A/N: Since I left the last chapter with a cliffhanger, here is a quick update (don't expect them to be this quick most of the time, I'm afraid). Thanks as always to everyone reading this story and especially those of you who take the time to review. I really appreciate all feedback!

Chapter 21

Aedan flashed across the porch to the open doorway, ignoring the heat of the air and the crackle of the flames as they crawled rapidly up the front of the house. Looking inside, he saw that only the front wall was burning so far, but it wouldn't take long for the flames to begin to spread across the wood floors. Toward where Damon lay, horribly still.

Aedan pressed uselessly against the barrier that kept him out. He could tear down the house, but it still wouldn't help him get inside as long as the human occupants lived. Maybe he should have let Elena die after all, but it was too late now to change his actions. "Damon," he shouted into the house. "Damon, you need to wake up now!" The black-clad figure sprawled on the floor didn't so much as twitch. With difficulty, Aedan tore his eyes from Damon's body and let them roam over the other two unconscious forms, but neither Alaric nor Jeremy had moved a muscle in reaction to the fire or his shouting. All three of them were out cold.

Desperate, Aedan glanced around the porch and the yard for anything that might help, but there was no time to fashion some sort of tool to reach into the house and Damon was too far away, anyway. Apparently, Elena lived among the most oblivious humans ever because he didn't hear any screams, sirens, or other indications that anyone in the neighborhood had noticed the fire. He wouldn't complain about the help of a human right now, even given the difficulty of explaining why he wasn't rescuing the victims inside himself. Reverting to the Gaelic dialect of his human days, Aedan let out a string of curses no one alive could fully understand. He slammed his fist against the magical barrier one more time, then tore a piece from the doorframe in frustration, heedless of the heat of the fire that blistered his hand. Damon had to wake up. He was too strong – and too beautiful – to die on a funeral pyre set by a random witch because Aedan couldn't get in the house. Because Damon had jumped into a fight to save the human girl that he inexplicably cared about so much.

"Damon, I need you to wake up," Aedan pleaded in English. The flames had spread to the couch, only a few feet from where his boyfriend lay, but Damon didn't stir. "Damon! Please. . . ." Damon couldn't die now when Aedan had only just found him. Except Aedan had seen too much to believe that the fates couldn't be that cruel. He closed his eyes for a moment in despair. Despite all his power as a vampire and everything he had learned in half a millenium, he was helpless. And it was his very vampire nature that prevented him from getting to Damon. The crackle of the flames seemed loud in his ears, and heat battered his skin as he stood in the doorway. "Damon!" he shouted again, frantic.

Then Aedan heard a car pull up to the curb behind him and felt the gust of wind that signaled the arrival of another vampire. He turned to see Caroline and felt a surge of hope. "You've got to get him out," he said without preamble, gesturing into the house at Damon's body. Nothing mattered except that they get Damon out before the flames reached him. "I can't get in."

"What happened here?" the blond vampire asked. She looked wide-eyed and scared, but she had the sense not to wait for an explanation before rushing into the house. To Aedan's disgust, she left Damon lying there and grabbed Jeremy, but at least she moved quickly to dump the boy's unconscious body on the lawn. Speeding back into the house, she moved to Alaric, hoisting the tall man up with an ease that would have shocked anyone who didn't know about the strength of vampires. Aedan could only stand there seething in frustration and watching the spread of the flames. Damon's pant leg caught fire just as Caroline reappeared at his side in the doorway. She grabbed his arm. "Where's Elena?" she asked, blue eyes wide and urgent.

"Not in the house," Aedan snapped. His eyes flashed dangerously. "Get Damon."

Caroline finally nodded and sped back in the house to grab the other vampire. Aedan finally abandoned his post by the door as she deposited Damon's body safely on the lawn. The speed of the rescue had put out the fire on his leg, and the whole thing had taken less than a minute. Bonnie was kneeling beside Jeremy. "What happened here?" the witch asked with a touch of panic in her voice. "Where's Elena?"

Aedan knelt by Damon, checking carefully for any more burns. His boyfriend's sleeve was burned away, but the skin on his arm finished healing as Aedan watched. Damon was breathing normally but was still unconscious, and Aedan stroked his fingers lightly over his slack face. He wouldn't relax until those ice blue eyes were open and glaring at him. "A witch took Elena," he finally explained. "Before she lit the house on fire."

"Why didn't you stop her?" Caroline asked.

"I couldn't get in," Aedan explained, trying to tamp down his annoyance at having to state the obvious. He looked up at the two girls. "And she threatened to light Damon on fire if I didn't let her leave."

Bonnie's gaze fell on Damon's singed jeans and missing sleeve. "Guess she got the best of you," she muttered.

"Sorry I trusted the word of one of your kind," Aedan sniped back. He was in no mood to take shit from a teenage witch.

Bonnie must have realized that, because she backed down. "I'm going to put this fire out," she said as she stood up. Aedan watched her close her eyes in concentration and raise a hand. A moment later, she frowned. "It's fighting me," she muttered.

"She was a powerful witch," Aedan offered. He wasn't sure if Bonnie would be able to extinguish the other witch's blaze. It looked to him as though the flames had barely receded. Bonnie did have power, but she was very young and inexperienced, no match for the witch who had taken Elena. It made Aedan wish that he had kept up his contacts among the magical community, but he had let those connections lapse when he had gone deeper underground to avoid Klaus.

"Please tell me you have some clue that will help us find Elena," Caroline asked. She had checked Alaric's pulse, and Aedan thought he saw sympathy in her eyes as she looked at him kneeling by Damon.

Aedan shrugged. "I can tell you the license plate of the car," he said. At the blond vampire's look of surprise, he added drily, "I do watch television."

"Ok. Good," Caroline said. "I'll call my mom. . . ." At Aedan's doubtful look, she explained. "She's the sheriff. They should be able to, like, track the car on traffic cameras or something, right?"

•••••

Damon blinked and groaned. His head was throbbing, and his limbs didn't seem to want to work properly. And why did he smell smoke? Confused, he opened his eyes to see Aedan hovering over him, gray eyes worried. Damon moved his hand and felt grass under it. What the fuck? Then the memory started to come back to him. "Elena," he croaked. "Where's Elena?"

Aedan shook his head, and Damon thought he saw regret on the older vampire's features. "The witch took her," Aedan said quietly.

Damon stared at Aedan. "Why didn't you stop her?"

Aedan's voice was still quiet. "I couldn't get in the house."

"Fuck," Damon muttered. It was true. Aedan had never been invited into the Gilbert house, and Damon had gone charging in like an idiot without even stopping to come up with some kind of a plan. "But how did she get away with Elena?" he asked, wide-eyed with worry. When Aedan didn't answer, he continued, "How could you let them take her? You could have found a way to stop them." He knew what Aedan could do, how powerful he was, after all.

Aedan's face was calm, but Damon could see a storm of emotions flash through those gray eyes. "She threatened to light you up like a bonfire," Aedan finally replied.

Damon was scared and worried, so he lashed out. "And the best thing you could come up with was just to let them leave with Elena? Really? Nice plan." His voice dripped sarcasm.

"Fuck you," Aedan replied as he apparently settled on anger to match Damon's. "I was trying not to get you hostages killed." He gestured at Damon and the other two bodies lying on the grass, which Damon saw belonged to Ric and Jeremy.

"I'm already dead and those two have magic rings," Damon countered.

Aedan glared at him. "And have you tried burning them to a crisp and seeing if they come back?"

"I'll try that next time one of them pisses me off. Elena has to come first. It's the only way we've managed to keep her alive." It had been Damon's mantra for so long that he didn't even think about how Aedan might react to that idea.

"Sorry," Aedan snapped, sounding anything but repentant. "I won't sacrifice you."

Those words and the fury and frustration buried in Aedan's gray eyes stopped Damon's next comeback. Maybe no one else in Mystic Falls cared if Damon lived or died, sometimes not even Damon himself, but Aedan did. He didn't want to fight with Aedan, and he was certain that Aedan had done his best to deal with a bad situation. So Damon blinked, swallowed his words, and tried to sit up. Aedan slipped an arm under him to help, and Damon needed that help more than he wanted to admit. Then he was partially upright and staring at smoke all around Elena's house. "Shit," he cursed, suddenly understanding Aedan's fear. "She really burned the house?"

Caroline, who was also standing there staring at the house, was the one who answered. "Yep, and I barely got you out, Damon. You so owe me."

Damon groaned again at the thought of being in debt to Vampire Barbie. Although he had saved her life a few times, so he figured he was still up in the ledger if they really were keeping track. As he watched, Bonnie turned away from the house. She wiped a streak of blood away from her nose – Damon could smell it, and he kept his sudden hunger under control with a bit of difficulty – and nodded with satisfaction. "Got it," she said. "Flames are out."

"I hope they're in good hands," Damon muttered, thinking of the cost of repairs. Elena probably didn't know anything about homeowner's insurance, and that was a lot of smoke damage, at a minimum. He eyed his own charred pant leg in disgust. "These were designer jeans," he muttered. His shirt was clearly a lost cause, too, with a chunk of the arm burned away. It had been one of his favorite shirts.

"You should think about a wardrobe change, get some old clothes," Aedan said, sounding amused.

"That would require them to survive long enough to become old," Damon replied. "Besides, you like how I look." He waggled his eyebrows, the earlier fight already forgotten.

"Uh, guys," Caroline interjected. "We need to find Elena."

Damon groaned. Another fucking crisis. He struggled to get to his feet even as he tried to think around the pounding in his head. "Right," he said. "Get Jeremy somewhere safe, and Aedan and I will take Alaric back to the boarding house, find out if he knows anything when he wakes up. We can all meet there."

•••••

Damon's head was still throbbing when they got back to his house. He had even let Aedan drive his car so he could close his eyes and wish the pain would go away. "I need to eat," he muttered as Aedan dumped Alaric's still unconscious form on one of the couches.

"The pie is still in the car," Aedan offered.

"Shut up," Damon replied half-heartedly. Aedan knew perfectly well that he meant blood, although in truth he appreciated Aedan's calm. It helped keep Damon from freaking out that Elena had been kidnapped yet again. He had really thought that with Klaus and his hybrids gone, the target would be off Elena's back. Apparently, he had been wrong.

Damon had only taken a step toward the stairs to the basement refrigerator full of blood bags when a female voice stopped him in his tracks. "Damon. It's been a while."

Damon whirled around to face the speaker. It was a tall woman with pale skin and reddish-brown hair. "Sage," he said flatly. "What are you doing here?" That really must have been Sage that he had seen at the Lockwood's the previous night, and he had a bad feeling that he didn't have the time or the energy to deal with this right now.

Sage smiled. "Visiting my favorite student," she said. "You're looking a little disheveled, Damon. Rough day?" Sage didn't miss much, and Damon knew she had taken in the burns on his clothes. Hell, he probably had grass all over him, too, and he really didn't feel like answering that question. When Damon didn't say anything, she shrugged and turned her attention to Aedan. "And Aedan," she greeted him calmly.

Aedan nodded back, just as calm. "Sage." Damon suppressed a groan. Of course these two knew each other. All the old vampires seemed to know each other, although he supposed your paths were bound to cross in five hundred years.

Damon tried to sound as calm as the other two even if calm wasn't really in his nature. "It's kind of a bad time right now, Sage. Can you come back next week?" He tried not to sound too hopeful about the prospect of delaying this encounter.

"Surely you have time to do a favor for an old friend," Sage replied. It wasn't really a question. "I want my Finn back, Damon. I've been waiting nine hundred years, and I'm tired of waiting."

"Your fin?" Damon asked stupidly. He rubbed his temple. He was definitely missing something here, and he wished his head would stop pounding.

"Klaus' brother, Finn," Aedan supplied. "If I'm not mistaken, Sage considers him the love of her life."

Sage shot Aedan a glare, but she nodded before turning back to Damon. "You killed Klaus, and his sister is lying in your basement with a dagger in her back. Klaus always kept his family close, so I think you know where the rest of them are. Where Finn is."

Damon wondered how she knew about Rebekah. "Sorry, Sage, but I have no idea. You can have Rebekah," he offered hopefully.

Sage narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't want that bitch. I want Finn."

"You're sounding a little obsessed here, Sage," Damon began. A second later, he was flying across the room. He hit the wall hard and lay there stunned as an antique mirror crashed to the floor next to him and shattered. Before he could even react, Sage was picking him up by the neck with one hand and pressing him into the wall.

"You will help me, Damon," she said.

Damon started to try to choke out a response, but Aedan was suddenly there, tearing Sage's hand from his neck. Coughing, Damon crumpled to the ground as his legs failed to hold him. He could feel the shards of the broken mirror slicing into his hands, but he barely noticed as he looked up to see Sage slam Aedan into another wall. Damon shouted, "No!" He tried to get to his feet as he saw the flash of wood in Sage's hand, but he was too slow.

Sage drove the stake hard into Aedan's stomach, and Aedan cried out in pain and sank to the ground, his hands clutching at the stake protruding from his gut. Damon's own stomach twisted at the look of pain on Aedan's face.

Sage glanced over at Damon. "What happened to your eternal love for Katherine, Damon?"

Damon had eyes only for Aedan. "I finally figured out who she truly is," he replied absently. If it wasn't for the fact that he could barely stand, he would have already attacked Sage, even with the knowledge that it was futile. She was hundreds of years older and stronger than even Aedan, let alone Damon – which she was demonstrating as she tossed both of them around without even breaking a sweat.

"You think you found love with Aedan here? You think he's perfect?" Sage continued.

Damon froze, terrified of where Sage was going with this.

Sage's eyes gleamed. "Well, he's been in your head, Damon, manipulating you almost since the first time you met him. Did you know that? Did I forget to teach you never to trust another vampire?"

Damon's eyes shifted to where Aedan sat slumped against the wall. A wide circle of blood was soaking his shirt around the stake in his stomach. What was Sage talking about?

"She's lying, Damon," Aedan said. He sounded steady enough for a vampire with a stake in his gut, but Damon knew him well. He saw a flash of guilt in Aedan's gray eyes that didn't match his words.

Damon kept his eyes trained on Aedan. He was sure the hurt he was feeling was visible in his eyes. He couldn't bear the thought that he had been wrong to trust Aedan, that their love had been a lie. "What did you do?" he asked pleadingly. When Aedan didn't answer, Damon turned to Sage suspiciously. "How do you know any of this, anyway?" he asked, trying to conceal the way his heart felt like it was breaking. He tried to hold onto the hope that Sage was, indeed, lying and there was some simple explanation for Aedan's guilty look.

Sage shrugged. "I've been in both your heads," she began.

Damon interrupted her as it all started to make sense. "Last night. That was you."

Sage narrowed her eyes. "My witch said the sleep spell would hold."

"She lied. Never trust a witch, Sage." Damon never could resist pushing his luck, and despair was making him even more reckless than usual.

Sage just shrugged. "I got what I needed. Normally getting into the head of Aedan here would be a challenge, but you relaxed him very nicely for me. I see you haven't forgotten everything I taught you. Although you apparently let any old vampire into your head."

Damon refused to rise to that bait. He cocked his head as another thought occurred to him. "If you've been in my head, then you should know I don't know anything about this Finn person."

Sage shrugged. "You've been dealing with Klaus ever since he showed up in town. You can find Finn."

"Your faith in me is touching, Sage, but I'm afraid it's misplaced."

"Is it?" Sage twisted the stake in Aedan's stomach, drawing another involuntary cry of pain from the other vampire. "You have friends, Damon. Your lover here, if you forgive him for messing with your head. Even a brother. Call me when you find my Finn." And with that not-so-veiled threat she was gone from the room.