Hey everyone. It doesn't seem like this fic is gaining as much traction as its predecessor, but I suppose that's to be expected with it being a sequel and all. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you if you've stuck around this long or are just now joining the ride. I'm not stopping until it ends, you can be sure of that.
This chapter is pretty much all about Rayna, a character that could have been so much more than what we ended up getting. This is my attempt to tie up a lot of the loose ends I've left with regard to her story as well as show a new side of her. I hope you enjoy it. (And for my faithful Bonora crew, fear not! Plenty of B/N moments, good and bad, on the horizon.)
Soundtrack (some noisy stuff; adjust volume accordingly!):
Container – "Shingles" from Creamer
Suuns – "Mirror Mirror" from Images du Futur
HEALTH - "Perfect Skin" from HEALTH
July 19, 2015
"I suppose this is karma. For all the years of misery and suffering you have caused my family and so many others. You took Beau's voice from him, made him live in fear of your return. Remember? Because he does. I do."
"..."
"I wonder, did you really think that they would just let you go once you gave me over? Or is it that somewhere in the back of that scrambled vampire-loathing brain of yours, you wanted to be caught?"
"Why would I want to be in here? Now I'm forced to deal with all my horrible psychic visions and can't even do anything about them. I feel naked without my sword. I would never intentionally part with it."
"Then why the bloody hell did you?"
"I... I don't know. I can't explain but it just…"
"...seemed like the right thing to do?"
"Yeah, that's it. How'd you know?"
"There's something about this place. Something... magnetic. I've always felt it but just sort of brushed it off."
"Think harder. What exactly is it? You know, deep down. Can't you hear her voice? My voice?"
"Wait. How are you in here? Why are they letting us talk?"
"They aren't. And I'm not really Rayna Cruz. Someone else, someone you're not ready for yet. You could call me the basement tenant, I suppose. You won't remember any of this, but tonight I begin rewiring your brain. You'll be mine soon enough."
Nora feels a sensation at the back of her head like someone tapping a finger against her brain stem, and the darkness starts to seep in.
April 15, 2016
All of the shards of glass haven't even hit the floor yet when Valerie grabs Bonnie and zips them behind the couch just as another loud crack rings out and the wood just above their heads is shredded like cheese. Bonnie's eyes are almost level with the crack underneath and she sees Abby go down, dead but not permanently, and she hopes whoever the attacker is won't take the time to finish the job.
The identity of the shooter isn't a mystery for long, though, for soon after they hear the sound of double barrels being reloaded and the action snapping back into place, a gruff drawl that Bonnie probably won't ever forget floats in from where the floor-to-ceiling windows used to be. "Give me my Sword, and no one has to die."
And as the huntress's heavy boots start to crunch on the debris-strewn floor, Bonnie mutters a cloaking spell to hide Abby and then both she and Valerie as they grab each other's hands and run upstairs.
September 30, 1857
Now surrounded by a circle of six corpses, each of whom had taken their own lives by stabbing themselves in the heart, Rayna suddenly feels much less confident about bravely continuing her father's legacy.
"She accepts our singular lives, so that she may have many," Teschu continues in his sonorous appeal to the Great Spirit, his gaze somehow simultaneously turned upward to the sky and straight ahead at Rayna.
Tears of regret and guilt start to well in her eyes. She's known these men her whole life; it was Teschu who delivered her from her mother's fang-mangled body after a vampire attacked their small Filipino migrant contingent as they made their way to Saint Malo, Itilakna who taught she and her father to read and speak English, Talako who told them the stories of the Brotherhood of the Five and how it was Vicente's destiny to avenge his wife's senseless murder and bring about an end to the vampire scourge.
"I didn't ask for anyone to die," she finally says, her mouth barely able to form the words.
Teschu almost looks confused. "No, they are not dead. They live on within you."
As he closes his eyes, Rayna remembers something her father once said to her when she was very young. "Those of us who know how to love have nothing to fear from death, Nene," he said in his deep, calming voice as he cleaned his weapons, her wide eyes following his every move. "Death is just as much a certainty as life; without it, there would be no life. Vampires do not understand this. They cheat death, find a way to keep breathing beyond their natural end, even as their souls shrivel to nothing. That is why they must be stopped."
"And so no one gets hurt, like Mama did."
He looks up at her and smiles sadly. "That's right, my little phoenix. That's exactly right."
Rayna feels a sliver of comfort as Teschu places her trusty short sword in her outstretched palms, the coldness of the metal a tether to the familiar in this whirlwind of the unknown. He turns his gaze upward again. "She wields a weapon of judgment, one that thirsts for the blood of those that prey upon us. Link her spirit with this sword." Then his eyes are boring into hers again. "When this blade draws blood from a vampire, it will connect you. It will guide you. It will aid you in their destruction."
Before she can ask what that means, she feels what it means; from the sword to her hands down her arms and then throughout her body, the crystalline jewel embedded in the hilt glowing a radiant orange-red, a burning sensation in the most abstract form flows and spreads, and within seconds the weapon is like an extra limb, a natural extension of her body that was always there and always will be there, and the Stone like a barren, desolate expanse sprawled out around her mind, its vast emptiness begging her to fill it with the darkened souls of the demons of the night, its wordless pleas agonizingly loud and ruthlessly incessant. She screws her eyes shut against the pain, drops the Sword and claps her hands over her ears, but nothing changes, until she opens her eyes again and sees Teschu point his feathered dagger toward his chest and the serrated blade sink into the tough, life-worn skin and the man who could still have had so many years left slump to the ground, pupils quickly draining their light until they stare straight ahead in undiscerning stasis, and still nothing changes.
It is SO. LOUD.
The fire goes out and she's enveloped in darkness, her only company a ring of dead bodies of great men who had almost certainly died in vain. She collapses to her hands and knees, her right palm coming down hard on the barbed blade of the Sword, which slices it through almost to the bone, but she hardly notices. She doesn't know whether to cry or scream.
So she does both, all night, until dawn's warm innuendos creep into the inky sky. And then she picks up the sword. Her Sword.
April 15, 2016
"I know one of you has it," Rayna yells, kicking away the couch behind which Valerie and Bonnie had been hiding only moments before and then blasting a round of wooden buckshot into the empty air, the jagged bits and splinters lodging deep in the darker grain of the living room floor. "First Alex St. John took it from me, then those two Heretic bitches had it, and now it's here. I want. It. Back." She accentuates the last word with the expulsion of the round loaded in the other barrel directly into the ceiling. The round busts through the drywall and rocks the floorboards in the guest room that the two witches are currently barricading.
Once Bonnie finishes her string of defense incantations, the last being an extra-strength "cone of silence" spell, she holds up her phone and shows the text on the screen to Valerie. "Damon's still outside but he's sneaking around the side and climbing up. If we can get her up here, make her focus on trying to get into this room, he can get through the window across the hallway and behind her."
Valerie nods, still tracing the rectangle of the door as she enhances the locking charm she just put on it. "This magic repellant thing she has is so infuriating. Every time she rears her ugly head I just want to siphon all the magic I can hold and just kick her arse."
"Believe me, I don't like being the bait for the least stealthy assassin in the world either. But—"
"She's coming up the stairs," Valerie interrupts, brushing a lock of hair away from her ear to listen. "Slowly."
"Can she sense where you are? You know, because of the—" Bonnie doesn't finish the sentence, just gestures toward where she knows Valerie's X-shaped scar marks the skin.
"Only if she is in possession with the Sword. And if that were the case, I would be bleeding from my scar like a stuck pig right now."
"Wait." Bonnie's stomach drops a bit. "Where is the Sword?"
Valerie's eyes widen. "Didn't you cloak it when you hid Abby? Downstairs?"
"No, it wasn't there," Bonnie says. "Maybe—"
The hallway-facing wall shakes and dust floats down from the ceiling as a heavy steel-toed boot smashes against the door.
July 20, 2015
"Don't you ever get tired of it? I mean, supernatural destinies are cool and all, but I know more than anyone that the ones involving extended or eternal life have a tendency to get a bit dull after a while. And you, well, you barely even get any perks or anything. Just a constant urge to kill that most would just call clinical insanity, a sword whose length is even less impressive than Odysseus's, and a drawn-out real life version of Groundhog Day."
Rayna grits her teeth and shuts her eyes, bringing her scrubs-clad legs up onto the cell bunk and wrapping her arms tightly around them. The fact that she's been a prisoner here before makes the situation all the more intolerable. How could she have been so stupid? "Shut. Up," she growls to no one. Or someone, perhaps. (It's hard to tell.)
"Wouldn't that be a nice change of pace for you. Not to have my dreadful, grating voice in the back of your mind all day long. Leave you to the crushing silence of this place, silence that has driven its prisoners madder than I ever could. You'd really prefer that?"
"Obviously." The feeling of her Sword being so closeby, but her not being able to touch it, feel the comforting heft of the hilt grasped tightly in her hand, is a torture worse than the things she feels when she has the Sword.
"You're lying. I can read your mind, you know. You put on this tough lone wolf act, but it's all a front. All you want is for someone to tear down the barricades and wrap their arms around you and tell you everything's going to be alright. I don't blame you—who doesn't want that?"
Rayna can't tell if the shrill laugh is echoing against the walls of the cell, the inside of her skull, or some other sanctum entirely.
"But the Stone won't let you settle down. Always begging for more blood, more links in this mess of a mind-web you drag behind you everywhere you go. And even when you find some semblance of happiness despite all that, vampires will take it away. I'm sure I don't have to remind you what happened last time. Memphis, 1883. What was his name again?"
"Don't fucking say it. You don't deserve to say it. No one does. Not even me." Especially not me, Rayna thinks as she grabs the pathetic excuse for a pillow that's one of the room's few amenities and folds it around her head to cover her ears. "Who are you? What the hell do you want? Can we just get it over with so I can be miserable in peace?"
"My dear, you haven't let me finish! I was just getting to all that. Don't you want to live a real life someday? To one day just be done with the destiny bullshit and grow old as a regular human?"
She does want that. She wants that more than anything in the world. But she doesn't say anything.
"I thought so. Again, who doesn't?" That fucking laugh again. "I can make that a reality for you, Rayna."
She can't stop herself. "You can?"
"I knew that would pique your interest. Yes, I can free you from this fate so unfairly thrust upon you, but it'll take some work on your part, too."
"Anything. I'll do anything."
"Well for now all I need you to do is wait. And after that, I need you to die."
April 15, 2016
"This magical barricade won't hold for long! Anything I touch starts to leak magic. I can feel it shedding off the door like paint chips."
On the other side of the door, Bonnie tries to slow her pounding heart and alternates between pacing back and forth and bracing for battle. Shouldn't Damon have gotten her by now?
"Does she always talk this much when she's, uh, hunting?" she asks Valerie, trying to alleviate some of the tension that's inevitable when a killing machine is trying to smash their way into the room you're locked inside.
"She used to be very much the creepily silent type. Maybe one too many resurrections has turned her brain to scrambled egg."
As if in direct response to this comment, Rayna's relentless kicks finally bust a hole through the door, fragments and splinters flying from the edges of the wound in the wood, and the next strike of the heel simultaneously knocks out the whole bottom half and breaks the lock, the remnants still attached to the hinges swinging open at blurring speed. Bonnie hopes the huntress's flair for the dramatic will buy them a few extra moments at least, before—
Rayna hits the second barrier and grunts. It feels like a punch.
"More magic? You witches never learn, do you?"
"Aren't you supposed to be a vampire hunter? So why are you always coming after me? And what kind of deal do you have with Cade?"
Rayna stops. "What do you know about Cade?"
Bonnie squints at her, the exchange transcending the imminent danger of the situation. "Do you not remember resurrecting when Damon killed you when you went after Nora? You looked at me and you said, 'Cade sends his regards.' Very dramatic. Your shtick, it seems."
Rayna actually looks confused. "No, I don't remember that. I just woke up back in the Armory cell. But—"
She instantly stops talking as the blade of the Phoenix Sword juts through her chest from where Damon has just run it through, right on her heart through the back. "That's for putting me through hell."
His expression is smug at first as he looks at Bonnie and Valerie, but then he looks back down, the Sword still buried to the hilt, and his brow furrows. "Uh, guys? Does the Stone usually glow like this?"
In a split second there's a vicious change in pressure, a painful pop like a sonic boom funneled through a straw, and the room is briefly bathed in neon scarlet before everything goes black.
date unknown, closest approximation July 28, 2015
Rayna scratches the back of her head. "So this is it. The Hell I've heard so much about. It's kind of boring."
"And hello to you too."
"Cade, right? The annoying woman in the basement told me a lot about you. So I'm sure you already know who I am."
"Indeed. And do you know why you're here?"
"Not really. I know I died to get here. And I know that there has been an offer of my living one last normal lifespan, without the Stone or the urges or the visions. I'm skeptical, but at this point, I don't have much to lose."
"Which is precisely why you're the perfect person for the job. At this point, you've died, let me see... seven times? So that means the eighth one will be your last one before the real deal. And I propose that we use that occasion to make our deal?"
"How? Also, has anyone told you you're super creepy?"
Cade smiles, which seems to be his answer to the latter question. "Every spell has a loophole, especially the grandiose ones. I've been studying witches of all sorts from my distant observatory for millennia, and so I can always figure something out. The death of an individual, any individual, is a powerful thing, a thing that can be channeled, rerouted even. For example, even now, a plan is in motion to release my dear Sybil from her subterranean sanctum, currently sealed with a spell I will unravel with the death of one Bonnie Bennett; this will allow you to escape as well. After that, I'll have you do a few things for me, and then eventually you will recover your weapon and ensure that it is the cause of your final demise. With this your psychic link to the vampires in the Phoenix Stone, and theirs to you, can be severed and all of the souls released—to me."
"You want a torture dimension bank transfer? Sure, whatever man, I'll do it. But what 'things' do you need me to do? Why can't I just get my Sword back and die right away?"
"My, my, so callous and flippant with your own mortality. This spell has really done a number on you, hasn't it?"
"Yeah, turns out a century and a half of lugging around a Santa sack full of screaming bloodsuckers makes you go a little cuckoo."
"As I said, the perfect person for the job. And regarding those errands... you will become aware of your responsibilities when necessary. Until then"—Cade fixes his cufflinks and turns to walk away into the darkness—"try not to die."
June 11, 1887
Two years ago, Rayna couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled over the course of one grisly death and who knows how many decades of hunting alone. Now she can't remember the last day that went by when she didn't smile. It was him—it was he who had found her, curled into a cowering ball, completely naked and covered in the blood of her now-mutilated murderer, took care of her, helped her through the traumatic and terrifying process of resurrection, joined her in her hunt. And now she loves him more than she ever thought she could love anything.
"How long have you been awake?" he asks her in the deep, sleepy just-woke-up voice that she loves so much, breaking her ponderous reverie—whether she's thinking about him, talking to him, touching him, anything, it helps keep the voices and the screams and the pain away.
"Not long. The sun shone right in my face. It seems like it will be a beautiful day."
"Always, when I wake up with you by my side." He reaches his arms out and grabs her and pulls her to him and kisses her deeply, and she kisses back, morning-breath be damned, losing herself in him like always.
"I'm going to kill Ambrose today," she tells him matter-of-factly as she rises wearing only her nightshirt and opens the window, the fresh summer morning air wafting in like a song. "I've narrowed down his hideout to an abandoned steel mill in the industrial district. There will be no more innocent deaths in this city that has already lost so much. No more Doorknob Killer."
"Well if anyone can do it, it's you," he answers. "I am coming too, of course."
She sighs and looks at him pointedly. "I have to do this one on my own."
"Rayna, we've spoken about this. I know the conflict between you two has become... personal, but we agreed: neither of us will ever hunt alone again."
"So be it. But he must go in here," she says firmly, stopping in the middle of preparing to make breakfast and holding up the Phoenix Sword hilt first, the Stone shining in the sunlight. "He needs to suffer for all that he's done."
"And it will be so." He hesitates for a second, then continues. "I did not tell you last night, because we were otherwise occupied, but... I have come into possession of a lead on the vampire who made y— who killed your father."
She freezes. "What? How?"
"I received a letter from an acquaintance in London. He frequently surveils a vampire-friendly salon to gather information about potential targets. Covertly, of course, so he cannot get too close, but he said he recently heard a patron loudly boasting that he had killed one of The Five in America. And well, he— he bragged about... how he avoided the Hunter's Curse."
Rayna's gripping the edge of the kitchen counter so tightly her nails are digging into the wood. "My father's death, reduced to drunken pub bluster?"
"Yes, I fear it being a coincidence is... unlikely. But—"
He's interrupted by the sound of the front door crashing open, and suddenly their home is filled with four, maybe five uniformed policemen, all of them looking at her.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asks them, but they ignore the question.
"Rayna Cruz, by the order of the President of the Taxing District, you are under arrest for twenty-three counts of murder in the first degree."
She looks at her lover with shock and confusion and fear, knowing she could slaughter or even simply incapacitate all of the men without breaking a sweat, but between the suddenness of the situation and her loathing for harming humans, it doesn't feel like an option. "Ambrose must have framed me. It will be alright. I love you."
Her shock and confusion and fear is mirrored tenfold in his face. "I love you," he echoes, all the fight draining out of his body at once as he slumps back onto the bed.
This is the last time she sees him before his vivisected corpse is hanging outside the police station when she escapes, his eyes crudely gouged out and replaced with brass doorknobs, the words NICE TRY carved with a serrated blade in jagged, bloody strokes across his bare chest.
April 15, 2016
What was his name?
Why the fuck can't she remember his name?
Whose name?
Who?
Where?
When?
She awakens chained to a chair in some dusty basement cell, four people standing before her who she doesn't recognize. Their clothing is strange. Come to think of it, her own clothing is strange.
"What is happening? Who are you people?" she asks in English.
The dark-haired man with the radiant grey-blue eyes turns to the women and closes his eyes, as if annoyed. "Wellllll, shit," he says.
