Prologue
Kai Parker feared no man.
Not "father of the millennium" Joshua Parker or his own younger by two minutes twin sister Josette. Sure, he held a soft spot for his mother, a wilting woman who succumbed to a man's rigid beliefs and an illness, but she didn't scare him. Neither did any of his teachers, older relatives, or coven elders, who all believed he needed a good lesson from the school of hard knocks. In his experience, authority figures in general were useless at worst and laughable at best.
Except for Sheila Bennett.
Something about her presence affected the rambunctious boy. She visited Portland throughout his childhood, courtesy of his coven often taking pages out of the book of Bennett. He remembered well his mother jokingly telling Sheila to take him with her when she leaves because he'd only listen to her. Which was true. If Sheila Bennett told him to do something, he did it without nary a verbal complaint.
As a child, he had an affinity for bouncing a miniature beach ball off the back of Josette's head. Blue eyes wet with tears, Jo would turn and yell at him to "quit it!" and sometimes their mom would tell him to simmer down, but he kept on. With Sheila's hard glare and stern words in the equation, he obeyed. As he grew into his rebellious teenage phase, he'd talk back to his father complete with teeth sucking and eye rolling, but even Sheila's quiet presence at the kitchen island was enough to nip his attitude in the bud.
No one could explain it – least of all Kai.
She never defaulted to sayings like "mind your father's words" or "listen to your momma" or any of that "respect your elders" bullshit, nor did she bat her lashes and coddle his feelings like so many teachers in school did. When she spoke to him, it was as if he'd personally affronted her and they were going to hash things out like civilized people.
"There are consequences for your actions, young man". Or Kai's personal favorite: "You make your own choices, Malachai, and there is always a choice."
Sheila was loathe to say something as dismissive as "you were raised better than that" because she couldn't definitively say he had been. The Parker litter had grown considerably since the firstborns, in hopes of a new crop of twins, and she knew his behavior was due to lack of attention – among other things. That was why she'd focus on him and him alone when reprimanding him.
On Kai's end of things, he did not like her – the lean woman with a sharp face, age chasing her now that she, too, had to deal with her own teenage offspring. Hell, he fantasized about his hatred boiling until he snapped her bony wrists or wrung her neck until her chocolate eyes popped out of their sockets. But he damn sure came to respect the woman. He knew to, unquestionably.
When it came to pass that he would slaughter his siblings in their family home and be banished to a hellish dimension, he couldn't really blame Sheila for her part in things. A prison world may have needed Gemini magic but it was a Bennett spell, which needed Bennett blood to bind it. If anything, that spoke volumes to his own coven's ineptitude and less about the witch herself.
See, Joshua had been planning to send his son away. The boy's erratic behavior had taken a turn of the worse, and he couldn't very well risk the backlash once Kai found out his and Jo's merge would not take place as planned. Myth had it a prison world already existed, so what was the harm in creating another one? Sheila, however, had a caveat to her involvement. Decided while on the jostling redeye to Portland the week of May 10th, 1994, in exchange for her blood she got to keep the ascendant. The Gemini elders did not like that and Joshua Parker was staunchly against it, but the clock wasn't in his favor and Sheila had all the time in the world. They did agree with a warning –
"If you open that cage, then you have to deal with the monster inside. He becomes your responsibility."
"Maybe that's been your problem this whole time, Joshua. You've only seen a monster in the place of where your son stood."
x
Fifteen years later and Sheila is all but the legal guardian of her granddaughter Bonnie. The lack of a mother, Sheila's daughter Abby having fled not long after Kai's imprisonment, and Rudy Hopkin's occasional appearances left the burden of actual parenting on Sheila. The years of staying out of supernatural qualms and grading term papers had weathered the woman, but Bennetts are resilient and she planned on passing that down to her descendant. To do that, they would need to leave Mystic Falls.
The quaint Virginian town had seen a resurgence of vampires, and for Bonnie's own safety they moved away. Not far but far enough. Wanting to be closer to the college campus at which she taught, Sheila realized she owed Mystic Falls no favors and didn't mind seeing it shrink in her rearview mirror. Bonnie, though, was devastated. She was leaving behind everything and everyone she'd ever known because her Grams was spooked. That was her home and they were abandoning it. She felt slighted and had no problem voicing her dismay.
Sheila turned down the radio. "You know, there's a parable about a man who is on a sinking boat. People keep rowing by to help him, but he waves them on saying 'God will help me.' This happens a few times. He eventually drowns and when he gets to heaven asks God why He didn't save him. God says He sent three ships."
"Thanks for the sermon," the seventeen year old grumbled. She'd curled in her seat against the passenger door, her body language speaking to how far from her grandmother she wanted to be.
"My point is you can't save those who refuse to un-root. If Mystic Falls burns, it's because the town and everyone in it let it."
Things were quiet after that and Sheila chocked it up to the dramatics of a teenager. They were right down the road, plenty close for Bonnie to spend weekends with her friends or them to come visit her. Of course Bonnie would bounce back, make fast friends at her new school. The girl was a quick learner, tenacious, and outgoing to boot. She'd find herself just fine.
That wasn't the case.
The move had shifted something in the girl. She grew more and more inward. She withdrew even from her friends a few towns over, going to see them less and less. Bonnie went to school, came home, did school work, and then dutifully studied her magic. She didn't stay out late or run through a string of dates, like Sheila expected. That's how teenagers act out; that's how Abby had. Then suddenly, she wondered if this is what the Parkers went through with Malachai. The withdrawal and isolation.
By senior year, Bonnie had enough credits to start taking college classes at Whitmore. It seemed as if she found her stride with her new classmates, which made sense. Apart from her friends back home, she spent a lot of her life around adults. That's where she gleaned her moral compass. But an incident with an associate professor, Atticus Shane who was being mentored by Sheila, sent Bonnie back into her solitude. She graduated high school with honors and booked the first plane out of Virginia for Boston. She'd got early admittance to study chemistry, and she took it without so much as a bat of the eye.
She was only a plane ride or half a day's drive away, but Bonnie's leaving carved a gaping hole in Sheila. She truly loved the girl, wicked smart, sharp in wit, and empathetic to a fault. Coming home to a quiet house became unnerving. One night when she'd had a glass of wine too many and Bonnie wouldn't answer her calls, Sheila went searching for a long forgotten device tucked away in a box in her basement.
Seventeen years into his imprisonment, Sheila makes a case for Malachai Parker.
She'll take whatever is left for him that hasn't wasted away in solitary confinement. She does this as an balm to the Gemini elders. She doesn't need their permission, it's her blood and her ascendant.
The only response is the warning she received in 1994. He's her monster now.
Author's Note: Thoughts? Questions? Prayer requests?