort of cave. But why were there hooks on the wall, as if to hold something? Caves didn't have that.
"Good, at least someone is going to comply," said Liz. "How did you fool us? How do you walk in the sun?"
"B-Bloodline," she spat. "Different... vampire... subspecies."
Liz was clearly confused, but buying it. She had no clue what the truth was, so Maddy had every opportunity to twist it and buy them time. She turned her head, seeing that on the other side of her was Stefan. He was completely unconscious, and she knew why.
"What's this about subspecies?" asked Liz. "Talk or I shoot your brother."
"H-Has to do with regions," she said, coming up with whatever lie arose in her mind first. "On the coasts... vampires adapted... to walk in the sun... but those in the mountains still can't..."
"Maddy, stop," pleaded Damon, helping to sell the fact that she was bursting out the 'truth' in some desperate attempt to stay alive. "Liz... please... you're my friend."
"Our friendship was a lie," said Liz coldly. "Now, keep talking, Madeleine, or I'll drag this out painfully. Do you want me to give your brothers a quick death, or a slow one? Next question, have you turned anyone here?"
"No," she said honestly. "We don't... like turning people. Too much of... a burden."
Liz shared a look with her deputies. "Well, that's all we need to really know. Damon's not gonna tell us anything. Let's kill them all. Each with a stake in the heart, and then we'll burn them."
There was a creaking noise near the entrance, where Maddy could hear the rustling of leaves and a few birds. Liz tensed. "Check it out." She faced the middle Salvatore again. "Are you telling us the truth, or did you lie about there being more vampires?"
"Just us," Maddy said desperately, not sure who was coming to their rescue. "I swear, I swear—"
Suddenly, a figure burst in. Maddy could smell Elena's perfume as she whacked one of the deputies in the back of the head with a wooden plank.
"Elena!" cried Liz. "What are you doing?"
"You can't kill them!" she pleaded. "I'm not gonna let you!"
The ground shook as a door was slammed, just a few feet away from them. "What was that?" said one of the deputies, who'd pushed Elena forward and was holding her at gunpoint.
"Who else is with you?" asked Liz sharply.
Maddy could hardly see, but she knew that Caroline was here, because the only other vampire in the town was Katherine, and she never would have come to their rescue. The deputies fired several times, before there was silence.
Elena rushed forward, pushing the deputies' unconscious bodies toward the three Salvatores. Damon and Maddy quickly grabbed onto one, biting into whatever limb they reached first and beginning to drink. Elena was with Stefan, trying to remove some of the wooden bullets, and urging him to drink, though he refused.
"You need to drink some deputy blood," urged Damon, who'd removed all his bullets successfully.
Stefan shook his head, putting it between his knees. "No, I'm gonna be fine, it's just gonna take a little bit longer."
"Stefan," said Maddy, forcing herself to her feet so that she could pull out the last of the bullets inside her body. "For once, do what Damon says."
"You need to drink blood," urged Caroline, who was standing guard over her mother. "If there's ever a time to break your diet..."
"He said he didn't want it, okay?" Elena said defensively.
Maddy gritted her teeth. "Oh my god— are you not looking at him? He can't even see anything! I appreciate you wanting to respect his choice, but I'm not about to let my little brother die when the solution is so simple. He's trying to convince himself that he's okay when he isn't. Stefan, come on, I'll stop you once you've had enough, I won't let it get out of control."
"No," said Stefan more gruffly. "I'm not drinking anything."
Elena gave Maddy a significant look, and the vampire had to resort to changing the subject. "Well, what are we going to do about them?" she asked, looking down at the three dead deputies.
"And what are we going to do with her?" muttered Damon, eyeing Liz.
Caroline cast her mother puppy eyes. "You won't tell anyone, will you? Mom?" Liz refused to look at her. "Mom— please. Look, I know that we don't get along and that you hate me but I'm your daughter and you'll do this for me, right? Mom, please. He will kill you."
Liz looked up at Damon, who was sneering at her. "Then kill me."
"No!" Caroline shrieked.
"I can't take this," said the Sheriff miserably. "Kill me now."
Maddy walked over to her, putting her in a chokehold, which immediately made Caroline, Stefan, and Elena cry out, begging her not to snap her neck.
"Calm down," said Maddy, squeezing just enough to knock Liz out. She didn't even fight it, likely thinking she'd go quickly. "Just making sure she's unconscious. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get her to the house, shove her in the cellar, and wait until she's vervain-free so that we can make her forget everything."
Once Liz went limp, she handed her to Damon. "Get them home," she said, pointing between Liz and Stefan. "I'll take care of the bodies. If Mason comes back to check on them, at least I have a better chance of making it out alive."
They all nodded, and started to file out. Maddy grabbed one of the stakes the deputies were going to use on them, and moved to a corner where just a little bit of sunlight shone into the strange room she was in. She removed her daylight ring, sticking out the hand with the stake, and allowing herself to burn just a bit to create a torch. As soon as it was made, she yanked her hand back into the shade and slipped the ring on, feeling blood leaking down her chin from how hard she bit her lip to hold back a scream of pain.
She dropped the torch onto the bodies, allowing them to burn. She then exited the cellar and started to dig nearby, using a branch and her hands. She took advantage of her vampire speed, wanting to get it done quickly, before anyone thought to investigate the smoke. She hoped that if Mason saw it, he'd think Liz and the deputies managed to kill the vampires and were now burning them.
Once the three bodies stopped burning, she started the process of dismembering them. At this point, she was so used to it, that it didn't bother her in the slightest. She carried the body parts up the stairs and dropped them in the grave, making sure to cover them up properly so that no one would suspect anything.
She went back downstairs, scraping her foot over the ash to move it so that it covered the blood. She then spit over the blood a few times, having heard spit could dissolve blood. She imagined she'd need a whole lot more spit to do that, but it made her feel better to know she made a good effort. Only a supernatural would be able to smell the blood that was left there.
She got to the Boarding House just as Caroline was arriving with a little suitcase. Elena opened the door for the two of them, and Maddy went straight down to the cellar, finding that Damon awas getting Liz to call out sick for a few days, to give her body time to get rid of the vervain.
"Shouldn't we just torture her?" asked Maddy, leaning in the doorway and eyeing Liz. "I could do it, you know how much I love to slice things up..."
"We're not bleeding it out of her," said Damon, more defensively than she expected. "Liz is my friend."
"Hmm." Maddy shrugged. "Alright, well I'm going to shower. If Caroline's going to stay here, get her set up in the corner room of the lower wing by the stairs. It's close enough for her to sense if Lizzy here tries to escape."
Liz looked up at them, resigned to her fate. "Can you keep Caroline far away from me, please?" she asked, just as Caroline, Stefan, and Elena were coming down the hall. "I don't wanna see her."
Maddy frowned, eyes flickering to the side and catching the hurt look on the blonde's face.
"She's your daughter, Liz," said Damon quietly.
"Not anymore," the Sheriff replied stiffly. "My daughter's gone."
Damon shook his head. "You have no idea how wrong you are about that." He turned to Caroline, who just walked away, with Elena following after her.
Maddy scowled. "Are you sure we can't bleed her out?" she asked her brother. "She's sounding like our father."
"We're not bleeding her out," said Damon, though he faltered, tapping his ear and pointing at the hallway. Maddy tilted her head to the side, finding that Elena and Stefan were just around the corner, by the fridge filled with blood bags.
"Katherine took a little vervain every day and built up a tolerance to it," Stefan was telling her. "I could do the same with blood. I could learn to control myself on it."
"But you can't, Stefan," said Elena. "You don't have to."
"I almost died tonight, Elena. Because I was too weak."
"But the last time that you drank human blood..."
"I told you I'll find a way to stop Katherine, didn't I? Well this is it, this is the only way because she's stronger than me. And unless that changes this, I can't protect you."
Maddy sensed Elena tapping her ear. "Can we talk about this later?"
Stefan started to shout, "They can hear us wherever we are, because they drink this! This is... this is the only thing that can help me."
"Are you serious?" Elena inquired in a deadly whisper. "Are you pretending to fight? Because I can't tell if..."
"No, this is real," replied Stefan. "No more pretend."
Maddy and Damon shared a look as they heard Elena rush off into another room. There was a splattering sound, followed by a thump, and they figured that Stefan had dropped the blood bag back into the fridge and closed the door.
"I'll talk to her," said Damon. "Think you can finish up here?"
"Gladly," said Maddy, holding out her hand. Damon handed Liz's phone to her before walking off. The woman looked down at the Sheriff as she closed the heavy door keeping her in the cell. "Get comfortable in there. I suggest you play nice with anyone who comes to check on you. Damon may consider you a friend, but I sure don't, and if you keep being so vocal about how unaccepting you are of your own daughter... then your fate is going to become less certain."
Liz flinched as Maddy slammed the door, leaving her in the cell.
_
Maddy was glad to not be on 'Liz duty.'
The last thing she wanted was to have to babysit her. Thankfully, Caroline had taken over that, to try and convince her mother that she was more than just a vampire.
"Morning," she told Damon when she came downstairs and found him drinking bourbon. "Guess we're staying in today to keep an eye on our prisoner?"
He nodded. "Yeah, unless you want to go over to the Lockwood Mansion to help set up for that Masquerade Ball they're going to have this weekend."
"Ew, no," said Maddy. "I like attending parties, but I hate helping set up. Besides, if we go anywhere near that place, we're going to see Mason Lockwood, and I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from killing him."
"Look at you," said Damon, wiggling his eyebrows. "First you want to do the horizontal tango with the dude, and now you want to murder him. It's a modern-day love story."
"Where's Stefan?" asked Maddy, turning on the stove to let it heat up so that she could make herself some scrambled eggs.
"At his girlfriend's house," said Damon. "Or maybe already being a volunteer and pretending he's not desperate for a drink. Oh, and make some of that for me."
"No," said Maddy. "I hate cooking for other people. Learn to make food yourself, it wouldn't kill you. Just because I'm here doesn't mean I'm your maid."
"Aw, what else are you good for then, Sissy?"
She tossed a spatula at him, but he caught it, and threw it back, though he obviously hadn't been expecting her to seize it midair and smack him over the head with it.
"Okay, fine," he said, waving his hand to stop her. "Don't cook for me, then, I'll just starve."
"Yes, you will," said Maddy. "Seriously, over a century and a half alive and you'll still only have human food when someone else makes it for you? Grow up."
The doorbell rang, and both Maddy and Damon stopped what they were doing to go and see who it was. When the elder Salvatore swung open the door, they both saw Jeremy Gilbert there.
"I need to talk to you," said Jeremy.
Damon made a face. "And why do I need to talk to you?"
He started to close the door on him, but Jeremy stopped him. "Tyler Lockwood has to kill someone to activate his curse. He's not a werewolf yet."
"Wow, fascinating," said Damon sarcastically. "Not enough." He started to shut the door once again, but Jeremy swiped his hand out.
"But Mason Lockwood is," the younger Gilbert continued, "and he's looking for a moonstone, a special rock connected to the werewolf legend. That's why he's here."
"Moonstone?" asked Maddy, pushing Damon aside and opening the door completely, gesturing for Jeremy to come inside.
He nodded. "Yeah, and I know where it is."
"And you're bringing this to us, why?" asked Damon.
Jeremy frowned. "Do I need a reason? Look, I just want to help, okay?"
"What's your sister say about this little discovery?" When Jeremy didn't answer, he smirked. "Oh, you haven't told her, have you?"
Jeremy sighed. "Well, Elena doesn't want me getting involved in all this."
Damon rolled his eyes. "And you're a Gilbert and you just can't help yourself. Wow. Your search for life's purpose is as obvious as it is tragic." He patted Jeremy's shoulders. "Go to the kitchen and have Mads make you some breakfast. I'm going to call Ric."
Maddy shot him a murderous look, but wasn't really able to say no once Jeremy's face lit up at the prospect of food.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," she told Jeremy once he was sitting at the kitchen island, watching her make the eggs and some pancakes, "but I was under the impression that you and Tyler Lockwood hated each other."
"Well, we used to, I guess," said Jeremy. "Since his dad died he's been less of a dick, and I was able to talk to him yesterday. He was pretty cool about giving me information."
Maddy hummed. "Alright. Well, I guess we're going to need you to keep talking to him about this because no one else is close enough to him."
Jeremy thanked her as she handed him a plate with three pancakes and a scoop of scrambled eggs. "So, you're like, the Girl Version of Damon?"
"Girl Version of Damon and Stefan," she corrected. "Most people who know all three of us agree that I'm a mix of the two of them." She tilted her head. "You, though, you're not too much like Elena."
"Is that a good thing?" asked Jeremy, unsure if she meant that as some sort of compliment.
"Oh, I don't know," said Maddy pensively. "You're adorable like... a bunny rabbit."
Jeremy grinned, apparently flattered that she thought he was cute. Though, realization hit, and he asked, "Wait, isn't that what Stefan eats—?"
Maddy's eyes glinted mischievously. "Exactly." She then brushed it off as if she hadn't said anything about the subject at all. "Anyway, I can hear Damon in another room telling Alaric to bring some of Isobel's research so that we can find out more about this moonstone. Eat quickly so that we can be ready to sift through boxes when he gets here."
Jeremy was a lot more likable than Elena, in Maddy's eyes. She knew that she was probably being a bit unfair, disliking the doppelgänger so much. It wasn't exactly her fault that she was born from the Petrova line, and it certainly wasn't like she asked Damon and Stefan to insert themselves into her life. Still, Maddy was having a hard time dissociating Elena's face from her own memories of Katherine. She supposed she'd have to see them next to each other to begin separating them as people, despite the fact they bore the same exact face.
About half an hour later, Alaric arrived with a singular, heavy looking box.
"Ric!" said Damon brightly. The other man didn't appear as pleased to see him when he caught sight of Jeremy and Maddy playing Mario Kart on the television.
"What are you doing here?" asked Alaric, staring at the younger Gilbert.
"Helping Damon and Maddy," said Jeremy, stopping the game and getting to his feet. "I'm the one who found out about the moonstone."
Alaric glanced at the Salvatores, who shrugged. "Does Elena know you're here?"
Damon scrunched up his nose and shook his head as Jeremy said, "Not exactly."
"Can we start looking through the box already?" asked Maddy impatiently.
Alaric assented. "So, Isobel's research assistant from Duke sent this to me—"
"Mmmm, Vanessa, the hottie," said Damon.
"Vanessa, yes," confirmed Alaric, opening the box and extracting some scrolls with drawings on them. "Now, do you remember the old Aztec curse she told us about?"
The elder Salvatore nodded. "Sun and the moon, blah blah blah blah blah."
"An Aztec curse?" asked Jeremy with great interest. "Cool."
"Yeah," said Alaric, "supposedly vampires and werewolves used to roam freely until a shaman put a curse on them to limit their power. Since then, werewolves can only turn on a full moon and vampires are weakened by the sun."
Damon wiggled his fingers, showing off his daylight ring. "Most of them, anyway."
"According to the legend," continued Alaric, "the werewolf part of the curse is sealed with the moonstone."
"So the moonstone can likely be used to break the curse," said Maddy. "Which is probably why Mason Lockwood wants it. This same scroll is the one that says a werewolf bite is lethal to vampires, right? We should probably get this moonstone before Mason runs back to his friends. Which means we have to go help set up for the Masquerade Ball. Wonderful."
"Well, you don't have to go," said Damon, already leading Jeremy out the door. "You can stay here and clean the house."
Maddy grabbed at a nearby knick knack and tossed it against Damon's head. "Ow!" he yelled. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm joking!"
"Watch your mouth," she warned, "or I'll shove the moonstone down your throat and make you eat your words."