18. The Murder of One

Complete story — includes the ending

Damon and Stefan make plans to destroy Klaus with their new weapon. Klaus and Rebekah convince Finn to cooperate with their plans to break the link when they reunite him with Sage. Rebekah gets carried away with her own plans out of revenge against Damon for using her to steal her memories of the remaining white oak wood. She stakes Damon with a dagger, then takes him to Klaus' mansion, chains him to the ceiling and cuts him to bleed out his protective vervain. Klaus coerces Bonnie into breaking Esther's linking spell. Bonnie is unsure if she can perform the unlinking spell, but Klaus threatens her mother and shows her that he has Kol watching Jeremy. Stefan lures Finn out of the bar where he was having tequila with Sage, and fails to stake him, but Elena and Matt manage to use Matt's stake to kill Finn. As Finn expires, Bonnie successfully breaks the linking spell making Finn the only Original to die. At the mansion, Rebekah manipulates Damon's hallucinations so he believes he and Elena are about to kiss after she saves Damon and urges him to drink her blood to recover. But then Damon realizes how desperate Rebekah is for attention and love, and that she is actually torturing him for violating these feelings rather than for tricking her to access her memories. Stefan is attacked by Sage, who is upset over Finn's demise. Sage is about to end Stefan when she coughs up blood and dies. Stefan, Elena, and Caroline realize that if an Original is killed, their entire vampire bloodline dies. Stefan goes to negotiate with Klaus and finds Damon bloody and half-conscious. To Damon's disappointment he brings eight of the stakes with him in exchange for his brother. Klaus compels Damon to admit there are actually eleven stakes in total. After failing to use his own stake to kill Klaus Stefan hands it over and promises to bring the other two. Tired of revenge, Rebekah releases Damon as a sign of good faith and leaves with the eight stakes. Caroline and Elena puzzle over the vampire bloodlines and realize that Tyler is a part of Klaus', and he would die if Klaus were killed. Stefan and Elena share a conversation about their feelings and Elena admits she does not know how to feel about her love for both Stefan and Damon. Damon goes to retrieve the last white oak stake but finds that Alaric's vampire hating alter ego has hidden it and Alaric can not even guess where.