Stefan's Diaries: The Ripper (The Vampire Diaries #4)

August 1888

How much can change in a year.

It's one of those phrases that I've caught in conversation, one that rattles in my mind like a pebble along a road, a vestige of my previous life. Once upon a time, a year was weighty, substantial. It was filled with possibilities: of meeting the love of your life, of having children, of dying. It was a stepping-stone on the path of life - a path that I no longer walk.

A year was one thing. Twenty years ago, when my entire world turned upside down, was something else entirely.

A year ago, I came to England, a land so steeped in history it makes the prospect of eternity seem less overwhelming. And although the setting had changed, I stayed the same. I still looked like I had the day I turned into a vampire, and the same thoughts - of Katherine, who turned me, of Damon, my brother, of the death and destruction that I could never, ever seem to erase - still haunted my dreams. Time had been steadily

galloping forward, but I remained as before, a demon desperate for redemption.

If I were a human, I'd be comfortably in middle age by now. I'd have a wife, children, perhaps even a son I'd prepare to take over my family business.

Before the Salvatore family business became murder.

It's a legacy I've spent the past twenty years trying to correct, hoping that somehow an eternity of good deeds could make up for the mistakes I have made, the blood I have shed.

And in some ways, it has; England was good for me. Now, I'm an honest man - or as honest as a man can be when his past is as wretched as mine.

I no longer feel guilty for draining the blood of woodland creatures. I am, after all, a vampire. But I am not a monster. Not anymore.

Still, time does not touch me as it does humans, nor does each new year turn over with the breathless anticipation of those who live. All I can hope is that each year will carry me further and further from the destruction of my youth with no fresh pain on my conscience. If I could have that, it would be my salvation.