A/N: Thank you so much for all the amazing reviews! *hugs*
Very important announcement: scarlett2112 has recently started posting her wonderfully written and brilliant new story The Unforgiven, in which Damon is a shark biologist! Needless to say, it's a must-read :)
Less important announcement: there's just going to be one more chapter after this one! I mean, one more chapter before a mini-hiatus ;) I'll be going on vacation in September and since I may not have the internet access and/or time to write, chapter 13 will be posted in a week or so, but for chapter 14 I'll probably have to make you wait until the last week of September. I'm sorry about that and thank you in advance for your patience :]
Chapter 12
It didn't feel like falling asleep or losing consciousness, but rather like breaking through endless layers of black cellophane paper whirling around them.
Suddenly, the darkness fell away and they found themselves in a lush green forest, bright sunlight painting the leaves above them yellow and gold. The landscape was so beautiful it looked almost unreal.
Not letting go of Elena's hand clasped tightly in his, Damon took a quick look around, his eyebrows furrowed.
"Can't control anything here," he murmured, after trying to manipulate their surroundings the way they had been used to doing it in their imaginary dream world during Elena's long sleep.
"You mean you didn't wish for this to happen?" Elena asked in mock confusion, standing on her tiptoes and pressing a sweet, lingering kiss to his lips.
Damon gave her a lop-sided smile, his frown disappearing. "More or less," he said with a speculative wink, sliding his hand into Elena's hair and capturing her mouth in a more heated kiss, gathering her into his arms in one smooth, tender movement that sent miniscule shivers across her body.
Elena leaned into him, anchoring her hands on his shoulders and kissing him back, smiling against his lips when she felt him lose his breath.
"It's a proof enough we're not in the real world, because no one's yelling it's not time for that," Damon muttered against Elena's lips and she laughed briefly under her breath before kissing him again, slowly.
"It feels so real," she suddenly said, drawing back to look at him. "Not like in dreams," Elena added in breathless wonder, running her fingertips across his face.
"It does feel real," Damon confirmed with a small smile, covering her hand with his and bringing it to his lips to press a kiss to her knuckles. "But we have to be in a dream."
"Whose dream? If we can't control any of this," Elena said, glancing around.
"This is not a dream."
Damon and Elena looked at each other and then turned around.
A few feet away from them there was a man clad in elegant but casual clothes, his black, slightly gray hair glimmering in the sunlight.
He gave them a cautious smile. "Welcome."
"At least he doesn't look like a product of Kai's imagination," Damon mumbled to Elena while giving the stranger an artificial smile.
"Says someone who thought up the Atlantic ocean made of rose petals," Elena said in a matching tone and flashing a matching smile.
"It was the Pacific ocean and I certainly look like someone who could come with that," Damon said, a little offended.
The stranger took a few steps toward them. "Please, come with me," he said, undeterred and apparently even slightly amused by their hushed exchange.
"I'll be honest. Making it seem like you were expecting us is kind of creepy," Damon said, squinting.
Elena stifled a smile, sliding her fingers in between his, thinking that she could deal with nightmares as long as they were about getting lost in sunny forests and meeting kind strangers while holding hands with Damon.
"I wasn't expecting you specifically," the man said, taking another step toward them. "But people come here all the time. I'm used to greeting newcomers."
"Newcomers?" Elena echoed. "I'm sorry, but... could you tell us where we are?"
"Yeah," Damon grimaced, looking the man up and down, trying to decide if he was trustworthy. Consulting Elena about this made no sense, because she thought everyone was trustworthy until they proved her very wrong. "Our GPS went all funky after we took an unplanned detour trying to avoid running over a chipmunk."
The man smiled with some sort of a benevolent understanding that Damon wasn't sure he liked.
"I see. Well, many roads lead here, I'm sure, but as for your question... I'm afraid I can't give you a specific name. This is the penultimate stop in everyone's life journey."
"Nope. Doesn't look like Vegas to me at all," Damon said in a wry tone.
"I'm sorry, but..." Elena interjected, squeezing Damon's hand to suggest a more diplomatic approach. "Why are we here? Are we in your mind? Who are you?"
"My mind?" The man laughed a little. "This place is as mine as it is yours. I came here just like you did." He paused before adding softly. "When I died."
Damon and Elena stared at him, rendered speechless by the revelation, but only for a few seconds.
"But... we're not dead," Elena said with a small, nervous smile, glancing at Damon who seemed more annoyed than worried, looking around in apparent attempt to decide what to do next, because they clearly couldn't expect much help from someone who had even the most basic facts wrong.
The man smiled, unfazed by their reaction. "Yes, that's what everyone says. At first."
xxxdelenaxxx
"You know, pretending not to care is rather difficult when in the span of five minutes you receive seven phone calls and eighteen text messages," Klaus said, strolling into the boarding house and glancing over his shoulder at Jeremy who closed the door behind him.
"You were already at Lily's?" Caroline asked, jumping to her feet.
Klaus stopped upon entering the living room, glancing at Elena who was lying unconscious on the couch.
"That'd make a good restaurant name," Bonnie observed in a tone that now occupied a very high position on Caroline's things that annoy me most list.
"No, but I was close," Klaus replied with a small smirk, clasping his hands behind his back.
Shifting his eyes between them, Stefan frowned noticing Caroline making an effort not to smile at... whatever she was finding amusing at the moment, because Stefan didn't think anything funny was being said.
"No worries, they'll be here soon enough," Enzo said flippantly, flinging his feet on the coffee table.
Bonnie grabbed her phone and took a picture of it. Enzo gave her a confused look.
"I'm going to show that to Damon when he comes back," Bonnie said, saving the picture.
"He got some mud on the carpet too," Stefan added, pointing to the other side of the room.
Bonnie lifted her hand with the phone and snapped another picture.
"Really? After I saved everyone?" Enzo asked, narrowing his eyes at Bonnie who was sitting on the other end of the same couch.
"Everyone is a bit of an exaggeration," Caroline retorted with a thin smile. "Not to mention save being an exaggeration, seeing how Damon's being possessed by Kai, Elena is unconscious and Hope wants to be a witchpire when she grows up."
Klaus' eyes lit up at the mentioning of Hope's name and he turned around at the sound of her voice.
"Daddy!"
"If you can't change who you are, embrace it." Enzo extended his arms in a gesture of mock hopelessness. "I was just trying to seem happy about my life."
Caroline rolled her eyes.
"Guess what! Sarah can throw pancakes that high in the air!" Hope said, running to Klaus and jumping into his arms while trying to demonstrate a pancake flying really far away from a pan.
"Well, breakfast is ready if anyone's interested," Sarah said with a small smile that Jeremy returned, despite feeling annoyed by Enzo spending a little too much time talking to her since his arrival and Sarah not appearing irritated enough by that.
"How was your trip?" Klaus asked cheerfully and Caroline watched him somewhat baffled or perhaps simply caught off guard by the sight of him holding a child and not being bothered by powdered sugar being transferred from Hope's hands onto his clothes, face and hair.
"Best vacation ever!" Hope exclaimed with such enthusiasm that it seemed to, in turn, catch Klaus a little off guard.
He simultaneously looked very happy to hear that and just a tiny bit jealous, which Caroline thought made for a rather amusing combination.
"But Elena's not waking up," Hope added after listing in one breath all the highlights of the trip from bumper cars to sand castles. She looked at Elena over her shoulder. "And Damon's missing."
"We locked Damon, well, Kai up in the basement for now," Caroline said with a sigh.
Enzo snorted humorlessly. "Right, because your fancy cell is going to contain someone who absorbed magic from one of the most powerful spells."
"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a better idea? Because I must've missed it," Caroline snapped with an irritated huff. "And what are you doing here anyway? On which side you're on?"
"On the winning side," Enzo said, widening his eyes at her as if the answer was obvious.
Caroline turned away from him.
"Well, we're dazzled by your optimism," Sarah said evenly, leaning against the side of the couch.
Enzo tilted his head to the side, a smirk flitting across his face. To Jeremy's umbrage, Sarah seemed to smile back.
"Did you figure out why Elena's not breathing and not waking up even though she isn't dead?" Caroline asked brusquely, addressing Bonnie whose eyes were glued to her phone.
She wasn't expecting an actual answer as much as a reaction, any reaction, so she was quite mystified when Bonnie did give her a reply.
"During those five years when they were seeing each other only in their minds, Damon and Elena's minds developed an ability to merge. They created a merge path, so at some point they didn't even have to actively make any sort of connection. Their minds are always open to one another, so when they fall asleep or lose consciousness they're automatically reunited in their heads."
Jeremy leaned over Bonnie from behind, curious to see what she was doing in her phone while explaining all that. "Bonnie found a grimoire on mind connections. We read it last night."
"How convenient," Caroline said, narrowing his eyes at Bonnie and Jeremy. "Do we seriously have time for that?"
"I thought we already figured out why Elena's unconscious." Enzo pointed out, helping himself to a candy bowl. "Kai must've been hiding in her subconscious during those five years that she was asleep and since Damon and Elena's minds were connected, when he hijacked the spell to unseal the passage between the afterlife and this world, he had a choice of jumping into either Elena or Damon."
"But since he absorbed all the magic instead of using it to open and then close the portal, the passageway was left open and it probably sucked in both Elena's and Damon's... souls, spirits, whatever," Jeremy said gloomily, squinting at the maps Bonnie was looking through on her phone.
Caroline wrinkled her forehead, trying to remember when they had drawn all of these conclusions, but then Bonnie answered her silent question for her.
"You were on the phone when we talked about that."
Klaus glanced at Caroline while placing Hope back on her feet when she said she wanted to go get her and Elena's bears to show him.
"So how do we get them out?" Caroline asked, inwardly commending herself for becoming better and better at not getting too miffed at Bonnie's tone of voice. "And what do you even mean by sucked in? Sucked in where? If they aren't dead, how could they be sucked into the place where dead people are? I don't get it."
"You and me both," Enzo said, offering a candy to Bonnie who ignored him.
"So... are we going to suck them back in here and then close the passage?" Sarah asked, not sure if applying logic to such a spectacularly irrational set of circumstances made sense, but developing some kind of a plan seemed like the best option anyway.
"We'd have to absorb a lot of magic to be able to close the passage," Enzo murmured dejectedly.
Without lifting her head, Bonnie's eyes darted to Enzo. "We?" She asked, raising her eyebrows. "You think you're a witch just because some deranged psychopaths turned you into one?"
"I'm open to suggestions. Is there any particular grimur- grimoore- grimoire I should read first?" He asked with a smile.
Bonnie tilted her head to the side, giving him a narrowed-eyed look. "Yeah, and there's a certification exam you have to take too."
Enzo bit back a smirk. "Looks like I'm in need of a tutor."
"What about the sucking Elena and Damon back in part?" Jeremy asked, interrupting the exchange that was getting too absurdly flirtatious for his taste.
Bonnie sighed.
"I don't like this answer," Caroline said, wrinkling her nose.
"This is my Bear and this is Elena's Bear," Hope said, running back into the room carrying both bears.
She stopped next to the couch where Elena was and slid her phone in her dress pocket. "She may want to try calling us," Hope explained matter-of-factly to Jeremy who arched an eyebrow, giving her an amused smile.
"I wanted an Elsa Bear, but Damon said this one is more badass," Hope said, running to Klaus and turning the Bear around to look at it. She smiled at her Bear. "Dad, can I stay with Damon and Elena for... three more years?" She asked after a moment of consideration, apparently having decided on the perfect duration of her stay. "Damon read all the Barbie books!" She added enthusiastically and Caroline tried not to laugh when Klaus blinked and immediately replied in a perfectly genial voice:
"And just like that, the answer is incontestably a no."
Hope pouted, but then giggled when she realized Klaus wasn't being entirely serious.
"What did you mean when you said they'd be here soon?" Stefan asked and everyone in the room fell silent, the question reverting the mood to a more serious and somber one and only at the sound of Stefan's voice Caroline realized that he'd been oddly quiet all day... or at least for the better part of the day...
She swallowed, suddenly wondering if he could've overheard her calling Klaus earlier today and possibly saying some casually silly things like:"I kissed you in the morning by accident."
"I let them know about Kai taking over Damon," Enzo said lightly.
Caroline widened her eyes at him. "You did what?!"
"Now you have leverage, something you didn't have before. Kai absorbed the spell that they need to bring their companions back," Enzo continued.
"So what? We can't give them Kai's body, because it's not Kai's body!" Caroline huffed in exasperation.
"Do we actually want them to bring their companions back?" Sarah asked, giving Enzo a dubious look.
"No, but let's worry about it later," he said with a shrug.
"Awesome strategy," Sarah said, narrowing her eyes at him.
Jeremy walked across the room to sit closer to Sarah.
"We have to put Kai back in his body," Bonnie interjected in a low voice, staring into the distance.
"Do we even know where he's buried?" Caroline asked with a grimace. "And even assuming he'll happily jump back into his own body. How does that solve anything? We have to-" She stopped herself in mid-sentence, glancing at Hope and then instead of saying the words, making a throat-cutting gesture she couldn't see.
"That's kind of the state he's in now," Jeremy observed dryly. "Didn't quite work the first time, obviously."
"That's because he inserted himself into Elena's magical coma," Enzo said, smoothing out a silver candy wrap and tossing it onto the table. "Before we do it again, we have to make sure he'll have nowhere to hide."
"But how do we bring Damon and Elena back?" Stefan asked, shifting his eyes to Bonnie and Caroline had an unpleasant impression that he was avoiding looking at her.
"There are two ways to do that," Bonnie said matter-of-factly which caused Caroline to take a double-take if she was really, finally speaking in a non-sardonic manner. Bonnie drew a breath and then slowly exhaled. "Both are bad."
xxxdelenaxxx
Damon and Elena weren't entirely convinced it was a good idea to accept the stranger's invitation and follow him, but with only a forest stretching in all directions and the inconvenient inability to have any influence over the spiritual world they were in, they decided it was the most rational course of action for now, especially that the man at least seemed friendly enough not to lead them straight into a trap.
He said his name was Desmond and that he was running a welcome inn by the river which Elena found intriguing and Damon sinister.
"Either way, he's insane, and that's still the best case scenario," Damon whispered to Elena on their way toward the place that Desmond had reassured them was worth visiting even if they didn't want to believe what he was telling them.
"How is him telling us we're dead and in some kind of a purgatory more insane than the actual truth?" Elena argued in a hushed voice, lacing her hand through Damon's arm. "If we told him the entire back story of how we found ourselves here, I'm sure he'd think we were insane."
Damon turned his head to look at Elena, her hair catching sun rays, the color of her lips the most exquisite shade of red and against the green, lavish backdrop she looked so much like a painting in motion, her dark brown eyes sparkling when she shifted her gaze to him, sensing his stare.
"What is it?" She asked in mock-impatience, a trace of amusement in her voice.
Damon's mouth twitched into a brief, roguish smile. He quickly leaned in and kissed her. "As long as you are real, I can live in any unreal world."
Elena smiled, leaning her head against Damon's shoulder, but then abruptly straightening up. "What about the spell?" She asked, struck by the thought.
Damon stopped in his tracks. Last night he'd felt like he'd overcome all the barriers anyway, but now in addition to that he also felt like he was able to understand all of his feelings again. "I think it's gone," he said after a longer pause, his eyebrows knitted together, but Elena's smile turned into frown when she noticed he must've been thinking about something more than just the spell.
She was about to ask him about it, but then Damon suddenly pulled his ring off his finger. Elena's eyes widened in dismay, but to her relief followed by puzzlement, nothing happened.
Damon glanced at the sun and then at Elena who blinked repeatedly, watching him trying to make his fangs elongate, but to no avail.
"You're human," Elena whispered with a disbelieving smile that faltered a little after a moment. "What if we really are dead?"
Damon gave Elena a horrified look that caused her anxiety to rise, but only until he twirled her around and pulled her into his arms with a crooked smile.
"If death means frolicking with you in a quaint little town for the rest of eternity, count me in," he said, brushing kisses across her lips before clasping her hand in his to catch up with Desmond who continued onward.
Elena was about to question at least the quaint aspect of it, but when the town that soon came into view proved nothing short of quaint and beautiful, she smiled to herself.
"Not to hurt your feelings, but this is not the most popular venue around here, is it?" Damon said when Desmond led them into a completely empty, dimly lit restaurant on the ground floor of his inn.
Desmond chuckled under his breath, glancing at them over his shoulder. "Well, it's 5am."
"Oh, there is time in the afterlife?" Damon made an impressed face. "How disappointing," he muttered, glancing at Elena who was silently trying to communicate to him that being nicer to their mysterious host wouldn't hurt.
"Not at all," Desmond said with a shake of his head. "It's a very useful organizational mechanism. You can celebrate your birthday without getting old." He smiled and Elena smiled back, finding his smile both contagious and... familiar?
She looked around the restaurant trying to figure out the strange impression.
"Personally, I'd recommend a table outside," Desmond said, opening the door that was leading to the patio.
He held the glass door open for them, letting them walk through it, telling them to watch their feet because of a small, uneven step and doing it in such a natural yet caring way that Damon thought that perhaps Elena had a point wishing to give the stranger a chance before he'd prove to be a bloodthirsty, angry wizard.
"This is beautiful!" Elena gasped, amazed by the breathtaking sight of a seemingly limitless river shimmering in front of them, mirroring the sky and sparkling beautifully in the sunlight.
Desmond smiled, apparently very glad that the view met with appreciation. He invited them to sit down and left to bring them something to drink, despite being assured it wasn't necessary.
"This is very beautiful," Elena repeated when they were left alone outside.
She propped her chin on her hands and looked at the lake.
"Better than New York?" Damon muttered into her hair, wrapping his arm around her.
Biting her lip, Elena turned toward him. "I don't care about the location as long as it is with you," she said with a playful smile, slowly leaning in for a kiss, but a glimpse of hard melancholy in Damon's eyes stopped her. "What is it, Damon?" She asked softly, touching his cheek with her fingertips.
He reached out to sift her hair through his fingers before tucking a few strands behind her ear. "Elena, if this is a purgatory, people go somewhere from here and there is no way we'll be going to the same place, you know that, right?"
Elena's forehead wrinkled in confusion. "What are you talking about?" She asked with a grimace, cupping his face in her hands, her eyes wandering all over his face.
"I'm talking about you going to what popularly goes by the name heaven and me going to..." Damon waved his hand, "whatever place Bonnie saw Katherine being dragged to," he said in a wry, melodic voice, narrowing his eyes at Elena in a small, warm smile when she gave him a purposefully irritated look.
"You're not going to any hell, Damon," Elena said with an incredulous grimace. "That's ridiculous."
"Is it? I'm pretty sure if there's a threshold for murder it probably doesn't exceed ten people a person is allowed to kill to still qualify for heaven."
"It doesn't work that way," Elena said with a huff. "What about why your past was the way it was? And what about all the people you have saved? That's what counts."
Damon leaned into her touch, a weak smile flickering across his face. "That's what counts for you," he said in a low, morose voice that made Elena's heart clench.
She shook her head. "First of all, we are not dead yet, so we'll have more time to prove who we are, who we want to be. Damon, I know you," she said earnestly, pressing a soft kiss to his lips before drawing back and glancing around them. "And whoever created this place is at least as smart as me and knows you too. Everything you've done wrong was done out of despair. You feel guilt and remorse and you've changed."
"This doesn't make any of it OK, Elena. There are things that can't be undone."
"I'd like to say that I've done horrible things too, but I don't want you to break up with me again," Elena said, hoping to lighten the mood, even if the callback was rather fatal. To her chagrin, however, Damon's smile was still sad. She sighed in frustration. "Fine." She thrust up her chin. "Let's say you're right. Then wherever you'll go, I'm going there with you."
"You're going to go to hell with me?" Damon said, his eyes brightening in wonder when Elena gazed into his eyes without any humor in her face, just genuine seriousness.
"Yes. I hope we'll follow each other back into the light, like we always do, but if I had to follow you into the dark to be with you, I would."
She kissed him, gently holding his face in her hands when he kissed her back, a kiss that felt more like he was clinging to her lips, savoring her closeness rather than kissing her.
"Years and few good deeds later, I still don't deserve you," Damon said in a low voice, grazing Elena's cheek with his hand and brushing his thumb over her lips when she tried to speak. "And just to be clear, there's no way in hell I'd let you do that," Damon whispered against her lips and kissed her again before she had a chance to voice her indignation.
They broke the kiss at the sound of footsteps.
"I wonder if you'll be able to tell the exact flavor and all the ingredients," Desmond said, placing a tray with three coffee cups on the table.
"Probably not, because we're not going to drink it," Damon replied, squinting.
"Damon," Elena widened her eyes at him, stifling a smile.
"Why not?" Desmond sat down at the table across from them and proceeded to handing out the cups. "If I wanted to poison you, I wouldn't have spent ten minutes steaming the milk just right," he winked.
"It's a delightful family recipe, I'm sure, but we're still going to politely decline," Damon said, grabbing Elena's hand when she reached out for a spoon.
"No family recipes, I'm afraid," Desmond said with a wistful smile and Elena looked at him more carefully. "I was raised in an orphanage. But I always believed I'd have my own family one day. I felt like I'd know exactly how to make a warm, happy home." He smiled, a little embarrassed as if he'd said more than he'd wanted to. He looked up and Elena returned his smile, feeling a twinge of sadness at the pain that flashed in his eyes. "But that didn't work out either."
"I'm sorry," Elena said quietly. "My adoptive parents died in a car accident when I was in high school and my biological parents... also died, soon after," she said in an instinctive effort to comfort him by showing him that he wasn't alone in harboring painful memories.
Desmond grimaced sympathetically, saying that he was very sorry about her loss.
Then they both fell silent and looked at their hands. Damon's eyes darted between them.
"My father was beating me and I thought my mother died of consumption, but it turned out she was trekking the world, killing people. This is not a decaf, is it?" he said flatly in one breath and then leaned over the cup to inhale the scent.
Elena covered his hand with hers and squeezed it, regarding him for a moment with such acute, tender understanding that it made Desmond smile just out of gladness that there was love like this in the world.
"No, it's not a decaf," he replied with a small smile. "So... where are you from?" He asked, hoping to change the mood and get to know them better.
He never got to spend much time with newcomers before they were moving on, but he always enjoyed pleasant conversations and hearing about people's lives, their joys and experiences that shaped them while they were alive. He always wondered if there was perhaps that one story he was yet to hear, because he couldn't think of a different explanation as to why he himself hadn't moved on yet. Why, even though it had been more than a dozen of decades since his own death, he was still here, in this exquisite waiting room.
"We're from Mystic Falls. It's a small town in Virginia," Elena said, shooting Damon an amused look when he held her wrist down, so she couldn't raise the coffee cup to her lips.
"Mystic Falls," Desmond echoed in such a strange voice that they both looked at him.
"Have you been there?" Elena asked with an uncertain smile, not sure if the name evoked good or bad memories, because the expression on Desmond's face was difficult to interpret.
"No," he said under his breath with a weak smile. "I just knew someone from there, a long time ago."
xxxdelenaxxx
"You didn't have to volunteer to go with me, you know," Caroline said, walking next to Klaus in a rather awkward manner, inwardly scolding herself for getting so distracted she forgot to change into comfortable shoes.
Klaus gave her a surprised look. "But it was you who volunteered to go with me," he said, adjusting the shovel flung over his shoulder and Caroline wasn't sure if she found his jaunty step amusing or creepy considering that they were out to dig out a corpse.
"No, I volunteered to go by myself," Caroline insisted, stepping on a slippery stone she couldn't see in the near darkness surrounding them and losing her balance which forced her to grab Klaus' hand.
He smirked and then instead of helping her to regain her footing, he dropped the shovel, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
"Stop kissing me on every occasion!..." Caroline whispered hoarsely, smacking him on the shoulder in sincere irritation that was, however, very difficult to maintain while he was trailing kisses along her neck. "And ignoring what I'm saying!..."
Klaus lifted his head to look at her. "I'm not ignoring what you're saying, Caroline," he said seriously. "It's just that I know you don't mean it."
"How do you know?" Caroline asked sharply, sincerely puzzled.
Klaus narrowed his eyes at her, amused by her tone. "Because you're here, with me. Because you look me in the eye." He glanced at her hand on his shoulder. "Because you hold on to me." He inched his mouth closer to her. "Because you can't catch your breath," he whispered, gazing into her eyes.
"It still doesn't mean-" Caroline trailed off, not sure what she wanted to say and if what she wanted to say was what she was really thinking. She frowned.
"I know I wasn't here when... you were grieving," Klaus suddenly said in a low, serious voice. "But-"
"I'd say that an excuse that includes Mikael and Esther returning from the dead and an evil aunt trying to kidnap your daughter is a valid excuse," Caroline interrupted him quietly.
Klaus gave her a small smile."I always wanted you to feel that no matter what, no matter when, you could always call for me and I'd come."
"I do feel that," Caroline replied automatically, smiling without realizing it.
But then her smile turned into a startled frown."Did you hear that?" She asked, her eyes darting right and left.
Klaus didn't reply, but also looked around and then started walking into the opposite direction than the one in which they were headed.
Caroline followed him, about to point out that according to Stefan, Damon and Alaric didn't bury Kai in the cemetery, but before she could say that, she was stopped dead in her tracks by the alarmingly eerie sight.
"Oh my God," she gasped, surveying the graveyard with wide eyes.
All the graves seemed to have been blasted open and pieces of coffins, shattered glass and broken tombstones were scattered everywhere.
Klaus sighed. "Looks like your town population might've just increased by a little bit."
