I turned my face away from the light streaming through the penthouse room Katherine had compelled the concierge to give us when we got here two weeks earlier. I cracked my back pleasantly and sat up. My neck still stiff from Katherine's feeding the night before. She was getting rough. I held the tender spot on my neck where the teeth markings were just the night before. I gave her mine if she gave me hers. I stood up standing naked in the Italian sunshine my body now a sun kissed gold. The scars on my chest the only thing unchanged. I turned back to watch Katherine sleep and then dove into bed. She pounced on top of me pinning me to the bed barring her teeth like a wild animal the blood rushing to her face. "Gotcha." I said, and her expression turned playful.
"You're getting better at that." She said, and raked her fingers through my hair.
"Really?" I asked.
"No." she shot back collapsing into my arms.
I let out a throaty laugh and let my fingers run through her black hair. "So what's on today's agenda?"
"Same thing we do everyday Pinky." She said and I scoffed.
"What?" she snapped sitting up pulling the sheet around her body.
"It's nothing." I said standing up and walking across the room. "I'm gonna shower."
Katherine appeared in front of me, "You think I'm wasting my time?"
"I think, you're a vampire," I reached out and caressed her cheek, "a beautiful, strong, confident woman." She leaned into the palm of my hand, "that's fooling herself, into thinking her ex still has deep down hidden feelings." she shoved me aside extremely gently and walked back over to the bed. "What is it about Stefan? You, Rebekah, Elena it's like you're all under some weird spell."
"We see the same thing in him as we do in you. You're good men." I shook my head at her answer.
"The three of you are just pathetic."
"This from the guy who's been banging his ex-girlfriend's look alike for the past two weeks." She pinched her lips together, and slid on a pair of black panties.
"I know whose bed I'm in." I answered back turning on the shower, when I turned back Katherine was almost fully clothed.
"I really don't think you do." She shot back and then moved across the room pushing me up against the wall in two seconds flat. She turned my head to the side. "When was the last time you had vervain Matt?" she asked as I struggled against her."Not anytime soon." She cooed and then pushed me aside. "You forget. You're swimming with sharks."
"You forget." I said garbbing the letter opener on the desk, "I've had your blood in my system for days now." She turned back to look at me.
"What are you doing?" she asked unamused.
"I wonder if I turned how long you think it'd take for Rebekah to track you down? I think you'd be running all over again. I think…well I'm done thinking. You think." I stabbed the letter opener into my throat and flashed to my mom. The image of her keeled over on the kitchen floor. Katherine's wrist was at my lips instantly and when my eyes finally fluttered open she was sitting at the edge of the bed and she wasn't happy.
"A whole day wasted because you decided to test my patience." She stood up and grabbed me roughly by my chin, "Good, you aren't in transition. Are you trying to make my entire existence miserable?"
I smiled cracking my neck, "You're pretty when you pout." I said sliding across the bed the sheets bunching up around the lower parts of my body.
She didn't flinch, "What you did, it's not a game. For some reason Rebekah's infatuated with you and if word got out I turned you."
I waved her off, "I'm taking a shower and when I'm done. We're getting room service." I leaned in and kissed her gently on the forehead
"I get it Matt." She said walking into the bathroom as I turned on the water for the second time that day.
"What do you get?" I snapped acidly.
"You're running, and hey that's why you wanted to come along on my little adventure you thought you'd pick up a few tricks of the trade. Hell maybe even learn how to shut off those pesky emotions that keep popping up, well you're human. It doesn't work that way. Rebekah will find you no matter where you run to. She will murder everyone you love and don't kid yourself into thinking you can take her on cause she is just as every bit as vicious as Klaus. And forget about turning off your emotions, she'll make sure you feel every second of it."
"When you have something new to tell me, that's when I'll listen." I got into the shower.
"You definitely got meaner." She said walking away.
"You have that effect on men." I shouted back.
The music boomed through the abandoned warehouse loudly around Katherine and I as we danced wildly to a dubstep remix of Emergency by Aimee Allen. The vampire's hair bobbed from side to side in perfect rhythm as my hips ground against hers. My world was on fire and everything seemed pleasantly out of focus. The drinking and drugs had lit a match and I could feel it all. "You smell great!" Katherine said to me and I smiled leaning in for a kiss. The pair of fighting for control over the lip lock, I'd been much more submissive when we'd first played this game but I'd changed since then. Even though her dominance was inevitable I still put up a fight. I slammed her up against one of the columns nearby and she gasped, sliding my hand under her shirt. I pulled away and grazed her left cheek with my right hand and she pulled two fingers into her mouth. I smiled my left hand gripping softly on her left breast, I pulled my hand free and our mouths crashed together again like an ocean sweeping across a shoreline. I slid my right hand down the front of her pants, and found what I was looking for. She moaned as the pace of the music changed and my fingers moved slower to time with our new rhythm. "You're good at that for someone whose only had a feel years practice." She bit the bottom of my ear lobe and I shivered. My left hand reached behind her and her I unhooked her bra, sliding it off and shoving it into the back pockets of my jeans my right hand still moving inside her. I moved my left hand back to her breasts and Katherine pulled my head to the left biting into my neck. I grinned as the familiar pain caused the front of my jeans to tighten even more. That's when I saw her watching us, Bonnie.
Katherine's teeth sank deeper into my flesh and I hissed in pain with Bonnie's eyes on me. She wasn't real I told myself. She was trying to say something but I couldn't hear her and then it was like her voice was too loud, drowning out the music and bringing my whole world back into alignment. "Matt!" she boomed, and Katherine drank more deeply. Then she was right in front of me, "Matt." She said clearly in a level tone. The music was gone, and so was everyone on the dance floor, including Katherine, "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Where the hell are we?" I asked. The club had turned grey and yet everything seemed so bright.
"The other plane, it's a spell Matt. What are you doing with Katherine?" she asked again, "Caroline and the others said you weren't picking up their calls."
"The others?" I asked.
"Faye. Lee." she answered.
"So I miss a few phone calls and you do some big hocus pocus to find me." I snapped back.
"Something like that." Bonnie replied sternly.
"But you'd let Caroline die." I threw my hands up in the air, "You want to know what I'm doing Bonnie? I'm having fun."
"With Katherine." Bonnie said.
"Yeah, with Katherine!"
"Well now I'm confused cause isn't she the vampire that compelled you to die in a fight against Tyler? "
"Yeah!" My blood was boiling.
"And her you can forgive, but me… your real friend." She shook her head, "You are losing yourself Matt, forgetting who you are as a person. You're Matt Donovan reliable, loyal, trustworthy,kind."
"I'm not a fucking puppy!" I shouted grabbing her by the shoulders, "I'm a man! My mother is dead! Vicki is dead! People that relied on me! Caroline is dead!" I let Bonnie go and turned to the column I had pinned Katherine to and smashed my fist into it.
"Caroline isn't dead Matt you saved her." Bonnie whispered after a moment of silence had passed.
I closed my eyes remembering how I took my eyes off her while she tumbled to the ground. "We're done here." I finally said, "Go away Bonnie."
The grey world was gone and Katherine pulled away from my neck, my blood smeared on her face. I grabbed her violently and pulled her in for the kiss of my life as my hands continued their work.
"Matt." The sound of my name woke me up gently. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock 1 in the morning, a day had gone by since my Bonnie experience and I was in no mood for a repeat. I sat up throwing the blankets off my naked body.
"Matt." The voice said again, but it wasn't Bonnie's.
I focused, "Matt." It said again coming from the living room part of the suite. I pulled on the pair of boxer briefs I'd discarded earlier that evening and grabbed the stake I kept by my bed side. I slid open the doors and there he was standing beside the coffee table, Jeremy Gilbert. "Finally." He said, "Jeez."
"Jere, is that you?" I asked to be sure and he smiled.
"Look man, I don't have much time. Elena's in danger."
"What?"
"Danger!" he said more loudly.
"No I heard what you said, I mean t what kind of danger?"
"Oh, I haven't exactly gotten this ghost thing down just yet. It doesn't come with a manual." I stifled a laugh and he went on, "Kol is pretty much trying to raise the spirit of his dead girlfriend, apparently he needs the blood of a Petrova because that was the blood that turned him. I don'y know if I'm saying this right."
"They're using Elena for some sort of spell to resurrect Kol's dead girl, and they need her blood because she's a descendant of the bloodline that made him transition?" I paraphrased making sure this was clicking right. Jeremy nodded, "So where are they?"
"The St. Martine's on Capthuleta. The belfry." Jeremy said and suddenly he wasn't the only spirit in the room.
The voice came from behind me, "Matty, don't." I turned around to see my mom.
"Mom." I said barely above a whisper, and she smiled sadly at me, nodding.
"Hey hon." Hot tears started to stream down my face, "Oh sweetie don't cry it wasn't that bad."
"Speak for yourself, I was bleed out in a field and turned to sticky paste afterward." Jeremy said and I turned back to him my face full of rage. He held up his hands and I turned back to my mom.
"She compelled you?" I asked and my mom nodded.
"Before you even got home. There was nothing you could have done." I started to sob and Katherine appeared in the doorway of the living room, our sheet wrapped around her body.
"What happened." She asked warmth in her voice.
"That's the problem." I looked up at my mom, "I can't do anything. These things they keep happening to my friends, my family and all I can do is just watch the dominos fall." Katherine knelt beside me and I felt her hand stroke the side of my face.
"You should come back to bed." She whispered with concern.
"Listen to her, stay as far away from that church as you can tonight." My mother begged.
"No," Jeremy interjected, "Tell her Matt, about all of it."
"She won't help me. She doesn't care about Elena, Jeremy." I spat, and Katherine looked confused.
"Matt, who else is here?" Katherine asked.
"But she cares about Stefan, and he's with them. He's been compelled to safeguard Elena." I processed this and Jeremy went on, "You just finished saying how you things just keep happening around you. Matt, don't let them kill her."
I looked from my mom to Katherine until finally my mind pushed my mother away and I turned to the vampire, "I know where Stefan is."
"What's the plan?" I asked looking upward.
"You handle the witch." Katherine answered handing me butcher's knife. I took it and slid it in the sleeve of my dark blue leather jacket.
"That's it? What you're gonna take down an Original without a white oak? Never mind Stefan."
"Stefan's been compelled to safe guard Elena you said, right."
"Yeah."
"Well steer clear of till I kill Kol." She smiled pulling jagged shard of wood from a large black handbag.
"How'd you-"
"You didn't think I'd leave Mystic Falls with all these Originals running around and not take myself a little insurance. Matt remember lesson one, mama looks out for mama."
I inhaled a sharp breath and the pair of us walked into the church.
Katherine kicked open the door to the bell tower and Kol turned toward us and his face went from shocked to enraged in a fraction of a second. "No security?"Katherine said, "Tsk tsk tsk." She waved her index finger at him. I could see Elena bound and gagged on the witch's altar. Stefan standing closer to Kol, but he could be in front of me any second.
"Katerina." Kol said and Katherine smiled. "I take it you're here for Mr. Salvatore." I made my way to the edge of the belfry and inched toward the witch who had not lost concentration with our interruption. "and you brought the commoner that seems to have charmed my sister." Now it was his turn to smile, "Does she know you're playing with her toys?"
The witch stopped chanting and pulled a meat cleaver from the alter he'd set up. He raised it above his head and brought it down. I ran forward sliding the knife I had from my sleeve and pushing it into the jaw of the mage, grabbing the back of his head. I screamed as loud as my lungs would let me. The rage and angst I'd held in me rushing out, I pulled the knife out and shoved it into his chest. The man's body fell limp to the floor, as I turned to see Stefan get shot by Katherine and he fell to his knees. She turned the gun on Kol and the bell rang. I rushed to Elena and pulled the gag out of her mouth.
"Matt." She plead as I used the knife to cut the rope around her wrist. "ouch!" she gasped as her blood dripped onto the altar. I lifted her into my arms while Katherine kept her eyes locked on Kol who hadn't moved.
"There's a good mate. You did me a solid." Kol said looking at me. Katherine turned to me for just a second and then a moan came from behind the altar.
"No, he was dead." I said wishing I hadn't left my knife for Elena.
Another moan but it wasn't the sound a man would make and suddenly a woman with long black hair and penetrating blue eyes stood up dressed in the same thing the man I'd just murdered wore. Her skin was the color of snow and her lips looked like they'd once been cherry blossom petals.
Kol stepped forward and when her eyes locked onto him she ran to him nearly jumping into his arms, "Jenyafehr. " the pair kissed for what felt like a lifetime and he swept her up into his arms, "Well, I'll be seeing you lot back at the Falls, thanks again." And the pair were gone.
"Jennifer doesn't seem like good news." Katherine said and went to lift Stefan onto her back.
"Stefan, please." Elena begged, her hands on his but he pulled away.
"After everything I've done. I can't go back. I can't be the man that you deserve." He replied and like that he disappeared into the trees.
"Stefan!" Elena called out and when he didn't answer she fell to her knees.
Katherine looked after him and then to me. I smiled, "Go on. Get outta here." I said walking over to comfort Elena.
"Don't forget me?" she asked walking backward into the woods slowly.
"Hard to forget Hell." I answered back playfully and she smiled.
She turned to leave and then turned back around, "God, you're hot." She said and then vanished chasing after her white rabbit.