A/N: Hello all, firstly a huge thank you to everyone for all the lovely reviews – I wanted to get this chapter up before replying to people individually – as I think you might have more to say after reading this chappie! ;)
Secondly a shout out to Lexicon – I agree with you about Damon's culpability; it's what makes him interesting. The issue with Amelie isn't so much that she made him the way he is (though she may have been the straw that broke the camel's back), instead she and Damon are birds of a feather, corrupted by their hate/sorrow, and Amelie used that to her advantage.
Reap the whirlwind pt 2
Forty minutes after Alaric had left his apartment his guests had transformed the living room from tired and threadbare bachelor stereotype to candlelit magnificence. A large circle had been drawn around the carpet in salt – used for its properties of purification and because it worked to ward off spirits. Furniture had been shoved to the far corners of the room and candles of varying shapes and sizes had been placed within the salt circle. Bonnie, sitting inside the circle, had been chanting over the pages of one of her family grimoires for at least twenty minutes.
"How will we know if it's working?" Caroline whispered to Stefan as they, plus Jeremy, knelt within the wide salt circle as far from Bonnie as they could. She watched the gently jumping candle flames and breathed in the warm, oddly comforting scent of hot wax.
"I don't know," Stefan admitted in hushed tones. He watched Bonnie almost as intently as Jeremy did. Caroline sighed and fidgeted.
"I think my foot's falling asleep." Absently she shivered as she stretched out her leg and massaged feeling back into her toes. The candles rippled as if caught in a breeze. Bonnie's voice rose up a notch, her chanting becoming more earnest. Jeremy looked around him, watching the candle light splash murky gold around the artificially darkened room. Caroline rubbed her arms, brow creasing when she noticed the hairs standing up on end on her forearms.
Stefan frowned, nostrils flaring. "I can smell blood."
Jeremy nodded tersely. "I think it's working."
Bonnie's head jerked up and back and she shouted towards the ceiling of the apartment in English, arms upraised as a flare of burning power washed through the room causing the candle flames to leap like blow torch jets.
"Amelie Bennett I call you!"
Something screamed; an ear popping noise akin to a sonic boom. Books tumbled free of Alaric's over-burdened plywood bookcase to the floor outside the circle. Caroline slapped her hands over her ears and ducked her head. Stefan grabbed for Jeremy who startled like a young colt and almost fell out of the protective circle. Bonnie, closest to the edge, felt the icy blast of stinking air rake over her face and tear through her hair. She reached out with all her magic to drag the spirit to her.
The two vampires, one witch, and one relatively normal teenaged boy all watched from behind the salt and candle circle as something hideous materialised in the shadowed room beyond. The air rippled, darkness condensing like ink through water, staining crimson. The scent of rot and swamp filled the room and the cold caused the candles to shrink down even further. In bloody increments a female figure emerged from the swirling mass of blood and shadow. Lean, wiry limbs, a face made of cruel angles, and even the faded dove grey folds of a battered dress all rose up from the receding tide of spectral blood. Like a cameo broken free of a liquid mould the ghost of Amelie Bennett stood revealed before them.
"Whoa," Jeremy breathed out before he could stop himself, "no way."
Bonnie stood up on shaky legs. She faced the taller spectre without flinching. "Amelie Bennett I command you…"
"You do not." The voice cracked like a whip through the room, felt more than heard. Bonnie flinched as the other three people with her scrambled up. The dead witch stared through garnet eyes at them all radiating a palpable sense of hatred. "Speak no words to me, Bonnie Bennett, for you have already sealed your fate."
"I summoned you," Bonnie tried again knowing that if she didn't bind the ghost to her will things could get ugly very quickly. "I command you to…"
The phantom hissed, a feral, twisted sound, and in a spotted blur of blood and thicker, darker things, Alaric's coffee table flew through the air, crashing against the protective barrier spell Bonnie had erected before beginning the summoning. The candles flared copper flame green as the spell stopped the table from crashing through the circle but Bonnie still stumbled back, the words of the binding ritual flying from her mind. Jeremy rushed forward to support her, but she shoved him away.
"Child," Amelie's ghost sneered. "You command nothing." Tolstoy's War and Peace ripped through the air and against the barrier followed by a dozen more books whipped up from the floor near the bookcase. Overhead the electric light bulb burst, raining a small shower of glass down onto the protective dome.
"Ugh," Caroline flinched. "Bonnie –do something."
In the kitchenette cupboard doors flew open and the contents crashed out. Cutlery erupted from a burst open drawer clattering to the ground in a riotous shower and the dishwasher spewed pots and pans five feet up into the air. The nearly tangible sense of cold closed in around the circle along with the reek of rot, damp, and spoiled meat. A couple of the candles sputtered out and Bonnie rushed to reignite them before the protective barrier began to fail. Alaric's orange easy chair tipped backwards onto the floor and then streaked across the room to crash against the far wall. The carpet began to peel back from the skirting boards. A corona of swirling, brackish crimson darkness rose up around Amelie's ghost and stretched out across the room.
Stefan stepped forward and spoke in a voice that carried with it every one of his hundred and sixty-two years. "Amelie Bennett."
The ghost's narrow face snapped towards him instantly and the room stopped throbbing with the force of her presence. The ghost looked at Stefan and some cold fey light ignited behind her deep set eyes; recognition.
"Do you know who I am?" Stefan demanded sizing the ghost up as he would any other predator.
"Vampire," the ghost all but purred the word, turning her body towards Stefan in a rippling fluid movement that was like water crashing down a cliff face, "But not the vampire."
Stefan frowned quizzically not sure what to make of that answer. "I'm Stefan Salvatore I…"
Amelie interrupted him, cooing an almost lullaby. "Little blind lamb, led to temptation, drank deep from the traitor bitch and tripped into damnation."
Stefan flinched just a little. "Traitor bitch…you mean Katherine?"
Amelie didn't answer and instead sing-songed another verse of her nursery rhyme. "Little Saint Stefan, all alone, pure as snow but stained with blood, cossets his grief and nurtures his sorrow. Little Saint Stefan, loved by all; he never saved a soul."
Stefan narrowed his eyes. "You were a child when Katherine turned me. Emily hid you away. You can't know anything about me."
"Stefan don't." Bonnie glanced at him sharply. "Spirits like this draw energy from negative emotion. She's trying to provoke you."
Amelie laughed a shocking sound that rattled in the bones. "Stupid girl. I don't need this vampire to sustain me. I have the other one. He's better. His spirit is as mine. Hatred begets hatred. He carried me here."
"Damon; you mean Damon." Stefan clenched his fists. "What did you do to my brother?"
"Nothing; what he is, he made of himself." Amelie's thin lips pulled back from a very real set of blackened teeth. The smile seemed to bisect that thin, mean face, stretching wider than a human smile ever could. "His hatred harboured me all these long years. Your brother," The ghost hissed mockingly her form bubbling and shuddering before materialising across the room near the bookcase almost before anyone had realised she'd disappeared. "Oh how he loathes you. Little Saint Stefan makes such sport of suffering but never counts his blessings. Little Saint Stefan, such a selfish child – had it all and wanted more."
Uneasy Stefan steeled himself and demanded of the ghost: "What do you want? Why are you doing all this? Tell me."
"Stupid little lamb," Amelie laughed. "You have no power over me. You are of no use; your soul is pure, for you never share it. You are beneath me." The spirit sneered and dematerialised, vanishing in a spatter of blood that pelted the beige carpet. The pressure in the air lifted and the temperature rose almost immediately.
"Is she gone?" Caroline asked after a handful of tense minutes had rolled by in complete silence, while the four people in the circle strained their senses for any hint of the ghost returning.
"Stay in the circle." Bonnie insisted spreading her fingers out in the air and sending out tendrils of magic that set the candle flames dancing.
"That was – intense." Jeremy sounded almost giddy. "What was up with those rhymes?" He glanced at Stefan, "And how come she hates you so much?"
"Because Damon does," Stefan said quietly eyes scanning the room. "She said that she'd fed off Damon's hatred…everything she said - I've heard it all before –from Damon." Stefan stared at the blood stains on Alaric's carpet putting the pieces of the puzzle together. "Damon's been sustaining Amelie's ghost for the last century, without even knowing it."
Alaric walked into the Mystic Falls Sheriff's office and introduced himself to the desk worker who immediately pointed him in the direction of the cells. It had taken him too long to get to the original rendezvous point at the corner of Main Street so he'd agreed to meet the Sheriff back at the station instead. She hadn't been happy about it, but unlike Damon, Alaric didn't have super speed so they'd both had to make do.
"More. Need. More," The sound of a growling sort of guttural mewling led Alaric to the end cell where Sheriff Forbes and a couple of deputies stood. Alaric stopped a few feet from their huddle and cleared his throat.
"Sheriff?"
The Sheriff turned around, her face drawn into harsh lines of worry and tension. She strode over to Alaric and shook his hand hard enough to stop circulation. "Thanks for coming. You need to see this." She jerked her head back towards the cell and turned to lead the way. Alaric trailed after her. He was not at all sure he really did need to see whatever was in that end cell but figured he didn't have much choice either way.
"Huh," he blinked, "Uh yeah…isn't that something."
There was an obviously dead girl standing the corner of the cell. Her skin was a dark, bruised-fruit grey and she was covered in blood and filth of an indeterminate nature Alaric didn't even want to begin to guess at. Occasionally she growled out another mangled word while rolling her head from side to side.
"This…thing...attacked one of my men. She was found trying to open his chest with a piece of broken store window glass, behind a drycleaners on the corner of Pike and Main." Sheriff Forbes explained. "Dawkins is going to make it but he needed thirty stitches to his sternum. We think it was trying to cut out his heart."
Alaric just nodded, "How'd you manage to bring her – I mean it - in?"
"Force of numbers," the Sheriff shook her head. "Dawkins called in a suspicious sighting before he was attacked and dispatch had sent officers to the scene even before the owner of the drycleaners walked right in on the creature eviscerating him." She turned to Alaric. "This isn't a vampire."
"No," Alaric agreed stalling for time as he tried to figure what to tell the Sheriff. Damn it. This whole situation was spiralling out of control. He decided to evade via another line of questioning. "What are you going to do with it? I mean you can't leave it in the cells and interrogation probably won't help."
Sheriff Forbes eyed Alaric keenly well aware of his weak evasion. She didn't call him on it however and instead pressed another line of attack. "I think this thing is connected to our witch. It – the body – matches the description of a girl reported missing in Richmond about three weeks ago; Chrissy Jennings, twenty-one year old college drop-out. If I'm right and the missing and dead are all victims of this witch, we could have a real problem."
"There could be more of them in Mystic Falls," Alaric nodded, blithely ignoring the fact that he knew there were more zombies somewhere in Mystic Falls. He stared at the zombie in the cell and tried to figure out a way of ensuring the Sheriff and her people had the right information to deal with a zombie infestation without giving too much away. He came up with an idea. When in doubt evoke the name of Damon, which carried serious weight with the Sheriff.
"I got a call from Damon late last night." He lied smoothly. "Bad line so the message was sketchy, but he gave me some more information about why a witch might take their victims' hearts." Alaric glanced over at the Sheriff trying to gauge her reaction. "There's something called necromancy. It's…well, Damon said it was a way of controlling the dead. I guess this is what he meant." He nodded towards the dead girl.
"You spoke to Damon?" The Sheriff tensed noticeably. "Where is he? Did he give you any more information about what happened to him?"
Alaric shook his head wondering how to navigate these trickier waters. "Like I said it was a bad line and we didn't talk for long." He shrugged uneasily. "He said he'd had to get out of town. He was pretty sure the witch had him marked as her next victim and whatever she – or he I guess – had done to Damon was bad enough he didn't think he'd be able to defend himself. He was worried about Stefan too. So both Salvatores are gone." Alaric briefly wondered how Stefan would feel about this story (and the inference that he needed to be protected) but shook it off and continued with his creative lying. "He said he'd try and be in touch with more information as soon as he could." Alaric winced sympathetically. "He sounded pretty rough."
Sheriff Forbes sighed and nodded sharply, buying his story for the time being. "We could use his help," she admitted honestly. "But if this," she jerked her hand toward the dead girl in the cell, "is what this witch does to her victims then I'm glad Damon and Stefan are someplace safe."
"Yeah," Alaric agreed disingenuously, thinking about spirit summoning spells and the perils of bloodlust and slow starvation, "Safe."
Caroline was the first to realise something was wrong. Bonnie was kneeling on the carpet inside the circle trying to sense for Amelie's ghost. Stefan and Jeremy were talking about all the crazy stuff the ghost had said, which seemed pointless to Caroline because – hello! – crazy, evil, ghost chicks lie and play crazy, evil, head games, but anyway all this meant that Caroline Forbes was the only person paying any real attention to her surroundings. Therefore it was Caroline who noticed the dark stain begin to form on the carpet beside Bonnie. She reacted instinctively, which was a shame because had she thought it through she might not have been so quick to throw herself in harm's way.
"Bonnie!" Darting forward Caroline knocked the other girl away, ending up sprawled across the dark wet patch on the carpet herself.
"Caroline! What are…?" Bonnie didn't get to finish her sentence before the stain under Caroline sprouted blood-liquid arms that grabbed the vampire by the throat. "No – Caroline!" Bonnie threw out her arm, trying to dissipate the bloody hands locked around her friend's throat with a wave of power. It didn't work, and as Caroline clawed uselessly at the phantom arms choking her, the rest of Amelie's body rose up from the sticky pool of black blood spreading outwards across the carpet.
"No, this isn't possible." Bonnie stood frozen in place unable to believe her protective circle had failed. She'd follow the instructions in the grimoire perfectly. She'd made sure that all angles were covered. The dome protected them from all sides as well as from above. It should have been foolproof…except Bonnie hadn't thought to make the protection stretch to underneath them as well. Oh god. She'd screwed up and now the ghost was inside the circle with them.
Their only protection from Amelie was now null and void.
"Urk…get off me!" Caroline shoved her fists through the fluid body of the ghost, her arms passing harmlessly through the liquid mass and out the other side. The ghost's 'blood' burned like vervain against her skin and Caroline shrieked, pulling back her arms to find them covered in weeping sores and blisters. Her throat was closing and not just because of the corrosive bite of the ghost's fingers around her neck. She couldn't get free; it was like the ghost was leeching her strength away from her. Dark spots danced before her eyes and she started to blackout.
"Get away from her," Stefan was suddenly right there, shoving his own arms through the spirit's body and dragging Caroline out of reach. Relief flooded through her and she twisted around so she could wrap her arms around Stefan's neck in a tight hug. She would never get tired of having Stefan rescue her.
"Look out!"
All four people in the room hit the floor as Alaric's bookcase hurtled through the air towards them. The barrier spell, which hadn't protected them from Amelie, did at least stop this latest projectile, but the distraction afforded the ghost time to reform completely inside the circle. She lunged like a towering wave of gore towards Bonnie. The living witch blasted her back with a wave of her arms and a mass of stinging blood splattered down. The deluge doused some of the candles; the offal reek of burnt blood and smoke created a choking miasma inside the failed protective circle that only made the darkness of the room all the more confusing.
Amelie reformed in an instant and this time went for Jeremy. The spirit surged toward the youngest Gilbert, sweeping his feet out from under him on a wave of noxious liquid. Jeremy yelped as he fell backwards and Amelie's swirling form rushed over him in a drowning wave.
"Jeremy!"
Caroline, Stefan, and Bonnie all leapt forward trying to pull him out of the fluid cocoon. Bonnie screamed in rage and tried to light Amelie's phantom form ablaze as the two vampires dragged a choking, gasping Jeremy away. The sound of Amelie's laughter hissed through the room.
"You cannot stop me. I thrive on the beat of a dead heart." Amelie's voice sing-songed through the air, seeming to echo from the walls all around them.
"Bonnie banish her – now." Stefan hissed as he helped a fumbling Jeremy to get his blood sodden shirt off before the toxic blood burned every inch of his skin. Bonnie began to chant and Amelie once again sent her laughter crawling through the air.
"Too late little lamb."
Caroline screamed as the ghost materialised without warning right before her nose and erupted like a geyser with enough power to throw Caroline across the room and pin her to the wall.
Caroline's screams turned to spluttered choking as the spirit began to force her liquid form down the vampire's throat. She kicked her feet against the wall, pinioned as she was near the ceiling and unable to get loose. Agonising pain erupted in her brain as she tried not to swallow any of the ghost blood, but inevitably ended up doing so. She could hear Stefan, Jeremy, and Bonnie all screaming at one another elsewhere in the room but it was distant, lost almost entirely in the cacophony of Amelie's raging hatred, an emotion so huge and maligned it sounded like the end of the world.
Then, as suddenly at it began, Caroline felt Amelie's hold on her weaken. The spirit shuddered and the choking flow of blood halted. Abruptly Caroline was falling to the floor, limp as a rag-doll. She spat the last of the foul blood from her mouth and looked up in time to see the spirit body of the ghost shudder, writhe, and twist in pain. Dissipating liquid hands clawed at a sunken chest searching for a heart that wasn't there.
"Noooooooo," the phantom wailed; hideous bloody form fading away like steam rising on the air. "No he wouldn't…he couldn't…I can't…be…stopped…" Amelie's ghost was gone, truly gone, before the echoes of her pitiful wail had ceased.
Elena Gilbert swayed at the top of the stairs her vision swimming as she grabbed hold of the balustrade to stop herself toppling headfirst down the flight of steps. Tiny little wounded animal noises kept trying to escape her throat. Her hands were slippery with blood as she gripped the banister rail and started down the stairs. There was static in her mind, a high pitched buzz that might have been a scream she couldn't afford to release. Her body felt light and weightless, insubstantial and weak. Her legs were wobbly, made of water. They wouldn't hold her up for long.
She kept her eyes on the front door of the boarding house.
She went down the stairs step by step. The silence yawned behind her. She couldn't look back. There were monsters hiding in the corners of her sight. She wanted to be sick. Her heart palpitated like a trapped bird inside her ribcage. Step by step she left that room behind. In her free hand, the one not holding on to the stair rail, she clutched tight to the dripping knife sending spasms shooting through the muscles of her forearm.
Just make it to the door. She just had to make it to the door.
Her left leg gave way underneath her and she lunged for the banister with both hands, the knife falling from her hand and clattering down the stairs ahead of her. She sagged against the banister, holding herself up by her arms only, her legs unable to take her weight. The screaming in her brain threatened to reach her lips and she knew if she started she wouldn't stop. She doubled over in a silent howl, teeth gritted against the white noise chaos blazing within her skull. Her hands were covered in blood –so very, very red.
Somehow she made it down the stairs, she wasn't sure how. She didn't remember making it down the last few steps. All the same she found herself standing before the front door of the boarding house. She stared at the rich glossed wood, innocuous and mundane, and had never felt so much hate towards any one thing in her life. She choked on the scream fighting for release inside her. Surging forward without conscious thought she wrenched on the door handle, yanking on the door as if she could tear it from its hinges.
The door flew open and Elena fell out, crashing to her knees on the front stoop, caught in the bright, chill sunlight of the outside world. She was free. The spell was broken. Just like he said it would be. Shakily Elena held her red hands up to the sun and moaned like something inside her had just died.
Stefan, Bonnie, Jeremy, and Caroline were all trying to put Alaric's apartment back together again as best they could when Stefan's cell phone rang. He sucked in a quick breath of air through his teeth when he saw the call display. He hit the connect call button so fast he almost broke the phone.
"Elena - thank god! Are you okay?" Relief surged inside him, ecstatic and almost painful for one shining moment before he heard the sounds coming through the line. The staccato panic of shallow breathing and soft half-gasp moans. "Elena! Elena? Answer me. What's wrong? What's happened - are you hurt?"
There was no answer except the soft sounds of pain and the rasping of her breathing. It sounded like agony. It sounded like heartbreak. Stefan's head swam even as something primal and terrified crawled up his spine, taking root in his brain. "Elena?" He whispered lips numb. "Please say something. Speak to me."
"Stefan!" On the other end of the line Elena broke down, a huge raft of sobs flooding the line that combined hideously with a high keening continuous moan that set Stefan's teeth on edge and made him want to scream just to drown it out.
"Elena," He tried to make himself heard over the sounds of her distress.
"I'm sorry." He thought he heard her say, her voice choked and stuttering. "Stefan."
"I'm here Elena. God. Tell me where you are. Please."
"I'm sorry," he heard say again as if he'd never spoken, "Stefan. I'm sorry...so sorry."
"Sorry?" Stefan's blood was ice in his veins. "Elena what's happened to you?"
Elena continued to sob, continued to whisper I'm sorry with each gasping breath she took. "There was no other way! I…oh god Stefan…Damon he said…and I…"
Stefan's world tilted on its axis, his vision greyed and a great roaring surged up in his ears that might have been his heart and might have been something else entirely.
"What," he swallowed choking out the words around the vicelike grip that had seized his chest. "What did Damon say? Elena what did you do?"
There was no answer, except for the sound of her broken sobs, yet somehow Stefan knew all the same. "No...no!" He shook his head back and forth, back and forth, and the cell phone slipped from his suddenly numbed fingers. It fell to the carpet at Stefan's feet. The sound of Elena's desperate weeping trailing up to him even as the phone came to rest in the centre of one of Amelie's left over blood stains.