The Monster Diaries
Chapter 1: The World Without You

My prey's name was Adam.

I could smell him through the tumult of sensation assaulting my nose; that salty, popcorn-y essence familiar to me after three months on the road with Klaus. The bar reeked of beer over everything else. I caught whiffs of sweat and cheap cologne from the hillbillies packed into the roadside bar in Bumfuck, Kentucky.

Adam was exactly the kind of guy I would have gone for in high school: Dark, curly hair, leather jacket, light stubble and, most importantly, he was a werewolf.

He sat alone at the bar, watching me over the rim of his beer. His nostrils were flared: He could smell what I was, just as I could smell who he was.

I grinned as I slid into the stool next to his. "I'd ask if you come here often, but I'd rather not be cliché."

Adam didn't answer, just raised a brow at me as he swallowed down his beer.

"What's your name?" I tried instead.

"Adam," he answered gruffly, but of course, I already knew that.

"I'm Eve," I threw back.

He snorted reluctantly and surrendered a tight smile. "No, you're not."

"No," I agreed. "I'm not. I'm Sidney." I stuck a hand out for him to shake. "Hi."

He shook my hand, palm rough against mine, and said; "What's a vamp doin' out here? I thought your kind preferred the cities?"

"We do," I told him. "I'm just passing through, looking for some company- someone to talk to. How about you? I didn't think there was a pack around here."

"There isn't," Adam said simply, and we didn't talk about it again.

Instead, we talked about football, then soccer, then the World Cup (I had managed to catch a match or two while on the road). I pulled more smiles out of him, quickly followed by a few chuckles, and before midnight, his fate was sealed. We pulled on our jackets, his eyes fixed on my chest, and left the bar. I tried not to feel too guilty about it.

The motel was a few streets over from the bar. It was trashy, but it was also the only one in the town. Adam was too preoccupied with ripping my tank top off to be suspicious. He should have been. I was hoping he would have been.

We fell onto the bed, and Klaus struck.

With a muffled scream and a loud clatter, Klaus had the werewolf tied to one of the bed frames. I was thankful there was no one staying in the rooms around us to overhear the commotion. I didn't want to have to kill another innocent person tonight.

"Nice work, love," Klaus quipped at me as he gagged Adam with one of the pillowcases.

I tried not to watch and shrugged in answer. "Can I leave?"

"Sure," Klaus agreed. As I walked out of the room, he called after me; "No phone calls, lover!"

I sucked down the night air, filtering through the smells of cigarette and gasoline to get to the clean, woodsy scent I was after. I could see the stars better, as a vampire. This was one of the things I was grateful for, along with the fact that I wasn't the one who had to torture Adam. Klaus never made me torture the ones I had lured in. I wondered how long it would take before he did.

It had been maybe two months since we had left Mystic Falls, since I had died. We had spent the summer driving up and down the East Coast, looking for a pack of wolves to turn into hybrids. It was the graduation road trip of my dreams—just with more murder.

The journey had passed in a bloodstained blur of gas station coffee, cheap beer and hot summer nights. I tried not to think much about the looks Klaus sent me sometimes, or the afternoons when we would joke around with each other. He was growing on me in this weird, skin-scratching way. I told myself it was just the sire bond. Kept telling myself even when he would brush his hands over my shoulders and I would question everything.

Why hadn't my family come for me?

"Sidney," Klaus called from the room. "Could you come in here, darling?"

With a sigh, I did. The motel room was significantly gorier than it had been when I left. I didn't want to know how Klaus had gotten blood on the ceiling.

Adam was still alive, sans gag. His torn-up chest heaved up and down with breath. His eyes focused on me when I walked in, bloodshot and teary. Klaus grinned at me from the mini fridge, tapping a beer bottle against his denim-clad thigh.

"Would you mind too terribly finishing for me, lover?"

I looked at Adam. "Do I have to?"

"Sweetheart." Klaus sounded dangerous now. That was a resounding "yes".

I drew closer to Adam. He looked up at me, and there was hatred in his eyes, and God if that didn't hurt.

Elena, that voice in my head whispered. Jeremy, Stefan, Caroline, Keeley, Bonnie. Damon.

I put a hand on Adam's chest. "I'm sorry," I whispered. And then I ripped out his heart.

We didn't spend anymore time at the motel. Klaus steered us onto I-65 North, the windows down and the wind ripping hair away from my face. He glanced over at me from the driver's seat.

"Aren't you wondering where we're going?" he teased.

I raised a brow and shot back; "I've learned not to care."

Klaus snorted even though I hadn't been joking. "Chicago, love."

"Oh." This did shock me. "Why?"

He shrugged noncommittally even as one of his toothier (danger, danger) grins grew across his face. "You're going to meet my little sister."

Rebekah's situation was more than slightly fucked up.

Elena and Jeremy annoyed me sometimes. Hell, Jeremy had punched me once (on accident, but still). And once, in fourth grade, Elena had pissed me off so badly that I had squirted mustard in her hair. But never in my wildest dreams had I ever been so angry that I would stab them and lock them in coffins for a couple of decades.

Despite all of this, Rebekah was a very blasé sort of girl. She reminded me of Caroline in a way that hurt: all bouncy blonde ringlets and dangerous smiles. She demanded I come shopping with her, and Klaus was compelled to agree on my behalf.

This was the first time in a very long time that I had been alone for an extended period with someone who wasn't Klaus. It was surreal to have "girl time" once again. It reminded me too much of Sutter, of Elena, of Anastasia or Jenna—and boy did that fucking hurt.

I didn't know how to handle myself. The mall we were in was too crowded, too busy. I hadn't been around this many humans since being turned, and my fingernails pierced the skin of my palms every time I clenched my fists.

Rebekah looked just as overwhelmed as I felt, and I couldn't stop myself. The big sister in me was riled up, and I took her hand. "Stop worrying," I muttered as we approached one of the department stores. "You're going to be okay."

This somehow seemed to calm Rebekah down. She took on a girlish excitement as we began to shop, very quickly assembling a pile of clothes in one of the dressing rooms. I found myself blinking in confusion when she thrust a handful of tank tops my way.

"Yours is bloodstained," she told my raised eyebrows. "Unnoticeable to a human, but more than enough warning for a vampire." A grin grew on Rebekah's mouth. "Just thought you should know."

I ended up exchanging the black tank top I had been wearing all summer for a red one, the same color as the blood I had been spilling.

Rebekah kept up a steady stream of chatter as she tried on her small mountain of clothes. Eventually, I found myself sinking into it, giving a smile here, an attempt at a joke there. She was unendingly curious about the world she had woken up in. I told her about cellphones and rock music, movies and high schools, though I found myself unable to tell her much about my own high school experience. Those memories, like a good chunk of the others, were too painful to think about most days.

"So," she drawled after a while, checking herself out in the short green dress she had picked. "What is going on between you and my brother?"

I blinked at her. "Um…. Nothing?"

"You certainly don't sound sure of that."

"I mean…" I looked at her, gauging her. How honest could I be?

Rebekah had been daggered by Klaus, left to rot in a coffin in Chicago for nearly a century. How loyal could she be to her brother?

So, I said; "He… turned me. Killed my family. My best friend. My sister. I guess I'm his minion, or whatever."

Rebekah snorted. "And is that all? 'Minion'? Trust me, love, that's never stopped him before. He's bedded many a crony."

I rolled my eyes, flushing despite myself. "No, it's not—It's all. That's all we are."

But was it really?

Once, we had gotten nachos in a dive bar, drunk ourselves silly and gone stargazing.

Once, we had put on a Bon Jovi cd and sang like idiots for an afternoon.

Once, he had kissed my cheek after finding a werewolf, and his lips had lingered.

But Damon… Damon hadn't come for me. Why hadn't he come for me?

Something in my face must have betrayed me because Rebekah's smile grew still wider and toothier. "There's someone back home," she probed, "isn't there?"

I nodded softly because it was all I could really do, and my dead heart ached.

The thing that I've learned probably the most about in my time as a vampire is blood: the way it smells, tastes, feels. The splatters it makes, bursting out the mouths of crying werewolves. The tackiness of it against your skin as you're bathed in it. The heat of it in your mouth as you're ripping out a wolf's neck.

An afternoon of carnage went by, and Klaus had worked himself into as manic a state as I'd ever seen him. After ten failed attempts at hybrid-making, Rebekah and I stood to the side. We watched him try and fail countless times. The waters of Lake Michigan lapped against the shore, and we watched wolves die.

Rebekah didn't look it, but I could tell she was tense. I was tense, too. I always was when we found wolf packs. Because if he found out…

Well, I was about to experience that rage. Was experiencing it.

Klaus knew—or almost knew, at the very least. And Elena…

My family was about to be in some very serious trouble.

But then Klaus turned to me, eyes caught between red and gold and mouth dripping with gore, and I realized that I was in worse trouble than she would be.

I blinked. Rebekah screamed. The world flew by and my spine snapped. The tree that caught me splintered. I was lucky none of the wood pierced my heart.

Or maybe unlucky. It depended on just how much pain Klaus cared to inflict on me.

"Why," Klaus snarled, more wolf than man, "is this not working?"

A spat out a mouthful of blood (and maybe some teeth?). "Hell, if I know."

"Funny. Funny girl." Klaus threw me through another two trees, proving that I was, in fact, not funny enough for him. "But rather than jokes, dearest one"—a punch to the face—"I'd like answers."

He kicked me, and I went barreling into the lake. When I resurfaced, he was there with a hand to my neck. "Now, if you please."

I maintained my silence, even as I felt that part of him in my brain pushing and prying and crushing my will. I wouldn't betray my family.

Your family who hasn't come after you, that voice whispered. Your family who forgot you. Your family who doesn't care about you anymore.

"Martyrdom isn't attractive, Sidney," Klaus whispered. And then he dropped me and turned away. The whisper continued; "She's still alive. Isn't she?"

I didn't answer. He didn't need me to.

For a long stretch of minutes, Klaus shattered his way through the sparse trees surrounding us while Rebekah and I watched in stunned, scared silence. When he was finished, he ran blood-soaked hands through his hair and straightened his crimson-dyed shirt.

"Well, ladies," he snarled, already making his way to the car. "It would seem we'll be on the road again."

"Where to?" Rebekah had the courage to ask.

"Mystic Falls." Klaus sent me a threatening sort of grin. "Sidney and I are going to see her family again."

A/N: And there we have it! Only about a year late. I did promise to keep this series going, didn't I?

All jokes aside, I do owe you guys a very big apology. Life just got in the way. Expect updates on this story and flood my inbox if you don't get them. They may come slowly, but they will come, I swear.

On the business side of things, The Monster Diaries will be the shortest and last installment of The Damsel in Distress Diaries series. I will mostly just be tying up loose ends and finding a way to get Sidney the heck out of Mystic Falls, while also setting the stage for Keeley to take over in The Lunatic Diaries.

I'm not sure when Chapter Two will be here, but if it's not out by the Fourth of July, hunt me down and chain me to my laptop until it gets out.

Next time: Sidney returns to Mystic Falls, but brings with her a monster the gang thought they'd seen the last of. Senior Prank Night becomes a horror movie as Keeley and Stefan are pitted against each other, and Stefan is forced to confront the darkness inside of him. Sidney's loyalty to her family is thrown in jeopardy when she is finally forced to wonder just why they never came after her.