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Infection

Story 2 of the Phantom Series

1

Damon held her hand in his, squeezing it gently after he had pulled her into a deserted side-street and tucked her into the darkest corner behind him. It had only taken a glimpse, but that had been enough to convince him that the trouble would not stop seeking them out, that they were both marked. He imagined that to these new predators, Bonnie now bore some kind of glowing target, but he would be damned if he'd let anything with less than the purest of motives touch her. His other hand covered her mouth to ensure her silence, just in time to stop her from attracting the attention of the humans that only he could see were possessed.

As soon as his hand dropped from where he had clamped it over her mouth, Bonnie felt her jaw began to tremble. She was cold in her thin clothes but that was not the reason why she shivered. She trembled because of the massive amounts of adrenaline racing through her viens, the way it electrified all her muscles and made them twitch. She hadn't been so scared in her whole life, she realised as she moved closer to snuggle against Damon's chest, even if she knew that Damon wouldn't let anything harm her. It wasn't so much that she did not trust that he would protect her, instead it was that whatever hunted her was a more darker, fiercer, ruthless evil than she had ever experienced before.

It took a few minutes, but at last Bonnie's heart began to slow it's frantic pace. He had worried less than a minute ago, he had wondered if it was possible for someone as young as her to have a heart-attack, because he was well aware of human frailties. She might be a witch, a bloody powerful one from what he had seen, but she was still only human and human's were so easy to break. She felt good, pressed tight against him; the shape of her body slotted in beside his so perfectly it was as if it had always meant to be this way. Damon bent his head down and planted a lingering kiss against her forehead, more than content to hold her for a little longer. "I love you, Bonnie, so, so much," he whispered into her hair once he was sure that they were no longer in danger of being caught, hating the cold air between them when he pulled away.

Bonnie smiled and kissed him, part of her unable to comprehend the joy she felt just to be close to him, and the other part wondering if there would ever be such a thing as a normal relationship for them. Was she shallow to be thinking of it when an evil was chasing them? Maybe, but she would rather stand in his arms than stand alone, and this new love was so fragile – one wrong move, one mistake, and it would shatter into a million tiny pieces. If that happened, there would be no way fixing of it or rekindling that passion, and she couldn't stand to think about that.

"What was that?" she asked, the strain etched into her cheeks, "What do you think..."

He touched her face as if he wondered whether she was still whole. Her skin was so soft and perfect that for a few moments he was lost in the sensation of it on his finger-tips. He was reluctant to tell her all of what he knew, but to lie to her felt as if it would be worse. He held her hand, he said, "I think this whole town is on the verge of disaster. I hadn't thought that the evil would disappear once you... but..." he hated thinking about what she had witnessed of him when the darkness had enveloped his mind. Had he been a monster? If only he could know for sure, "I think this whole town is under attack by the same evil that stole any control I had over my own body."

The unbalanced levels of power Bonnie had felt before and after she healed Damon hadn't just been a figment of her imagination, at least she knew that for sure now. She did not have the magic to fix the whole town, and she knew of no other way to exorcise such darkness. If the whole town was going to hell, though she would do something if she could, she would ask Damon to take her far way. She knew he would, because Damon, unlike her, cared only for his own interests.

"Do you know if anyone's infected?" she asked.

"I had to beat Stefan unconcious last night – I have him tied up with vervain strapped to the back of his neck. I haven't seen anyone else but you," he paused, a thought occuring to him, "Have you seen anyone?"

"This morning..." she remembered what she had seen when she'd parted her bedroom curtains, and had seen the clusters of people on the pavements. They had all seemed drunken, intoxicated, but with what she hadn't known. She would have thought that it could have been the same evil as was in Damon, but the lethargic people hadn't seemed angry or twisted. "Oh, Damon... we can't face this alone. What are we going to do?"

"I've never seen anything like this before," Damon admitted as he took Bonnie in his arms tightly and watched as the first of the zombie's came into sight and Damon jumped high into the thick air that hung between every building, alighting on the upper-most level of the fire escape.

TBC