A/N: I know I shouldn't be starting a new fic when I haven't updated Invasion and Restless in forever, but watching tonight's episode, I couldn't help it. I've been meaning to update the other two, but things just kind of got out of hand because I've been writing my own novel, and I've been crazy busy with that. As soon as I have time and inspiration, I'll update.
I hope you like this new one!
Bonnie sat on her bed with her history book propped on her knees. She was trying to study, she really was, but her mind was elsewhere. She knew what her father had said. He had told her that if she didn't bring her grades up, he would ship her off to some boarding school, and she couldn't have that. This town would burn to the ground without her, and she knew it.
So, she was trying to study so she would be able to pass her test on Monday. Because if she did, it was goodbye Mystic Falls, and hello some school in the middle of nowhere. But her mind was still preoccupied with the newest situation. Another big bad rolled into town, and no one, not even the Originals, could figure out what it was. All anyone knew was that it was dangerous, and practically invisible.
Stefan's theory was that it wasn't a physical being because they had all searched every corner of the town and came up empty. So, he said, that it was either very good a hiding, or something that didn't have a body. Damon had called him a crazy fool for thinking that, and Elena had stayed mutual. Bonnie didn't know what to think. All she knew was that it was dangerous, and they needed to get rid of it.
It had taken Caroline's mother. That was its first victim. Except that it didn't really kill her. No, Damon had killed her because if he didn't, then she would have killed everyone. A couple of nights ago when Caroline went home, she found her mother in the living room. She knew that there was something wrong, so she had called Bonnie, and Bonnie had called Stefan for muscle.
There was no way to describe the horror that had become of the Sherriff. She was blank-faced, and grey-skinned. Her eyes…she didn't have eyes. She just had large gaping black holes. Stefan and Damon had showed up, and tried to move her, thinking that she was dead. She wasn't quite dead because when they touched her, she jumped up, screaming. Her voice was completely inhuman, and it didn't belong to her.
"This is a warning." She had said, and the voice she had spoken in still made Bonnie shiver. "I am the end. I am destruction, and this is just the beginning. Death has come for all beings. It is time for a new species to take over. The queen and king will unite, and together they will bring the world to ash."
And then she had attacked them, like a wild animal. It had taken all of them by surprise, when she jumped at Caroline. Bonnie could still hear her friend's screams. The Sherriff had dug her hand in to her daughter's chest, and squeezed on her heart. Bonnie was almost sure that Caroline would die at the hands of her mother. But after Damon recovered from his shock, he reached forward, and decapitated her.
Caroline would never be okay. Bonnie and Elena had stayed with her for the first couple of nights. They had stayed by her side, and each night Caroline had cried herself to sleep. Tyler had been out of town at the time, but he was back now, and he was staying with her. Elena and she took turns calling in and checking up. Each time the answer was the same. She's not okay, but give her some time.
And every night since then, they had gone out in teams, looking for apparently nothing. Bonnie's eyes floated over to her clock. It was almost ten o'clock on Friday night, which meant that it was almost her turn. Studying would have to wait. The safety of the town was more important. If worst came to worst, she could always get someone to compel her father into letting her stay. That would be a last option kind of thing, but what had to be done, had to be done.
She jumped off of her bed, and went over to her closet. Last time she had learned the hard way to dress warmly. For four hours she froze her ass off in the forest because she hadn't dressed properly. She should have known to wear a coat since it was late fall, but she had been so worked up that it totally slipped her mind. Now, Bonnie pulled on a long sleeve shirt with a tank top under it, a hoodie, and her coat.
A tapping on her window startled her. She looked over her shoulder, and slowly made her way to the window. There was no one hanging there. She took a step closer, and watched as a rock hit her window lightly. She sighed, and went over to it. The window groaned as she pushed it opened, and she leaned out of it. Standing in her back yard was Damon, looking up at her with a smirk.
"Where's Jeremy?" She called down, irritated. Tonight it was supposed to be her and Jeremy going out. Damon and Stefan went this morning. She had specifically requested that she not be paired with Damon because she knew that she couldn't handle him until sunrise.
He shrugged. "Called me and said something came up, and that he couldn't make it. I tried to pawn it off on Stefan, but he's been getting lazy."
She rolled her eyes at him. Surely this was going to be a long night. A really long night. And if she had to kill Damon before morning, then that wasn't her fault. Jeremy could take the blame because he bailed, or Stefan could because he made his brother go. It would be so much easier with Stefan because at least he didn't get on her nerves so much that she wanted to claw her own eyes out.
"I'll be right down."
"Jump!" He called, looking up at her with a wider smirk.
She rolled her eyes again, and slammed the window shut. The last thing she wanted to do was jump out of a window, and have to trust Damon to catch her. She wouldn't trust Damon to babysit a plant, let alone catch her. He would probably let her fall just so that he could laugh at her and say did you really think that I could catch you? She didn't want that. She had her pride.
Her father wasn't home tonight, so she didn't have to worry about trying to sneak out. On her way outside, she stopped by the kitchen, and grabbed a handful of grapes, and a couple of cookies. She stuffed them in a sandwich bag, and stuffed the bag in the pocket of her coat. She knew that she would get hungry later. At the last moment, she grabbed her cellphone that was lying on the table.
Outside, Damon was leaning up against the railing. He was dressed in his usual black leather jacket, with his arms crossed over his chest. He cocked his head at her when she came out. "Cold?" He asked, raising one eyebrow.
She walked past him, bumping him with her shoulder. "I'm not going to freeze to death, Damon. Some of us actually get cold when it's minus ten." She walked in front of him, intent of ignoring him for as much as she could. Bonnie opened the passenger's door to his car, and slipped inside.
"No need to be snippy, Bonnie. We get each other all night long." He said when he got into the car. He started the engine, and pulled out of the drive way. After a long moment of silence, he informed her, "we're heading to the cemetery tonight."
She arched an eyebrow, turning toward him. Why would they go to the cemetery? The first place they thought to look was in the cemetery, and they had come up blank. Stefan and Alaric had checked the place several times after that, and still there was nothing there. It was pointless to look there. Plus, whatever this thing was, it wasn't stupid. It would know that the cemetery was the obvious place.
He sighed, shaking his head as if he knew her thoughts. Then he turned around, and with one hand, fished around in the backseat for a moment before producing a small leather book. He threw it at her. "Alaric found that in the house. It's one of Emily's witchy cookbooks. I thought that we found them all, but apparently we didn't."
She flipped through a couple of pages, and then stopped. Her heart fell into her toes, and her ears started ringing. She read the page once…twice…three times, just to makes sure that what she was reading was true. None of the words were changing. It was there, imprinted on the page. Bonnie looked at Damon with large green eyes. "This takes dark magic, Damon. A lot of dark magic." She said in a hushed tone.
Damon nodded. "Can you do it?" He caught her eyes, and a she thought she saw a flicker of concern cross them, but just like that it was gone, leaving her to believe that it was just a trick of the light.
Bonnie read the spell again. To summon a dark spirit. She read the title over and over before looking at Damon. Could she do the spell? Yeah, she could probably do it. But that didn't mean that she wanted to. It might help, but it might not. And it would be great if it did. If she knew that it would help, she wouldn't even hesitate. But there was the chance that it wouldn't.
If it didn't, Bonnie would be opening herself up to all sorts of evil. She didn't know what could happen. The witches could take away her power, which she wouldn't totally mind. That was the best case scenario. The worst case was death. No, the worst case was worse than death. Because death was peaceful, it was easy. What would happen to her would be unthinkable. An eternity of burning. And she wasn't sure if she wanted that.
She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, and nodded at him. "Yeah, I should be able to."
He looked at her with a furrowed brow for a moment before asking, "how bad will it be?" His voice was low, and she knew that there was concern in his eyes now. She could see it, and it wasn't fading.
Bonnie sucked in a breath. "Does it matter?" She asked with a cold laugh. "If it helps, who cares about the consequences?" She shook her head, turning to look out of the window. They were passing by things at a speeding that made everything blur. She couldn't help it. She wondered if this was going to be the last time she saw her town. One life, for hundred, she told herself.
"Well, we still kind of need you, Bonnie. If you haven't noticed, this town isn't exactly crawling with witches." He paused, and his eyes were burning holes into the back of her head. "Tell me this: is it going to kill you?"
"It could." She nodded, still not looking at him. "Any dark magic could kill because witches are a force of nature – good magic." She lowered her voice. "All dark magic has consequences."
He was silent again as if he was weighing her words carefully. "One a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that you're going to die?" He asked her.
Bonnie turned to him then, and let out another cold laugh, shaking her head. "Six." Or seven. She wasn't really sure about it, but it was a high chance. "But the chances of some evil spirit latching onto me are much higher. Like a nine." And that's what would be bad. If she was possessed, she would be alive, but she wouldn't have control of her body. And whatever did would probably do some evil thing, which would make her wish that she was dead.
"Sometimes…" he said slowly, carefully, "witches tie someone's life to someone else, so they can't be killed unless the other person is." Her eyes widened at his words, and she watched him with her heart beating in her chest. "If you could tie your life to someone, then that would guarantee that you'll live." His eyes caught hers and they stayed like that for a long time.
Then she looked down. "I don't know if I have that kind of power." She said, chewing on her bottom lip. A tying spell took a lot of magic, and it took a mixture of good and evil magic. What would Grams say? She would probably shake her head and say something like baby, sometimes we've got to do things we don't want to in order to save people we love. She wished that she had Grams now.
Damon laughed, giving her a smirk. "Yeah, you do."
She sucked in a breath, glaring at him a little. "Whose life would I tie mine to, anyway? Yours?" Bonnie laughed, and turned her head to look out of the window again. She expected a snarky remark from him, but she just got silence. Her head snapped back in his direction. "You're joking? Please tell me you're joking." She gasped, and then dragged her hands down her face.
"I wasn't too pleased about it either, Bonnie. I mean; what if you go off and decide to be the big hero, and then end up getting us both killed?" He scowled. "But Alaric made the wonderful point that no one values their life more than me, so there was no one better."
That was a good point. There was no one in the world that cared more if he lived or died than Damon Salvatore, which should make him perfect. And he would be. If he wasn't Damon. Because she still didn't trust Damon, and she barely liked him. The last thing she needed was him to go prancing around dangling the fact that he controls her life over her head. But, was there another choice?
And then there was the fact that tying meant more than dying or living. If she tied their lives together, that would also put an empathy link in. And that meant that she would be able to feel whatever he was feeling and vice versa. That didn't seem great. No, that seemed horrible. He'd probably just hurt himself for spite when she did something that he didn't agree with. She didn't want to be tied to Damon like that.
But there wasn't another choice.
She sighed, and pushed the car door open when Damon stopped. There isn't another way. This has to be done. It's the only way to keep me alive. It's going to be okay. This has to happen. She told herself over and over as she made her way to the Salvatore crypt. She knew that there would be an alter in there for her to use. Bonnie dug her fingernails into the skin on her palms as Damon pushed the heavy stone door open.
The room was lit with candles, and in the center was an altar with herbs and a bowl. Bonnie went to stand in front of it, and started putting things in the bowl. She kept her mind focused on the task at hand, not looking at Damon who was looming behind her. His eyes were boring holes into the back of her head, she could feel it. Every muscle in her body was tense, and her heart beat was erratic.
"I'm not doing the summoning spell tonight; it'll take more power than I have." She said dryly.
He didn't say anything.
"Come around front and give me your hand." She ordered, and when he was in front of him, she took his hand. Bonnie picked up the dagger that was lying on the altar, and used it to make a long cut in his palm. She turned it upside down, and watched as the blood dripped in the bowl. She then did the same to hers.
Bonnie struck a match, and before throwing it into the bowl, she looked at him. He wasn't saying anything, but he caught her eyes and nodded grimly. She was hoping that he would say no because this would be their last chance to walk away. But he didn't. He remained completely silent, watching her work the spell. Bonnie dropped the match into the bowl, and placed her hands above the fire.
Power, both good and evil, rushed through her body. Non-existent wind caught the both of them in a tornado, sending their hair flying every which way. Bonnie kept her eyes closed tightly, determined to stay grounded. It would be so easy to lose herself in the power like so many witches probably did, but she couldn't. She thought of her friends, of her family, of how they all needed her. That's how she stayed grounded.
The wind died, and the fire from the bowl and all of the candles flickered out. Through the darkness, Bonnie could see Damon looking lost and wind-blown. She put her hands around the bowl, and lifted it to her. It was burning in her hands, but she ignored it. "Drink." She ordered.
He took the bowl from her, and did as she asked, and then handed it back to her.
She drank next, and it took all of her willpower not to spit it back up. It burned her tongue, and she could feel it go all the way down into her stomach. Bonnie gripped the edge of the altar to keep herself from falling down. After the feeling past, she looked up at Damon.
He raised a brow. "Did it work?"
She shrugged, and picked up the dagger again. Bonnie made another cut in her palm. Damon opened his hand to reveal a cut, identical to hers, in his hand. "It worked." She said dryly.
It was just the beginning.