Chapter 7
Runaway Train
"I never understood that saying," said Kai, gesticulating with his bag of Funyuns. "Can't teach an old dog new tricks."
Sitting on the blanket, communing with nature in the middle of the field, Bonnie tried to ignore him but his casual munching was growing louder and more obnoxious. She closed her eyes, tuning him out.
Several hours into her flagging attempt to restore her magic and she was almost out of ideas. His one suggestion so far stunk. This was her first time being disconnected from it, and his insistence that her own state of mind was responsible didn't sit well with her. Why would she have done that to herself, and more importantly, how? Not once in all these past months of learning about the mystical aspects of herself and the world had the thought ever formed-no thanks, don't want it.
Not even when she'd made contact with Kai in the mirror, or started having random nightmares about all the things wrong lately with not just her life but also, her town.
"Like, why not? My family had one, this dopey bloodhound, but even at thirteen years old he figured out the squirrels I tortured were easier kills than the street cats he liked to chase." He snickered, chomping down on another crunchy processed onion ring. "Got real good trapping their necks between his jaw on the first lunge."
Appalled, she popped open an eye just in time to catch him adjusting his position on the lawn chair, making himself more comfortable, moving his irritating quotient into the ninety-fifth percentile because the ground beneath her even with the blanket had been hurting her ass for the last twenty minutes.
She glared with her one seeing eye.
"Do you mind?" she asked pointedly.
"No, carry on," he said, smiling. "Not that you're showing any progress, but who am I to get in the way of self-delusion? You're a Bennett, of course you want to go kumbaya with the trees and the sky- and all this grass. That's where good ol' Sheila told you to draw your power from, right?" He snorted. "You'd probably get better results with a different type of grass, Bonnie."
The problem with this world-aside from having to share it with a lunatic-was the lack of movement and sound. Not just people or animals, but nature. Wind didn't seem to carry, at least not in a natural way, one that didn't involve elements of the supernatural. Leaves stayed stagnant on the ground, and plants and flowers sat dull and lifeless in their settings, much like the fake plastic ones in the department stores.
Useless, this exercise. No communing with nature, and why would there be? Kai's prison world-his coven hadn't wanted him to. The little that she had read of the Gemini coven told her they had once stood against the unnatural aspects of magic, but then a few of their practices from the last couple centuries didn't seem to support that any longer.
"It's not the old dogs who are the problem. The puppies, though?" Kai tsked. "Getting them to learn even basic tricks? Now that's a bitch."
"You've been alone too long," she muttered. "You like the sound of your own voice too much."
She stood, brushing off imaginary lint from her pants. The world was growing dimmer, the solar eclipse starting to cast its partial shadow above, turning day slowly into night. Kai continued sitting, smirk growing as she picked up the blanket and slung it over her shoulder.
"Giving up already?"
"I'm not four-legged or furry, Kai," she said through gritted teeth. "Might wanna work on your pep talks."
She stalked past him, but he abruptly stood, blocking her.
She stopped short, caught between the need to stand her ground against his obvious ploy to make her uncomfortable, and the desire to maintain distance just in case he decided he'd had enough of playing at their truce. It never left her thoughts-not fully-that he could just as easily siphon her magic and attempt his own escape. With or without her.
"Hey," he said casually. "Quick question. Notice anything missing?"
She'd already been moving even before he got the comment out, and she didn't stop again as she answered. "Yeah," she tossed over her shoulder, her hand automatically drifting to her neck where her medallion should've been. "I was hoping you'd stop playing games and give it back."
Behind her, he scoffed. "What would I want with it? The amber totally washes out my skin tone." He was quiet for a moment. "Suits yours better."
She kept barreling towards the house, not dwelling on how his voice pitched lower, or that her ass felt warm. If she turned around, she was fairly sure his eyes were drilling holes into the back pockets of her jeans.
The idle wish crossed her mind once more-if only he had a hook nose and hairy warts all over his face. But what did any of that matter anyway? She needed to avoid taking pages from her friends' books. Mysterious and broody lately in their world could only spell unspeakably terrible things. Even now, she wished she could travel back in time and nudge Elena past the school office without any mention of Stefan's leather-jacketed back. Or that she'd found a way to run interference the night Caroline had ever crossed paths with Damon, leading to him giving her a ride home.
Look where both her friends were now. One aggressively twitchy, the other wallowing in secret anxiety. Both husks of their former selves, just a few short months back.
Then again, Kai was neither broody nor mysterious. Sure he had a nice face, but in the end smug and sociopathic were more appropriate terms, and she found neither quality appealing.
Bonnie sighed, then turned, and her arms went out, preventing Kai from colliding with her because of how closely he followed.
This would be mortifying, but needed saying, and she wasn't one to avoid harsh truths.
"I'm the first girl you've been around in years," she said. "And I wish you were ugly, but that's not the case. Either way, this link is messing with both our heads. And probably some hormones. On your part. We can't afford that. So quit staring at my butt."
For once, he was speechless. Just blinking, completely at a loss.
She swallowed nervously, knowing her cheeks would soon turn a little pink and wishing her skin was just a shade darker to hide those tells. At least she had comfort in the growing darkness around them, as the eclipse neared its full height.
Kai suddenly bit down on his lip, his eyes filling with amusement. "As you wish."
"Seriously, Kai," she said, eager to put this conversation behind them. "Down the line, when I feel like you're safe enough to let out, you're gonna go wild with bar-hopping, clubbing, getting your fill. The whole nine yards. Just-keep calm, until then. Okay?"
"Why would I take advice from a sixteen year old?" Then his eyes narrowed. "Are you even that?"
"In a few months."
"Geeze," he muttered, a hand rubbing his eyebrow.
"Look, if we're gonna be in each other's corner, I don't want it half-assed."
The slip-up heated her cheeks even worse; she could feel it, and knew it too in the way his glance turned knowing.
"For all that you're warning me to behave," he drawled. "You're the one that keeps mentioning derrieres."
"You know what I mean." Then she paced, moving on to the more pressing topic. "If you don't have Emily's talisman, then who does?"
He put his hands in his pockets, shrugging as he walked past her.
She'd woken up that morning feeling the loss of the talisman instantly. But then finding Kai's corpse missing had superseded everything else, and in the ensuing time, she'd suspected that he was the one who took it.
"You said it amplified the effects of this spell connecting us," she said, her steps quick to catch up with his long strides, even though he didn't seem to be in any rush himself. "How could you tell?"
"How could you not?"
She frowned in confusion.
Now he was the one exhaling his irritation. "Much as I thought I could be all, 'well, it's like this, young grasshopper'-I really can't." He laughed, a hand sweeping from the top of his brow to the bottom of his jaw, while his eyes glared up at the shadowed skies before turning to her. "First things first, Bonnie. Stop being naive with magic."
His hands reached out, grabbing hers. "You wanna feel nature, great. But my world's not normal. Focus on that, instead. Close your eyes."
She watched him warily.
His brow quirked up, and she huffed but let her eyes drift shut, and it registered then that he had timed it somehow. The eclipse was in full force now, the world around them eerie and dark while she held hands with the friendly neighborhood psycho.
She tried not to shiver.
"I can't produce spells without drawing from another witch's power first, but a little bit of magic still runs in me." She felt him step nearer, his hands squeezing before his grip turned loose. "Channel it. It's the most abnormal thing you'll probably encounter here. Use it as a stepping stone."
Channeling was a work in progress for her. Grams had been her only experience so far, an effort which had taken nearly half an hour and a series of hiccups before Bonnie even so much as felt a trickle of the older woman's potent magic seep into her.
She felt nothing now with Kai, except for her hand growing sweatier by the moment. She tried to pull away.
"Bonnie," he warned. "Fight your nerves. Just do it. Baywatch is on in ten minutes."
Which drew a choked sound from her, one that let out her frustration at being such a walking disaster lately. Baywatch. Of course. How could she forget the funeral parlor interlude in his dream? Where he plowed into Pam Anderson in her strange affinity for dark sheer stockings and stiletto heels while in her swimwear. Bonnie had thought at first that it'd been a different woman and the blonde had been added in later, but he'd talked almost non-stop about Baywatch since breakfast, so now she knew better.
Secretly, a part of her suspected he harped on it to cover how shaken he was by everything else.
Probably Pam Anderson had been his brain's way of protecting him from having to watch the funeral of his siblings that he'd murdered.
Aside from that one comment during breakfast, about the four getting even with him, he'd never brought it up again. Even though, like he'd said, it'd been pretty much torture.
At her hands.
He tugged her abruptly, and she stumbled against him, gasping in surprise, her eyes opening wide.
His were still closed.
"Any day now," he sing songed, his breath hitting her cheeks.
Annoyed, she shut her eyes tightly, focusing on the erratic pinpricks of power on his skin. He was right. It was there, but hard to get a handle on, like trying to gather sharp hot needles inside one container. Channeling him would hurt, she realized.
She did it anyway.
Her blood burned, coaxing a cringe from her in reaction to the sting. Between her ears grew a sound, small at first until it filled the spaces in her head and her brain echoed with a roar that beat forcefully against her head. Nerve endings shot to life, her skin on fire with magic that was greedy, seeking, attuned not to nature but to a vacuum, to the act of emptying filled spaces.
"What is this?" she whispered, and then her eyes shot open again, because her magic was back, and when she looked around, the world was spinning in a swirl of leaves and inky black skies, trees around them swaying to the force of her power.
Kai gazed intently back, sweat pooling on his brow. "Keep going-" his voice caught between a choke and a growl.
Nature and the abnormal-the unnatural, fighting for dominance in her blood. Fire crept over her hands, covering his, too, but he didn't make a sound, just set his jaw. The flames tickled her skin, and she laughed, letting it dance around her arms before it swept over the rest of her.
She kept the fire away from him but let it spread around them. It devoured the grass, Kai's magic leeching it of life. The flames turned white, then dimmed back to orange, following the movement of leaves in the air around their heads, the wind whipping Bonnie's hair around both their faces, strands of it wrapped in flames, red-gold and cracking against Kai's cheek, singing the skin there.
Bonnie gasped, then pulled away from him.
The magic show died, just as the eclipse, too, began to pass.
"S-Sorry," she said, because aside from the burn on his cheek, she saw that his hands were blistered, the skin there smoking.
He was still gritting his teeth, staring at her, his pupils large and black and fathomless as he reached out, swiping with a finger against her skin, between her nose and her lip.
Her eyes caught on the blood resting at the tip of his finger, which looked leathery white and raw.
Bonnie ran back to the house, not looking behind her. "I'm gonna get first aid," she called. "Stay right there!"
They were at least third-degree burns, she thought hazily, and he could pass out from the pain which was why she'd left him behind. She filled a small pot with cold water while she rummaged through the cabinets. By the time she made it back out with supplies and was near enough to spot him, Kai was lying on the ground.
She cursed. The pain must've been bad, for him to have fainted that quickly.
When she reached him, her steps faltered and then her grip went slack, dropping all her supplies.
He lay in a pool of blood under his head, a Swiss army knife in one of his hands.
"Kai," she whispered, getting to her knees. She shook him. "Kai!"
He was-dead?
Her shaking turned him towards her, revealing the thick gash on his throat. Her eyes stuck on the knife in his hands. "What the hell?" she cried out. "What did you do, you stupid-"
She drew back, numb. Her magic had done too much damage, and she had left to help, but maybe he hadn't heard her when she said she was getting supplies, only what did it signify-why would that explain anything? Except if he was suicidal-
Her brain offered an image of the Founder's ball, when she'd spotted him in the mirror, looking ill. Smoke billowing in the garage. What had he been doing? Smoke, not from a nearby fire, but like the exhaust fumes of a running car, dissipating through the opened garage. He hadn't been ill-just recovering.
Last night-the stabbing. He'd only smiled at that. Then the beating that he'd sensed was coming for him, when the bat rolled towards them. That one, had prompted his laughter.
He was suicidal.
She smacked his arm. "Wake up!" she shouted, then bowed low, wracked with guilt but more with frenzied hope that it was another fake-out.
She'd killed him over and over last night, and whether the ghosts of his siblings had resurrected him or it had all been one enormous mindfuck, she hadn't yet decided-but the point was, he'd been alive that morning.
And now he was dead again-at his own hands. Maybe his siblings had returned, and while she was gone, they'd finally finished for real what they had started last night.
Tears prickled her eyes, but she refused to give in.
"Can't be right," she said to herself, feeling insane. How did this happen?
She stood, pacing around, her wild eyes everywhere and on the lookout for the ghosts.
"Where are you?" she demanded.
The truly ironic thing was how badly she needed to see them just then. At least if they did, she'd know what to expect, that after inflicting this latest bout of mental anguish on their brother, he would wake up once more. Or so she hoped.
Daylight had returned, the sun irrationally bright and pleasant while the puddle of blood at her feet grew wider and thicker, and Kai's body turned paler.
Bonnie stared, her gut churning, and then couldn't hold it. She ran to a nearby bush, vomiting the continental breakfast that a dead man had cooked for her, until her emptied stomach spasmed in protest. She made her way back to Kai, circling his body in growing anger.
It didn't make sense.
She clutched her head, shaking it. Something wasn't right. Why would his siblings bring him back to life? She lay on the grass, taking in lungfuls of air in an attempt to avoid hyperventilating.
His hand were burned-and that was all. The pain couldn't have been unbearable, he didn't seem like a wimp.
She closed her eyes, the tears on the edge of her lashes drying now. Her mind was settling, cooling, following a meandering path through twisted logic. Nobody could be that blasé about dying. Even jumpers never just plunged without any warning, without first trying to seek attention, find someone who cared enough to derail the effort.
He wasn't really suicidal-so then, what?
Grass prickled her back, soothing her, and she let her magic coat her, bringing her more peace. Her thoughts further calmed.
Prison world. Solitary confinement. The Geminis. A bunch of assholes, locking up one of their own. They hadn't killed him for the atrocities he'd committed-they wanted him to suffer. For a long time. Maybe even forever.
Fifteen years, he'd said. He hadn't aged.
Why would his siblings bring him back?
They wouldn't.
They didn't need to.
Kai couldn't die. Or if he did...
This prison brought him back.
"Of course," she muttered, relief and fury mingling in her aggravated tone. She glared at his body behind her, nearly giving into a strong urge to kick him.
Who knew why the hell he'd done it? Only that he'd done so without warning.
What a prick.
-oOoOo-
Her anger didn't faze him, not in the least, but his reaction to it sure as hell did.
Hours later, he was back in the house, his face and hands fully healed, the secondary reasons behind his latest suicide. The primary one sat at the dining table, flipping through notebooks and grimoires, each turn of the page a sharp, crisp crack of a whip in the heavy silence filling the gapingly huge den in the boarding house.
She'd channeled him, burned him, and by the time it was all over he'd sported-literally-the world's biggest boner that somehow she'd missed before she ran away. Of course he was going to kill himself. How else to get rid of the damn thing that didn't involve tossing her against a tree when she returned and having his merry fucking way with her?
And it wasn't his fault-not really-if he hadn't anticipated that this gullible witchling had failed to pick up on his imposed immortality here in this prison world, never mind that she'd witnessed him come back to life three or four times now.
Why was she even mad? Channeling him had gotten her magic back.
He was the one who'd missed Baywatch. What did it matter to him that she was mad?
The blank television mocked him, its black screen inviting thoughts of swimsuits and breasts and butts and Bonnie's breasts and butt, to be more exact. Flames coating her form while she pranced around the beach in a trim little red one-piece-
He groaned, grabbed the remote, and switched the television on to MTV.
Kris-Kross's latest music video greeted him. He stared unseeing while his brain went into overdrive.
What was wrong with him? He had control.
Near-death or actual, those experiences he could usually brush off, but last night's debacle was just on the wrong side of fun. Seeing his siblings, even in specter-form-those had hit him hard. Since breakfast, he couldn't seem to stop remembering how, when they were all younger and before he'd started distancing himself from them-they'd all done things like family game night, or card night, or movie night. Every once in a while, when they weren't being obnoxious little brats.
Even his stupid dad used to join, back before he got all outraged over Kai's brushes with the law, the coven elders, and the other covens' elders.
Bonnie-being the only girl available to him-was serving as his escapist fantasy. From the stress which, irritatingly, had never really been much of a problem for him until a few weeks ago.
He patted his pocket, thinking, but not so lost in his thoughts that he wasn't aware the instant she entered the room. Her faint perfume wafted his way, along with her energy-like a spark of tinder-and it zinged him right back out of his mind, which he did not appreciate.
She was glowering at him, holding a large magazine in her hands that was spread open and dotted with blood. He scowled back.
"Thought I told you to clean up," he said, but that wasn't right, he realized. Her face was clean, the blood that had pooled beneath her nose when she'd channeled him now wiped off.
He'd been dying to lick it off her earlier, back when they were still holding hands and she looked nothing more than the best candy ever, dipped in fire.
She slowly approached, her eyes narrowing into slits as they stared down at the page-not from a magazine, he saw now, but an atlas of the city-before she tossed it on the table behind the couch.
"You said to be more proactive," she said in a deceptively light voice that gave him just a little misgiving. "So I tried a locator spell."
"Oh?" He glanced breezily towards the page, saw a circle grouped in one location in Mystic Falls. "Do tell."
"Wanna explain why the line doesn't move from the boarding house?" she asked, grinning with bite at him. "Emily's talisman is here. Right here. Your siblings didn't magically smuggle it out with them, did they?"
He gestured towards the atlas. "See what the locator spell says, young grasshopper."
"Stop it, Kai. Just gimme back her talisman."
"Not hers," he corrected. "Why don't you claim it as yours, Bonnie?"
"Because it was Emily's. Grams said she made it-"
He held up a finger, cutting her off. "Eeeeeergh," he beeped. "Wrong answer."
He stood, towering over her. This was an important lesson for any witch, much less one packing the wallop she did. "Your Grams is not the end-all be-all for magical studies, all right?" he said. "Do you understand what happened to you out there? You think it was about earthy Mother Nature giving you hippy bohemian voodoo vibes?"
"No," she said. "Destruction, too. I get it, okay? Felt the need to burn everything away. You included." She smiled. "I should've."
He nodded in approval. "Very good. The only kind of nature you should be concentrating on for now is your own." She gave him a speculative glance, moving closer. "Know what makes you tick, what you're capable of, and then you'll know how to avoid losing control. Because that's why you blocked yourself, right? Afraid of the damage you could do?"
She stared up, her demeanor reminding him of a skittish porcupine. Any moment now, she'd turn and raise those quills.
"Because I'm such a bad influence on you?" he continued softly.
"The amulet's close," she replied.
"Get closer."
Challenging, she stepped boldly up in one go, her hand shooting out to land on his hip.
"Whose amulet?" he prodded.
Her gaze was steady and measured. "Mine."
He continued staring at her, hoping she wouldn't hear the stupid way his heart pitter-pattered against his ribcage. She couldn't hear that, there was no way-she was a witch, not a damn vampire.
His eyes widened-there it was. The shared thread. "Oh," he said.
Her hand was in his pocket, digging, fingers wrapping around the talisman. Several things happened all at the same time.
One-junior Kai, stirring in response to her fingers in his pockets.
Two, his Eureka.
Three, Bonnie flashing the amulet in his face, her smile triumphant, which was good, it was a distraction for her, thank God. She still failed to register the first thing. He turned, focusing on his notes and the grimoires stacked on the table, browsing quickly through several passages.
She followed him.
"You waste a lot of time with your mind games," she grumbled.
"If I spell everything out for you, how're you gonna learn? Gotta exercise those brain cells, kiddo."
Her face scrunched up. "Kiddo? You're not that much older."
That one had him chuckling in irritation. "I'm thirty-eight mentally, trapped in a twenty-two-year-old physically, and every second I'm spending training you is kinda making me feel like I'm sixty and ready to collect my social security."
She bristled, rearing back to snap his head off, but then her head tilted in curiosity. "Retirement age is sixty-seven now," she said unexpectedly.
"Hooray. I'm totally digging the future. Not."
"Yeah, Grams sounds just like that, anytime she talks about it." Her teeth flashed, pretty and white and mocking. "Guess you are more like an old geezer than a teenager."
"Nice. You just called your Grams an old geezer."
"No," she insisted. "That was reserved for you."
He turned away from her, pressing his hands against his eyes. "Trying to concentrate here. I'm onto something. The Salvatores, your friend's sister. I know what they are." He frowned at her. "What'd Sheila tell you about them?"
"Stay away from them."
"Any weird instructions? Like, buy lots of garlic. Keep lots of crosses."
She scoffed. "You're telling me they're vampires?"
He eyed her without any mockery.
Bonnie gasped, her own eyes filling with shock. "Grams said don't let them inside the house. But that doesn't mean-no way-"
"Why not, Bonnie? You're a witch. I'm an exiled magic-siphoner, stuck on a 1994 repeat. Why exactly wouldn't there be vampires running around, probably snacking on your friends as we speak?"
She backed away, her head shaking. "No way," she repeated. "Stefan's not. How? He's-"
"Cold to the touch, reeks of death, and super pale."
"He walks around in daylight."
Kai contemplated that. "Loophole. It happens. Maybe he's got a witch tucked away in a back pocket, spelling him free of that one little drawback."
She paced, the talisman around her neck glowing brightly. His head tightened, and the world spun-for her also, he suspected, judging by the sudden queasy look passing her face. The achy feeling in his chest became more pronounced, and his mind filled with thoughts of his dead siblings. Unbidden, tears sprang to his eyes.
"Fuck me," he choked out, dropping to the couch.
Another song played, guitar strumming an easy ballad, while Bonnie plopped down next to him.
Call you up in the middle of the night...
"Why're you crying?" she asked, her voice sounding curious and distant and not all that interested in getting him to stop.
"Is that what it is?" he said. "Cuz I was gonna say-allergies."
She snorted.
"I should get back to my friends," she said. "If vampires are in town, someone needs to keep an eye."
"Guess you're volunteering yourself?"
She shrugged, the movement eerily close to his own mannerism.
"Get rid of that talisman," he suddenly said.
"What? Why? You just told me to claim it."
"Did I?" he asked weakly. He sucked. "I was wrong. It's not good for us."
She sighed. "We're turning into each other, aren't we?"
He shook his head. "Mirroring. Hopefully we'll plateau soon."
"Why are you more affected by it?"
"Sure about that? Ask yourself, do you feel bad that a grown man is crying like an idiot in front of you right now?"
"No, I don't. What you did was awful and boohoo crying doesn't bring them back. It's the lowest form of remorse, if you ask me. Find another way to make amends." She paused. "I feel bad for your family, though."
Ha. A faint smirk crossed his lips. "Wait til you meet the rest of 'em. I'd withhold judgment until then."
Seems like I should be getting somewhere, somehow I'm neither here nor there...
"God, why is this song so depressing?" he asked.
Bonnie started chuckling, but when he turned, she looked half-crazed because her face was sad while she devolved into laughter. "It's the nineties. Everything's angsty."
"Eighties would've been better."
She nodded, smirking back, her eyes cool while they assessed his own, still tear-filled. He rubbed sloppily at his face.
"Bonnie," he said. "Get outta here."
"Uh, hello. I've been trying?"
He lifted a hand, just stopping himself from touching her face, and pointed instead. "Face up to it."
The lost look in her eyes drew out more tightness in his gut. He took his hand back, leaning against the cushions of the sofa, compelled by a need just then to hurt something living and breathing. She was the only candidate, but the thought of laying violent hands on her made him want to hurl.
The fuck was this spell doing to him?
"Remember how you thought you could help with my ghost problem?" He laughed, too, this one bitter. "Not realizing, the whole time, you're the biggest one. You're not really here, Bonnie."
"Wait, what? Kai, what're you-"
"You haunt me," he said, his voice hoarse. "Worse than they ever did. Go back. Ten bucks says your body's still in your room, waiting for you to wake up."
Her face lit up with hope. Abruptly she leaned in, her arms reaching out. He braced himself, thinking too much of him had replaced her, and now Bonnie was going nuts, she was going to attack with her magic, in some weird way involving close contact. She could probably kill him just then with him putting up barely any fight.
Her body pressed against him and he lost the ability to form a coherent thought. Whatever this was-kinda didn't suck, as far as being murdered went.
"What-" He cleared his throat. "What do you call this?"
"A hug."
He tried to think, realized he'd seen it before a few times and just hadn't paid much attention.
"Catch you later," she said, her arms squeezing around his neck. "I won't forget your stuff."
Then she closed her eyes tightly, fading away in slow increments until all that was left of where she'd once been was her scent, lingering in the air beside him.
Stupid spell.
A/N: Hope you guys liked. Thanks for the feedback once more. The chapter title is from the song by Soul Asylum. Gold star to anybody who can guess why I chose it-hint: the song is important to canon Bonkai. :)
