History Repeats, Part 13

"Elena, come in," Alaric said, glancing up at Elena's arrival.  She set her bag down against the wall and sat on one of the desks in the front row.  "I called you because Stefan's not here.  Have you talked to Damon in the last few days?" he asked, finally extracting a few pages of notes from the pile of papers he was searching through.

"Yeah, briefly, on the phone about twenty minutes ago.  Why?"

"When was the last time you saw him in person?"

Elena screwed up her bit her lip and thought.  "Last… Wednesday?  Why?  What's going on?"

Alaric leaned over his desk and put his hands down to rest some of his weight on it.  "He came to my house the other night, really freaked out."

"Damon was freaked out about something?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah," he said.  "He told me a story about another vampire that was doing everything he was being accused of."

"You mean attacking Aimee, the sorority girls, and the couple on Old Mill Road?" she said.  If there was another vampire, that didn't explain why Aimee identified him in a picture.  Unless the other vampire had compelled her to believe it had been Damon…

"Yes.  He also said something about some campers.  Anyway, this girl apparently did all of those attacks to get his attention."

Elena folded her arms.  "For what?"

Alaric shrugged.  "I don't know, and I don't think Damon knows, either.  But here's the catch: she's not a vampire."

"She's… not a vampire," Elena repeated, and blinked several times.  "Okay.  Is she a werewolf?"

"No.  She's not anything we've encountered before."

She sighed and slid into the chair below her.  "Great.  New creatures."

"I didn't put much stock to his story at first.  I didn't know what was going on, but I didn't believe there was a girl in the world that could unnerve Damon.  I thought maybe it was Katherine messing with him, or something."

"But?"

"Well, I did a little digging anyway to appease him, and I actually found something," Alaric said, and handed her the papers.

She looked at the word at the top of the page.  "'Fae?'  What is that?"

He shrugged.  "No one knows for sure.  There wasn't much in Isobel's stuff about them.  She couldn't even get much on them.  But I do know a couple of things.  A Fae can be any number of creatures: fairies, banshees, golems…"

"You're saying Tinkerbell is attacking Damon?" she said.  She felt like shaking Ric and seeing why he was acting like crazy.  Come one.  Fairies?!

"Well, no.  You're thinking of the Disney version of things.  There's some really nasty lore on Fae.  It wasn't easy to dig up, but I found some.  There all sorts of stories, of shapeshifters eating human babies and taking their places, fairies using their light to lead people into bogs—"

"Wait," Elena said, and stood up.  "Shapeshifters.  What else do you know about them?"

He took his notes from her and shuffled through them until he had the right page.  "Shapeshifters…  Ah.  They seem to appear and disappear whenever they choose, they can change into any shape they choose, but they can't imitate voices.  Whatever shape they change into, they have to use their looks to attract people, because they can't speak to them."  Elena's eyes widened.  "What is it, Elena?"

"I talked to Aimee about what happened the other day," she began, and swallowed.  "She said it was Damon.  I even showed her a picture, and she said that was him."

Ric nodded.  "Well… looks like we I.D.'ed out mystery player."

"Do we know anything else about them?"

"They use their shapeshifting in other people's dreams a lot, which really explains why Damon's been so worked up.  This shapeshifter has been invading his subconscious.  I'd be a wreck too, if I didn't know the difference between reality and fiction," he said.

Elena sat down again and put her chin in her hand.  "Why is it here, though?  Why is it targeting Damon?"

"I don't know.  I guess the shapeshifter's the only one that's going to be able to answer that," he replied.

"Do you know how we could trap it?"

"I don't.  But we know someone who could."

Elena grimaced and shook her head.  "Let's do some more research before we bring Bonnie into it.  She hates being involved.  I'd rather know more about it first."

Alaric shrugged and packed his notes into a folder.  "Fair enough.  But, I'm going to need to make a trip to Duke to get some books on this stuff.  I don't have anything on Fae in my stash.  It's mostly just books on vampires."