Chapter twenty five

Elena rushed into Jeremy's room and wrapped her arms around him pulling him close. "I'm so sorry he did that to you, but I am so glad you are awake." She said burying her face in his shoulder. "I thought I was gonna lose you."

Stefan took the cup of water from his hand so that Jeremy could hug Elena back.

"He didn't give me blood." Jeremy said.

"You wouldn't know. He'd have made you forget." Elena said. "He wasn't thinking about what you wanted, he was just thinking about keeping you around."

"Elena, he didn't give me blood. I know. I was around" He said gesturing to the room in general. "Out of body. He stole my ring from the house, put it on me and broke my neck. It's okay. I'm okay with it. I was pretty pissed but he wasn't here after the nurse showed up so I got over it. I have things I have to tell you anyway."

Not that he wanted to. He didn't want to believe it at all but Tyler had no reason to lie.

"okay." Elena said sitting on the side of the bed.

Stefan pulled the chair closer to the bed.

"While I was having my out of body experience, which is beyond weird to begin with, Tyler was here. "

"Physically here?" Stefan asked, brows knitting together.

Jeremy shook his head. "Nah, the real Tyler. He told me what went down that day. " He looked down at his hands. "Bonnie did it. She switched him and Klaus. No one
was possessing her or making her do it. She's working with Klaus. I don't understand it but it's true."

Elena looked stricken.

"I'll be right back." Stefan said and stepped from the room. The first call he made was to the house but he got no answer. There weren't phones in the bedrooms since the advent of cell phones and he didn't have Avril's cell number. His next call was to his brother. "Damon."

"Look if Elena's hot under the collar I didn't break her promise for her." Damon said before Stefan could get anything else out.

"We know. Jeremy was there even if not in his body. He talked to Tyler, "Stefan said quickly. "you were completely right about Bonnie. She switched Tyler out with Klaus. She's working for him."

Damon started to speak but was interrupted.

"She's at the house in the cell down stairs. Avril is there sleeping in one of the guest rooms. If Klaus figures out Bonnie's been taken down…"

"He'll know where we'd take her. I'm on it." Damon said hanging up. "We need to get moving. The high school contingency has discovered we were right about Bonnie and she's working for Klaus." He said grabbing Alex by the arm to speed things along while he talked. "Apparently Avril is over at Stefan's sleeping it off."

"Where the hybrid sponsored witch is being kept." She said and picked up the pace running to the car. "You can get there much faster without me. I'll catch up. Go."

The door was standing open when he got there and Damon entered cautiously. He picked up a broken piece of wood from an entry way table. "I just replaced that." He muttered.

He followed the debris through the house to the door to the cellar stairs. He took each step cautiously ever vigilant of his surroundings. His probable opponent was a hybrid that could just about kill him with a harsh look. One near death experience with a werewolf bite was more than enough for one lifetime no matter how long it was.

Avril lay in a heap at the base of the stairs and he leaped to the floor below. He knelt beside her and reached to feel for a pulse and pulled back a bloody hand. "Damn it." He whispered, and a cursory glance around him showed no one else in the room.

"Sorry about this but Alex would never forgive me if she lost you." He said as he opened the vein at his wrist and fed his blood to the barely conscious woman. "That's it. You'll be alright. "He told her as she drank. He had no doubt it was Klaus who had come for Bonnie. Nothing less than an original could get the drop on a witch as old as Avril. And none of the others would pick that fight right now. Elijah was too smart than to declare war on an entire family.

He picked her up and carried her up to the parlor and lay her on the sofa, covering her with the blanket he'd found there. Elena's no doubt. He called Alex, and laughed softly hearing her phone ring as she came up the front step. He hung up and looked to the door.

Alexandra spotted her sisters hair spilled over the arm of the sofa and rushed inside. She knelt beside the sofa and spotted the now healing hole in Avril's neck.

"She'll be alright" He said "I got to her in time." Too much longer and she would have bled out. Klaus hadn't been gentle. Was he using Rowan now? That wasn't common knowledge. Would Bonnie really share that much information?

"thank you." Alex said, turning her head to look up at him. "Thank you."

He reached out and stroked her hair gently, then called his brother. "I got here too late," Damon said. "Avril was attacked but she'll be alright."

"So now we have an angry witch out there with a very powerful hybrid and we can't do anything about it." Stefan said, and felt selfish for once again being relieved that Elena was now a vampire and no longer of any use to Klaus.

"Yeah. I think we need to start keeping watch on Caroline, and Jeremy. There's more that I haven't told you but I don't want to do it over the phone. Leave Elena to keep watch on the kid and meet me at your place."

"On my way." Stefan said and hung up. "Bonnie escaped." He told them. "I need you to stay here with Jeremy just in case. I'm going back to the house. Damon and I will see if we can't find her."

Elena nodded. "Be careful." She told him.

"Always." He said and leaned in to kiss her. "love you." He told her.

"Love you." She said back as he left the room.

He didn't bother with the car. He could get home faster without it. More information Damon had been keeping from them? He really hoped this was over now that he knew they were all free of Bonnie. He understood the secrecy but he didn't like it one bit.

He closed the front door as he walked in and spotted his brother coming down the stairs, a glass of wine in hand. "Where are the girls?"

"Resting in my old room. Avril's healing. Figures he'd attack the sister I like." Damon said.

"So can we please stop keeping secrets now?" Stefan asked.

Damon shrugged. "I'm working on it." He said. "The other night after we evicted Katherine, I went to see Elijah. Too much about this is out of sync and really bugging me." He told his brother about his conversation with the original and exactly why he was always so determined to keep the doppelganger alive as well as the fact that they had been willing to turn Jeremy and hand him over to Timon. "So now we have to keep an eye on medium boy before he winds up enthralled to someone less than friendly. "

Stefan nodded thoughtfully. "What was it like?" he asked "When you were bound to her?"

"Why would you want to know that? Damon asked frowning.

"If I hadn't met Henry I probably wouldn't be asking."

Damon sighed. " It was nothing like that, baby brother. You keep forgetting which one of us is older here, "he said.

"At our age do you really think four years matters that much?" Stefan laughed quietly. "Seriously, I want to know."

"It will always matter." Damon sat in the chair across from him. "Alexandra doesn't use much in the way of control. I was her first and as far as I know her only thrall. " He grinned a little. "She was mad because I tried to kill her. I don't think she knew what she wanted me for at first. So we don't have a normal relationship when it comes to that. I've been her body guard, I've been her partner in crime, we've been lovers and friends. I've never been abused in any way by her. I feel protective of her " He took a drink of his wine "When bound" He added not wanting Stefan to know he wasn't free. "There is an affection that isn't real but it doesn't feel real. It's like being compelled to love. If you've ever really been in love you know the difference. She comes first above anyone and anything else. And sometimes yes there are unbreakable rules. But they've always been things like don't go out and slaughter the locals where she's working. "

"So you're saying it's the difference between household slaves and the poor creatures that were forced to work the tobacco plantations." Stefan said.

"Are we on this again?" He asked. "No its not. It's the difference between an employee with an amazing benefits package and an unbreakable contract, and being kept prisoner by a sociopathic sadist." Damon said firmly, although his hand shook a little at the memory of Timon's brief control. "Let it go Stefan. I'm fine. I'm happy for once. "

"What do we do about Henry?" Stefan asked. "His eyes are so dead."

"We don't. I would if I thought it would actually help him but it won't." Damon told him. "One, if you go after him she'll use you to replace him. She's vindictive and doesn't have a forgiving bone in her body. Two, he wouldn't know how to exist outside of her world. He's been there too long to save. He'd been there a long time before we were ever turned. Let's just focus on keeping Jeremy human and necromancer free… other than Alex. " He frowned a moment. "When you were with Katherine back in the day, did she ever mention necromancers to you?"

Stefan shook his head "Why do you ask?"

"Because according to Sacha, the Gilbert rings aren't enchanted by witches. They were made by a very powerful necromancer. Which makes sense when you think about it, who else do you go to when you want to cheat death? "

Stefan nodded. "Guess we know what we're doing tomorrow. Time to go find out what Katherine knows. Alex said that disk was like one her father used in the past. If Katherine had it, you know she knows what it's for and who to keep it away from. "

"Or sell it to." Damon finished off his drink "So how mad is Elena?" He asked.

"Well, she was threatening to kill you when we got the phone call, but I talked her down to torture." Stefan said, dark eyes twinkling.

"What a brother." Damon said laughing. "Always at my back." Sometimes with a knife, he thought but still, he'd let him have his back again. Ultimately no matter what they were brothers.

"I try."

" We have to get to Bonnie's place." Jeremy said as he got out of bed and began to dress.

"What? No. Why?" Elena said "You're not going anywhere. Especially not to Bonnie's place."

"It'll be fine. Her father is still out of town until the weekend." He said, "And she has the item used to switch out Klaus and Tyler. We need to have that Item."

"Fine, I'll go. You stay here." Elena said and growled in frustration when he said no.

"Elena… you can't keep protecting me forever." He walked out the door, leaving her no choice but to follow.

"Jeremy, you were almost a vegetable for life." Elena said. "I had broccoli for a brother. There is no reason for you to be going too."

"That's exactly why I'm going." He said. "And I was never broccoli, maybe a tomato but never broccoli."

"Tomatoes aren't a vegetable."

"See, I was fine." He said with a grin.

"You have been spending way too much time around Damon." She said doing her best to scowl but she stopped arguing with him once they reached the parking lot.

The house was dark when they got there, and Jeremy hoped that was a good sign. He hoped that Bonnie left town and had no intention of coming back. She'd be safer that way, and so would his family. He honestly believed that she was still basically a good person but that things spiraled out of control because of the things she had to do on a regular basis to keep people safe. It didn't mean he could trust her. It just meant that he didn't want anything bad to happen to her.

'Growing up sucks' he thought as they broke into the house. He much preferred the black and white playground rules. I like this person therefore they can do no wrong made so much more sense than the realities of life. The fact that people who mean only good can wind up being so twisted by those good intentions, that it doesn't matter the lengths they have to go to achieve them.

He entered the bedroom and looked around at the stacks of books she had taken from the Martin's after they had both died. He wondered if Mr. Martin had twisted her somehow when he'd given her powers back, but he had to shut those thoughts from his mind. In the end it didn't matter. She'd betrayed them. Why ceased to be important when she had ripped Tyler out of his body and gave it to Klaus when there had to be so many other options out there. Including leaving him in whatever it was she'd used to rip him out of his body.

"Tyler said that there was a locking function to whatever it was. So we're looking for something she could carry around easily that Damon wouldn't think was odd if he saw it with a key hole somewhere. Tyler didn't get a good look at it. "

"Makes sense." Elena said. "I never would have thought she would know the spell to do something like that." She shook her head and began looking at the various trinkets around the room "It's my fault she's like this. If I'd never gotten her involved in the insanity that's my life-"

"No. It's not." Jeremy said. "You didn't compel her Elena. You didn't brain wash her or addict her to the power of that house. She did this to herself all on her own. "

"She was out there learning how to do all of this on her own, of course the lines are going to get blurry."

"I love her." Jeremy said. "Okay, not like a friend, not like someone that's just always been a part of my life. I love her like you love Stefan and Damon, and even I have to accept that she's responsible for her own actions." He told her, looking in the closet. "Where would she hide something that she didn't want someone like Klaus to get his hands on? Please don't say the witch house."

"I'm not in love with Damon." She protested. "And no she wouldn't hide anything there. The witches gave up the coffins with just a threat remember. It would be some place she could control which means it has to be here somewhere."

"Yes you are." He said laughing. "You're doing the right thing letting him move on but you are still very much in love."

She glared at her brother. "I'm marrying Stefan because I love Stefan."

"That wasn't my point." Jeremy said "Try and find something that you can't touch or that bites when you touch it."

"Oh good idea." She said starting to run her hand over everything. "So what was your point?"

"You respect him enough to not make excuses. When Damon screws up its all on Damon, not the devil made him do it. "

"That's not respect. That's just Damon." She said giving him a pointed look. "He screws up."

"Sure it is. You accept that he has a mind of his own and knows how to use it. You don't treat him like a victim because he tears someone apart out on a back road somewhere. You hold him accountable. Usually you forgive him, but you don't let him off by blaming everyone else around him. Bonnie isn't a victim either. She's had some crappy things happen in her life lately. So have you, so has Caroline. Matt hasn't thrown anyone under a bus because of the life he has to live. The only people that get a pass on their evil acts are Ric and Stefan because they actually were victims. " He told her. "The devil didn't make Bonnie do it, and even if he had, you haven't been the devil since I was twelve. "

"You saying I should forgive her one day? After what she did to you?" Elena asked. "you made the parallel." She said at the look he gave her.

"She didn't do anything to me. I got in the way. She was however trying to kill you and Caroline, so you have to deal with that and what she did to Tyler." He told her. "I guess that depends on the circumstances, but one day … yeah."

Elena sucked her breath in sharply. "That one. That book it's been coated in vervain" She said. "And it looks like she's glued willow leaves to the cover."

Jeremy picked it up and opened it."That's pretty funny cause Willow doesn't hurt Alex. It just blocks her powers." He opened it up and within was a smallish donut shaped disk with elaborate wire work around it culminating in an ornate lock in the center. "This is it." He said smiling. It was an attractive piece of jewelry when all was said and done. He also found the key and a folded piece of paper within.

"Let's get out of here before she decides to come back for it herself." Elena said.