I had been feigning utter incomprehension as he spoke. I had ensured my eyelids fluttered and that my breath had been shallow. I looked like somebody nearly dead. He did not look like he was expecting me to suddenly scramble to my feet and launch myself at him. But whether he was prepared or not I was too weak to capitalize. He caught me by the arms as I sprang for him and with strength I did not expect him to possess, forced me back onto the stone like he was forcing a reluctant lover onto his bed.

‘No,’ he said, and the light caught his tiny black eyes. ‘You do not get to escape from this. Soon you will be with your son – the son who died so magnificently; whose soul I watched depart. But first, there is pain. So much pain …’

I didn’t need to fight him off. Didn’t need to push him back or try to get my fingers in his eyes. All I had to do was keep him there, hunched over me like a pecking bird; my fingers digging into his wrists and keeping him still, above me, distracted …

He never heard Felicity. Never saw the timid little woman scoop up the broken bottle by its neck.

He didn’t make a sound as she stuck it in his back. Just twisted in shock and pain and let go of me to round upon her.

I pulled the glass from his back as he advanced towards her. It made a vile sucking sound as it popped out of his skin.

Favre half turned at that. Parted his grotesque lips to show the tiny row of sharp teeth. For a moment he blocked out all the light. The world beyond the skull room disappeared and there was just him and me and Felicity in a room that reeked of skin and blood.

And then I thought of Stefan. That moment, as I held him, and his soul went wherever it wanted to be.

This thing had been there. Had witnessed his last breath.

I lunged forward with the broken bottle.

And stabbed.

And stabbed.

And stabbed.

FELICITY

Transcript 0012, recorded November 1, 2010

Where do I even start with what happened next? It was me who stopped her stabbing him but by then he was long since dead and I only stopped her because it had gone on long enough. Most of the next few hours were a blur.

We supported each other as we made our way back across the snow. She was bleeding and couldn’t hear out of one ear. She kept stumbling and didn’t know which way was up nor down. And I was trembling enough for the both of us and if I hadn’t kept telling myself that the blood on my wrist was Cordelia’s, I think I’d have started scrubbing myself clean in the snow.