Josette found him in the grove. Untied and fiddling with his cuff. He didn't look up at her approach. As she neared, Bonnie came into view. She lay carefully under the archway, features still and peaceful and hands folded over the white silk of her dress. Her stomach moving with shallow breaths was her only indication that she was still alive.

'What did you do to her you bastard?'

Kai barely looked, working on the other sleeve and replying in his own time. 'Relax would you. She's fine, just sleeping.' He glanced over at her body, eyes round in wonder and Jo almost laughed.

Because that look, on her brother's face, was a joke.

It was almost like he cared.

'Are you here to kill me sister Jo?'

'Cut the crap. I know everything. I know you've been working with Qetsiyah.'

'So why are you still here?' He turned over to her, dangerously calm. This was wrong. Why wasn't he snarky, or angry? The look on his face was almost peaceful and assured and it brought back all her worries. Until she remembered the failsafe coursing through her veins.

'Because I'll do it.'

'Come again?'

'I'll merge with you.' She took advantage of his surprise to latch around his wrist, boring crescent indents from her nails into the flesh and hoping it hurt.

'Over-eager much Josette? What are you planning?'

'I'm planning on winning.'

'Fat chance. You lack the motivation.'

'Shut up and let's do this.'

He clamped back, planting his feet and turning his back on Bonnie.

Sanguinem desimilus!' They chanted, wind picking up around them. 'Sanguinem generis.' Low burning tapers spewed flames high into the air, lighting the grove in a burning orange glow and throwing shadows across their face. 'Fiantus.'

Jo managed to stay awake a second longer than him. Long enough to see his eyes glaze over completely white, grip slacken and body start to fall back. A second later she did the same.

Unimaginable light filled him. Not just his eyes, but his ears too, seeping onto his body.

His body.

He had form.

Kai blinked, letting his vision settle as he felt the soft blankets around him. Of course he had a body, he was in a bed. The movement under the covers had him turning over to the other side of the bed. He reached out a hand, bathed in sunlight creeping from the windows, to pull back the cover, revealing a mess of charcoal hair. The hair fell away as the head turned to him, eyes fluttering open to reveal familiar green flecked pupils.

'Go back to sleep.' Bonnie commanded, her voice tired. He smiled, relief filling him and he moved closer, nose against her own.

'Not a chance.'

'Then let me go back to sleep?'

'Even less chance of that.' His hand found its way onto the dip of her waist, gleeful at the feel of bare skin and only noticing now their lack of clothing, fingers tracing goosebumps. She giggled at the contact and his chest beamed at the sound, feeling her leg crawl it's way over his own, her nose nuzzling his.

If this was death he didn't mind it.

But he felt it.

The impending sense of something waiting for him just beyond their bedroom door.

'You can't ignore it forever.' Bonnie whispered and of course she knew what he was thinking.

'It's not ignoring,' he pushed himself above her, moving her legs apart and settling between them 'If I have more important things to focus on.'

'I'll come with you.' She promised but he shook his head, tucking her hair behind her ear.

'You can't.' He leant down and kissed her gently on the forehead, feeling the sands of time slipping between them.

Either he could walk to the door or the door would come to him, but they were out of time.

A blink and he was in front of the wooden panelling, fingers curled around the brass handle, no memory of leaving the bed. Kai looked back at Bonnie, covered under ruffles of fur blankets, the smooth skin of her shoulders glowing with sun, and her eyes trained on him. If this was it, his only moment with her before whatever was waiting for him behind the door took him, then he wanted to say it.

'Bon, I lo-'

'No.' She cut him off. 'Say it to me when you come back.'

'What if I don't.'

'You will. You always come back.'

And she was gone.

He was left in nothing but pitch black, beneath his feet he recognised the feeling of stiff blades of grass almost cutting him with each step. He looked down at his feet, significantly smaller and the trees towering around him. He was shorter, clad in just a tunic and loose pants. No shoes, they'd been taken from the minute they arrived outside that stone wall. Shoes were for people with places to go.

Choose.

The word rang in his ears, sprung from his father's lips but the old man was nowhere to be seen. It was just him, alone, facing off against his grey Prison.

Something bristled beside him and he looked.

Not alone.

Josette was here.

Equally as shabby.

Josette wasn't supposed to be in this memory.

She'd gone back to the castle, to live in their father's eternal grace, while he was the one cast out here to suffer. But what was, didn't dictate what was happening right now. And right now his sister was beside him, fear mirrored on her twelve year old face.

'I should have stayed.' She whispered, wide eyes expanding as the old brick screamed at her, dark gated doorway beckoning her. 'I just let him send you away.'

'I spent the first night thinking you were going to break me out..' Kai muttered, keeping his gaze on the iron. 'Qetsiyah kept telling me you wouldn't come but I never believed her.'

'I wanted to.' Jo replied, her voice barely a whisper. 'But I was so scared he would throw me in there too.'

'And you still cared about him.'

'It's complicated Kai. He was our father-'

'He didn't care about us.'

'He cared about me.' Regret flashed across her face before she hid it away, steeling her resolve. 'And you killed him. Father, I understand, but what about them? What about our brothers,' she sobbed over the words, their faces conjured up at the thought of them. 'Our sisters? They only ever cared about you-'

'They cared about you, not me. I was the burden.' He hissed. 'And he fucked me up so bad it made my own power twisted. Why do you think I'm a siphon? Because everything I have has to be taken- no one gives me anything like they do with you.' He was sick of her thinking that her own experience of people was universal for the both of them.

'Choose.'

This time the voice came from behind them and both he and Josette turned. The single voice came from the mouths of two girls. One blonde, one brunette with familiar eyes that he couldn't quite remember.

'Choose.' They commanded.

'Choose what?' Josette asked, he rolled his eyes. Of course she'd engage with their metaphor.

'One must go and one must stay. To live in the other until their dying day.'

It was even creepier when they rhymed, but it made this easier to understand. One of them wouldn't be leaving. He looked over at his sister, realising the same thing. They turned their backs on their hosts.

'Choose.' They boomed over their shoulders one last time.

He could push her into the cells. Force her to be stuck here forever. He had so much to go back for. Jo was easily distracted by her own fear and he could do it. He'd finally have magic, filling up that hole inside of himself. All he had to do was give her a good shove.

But who would he be if he did?

There was a reason he left Jo alive.

A reason she was the only member of his family he didn't think twice about sparing.

Josette was his twin, she was one half of him. A half he couldn't stand, but part of him all the same.

So he began walking towards the iron gate before she even understood what he was doing.

As he took each step he felt resolute in his decision, more sure than anything in his life that it was the right choice to make. He survived this darkness before, he'd survive it again. Kai's thoughts turned to Bonnie as he walked.

Would she be upset by his death?

She'd get over it, there was no way she loved him enough to mourn him, not after all the terrible things he'd done. He wasn't worth loving that much. The gate opened with a creak, and he stepped up into the passageway, darkness swallowing him whole from Josette's view.

It was enough to give him a heart attack, killing him stone dead, if he wasn't already an animated cadaver. Three bodies, all strewn about on the grass.

Bonnie was definitely alive, chest moving up and down as she breathed softly.

Unfortunately so was Kai.

Both he and Jo sported filmy white eyes, blank and unseeing. Enzo had seen it before, more than two decades ago. It was a good job Sheila sent him to keep awatch of Kai, she'd murder him on sight the minute she saw Bonnie unconcious. But Enzo was more respectful of the process, curious to see which twin would finally wake up.

He didn't have to wait long for the victor to stir.

King cockroach, always coming back.

Kai rose from the grass, sitting bolt upright. He blinked, adjusting his eyes and taking in Josette. Enzo listened to the sound of her heart slowly fading away. She'd be dead in a few seconds, spirit supposedly tethered to her brothers.

'Welcome back.' Enzo drawled, walking into view to lean by the side of the flowery archway, perched over Bonnie's body.

Kai stared at him, under the vague light the beads of sweat dotting his forehead were illuminated. 'I-I won?'

'If you can call it that.' Enzo replied.

He took a few deep breaths, letting the realisation sink in, before getting up to stand. It was like watching a baby deer rising for the first time, all hesitation and wobbles. He moved to his sister's corpse, dragging her eyelids closed with his thumb and forefinger.

'How very respectful after murdering her.' Enzo sneered.

His knees clicked as he stood back up, shoring up his leaking insecurity to face the vampire.

'She knows what you did.' A slow smile spread over Kai's face as he looked at Enzo's cocky facade fracturing. 'The compulsion, she knows everything.' He added, sprinkling salt over the wound.

'How?' The word echoed around the bark, landing between them.

'I siphoned it away.' Kai moved closer, kneeling by Bonnie and tracing a finger over the smooth line on her forehead as she frowned in her sleep. 'You want to know the best part? I didn't even mean to do it. Which means, your entire master plan fell through because of an accident.' He heard teeth grinding and sniffed. 'That must really bite huh?'

'Well it certainly does mess things up a bit.'

Kai put his fingertips to his own temples, ready to remember.

'But as for biting,' Enzo spoke, watching the siphon close his eyes as the corpse rose behind him. 'I'll leave that to her.'

Kai's eyes flew open the second he heard the shuffling, turning back around

No.

She couldn't have.

She wouldn't have.

'Josette…' she was still as pale as she was seconds ago, resurrection gave back none of the colour death took. 'How are you…'

'Alive?' Enzo answered for her, his sister's mouth hanging open and eyes blank. 'Technically she's undead. Or will be. Did you know if you die with vampire blood in your system, you come back? Can't keep a good woman down, really.'

Kai listened to his explanation, head hurting the longer he looked at his sister.

'Josette?' But she still didn't answer.

His mind began to sting now, whole body beginning to sear like he was being torn in half. This was- this was bad.

High pitched ringing practically making his ears bleed and he doubled over, clutching his head. He watched the blood trickling down his nose, over his lips and falling off his chin onto the grass.

Kai forced himself to straighten up, look his sister in the eye.

But when he looked back, it wasn't Josette. Jo didn't have thick black veins dimpling her skin, or razor sharp incisors cutting through her lips. He blinked and she was right in front of him. Up close he smelt the stench of decay on her breath as she reared the fangs back. He couldn't scream when she pierced his sternum and drank. Shoving her was useless, his arms weakening as she drained him.

'Mot-Motus!' More of a prayer than a spell and it worked to make her stumble a good distance away, fighting the movement in her blood-driven frenzy. He saw his crimson staining her face, the colour of her chin bleached red.

'Josette,' Kai gurgled, teetering. 'W-hat did-' he buckled to his knees, blood coming up from his lungs as he choked on his words, 'you do?'

Falling backwards, he landed by Bonnie's head, paralysed. The last thing he saw was eyes that reminded him of forest leaves under the sun and the shallowest parts of the ocean, staring back into his own.

Bonnie's scream was the last thing he heard before the light consumed him.