"Get in the car," Damon barked, not looking at Elena as he opened the driver's side door.
"No," she protested, acidly. After following his orders by taking picture after picture of the symbol on the wall and cleaning up Klaus's bedroom like they had never been there while he snuck away and made a cryptic phone call to God knows who, Elena just wasn't in the mood to obey him anymore. She wanted answers. "I'm not going anywhere with you until you tell me what the hell is going on?"
He stopped cold, his back tensed. He turned around and leaned against the open door. "Get in the car, Elena."
She folded her arms across her chest, unmoving. "Who was on the phone?"
"Get in the damn car, Elena."
For a moment they just stared at each other, their eyes burning into one another but no one moved. Elena had no idea why Damon was so hesitant to just tell her what he knew, who was on the phone, why the symbol on the wall sparked such a panic in him. But she wasn't going anywhere until she knew.
Eventually, Damon's face softened and he sighed. "Please get in the car. I swear I'll explain everything on the way. But we have got to go, now…"
His pleading gesture was enough that she decided to not enjoy her victory. Instead, she pursed her lips and slid comfortably into the car, pulling her legs up onto the seat and blaring the heater.
Soon, he was beside her and they were gunning down the interstate, past the sign that read 'Welcome to Mystic Falls'.
"Okay," she murmured. "Start talking."
Bonnie threw the half-eaten slice of pizza back into the empty box and leaned against Caroline's couch. "Oh, I'm stuffed."
"Me too." She swallowed her mouthful and sat up on her knees. "I'm guessing there's no room for cookies and ice cream?"
Bonnie groaned.
Caroline's mother had called earlier that day to let her know she'd be working late on the Mystic Grill case, which actually meant she would be trying to lead the rest of the force to dead end trails so they wouldn't know it was actually a supernatural attack. So she asked Bonnie to come over. They could use some relaxing time away from the distress that was going on in the rest of the town.
But she still felt guilty about it. "Do you think this is wrong? A building just blew up and we're eating pizza and watching a Grey's Anatomy marathon."
"Yes, but Izzy just kissed Alec and you know they're your favorite couple," she giggled.
"I'm serious, Bonnie."
She sighed. "Trust me, we have more on our plates right now than they do. Actually, I wasn't going to tell you this until later tonight, after we broke out the vodka and you pulled it out of me, but there may be a spell I could try…to locate Klaus."
Caroline's eyes widened. "Shut up. Shut up! If we could find Klaus, then we could tell him what's happening and make sure whoever took the stake doesn't use it on him. But it won't be that easy. Will it? Unless the spell calls for everything under the sun and some mystical dude's blood. Because I thought you could only do a locator spell on humans—"
"Whoa, Caroline, slow down," Bonnie laughed. "I said there might be a spell, which means there's only a small chance it will work. And you're right; locator spells are easier on humans but not impossible on vampires. I'm just worried about how powerful Klaus is. He may be able to fight me while I'm performing the spell."
"Is it dangerous?" she asked.
Bonnie shook her head.
"Then tell me what you need to do."
"You were in a rock band?" Elena demanded to Damon, the first time she had raised her voice since they started driving a half hour ago. "Gosh, you've never talked about your time in the eighties. Now I know why."
"I didn't say I was in a rock band," he corrected. " I said I ate one. Big difference."
"But what does any of this have to do with the mark on the wall?" she sighed, sifting through the many glossy old photos Damon had pulled from his cluttered glove compartment of him hanging around a bar in Memphis. It was just an ordinary looking bar, although Damon's old-fashioned appearance made her smile a little.
Damon nodded toward the photos, but didn't take his eyes off the road. "That bar in those pictures, it's called Charlotte's. I used to go there every night in 1986. They had great beer, awesome music, and after the sun went down it was a vampire's all-you-can-eat buffet."
"I could have guessed as much."
"But that's not the point, judgy," he retorted. "What I was getting at is the bar only had one busboy in the entire time I went there. I never thought anything of it until I saw the symbol on the side of that missile, and then again on the wall in Klaus's mansion."
Elena sighed. "I give up. How the hell did that symbol make you remember a busboy you knew twenty-seven years ago?"
"You took pictures of the wall, right?"
She nodded, impatiently.
"Good. Now I may be wrong, but I think I remember seeing that symbol in 1986, sort of a square with an x inside, shaved into the back of the busboy's head," he told her, proudly. "It was the style then."
"Wow," she breathed. "This is creepy. Please don't tell me the Grill was bombed by a fifty-year old busboy."
"It's not really about the busboy. I think it's Charlotte's. The things that happened there were…creepy."
"How creepy?"
"Creepy enough to grab the attention of a vampire. Drinks would never run out, the band could play all night without stop, and any guy who didn't pay his tab could be found no matter where he was," he explained.
"Damon…" Elena sighed.
"What would you know? You were still just waiting around to become an effect of John's teenage hormones."
"So you think whatever is in this bar might lead us to answers about who's following us?" she asked.
He nodded. "And if the stars are aligned, our little stalkers will be the same folks who took the stake. But the only way to know for sure is if we go and investigate ourselves."
Elena sat back in her seat, her eyes wide as if she just realized what was going on. A laugh burst through her lips. "We're going to Memphis?"
Damon grinned, smugly.
"Okay so I got the candles, the map, the grimoire, the bowl, the works." Caroline announced as Bonnie walked into the dim living room. "Did I miss anything?"
She smiled warmly and kneeled in the middle of the circle of candles. "Everything's here. Um, did you call Matt?"
"Yes. He said Jeremy's going to give him a ride considering Matt's truck is still on vacation in Atlantis and all."
Bonnie nodded and began finding the proper spell in the grimoire. Caroline gave the spell circle a wide berth and went to sit in the rocking chair by the fireplace. She wanted Matt to be here with her. All of the witch stuff never made her comfortable and having a human friend by her side would ease her. She didn't know whether it was in her vampire nature or if it was just the silly little girl inside her that made her back ramrod straight in her chair.
After a moment of spooky silence, Bonnie hesitantly gestured toward the open book. "There is one more thing that the spell calls for, and I need your help to get it."
"It can't be that bad right?" Caroline giggled. "What does it need? Dragon tooth? Hair of a phoenix?"
"Well, this book says we can use perform a spell that can locate a vampire, but the familiar locator spell that I used to find Elena calls for the blood of a relative. So we have to use the vampire equivalent: a sire from that vampire's bloodline."
Caroline blinked. "Oh that's me!"
"Yeah so if you could just hold out your hand," she pulled her wrist over the bowl and as gently as possible, ran a wooden needle across her palm. The blood fell in small drips. "And think about something else for a second."
After everything was in place—the map of the U.S. was laid out before Bonnie, looking so large that Caroline worried they would never be able to find Klaus, and Caroline's blood was to her right—Bonnie closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. Simultaneously, the candles lit.
"Ves montos tribos, siet oncrio cle si…" she began murmuring.
Luckily, Matt and Jeremy arrived after a few minutes and Caroline thankfully jumped up to get the door, leaving Bonnie alone with her spell. She initially held her finger to her lips at the boys and motioned for them to follow her into the kitchen.
"Sorry you had to come all the way out here this late, guys," she whispered, beginning to straighten up the counter.
"Of course. We were just happy to hear there was something Bonnie could try to find Klaus," Jeremy replied.
"It's just weird," Matt added. "For a long time, all we wanted was to get rid of him. Now it's all we can do to bring him back. What if those people who leveled the Grill and took the stake find him first? Would he be able to stop them before they take him and his entire bloodline out?"
Caroline shook her head as she tossed out an empty plastic cup. "I don't know. I'm still trying to get over the fact that he, for just a moment, was indestructible. I mean, immortal's immortal right?"
"Maybe that was the case a month ago," Jeremy muttered. "But not anymore."
Caroline's laughed lightly and humorlessly. Nothing about this situation was funny. Her friends' lives and her own were at stake, no pun intended, and everything depended on stopping the freaks who broke into Damon's bedroom.
But would that be enough? Klaus has been leaving trails of blood across the Earth for over a thousand years. Surely he's acquired many enemies since then, enemies that would not rest till they found the stake and drove it through his heart.
She shuddered. One step at a time, she reminded herself.
Matt opened his mouth to offer to help Caroline pick up the kitchen, but before he could say a word, there was a crash from the living room.
"Bonnie?" Caroline called as they rushed in, Jeremy the quickest.
There, on the floor in the middle of the spell circle, next to the map covered in red blood, Bonnie lay flat on her back, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she was seizing uncontrollably.
Elena followed Damon into the restaurant, warily.
"Wow," she breathed. "Can't say I'll ever be able to look at the Grill in the same way. This place is amazing."
And it really was. Elena was so used to the dingy yet charming bars of home and Damon's past. This time, she didn't know what to expect. But it certainly wasn't this.
Of course, it still had the dark and old feeling to it, although it felt so clean that Elena could eat off the floor. The wooden tables sparkled in the perfectly placed lighting and smelled faintly as if they had just been taken from the forest. This aroma was inviting to her vampire senses. At the back of the large room was the bar made of the same wood that extended to both corners of the wall. Behind it was a shelf full of expensive looking bottles, shining by a bright white backlight.
Along with the quality appearance, Elena was surprised to detect not even a whiff of smoke in the air, despite the various men and women who sat inhaling their cigarettes.
"This is where you'd feed every night?" she asked, running her finger along the edge of a table. Her finger came back clean.
He noted her skepticism. This didn't seem like a place where you could get away with something like that. He smiled mischievously and nodded toward a door off to the left, deep in the shadows. "Follow me."
Behind the green door was a small room, rather unremarkable compared to the rest of the bar, and basically empty, until Damon flicked on the single light bulb and she saw a broom and bucket against one of the walls.
"A janitor's closet?"
"Practically abandoned. Although the impression from the front room suggests otherwise, this room hasn't been stepped in since my last visit in 1986," he explained, proudly. "So no one would accidentally walk in while I was having dinner."
"You would lead them in here, feed, and then compel them to forget everything?"
He leaned his shoulder against the door. "This place gets awfully crowded after the sun goes down. I'd love to show you sometime."
Elena scoffed. "We're here for a reason, Damon. Remember?"
"Tonight then?" he suggested, and then opened the door. "But until that time, can I interest you in a drink?"
She gave in with a sigh and went to take a seat at one of the comfy bar stools. As Damon settled into the next stool, someone called from behind her.
"Elena? Elena Gilbert?" The voice was a young man, probably Jeremy's age, and sounded so familiar. Elena recalled this voice from the muddy memories of her childhood as she turned around to see who it was.
The face was just as familiar as the voice. A tall, lean boy around fifteen or sixteen in a white cotton t-shirt with blue eyes, thick lashes, and a shock of wavy sandy hair was smiling a dimply smile at her as if he'd just been told something pleasant but shocking.
And then Elena remembered. "Ashton?" she gasped. "Oh my god, it's been so long."
"Five years," he agreed. "How've you been? I heard about your parents…"
She shook her head. "Forget about it. I'm okay."
"So, what are you doing here?"
"I was just going to ask you the same thing."
Damon cleared his throat, irritatingly, his elbow up on the bar, his eyes narrowed and shrewd.
"Oh I'm sorry," she said. "Ashton, this my friend Damon. Damon, this is Ashton. We were best friends back in junior high until he moved to Indiana with his mom. He's Matt's cousin."
"Please, call me Ash." He held up his hand but Damon predictably watched it until it fell.
"The quarterback's cousin, huh?" he remarked.
Ash nodded. "Yeah, Matt's always been a big star on the field. I was just the
nerdy guy who stayed in and studied for his history test like my mom told me to."
Elena laughed. She had forgotten how much she missed his sense of humor. "How is your mom?"
But she regretted asking the question because as soon as she did, his eyes grew sad and color leached from his skin. Elena knew this look. This look had probably been on her own face about a million and one times, anytime someone would ask about her parents.
"Oh," she whispered. "Oh god, I'm so sorry. If I had known…"
"You couldn't have," he assured her. "Besides, it was over two years ago. And three days."
"H-how?"
"She, um, well we went to the lake house for the weekend," he began.
Elena felt her body go cold. "Our lake house?" she asked so softly, through barely moving lips.
"Yeah actually. Your parents were supposed to meet us there but they called and said they couldn't make it because your mother's sister was in town. Anyway, she drowned taking a swim by the dock."
Damon glanced at Elena, but she refused to meet his gaze. All she could focus on at the moment was getting the oxygen in and out of her lungs.
Maybe it was a coincidence, she told herself. It didn't matter though, because she wasn't going to think anything more of it until she knew more. There was too much going on right now anyway. So instead of worrying, she changed the subject.
"So how did you end up here in Memphis?" she quickly asked.
Ash boosted himself onto the counter and slid his legs around to hop down on the other side. "After the accident, I came down here to live with a friend of the family. Got a job as busboy not long after."
"Busboy, huh?" Damon repeated. He nudged Elena in her hip so that Ash would not notice. She shoved him away, knowing exactly what was on his mind.
"Yup. Pay's a little low, but it keeps me busy. Hey, you guys want a drink? It's on the house," he offered.
"There's that Tennessee hospitality I was waiting for," Damon replied, and rested his chin on his hand. "I'll take a bourbon on the rocks."
"And you Elena?"
She shrugged. "Can't. I'm not old enough."
He looked around and leaned in closer until his breath was on her nose. "You look like you could use a beer."
"Bonnie!" Jeremy screamed, and lurched forward.
Matt yanked him back by his shoulders. "Dude, you can't go into the circle. I've seen her do this kind of thing before. Her mind is locked into the spell. If you go in you could kill her."
Caroline was bouncing on her heels, tucking her hair behind her ears, holding in a sob. She had never seen her friend suffer like this. She was torn between looking away, and watching to see what happens.
"Isn't there something we can do?" Jeremy begged.
"Matt was right. Every second that goes by, the dead witches are finding Klaus and telling her through her head. Just look at the map."
The boys did, and saw exactly what she meant. Through the light of the wild-moving candle flames, the puddle of Caroline's blood was spreading, morphing into a more slender shape similar to a comet and swirling around the different continents until it rested on North America.
They all waited, frozen in their spots, for the locator spell to find a more specific spot. But all of a sudden, the blood fell back into its oval puddle and the candles went out.
Bonnie opened her eyes, but they did not see the room around her.
She opened her mouth, but the voice was not hers.
"Bonnie Bennett," it stated. "You are in over your head."
Charlotte's bar was alive with action. Dozens of people had begun to pour in hours beforehand, the music grew in tempo and volume, and Ash had flipped a switch beneath the bar just before he left that changed the lights from dim to a flickering stream of neon beams that punctured the room from different angles, glancing off the skin of the dancing drinkers.
Damon turned his head to assess Elena's reaction from where they still sat at the bar. "Your eighteen years have nothing on this."
"I hate to admit it, Damon," she murmured, not taking her eyes off the party scene. "But you were right."
He leaned his head back until it touched the surface of the bar counter. "God, I love those words."
She laughed, but it was true. Her life up until she met Damon was always played in the safe zone, never pushing her limits. If it weren't for him, she would have never had half of the experiences that she'd shared with him in the past years. As unbelievable as it seemed, Elena was actually glad she was here.
"This is so cool. And these people will do this all night?"
He grinned at her like he was actually proud that she just as strangely fascinated by these exotic humans as he was. "Wait till you taste them."
Elena frowned. "I think you can count me out of the massacring portion of the night, thank you."
"Oh, but that's the best part," he pouted. "Or are you afraid Ash will find out?"
Her jaw dropped, flabbergasted. "When did Ash become apart of this?"
"Please, I saw the way you acted around him. All of a sudden you were little Elena Gilbert, the one who dated the jock and minded her parents and just said no about twenty annoying, splinter-in-your-side, please please please put me out and end it times a day. You even turned down a drink. Back at home, you drink all the time."
She bolted upright in her chair. "So what you think before I met you that I was just another version of those desperate girls you drink from all the time? Because I wasn't, okay?"
"You don't have to defend yourself, Elena," he said. "I think it's kind of hot. Annoying, but hot."
"How can you be so lofty?" she demanded.
He looked her up and down. "Did you learn that word on your study dates with Ash?"
"Okay, we didn't have study dates." Suddenly, Elena remembered quite clearly one afternoon at Ash's house that Matt had talked them into something rather unholy. She hesitated for a minute, pondering whether this was something she wanted to share with Damon. But the part of her that just needed to prove him wrong won over.
"Alright, I've never told anyone this but you've forced me… I smoked with him," she admitted, unwillingly.
His hand flew to his mouth, teasingly. "No."
"Yes. I did it once. Matt convinced me to try some of his mom's cigarettes so I did. But I didn't like it so I haven't smoked since."
Damon looked out onto the crowd, his eyes resting on the various smokers and he got this sparkle in his eyes.
"How about this?" he bargained. "You want to prove to me that you are not a goody-goody? You'll smoke."
"What? No!"
"Shh, shh. It is the perfect opportunity. Half the people here are hammered, so who the hell is going to care?" He wrapped his hands around one of hers and pressed it to his chest. "We'll keep it between you and me, I promise."
Elena didn't have time to consider his offer, because her phone rang in her pocket and she hurriedly removed herself from the pressure of his gaze to answer it.
"Elena?" asked Stefan from the other end.
She put her finger against her ear but she couldn't drown out the loud noises. "I'm sorry, Stefan, I can't hear you. Hold on a sec."
She ignored Damon's spiteful expression at Stefan's name and found her way into the separate room he'd shown her earlier. After the door was shut behind her, all that was left was the faint pulsing of music.
"Okay, I'm here. What's up, Stefan?"
"Hey, I'm just worried about you. Damon told me you were going to check out Klaus's mansion, but that was more than a day ago. What's going on?"
"Well." She swallowed, nervously. "We're sort of in Memphis."
There was a pause. Elena could picture exactly what face he was making. "Memphis? As in Memphis, Tennessee? What are you talking about? Elena, Memphis is nine hours away."
"Yeah, I…I know."
"This was Damon's idea, wasn't it?"
"No, actually," she murmured. "It's a long story. We found that same symbol that you saw at the Grill while we were searching his house and—"
"And Damon just took this opportunity to sneak you away," he finished. "Elena, can't you see what he's trying to do? This was all part of his plan."
Her eyebrows pulled together. "His plan to lead us to the people who took the stake?" she demanded, angrily.
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean? Because I don't even think you know."
Stefan sighed. "He told me if you chose me then he'd leave town and leave us alone. While you're out having adventures with him, why don't you just casually ask him when that's going to happen."
Elena sputtered. The fact that he would just easily give up something personal that he and Damon talked about was appalling. And she didn't appreciate the fact that he didn't trust her enough to let her go on this trip with Damon. Her fingers clenched around the phone.
"You know what, Stefan? I'm staying here in Memphis because it's my responsibility to Bonnie and her mother, and Caroline, and Tyler, and myself to find the stake and if Damon knows how to help me than I'll gladly let him. And by the way, he did leave town, I just went with him."
She snapped the phone shut and stomped back out into the bar, fuming. Her mind was so clouded with hot red anger that her response to the woman holding a cigarette between her fingers in front of her was different than it normally would have been if she were in her right mind. Distraught from her conversation with Stefan, she ripped the cigarette from her hands and inhaled it.
Damon watched her return to her seat, staring at what she was holding, with an arrogant expression.
"I'm impressed," he complimented. "Now, how about some dinner?"
"Bonnie Bennett," the strange voice continued. "Did you really think I would be beaten by a witch? I didn't spend a thousand years being undetected by the spirits' magic just to let a child like you ruin everything. You won't find me, but if you continue to try, there will be consequences."
Bonnie relaxed and her eyes found sight again. She sat up, dizzily.
Jeremy rushed to help her up. "Hey, are you okay? You scared us."
Matt kneeled at her feet slowly so that he wouldn't frighten her. "Do you have any idea at all what just happened?"
She blinked numerous times and glanced around her. "No, I-I don't. I mean, I remember doing the spell and it was working fine. Then the spirits came in and they were telling me where Klaus is but something went wrong. The connection broke, and everything went black. What happened?"
Caroline, Matt, and Jeremy exchanged a worried glance.
"I think Klaus happened," Jeremy finally answered.
Elena lifted her head from the strawberry blonde's jugular, blood dripping down her chin. Gosh she was a mess. But Damon was no better as he drained the same girl from her other side.
There was no way Stefan was right about Damon having other intentions on this trip, and Elena was proving that right now. This was her decision, not Damon's. He didn't talk her into it and he couldn't talk her out. She was feeding on human blood because she wanted to.
But Lord, did it feel good.
She had never done drugs before, never drank too much apart from one or two occasions, and so this sense of high felt strange and foreign. Her body was accepting the blood far more than it did on Stefan's animal plan. The taste was so warm and rich that she couldn't get it down her throat fast enough to make room for more. Now she understood why Damon was so unwilling to change his diet. Why hadn't she listened to him all along?
But she couldn't care less as she sank her teeth into flesh once more.
The next time she came up for air, Damon's head came up with her. And in the light of the dark janitor's closet, she could see his face and knew it was a mirror reflection of her own. The deep red eyes, the purple veins beneath them, and the blackening blood that was smeared around his lips.
He dropped the girl to the floor and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. She did the same, the both of them breathing heavily.
"Don't worry," he said to her. "She'll get back to the party in no time, and this will have never happened."
It took a moment for her to understand why his words weren't what she wanted and she cringed.
She wanted for this to have happened, so Stefan could find out. So Stefan could know that she was going against the 'Bambi blood' as Damon called it. She practically wanted to take a picture of the puncture wounds in the girl's neck and shove them in Stefan's face.
And then the overwhelming guilt took its place right where it always goes in her stomach, only now it was intensified, because she wasn't being fair to Damon.
"I shouldn't be doing this," she murmured.
He waved her off. "This was just your first time, Elena. You've got to hold off on the pity party until after you ripper an entire village."
"No. No, really. I'm not doing this for the right reasons,"— although she didn't know what the right reasons were to drink someone's blood— "I should be fair to you and I'm not."
"What are you saying?"
"I only decided to feed with you to get back at Stefan. He really got under my skin on the phone earlier and I did this to spite him. I'm sorry."
Elena didn't want to see the depressed look on Damon's face, so as soon as she finished her apology, she walked out and kept walking until she was sitting out on the sidewalk with her knees up to her chest. The sun was rising in the East, but it didn't warm her.
After about five minutes, Damon came out and stood in front of her. "I fed her my blood, and then compelled her to forget about it. She's already back in the crowd and drinking again."
"Damon…"
"I got us a hotel room for the rest of the night. This place was just a dead end. We'll head back after we get some sleep."
Numbly, she nodded and followed him back to the car.
Jeremy handed Bonnie the cup of water and sat next to her on the sofa. He's never seen her in such a weak state.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
"Better, definitely. Especially after having my body taken over by a hybrid who could be a thousand miles away or he could be ten thousand miles away."
"Do you think he has a witch of his own, wherever he is?"
She shrugged. "I know there's no way he could have done that on his own. Unless he's been growing stronger ever since he left.
"I can't believe how things went down I was so sure this would work."
"Hey, you and me both," she smiled. "But there's nothing we can do if he doesn't want to be found. Because witch or no witch, if Klaus doesn't want to be found, he won't be found."
"Let's just cross our fingers for no witch, maybe we'll something in this situation will be in our favor."
Bonnie took a sip of her water and set it on the end table. He casually laid his arm on the back of the couch behind her. She seemed grateful that he was there, and that was better than the alternative.
"Thank you for the water," she said. "I'm glad you're here."
"Me too. I just wish Elena was back already, so she could be here with us too."
"I know, Memphis suddenly seems so far away," she agreed.
"Wait," he interjected, confusedly. "Memphis? I thought she was just downtown. Why the hell did she go to Memphis?"
Bonnie blinked, unable to understand his puzzlement. "She didn't tell you?"
Jeremy became fully aware of what was happening. His sister was nine hours away but she didn't bother to let him know in a phone call. He looked down at the ground, his nostrils flared.
"No, she didn't."
Matt walked into the kitchen and set the bucket of carpet cleaner in the sink, where Caroline was vigorously scrubbing the bloody bowl with dishwashing soap. After a moment of intense, finger-pruning cleaning, she gave up and set the bowl aside.
"Thanks for the help," she said to him.
He smiled and shrugged in an innocent way. "That's what I'm here for. Besides, you shouldn't have to deal with this alone. Tonight was…weird, and crazy, and you can always call me and I'll be here with you the whole way."
"One step at a time," she murmured to his feet.
Matt looked at her face intently, trying to read the emotion in her eyes. On the surface, she appeared to have it together when underneath she was ready to burst. He wanted to make sure everything was okay before he left.
He took a deep breath. "How are you doing, Caroline?"
"You mean, has it all gotten to me yet? The overwhelming anxiety?" she laughed with dark humor. "I don't now. Everything was just starting to be okay again like it was sophomore year, and then one night it all goes back to sucking."
"Pun intended?" he asked, jokingly.
Caroline giggled her high, bell-chime giggle, but it was shaky. Matt watched as her face squinted into something new and her giggle turned into a tearless sob.
"As hard as I try not to forget about him, I just can't. He's a nightmare, Matt. And I'm so afraid of him. I'm so afraid…"
He quickly wrapped his arms around her shoulders to hush the weeping. They rocked back and forth on their heels for what seemed like forever. The more Caroline shook, the more terrible Matt felt inside. It felt like these times had changed Caroline so much; her light, her fire had gone out. Sure, it sounded cheesy, but it was the honest truth.
He held onto her hoping that one day, her light would return.
Elena paced back and forth across the hotel room, biting the nail on the thumb of one hand with the other on her hip. Damon was in the other room, packing up there belongings.
She glanced at the glowing digital clock for the thousandth time, but it still showed that it was almost four o' clock in the afternoon. They'd basically slept the first half of the day, until Damon woke up and went out to bring back food, real human food. The whole time, neither of them said a word.
Underneath her bed was a carry-on bag, filled with various personal items. But one item in particular kept calling out to her, sending shockwaves through the air.
Finally, Elena gave in and ducked down under the bed, retrieving her green plastic leather diary and one of the hotel's stationary pens.
Minutes passed with her sitting on the made bed, tapping the cap of her pencil against the edge of the book, biting the inside of her lip, wracking her brain for what she wanted to write. But then, all of a sudden, the words came to her.
Dear Diary,
I know it's been a while since the last time I wrote you, but so much has happened. And I don't know if I have time to write them all down now. I want to start off by saying that you have always been there for me when I had to tell my secrets to somebody who would listen. Please don't let me down now. Well, here we go, I guess.
Elena looked up from her diary just as Damon nudged the twin bed she was laying in with his knee. Their bags sat on the adjacent bed, full of extra clothes and ready to go. And by the expression on his face, Elena could tell that Damon was ready to leave as well.
He held up his arms and then let them fall loudly to his sides. Impatient.
"I'll be ready in a second. Just go check us out and I'll meet you in the car," she said, flatly. It was the first time she'd spoken to him since they left Charlotte's.
As soon as he was out of sight, she leaned her head back down over the diary page.
Okay, I've decided that I have to go back a little for you to fully understand. Maybe all the way back to last month, when this all began. I'd been a vampire for seven days. I'd transitioned the normal way; with a blood bag from the Salvatore's basement, and since then was feeding in moderation, socializing with the rest of Mystic Falls, and I even donated some of my blood to Meredith at the hospital. Nothing had changed from my time as human…
She then began to condense the last few weeks onto the paper, explaining about what happened at Jeremy's birthday party, how the stake was stolen, the trip to Memphis, seeing Ash, his story about his mother died, the uncanny similarities to her own parents' deaths, everything. When she was finished retelling, she continued on to relay last night.
How could I have been so stupid, diary? I've never let anger get to me before, but that was when I was human. Seems so long ago now. My amplified vampire emotions caused me to hurt an innocent girl tonight, and somebody else very important to me. Where is the old Elena Gilbert? I feel like a total new person, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
With a sigh, she shut the book, tucked it back into her knapsack, and left the hotel room, leaving behind her unhappy memory of it. She felt slightly better having written down the thoughts that plagued her for the last twelve hours, but she didn't know how long it would be affective.
Ashton walked down the sidewalk and stopped when he reached the door to Charlotte's. Ducking under the cover of the awning, he pulled out his cell phone.
He spoke before the voice on the other line could say anything.
"They're here, in town," he said quietly. "Elena Gilbert and Damon Salvatore. They walked into the bar and stayed for a few drinks."
The other person replied for quite a long moment, and Ash nodded along, complacently.
He ended the conversation with, "I will," and flipped the phone shut. As he slipped it back into his pocket, he caught sight of a black line peeking out from underneath his sleeve. He pulled it all the way up to stare proudly at his intricate tattoo, vines crawling around the square with the x inside.
AU: Yep! Chapter four ^^^! I particularly like this chapter as I've told you already, but that's just me! If you liked it too, here is the synopsis for chapter 5:
CAR TROUBLES-Damon helps Elena come to a new understanding about being a vampire in an unusually exciting way and together the both of them lead off in a new direction to solve the puzzle. Bonnie gets put in an uncomfortable situation, which makes her rethink the decisions she has made in the past and forces her to make new ones.