I'm sorry that it's taken me this long to up-date. Real life kept interrupting my muse time. I've taken some literary liberties with the characters of Bonnie's parents. I've read the books and the TV show doesn't really follow them exactly. I tried to find some cannon for the folks on the show and failed miserably. So, I gave her mom the name of Mary after her sister's character in the books, her father I gave the name of Joe, you will see why..It's pretty important to my plot in this chapter, this is a pivotal one for the whole story. If anyone knows their real names let me know..My musical inspirations are many and varied-Poets Of The Fall, Phoenix Effect, 30 Seconds to Mars,Powerman 5000, Five Finger Death Punch, Apocalyptica, With In Temptation, Ra,Lacuna Coil, and a newly discovered favorite Shaman's Harvest. Here you go, I hope you like it, please review if you do, thanks.
The Price Of Redemption Chapter 7
At first the phantom floated around the room as if she were pacing back and forth, then she stopped to hover in the middle of the space, directly in front of Bonnie . No one else dared to move a muscle, not even the vampires. Tearfully the little witch asked,
" Grams? Is that really you?"
Sheila's perturbed face softened as she solidified enough to gently reach out and pat Bonnie's cheek,
" Oh, honey child, yes it's really me."
She opened her arms in invitation and Bonnie courageously stepped closer. Immediately the little witch was enveloped by the cloying sweet scent of roses and jasmine. A comforting feeling of warmth and unconditional love washed over her. Bonnie sobbed,
" Grams!, I love you so much !, I thought you were truly gone! You did hear me, didn't you? The E.M.T.S said that you couldn't. You must know, you have to. I'm so sorry that I messed up the spell because I was too weak and inexperienced. I failed you, what happened before...it was all my fault!"
"No! Baby !, No you didn't fail me. Yes, I died...but it wasn't your fault. "
Turning the specter addressed Damon and Stefan, who were positioned near the dresser, both squirmed uneasily. They had resumed their "normal human" guise, fangs retracted, no protruding veins or black eyes. Sheila's lined lips pursed and broke into a tight bland smile,
" It wasn't anyone's fault, except perhaps my own. I had a few premonitions that my time was growing short. I chose to ignore the warning signs."
Looking towards the bathroom door at her son knowingly she wirily smirked,
" Given who and what we are that was rather irresponsible of me wasn't it?"
Waggling her finger she groused,
" That was a rhetorical question. No matter who it was that had been appointed to deliver the message, or sent to escort me back to the Akasha. { The all-pervading spirit ether.} Just chalk it up to the stubborn streak that runs in our family and call it a day. I wasn't about to leave our Bonnie girl alone with the monumental task of cleaning up after Emily's mess."
Sheila's form wavered as she sighed wearily,
" But that's neither here nor there now. We still have a dirty job to finish. I fear that by tampering with the tomb's spell, the seal on the door has destabilized and completely evaporated. The passageway is unobstructed, anyone can come and go as they please....including the vampires entrenched inside."
Elena vigilantly perched upon the nightstand had been silent up until then,
" You and Bonnie were pretty wiped when we left last night, I'm not sure if you realize exactly what we found down there. Twenty-six of the vampires on the list were basically mummified and immobile, that is until Anna reunited with her mother Rose. That's when Jeremy's quote on quote "cute little stalker chick" decided it would be fun to hold my arm against her mommy's mouth so that she could feed from my wrist. Thanks to Stefan, Rose didn't have the time to fully drain me.
So wouldn't someone have to intentionally revive the others in the same way, using doses of fresh blood ? Couldn't you and Bonnie just duplicate Emily's spell book recipe and restore the seal before that happens? "
Sheila's dry cackling laugh echoed eerily, " Ha !, ha!, ha!...Elena, sugar you make it sound like all we need to do is mix up a batch of fudge brownies in the kitchen, if only it were that easy. You have no idea what you are asking for do you? Remember your comment about my use of plain old everyday bottled water in our ritual? Well this is why it didn't have to be blessed or any other such nonsense. As witches Bonnie and I can always call upon the four powers of the elements, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, blending them whenever we need to.
However, we each have a special innate affinity for channeling our own specific one. Emily's element was water, making her one of the most powerful witches ever born in our line. Like air, water touches all, it's necessary for every living thing, it never truly disappears, it only changes form. From the airy clouds it falls, drenching the soil,- then it seeps through the ground to reach the rivers, flowing out into the oceans,- where it's heated by the sun and swept up by the wind,- only to be tossed back into the sky again. A continually renewing cycle. It can also flood cities and drown you.
I used to gather strength from my element, the Earth. The land records time itself buried in the sediments as Gaia {our mother} is surrounded by air and washed by the rain. I could sense the people around me, along with the animals and the plants. Carefully tapping from their reserves, I was able to alter the nature of loam and stone...but only while I lived. Now my abilities are limited.
Bonnie, your element is fire, the antipathy of water. Another very powerful force, you can harvest energy from the air and the sun and feed off of the heat from a burning flame. Destruction may be welded at your fingertips, the aftermath nurturing new life that grows all the more richer from the fertilizing ash. Never the less, water can extinguish fire and without oxygen the flame burns itself out .
Emily's spell was never meant to be reversed. It was booby-trapped somehow. She may have made a pact with you Damon, but we know from her actions with Bonnie and the crystal that she never really intended to honor it. She always had her own secret agenda for everything that she did, and who knows what that was. Some of her encryptions in the Grimmore are so abstract that I couldn't decode them. There's a master codex key missing and I've no idea where she hid it. Duplicating her exact spell is impossible.
Besides that, the triple-fold feedback loop is what sapped my life-force and compromised our control over the seal. Bonnie and I used the best combination of our gifts and the elements available to us, and still we weren't strong enough to bend the rules without paying the ultimate price. I don't advise tempting fate a second time, I won't put Bonnie in danger again."
Damon crossed his arms across his bare chest and darkly said,
" And it harm none. I completely agree with you, No one touches a hair on Bonnie's head, except me of course. Right Cara bella? "
Sheila peered at Damon skeptically as he waltzed over to Bonnie's side and possessively pulled her into a seemingly casual hug. {Thus subtly steering the little witch away from the ghost's embrace.} Bonnie shyly smiled at him murmuring,
"Yeah, morning Baby,"
as she leaned towards his tender kiss upon her temple. Sheila narrowed her eyes,
" You know about the law ?"
Damon straightened his posture again, nudging Bonnie behind him as he captured her tiny hand in his before quipping,
"Yes, I do. That's why I'm standing here raptly listening to your whole witchy edition of the rock, paper, scissors game instead of getting some breakfast. Anyone else hungry? I for one sure could use a fresh cup of Joe. No, not literally. I mean Java...er..coffee. Or is that Java-Joe's ? Hmmm?"
Bonnie elbowed the vampire in the ribs at her father's stricken expression as he emerged from his sanctuary in the bathroom with a large wooden handled loofa brush in his left hand. He had snapped it in two, one end was the harmless sponge, while the other was rather pointy... creating a comic but credible make-shift stake. Caught red-handed he slowly sat the sharp exfoliator down on the top of the chest and retreated back towards the bathroom door.
Damon grunted in faux innocence, " Ouch ! What? Oh I get it, J. B. His name is Joe Bennett. Oops sorry my bad. O.K. Breakfast can wait. "
Stefan rolled his eyes, Damon synonymous with irreverence. He cleared his throat,
"Sheila, I understand that there must be more to this story, something very important that you want to tell us. Otherwise you wouldn't be here...as you are. If we can't use magic to keep the vampires trapped inside of the tomb, what would you suggest?"
The apparition glided effortlessly from one piece of scorched furniture to the next, for the first time noticing that the room had sustained some damage from the night before. Everyone else followed Sheila's visual inspection, {excluding Damon who just acted bored.} Bonnie darted her eyes to her Dad worriedly, then she nervously fidgeting with the belt on her robe while waiting for her Grams to say something.
Sheila fingered the burn holes in the blankets and pillows on the bed. Flicking her gaze from the melted curtain remnants that hung in stiff uneven patches along the welded metal of the canopy frame to the charred items dotting the floor. She raised an eyebrow,
" I see that the two of you did a bit of remodeling in here. Was it to better suit your newly acquired tastes ? I hate to tell you this, it may have been hot...{insert fake valley girl accent} shabby chic is now....not !, it' so 1985. You should check out Pantone's website, their spring color forecast says a make-over could be just the thing to give a pair a happy ending."
Sheila had picked up Damon's well worn black leather jacket from the floor and held it out as an example of the wicked vampire's style before placing it on the cedar chest next to the wilted stuffed toys. {Her sour sniff heavy with a hint that in her opinion more than his fashion sense was going to have to be modified for her to like him, and that she would be more than pleased to help Bonnie tame him, the undead man's sexual prowess not withstanding.}
Bonnie started battling a fit of giggles in shocked relief that for the moment her Grams seemed to be willing to overlook her and Damon's tryst, not to mention the ruin of a few rather expensive presents. The case of giggles was contagious to Elena who joined in, soon Sheila's caustic chuckle mingled with theirs. The three women were laughing giddily sharing their feminine inside joke. { Mostly at the expense of Damon's scowl and the other guy's confused expressions...Pantone?}
Sheila's weird chortles subsided, she fanned herself with her hands as if she needed to cool down.
"Oh my...girl's that was pleasant, there's nothing like a good hard laugh. Remember that, hang on to those positive emotions for as long as you can. Your friends, your family, true love...they're the reasons why we must take on this fight. We're going to need every advantage that we can get..."
Abruptly the ghost rounded on Damon, roughly yanking him from Bonnie's hand clasp. Sheila kept punching and shoving him forcefully maneuvering the vampire towards the bathroom door...The same one that her son was leaning against, the same one that hung a mere three feet from the chest... and the stake!
Damon was pissed !!! What the hell ???
" Bonnie !, you better tell Grandma to chill or she's gonna get ran over and it won't be by a God damn reindeer ! "
Bonnie yelped, skittering after them. She could sense Damon's anger and frustration, he didn't want to be forced into doing something that would alienate him from Bonnie's affection. A difficult set of emotions that were rare for him leached out as well ...uncertainty and fear !
" Grams !!!, Stop it!!! Please !!! Don't hurt him !!! "
Damon's mind was reeling. Holy hell !, Where was Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis when you needed them ? What I wouldn't give for one of their Ghostbuster proton pacs, an ectoplasmic trap and a thirty ft. tall Stay Puft Marshmallow Man ! Every time Sheila the poltergeist bitch touched him he received an electric shock tantamount to sticking his finger in a 220 volt outlet.
The pain racked his bones setting his teeth on edge...he transformed violently, his fangs erupting in a burst of self defense. His skin tingled and itched, every hair on his head and body stood on end as his spasming muscles grew clumsy and numb. On top of that, when he tried to push or hit back... his cuffed fist met nothing. He had no effect what so ever on her astral projection. It was like shadow boxing a dancing mass of dust motes.
Stefan and Elena hopped up and attempted to reason with the ghost. Stefan's tone was strident ,
" Sheila !, Wait!... you don't want to do this ! I beg of you!, I know you believe that he deserves this, but have mercy... he's my brother !"
Elena whimpered, "Grams !, this isn't like you !, blind justice for vengeance's sake is wrong ! Look what you're doing to Bonnie ! "
The little witch was flaying on her stomach, wailing in heartache and pain. She and Damon were still linked and she was sharing every jolt that he received. The ghost of Sheila Bennett temporarily paused in her torture of Damon, swinging her head from him to Bonnie and then back again she shrieked,
" What precisely did you do to my grand daughter Vampire ? She absorbes your punishment ! Her cardinal signature is different! How did you convince her to betray her own kind ? Tell me now!!!"
Bonnie cried despondently, divided between offense and supplication.
" Grams !!! [sob] No !!!, He didn't compel me, not really ! [sob] I wanted to be with him ! We're joined, it must be our blood bond. Can't you see ? It's polished my rune, making it shine !...Grams, I love him !!!, I didn't betray anyone !!!"
Sheila switched her attention to her son and baited him,
" Did you hear that ? He has defiled her with his cursed animus! She is no longer pure. The Anunnaki will not be easily placated. What are you going to do about it ? "
Joe Bennett appeared about as undone as any man could be. He detested all of this archean New World Order mumbo-jumbo bullshit that had been a constant thorn in his side since childhood. His parents had raised him fully immersed in the doctrine of a realm that existed beyond the plateau of the everyday.
Oh he knew they were right, he had seen too many uncanny events unfold. Indeed he had met many of the three kinds of *sups*{ as he liked to call them, the superstitious, the supernatural, and the superhuman.} Those curious inhabitants hidden in plain sight unmasked before he had even learned how to use their home's big boy potty.
He had shared the "take your kid to work nights" with his Daddy and discovered that there were some secrets so dangerous that you could never reveal them to anyone not sanctioned by their small circle of contacts. This was drilled into his young mind as he practiced riding his bicycle without the training wheels.
Some would say that he had a remarkable education. Each milestone of his public school / community college years marking his journey to manhood had been penciled in right alongside the indelible ink stains of ancient tattoos, magic lore, alien scrolls, dusty tombs and the never ending battle between good and evil.
He had walked the line,... playing sports, making friends, going fishing even taking dates to the movies by day...Then at night he practiced with and mastered the art of the assassin, using his large intimidating physique, ancient weapons and futuristic artificial intelligence systems to win Pop's proud approval.
He had been groomed to take over his father's position when he retired. It was supposed to be easy for him, it was his destiny, it was in his genes.... After-all the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree,.. grafted from the one in the garden of Eden. Ha, ha, ha, what a joke!
The thing was, his father didn't make it to retirement. Nope he had died while on duty one week after Joe had turned twenty-one...how ironic was that? The Grim Reaper himself kicking the bucket while escorting a damned soul to his just reward in hell.
Yeah, after all of the years of his own intense training and dedicated work ethic for the netherworld, Mr. Joseph Black-Bennett senior had succumbed to one of the most ordinary ailments know to his kind... He had been felled by a massive heart attack.
Sheila had blamed it partly on his profession, and partly on herself. Citing the stress of maintaining an inter-racial relationship in a primitive judge-mental society.
Joe had blamed his father's demise more on his mother's repertoire of southern fried / cajun creole soul-food recipes served with iced sweet tea and the average American diet filled with convenient frozen entres, fast food joints and free flowing alcohol. His father's dreaded foes - high cholesterol and a fetish for Crispy Cream doughnuts.
Fire Demons really should stick with whole grains and fresh fruit mixed with steamed vegetables for healthy side dishes to their staple of raw red meat...Or salads, greens are good. All that processed white flour and refined sugar are bad.
Given a leave of absence from the antipodes Sheila and her son had dropped the first hyphen Black from their last name and moved back to one of the secluded hamlets favored by their ancestors....Mystic Falls.
All Joe had wanted then was a nice normal life. The Sears Roebuck package complete with a satisfying job, a modest house with a garage surrounded by a white picket fence, a loyal dog in the backyard, a beautiful loving wife and an adorable passel of kids. He had come so close when he had met Mary, his one and only love-Bonnie's mother. He had seen his chance, been given a glimpse of heaven. In the beginning it was just the two of them and their passion for one another. Then Bonnie was born and their life together had gotten even better. They were a family now.
He had felt so blessed, just the three of them living in their little pink house. His mother Sheila had been ecstatic for them. Christ, they'd have made the perfect family portrait for a John Mellencamp album cover. "Grandma" had helped them find the place only a few blocks down from her own bungalow. Even going so far as to co-sign on the loan and volunteer to be an on call baby-sitter whenever they had needed one.
As it turned out Sheila had done more than just baby-sit Bonnie, she had stepped in and practically raised her single-handedly after Mary's death. {She understood all too well what it meant to lose your kindred spirit.} Without his mother's love and support he would never have survived the whole ordeal of his young wife's long lingering illness. Cancer had stolen his dream, and jaded his wounded heart. He vowed to never re-marry.
Bonnie and his mother were the only two beings left in this galaxy that remotely mattered to him anymore. That was why he had left his old job as a quality control inspector at the foundry and went back to work for his father's people. Yeah, sometimes you just did what you had to do in order to make ends meet. Other times you convinced yourself that it was O.K. because you made a difference. Coldly,... logically,... without debate or regret,.. you ensured that the scales were kept in balance. You lied to yourself, and to your daughter.
Under the guise of an industrial energy efficiency tech, he traveled from city to city collecting his quota of lost souls. He was in charge of the entire eastern seaboard area. He exercised, ate right and only allowed himself two drinks{a bud and a blood} at dinner and only the occasional sulfur cigar. {Those he had to special order from a heretic in a smoking cave on the sixth layer.} Sheila's demanding voice dragged him from his reverie,
" Son! Are you listening to me? I asked you a question! What are you going to do ? The Anunnaki are on their way here, with the twelfth planet's elliptical orbit they are due to arrive at sunrise Dec. 21st, 2012. They will not expect their Caledonian Oracle to be bound to a son of Lilith. The Illuminati are watching and have sworn to stop at nothing to prevent the control of the established governmental infrastructure from falling into the hands of the Anunnaki aliens or their descendants here on Terra. You know what must be done !"
Joe Bennett cursed loudly….
" AUGH ! GOD DAMIT !! YES, MOTHER I KNOW !!!"
Faster than humanly possible Bonnie's father lunged out from the threshold of the bathroom door towards the chest and Sheila where she was wrestling with Damon to pin him down.
Stefan was a blurred shadow moving even quicker to intervene. Allowing his own inner beast to surface he changed, snatching up the stake and gripping it in his right hand like a knife before Joe could reach it. The tall, lean vampire then leapt to land on the balls of his feet like a great jungle cat, hissing a fanged warning while blocking Joe's path to Damon.
" YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME IF YOU WANT TO HARM MY BROTHER !"
Joe abruptly stopped and calmly raised both of his hands up, flat open palms facing Stefan so that the vampire could see that he was unarmed.
" I wasn't planning to use the stake unless I had to. There's no reason why this has to escalate any further. Bonnie, sweetheart..I don't want to hurt anyone, but I have to follow my orders. Death was summoned and now a soul has to either return with me to be judged, or it has to be cleansed and allowed to continue on it's journey of enlightenment. "
Bonnie sighed sadly,...Could these last thirty- two hours get any worse? Her Grams had died and now her ghost wanted to get revenge on the vampire whom she said she did not blame for it. The same vampire that Bonnie had let seduce her and who she'd fallen head over heels in love with. Now Bonnie's Dad was flaking out too.
She was puzzled by that nutty, cryptic response from her father. He had always behaved as straight arrow and no nonsense as the acerbic "let me hear just the facts mam" Sheriff Forbes. He never once bought into the magical mystery tour stuff that Grams had been teaching her. Where had he gotten all of that new age crap from? Could her Gram's ghost be influencing him somehow?
He had to be grieving and in a daze from Gram's passing, along with everything else. As if being an inexperienced person witnessing not one, but two frightening vampires in one afternoon wasn't enough to send any sane man over the edge, then he was subjected to communing with the ghost of his own recently deceased mother.
Bonnie was terribly anxious about her Dad. He got all bent out of shape just by listening to her read that itty bitty slip of paper from a fortune cookie. She'd have to get Damon to glamour him into forgetting all about this later, it would be safer that way for everyone involved. That is, if she and her beloved vampire even survived the rest of this bewildering encounter with Gram's angry specter.
Joe slowly lowered his arms down to his side and shut his eyes as if in deep meditation, or prayer. Sheila stared at her son for a few seconds then she released her hold on Damon who slumped weakly to his knees. The ghost drifted away from him to camp out in the corner.
That was Elena's cue, she hurried to help Bonnie limp to Damon's side where the little witch kneeled into his ardent embrace. They clung tightly to each other for support, gathering their strength for what may lay ahead of them.
Stefan passed the stake off to Elena like a baton, with it she guarded their backs, while Stefan stayed * frosty * on point in front of them and watched as the bonded couple obviously communicated using only their body language. Bonnie was weeping softly as Damon gently wiped the tears away from her cheeks before kissing her passionately, not giving a hoot about what anyone else dared to say about it.
A cold breeze swirled around the room, at first Elena thought that the central air unit had kicked on before she realized that the bright sunlight beaming through the window was rapidly fading. An approaching storm front was an unholy black sackcloth swallowing up the sky. The temperature plummeted and frost coated the glass in an opaque sheet, icy dread knotted in her gut. Something wicked this way comes....both of the young women shivered.
Bonnie and Elena's warm breath grew visible in foggy white puffs wafting out to encircle their frightened faces. The wind howled as thunder rolled in a low rumbling echo announcing the biblical deluge of hail, rain and sleet that poured from the stratosphere. Damon rose to his feet pulling Bonnie closer still, he could feel the pulse in her neck beating a panicked tattoo beneath his thumb.
Stefan hastend to gather Elena against his tense lanky length. Stefan whispered a few comforting assurances in Elena's ear, nuzzling his nose into the silken chocolate fall of her hair. His hooded brooding green eyes met his brother's fierce piercing cobalt glow in an unspoken pact. They would fight to protect the treasures that were now theirs... mates, the word plucking a primal chord in each of them. They would fight to protect each other... brother, a word whose meaning for them had rusted, but now was fulgently restored .
As the storm outside battered the house, inside a tungston white hot flash of lightening forked out from the epicenter that was a bubble of plasma morphing around Joe Bennett. It expanded to form a spherical eddy of crackling energy that sucked anything not tied down into it's spinning, whining vortex.
The bricketts of burned books, stubby candles, and seared knick-knacks that were on the floor went first, followed by the bigger items like the shutters and shades, the blankets and pillows, the lamp, the framed photos....even the Johnny Depp poster disappeared into the mini hurricane from hell.
The widening maw of the portal began to spit out heat even as it's suction grew stronger, spinning ever faster the discord of sound was deafening. The furniture skidded across the wooden floor towards the center of the room. Damon dug his heels in and clutched Bonnie more firmly to him, she was so tiny that she was lifted up once, her robe flapping open to catch like a sail...She screamed...with her voice and in his head via their link.
( Damon !, Oh Goddess ! Please don't let go of me !, if you do I'll kill you a second time! )
Damon couldn't help but grin at his little witch's undaunted spunk, he slung his strong legs around her and locked his ankles together,
( I think that's the general idea of this ...what ever the freak it is !... ...Don't worry, I promise I won't let you go, Sally Field. You know you'd make an awfully cute flying nun, Cara Bella ! )
Wriggling them to the floor, he shielded her as he laid them facing each other, arms and legs interwoven. He figured that the change in their center of gravity would help counter their bodies resistance against the wind. Bonnie squeezed her arms around Damon's neck so tautly that if he were merely a human it would have come close to strangling him. Not that he was the one complaining.
( Yeah, well I have no idea what could create a phenomenon like that. By the way flying without an airplane is for the birds, Mr. Crow ! I'd prefer a first class ticket with you to say Hawaii, or Tahiti. Thank-you very much!)
( Well, don't knock it til you've tried it Sabrina ! Besides couldn't you just twitch your little nose and make us a super-sonic broomstick hmmm? No? That's all right, never mind. Ask and ye shall receive ! It's a date then, as soon as we are able to arrange it..A tropical island paradise vacation awaits ! Sand, surf, rum-runners and you in a bikini, oh yeah!!! )
Bonnie chortled as she ducked into his chest, shielding her face from any whirling debris. Only Damon could make her laugh at a time like this. She hoped that her father had been able to take cover somewhere.
Damon searched for Stefan and Elena and saw that they were safely tangled up around each other too. Stefan had used his additional height to wedge them both into the bathroom door jam. Elena's long, slim legs straddled him easily. Suddenly another bolt of lightening arced out of the sphere and the light bulbs in the ceiling fan and above the bathroom medicine cabinet shot out with a blaze of sparks.
The plasma orb had just imploded in upon itself and blinked out of existence. Without the crescendo of the wind the room was deadly quiet. Bonnie squinted her eyes straining, her attempt reflected only a cavern of ebony pitch, neither Bonnie nor Elena could see a thing. In the hallway and the kitchen it was the same story, the entire house was dark.
Then from a fractured slit of an aperture in a ghoulish acid yellow haze, twin pinpoints of red embers emerged and moved in the darkness. They became a nightmarish shadow of an ashy ivory boned skull with empty flaming eye sockets. It loomed upon Damon and Bonnie. Damn Ghosts !!! The vampire had Bonnie off her feet and was carrying her bridal style in an instant exit.
The storm had went from a freezing hail and sleet laden rain to a thick pea soup fog. The electricity was out all over town. Damon sat Bonnie on her feet in the driveway long enough to confer with Stefan who was directly behind them with Elena. Time ticked by while they debating on weither to pile four passengers into a two passenger Jaguar AJ-V8 sports car or risk going back inside the house to search for Sheila's keys to the Omni Blue Honda Element that was stored in the garage.
Joe Bennett's Impala and keys were no longer on the property, he must have made it out of his mother's house and left to go back to check on his own home. Bonnie prayed that her Dad was alright.
A soft meow made the girls pause and look up into the leafy shade of Gram's maple tree. A shaking, soaking wet, black kitten with silver sage green eyes peered down at them miserably. Elena tried to reach him but she wasn't tall enough,
" Oh poor baby !, I think he's lost. He must have gotten scared in the storm and climbed up into the tree, but now he's afraid to come back down again."
Elena gave Stefan one of her sweetest smiles and batted her long lashed, big brown doe eyes at him... he was sunk.
" We can't just leave him here all alone, Will you hop up there and get him down? "
Bonnie nodded to Damon saying, "Well if he's not going to do it, will you ?..please? "
Damon made an annoyed face, {What was it about furry little critters that made females forget about anything else ? Like dangerous unstable spirits.}
Now it was his turn to cave, Bonnie used their link, ( If you rescue him for me, I promise that I'll grant you any favor that you ask for.)
Damon was many things, but stupid was not one of them. He knew a good deal when one arose. His smile was lecherous with anticipation. Stefan grinned back guessing what was going on and said,
" Elena asked me first, let me at least give it a try."
Damon bowed gallantly to his brother, then scanned the area for trouble... the kitten meowed pitifully.
" Be my guest, we should hurry it up though...this is not what I would call a smart move considering...Wooo-ooos he made a spooky ghost voice and a fluttering hand gesture."
Stefan agilely swung up onto one of the lower branches and held out his hand to the kitten.
" Here kitty, kitty, kitty... come on, I won't hurt you."
It crawled closer but then it puffed up like a porcupine, hissing and spitting at Stefan, trying to scratch him. Stefan frowned then gracefully dropped back down onto sidewalk, empty-handed. Damon smirked while Bonnie and Elena covered their mouths and giggled.
" O.K. Well that was a bust, I'm sorry Elena, but I don't think he likes me."
Elena kissed Stefan adding,
"He must not have very good taste. Thanks for trying though."
Damon snarked to Bonnie, (More like she knows that Stefan would think that kitty, kitty, kitty would taste good.)
Bonnie snarked back, (Oh, You are so bad..) Out loud she smiled innocently, " Let Damon give it a shot,"
Damon quickly took off his leather jacket and handed it to Bonnie, flexing his biceps he kissed each one quipping,
"Stand back Stefan and let me show you how a real man with big guns does it."
Damon acted like he was going to haul himself up onto a higher branch, then he stopped and stared at the little kitten, glowing silver sage eyes to glowing cobalt blue ones. Damon's pupils danced.....he was glamouring the kitten.
" Come on Miss Kitty. Don't you want to come home with me?, I'll take very good care of you, just ask Bonnie. She'll be there too and trust me, you'll grow to love her as much as I do."
The feline mite meowed once and jumped out of the tree landing right into Damon's waiting arms. Damon took his jacket back from Bonnie and wrapped the purring midnight fuzz ball in it, then he handed the soft bundle to Bonnie...rasping in her ear playfully...
( Go ahead, you can call me the pussy whisperer. )
Bonnie blushed then teased him,
(Hmmm-promises, promises. I guess that means it'll be your job to clean out the litter-box.)
Elena and Stefan were happy to observe the other couple's easy flirtatious back and forth banter, even if half of it was on their own private wavelength so to speak...{They were getting used to the long, meaningful silences between them.} Elena had to ask Stefan, How come you didn't know that she was a girl kitty?"
Before he could answer her, they both observed that Bonnie had stopped petting her new baby and was standing by the Jag with a weird expression on her face. Once again the cloying sweet scent of roses and jasmine hung thick in the air. When a taloned skeletal finger crept out of the lilac bushes and caressed along the little witch's jaw... her high, shrill screech rang out shattering the malignant stillness that had washed over the neighborhood.
Damon's wild alpha male challenge growl sounded exactly like the lethal back off warning that it was. Stefan's second in the pride feral roar ensured that whoever or whatever that had overstepped their territorial boundaries and touched one of their females, now knew better than to try it again lest they wanted to sacrifice a limb...or a life.
Bonnie felt Elena bump against her as the two vampires herded them closer together. She couldn't see anyone because it was still so dark, but she did hear the faint swish, swish, swish of fabric and the clump, clump, clump of boots upon the pavement as someone walked from across the street towards them -giving away their position....
Sheila's gossamer construct peeled away from the side of the shed. Damon and Stefan were already in full vampire defensive mode, fangs, veins and attitudes.
Bonnie herself was tired of all of this mysterious popping in and out and getting scared half to death by her own grandmother, ghost or not. She was determined to get to the bottom of this...tonight.
" Grams, You know that I love you, but I love Damon too. You are going to have to accept that and move on to...to.. wherever . You never finished answering Stefan's question about the tomb. If there's something important that you want to tell us, then please just say it. "
Grams looked at the four young adults standing there and she nodded to the lilac bushes. It was time for the revelation.
"Bonnie, meet your real father. Colonel Joe Black-Bennett. "
Bonnie did a double -take...What the...? Her little mouth was opened in a confused "0" as another large shadow stretched out from the bushes and coalesced in front of her. Bonnie felt her heart pounding erratically and her throat constricted as she gulped with fear.
The thing was at least seven feet tall with a barrel chest, trim waist, long muscular arms and legs. He boasted shoulders that any N.F.L. Defensive line- blocker would die for. What am I thinking...one probably did !
It's face was similar to the ivory and ash boney skull goblin that she had seen earlier. However, she could tell that this guy wasn't really a ghost. Nope, he was waaay scarier.
While his high cheeks were boney, they weren't actually bare bone. His smooth flesh was covered by thin, luminous gray skin that surrounded a square jaw, a straight aristocratic nose, a wide mouth with full lips and black lashed deep set eyes. Oh crap... This was the really frightening part...those eyes.
Where most people had a round black pupil, then a colored iris centered in the white of an eyeball. His were almost reversed. The pupil was a vertical white diamond, the iris...honest to goodness red and orange dancing flames,.. the "ball" solid obsidian.
His hands were huge, with five long skeletal fingers and a thumb tipped not by nails but by cinder shaded curving talons. { That's six digits per hand people...creepy!} An ornate gold ring with an oxblood red stone adorned the third finger on his left hand. So he was married, well goodie for him.
He wore an ebony floor length outer tunic woven from thick wool, complete with a deep cowled hood . Strange, ancient tribal symbols were embroidered on the cloth with red silk thread. Bonnie gasped as she recognized them- Druid symbols!!! He pulled the hood back to reveal more.
His wavy raven hair was streaked with silver and grew past his shoulder, he kept the front pulled back into a braided queue. Two ten inch curved horns sprouted from a ridge above his pointed ears. He wore a wireless bluetooth headset plugged into his left one.
He parted the tunic duster to display a matching ensemble of black leather, from his shirt, pants and boots to a set of ...yes, you guessed it black kevlar body armor. Seems like black was Mr. Black's favorite color yuk-yuk-yuk. [He could have raided Damon's closet, except none of the vampire's swanky clothes would have fit this behemoth.]
An assortment of wicked looking bladed weapons and loaded guns were strapped to his limbs and sewn into the inside lining of the tunic.
(Were those some sort of grenades fastened to his belt?)...
Damon was about to answer Bonnie's mental inquiry via their link when the creature spoke first...
" Yes, Bonnie... they're a sci- ops formula of liquid silver nitrate and acetylide mixed with gunpowder and C4 for taking out rabid were-wolves. I'll be happy to teach you how to use them."
Bonnie's mocha coloring paled visibly as her shell- shocked mind tried to wrap around the fact that more than just the Druid symbols were familiar. The being before her was speaking in a gravellier version of her father's rich baratone voice...the same one belonging to the man, the human everyone called Joe Bennett.
Stefan caught Damon's scowling gaze...,
" This explains a lot. Witch craft elemental abilities aside, it's one more reason why Bonnie has such powerful potential when using fire. Her father is a shape shifting fire demon. He's a R.E.A.P.E.R. Call sign for Rapid, Emergency, Assault, Paranormal, Extraction, Reclamation.
Elena gave her boyfriend an incredulous salute, then flipping her long brunett locks she stepped forward and bravely addressed the fire demon himself,
" Grams called you Colonel, does that mean that you're a member of some secret un-dead military group or something?"
Boosted by her best friend's brazen confidence [even if it was misplaced] Bonnie chimed in,
" First of all, he's not my father ! So stop saying that ! Grams what is going on? Look Mister, I don't know what kind of sick game it is that you are playing here, but I'm not joining in. I don't care if you do sound like a memorex recording of Dad's voice on steroids. Where is he? What did you do to him?"
The fire demon smiled at the young women as if they were as adorable [and harmless] as the kitten sleeping in Bonnie's arms. Conversely his full set of serrated teeth expertly advertised that he himself was a hazardous predator.
" You two always were full of questions, ever since kindergarden. Does the old adage curiosity killed the cat ring any bells with either of you? I'm ex- military, semi-retired from an elite special forces unit. My classification is top-secret clearance only. Yep, Bonnie- I bet you never imagined that you were a third generation army brat.
I'm sorry but for your own safety, there are a lot of things that I've had to keep from you. I assure you , I am your father, the human that you call Daddy, we're one and the same, always have been. Well, I guess seeing is believing. "
The fire demon, the Colonel or whatever you wish to call him stepped back a few steps and stood at attention, immobile as a statue. A mesh- work of glittering static particules began to cross section his body. The air surrounding him seemed to ripple as his form waxed and expanded then liquified and shrank only to become dense again. His very molecules mutated and rearranged as he shifted from his true demon body to the human one he used when off duty in the Terra realm.
Bonnie stumbled in shock. Her Dad, still dressed in the currently tailored for his size black armor and such, now occupied the spot where the demon had been. When he started to shuffle over to give her a hug she balked holding her hand out to stop him,
" No !, Wait ! How do I know this isn't a trick ?"
Joe Black shrugged and nostalgically recalled a moment from Bonnie's childhood.
" Do you remember the time that you, Elena and Caroline were playing at our house and you decided that it would be more fun to go hang out at Elena's rather than stay there with *boring old Mrs. Towery ,* who by the way was your Great Fairy God Aunt on your mother's side. She doted on you, spoiling you rotten with homemade candy and cookies whenever she visited. You hurt her feelings that day when you wanted to leave.
Grams nodded in agreement,
" I had to teach a class that afternoon and she happily covered the sitter zone for me. She wanted to stay close to her Bon-Bon as she called you."
Joe Black seemed sad when he said,
" Yes, she's gone now too..... But I digress, before you bailed on your Auntie you let Caroline talk you and Elena into sneaking out with my best electric razor. She wanted to use it to give your entire Barbie doll collection new summer haircuts. All of that sticky synthetic hair gummed it up so bad that the motor overheated and quit. You felt so guilty about it that you used every dime in your piggy bank to go buy me another one. "
Bonnie gushed somewhat bemused,
"Oh my gosh, I'd completely forgotten about that. It was not long after Mom had passed away and that razor was one of the last presents that she had given you. How did you know?... You were out of town at the time. The three of us were only eight years old and Elena's folks were at work. Jenna was babysitting her and Jeremy. We begged Jenna to drive us to Walmart. "
Elena brightened, mirth twinkling in her brown eyes,
" She was barely sixteen and made us swear never to tell another soul about it because she had just gotten her driver's license and wasn't supposed to use the family truckster unless it was a dire emergency."
Bonnie embellished further,
" Jenna was so safety conscious that she made poor Jeremy sit in the middle of the backseat, strapped into one of those kiddy booster car-seats that he had outgrown,.. oh say.. probably two years earlier. He hated it, being squeezed between me and Caroline like a baby while you sat up front with Jenna. She insisted that we all buckle up before she would even start the car. When we got back I replaced the broken razor with the new one and then I let Jeremy dig a big hole in the backyard so that we could bury the trashed Remco in it. "
Joe Black laughed along with his daughter and her friends,
" Of course as a shape shifter I never actually needed to use a razor, your Mom understood that, she had gotten it for me as a keep up with the Jone's gift for appearance's sake. It was a gag that we shared, pin-pointing little normal everyday absurdities that helped us while we pretended to be a normal couple."
Damon and Stefan had listened to the conversation with interest, they identified with the demon all too well. The bluetooth headset in Joe's ear squealed audibly with feedback and he fiddled with the interface waiting to hear the entire communication before he reacted.
"Duty calls !" he snapped. He shifted back to his demonic persona and hefted an automatic rifle taking sight and tracking the street in a sweeping motion with the gun. A Banshee's wail off in the distance signaled that a death was imminent.
Out of nowhere Elena swayed on her feet, Stefan caught her and held her up. The Colonel barked to Stefan,
"Is she hit?"
Stefan's face looked panicked as he ran his hands over her when she fell limp. He couldn't see anything, no wounds, no bleeding. Other than looking paler than normal, she seemed fine. Yet she obviously wasn't. He gently patted her cheek,
" I'm not sure. Elena what's wrong?, tell me where it hurts." Her voice was shaky,
" I feel so weak, it doesn't hurt, I just want to go to sleep...let me go to sleep , my head zzzz..."
She passed out. The Colonel paced closer and perused Elena coolly analyzing the problem. Swiveling to Sheila he tersely asked,
" How long has it been?"
She twittered her fingers as she counted,
" About thirty-five minutes."
To say that the Colonel was agitated was an understatement. He never made rookie mistakes anymore, until now. Giving Stefan a scathing glance as if he were an insect under a microscope he grumbled,
"Shit !!! Is she still fully human? I'm sorry, but I just assumed that as a consort to a vampire she would have been more immune to my presence. I can't believe that you've never shared a blood exchange with her. What kind of a peculiar vampire are you anyway? Nothing like your brother I see."
Damon couldn't be sure but that last tidbit of what the demon had said bore a hint of grudging respect for {lack of a better term} his new son-in-law, Hmmm? The Colonel continued,
"Exposure to my true self has started the countdown on her death clock. An unfortunate result of an encounter with a R.E.A.P.E.R. for a regular human. It's lowered her resistance to an Incubi soporific dart, they don't leave any physical evidence behind. "
" She'll sleep until she slips into a coma while it saps her strength leading to her demise. Her name has already been logged into the book of dead souls. You have seventy two hours to either turn her or have her name erased from the book."
Bonnie and Damon felt their link hum with an identical thought,
( A book of the dead ?, the dream! )
Bonnie excitedly sputtered it out before Damon had a chance to,
"The black book from my dream ! The one that went along with the Grimmore sitting beside the rock at the Loch Of Sorrows !"
With a sardonic arch of his eyebrow Damon smirked,
" She means the Necronomican Ex-Mortis from our dream."
Sheila rushed over getting in his face,
" You shared a vision quest with her of our most sacred place ? Tell me everything that you saw. What happened while you were there?"
Bonnie blushed and Damon winked at her,
" Oh the usual, lone tower- all that was left of a crumbling down castle, huge lake, deep forest, big rocks, two musty old books-one red, one black. It was our first date and I'm not one to kiss and tell."
The Colonel received another dispatch through the headset and warned,
" Checkmate 2 reports that the raid on the tomb found no enemy hostiles in the perimeter. Empty Cupboard. There's been chatter on the civi-blue bands about several 11-14-wild animal attacks and a 10-54d possible dead body, X-RAY says affirmative 62b burglary at the local hospital. N.O.R.A. buzzed, no contraband {drugs} are missing, but the blood bank's entire stock of frozen M.R.E.S {the vampire equivalent of meals ready to eat-plasma donations} and extra c-sups{command supplies} have been swiped. The unfriendly's {vampire's} are liberated and upwardly mobile. We need to get you four to a safe house ASAP. "
Stefan angrily rejected that idea,
" No !, Absolutely not ! Elena should be rushed to the E.R.
" The Colonel wasn't detoured by his outburst,
" Son, the best way to help her now is to go back to the boarding house and secure it. Once you're in lockdown, you will need to give her some of your blood. That should tide her over long enough for her to regain a few hours of consciousness. Then my man, you two will have to have the big talk.
If she doesn't want to be turned, then you and your Scoobie Doo Bunch here are going to have to teleport to Edinburgh Scotland, circa Caledonia 1692. That's where the Necronomican Ex-Mortis is hidden, at the bottom of the Loch Of Sorrows.
Sheila harrumphed,
" It doesn't matter if Elena wants to be turned or not. Bonnie, you and Damon have to make that journey. Your shared dream was a calling, a message. I told you that Damon must be cleansed, only then he will be allowed to take his ovate vows. Right alongside you when you take yours.
You are bonded, joined as one and nothing can change that. I suspect that your wyrds were meant to unfold this way, it was inevitable. It may even be prophecy unfolding. We shall have to wait and see.
However, Damon forgive my pun, but I think you may have bitten off more than you could chew when you linked yourself with my grandchild. Your own dark aura cannot be allowed to completely corrupt Bonnie's signature of light. You are each other's ying and yang, there is a little bit of good inside of everything bad, and there is a little bit of bad inside of everything good.
You two are the epitome of that balance. That tightrope walk will be precarious at best considering the war mongers gathering as we speak.
If the Anunnaki cannot communicate with their Caledonian Oracle, or should I say Oracles, plural now since that means you too mister. The Earth really could wind up being just the third rock from the sun. The Anunnaki have the power to annihilate life as we know it on a planetary scale, burning our big blue marble in the sky into a cinder. Let me see you bounce back from that one vampire.
Oh, I almost forgot, in case the fate of the world isn't enough of an incentive for you to behave yourself Damon, here's another....Your name is logged in the Necronomican, along with Stefan's and... Katherine's, plus all of the other vampire's in existence today.
It may be up to you and Bonnie to decide which ones are given salvation, which ones will meet their final death and which ones will be dragged to hell by Colonel Black and his team. "
Damon's mind was churning while he reached for Bonnie's trembling hand, They would be each other's anchors, whatever may come. Bonnie's voice was morose as she murmured,
"Grams how the heck do you expect me to teleport us anywhere? Will you be coming with us? How about you Dad?"
Grams took the lead,
" I can teach you how to create the portal here on this end, and open it again when you need to return. As to weither we can go along, no sweet heart we can't. This is something that the four of you will have to do on your own. Ghosts cannot use the portals, something about the design of the realm phase matrix messes with our projection abilities."
The Colonel reassured his daughter. You'll all be just fine. Trust your gut, trust Damon. I would go, but I'm under orders to contact a fledgling Slayer here in Mystic Falls. He doesn't know it yet but Mr. Alaric Saltzman is going to be my first civillian protege. He's got great instincts, he inherited them from his very, very, very old grandfather....Thor, the God of Thunder"
I predict that there will be a dramatic drop in the rouge vampire population before you guys even get back. Go on, we'll rendezvous at the boarding house and help you get everything set-up. Both the fire demon and the ghost sighed as they urged the two couples towards the Jag.
Stefan climbed into the passenger seat and tenderly cradled the slumbering Elena in his lap. Damon got in next and pushed his seat back as far as it would go so that Bonnie could sit on his lap. There wasn't much space between her and the steering column and she nervously leaned over sideways every time another car approached them. Through their link she instantly sent him everything that she saw on the road, but soon found it unnecessary.
He chuckled wickedly at the way it totally unnerved her that he could drive using only his radar-like vampire senses to tell where they were going. He knew when to stop, start and shift gears, even with her petite curves perched in his way. With her face so close to his, he couldn't resist brushing a kiss across her cheek. He used their bond to vent a few nagging thoughts that he hadn't been able to let go...
( Bonnie, Your Dad, the Colonel is a R.E.A.P.E.R. And a part of his job, other than taking out bad asses, is to escort souls to their judgement, be it to heaven or hell depending on the person, or they could be cleansed and allowed to continue on with their journey of enlightenment. Who was supposed to escort your Gram's soul?, and to where? Is she opting for the whole cleaning thing?
She said that I had to be cleansed before I could take Ovate vows with you. Who are we supposed to be Ovates to? Was your Dad there for her...or for me? Also do you realize that both your Mom's and your Gram's names are probably in that book as well ? I wonder what we are supposed to do about that? Is it just me or are you smelling a set up here too? ).....TBC