A/N: With this chapter, you'll see the story is finally starting to heat up. You will also see that it's starting to enter into the realm of the "Mature" rating I've given it. This chapter is a bit longer than normal as I had a hard time finding a cut off point. Thank you all for the follows, favs, and reviews! I love them. Enjoy! Also, tell your friends about this story. ;)

Klaus's POV

Earlier that Night

"I don't care if we think she is possessed or not. As soon as I get my hands on her, she's bloody dead."

"I don't think that's really a good—"

"She almost got Caroline killed, Damon! Technically, if I wasn't around or didn't exist, she would be dead right now. Caroline Forbes would not exist. Can you not wrap your head around that, mate?" I watched as Damon eyebrows shot up. He couldn't deny I was right.

"Now let's just take a second to think through this. Are we even sure it was Bonnie?" Alaric nonchalantly spoke as he held a book up in front of his face. He had been furiously flipping through pages in several books he had acquired from my bookshelf for over an hour now.

Damon sighed. "Of course it wasn't Bonnie, Ric! I mean, yeah it could've been her body or whatever that cast the spell, but it wasn't Bonnie. I told you about how weird she was acting last night. It like she was a different person at times."

My patience was running thin as I felt myself taking deeper breaths in order to stay calm.

"What do you mean the witch was acting different?" I asked.

Damon seemed to start fidgeting with his hands as he seemed reluctant to answer me.

"Damon. How was she acting differently?" I accentuated my question so that he knew I was demanding an answer, and not just asking for one now.

"Well I—I had planned last night to tell Bonnie how I really felt about her. After practically begging her for some time alone, we went outside to the back patio. I told her how I felt, and to keep a long story short, she laughed in my face and told me how uninterested she was."

"Which I then told him that that didn't sound like Bonnie at all." Alaric quickly interceded.

To be honest, doing a cruel thing like that didn't remind me much of Bonnie Bennett either. She had always seemed so nice to her friends; especially Damon.

"Yeah. We parted ways, I found Alaric, told him what had happened, and then that's when I introduced you two. Bonnie went to go talk to Blondie and Teen Wolf, which was when we think she cast the spell."

"We need to figure out who is possessing her, and more importantly, what the bloody hell is it that they want." I could hear the venom dripping from my own voice.

"You're right." Alaric agreed. "Damon, you're the closest to Bonnie. Why don't you see if you can get her isolated again? Maybe catch her with her guard down and try to figure out what's going on with her?" Damon silently nodded in agreement as Alaric gathered up a crowd of books in his arms. "In the meantime, I'll be looking through all these dust collectors to see if I can find the spell Bonnie used last night. Klaus?"

I quirked my eyebrow at the all-knowing human and he almost flinched away as he cleared his throat.

"I'll see you guys later." Whatever the Professor was going to say, he had decided to bite his tongue as he rushed out of my home.

I turned my attention to the older Salvatore brother and immediately had to keep my countenance from betraying me. He looked defeated.

"Care for a drink, mate?" Without having his answer, I went to my liquor cabinet and poured two glasses of my finest bourbon. Damon Salvatore needed it. He took the glass out of my hand as soon as I was close enough to him, then sat down on my couch right as he took a long drink of the brown liquid.

"Thanks. That's a good glass of bourbon. Nice taste, Dracula."

"It's one of my favorites. Got it during a trip to Europe in the 1980s. This is my first time opening this bottle of it. I figured you would enjoy it. You seemed to have needed a strong drink."

Damon shrugged as he took another drink out of his glass and sank further into the couch.

"Do you love her?" I'm not sure why I asked, or why I cared, but something in this small town was making me privy to the inner-workings of those who had been around Caroline all this time. For some reason, in all my centuries of existing, I felt out of the loop. Normally, I was the loop. I was the person people dared to try and get to know, but I was also the person who ignored those around me and kept to myself. I was always fine living a solitary life until I met Caroline.

"BonBon?" Damon's question yanked me out of my inner musings.

"No, me." I rolled my eyes. "Of course I'm talking about Bonnie. Do you love her?"

Damon took another sip of bourbon as he seemed to think on my words a bit longer.

"If you had asked me that last year around this time, I'd have probably said no."

"What changed?" I asked.

"Klaus, we are more alike than you know. We've both had to watch the ones we care most about die in our arms. The only difference is I was only separated from Bonnie for about seven minutes. Those were the longest seven minutes of my life."

Damon Salvatore had fully piqued my interest. How had a human, even as a witch, died for seven minutes then come back?

"Before you got here, things were a bit more complicated. There was a different Big Baddie in town. His name was Kai Parker, and he was Jo's little brother by two minutes."

"Who is Jo?"

"Alaric's dead wife. Remember how he said she was a witch? She was a member of the Gemini Coven. Apparently, all the twins in the coven merge when they're twenty-two years old. They battle each other with magic, one kills the other and sucks up the dead twin's power, then Voila! The remaining twin is the leader of the Gemini Coven. Jo had been running from Kai basically all her life. He had killed their family when he and Jo were kids, and Jo refused to do the merge. A few years ago, he had completely disappeared. She could no longer feel his presence."

"And so, she became a fool with too much hope?" I knew how this story was going to go, but I asked the question anyway.

"Exactly. She winded up in Mystic Falls and became the town doctor. It was quiet for her for almost three years. But then, the day after her and Alaric got married, Kai blasts into town like lightning. Everything was still quiet for the most part, but you knew a storm was brewing. This was back when Bonnie hadn't started practicing yet, but with her best friend dating a vampire, of course she was aware of the supernatural. Plus, her crazy grandma had been trying to tell her a thing or two about who she really was.

"Anyway. Kai stayed in town for a few weeks, and it turns out that every patient Jo was treating, he killed them. Kids, the elderly, you name it. He told Jo that if she stopped practicing medicine, then every person that she spoke to, or those who spoke a word to her, he would murder them with his bare hands; including Alaric.

"As you can guess, Bonnie Bennett had a sinus infection and went to Jo to get some antibiotics. She left Jo's office that day, and we didn't hear from her. About four days passed, and finally Kai fessed up to Jo. He had taken Bonnie, but some tiny flicker of emotion he still had left in his body wouldn't let him kill her. He liked her. Jo saw this as her way out. Kai didn't have many weaknesses.

"So, Jo pretended to agree to the merge. We all were in on the plan. Instead of actually doing the merge, Jo was going to use her magic to seal Kai away so he wouldn't be a problem anymore. She succeeded in sealing him away, but not before he stabbed Bonnie through her chest. I saw it in slow motion as it happened. I remember I ran to her, checked her pulse and knew she wouldn't make it to the ER. I tried to feed her my blood, but she wouldn't take it. Her pulse had completely stopped, so I yanked out the knife and began doing CPR on her. It didn't do much. Once I realized she was dead, I looked over and saw Alaric looking hopelessly at Jo. She was dead, too. She used too much of her magic. We thought we were failures."

"Until Bonnie woke up." I stated.

"Exactly. Then, not soon after is when she discovered she actually was a witch. Alaric's theory is that Bonnie's ancestors sent her back, but with her not being able to remember anything, we had nothing more to go on."

"Until now." I stated without looking at Damon.

"Until now." He repeated my words in an almost inaudible voice.

..

Caroline's POV

Present Day

"Bonnie?" I tried to keep my voice from cracking. I wasn't afraid of Klaus. I knew I had no reason to be.

But as I looked into his murderous, almost obsidian eyes, at this very moment I couldn't ignore the fact my body felt like it ran cooler than normal. I could almost feel the goosebumps prickling up at the nape of my neck.

What scared me the most, though, was the warm feeling I was getting in the bottom of my stomach. I could almost feel the slight wetness starting to form between my thighs.

I cleared my throat.

"What about Bonnie?" My question came out more solid this time as Klaus removed himself from his God-like pose against the wall and walked toward me.

"She cast that little spell that almost took your life, Caroline."

I felt my face drain of its blood as I questioned Klaus with my eyes. He must have noticed this as he motioned for me to take a seat on the sofa. As I got comfortable on the couch, my actual question tumbled from my lips before my brain could process it.

"Ni—Klaus, what are you talking about?"

Klaus and Rebekah exchanged a curious glance that I didn't understand before Klaus asked Rebekah to get me some warm tea to help calm me down. She reluctantly left us alone, but not before glancing meaningfully in my direction. It was odd, but it was like I had seen that stare many times before.

"There was no full moon last night. So, please enlighten me as to how someone other than the only hybrid in existence was able to shift just enough to claw and bite you, then run away on foot?" I sat still as I wasn't sure I should really answer the question.

"It's impossible, Caroline. Only I can shift on command. Normal werewolves can't. They are slaves to the moon, and the only way to manipulate that would be to use a very powerful witch."

"And you think that's where Bonnie comes in? But, how? She hasn't been practicing that long."

"We are still trying to figure that part out, love." Just as Klaus made his statement, Rebekah appeared next to me holding a mug with some tea. It smelled delicious.

"Thank you, Rebekah." I quickly took the mug from her hands and took a sip. It was absolutely the best tea I had ever tasted in my entire life.

When you become a vampire, all your senses are heightened. The only weird part is taste is only applied to blood. Most normal food and drink either have no taste at all, or taste average. Only alcohol seemed to be taste-worthy these days, and it also impeded the unwavering need for blood for at least a little while.

But there was something about this tea. Unlike normal teas I've drank, it wasn't bland at all. In fact, something about it tasted almost fond to me; like it was something I had a lot of as a small child maybe. I'd have to ask mom about it later.

"This tea is perfect. What's in it?" I noticed Rebekah's face was sad for a moment before she quickly tried to hide the sadness with a smile. The smile then turned to a sneaky grin.

"It's my secret recipe. A friend and I created it years ago and vowed never to tell anyone else the ingredients."

"Well, if you ever decided to tell me, it's a secret I'll take with me to my grave." I smiled as Rebekah smiled at me and sat down in the recliner to the left of the couch. There was a slight sadness behind her smile, and I figured it must have been because her old friend had taken the secret to their own grave.

Klaus cleared his throat; bringing my attention back to him.

"Because we aren't sure just how powerful Bonnie is, or why, Rebekah and I would like to offer you our protection. Even though you are a vampire, Rebekah and I have many superior things about us that would add to your safety. We aren't sure to what extent Bonnie's spell even went to. We'd like to be around if anything out of the ordinary happens."

"Yeah." Rebekah chimed in. "I'm going to watch over everyone at school and around town to see if anything else weird happens, and Nik is going to keep working on figuring out what type of spell it was that Bonnie cast. He also may be on protection duty here and there."

"I'm working with Alaric and the Salvatores as well." Klaus explained. "Hopefully we can get it figured out quicker this way." I just nodded my head at Klaus's words. I felt like I was in good hands.

At least that's all I could hope for at this point.