Bonnie Bennett was glowing.
No, she was literally glowing.
Fire was spreading through her veins, lighting her up from within. Her face was twisted in agony as sparks emanated from her flesh, her skin glowing a hellish red.
"Bonnie!"
Damon was rushing to her side, and despite his superhuman speed, you could see in his eyes, he wasn't going to reach her in time.
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Three weeks earlier-
Bonnie keeled over, hands on her knee's as she gasped for breath. Damon flew past her, running probably only half as fast as he was capable, and yet Bonnie had no hope of catching up to him.
"No fair." She panted, knowing he'd hear her. "You promised no super speed."
"I lied."
His voice came from behind her and startled her. She spun around, hand on her hips in annoyance, a glare fixed on her gorgeous, if a little sweaty, face.
Damon immediately smirked. "Aw come on Bon-Bon, you didn't actually think I'd let you beat me?"
Bonnie glared at him, her eyes narrowing. "Shame on me for thinking a douchebag like you was capable of telling the truth."
"Douchebag?" Damon questioned, mock horrified. "I prefer good old fashioned handsome devil, thank you."
"Nope. Douchebag suits you better." She said dryly, holding out her hand for the water bottle he was holding.
"Ouch." He pretended to be hurt as he tossed her the bottle. She rolled her eyes and took a swig of the water, grateful for the refreshing liquid. "Come on, we have to go."
"Okay, okay, but it was you who wanted to have this race." Damon reminded her as they walked back to his car.
"Only because you kept bragging about how you were so much faster than me." Bonnie argued indignantly.
"And I was right. Damon Salvatore does not lose to girls. Or witches for that matter."
Damon looked far too pleased with himself as he said this, wearing the tolerance Bonnie had for him a little too thin.
"Genere impetum." She muttered under her breath, performing a quick and complex hand movement behind his back.
"You say something little witch?" Damon asked, turning to look back at her, before he was foiled mid turn by a tree branch snapping around and whipping his feet out from under him.
He landed on his ass with a thump, looking comically surprised and suitably disgruntled.
"Ooh, beaten by a girl and a witch." Bonnie jeered sarcastically as she stepped over him, biting back her laughter.
"Bitch." Damon cursed as he got up, dusting the dirt off the seat of jeans resentfully.
"I heard that." She called back as she reached his car, sliding into the passenger seat, feeling extremely satisfied.
Damon huffily joined her in the car, starting it up and driving out of the woods and back onto the road without speaking to her.
Bonnie had spent years hating Damon, and yes, she still didn't like him, but they were allied now. Allied and on an adventure/road trip she was already wondering if she'd regret. They were on a mission to take down a vampire coven in Berlin that were keeping Stefan and Caroline captive.
The drive was a strained one. It took them several days to drive through the states, eventually arriving in New York. This was their last stop before they flew to Berlin.
Bonnie fretted about the time they were wasting but they were heading into a hornet's nest of danger. The coven had many, many ancient vampires, ones barely younger than the Originals, and many witches protecting them. Damon wouldn't be able to fight them all off with brute force, he'd be outnumbered one hundred to one. So, Bonnie needed some blood crystals. They were an extremely rare and invaluable magical item that would provide the power the two of them would need to walk undetected into the coven and back out. Ultimately it was a necessary waste of time.
Stealth was the name of this precarious game.
The crystals would cloak Bonnie and Damon, hiding their respective vampire and witch scents, allowing them to enter the coven as "humans".
And of course, Damon had fucked a witch about 70 years earlier who owned some of these crystals.
It was the middle of the night when they finally arrived in NY, Bonnie was half asleep and feeling travel worn. "Once we get these crystals we need to get a hotel room, I need to shower, and sleep. Gotta be fresh to keep the magic flowing." She informed her companion, climbing out of the car, and stretching out her body.
"Not to mention I need to find some nice people to eat." Damon countered, ignoring the look she shot him.
They were on a quiet side street filled with dark shop windows, a few neon signs and flickering street lamps breaking the darkness.
"Okay, its dark, so none of this witch's bitchy juju can interfere with my daylight ring, but it's still likely she'll do that brain bubbling thing you're so fond of, or worse. So, you may have to get those crystals all by yourself." Damon reasoned as he gently pressed on the door of the shop nearest them.
Bonnie nodded, steeling herself as the door swung open ominously.
"Huh." Damon hovered a foot in the doorway, a triumphant smirk gracing his features as he stepped inside.
"Guess she doesn't live here anymore, hopefully she still owns the sho- "Damon was cut off by two loud bangs as two long wooden rods burst quite suddenly out of the wall, tearing through his flesh and leather jacket with surprising ease, skewering him right through, the pointed steel ends sticking out of his back, covered in blood and skin.
Damon's reaction was minimal but the grunt he suggested pain, and he hissed a bit as blood started streaming down his chest and back.
Bonnie bit back several reactions of her own, including holding in a high pitched scream she only held in managed to hold in because she knew he'd never let her live it down. Once she'd composed herself she followed him through the door, ducked under his arm and come up in front of him inside the store, where she became aware that there were wires attached to the stakes.
Almost in unison the companion's eyes followed the wires to a bomb screwed into the wall.
"Well this feels oddly familiar." Damon commented dryly, clearly putting on bravado for Bonnie's sake as a wide pool of blood gathered at his feet.
"Shit. What do I do?" Bonnie whispered, trying not to panic as Damon grimaced, his face scarily pale.
"You need to go and find those fucking crystals, and you need to do it quickly, because these wooden suckers are barbed and draining me of blood at an alarming rate." Damon fixed his intense blue eyes on the witch and grew deadly serious. "Bonnie I will be unconscious in less than ten minutes, and I fall down, pulling these wires, we are both going to be blown to smithereens."
Bonnie could feel the pressure mounting, her focus stuck on how his icy eyes were growing dark with pain, the metallic stench of blood filling her nose as she nodded mutely.
She turned away, stepping round the wires with care and continued into the dark shop. Her hands shook as she went, she was afraid, not only of what could be waiting for her in the dark shop, but of failing, and the fact that every minute she waited Damon was in horrendous pain. This didn't bring her the joy it usually would, not right now, in this creepy shop.
"Be brave Bonnie." She whispered fiercely, reminding herself to be strong, she had to rescue her friends, she had to be the strong woman and witch her Grams had raised her to be.
Bonnie pulled a bundle of sage out of her pocket, held it to her lips and muttered some Gaelic words. Immediately the sage starting emanating light, showing her the room she was standing in, the sage a becoming a light for her, but virtually invisible to anyone else's eyes.
The shop looked abandoned. It was still filled with witchy items, nothing particularly dark but all old and covered in cobwebs. There was still old money in the till at the counter and half-finished potions on the work bench, leading Bonnie to believe that the witch they needed was very possibly dead already. The witch searched high and low, her heart pounding like crazy, her mind all too aware of the time ticking past. She looked everywhere she could think of, tapped the walls, pulled up loose floorboards, cast anti-cloaking spells, pulled apart the chandelier, but her search was fruitless. She couldn't find the blood crystals anywhere.
Upset that she couldn't find them, but horribly aware that she'd been looking for almost ten minutes she turned back empty handed and rushed back to Damon's side.
Her least favourite Salvatore brother had zero colour left in his face and was swaying dangerously on his feet, entirely soaked in blood. Bonnie hovered on the edge of the pool surrounding him, reaching out to steady his shoulder. "Damon? Damon, I can't find them." She didn't apologize, the desperation and shame in her voice made how sorry she was clear enough.
"Never mind." Damon cracked a watery smile. "We'll chase it up. For now, you need to find a knife and try and dig these out." His voice was weak, his usual sass barely evident as he blinked heavily.
Bonnie glanced around before grabbing a large knife off a shelf. "Okay what do I have to do?" She asked apprehensively as she stepped through the blood to stand right in front of him, face to face, right between the wires.
"You need to make the wounds bigger so we can rip them out without pulling the plug on this bomb." Damon was fading fast, his words were slurring together, any human would have been unconscious by now and Bonnie was not as keen as she thought she would be to stab a knife in to Damon Salvatore's chest.
He turned your mom into a vampire, killed Jeremy, twice, ruined everything, many times, and destroyed Elena.
"Argh!" Bonnie shouted as she dug the knife into him with renewed motivation, fuelling herself to complete the gruesome task with memories of why she hated him.
"Ow." Damon whispered sarcastically, his head hanging low, his forehead resting on Bonnie's shoulder as worked her knife into his flesh around the bolts, the sound and feel of these actions almost enough to make both of them sick.
After a few adrenaline charged moments Bonnie thought she might have the bolts ready. Damon appeared to agree with her, he braced one hand on her shoulder and then, without warning, gripped a bolt and tore it from his chest with a blood curdling scream.
"Fuck!" He shouted as his whole body shook and he almost collapsed, Bonnie caught him, but the petite witch struggled to support his weight. "OHMYGOD." Damon roared as he tore out the other bolt, carefully setting both the barbed stakes, covered in his flesh and blood, against the wall.
The danger of exploding now eliminated they both felt to the floor, Bonnie now almost as covered in his blood as he was.
Damon's breathing was raspy as he tried to get up from the floor, he was unsuccessful however, he'd lost too much blood, and he was losing consciousness. Bonnie, on her knees, caked in blood, hauled him up to a sitting position and leaned him against the wall. Unsure of what to do or of how she could help she put her hands over the wounds, putting pressure on them, trying to stop the bleeding before she was left with a clinically dead vampire to explain to the neighbours that would be waking up to this apparent crime scene in only a few hours.
"I need blood." Damon's voice was barely audible, but the desperation rang clear. Bonnie was out of options, she couldn't exactly go catch a person herself, or leave him here for that matter, and any blood this witch might have had on this shop had long since dried up.
Even though it hurt the very essence of her being, and went against all of her instincts, her pride, her heritage, Bonnie came to terms with the fact that she was the only blood source available quite quickly. She knew she couldn't rescue Stefan and Caroline without him, and if she had to sacrifice her dignity and most sacred morals to do so, so be it.
She turned around and sat down beside Damon, taking his lolling head in her hands and bringing him to her neck. It felt so unnatural, so intimate, such an invasion of her soul, but she had to be brave.
"Drink from me." She encouraged the barely awake Damon. "Drink my blood."
She wasn't sure if it was the will to live or the proximity to her pulsing veins, but Damon's predator instincts kicked in and his fangs extended, his eyes going dark and bloody as he sunk his teeth into her neck.
Bonnie cried out as he tore into her skin, the adrenaline, pain, stress and intensity of the moment overwhelming her, and she sobbed as he latched onto her throat and drank from her hungrily.
The angle was wrong and it hurt horribly until Damon grew conscious enough to bring his hand up to hold her head, guiding her to a better angle, one that hurt considerably less and allowed a better blood flow. Damon was in survival mode, he was on deaths door and drinking to heal, gulping Bonnies sweet essence fervently, growling as he did so and wrapping his arms around her possessively, holding her to him as he drained her of as much of her blood as he dared.
Once he had regained a clear mind Damon let her go, unlatching from her neck gingerly, his wounds healed but tender. He was aware of how much this act went against Bonnie's code, and he had no words to express his gratitude to the witch, no way of repaying her the debt he now owed.
Silently, the tears on her cheeks gnawing at his conscious, Damon bit into his own wrist before retracting his fangs, his eyes returning to their icy blue. He held his wrist out to her.
"Drink." He ordered, his voice soft. Bonnie eyes his extended wrist with disgust but after a moment she accepted, taking his hand and arm into her hands. She held his wrist to her mouth and with a grimace she pressed her lips to his skin and drank his blood.
She pushed his hand away after the first swallow and immediately started coughing. She managed to keep it down though and felt her newly smooth neck in wonder when the bite healed instantly.
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"What now?" Bonnie asked several minutes later, after they had fled the scene and were safely back in Damon's car, headed to a motel, still covered in drying blood and lacking crystals.
Neither of them wanted to talk about the intimacy they had just shared, so focusing on the new plan was their only option.
"Well I have been caught in a similar trap to that before, courtesy of vampire hunter. Unfortunately there's none of them left, however, most of the ones who used to be alive, worked for my diabolical sire, Katherine Pierce. I'd put my money on those crystals hanging around Katherine's neck on some beach somewhere." Damon informed Bonnie, who's heart sank even lower than it already was when Katherine was mentioned, her initial excitement at Damon's lead fading instantaneously.
"How are we supposed to find her?" She despaired as they pulled up outside a seedy looking motel.
"Well I just so happen to have a brother with whom the bitch herself is still infatuated with." Damon leaned over and pulled a postcard out of the glove box.
It was from Katherine, addressed to Stefan, and clearly sent from France.
"Oh my god, we have a genuine lead." Bonnie said almost excitedly as her hope reignited.
Damon smirked and shook his head.
"Yeah, now all we have to do is steal from the craftiest woman in history."