Do Not Go Gentle
The next few days are...disheartening.
News about the ascendant comes in the form of a single text from Stefan late at night. She's alerted by the abrupt flashing luminance of her phone screen piercing through the pitch black darkness of the room.
She remembers having to twist her body gingerly and at a slightly awkward angle in order to reach the phone on the nightstand. She had only glanced at the message for a second, her body remaining frigid and still so that the loury figure mere inches away from her would not be inclined to wake.
The ascendant wasn't there.
It hadn't been at the wedding hall like they had expected it to be.
She remembers sinking back stonily into the mattress and the rest of her semblance sinking with her.
This isn't the only news she receives that week.
Jo and Liv are still adjusting to their newfound vampirism, Liv doing surprisingly well, according to Tyler. In the days following, Tyler had decided that he and Liv wanted to leave Mystic Falls, start a new life in New York, or the like.
But before Tyler and Liv settled in, Tyler had promised Damon that they would visit the Gemini compound in Portland to see if the ascendant had somehow ended up there. It's a long shot, but they don't have any other leads, and Liv and Jo are the last living Gemini coven members that have access to the compound to begin with.
Jo has been...struggling.
There had always been a brief possibility that Jo's twins had somehow survived due to the revitalizing nature of the vampire blood coursing through her system.
But they hadn't, and Jo has been distraught ever since, made worse due to her heightened emotions.
Her and Alaric have been getting into a lot of fights lately, and Alaric has told Damon—who of course told Bonnie—that she's gotten into the habit of excessively splurging on blood bags.
Which poses the possibility that Jo may also be a Ripper.
And normally, Bonnie would have qualms about letting a very human Ric live alone with a Ripper, but he's reassured everyone that he is more than prepared in the slim chance that Jo ever does attack him. And Bonnie trusts a seasoned vampire hunter to hold his own.
As of recently, Jo and Alaric decided to join Liv and Tyler in Portland to visit Jo's old home for a few weeks, maybe to get away from all the Mystic Falls drama for a while. She doesn't blame them.
Sometimes, Bonnie finds herself wishing she had gone with them.
The only remotely good change that'd happened in the past week was when Kai decided that their hotel room was far too "cramped" for a mega powerful leader.
Kai has since compelled Bonnie and him into one of the deluxe suites in the hotel—which is an absolutely egregious upgrade in Bonnie's opinion. There's an extra living room with a couch and coffee table, two seperate bathrooms, a kitchen, and far too much space for only two people. Funnily enough, there is still only one bed, though king sized, this time.
She didn't have it in her to ask him if they could just move into her father's, or her Gram's empty house.
And she doesn't have it in her to ask why they're living together in the first place.
She's simply accepted the glaring shift in her life. If this forced domesticality is what it'll take to prevent Kai from blazing a destructive path of revenge on herself and on Mystic Falls, then she will gladly comply.
And if she ignores the very blatant precariousness of their relationship, it hasn't been all that bad.
Her days typically go like this now: she's awakened by the summer heat peaking through the blinds. Her eyes adjust to the light circulating around her to settle on the figure next to her, who's already awake. She knows by now not to startle at the sight of cerulean eyes trailing over her stirring form.
Because no matter what, he always manages to wake before she does. And she's almost become okay with the consequent ungardedness that this brings her.
And although it's usually impossible to get him to shut up, in the early hours of morning, he's typically silent. There's always a moment once she rouses when a very deliberate quietness blankets them. She knows that it's only there to mollify any potential altercations.
Sometimes, in the center of those moments, she'll notice his gaze drop to the curve of her neck, and so she'll quietly study him while he studies the carotid artery that pulses under the surface of her skin.
Through her studying, she's deduced the fact that that lingering habit of his has become increasingly more consistent as the days go on, and yet, she has never once seen his fangs.
She's long since scrapped the idea that he's a Ripper—he actually exhibits a sort of eerily unremitting sense of self control.
He drinks his blood like a human, often opting to microwave blood bags and then pour them into a blue Whitmore Hospital mug that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and periodically takes small sips from it in the morning like it's a cup of coffee. The veins on his face don't crawl murkily under his eyes, and his features never mutate into nightmarish proportions. And she doesn't think he's doing it for her own comfort. She has a theory that he's feigning normalcy for the sake of his own sanity.
The other, more pressing habit that she's noticed him taking a liking to, is touching her.
He usually does it in the mornings, in the depths of the quietness they've so meticulously placed around themselves as a standardization for how they should be acting around each other. It's because he knows that he can get away with it then, when she's too busy trying to preserve the silent neutrality, and her brain is still cloudy from waking up.
He'll usually brush a strand of hair from her face, and even though she can always see it coming from the disgustingly docile look that crosses his face, she still has to bite harshly on her lower lip to keep from lurching away from his touch. Because even in their armistice, his touch is a constant reminder of his vile capabilities, capabilities that she had once allowed to warm her insides.
She's been getting better though.
She's slowly dredging herself into the habit of reminding herself that he can touch her and it doesn't have to lead to anything inherently disturbing. Because as much as she wants to contribute his inherent touchiness off of her own disposition, she knows that it's more than that.
Kai Parker is a siphoner first and foremost—he fiends for contact.
And as she's discovered over the past few days, he finds comfort in intimacy.
Human touch keeps him placated in a way she hadn't known he could be, which is basically the only reason she allows him to touch her in the first place. His behavior almost makes her wonder how different he could've been if he'd received the same human contact while growing up.
And she thinks that deep down, she craves it too. After being isolated for so long, it's nice to feel a warm hand tracing its reassuring presence on her skin, no matter who those hands belonged to.
But as much as she finds a shallowly deceptive comfort in this form of intimacy, sometimes, she wants to scream at him.
It's because he allows his expression to become too unguarded around her when he's providing said intimacy. Because not only does he brush the tendrils of hair from her skin, but his eyes trail delicately and forlornly across the features of her face when he does.
She can far too clearly see his bleeding heart flayed out bare and vulnerable on his sleeve, and it does nothing but fill her with a dark desire to break it. It would be so effortless and simple, obliterating every last trace of his affections for her.
It's not as if she can help the cruel thoughts that fill her, or the way her insides sometimes still flare with anger when his fingers drag across her in a particularly careful manner. She simply can't prevent herself from despising the fact that he has the audacity to crave her closeness after everything he's put her through.
But as much as she so deeply wants to reject every semblance of his propensities, she can't, because that means compromising everything that she has been desperately trying to protect.
So she plays the caricature of herself, the one who bites her tongue and doesn't say anything when his open gaze lingers on her for too long, or when his arm just so happens to drape itself over her waist before they drift off to sleep.
She hasn't broken thus far, not even when the arm lying curled around her form starts to feel more and more like a boa constrictor coddling its meal before it bites into warm flesh.
Because she remembers what it was like, the last time she had broken. When she had allowed his fingers to brush against her throat and coax a dizzying heat to spread through her core.
She won't let it happen again.
And so she forces herself to get over it, forget her past mistakes, and continue pushing through, like she's always done.
Because her days go like this now, and she'll do well to accept that.
.
.
They've unknowingly created a routine.
They both leave the hotel room around the same time, and they return around the same time.
When he'd asked for her phone number on their second morning together, she could tell by the way the words had tumbled from his lips that he had been deliberating over ways to ask her for a while. She didn't want to give it to him at first, but now that she has, she's figured out a way to use this to her advantage, or at least she tries to.
There's a such thing as GPS tracking available in cellphones, and she uses this mainly to deduce what time he's going to be returning to the hotel. She's lucky enough that he's not exactly up to date on the latest tech inventions of the 21st century, or he'd probably be using it on her.
He knows now that every time she leaves, she's been meeting with her friends, just like how she knows that he's been meeting with the Heretics.
But when they return, they try to keep their conversations light and virtually unmitigated. This works against Bonnie's favor because it means that she has no leads on what the Heretics are planning. However, it also means that Kai remains in the dark on what she's been planning.
Despite the fact that most of their conversations are void of substance and consist of tiptoeing around blatant subjects, they still argue over almost everything. It is near impossible for Bonnie to maintain an amicable conversation with him, and almost far too easy to slip into the barbed verbal tête-à-tête that they're so used to.
Luckily for Bonnie, Kai Parker is the type of person who can hold a conversation with a brick wall.
He talks constantly, and although it's obnoxious, she often finds herself grateful that she isn't being held responsible for filling any silences, especially when she uses those moments to secretly think about ways to gouge those annoyingly animated eyes out of his skull.
She's learned from previous experience that he can remain chipper and amicable for long periods of time, but that it also takes very little to dwindle his mood.
His face shutters any time she mentions her friends. He's explained himself once before, it apparently pisses him off that they use witches with little regard for their well-being. She knows that his use of the term "witches" correlates directly to her. She doesn't point out his blatant hypocrisy.
She's been used by everyone.
But even still, on the outchance that they do leave the hotel together, they avoid places like the Grille and Whitmore College like the plague.
He cooks. Mostly. And she pretends that his food isn't Michelin Star quality.
She's never once told him which foods she likes or dislikes, and it's moments like these where she has to swallow down unease once she realizes that he may know her preferences from the 4 months he spent lurking in the background of her and Damon's 1994 prison world excursion.
She doesn't allow herself to wonder what else he'd learned about her while there.
The first night he had cooked for her had been the worst.
That entire day had been an inevitable bump in their already skewered road to acquaintanceship that they'd been unnaturally forming.
It was directly one day after the event she would rather leave forgotten in their collective memories, the one where she'd had to empty the contents of her stomach while shamefully kneeling on the cool tiled floor of the bathroom.
Her anxiety had peaked in the form of the parallel she had drawn between the present dinner, and the dinner he had prepared for her before he'd carved his twin's hunting knife into her stomach. He'd quickly become aggravated at her refusal to eat the food he made, and she'd quickly become aggravated over the fact that he thought that she would possibly be okay with eating it.
She hadn't ended up eating that night, but Kai had decided to busy himself in figuring out how to work the DVR system on the flat screen, and had chosen to start a movie instead.
They don't typically watch movies all too frequently, but when they do, she usually chooses them (save for the first time), and in doing so unknowingly updates him on the important pop culture cinema that he'd missed out on.
He mostly talks through them—she stays silent the entire time.
And on that first night, when Kevin Costner's face appeared in the opening scene of The Bodyguard, she'd spent the entire movie silently feeling sick to her stomach.
.
.
Her hair's getting longer.
Although it's only been a few days since he'd whisked her away from the wedding hall, it now flows in wavy strands down to her shoulders. It's matured length matches the prescient look in her eye.
It suits her, he thinks.
And when he brushes away a particularly long wispy strand that'd curled around her chin that morning, he's so focused on the pretty way in which her new length frames her heart-shaped face, that he almost doesn't notice the eruption of goosebumps trailing down the side of her neck.
She's still frightened by him, he notes.
But he knows now that it's in a different way.
Because no matter what she wants to think of him, she cannot prevent her body's visceral and natural reaction to him.
This is a fact that he is now oh so very hyper-aware of.
But he decides out of the kindness of his own heart not to torture her further and instead drops his gaze and softly smiles to himself before lowering his hand.
They still don't talk about that night.
And though he wants to, he doesn't bring it up himself.
It's because he can see the excuse teetering on the tip of her tongue, waiting to spill out. And also because he kind of likes watching the slightly panicked look that flickers onto her face in those moments when she thinks he's going to mention it.
He's doing himself a favor really, saving himself the eye roll, and the impending exasperation. Besides, any excuse she could possibly come up with would be no use—she's already exposed herself.
So he doesn't say anything, maybe because he wants her to fester and slave over her denial of what her body wants. He doesn't need to be her undoing in that sense, not when she'll eventually cause that unravelment herself.
Because before she had so blatantly given herself away, he hadn't been even remotely cognizant of her reluctant attraction to him. But rather entirely aware of an electric atmosphere that crackled and flared every time they were near each other.
But he'll ignore this for the time being, in favor of playing the long game.
His first and foremost priority is trying to be nicer to her, starting with being less demanding and curious as to what she's doing with her friends. He's really more of a night owl, because of the whole undead thing, but he forces himself to wake before she does each morning. Forces himself to be tender and cutesy and placid so that it's the first thing about him that she acknowledges when she wakes. He's perfectly mastered the art of constructing his expression into that of a love-sick puppy every time she catches him staring at her, so that she won't feel as threatened by his presence.
Sometimes though, the affection and admiration smoothening his features feels a little too real, and not enough like the surface level imitation he'd become so used to dredging up during his free-range sociopathic days.
He is not worried about those moments where he finds himself drifting between pretending to be enraptured with her every move, to actually admiring the way the honeyed light catches in her green irises. He's not worried because he knows that despite her perceptiveness, she's too frightened and anxious over his rapt attention to bring herself to truly focus on it uninterrupted.
She doesn't notice when he floats between his pseudo expressions and reality because she's too busy trying to subtly move herself out of his eye-line.
So when she clears her throat that morning and inquires his name in a breathy voice that's just shy of timid, he taps up the vulnerable look he had been giving her just then, but only a bit.
She's not looking at him when she speaks, her fingers nervously trail the bedding, and he unabashedly stares as a light pink tongue darts out to lick plump lips. He knows what she's going to say before she says it, but he kind of wants to bask in her blatant nervousness a little while longer.
It's cute.
"I don't want you to get the wrong idea about...us."
Her eyes finally travel to meet his, a surprising determination burns through the anxiousness that had been there. Her lips part, as if in preparation of a rebuttal.
He stares right back at her, and despite correctly predicting her words, a maniac laugh threatens to burst from his lungs almost immediately after they are processed.
He wants to tell her that he's already gotten the wrong idea about them, and that it's her fault. And to let her know that at this point, it's no longer a matter of how he is going to gain her trust and devotion to him, but when.
He doesn't bother trying to prevent his eyes from glinting impishly as his mouth contradictorily moves to form the responsible words he knows she wants to hear.
He chooses his next words wisely, and good naturedly.
"Wouldn't dream of it, Bonster."
.
.
He's still thinking about her even when he stops at the huge double doors of the Heretic mansion on Sansom street.
The Heretics are already in deep conversation by the time he unceremoniously pulls one of those frilly wooden chairs from under the decorative tea table to plop down on. Lily Salvatore's standing at the front of the living room with her hands on her hips and her forehead scrunched with worry lines like she's been tasked with commanding the stern of a ship.
The last time that he'd been in the midst of pretending to listen to Lily complain about Enzo's supposedly "suspicious" behavior, Valarie had shoved him a crumpled piece of paper with two names on it.
The names in question were Mary Alice and Astrid Malchance.
He hadn't gotten the opportunity to ask her about their significance the last time he'd had to listen to Lily Salvatore harp away about some phoenix stone, so he figures he may have better luck this time.
Especially when considering Kai's plans of frustrating Lily to the point of exit by doing what he does best: making unhelpful comments asking nonsensical questions.
He knows he's done his job correctly after interrupting her for the umpteenth time and seeing that she has to physically bite her tongue—most likely to prevent herself from voicing her desire to rip his own tongue from his mouth.
He waits until Lily irately turns on her heels and out of the room, muttering something about checking on a "Julian's" coffin, whatever that's about.
Malcom is next to leave, and then Beau, Kai chooses to ignore the dirty looks that are tossed his way when they do.
Nora grabs Mary-Louise by the hand and stands before turning to Kai, regarding the peaceful look on his face with appropriate disdain.
"You really are annoying, you know."
He merely gives her one of those mocking 'who me?' looks, and lets a smile split his face when she scoffs and turns away, dragging her petulant blonde girlfriend along with her.
Valarie attempts to slip out the living room along with them, but Kai's standing and rushing to block her path before she gets the chance.
"Ah ah ah," He tuts, causing Valarie to halt with her arms folded and her brow to quirk upwards.
"I believe that you owe me an explanation…" His face contorts to an expression of fake offense, "If I didn't know any better I would've thought that you were avoiding me—"
She rolls her eyes before sighing at his antics, as if she's already bored with the conversation.
"Well I'm not. What do you want to know?"
Kai grins. He's always preferred Valarie out of all of the Heretics.
His smile drops as he edges closer into her line of sight.
"The names. Who are they?"
He knew for certain after she had given him that crumpled piece of paper that this was his lead to finding the siphoning curses he'd questioned her about earlier, but he just needed her to weed out the details.
Valarie's cobalt eyes dart around briefly, no doubt to make sure none of the others are listening in. He doesn't tell her that she shouldn't bother—he doesn't exactly care if the other Heretics hear what they're up to, they're too busy worrying about themselves to concern themselves with analyzing his endeavours anyways.
"They're witches. Part of the French Quarter coven to be exact."
Kai very vaguely remembers learning about French Quarter witches as a child, and how they partook in some freaky Harvest Ritual. Maybe not as freaky as his own coven's twin ritual.
Normal coven things.
Valarie lets out a haughty snort of air from her nostrils when he does nothing but stare at her expectantly, more than slightly unimpressed with this bit of information.
"They're not alive anymore. But they were a pretty big deal in the early 20th century. They specialized in...a different sort of dark magic. Their spells were derivative of Arabian dialects instead of Latin, and the witches were most infamously involved with the Original, Kol Mikaelson. I assume you know of him."
She doesn't wait this time for the information to sink in before continuing.
"They used their magic to spell objects, turn them into dark contraptions and talismans. But they're not exactly like the normal magical objects you're familiar with. From what I remember, these objects were capable of sucking and absorbing magic from virtually anything, which was why Kol Mikaealson was so interested in them. He wanted them to spell a white Oak Stake to kill his brother, the hybrid Klaus. Suck all the supernatural magic out of him like a siphon."
Well this was new, valuable information. A bunch of French Quarter witches creating siphoning contraptions, with Arabian dark magic no less? How did that story get swept under the rug?
Just like how the existence of the 1903 prison world was, a tiny voice in his head pipes up.
"These witches. Were they by any chance involved with—"
"—The Gemini coven? Yeah, they were. French Quarter witches used to be heavily involved with us. We were the two biggest witch covens residing in North America, believe it or not. The Gemini's actually didn't take too kindly to Mary and Astrid, though. Rumor has it they helped create a sort of—"
"—Prison world", he finishes for her, his face now set into a grim line.
"It wasn't one exactly, there weren't enough Gemini's in NOLA at that point. But one of our witches sided with Klaus and helped him trap them in some mansion, along with a bunch of other witches who've pissed him off."
"Were you one of them?"
He couldn't help himself. He was genuinely intrigued by the answer, and especially with how exactly she knew all of this information in the first place.
Valarie's lips part briefly, as if she's on the verge of saying something, but chooses not to answer at the last moment. Kai supposes it's for the best that he doesn't know any more than he should. Petty attachments and all that.
"The point is, Astrid and Mary Alice supposedly died with their Grimoires with them in that mansion. And because people tend to avoid that place like the plague—dead witches and such—those spell books are likely sitting there untouched," Valarie studies his face, but he makes sure to keep his expression blank and unmoved as she reopens her mouth to voice what he's thinking, "And if you got your hands on those Grimoires, you get your siphoning curse. Or at least as close to one as you can get."
"Are we sure the Grimoires are still there? I mean, why wouldn't a bunch of witches not know how to get out of a spelled prison?"
Valarie shrugs, but doesn't meet his probing eyes, so he tries the other question that was resting on the tip of his tongue.
"Do you happen to know where this mansion is exactly? Or a name, or even a street I could go off of?"
"No idea," and the careless way she says it after dumping that immense load of information on him, kind of makes Kai want to strangle her, but he keeps his jaw set, "But I'm sure if you asked around in New Orleans, or happened to run into any Originals, they'd be happy to tell you."
It's now his turn to let out a snort, and as he shakes his head, his legs move towards the door on their own accord. All of this new information is making him feel a bit stir crazy, and he wants to leave before he's inclined to ask for more.
He pauses though, just under the door archway when he hears her soft voice peak over his rampant thoughts.
"Why are you so interested in knowing about all of this anyways? I know it's not out of mere curiosity for our coven's history."
She's perceptive, he'll give her that.
He settles his eyes squarely on her face, deciding to let his transparency be known.
"Do you really care?"
She regards him briefly, and he can feel her sizing him up, the settled look on her face telling him that she's come to her conclusion about him. What that was, he didn't care to ask.
"'Suppose not."
Valarie was definitely his favorite Heretic.
.
.
"We need to slow them down."
Bonnie watches as Stefan surveys the rest of the room with lips slightly downturned, and green eyes hardened with resolve.
"Lily's been getting suspicious, and now they know about the missing ascendant."
Stefan had spent the afternoon debriefing them on the lovely conversation he'd had with his mother, who had apparently spent the majority of it passively aggressively hinting at knowing of their plans to find a novel Gemini ascendant.
All eyes turn to Damon at Stefan's admittance, who sits nestled between Bonnie and Elena on the couch.
He has the nerve to look indignant.
"Why are you all looking at me?"
"Are you going to pretend like we didn't all see you acting all buddy-buddy with Enzo at Matt's deputy initiation ceremony this morning?
Caroline steps closer towards Damon from her spot besides Stefan, her eye-brow arched in challenge.
"We weren't all 'buddy-buddy', we barely even said two words to each other."
Damon rises to stand as well, his fingers coming to circle around a glass of bourbon on the throw table in front of them, while Bonnie feels an impending headache forming from the affronted tone lacing through Damon's response.
"Really? Did those two words happen to be 'new' and 'ascendant'?"
"Look, Blondie—"
Stefan steps in between them, reaching out a hand to stop Damon's advances.
"—We don't have time for this, Damon. Did you, or did you not talk to Enzo about the possibility of there being a new ascendant? Because before today, the Heretics weren't even aware that there was one."
The room falls silent again, and Bonnie finds herself watching Matt use his finger to trace the pattern of the couch cushion across from her.
"Okay, alright, just for the record though, I didn't say anything to Enzo. He asked me if I knew where it was. How he found out about it to begin with? The guy has a habit of lurking around the boarding house, he probably overheard one of our many conversations about it."
He downs the rest of his glass of bourbon, ignoring Elena's worried gaze settled on him.
"Damon—"
"—Besides, this is a good thing. We now know that Enzo doesn't know anything about where it could possibly be. Which means we have a leg up on them. We just have to wait for Liv to give us more info from 'you know where'. And so what if Enzo told Lily about the ascendant, Enzo isn't who we should be worrying about."
"Did Enzo say that? About not knowing where the ascendant was, that is. And you trust him?"
It's Bonnie's voice that floats from behind Damon's standing form, suspicion bleeding clearly through her words.
Why should they trust anything that Enzo says? Especially with his history of screwing them over. For all she knew, Enzo did know where the ascendant was.
Damon shrugs, and the nonchalantness of the gesture only slightly makes Bonnie want to give him an aneurysm.
"He mentioned that the Heretics are planning something. Something big. Said something about a stone."
"A stone?"
Stefan's eyes snap suddenly to Damon, as if he's heard something familiar, and Bonnie watches the exchange curiously. Damon waves him off, though.
"I didn't get all the details. I was...interrupted."
Caroline chews on her thumb contemplatively, absorbing Damon's words before settling on a decision.
"Okay well we can't let them gain any more traction. We need to slow them down like Stefan said," she turns to said vampire,"Where did you say they were staying again?"
"I didn't. But I remember Lily saying that Kai had cloaked an abandoned warehouse on the night of the wedding—"
"—He didn't. Cloak a warehouse, I mean," all eyes zero in on Bonnie, who's glad that finally all of that time she's been spending with Kai Parker talking about absolutely nothing of consequence has actually become useful.
"It was a mansion, number 704 on Sansom street."
She waves her phone when she receives a few questioning stares.
"GPS tracker", she finishes in explanation.
"Maybe…" Bonnie can practically see the idea stringing itself together in Matt's head, his eyebrows crinkling as he rubs a hand over the growing stubble on his chin.
"Maybe we don't have to just slow them down, maybe we can stop them altogether. Maybe we wouldn't need the ascendant at all."
Bonnie doesn't mean for the overwhelming surge of doubtfulness to creep in at his words, but it does, and she can tell just from glancing at the vampire out of her periphery that Damon feels skeptical too.
She stops listening once Caroline questions Matt about his so-called alternative option.
She feels unbearably anxious about it all. It seems as though they've been doing the same thing everyday since the wedding; simply talking about what to do with the Heretics and never following through with any sort of action.
This is what Bonnie's used to, it was her prefered method of attack, but now she's just finding herself being tired of it all. She just wants the Heretics problem over and done with, and more specifically she wants Kai Parker, to be over and done with. Because if she's being honest, being around Kai Parker is exhausting in and of itself.
She's not entirely keen on waiting for Matt and Caroline to come up with some other idea to potentially get them all killed.
If they want to knock the Heretics off their scent, they'll have to act fast, use the element of surprise.
She doesn't voice her opinion on the matter until she's in the sanctity of Damon's bedroom.
She stands with her back leaning against the hard wood of the door, while the vampire sits with his jean-clad legs dangling off the bed. His large hands run themselves over his face, maybe in an attempt to smooth out the exhaustion lines forming.
"I'm sick of it, Damon. I'm sick of waiting around, waiting for them to make a move. I'm tired of all the planning. Because realistically speaking, when have any of our plans actually worked? We should do something now, before they end up taking over our town."
Damon immediately stills at Bonnie's words, his face lifts to peer at her with those translucent eyes of his. When he realizes that she's being serious, it's like a sort of tension seeps out of Damon's body, his shoulders relax and his plump lips quirk in pleasant surprise.
"Why, that may just be the best suggestion you've made all day, Bon Bon."
His eyebrows waggle crazily on his face, and when his mouth splits into a familiar devilish grin, she finds her lips curving to grin along with him.
"What's say you and me go kill us some Heretics."
.
.
She's not exactly sure how Damon spots Malcolm. But she supposes he has a sort of penchant for finding trouble.
They're in the back of some parking lot, she's not exactly sure where as it's a little too dark out to make out her exact whereabouts, though she can see enough to make out a few trash bins and a man in a handsome black suit.
They find him in the middle of feeding on an innocent, his back hunched in a pristine suit with bloody fingers and curling and digging into his victim's flesh.
The Heretic senses her presence almost immediately, choosing to drop the body he'd been feasting on before whipping around to focus bloody, soulless eyes on her.
"And who are you?"
Blood drips in perfect streams down his chin, his eyes look hungry and bare as they trail over the slopes of her naked shoulders in her white tube top. She attributes the prickling shiver that travels down her spine to the summer wind.
Her eyes flicker briefly to the dead body lying limp to the left of Malcom's feet.
She's going to enjoy getting rid of this one.
She offers a sort of off handed shrug in response, the corner of her mouth twitches upwards, but just barely.
"Town Witch."
.
.
He had actually been wondering when Lily would decide to try to exploit him.
He's honestly just surprised it took her this long to find another use for him, what with her many plans for the quaint town of Mystic Falls.
When he got the phone call from her earlier in the day asking to meet up at some seedy bar, he'd honestly thought that it was some sort of come on.
He had even been thoroughly prepared to dismantle any and all possible sexual advances from the older vampire, were she to try.
But as it turned out, what she really wanted from him was actually much worse.
Lily had heard through the grapevine that her son and his friends had a lead on where the ascendant from the wedding hall was.
Which was where he came in.
"So let me get this straight. You want me to get information from Bonnie about the missing ascendant?"
He honestly hadn't even thought of that thing since the night of the wedding, and now that he's thinking about it, he still wants nothing to do with it.
Let it stay missing for all he cares.
He supposes he should be more frightened of the aspect of being put into another prison world, but finds himself unable to conjure even a modicum of concern.
Maybe it's because he knows that by the time Bonnie and her friends even find the ascendant, she'll be putty in his hands. He's confident in his prowess to ruin any and all motivation she has to trap him anywhere. And besides, he couldn't care less if the rest of the Heretics are imprisoned, just that he himself is not included in that ordeal.
And if worse comes to worse, and on the slightly more probable chance that she does try to screw him over, he's pretty sure he can take her.
He realizes only somewhat late through his internal monologuing, that Lily is still waiting expectantly for an answer.
Talk to Bonnie about the whereabouts of a device used to entrap him? As if.
"She'd never buy it. I can't just casually work it into a conversation. It'll ruin our little thing we have going," He intentionally ignores the soured look that's begun to twist Lily Salvatore's face as he twirls the little pink umbrella sticking out of his martini glass. "We don't talk about anything supernatural related, especially not those regarding ascendants, or the 'v' word for that matter. Both are big no no's."
Lily looks exasperated by the time Kai reaches the end of his explanation, and he can honestly say he doesn't blame her.
"What is it that you two possibly talk about if not related to vampires?"
Kai splutters a bit indignantly at that.
"I-I don't know? The weather? Kevin Costner? Why that song by Carly Rae Jepsen is so popular?"
What don't they talk about, should be the question. They talk about a lot of things.
Well at least, he does.
He thinks it's nice, in a way, not having to focus on the supernatural for once.
It allows him to focus on more important things, like her.
Lily and him end up spending a bit more time at the bar, Lily continuing her attempt in convincing Kai to talk to Bonnie, to which he finally decides to agree to, coincidentally after finishing his third apple martini.
He finally leaves the bar after reassuring Lily one last time that he'll try to coax information out of Bonnie, full well knowing that he will do no such thing.
He was serious about not messing up their little thing they've got going.
He doesn't realize how close he is to the boarding house until he's rounding a corner and finds himself on the street next to the Grille backlot.
He doesn't need his eyes to adjust to the darkness to see the outline of three figures poised for battle in the middle of the barren street.
But he feels it. Feels her magic, potent and swirling through the night air as he nears.
It looks like Bon Bon has still maintained her heavy involvement with the supernatural after all.
This was going to be good.
.
.
The plan was to let Malcom siphon her magic while Damon snuck up behind him to yank his heart out of his chest.
But because this was a Damon plan, and the probably the one and only time that Bonnie has ever participated in 'spur of the moment' thinking, of course that isn't what ends up happening.
Malcolm turns just in time to see Damon creeping up behind him, and Bonnie's vision is so blurred from the intensive siphoning that she can't even attempt to cry out in warning. She can do nothing but watch as Malcolm's hand delves deep through the crevice of Damon's chest, aiming to grip his heart.
What's left of her magic flares hotly under her skin and latches onto the blood vessels in Malcolm's brain in a last ditch attempt of an aneurysm. It's barely sustainable, but it's enough to distract Malcolm from Damon who immediately collapses into the pavement with a wheeze of pain.
The Heretic lets out a snarl and raises blood-stained fingers towards her, gripping her throat with the reinvigorated magic coursing strongly and solidly through his veins.
His magic curls its hold hotly around her, and it's somehow worse than anything she's ever experienced in her life.
She feels her eyes bulge with the pressure of trying to keep them from being squeezed out of their sockets, while her tongue pulses and flops uselessly out her mouth. Every single vein in her body throbs horribly with pressure, she can feel her face flooding with blood and her lungs draining of oxygen.
It's then, in the midst of feeling as if she is about to implode, that she comes to the jarring realization that Kai couldn't have possibly been using his full capacity of strength when he'd strangled her in the wedding hall. That had been mercy in comparison to the pain Malcolm was eliciting from her now.
The rest of her body feels numb from lack of blood circulation, so she doesn't even feel when her feet are dragged to suspend in the air. White hot panic floods her readily and easily as she drops to Damon's form weighed heavily with the excursion of staying conscious and struggling to raise a trembling hand in her direction.
She can practically feel the tiny bones and cartilage in her neck bending and cracking under the sheer force wrapped around them, and it's only a matter of seconds before they snap completely.
"Kai."
Damon spits out his name from his crumpled position on the ground, his other hand still clutched around his bleeding chest that won't seem to stop seeping with blood.
Bonnie watches helplessly as Kai appears from the shadows behind Malcolm, the gray of his eyes glowing shark-like in the darkness, a knowing look spread across his face.
Kai glances down at Damon and grimaces a bit in disgust at the sight of spittle and blood dribbling down his chin.
Fortunately for Bonnie, Kai's presence serves as a bit of a distraction for Malcom. She feels his magic immediately loosen its hold on her, and the sudden lack of pressure causes Bonnie to slightly stumble when finally making contact with the hard ground, her hands rising to immediately rub at the tender welts forming across her neck. Coughs wrack her spluttering form as her throat desperately opens to try and choke down much needed air.
"How long have you been watching us?"
It's Malcom who speaks over her coughing fit, turning to look at Kai, suddenly completely uninterested in Bonnie.
Kai's eyes curiously trail over Bonnie's hunched form, distantly assessing her, like one would a science textbook.
Part of her wants to feel indignant over his lack of interest in her predicament, but reminds herself that she has no right to.
He's still watching her struggle to gain her breath when he responds to Malcolm.
"Long enough," Kai responds cryptically, but the pleased smile that is now perched on his face tells her he'd been watching them for longer than deemed appropriate.
Surprisingly, he unglues his gaze from Bonnie's form to settle them on the Heretic between them.
He steps carefully around Damon, very flagrantly not wanting to get any vampire blood on his new boots, his hands tug idly on the cuff of the black peacoat he's adorning.
When he speaks again, his eyes are still focused on Malcolm, but the smooth lilting of his voice carries clearly and deliberately to Bonnie through the crisp night air.
"Hey uh, why don't you guys leave us. Malcom and I need to have a little chat about some things."
The sudden silence after Kai finishes blares loudly and precariously through her ears as Malcolm and Kai partake in some sort of staring contest, but she doesn't need to be told twice.
Bonnie misses the way Kai's mouth twitches as he watches her immediately scramble to Damon's side and attempt to haul his body upright.
Kai waits patiently for the two of them to hobble out of ear shot before focusing his full attention on the slightly disgruntled and bloodied witchpire before him.
Oh, stupid Bonnie. Stupid, stupid Bonnie and her stupid plans.
He thought she would've known better than to try to mess with a fully-fed Heretic with Damon of all people as backup.
Bonnie doesn't need yet another reason for the Heretics to be wary of her; he's confident that she's probably the only person in her friend group—maybe besides the perky blonde—who has even a slight capability of getting into their good graces should they need to.
And he supposes that now that they're kind of a thing, it is his responsibility to clean up her messes.
He's honestly just glad that Malcom is incredibly naive and took the bait of Kai's complete and utter bullshit need for a 'talk'. Poor guy most likely believes that Kai wants to speak to him regarding either the ascendant or the phoenix stone.
There's still a niggling in the back of his head that can't help but think that if it were any other Heretic that Bonnie and Damon had attempted to murder, his job would've been made a lot harder.
And Bonnie very well could've been dead.
And then where would he be?
If his judgement hadn't been so clouded from all the martini's he'd consumed beforehand, he would've torn Malcom's head clean off his body before he'd even gotten the chance to touch her.
And he had only waited so long to intervene in the first place because there was a part of him that desperately held onto the hope that Bonnie was smarter than to go through with a plan that Damon had clearly concocted. He had wanted to believe that she'd had another trick up her sleeve to somehow evade death once again. But when that clearly wasn't the case, he'd had no choice but to step in.
It had been harder than usual to feign uninterest in the scene before him when he'd felt his body tightening and roaring with a possessive rage the longer Bonnie spent in Malcolm's threatening presence.
Malcolm could've killed Bonnie tonight.
And that's not just something he could very well forgive was it?
This thought is what makes it far too easy for him to mutely slip his hand past Malcolm's rib cage and push against wrought tendons until he's pulling away and holding a warm and throbbing heart clutched between his fingers.
So much for that talk, he thinks.
His new consciousness prevents him from swirling his tongue over all the blood sinew and muscle scraped under his nails.
But just barely.
.
.
The rest of the Heretics find Malcolm's body abandoned and heartless on the ground of the Grille parking lot later that night.
Lily Salvatore calls Kai in a flurry of tears, her voice cackling along with the static of the complicated smart phone damn that's near impossible to work.
He actually does manage to feel a pang of upset twinge in his chest at her distress, though it doesn't last very long. Funnily enough, Lily doesn't mention anything about the mundane who he knows had been laying a few feet besides Malcolm's corpse.
Lily is already suspecting the culprit behind Malcolm's cold blooded murder.
And since she's honestly not too far off in her estimate, Kai decides to corroborate her suspicions.
No, Bonnie Bennett couldn't have possibly been involved in something as petty and vengeful as this, he tells her.
Yes, Damon killed Malcolm, he also tells her.
.
.
Caroline and Matt blow up the Heretic mansion on Sansom street the next morning.
A/N: Since we are very loosely following canon events of season 7, no unfortunately the rest of the Heretics aren't dead yet. They are now angry though. Also did I forget to mention that this bonkai story was going to be a slowburn? Because it's going to be a slow burn.