A/N: Hello! Once again I'd like to thank everyone – new and old – who reviewed this story and particularly the last chapter. I'm sorry I haven't had chance to reply in person to each review but I've been too busy feeling sorry for myself with a dose of the stomach flu –ugh. I blame the delena in the last chapter, took way too much out of me writing all that angst! Anyway in this chapter I return you to our scheduled plot (and some gore) ;)
The dead call to the dead
"Wow." Caroline stared at the wrecked truck sat on the side of the county road. "I hope the owner's insured."
"I think he's past caring, Caroline." Stefan stood by the crushed cab of the pickup. He was peering inside, where a body was slumped over the steering wheel. In one harsh movement he wrenched the caved in door right off. The body flopped out in that boneless, sick way only the very dead could manage. Caroline flinched despite herself as the corpse hit the ground. She tried not to focus on the pulpy red mess that used to be the guy's head. She tried not to think yummy when she caught the scent of fresh(ish) blood on the night air.
"Poor guy," she walked up beside Stefan, determined to prove that she could handle this as well as he could. She turned to look up and down the completely deserted county road. "Huh, what did he hit? I mean this is the only wreck on the road and he didn't hit a tree because that would leave marks...so...what happened? He has to have hit something, right?"
Stefan bent down to turn the body onto its back. Caroline turned away as the man's floppy, lifeless limbs rolled into a dead sprawl. She might be dead, but that didn't mean she was all that comfortable being around corpses, especially not ones that were all squishy and, just well, gross.
"His heart's missing." Stefan told her in that voice that meant I am imparting serious and doom laden information please pay attention because you will be tested on this later.
"No way; let me see." Caroline immediately forgot her icky feelings and hunkered down beside him. Stefan pulled back the blood saturated material of the guy's flannel shirt to show her the blood rimmed hole in dead-guy's diaphragm. Caroline swallowed shallowly not sure if she wanted to throw up or start chowing down. "That's not normal." She said. "I mean that didn't happen because of the wreck."
"No," Stefan agreed getting to his feet before walking away from dead-guy's body. "Someone ripped his heart out."
"Someone?" Without the safety net of Stefan beside her Caroline hurried to step away from dead-guy before she did something embarrassing like vomit or try to lick the blood from the body. "Like Damon; that kind of someone?"
"I'm not sure." Stefan was staring intently at the empty road beyond and he was wearing his deep thoughts frown now. "I thought I smelled Damon in the cab. I'm pretty sure he was in the truck when it crashed, because it's his blood on the broken windshield glass. But the body hasn't been bitten; it hasn't been drained. It doesn't make sense that Damon would kill someone that bloodily but not feed, not in the state he was in when he escaped the basement."
"Right so..." Caroline wandered up behind Stefan, "So what? Damon tried to hitch a ride out of town, the guy crashed and he decided to rip his heart out because he was mad about the wreck?"
Stefan didn't answer her, instead he raised one hand to...hi-five thin air? Caroline blinked. "Stefan?" He still didn't answer but began some sort of mime act where he pretended that the air was solid and he...leaned into it.
"What the hell?" Caroline blurred up beside him and as she did so something shocked her, a flash of stinging static that seemed to jump from the air just beside her to numb her shoulder and side as she tried to crowd Stefan. "Hey...ow! What?"
"It's...a barrier." Stefan was staring at his own hands, both pressed firmly against the suddenly solid and impassable air. "A threshold barrier...but that's impossible. This isn't a dwelling place, it's a county line."
Caroline reached out to touch the air and jerked her fingers back as the spark of...something...zinged through her. "Ouch...that's really freaky."
"Yeah," Stefan said slowly. "Freaky is one word for it."
Bonnie Bennett couldn't shake the spiders down her spine feeling that she was being watched as she rooted through the boxes of her Grams things she'd brought down from the attic after speaking with Elena. She told herself that she was probably just amped up after her weird dream and the news that Damon had gone loco. In fact merely hearing the name Damon Salvatore was enough to put her on edge. It wasn't that she was afraid of him (she'd gotten too good at giving him aneurisms to be afraid of him) but instead she just really disliked him. Hearing his name was like fingers on a chalk board to her. It was enough to make her cranky all day.
Of course the dream hadn't helped. The dream about a man she somehow knew was one of her ancestors; the dream that had involved Emily's son asking Damon Salvatore to kill his sister. Bonnie had seen and done too much since discovering her witch heritage to dismiss the dream as just a figment of her imagination brought on by eating too much cheese before bed. No, she'd had that dream for a reason. Now she just needed to find out what that reason was. Hopefully Grams genealogy books would be a good place to start.
She had names to work with after all, Ambrose and Amelie Bennett; maybe if she found them in the family tree, saw for herself that they had really lived, she might find some better to clue as to why she was dreaming about them and Damon.
"A-ha," finally after forty minutes of fruitless, increasingly angsty searching through the numerous family tomes her Grams had kept so beautifully preserved and left to Bonnie in her legacy, she found a reference to Ambrose Bennett. An obituary dated September 21st 1900. The obituary was short, just a few lines from an old and crumbled newspaper cutting and didn't say much, but what was interesting was the hand written scrawl on the back of the paper, the ink faded to a near invisible brownish violet: He died to stop her.
"'He died to stop her?'" Bonnie repeated the words out loud, feeling a chill race up her spine as the sensation of being watched intensified. "Stop who? And stop her from doing what?"
September 14th 1900:
The vampire knew that he would find death inside as soon as he approached the small house on the edge of the swamp. He could smell blood and decomposition wafting on the air from the open windows. He rocked back on his heels, half enticed and half revolted by the scent. Vampires were predators and blood was food, but they were not carrion feeders and he had been dead long enough to recognise the stench of old death when it walked up and, metaphorically speaking, slapped him around the face. Turning to his travelling companion he waved a hand silently telling the other to stop.
"We're too late."
Removing his hat the vampire used a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at the perspiration beading his brow. He was a southerner to the bottom of his undead heart but Virginia was never this humid; the wet heat was stifling and he wasn't dressed for it. He hated Mississippi.
"They dead?" Ambrose stepped up beside him nodding towards the house where they had been told Amelie had found lodging, ignoring the explicit command not to. The vampire sighed. These Bennetts' were just incapable of behaving. He really wished he could just leave them to their own messes – or better yet kill both sister and brother. He had a feeling his life would be so much easier without any Bennett witches causing him trouble. If it wasn't for Katherine...
"Yes," he dragged out the word nerves jangled by the sweaty heat and the stench of death, "Surely even you can smell it?"
Ambrose shook his head and foolishly moved forward as if to enter the house. The vampire growled under his breath and blurred forward, breaking open the door to the house and breaching the property (the threshold null and void with everyone dead) before Ambrose had made it to the porch. It may be a nuisance but he'd made a promise to protect Emily's line and he would fulfil it, even if that meant he had to protect one Bennett from another.
The first thing he saw when he entered the house was the blood liberally painting the walls. Despite the fact that the blood was old, half dried and spoiled, the vampire still had to close his eyes and release a cleansing breath to stop his vampire instincts from taking command. He'd been dead almost forty years, which was, ironically, longer than he'd lived, but still he wasn't in complete control. This annoyed him and tended to remind him of his brother, the one person he never wanted to think on. The idea that he and his brother might have anything at all in common angered him and anger did not help one curb one's bloodlust.
Opening his eyes, instincts held under his tight rein, the vampire forced himself to look beyond the blood to the carnage laid out so carefully before him.
"Oh...lovely," The body of a woman had been strung up across the lintel of the door leading to the back of the house. Someone had opened her up like a carcass in a butchers' window. Flies swarmed the body, laying their eggs in the gaping hole where once the woman's heart had lodged. It was an incredibly unedifying sight. Whoever the woman had been in life, he doubted she'd deserved to be treated like this in death.
The vampire sighed and shook his head, following his nose to the other bodies. He found two in the tiny sitting room; a man slumped over an open newspaper, and a grandmother, dead in her rocker. They too were missing their hearts. He left the room, sidestepped around the dangling corpse leading to the kitchen – setting her stockinged feet to gentle swaying in the air – and looked around for anything remotely interesting or out of place. He found a pot of stew, gone over the boil, sat on the stove and a rustic table set for five places. This meant that he was missing two bodies.
The vampire left the kitchen, once more sidling around the corpse in the doorway, but this time he stopped, looked up into the slack, grey features of the dead woman. Mocking himself for foolish sentiment but reacting all the same, the vampire reached out and pushed closed the dead woman's eyelids before carefully taking her body down and laying her out on the kitchen floor. He justified the action to himself as solidarity with one of his (less fortunate) fellow dead.
"Saints preserve us," Ambrose stood in the open front doorway, his eyes wide, flicking from the blood soaked walls to the dead woman he could just see through the open kitchen doorway. The warlock's heart rate picked up notable; the gorgeous scent of fear spiked adrenalin perfuming the air. The vampire scowled, grinding his teeth just a little.
"You just don't have the sense you were born with, do you?" He rose to his feet ignoring the resurgence of his bloody desire. "Well as you're here. I've found three bodies; this one and two more in that room there. They seem to have lost their hearts. Think it was darling Amelie?" He smiled brilliantly fully aware that his fangs were evident but too annoyed to care.
Ambrose eyed him warily, "I'd have to touch the bodies to test for magic," he sighed expression falling into deep sadness. "Is it just the three?"
The vampire shrugged, "The table was set for five. I have yet to check all the rooms."
He didn't bother to mention that he could smell more blood and death emanating from the pantry beyond the kitchen. While it might be fun to play with the man, trick him into walking into the two missing corpses just to watch his reaction, the truth was that he wanted to get out of this charnel pit of a house possibly even more than the warlock. He could always tease Bennett once they were back in more civilised environs, after all.
"Then you find 'em, while I deal with these," Ambrose said rolling his shoulders and squaring his jaw. The vampire arched a brow unimpressed.
"You're ordering me around now?" He stepped forward, "Has your sister's lunacy spread? Do I need to list all the reasons why annoying me is not healthy for you?"
The warlock had the audacity to smile, faint but confident. "We all got our strengths in this world, vampire. Mine's magic and yours...well, I heard that the dead call to the dead."
"You're a fool," negligently the vampire slammed Ambrose against the doorframe, notching his hand comfortably under his chin and leaning in to breathe in his ear. "A very lucky fool whose mother had the foresight to make a deal with me that included your safety. If she hadn't I might just kill you right now."
Ambrose snorted disdainfully, "Luck ain't got a thing to do with any o' this vampire." The warlock stared him down, "Not a one o' us in this house, including these poor sons-o-bitches got a jot o' luck to our names."
Alaric had just finished grading (pretty bad) papers on McCarthyism and Cold War hysteria when he heard the knock on his apartment door. His head jerked up and he frowned. Despite having lived in Mystic Falls for almost five months now he really didn't know too many people. This was partly because integrating into society hadn't been in his original game plan upon moving to the town, but also because his new circle of friends included a vampire with a big problem with social niceties and so, yeah, his social life was pretty dead in the water. Therefore it raised all his 'danger Will Robinson' sirens that someone would be knocking on his door at a quarter from eleven at night.
He grabbed the vervain syringe and slim stake from the hall table, shoving them into his pants back pocket before opening the door. He had a moment to wish, sincerely, that his apartment door had a peep-hole before all his attention was taken up by the gun being pointed very squarely at his head. Well shit. This never happened to him back in South Carolina.
"Mister Saltzman," Sheriff Forbes said on the other (far safer) end of the gun. "I apologize for this. But I need you to please put this in your mouth and chew." In her free hand the Sheriff presented him with a fresh sprig of vervain.
"What the hell?" Alaric stared from the vervain to the woman holding a gun to his head. "What is this?"
Sheriff Forbes hard expression faltered a little, "I'm sorry but I need to know I can trust you." Her finger shifted on the trigger. "I won't ask again. Please take the vervain."
Alaric took the vervain in his bare hand, watched the Sheriff watch him take it and very deliberately stuffed the sprig into his mouth, chewing methodically. He made himself swallow everything, including the rough twig and watched, curious despite a rising sense of outrage, as the Sheriff lowered the gun, her breath whooshing out of her in overt relief.
"Oh thank god," the woman holstered her weapon. "Damon said you could be trusted...but I had to be sure."
"Wait...Damon? What does this have to do with Damon?" Alaric demanded, trying not to cough around the piece of vervain stuck at the back of his throat in case the jumpy Sheriff mistook the reaction as a vampiric one. After all Sheriff Forbes wasn't supernatural (as far as he knew) if she killed him thinking he was a vampire Alaric was fairly certain he'd stay dead, which, although incredibly ironic all things considered, would suck.
The Sheriff shifted a little awkwardly now she was no longer holding him at gun point, and glanced briefly over her shoulder down the empty apartment complex corridor. "Can I come in? This isn't really the sort of thing I want overheard."
Alaric stared at her, "You pointed a gun at me. I'm fairly sure I could have your badge for that."
He wasn't actually, but on principle he didn't want to make a habit of being friendly with people who tried to kill him. Alaric knew this made him something of a hypocrite as he was perfectly fine with being friends with someone who had actually succeeded in killing him, but yeah, whatever.
Forbes looked increasingly tense and worried, shifting nervously from foot to foot and glancing around her at the still empty corridor. "This is Council business, Mister Saltzman." She told him grimly eyes steely but glinting with urgency. Alaric knew he didn't entirely manage to keep his poker face intact because the Sheriff read something in his reaction that convinced her to continue with a little more confidence. "There is a threat coming to this town and Damon Salvatore told me you could help keep Mystic Falls safe."
What the fuck? "Damon said what?" Alaric wondered if he was drunk and dreaming this, and then thought that he just wasn't that lucky.
"It's complicated," the Sheriff said and Alaric couldn't help but think no shit, Sherlock, but just managed not to verbalise that response. Sheriff Forbes was watching him intently. "And it really isn't something I'm comfortable discussing in a corridor."
"Right," Alaric rubbed a hand across his face, feeling like Alice falling down another damn rabbit hole. "Yeah, okay. Come in." He stepped aside and opened the door for the sheriff who slipped in behind him swiftly.
"Thank you, I promise I'll explain everything. First though I need to ask you," she looked at him intently, "What do you know about witches?"
"Stefan...shouldn't we report the wreck or something?" Caroline asked as she trailed Stefan through the woods running parallel to the roadside. They had been tracing the invisible county line, checking to make sure that the barrier extended into the woods and not just across the road. "I mean that guy might have family."
"We can't Caroline. Not yet. Not until we know more. Damon might still be out here somewhere."
"All the more reason for us not to be," Caroline muttered under her breath and Stefan had the good manners to pretend not to hear. It wasn't that Caroline was scared of Damon it was just...well, okay, she was kind of scared of Damon Salvatore. The guy was crazy, after all, even more so now, and he'd kicked her and Stefan's asses earlier before locking them both in the basement cell. Caroline was still sore about that – she'd broken a nail helping Stefan break the cell door down so they could get out. Being choked with a makeshift noose hadn't been fun either and she really didn't want to be traipsing through the woods late at night chasing after a homicidal maniac. Caroline had seen enough late night movies to know what happened to cute blondes who did that, and hello, she'd already died once this year, she so didn't want to give an encore performance.
"Stefan, seriously," She began again when it was clear that Stefan was totally absorbed in his 'must find my batshit crazy brother' mission that he wasn't thinking. "Shouldn't we be calling Bonnie about the barrier-thingie, and you know, having like a war council to discuss the fact that something freaky is going on...besides the fact that Damon's on a crazy-ass rampage?"
Stefan stopped tramping through the woods to face her. "Bonnie?" He blinked looking momentarily embarrassed and Caroline could tell he'd been so involved in his track down Damon mode he hadn't twigged that magic barrier equals magic equals we should really call Bonnie who's a witch and might know something about that. "You're right Caroline." He admitted and Caroline beamed (she never got tired of hearing those words). "You should call Bonnie. In fact it might be best if you go back into town. I'll stay out here awhile; see if I can pick up Damon's trail."
"Stefan," Caroline knew she was whining, but sometimes whining was what was needed to get things done. "Damon's probably back in town now too. I mean what if that's why the truck crashed? It hit the barrier and Damon was in the truck and that made it go splat. That could happen right? He probably realised he couldn't leave the county and headed back to Mystic Falls." Seeing that Stefan was still not convinced Caroline decided to play her trump card. "He could be on his way to Elena's right now; all crazy and pissed...and really, really hungry."
Stefan was clearly having a real brain-drain day because the way his eyes went wide and then his frown lines descended on his brow made Caroline think that even his Damon/Elena paranoia wasn't working at full capacity if he needed her to point out this pretty obvious danger.
"Let's go," he said shortly, immediately blurring back to the road where they'd parked Caroline's car. Smiling triumphantly while silently congratulating herself on her impeccable powers of Stefan-empathy Caroline blurred to catch up to him.
She cleared the tree-line still revelling in her own power, which was why it really sucked when Mister pulpy-face-no-heart-dead-guy grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into a tree trunk. Wide eyed Caroline grappled with the cold dead hands clawing at her throat and shoved the corpse away from her. He staggered back, head lolling at a revolting angle, mouth gaping open, hole still in his chest. Uttering a guttural moan dead-guy lunged again, swinging fists that didn't work properly as he snatched at her. Caroline blurred away, twisting around so she could stare, open mouthed, as the corpse shambled across the road after her.
"Zombie?" Caroline squeaked not sure if she was more shocked or outraged. "There are zombies in this town now? No freaking fair!"