A/N: Firstly I want to offer a huge thank you to everyone reading and reviewing. This story is only the second one I've ever written to achieve more than 300 reviews, but more than that the incredibly positive response has been just staggering and I can't thank everyone enough for it. Secondly this is officially the longest chapter I have written for this story –over 6000 words. A lot happens, most of it in brand new flashback, but hopefully it should answer some of the questions about what the heck is going on with Amelie.
Also – guess who's back!
No good, very bad weekend
Friday last:
He'd been having dreams; that was the first indication something was not right. At first he'd ignored them. Since the switch had failed he'd been dreaming a lot, half-memories and forgotten sins come back to haunt him now he had no choice but to care about the things he'd done. For the most part Damon had figured the dreams were just the wages of sin long overdue and taken to gulping down an extra night cap or five before bed as a remedy.
The dreams kept coming however, the same one, on repeat in his brain. Ambrose, Amelie, and a whole smorgasbord of things he would rather have stayed buried in his subconscious for another century or two. He wasn't stupid. He didn't believe in coincidence, especially not when witches were involved. So when Liz told him about the suspected satanic rite killings over in the next county, Damon's ears pricked up (metaphorically speaking) and he re-evaluated his dreams.
(But not in a 'how does that make you feel?' kind of way, more like: 'does this mean I get to kill someone?')
He didn't particularly like the conclusions he came to, but that didn't matter. Just like with Mason Lockwood he knew there was something freaky going on and he was going to find out what it was before it reared up and ate his face. He made plans. He checked on the condition of certain items in his possession. He made a half-hearted attempt at proper risk assessment and contingency planning but gave up because, damn it, he wasn't Stefan. He didn't do the cautious approach. Heedless aggression and fast backtracking had (mostly) worked out for him for the last hundred and forty-six years so why mess with perfection now?
"Damon?" Stefan stood in the doorway, lingering just outside the threshold of his room as if he had some moral objection to setting foot in Damon's personal den of iniquity. Damon resisted the urge to roll his eyes as Stefan's oh so woe-be-gone regard flicked over the room, presumably looking for all the nubile sex slaves and dead people Stefan must figure he left lying around in his bedroom for anyone to find.
"Stefan," He sing-songed in response and didn't bother looking up from his scrutiny of the crossword on the back page of the paper. He hated crosswords and tended to fill the gaps with dirty limericks as a form of protest against the inanity of life in general. His campaign against the Mystic Chronicle's crossword had reached the point where Stefan, who actually filled in the answers properly (because he really was that boring) had taken to trying to hide the paper from him. In retaliation Damon started defacing the paper by drawing horns and fangs on all the black and white pictures printed inside whenever he managed to get hold of it first. He was a simple psycho, after all, and it was the simple pleasures that made life worth living (or un-living in his case).
"Elena and Caroline are coming over," Stefan told him frowning so he looked like a constipated pug-dog when he saw the red pen Damon held poised over the paper in his lap.
Damon afforded him a bright smile. "Building your harem brother? I approve." He quirked a brow hoping for a reaction because he'd just decided to go do something potentially very stupid and was spoiling for a nice adrenaline pumping fight to get him in the right frame of mind. "I should tell you, speaking from experience, if you're thinking of taking Forbes for a test run, gag her first. Girl does not stop talking –ever."
Stefan's brow rolled like an avalanche and Damon notched up a point to himself before his brother managed to smother his initial reaction. "I'm going to ignore that." Stefan told him after a discernable pause, as if he was doing Damon a favour. Then he paused again, one of those patented Stefan pauses that annoyed Damon, because honestly, did Stefan have some issue with the English language that meant he had to take twice as long as anyone else just to say what he was thinking?
"Damon." He managed finally. "What are you up to?"
His brother's eyes looked pointedly at the clutter of various items dug up from his bureau drawers and left scattered over the top. Damon bit back a scowl, he should have tidied up after he'd finished, but how was he supposed to know Stefan would chose today of all days to pay attention to what was going on around him?
"Up to?" He asked smiling.
Stefan nodded. "You've been...less obnoxious than usual all day." Stefan told him. "And I heard you banging around up here earlier."
"Banging around?" Damon's smile slipped into a more natural grin, "Nope, no banging going on around here." His smile faltered because, now he thought about it, that fact was actually very sad. He made a mental note that once he'd investigated this Maudeville ritual killing thing to his satisfaction he would go get laid –and possibly bring his partner back to the house and have very loud sex in his room just to annoy Stefan.
"Right," Stefan tossed him a disgusted look as if he could read his mind. "Bad euphemisms aside, seriously, what are you up to?"
Damon returned his brother's piercing regard pound for pound with his best, most infuriating, faux innocent look. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Hm," Stefan made that noncommittal noise in the back of his throat that sounded of suspicion. His eyes tracked over the room once more, hesitating on the bottle of bourbon nestled against Damon's hip and his too deliberately blank expression. Still he dropped the issue as he really didn't want to deal with Damon and his Damon-ness tonight.
"We're having a movie night." Stefan said segueing back to his previous point but still fixing his brother with the weight of his gaze. "Elena asked me to tell you that you are welcome to join us if you can stop being an ass for a few hours." A smirk flickered around the edges of Stefan's lips. "We're watching Ghost." He added, simply to see Damon's face crease into a look of affronted horror.
"Ugh, pass." Damon flapped his hand imperiously. "Go. You've done your boyfriendly duty. Don't let me keep you from your oestrogen fest." He rustled the paper spread out across his thighs and tried to look like he was actually reading about the bi-annual Presbyterian bake sale. He managed three lines before giving up and returning his annoyed gaze to Stefan, who was standing there like a gargoyle propped up against his doorframe.
"What?" He snapped.
(Honestly his brother's timing sucked. Why did Stefan have to pick the most inconvenient times to butt into his life?)
Stefan shook his head, his pensive – and worryingly suspicious regard – shifting into his more usual and staid expression of I-weep-for-the-planet's-pain world weariness. "We're almost out of blood bags." He said a bit stiffly, because the people blood was still a sore spot for Stefan. Damon in contrast saw an opportunity and a handy excuse to get out from under his brother's scrutiny.
"Well then I'll go get some." He jumped up from his bed, taking a healthy last swig from his bottle of bourbon before placing it down on the nightstand and moving across the room to shrug into his jacket, patting his pockets for his car keys.
"I didn't mean you had to leave now." Stefan said which was pretty much a lie but Damon didn't feel like calling him on it. Instead he just shrugged. "Eh, I'm hungry anyway." There was a blood bank just out past Maudeville, he'd used it before. He could pick up the blood and then swing by the murder site on the way home. "I'll grab a bite while I'm fetching bagged lunches for you and Blondie." He'd take a poke around the site, if only to prove to himself that this wasn't what he thought it was, then come back in time to cheerfully mock his brother about his pathetic need to degrade his masculinity and prove, once and for all, that he really was as lame as Damon had always claimed. "Unless you think Elena might be willing to..."
"Don't even go there," Stefan growled and Damon smiled at him pretty much certain he'd knocked his brother off course with the whole suspicious curiosity. Stefan was so cute when he was jealous; cute and so easy to manipulate.
"Whatever you say brother," He clapped Stefan on the shoulder, a little harder than strictly necessary, and walked past him out of his room. The antiquated door chime rang as he was bounding down the stairs and Damon threw open the front door with a flourish.
"Ladies," he swept Elena and Caroline (mostly Elena) a courtly bow and stepped back to let them in. Elena was carrying a family size tub of ice cream and a carry bag of sugary treats. Caroline had a stack of DVD's in her arms stopping just below her chin. A quick glance at the titles convinced Damon he'd made the right decision to skip out on movie night in favour of a date with a potential Satanist killer.
"Damon," Elena frowned at him, which she did often. It wasn't exactly an unhappy expression, but instead was her 'I'm trying to figure you out on a deep and spiritual level, but don't take it the wrong way because I totally like your brother more' look. "Are you leaving?"
"Mmhmm," He smiled at her edging past Caroline, who was glaring at him as if she thought he cared that she didn't like him. "I have a medical facility to rob." He did the eye thing. "You know how it is."
"Oooh," Caroline broke in as Damon hopped off the front stoop. "Can you get some A positive? It tastes better than the others."
Damon halted in mid-step and turned around to look at the dim-witted blonde. "It's blood. It all tastes the same."
"No it doesn't," Caroline insisted matching her four and half months of undead experience against his one hundred and forty-six years without blinking. "It's like the difference between Coke and Pepsi; totally different taste."
Damon blinked. "Remind me why I haven't killed you yet."
Caroline's eyes widened in a moment of fear, which was gratifying because really, blondie should learn to mind her elders, especially when he could snap her in half without breaking a sweat, but then Stefan appeared in the doorway to herd his mini-harem inside. He shot Damon a look that was hardly very respectful either and half-smirked. "Have a nice night Damon."
"Not likely." Damon's own smirk twisted into a grimace as the boarding house door closed firmly on his face.
Sunday present:
"I don't get why we couldn't just go back to Alaric's apartment." Caroline repeated for the second time. The fact that Stefan had failed to answer her once already not deterring her in the least. "I mean this is so...weird," she gestured at their surroundings – a gutted and abandoned storage building. She was technically on look out duty while Stefan tried to get an IV linked to a blood bag into Damon's arm.
Caroline had thought at first that bringing Damon back would be simple; just force a couple of blood bags down his throat and hey-presto instant re-sanguination. One look at the shredded tissue paper mess he'd made of his neck had put paid to that idea. She shivered. She still didn't like him, he was a jerk and he sucked, but Caroline found that she didn't derive any satisfaction from seeing what Damon looked like under that bed sheet after all.
"I don't want to take the risk," Stefan answered her question distractedly, finally managing to feed the needle into a deflated vein deep enough to begin the transfusion. He held the bag up in the air with one hand and pressed the thumb of his other hand to the pulse point in Damon's wrist. "We don't know the real connection Amelie has to Damon. Plus even if the transfusion works Damon is going to be hungry, very hungry, when he revives. I don't want Elena or the others around him until I know he's in full control."
"Okay, but why are we doing this in the back of your car? Couldn't we just go back to the boarding house?"
"This building is on a secluded slip road leading to an abandoned factory. We'll hear any approaching cars before they come up on us. It's the perfect spot. Far enough away from population centres that we won't be disturbed."
Caroline frowned, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. The sun had been smothered by increasingly dark clouds as the afternoon wore on and their surroundings, a rough, untreated road lined with junk and a rusted chain link fence just screamed out 'death trap' to her. She replayed Stefan's words and realised the hidden message he hadn't said aloud. "Wait -you think someone's going to come after us?"
"I think that Amelie might. She'll know one way or the other when Damon's conscious again. I'm sure of it." Stefan glanced back at her briefly. "She could send more of her zombies after us." He crouched down beside the open trunk of his car so he was more of less eye level with his brother. Caroline noticed that Stefan's free hand had moved from clasping Damon's wrist to holding his hand. "I don't think it's anything we can't handle," he admitted honestly. "But I'd still ask you to leave, for your own safety, except that until Damon's back on his feet..." He trailed off.
"I'm not leaving anyway," Caroline said understanding what he wasn't saying and recognising that Stefan was asking her, without asking, to help him protect Damon if they were attacked because he wasn't sure he could do it alone. "We've already been over this." She smiled, even though Stefan wasn't looking at her. "I'm like your Girl Friday. I've got your back."
Stefan laughed a little then, straightening up so he could look at her, dropping Damon's shrivelled grey hand back down at his side. "Have you even seen that movie?"
"Sure," Caroline nodded. "My dad loves those 'forties screwball comedies." She gave Stefan a haughty look. "When I was seven I wanted to grow up to marry Cary Grant. I cried for days when mom told me he was dead."
Stefan smiled and shook his head. "I never would have thought that about you." He looked at her for a long moment, thoughtful and inscrutable but not in a bad way.
Suddenly nervous for reasons Caroline didn't want to think about she smiled and shrugged, "Well, now you know." She turned around and made the effort to keep an eye out for rampaging corpses headed their way. "I could call the others at least. I mean Elena's got to be worried."
"Elena." Stefan jerked in alarm, his expression twisting in guilt. "I...I hadn't even thought about her." He admitted, sounding mildly horrified. His eyes darted from his brother lying in the trunk of his car, still and corpse-like and then up to the half empty blood bag in his hand.
"Well you did have other stuff on your mind," Caroline pointed out nodding towards Damon. "I don't think you're going to lose your boyfriend of the year award just yet." She fished out her phone and waved it at him. "I'll call her; let her know that the Damon de-mummification operation is a-go."
Stefan nodded, already distracted with his brother's condition. Caroline couldn't see Damon too clearly from where she stood a few feet from the car and she was actually glad of that. She'd never seen a shrivelled vampire before and seeing Damon had reminded her forcibly that as a vampire the same thing could happen to her. Still she didn't need to be a mind reader to know Stefan was worried. The first blood bag was mostly empty already and Damon still looked deader than an ancient Egyptian. He didn't seem to have healed at all. She really wasn't sure what Stefan would do if he couldn't revive Damon.
Caroline shivered again. She was well aware that Stefan had taken hold of Damon's hand and was holding it the way a normal person might clasp the hand of a sick relative they wished well with all their heart. She turned her back from the oddly painful scene and speed dialled Elena's number.
Friday last:
The murder site in the woods outside Maudeville, a town about the same size as Mystic Falls but with a whole lot less money behind it, was guarded. Still, and again unlike Mystic Falls, the newbie officer stuck on the night watch did not receive regular infusions of vervain with his donut fixes. Damon convinced him to go sit in his squad car and take a little nap while he poked around inside the yellow police tape barricade uninhibited.
An owl hooted in a tree about forty feet away as Damon tramped through the woods headed towards the murder site. Somewhere a little further off a fox hunted vermin and he surprised a rabbit in the underbrush as he trekked along. Still Damon was used to ignoring the rustling and bustling of life occurring all around him in what would be for a human a near silent night in the woods.
A vampire's senses are far superior to a human's but, unless the vampire knew how to use those senses, they were not always an advantage. It took experience and trial and error to understand all the minute, subtle signals his enhanced hearing, sight, and smell picked up in the woods. For instance the undercurrent of carrion on the air, mingled with the rich, earthy aroma of decay, didn't necessarily mean anything. The woods were teeming with animal carcasses slowly decomposing and the sharp, unmistakable tang of copper heavy blood he caught as the wind changed could have come from the vole the hunting fox had snared just a minute ago.
The stink of magic, however, now that couldn't be written off – not unless evolution in the animal kingdom had taken a decidedly odd turn while he wasn't looking.
Burnt tin and ozone; this scent was what he had come to equate unequivocally with magic. Sometimes it was a little different depending on an individual, Bonnie tended to exude an aroma like melted liquorice when she was doing her juju, and Bree had given off this gorgeous musky smell when she did her thing, but underneath it all there was always the scent of burning tin and ozone. It was that smell he caught now, just a whisper sitting stagnant on the air.
Damon paused under the canopy of the trees. This changed things. If this killing was a genuine witch ritual and not some random nut-job with a penchant for pentagrams and casual mutilation then he should retreat now, maybe go fetch the teacher, or if he was going to be all responsible about things, give Bonnie a heads up. On the other hand, he'd made the trek all the way out here. What harm could there be in taking a little look around?
He grinned at his 'famous last words' and continued forward towards the murder site. Soon it was obvious he was going the right way and not just because of the tell-tale signs of police and forensics teams along freshly beaten trails in the undergrowth, but because the hair on the back of his arms had risen on end and the air carried a charge, like static electricity. The scent of magic and old blood was also stronger here.
The clearing where the killing itself took place wasn't all that interesting. There were the obligatory obscure mystical designs carved messily into the tree trunks, but those were left for obfuscation purposes only. Damon had never met a witch, or warlock, stupid enough to leave evidence of their spell casting behind. Magic users of both genders tended to be paranoid and covetous, jealous of their rivals' power and afraid that some other witch would come along and steal theirs in turn.
The altar, a dead fall log, was also mostly for show –although the blood soaked into the bark was a distant temptation to the taste buds and a reminder that he hadn't fed yet. In fact there wasn't much left in the clearing for Damon to work with except for the reek of magic itself and the blackened, scorched outline of a fire circle surrounding the outer edges of the clearing. He'd seen something like this before, albeit a hundred years ago.
"Well isn't this just peachy." He sneered, fingers quivering at his sides. He prided himself on having a pretty sharp instinct for trouble (and an unerring ability to find it) and right now his vamp-senses were tingling. This had all the hallmarks of a set up. It also seemed like his dreams weren't just dreams after all.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he called softly, voice lilting as his nose wrinkled, assailed by the reek of rot. Every sense was primed as something slow moving but steady dragged itself forward from the far side of the clearing. Keen eyes picked up a vaguely human shape; a silhouette detaching from the indeterminate mass of night shadow. All the same he knew the figure watching him from thirty feet away wasn't human, or at least not a living one.
Tilting his head back, nostrils flaring, he tasted the air, sampling it as a snake might while trying to catalogue the different nuances on the air. Blood, death, magic - who else could it be? A wide grimace spread his lips away from his teeth, grown sharp and keen as he realised just how deep he'd stepped in it this time.
"Why does no one I kill stay dead?" He asked rhetorically, almost laughing at himself as Amelie Bennett's corpse dragged itself out of the darkness before him.
Somewhere deep in sunken eye sockets something cold and angry flared inside her skull. He noted with detached amusement that he really wasn't all that surprised to see her - had been expecting it even - considering the year he was having so far it just figured that Amelie freaking Bennett would return. Seriously the universe hadn't kicked him in the balls for at least a month or more, he was overdue a little new suffering. Amelie couldn't speak; the soft tissue of her tongue and tonsils had long since rotted away, yet Damon had the odd feeling that he would be able to hear her words all the same if he just let himself listen.
He and Amelie circled one another in silence, his movements long and smooth, hers flying in the face of the natural order, yet both of them were dead and displaced from their own time and place. There was a strange symmetry to it all; a fucked up glorious perfection. He wondered how he was going to kill her. Ripping her limb from limb could work. Still he was just a little wary. He stopped circling and cocked his head to the side, surveying his prey through narrowed eyes.
"I should have ripped your damn heart out instead of your throat," he said with a sigh, catching the slow, regular thump of the dead organ still lodged in her emaciated chest. Ambrose had told him that destroying the heart was the way to take out a zombie, but back in 1900 he'd been a little distracted – and how was he to know that Amelie had the juice to turn herself into a zombie, even after he'd torn out her jugular?
His thoughts raced as he stared at her and then he laughed again, a sharp barking sound. "Bitch, you set me up. Back then, you weren't trying to raise Emily at all. All those zombies – you were practicing."
The zombie shifted, a ripple of animation contorting what was left of her face and although the movement did not in any way resemble a smile (generally a person needed lips for that) Damon still felt the laughing triumph in Amelie, the cold superior mockery. Oh, yes, she thought she was so very clever. She'd played him and her brother and bought herself a ticket to eternity – but why? There were other, far less revolting ways to cheat death, vampirism for one, and while he wasn't sure a witch could actually make the turn, he refused to believe that Amelie had just up and decided in 1900 that what she really wanted to do for the next century and change was become a slow rotting walking corpse.
As if to further taunt him as he tried to figure it out, Amelie raised one bony arm and pointed a fleshless finger at him. You, He sensed her words through some means that had nothing to do with hearing them. Mama made the deal with you. One hundred and forty-five years. She had to come back to honour the deal. It was my only chance.
Damon blinked rapidly several times in complete surprise. "You're kidding me." If he'd been less of a bad ass he'd have been gaping at her like a slack-jawed yokel. "That's it? You did all this because of my deal with Emily?" He shook his head, jerking his arm in a sharp slashing motion. "Well I've got news for you sweetheart. Emily's been and gone – and you missed her."
That was, perhaps, a baaad thing to say because right then Amelie's corpse launched itself at him, fast as the proverbial bat out of hell.
Sunday present:
Stefan exchanged another empty blood bag for a full one, the fourth, and stared down into Damon's ruined face as the line of blood pumped into his brother's arm. Damon didn't even look like Damon. Grey skin, thin as old parchment and flaking like burned varnish, stretched over fragile, jagged bones. His lips had curled up, pulled back from gums and savage teeth in a hideous death grimace, robbing Damon of the looks he had used to smooth his way for the last century. His eyes, thankfully closed, had sunk deep into his skull, the lids puckered and creased. Stefan was brutally aware of the stillness of his brother's chest, the torn skin that wouldn't close just under his breastbone and the shredded ruin of his throat. There was blood in Damon's veins again, at least two pints already, but unless his heart started pumping the blood around his body once more none of it would do Damon any good.
To Stefan, staring at his brother so hard his eyes ached, it seemed almost like his entire undead existence had come full circle. Once again he was trying to force stolen blood and life into his brother when Damon gave every indication that he'd prefer to die. But that wasn't an option. Just like that day in 1864, the day he discovered he was damned, Stefan was motivated by only one thing. He didn't want to do this, face eternity, on his own.
Once long ago, after Damon had wreaked his particular brand of chaos on Stefan's life once more, Lexi had come to him, helped him pick up the pieces and, in her quiet but straightforward way, asked him if he wanted Damon finished. She'd said that his brother was broken, that it happened to vampires sometimes. Damon was just too full of hate to function normally. Lexi had said she could arrange for Damon to be granted 'release' as painlessly as possible, but she would only do so if Stefan agreed. Stefan had slammed her into a wall and told her, in no uncertain terms, that his issues with his brother were no one's concern but his and Damon's. Lexi got the message and never brought up killing Damon again.
Looking down into Damon's face, clasping his brother's clawed and skeletal fingers in his hand, Stefan knew that he hadn't warned Lexi off for Damon's sake. He'd done it for his own. As much as he had hated Damon and feared him and wished him gone from his life in the last hundred years he had still, paradoxically, clung to the inescapable truth that Damon would always be there. Locked in hatred, at war with one another, they were still and would always be, the Salvatore brothers -and Stefan, Stefan, had to face the fact that he wanted it this way.
He needed Damon.
Damon was his mirror, a reflection of what he could become and all the things, good and bad, he would never be. In life Damon had been his role model, his brother's dogged determination to speak his mind and follow it no matter what, a trait Stefan had admired, even as he saw the flaws in his brother's intransigence and how it cost him their father's respect. Stefan had envied Damon his easy charm, his lack of inhibition, and the way he could wear his heart on his sleeve, even when it cost him dearly, because Stefan knew he could never be that reckless. Even now, as he watched Damon claw back his discarded sanity inch by inch, Stefan was constantly measuring himself against his brother. If Damon died who would he have to stand up to, and to whom would he be compared in people's minds? The thought scared Stefan. He squeezed down on his brother's hand tightly and silently begged Damon to squeeze back.
Friday last:
Damon crashed through the middle of the dead fall altar, Amelie riding him down to the ground like a deranged rodeo rider with a severe case of leprosy. She was choking him, possessed of a strength that beggared belief, but Damon was no slouch when it came to a fight. He twisted underneath her, bucking up from the ground to kick her off him.
The zombie staggered backward, teetering but not falling. Her jaws gaped open on a silent howl of rage and the stink of bad magic rose on the currents of air whipped up around the clearing cold as hell frozen over. Damon snarled and ploughed into her like a linebacker, striking her with his shoulder and sending her body bouncing into a tree. He jerked back a fist, ready to plunge his hand into her chest and tear out her foul heart. Amelie's head jerked forward, straining her torn neck and she bit deep into his shoulder, blackened teeth digging right through the leather of his jacket.
"You little –'' Outraged he smashed his fist into her face, knuckles scraping against the spine of exposed cartilage that was all that remained of her nose. Amelie's head snapped back against the tree trunk but the miasma of magic still rose up around him, thick and cloying. A spasm of pain ripped through his gut and Damon doubled over, clawing at his chest as agony like nothing he'd ever known tore through him.
His veins were twisting under his skin, his heart shuddering. He couldn't breathe, lungs collapsing like broken bellows. He fell to his knees eyes wide and uncomprehending. Amelie's zombie grasped his head in her two hands, filthy long nails digging into his scalp like talons.
Mama broke her word. She intoned without words as Damon spluttered, beginning to choke. She must pay her debts to you. Blood, creeping cold and dead, began to crawl out from his eyes, leaking like slow running tears. Together we will call her here vampire. More blood forced its way up his throat and out of his mouth, while simultaneously pouring from his nose. His body twitched and writhed. Together we will burn this town.
Amelie's corpse shoved him away and Damon fell to the ground, spine bowing, fingers clawing at the dry dust and dirt as Amelie's ghost wrenched free of his body in a deluge of blood. Convulsing on the ground he watched, nearly mindless with pain, as zombie and ghost, two halves of one monstrous whole, combined.
But first I shall break you.
Magic surged on the air. Amelie pointed one dead finger, wreathed in a corona of blood, straight at him. Damon screamed and screamed and screamed as Amelie did her best to destroy his mind.
Sunday present:
Caroline jerked the phone from her ear and glared at the display screen. This was the second time she'd tried to call Bonnie and the second time the call had bounced straight to voicemail. The same thing had happened when she'd tried to call Elena first and then Jeremy after Bonnie was a no go.
"I can't get an answer," she told Stefan, stepping over one of a half dozen discarded blood bags lying on the floor by the car. "I can't get through to Elena, Bonnie, or Jeremy. That's not normal."
Stefan fished his own phone from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her as he hooked up another full blood bag to the tube feeding into Damon's arm. "Try mine."
Caroline frowned, not particularly liking the inference that her friends would ignore a call coming in from her but answer one from Stefan, but went ahead and dialled Elena anyway. She was worried. There was no good reason the others wouldn't take calls, especially Elena. She should be hanging on the end of the phone just waiting for a call.
"Ugh, no answer," Caroline scrolled through the contacts list until she found Bonnie's number and tried that. She peered into the trunk as the dial tone rang in her ear. She narrowed her eyes. Damon still looked like a day old corpse, but considering he'd looked like a thousand year old mummy an hour ago that was actually an improvement.
"Nope nothing," Caroline said fifteen seconds later after the automated voice told her to leave a message once again. "They're not answering Stefan. Something's wrong."
Stefan was frowning. He lowered his arm holding the blood bag and dropped Damon's wrist back down onto his chest before taking his phone back from her. Swiftly his fingers darted over the screen as he typed a text message. Caroline rolled her eyes.
"I tried that, you know." She pointed out tartly. "They don't answer."
Stefan didn't bother to reply to that and instead found another number in his contact list. Caroline heard the faint buzz of ringing and then a man's voice.
"Stefan, what is it?" Alaric's voice was tinny and distant but Caroline thought she heard an uncharacteristic sharpness to it. He didn't sound happy.
"Do you know where Elena is?" Stefan asked, not wasting time.
"What? She's with Jeremy and Bonnie at mine, isn't it she?"
Stefan shook his head sharply and Caroline felt her stomach tighten with growing anxiety. This was so not good. "She won't answer her phone. None of them will. When was the last time you talked to them?"
"About an hour ago; I called the apartment. Jeremy answered. Look Stefan, in case you hadn't noticed, things are crazy here. The zombies are killing people in town and Sheriff Forbes is about ready to call a town wide evacuation so we can find the things before they kill anyone else. Unless you have something useful to add, I've got to go."
"Fine," Stefan snapped and cut off the call with Alaric, raking one hand through his hair in frustration. Caroline met Stefan's eyes when he looked up at her.
"You think it's Amelie, don't you." Caroline said and it wasn't a question. Stefan's lips thinned; a muscle in his cheek jumping. He didn't need to say anything; the fear deep in his eyes was answer enough.
"I need to find Elena." Stefan jerked into motion, stepping away from the trunk. Caroline moved toward him, hands fluttering not sure what she meant to do, or even what she wanted to do.
"Wait – Stefan..."
It was then that another hand, thickly veined and still sort of grey, shot out from inside the trunk and latched around Stefan's wrist, stopping him dead. Both Stefan and Caroline whipped around, turning to stare wide eyed into the trunk.
Damon was awake. His blue eyes seemed to blaze from deep inside his sunken sockets, dark hungry capillaries writhing under the fragile, dry skin of his cheeks. Movements jerky and awkward, he yanked the IV needle from his arm and sucked in one harsh, rasping breath, chest inflating and freshly healed throat bobbing. "I know," he croaked in a voice from beyond the grave, eyes fixed unwaveringly on Stefan's. "I know where they are."