it is never over
May 2013
Whitmore
It was mere hours to the nuptial ceremony between Jo Laughlin and Alaric Saltzman was to commence and Caroline Forbes was sending frantic texts to Bonnie and Matt asking about the whereabouts of the floral arrangements.
Bonnie texted back something about a flat tire and turned off her phone before Caroline blew it up.
Sitting at the passenger's side of Matt Donovan's truck, she threw her friend a wry look that he returned.
"If Kai or the heretics don't kill me, then Caroline will for sure," Bonnie muttered and Matt laughed.
He pulled the truck into a short term parking slot in front of Kai's apartment building. Bonnie stared up at the nondescript, standard building with some surprise. She hadn't imagined Kai living somewhere so… ordinary. Not that she had given it much thought, that is. But if she had, she probably would have imagined his home having at least a chimney – somewhere to send the smoke from his cauldron.
She shook her head, laughing silently at herself as she and Matt hopped out of the car.
The flowers lay beside Matt's bag of weapons, and together they both selected the most practical ones for the task at hand – a gun with wooden bullets, tiny Molotov cocktails of vervain water and gasoline, and a mini-bow that he could put under his jacket. He wanted to take the more powerful crossbow until Bonnie reminded him that neither of them were vampires and it would be hard, without compulsion, to explain to Kai's neighbours why a man the size of a linebacker was lurking around their corridors with a loaded weapon.
Bonnie didn't take any weapons. She had her magic, and the only weapon she wanted was her missing knife.
With one last guilty glance at the flowers, she led the way to the front door.
Getting through the security code at the main entrance door was tricky. Bonnie couldn't pick it in view of security cams, nor think of a discrete spell that won't do permanent damage to the door; so Matt had had to punch a random apartment number and pretend to be a delivery guy. Compared to that, getting through Kai's apartment door was a breeze. No cams in the passageway took off the pressure of discretion. A quick detection spell identified an empty apartment and a weak boundary ward. So weak that she disabled it with a simple power spike. The lock was a joke, nothing compared to hot wiring a car. She pulled out a hairpin, grinning slightly at the stunned look on Matt's face.
He recovered quickly, and moved to shield her, his eyes scanning for nosy neighbours.
"Where did Bonnie Bennett learn how to pick a lock?" He whispered from the corner of his mouth.
Bonnie twisted the pin with her teeth and placed it inside the lock, and wiggled expertly. "I was stuck on an empty planet for months with no magic, Matt. Kicking down doors doesn't come naturally to a girl my size. So I learnt some new skills."
The lock clicked and the door fell open. Bonnie stepped in, then turned back in surprise when Matt still lingered outside. He was staring at the apartment door across from them with a frown on his face.
She touched his hand, and when he looked at her, she raised an eyebrow. "What?"
He frowned. "I'm not sure but… I saw a shadow pass across the peephole. I think someone might have spotted us."
She cursed softly.
He shook his head quickly. "I said I'm not sure. Probably imagined it."
"Better safe than sorry," she murmured. She whispered a quick Ocludus in the general vicinity of the other door.
"What was that?"
"A distraction spell. It'll last an hour. We'll be long gone by then."
Gently, she shut the door and they were fully in Kai Parker's apartment easy as pie.
It said something about the psyche of the resident that he was all but inviting danger into his home. And not, Bonnie told herself, that he was brave. Or even that he was stupid. But that he knew that there was nothing outside that could be more dangerous than himself.
She shuddered to imagine what Kai would think – what would Kai do if he ever found out that she broke into his apartment.
While driving, they had spoken to Tyler and he had confirmed that Kai, and the rest of the Gemini coven were at the venue. So Matt and Bonnie expected his house to be empty. Still, she stretched out her senses again as they stepped further inside.
He wasn't there – no one was. But she could sense magic lingering in the air. Casting had been done there, recently. Nothing potent, nothing remarkable. Just ordinary magic – levitation, cleaning; it even seemed like someone used a spell to fix a last-minute wardrobe malfunction. Day to day magic, done casually, carelessly even and it brushed against the edges of Bonnie's aura and hit her with an unexpected pang of wistfulness.
"You said some Gemini witches were here?" She asked Matt.
"Three at least. Looked like family," he said, distractedly as he made a beeline towards the large screen TV and complicated game centre taking up most of the space in the living room.
The interior of the flat was furnished in the typical bachelor pad style – basic monochromatic furniture. The small kitchen, which they had to walk through to get into the rest of the house, was equipped with a variety of gadgets, a lot of which Bonnie didn't even recognise. She lingered a little in it, remembering her last Thanksgiving dinner. Kai had cooked it. It had been a surprisingly good meal, but she had been too on edge to enjoy it, half-trusting, half-wary about the deal she had made with him.
He got her to trust him towards the end, she realised now, bitterly. It must have made the literal and figurative gutting all the more sweeter for him.
She frowned at Matt's awed inspection of the entertainment centre. "We need to hurry. Find something of Kai's for the spell."
As she had explained in the car, since the Ascendant belonged to the Parkers, and Kai personally as their leader, a locator spell would need something of his. Blood was always the best choice but a little hair would do.
Going a bit shamefaced, Matt nodded. "Should we split up?" he suggested.
"No," Bonnie said firmly.
There were two bedrooms in the flat. They chose one by random and stepped in.
Matt whistled under his breath. "Woah."
"Woah, exactly," Bonnie murmured.
The room had clearly been magically reconstructed. There was no other way that its internal dimensions or the large elaborate furniture pieces contained within could have otherwise fit into its physical space.
Bonnie felt slightly ill standing inside it.
"Convenient," Matt said. "Wonder why they couldn't all have super-sized their hotel rooms?"
"It's complicated, and some people might just not prefer to do this."
"Maybe. But it's also fun, isn't it? It's kinda easy to forget that," he said with a shrug. "We get so used to always using magic in the middle of some war or the other, we forget that sometimes magic is just cool."
Bonnie hummed vaguely, and left the room quickly, Matt behind her. He might find the room fascinating, but the dimensional alterations made her slightly nauseous. Also, she doubted that there would be anything of Kai's there.
The second room was clearly his. If the plain starkness didn't tell her, the trace of his magic, powerful and capricious as the man itself, seemed to reach through her skin to touch her own power. It made her blood thrum. The memory of 1903, when they channeled each other, suddenly overwhelmed her.
"You OK, Bonnie?" Matt asked, stopping halfway into the room to stare, puzzled, at where she hesitated by the doorway.
She smiled thinly, forcing herself to shrug off the momentary shock. "Sure," she said as normally as she could, and stepped into Kai Parker's room.
There were no structural alterations that she could see or sense. Which, she supposed, made sense. After almost two decades of his life being trapped in a magical dimension, he would probably find the thought of magical enhancements or alterations to his physical environment as nauseating as Bonnie had found that guest room. Rather, his room was sparsely furnished – just a bed and a low table in the centre of the room – ideal, she thought immediately, for sitting cross-legged on the floor and casting. There were two pillows placed neatly beside the table, and she pictured Kai sitting across a random witch, doing magic.
That pang of longing shook through her once more. She allowed herself a moment to imagine what it felt like – growing up with magic, being surrounded by witches she could practice with, learning difficult spells, honing her craft, or merely studying along with. She had never had that. Her grandmother had died too soon. The brief time she had 'tutored' Liv Parker, Bonnie had been a magic-less Anchor.
Then she snapped out of it. Someday, she'd find a witch community that wasn't working against her and/or trying to use her and she would integrate into them. She would learn from them, make allies, and maybe even friends. The Gemini were out of the question. She didn't envy any of the Parkers nor their medieval twin-murdering cult.
Matt had already headed to the bathroom, so Bonnie had no choice but to rifle through the bedroom. There was a tiny dresser and a larger wardrobe. She yanked open the top dresser drawer and felt the blood rush into her face.
She could have lived her whole life without knowing that Kai Parker folded his underwear.
Bonnie had never so desperately wished for a spell as she wished she knew a spell that could just call loose strands of hair out of clothes. Instead, she had to carefully run her hands over the fabrics of his clothes, all his neatly folded tees, slacks, jeans, and … everything else. His scent lingered on them, despite their obvious cleanliness and her face was scorching by the time she moved to the wardrobe.
This was so awkward. It felt so invasive, touching his clothes like this. Then she laughed at herself. She didn't feel guilty breaking into the man's house to steal his family's magical artefact but examining his clothes made her feel bad?
Of course there wasn't a single strand to be found, she realised when she was through. He probably did a scouring spell every-time he left his house. Kai Parker, Gemini leader and scion of a generations-old coven, was not going to leave random bits of himself lying around for some interloping witch to find. That was a rookie mistake. The kind of thing mundanes did thoughtlessly all the time. But no seasoned witch half their salt would leave such a powerful ingredient for any number of personal spells – anything from locator spells to powerful jinxes – lying around.
"Any luck?" Matt asked, popping out of the bathroom.
"Not yet. You?"
"Nothing. Everything's so clean, it looks like it was magically bleached." Which made Bonnie laugh because she had just been thinking the same thing. "I'll go check the living room. Maybe there's something there?"
More like he wanted to scrutinize the game console more closely, Bonnie thought, turning her head away so he couldn't see her roll her eyes.
"Leave the door open, Matt," she conceded. There were too many horror stories – including the ones she had lived through – that taught that splitting in enemy territory was always a bad idea.
Only Kai wasn't an enemy, still. Was he? Bonnie wavered, uncertain. She didn't know. And she was too tired of worrying about it. About him. His plans for her. If she needed to watch her back. Once she got hold of the Ascendant and destroyed it, then she'd let it go. Until then, she couldn't drop her guard.
She glanced around the room, her eyes falling on the bed. She had avoided looking at it directly all this while but now she couldn't take her eyes off it. It was hard not to imagine the man himself lying down on it.
There was one particular dream.
"I was spooning you earlier and I may have sleep-siphoned you."
Gah! Bonnie yelled mentally. She had been certain that she had scoured the memories of that particular sleep encounter from her brain. Rubbing her suddenly damp palms against her jeans, and grimacing, she marched up to the bed and briskly lifted the pillow propped against the headboard. She ran her hands over it. It was cool to touch, and it smelled even more strongly of him. His scent was not unpleasant at all and, her whole face was burning now.
When her finger snagged against a single short brown strand, Bonnie almost cried in relief.
"Missed one, Kai," she crowed.
"Found something, Bonnie?" Matt called.
"Yes, I'll be right there."
Matt was standing by the low corner bookshelf, looking through a book when she stepped into the parlour and she was feeling guilty for misjudging him until she realised that he was holding the book upside-down.
"Can we do the spell here?" he asked, dropping the book quickly and walking up to her eagerly. "Or do we go to your place?"
Bonnie hadn't exactly packed a magic bag but an idea suddenly popped into her head. She went to the kitchen pantry, and she found exactly what she expected. Arranged neatly in clearly marked containers on the shelves and DIY-organizers were bunches of different-flavoured candles, a bowl of incense, a bottle of quicksilver, a rolled-up bunch of thin maps on scrolls, that looked like if they had been conjured en masse. Beams from the skylight hit the top shelf, where a row of terrariums with spices and slithering things sat. A mortar and pestle on the floor. There were ingredients and tools here she couldn't even describe, much less name. In other words, she found pretty much everything she needed for the locator spell. And probably any other spell she would ever want to cast.
And was that…?
Bonnie gasped.
"Bonnie?" Matt asked at once.
"He has a cauldron set," she said quietly. Packed like nesting dolls, and ranging from soup-bowl-sized to cook-a-small-human-sized.
Well, what else would one expect to find in a witch's pantry?
It hit Bonnie for the third time. That sense of forsakenness, of being disconnected from her natural habitat and left to float adrift. She had been cut off from the witch community all her life. And now here was one ready-made all but staring her in the face. She had always believed that her grandmother had good reasons for going solo and teaching Bonnie to do the same. But right now, perusing Kai's magical collection in his house that was filled with magic... Bonnie wondered if her grandmother might have been wrong about this, at least.
"I don't…" Matt asked, confused. "What…?"
"Nothing." For the third time, she shrugged off her melancholy thoughts and focused on the task at hand. She gathered what she needed briskly and shut the pantry behind her. The map was spread out on the kitchen counter, then she arranged the rest of the things quietly while Matt, after a last uncertain glance at the pantry door and whatever he had just missed, drew up two bar stools for them. The strand of hair slid into a crucible. A trickle of Bonnie's blood and a fyre spell transmuted it. Carefully, she magically extracted a single drop and let it fall on a corner of the map.
She sat on the stool and started chanting softly.
The first time Bonnie casted, the blood shivered, like if it was boiling, then it vanished.
She blinked at the map in shock.
Then she repeated the spell twice more – almost completely depleting the contents of the crucible to be sure – before she stopped.
"What's going on?" Matt asked finally. He had been silent all through out, staring at her magic with a mixture of fascination and wariness.
She spoke slowly, still struggling to grasp this new development. "It's gone."
"Gone? As in gone to a Prison World? I thought that wasn't how it worked," he asked, confused.
"No. I mean yes, you are right. That's not how the Ascendant works. It doesn't follow to the Prison World. It can't travel between worlds so it's always on this side while there's another one on that side. Only…" Bonnie frowned at the empty map. "The Ascendant on our side is… gone."
Matt leaned forward, staring at the map. "I don't understand, Bon."
"This spell is telling me that it's been destroyed, completely and leaving no trace."
"So Kai destroyed it after he sent Lily back. Makes perfect sense to me. He'd be the last person to want those monsters out," Matt said reasonably.
Too reasonably, Bonnie thought, schooling her face so her irritation didn't show. There was nothing reasonable about Kai Parker when he wanted to get even with someone.
She should know. She had the scar to prove it.
And it was that memory that fuelled her as she grabbed a knife, slashed her palm – ignoring Matt's sharp inhale – and sent the spray of blood into the most powerful revelation spell that she knew.
A gust of wind swept through the sealed apartment, the lights flickered twice and she felt the reverberation of the spell send a tremor through her bones.
Matt sprang to his feet. "What was that?"
"The Gemini love their cloaking spells," Bonnie murmured calmly, reaching for a paper towel to clean her bloody hand. "If Kai cloaked the Ascendant, then I just uncloaked it." And everything else cloaked within a hundred feet from here. But there was no need telling Matt that.
"So the tracking spell will work now?"
"Unless it's really been destroyed. Let's see, shall we?"
Using the very last drop from the crucible, she casted the spell for the last time.
And for the very last time, the blood boiled and vanished.
"It's settled then," Matt said, relieved. "Kai destroyed it."
Shivering slightly, Bonnie stared hard at the map, while she mentally repeated what she had told Matt.
The Ascendant couldn't travel between worlds. So there was one on this side to transport the bearer into the Prison World and another in the Prison World to transport the bearer out.
"The heretics don't need this Ascendant to escape. They need one on their side. They have one on their side. It would be on the ground, right where Kai and I left."
"But what happens to the Ascendant on that side if the one on this side is destroyed?" Matt asked.
"I don't know," she admitted.
"Can you search for it?"
"Matt, I can't track an object from another dimension."
"Maybe not with this spell but some other spell, right?"
"Matt…"
"I mean." He snorted softly. "Bonnie, this is magic we're talking about."
She opened her mouth to contradict him with a laugh – then stopped. That was the great thing about Matt, Bonnie thought. He might not know the answers but he sure knew the right questions to ask.
"You're right, I guess," she said slowly, thinking. "With the right tools, practically any kind of spell is theoretically possible. The problem would be the amount of mojo it would take." Expression. "Way more than I have, I'm afraid." She made a face.
He saw it. "What is it?"
Bonnie shrugged. "This talk of mojo – not having enough. It reminds me of…" She trailed off. When he kept staring at her with puzzled earnestness, she gave him a small, sad smile. "The times I didn't have magic. How powerless I felt."
His face lightened as something like realisation seemed to dawn on it. "Maybe that's what's causing your nightmares, Bonnie? Remember how it was to feel powerless."
She smarted at that. "No, Matt, I don't think so."
"Bonnie…"
His face was filling with deep concern and she shied away from it, hunching her shoulders slightly as she stared back at the map. But she wasn't seeing it; her gaze had turned inwards, reflecting on his words even though she had denied them. Was Matt right? Had all this really been for nothing? Her fears? Her bad dreams? Was all this just a way of her wanting to reclaim control?
She supposed that she would probably be feeling something like embarrassment right now, but she was still too tense.
Lily Salvatore was back in the prison world. The Ascendant was destroyed. Kai Parker… He had told her they were even. And before that – and as always when she remembered this, Bonnie felt her insides churn with confusion – he had saved her life.
Maybe, just maybe, Kai had really let 1903 go?
Could it really be all over?
What were her dreams, then? Vestiges of post-traumatic stress, like Jo Parker kept insisting?
Perhaps she should call the good doctor for the shrink's number after all.
"Bonnie," Matt said very gently, and she felt his warm hand on her arm. "The Ascendant on this side is gone. No one's going to get them out. And they can't get out themselves, remember? They need to know the spell and to have Bennett blood." He squeezed her arm. "It's over, Bonnie. You don't have to be afraid anymore."
The spell.
Bonnie sat up so suddenly, she felt her spine crack.
She and Kai had escaped under the Northern Lights, a circle of heretics around them. Any one of them could have heard the spell.
As for Bennett blood…
There was a whole vat of it in its ancient, most powerful form in a tomb in Nova Scotia.
"Bonnie?"
Bonnie didn't hear Matt. She was too busy forcing herself to remain calm, to deliberately think this through before panicking.
Surely, if the heretics had been aware of Qetsiya's blood, wouldn't they have escaped the Prison World long ago? Unless they had only recently found out… from Kai.
Information he gave under duress?
Or information he had given up willingly with the hope that they would break free and take him along?
Or…
Bonnie remembered the nightmarish details of her second trip to the 1903 prison world. By the end of it, she had been exhausted. Her magic couldn't sustain Kai's revival spell. Her own healing spell had failed and her wound had re-opened. Only the power of Expression, the magic she got from channelling Kai, and her sheer force of will had kept her alive long enough to do the Ascending spell.
She sat warm and safe in Kai's kitchen, but she felt herself very far away. She could almost taste the snow falling against her lips, the sound of Kai's voice chanting, the warmth of his fingers where it tangled with hers around the Ascendant, the coldness of her blood-soaked shirt. The smell of iron from her blood as it dripped into the snow…
Her blood-soaked shirt… her blood… dripping into the snow…
It's never over.
Bonnie stood up from her stool abruptly, and whirled at Matt, horror rising in her.
"Bonnie, what is it?" he asked, startled.
"I left blood behind," she whispered. "They heard me say the spell.
"Matt, they're already out."
June 2014
Whitmore
During the drive from the airport, Damon eventually managed to touch base with Stefan. Assuming she hadn't got any of Bonnie's messages yet, Stefan would bring Caroline up to speed. Matt sent them a text that he had got through to Tyler. They all agreed to convene at the Salvatore's Boarding house the next morning to discuss strategy. Damon still hadn't figured out exactly what his Plan B would entail but, in his usual Damon way, he was pretty optimistic.
He dropped Bonnie off at the off-campus apartment that she and Caroline had moved into after sophomore year. During the previous summer, the university had relocated several students out of their campus dorms to temporary housing, in order to do the construction upgrades requested by the new owners. The three girls were supposed to have moved back to their old and improved dorm for the Fall semester; but when Bonnie and Caroline returned from Europe without Elena, it just hadn't felt right to them. So they moved to this place, which was just near enough to campus that they still felt like a part of the community, but far away that they could practice what Caroline liked to call their 'alternative lifestyle' without raising too many eyebrows. For Caroline, that involved nocturnal hunting and the occasional trip to the bleeders. For Bonnie that involved practicing magic that could cause extremely localized climate changes.
Bonnie hadn't spoken directly to Caroline since she left Portland but there was a welcome home note on the fridge and an actual apple pie in the oven.
Bonnie grinned happily because it was good to be back in their cosy little place, tastefully furnished with Caroline's eye for colours and patterns and Bonnie's magic creating some exciting finishing touches. Dropping her stuff at the foot of her bed, she threw herself with her arms spread out on it, kicked off her shoes and exhaled.
It had been a nightmare finding a place that they both agreed on but when they found this place, they had fallen in love with it at once. To Caroline, it meant growth, and independence. It meant those for Bonnie too. But even more, it meant escape. She had taken everything worth taking from her father's house and moved it here, then put up the house for sale. She had not quite sworn to herself that she would never step foot in Mystic Falls again – that was extreme, especially with the ties she still kept with Matt, and Tyler, and so many others she grew up with and loved. But she had vowed not to have a reason to stay too long, and certainly not to get tangled up in Salvatore and supernatural feuds.
But this was different.
So you come rushing back to save the box of tools that you call friends?
Kai's mocking words echoed in her head and she felt the same flash of anger rise in her again. He had no idea what he was talking about and she hated that his words – the entirety of the man himself – affected her so badly. In so many aggravating ways.
Sighing, she rolled out of bed, stepped into the bathroom and, despite the cool Virginia evening, had a cold shower. She tried – and failed – not to let certain memories plague her but they were like the contents of a Pandora's box. After a year of keeping that night shut tightly in the box of her mind, the trip to Portland had slid the key into the lock and turned it; Caroline's insidious phone call had creaked the lid open; and the last encounter with Kai Parker in the Saltzmans' kitchen had blown the lid off completely.
Or, Bonnie thought crossly, lifting her right wrist to the spray and glaring at the band, maybe this was the culprit. Maybe he really had put a hex on her. But even as she thought it, she knew she didn't believe it. Still, first thing that morning – well, first thing after the meeting at the Boarding house – she was going to find what it meant and a spell to take it off.
And now, her head was filled with the memory of that smirk when he said that he might have hexed her.
After several cold showers, she finally felt sane enough to slip into her sensible pajamas. She walked with stocking feet to the kitchen and made a cup of hot chocolate. She drank most of it as she slowly worked through most of the apple pie, only stopping when her eyes started drooping. Then she packed up the leftovers and went into her pantry to find the ingredients she needed to make a very special potion.
She had got the recipe from the two witches she had made friends with in Europe. It was an antidote to bad dreams… and unwanted memories.
She measured carefully, poured the mix of herbs and rock into her tiny mortar and ground them into powder.
His chest pressed against her back, hands on her waist, rings digging into her skin, and something harder digging into her ass. He buried his face in her hair and hummed a little against her scalp while her hands shook slightly over the coffee machine and she steeled herself to say it …
Her hands were steady as she poured the powder into her chocolate. She started lifting the cup to her lips…
…and tipped its contents into the sink.
She made another cup of chocolate, and spiked it with a little vodka. Enough for a long night's sleep only, not a bad hangover the next morning… certainly not enough to suppress the memories that she had been running from for the better part of a year.
Not anymore, though. It was time to wake up. Figuratively, that was.
She washed up and wiped her hands, and then she had to wipe her face which had suddenly, stupidly become wet and she padded off to bed.
May 2013
Whitmore
Bonnie's sense of panic was so immense, so immediate that Matt's unworried face startled her.
"Bonnie, that's a pretty big conclusion."
She gaped. "Did you hear anything I said? They have my blood and they know the spell. The Ascendant fell on the snow when Kai and I left there. They had everything they needed. They may've been out for days!"
"Then why didn't they meet up with Lily Salvatore?" he asked reasonably. "Why leave her wandering around Mystic Falls, desperately missing them? All they had to do was mention the name 'Salvatore' to anyone in town and they'd have found her within a day."
The thought gave her pause. "I don't know."
"Lily's about the only thing that would bring them to Mystic Falls, anyway. If – and, mind you, I think it's a pretty big if – these heretics got out, they'd be more likely to go West to Oregon where the Gemini coven is…"
His voice trailed off as Bonnie's panic finally caught up with him. They stared at each other in dismay.
"The Gemini coven isn't in Oregon," she said unnecessarily, her voice rising. "They are here in Mystic Falls. To attend Jo's wedding. They've been gathering here for days. And," her mind was racing now, making the connections faster than she cared to, "more importantly, Kai is here. They don't need to go after the entire coven. They just need to kill him and the rest of the coven dies. And the prison worlds collapse, yes but perhaps the heretics think destroying the Gemini is worth sacrificing Lily. Oh my god!" She gasped. "We need to call him, Matt. We need to warn him. All of them!"
She started reaching for her phone, and then she let out a soft scream when she realised it was pointless. She didn't have his number. Why would she?
But Matt had pulled out his phone and was already dialling. "I got his number when I was running around, getting their coven people settled in," he said in answer to the unspoken question.
Bonnie waited, standing on her toes and straining her ears. Kai's phone was ringing, but he wasn't picking. It rang and rang then it went into an automated voicemail.
"Let's call everyone else," Matt said, and his calm voice anchored Bonnie a little. "I'll call Alaric, Tyler, Stefan. You call Elena, Caroline, and Damon."
"We can call and walk at the same time, too," she declared as she strode towards the door.
Matt rushed ahead, passing her. He was reaching out to touch the knob, when Bonnie felt it – a spike in the air that said Danger.
Her hand stretched out in a silent Motus, and she pulled Matt back to her side a split second before the door flung inwards violently.
Standing in the doorway were three people – a man that looked partly Native American and an olive-skinned brunette standing side by side; towering behind both was a tall, auburn-haired man. They were dressed in long, hooded red robes; their faces were veined and hungry; and their auras pulsed with a strange, repulsive but – to Bonnie – horrifyingly familiar rhythm.
Heretics.
June 2014
Portland
The ringing of her cell jolted Jo Saltzman out of sleep.
Because she had spent over two decades responding to life-and-death late night phone calls, she didn't grab the offending object and fling it across the room – like any other sane nursing mother of twins who was catching up on some much needed sleep would have done. Instead, she calmly swore like a sailor, enough to stir the man sleeping beside her, and then checked her phone to see the suicidal fool that would dare disturb her rest.
The name seemed to jump at her, and she sat up in bed at once. "Dad? What's going on?"
She and Joshua Parker may have reconciled over the little matter of attempted filicide but they were not exactly on late-night social calls terms so clearly, something was wrong.
"Where is your brother?"
Her heart jumped. "I'm guessing you mean Kai?"
Joshua sighed heavily. Wherever his children had got their snark from, it wasn't from him. "I need to speak to him urgently."
"Have you checked his place? Because if he's not in Portland, then I have no idea where he is."
"Jo, this is important."
"Honestly, Dad, I saw him this morning and he didn't say anything to make me think he was planning on leaving town soon."
"Do you think he's gone to Virginia? For the heretics?" Joshua cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I believe Ms. Bennett and the vampire returned there today."
Jo raised an eyebrow. So her father had picked up on that.
"Jo, what's going on?" Alaric mumbled from beside her.
She shhhd him. "Nothing important. Go back to bed. You need your rest." He was on night-duty again.
Murmuring sleepily, he turned around and hopefully, nodded back off.
"Jo, are you still there?"
"Coming, Dad," Jo muttered, as she dragged herself out of bed. She went to the corner of the room, far enough that she could talk a little louder without waking her husband.
"Last we spoke, Kai mentioned the renegade shapeshifters. Maybe he's gone to NOLA to consult with the Southern Court? Then there's the vampire situation in Brooklyn…"
Even to her own ears, her words sounded unconvincing.
"Our Envoys and the Hunters have got the Brooklyn situation in check. And while I would very much like to think that Kai is in NOLA for entirely different reasons – all this talk of the Augustine Society resurrecting, and the Nine Covens allying with them, should be of grave concern to us all – I sincerely doubt that. You're covering for him, Josette, just like you did when you were both younger. All these years and you're yet to learn your lesson."
A short, uncomfortable silence followed that.
Then Joshua sighed again.
"Whatever means you have to reach your brother, do so quickly. I won't stand him going after his personal vendetta and risking the coven."
Jo tensed. Joshua Parker was head Councillor and informal peacekeeper between the council, the elders, and their Praetor. Emphasis on peace-keeper. His threats carried weight.
"Kai won't do anything rash. If he's in Virginia – and I don't know if he is, OK? – but if he is, he has a plan."
"It'd still be an unnecessary risk. Especially now that I strongly believe that our real enemy is not in Virginia, but here in Oregon."
Jo was fully awake now, her grip on the phone tightening. "Dad, what do you mean by that?"
"Benjamin Martin. Victor Briggs. Gabriel formerly O'Sullivan. Judith Stewart. Do those names not mean anything to you, Jo?"
"No, they do not."
"Are you sure, Jo? Because these three..."
"You should speak to the Praetor," she said and her voice had gone stern, formal. "In a situation of this nature, you are required to provide all information…"
"Don't quote rules to me, Jo." He snapped. "Have you forgotten who you're talking to?"
"Have you?"
He exhaled noisily, clearly irritated. "I have my reasons to wait until my theories are proven – or not. I do not want to cause a panic. You obviously know more than you want to admit so I advise you to do the same."
Jo was silent.
"Whatever you choose to tell your brother, I still need to talk to the Praetor and soon. Let him know this the moment you get off the phone with me."
"I'll do my best to reach him, Dad but I can't guarantee anything."
"You doing your best, Jo," his voice had become suddenly fond, "is all the guarantee I need."
They said their goodbyes and Jo put her phone down. For the first time, she noticed the time. It was three am. It was already early morning in Virginia. Montana was earlier still.
Donning her dressing gown, and slipping her phone into her pocket, she quietly left the bedroom.
The house was quiet. The twins were still sleeping deeply. Even Liv's usual snores were silent as Jo passed by her door. The study was on the first floor and she carefully made her way down the stairs in the dark.
She turned on the desk-light, then went to a bookshelf and searched through the thick tomes of medical reference books until she pulled out a specific volume. She opened it carefully, and revealed – not pages – but a hollowed-out centre. It was a trick book. And hidden in it was a slim and faded spiral notebook. She flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. A list of names.
Seven names precisely. And the first three names were already crossed out.
M. Linus
V. Briggs.
G. O'Sullivan.
Holding the book open with one hand, she walked to her desk and got a pen. With a careful hand, she crossed out the fourth name on the list.
J. Stewart.
Jo's finger rested against the first name beneath these, pressing hard enough to feel the worn paper yield. Indecision raged inside her as she felt a swirl of emotions staring at the list.
J. Stewart.
Jo's finger rested against the name beneath these, pressing hard enough to feel the worn paper yield. Indecision raged inside her.
She made up her mind.
The burner phone was hidden in another trick book. She waited impatiently for it to power up, then scrolled down the contacts until she found P. Lang, and started typing her message.
May 2013
Whitmore
The three heretics were as shocked to find Bonnie and Matt at the other side of the door as Bonnie and Matt had been to see them. It was a momentary advantage that Bonnie had the presence of mind to seize.
"Immobiliza!" She cried, one hand throwing a hex, while the other stretched up and drew a protective shield over her and Matt.
Her spell hit the three squarely and they froze in place.
Matt was already loading his crossbow, and he shot two arrows in quick succession right into the hearts of the two in front. The third arrow was aimed for the head of the tall redhead but it never hit its target.
Because the man had broken through the spell and charged, leaping over the heads of his companions with the super-speed and agility of a well-fed vampire.
Bonnie threw out another freezing spell but another figure leaped in front of her, catching the spell, absorbing the spell and then charging at Bonnie.
Her weight slammed Bonnie right into the ground and Bonnie pushed out an Immolata with her mind. The heretic reeled back, holding her head as she squirmed on her haunches and Bonnie tried to scramble out from under her, yelling out Immolatas after Immolatas with rapid succession.
Across the room there was a small explosion, and a shout and she guessed that Matt must have thrown one of the vervain bombs.
Thank goodness he's holding his own, Bonnie thought with relief. Now all I have to do is incendia this creature…
The Incendia spell hovered in the air, suspended an inch from the heretic's eyes, which were glowing gold. She was smiling at Bonnie.
And that was when Bonnie realised, with a thrill of dismay, that the heretic had not been squirming with pain but shaking with laughter.
"Your magic is delectable," she said, her eyes shimmering with familiar gold whorls as Bonnie literally watched her magic being absorbed by the creature.
Bonnie stopped casting, frozen with shock as she realised, remembered – and all that was holy, how could she have been so stupid to forget? – that everything she just did had only served to make this creature stronger. How, she thought, terror-mounting, do you fight something that turns your own power against you?
"Pray do not cease on our account," said another voice above Bonnie and she looked up to see the dark-haired man standing over his companion. "My friends and I were just starting to get entertained."
The redhead appeared beside them. All three heretics were accounted for.
"Where's Matt?" Bonnie cried.
The three heretics exchanged glances, then turned to give her identical, malicious smiles. Two of those smiles, she noticed with horror, bared sharp teeth stained with red. The redhead lifted his hand and curled his fingers into a fist.
Immediately, Bonnie felt her throat close, as if an invisible hand had wrapped around it and was choking her. She couldn't breathe and her vision was rapidly dimming.
She tried to push back with magic, but the more she pushed, the tighter the grip. She didn't need to see the three pairs of eyes glimmering with gold to know that once more, her magic was being used against her but she couldn't help it. She couldn't not struggle.
Everything was dim now. She slumped to her side, still gasping.
Where was Matt?
A shadow was looming over her, and then suddenly, strong arms pulled her into a sitting position and she felt cold breath at her throat.
No!
Panic and disgust shattered through her and she tried to struggle – with magic, with physical strength, but she couldn't. She was weak, too weak.
Matt. Was he all right?
The edge of sharp teeth grazed her skin. She didn't even have energy to scream, just brace herself for the agony of blood and magic being stolen from her.
Then she felt a lightening of pressure as if someone had hurled her attacker back.
She fell back to the floor, her head hitting hard. Darkness came rushing, much as she struggled against it. But not before she heard their last words.
"Not this one. Remember our sire."
"A taste. Bennett magic. By god, her Expression…"
"Be steadfast then. Frederick, contain your sister."
"And the other?"
"He's already dead."
Matt!
Bonnie's own mental scream was the last thing she heard before she went under.
June 2014
Whitmore
When Bonnie woke up, it took her a few minutes to remember that she was no longer in Portland, no longer in Jo's and Alaric's white-picketed house, no longer in the same vicinity as Kai Parker.
She had no idea how long she had slept but if the light pouring through her thin curtains were any indication, it had been an incredibly long time. The vodka had done its job and she didn't even feel the slightest bit woozy. For a long moment, she stared blankly at the ceiling.
She was home. She said it aloud and then again, in a happier voice. She was glad to be back.
She had reached out for help but to no avail. In a twisted way, she should be thankful for that. If the Gemini had agreed to help, and swooped in to save the day, she'd carry the burden of being the one to cast the deciding vote that day in the War Room when they had argued about petitioning to Portland for help. She hadn't just been the one to break the tie – she had also been the one whose 'objectivity' had convinced everyone who opposed to agree. Agree that they didn't need the Gemini coven.
She could admit to herself now that – despite her efforts to ignore it – the insidious thought had been creeping up on her. The thought that she had steered her friends, her comrades-in-arms to speak, wrong not because of an honest mistake but purely because of her –
- past, feud, unresolved feelings for Kai Parker –
own comfort. At least this way, she didn't have on her conscience the deaths of all the people that had been killed between then and now. The Gemini didn't help now, and they won't have helped then.
So yes, she was thankful that this was not one more burden for her to carry.
And if once more the stakes of a looming supernatural war depended solely on her? She was fine with that. Since Sheila Bennett's passing, there was only one person Bonnie Bennett had ever been able to depend upon and that was Bonnie Bennett. She'd deal with this problem like she'd dealt with countless others in the past. Sooner or later, she was going to fix this, and then the debt she owed this town would be paid once and for all.
She got up with a little hop and stretched like a cat. Then she padded to the bathroom, freshened up, and returned to her room to attack the luggage that she hadn't bothered unpacking the day before.
It didn't take too long and when she was done, she picked up the Gemini Grimoires and took them to the reading table by the window. She cracked her knuckles, then cracked open one of the volumes.
Once again, she felt overwhelmed with the wealth of knowledge contained within. The Gemini might have been reticent about recording any information about Heretics, syphons and Prison Worlds, but they had detailed out information about practically every other supernatural phenomena. Bonnie could spend months poring through any one of these books and not nearly be done.
Today however, she looked for information about vampire weaknesses. She remembered what he had told her about how vervain worked against the heretics – by dampening their vampiric aura and their primary source of magic – and she wondered if there was anything else that could have that effect. An elemental by its own nature, not constructed and spelled like one of the Gilbert devices. She already knew that holy water, garlic and crosses were useless. But she wondered if there weren't any real-life equivalents to these elements of popular fiction.
An hour later, and she was almost drowning in information. The tome she was reading was titled Medeis Bestia –a study of supernatural creatures. Apparently the supernatural demography was a lot more varied than Bonnie had realised. Vampires, werewolves, and recently dragons were the extent of her own knowledge. But now she skimmed through an index that included immortal faeries, banshees, succubae, and so much more. The Gemini seemed to regard these creatures with a spectrum that spanned from mild suspicion to outright hatred.
And vampires, Bonnie realised with disquiet, were very near on the 'outright hatred' side of that spectrum.
As much as she realised that her own life became considerably more difficult when vampires entered into it, Bonnie still held onto her objectivity about them – still believed that she was supposed to judge vampires based on their actions, not their natures – just like every other sentient creature in existence.
The Gemini did not.
If this tome was any reflection of their beliefs, vampires were high on the list of Nefandus Bestia[1] – supernaturals that were inherently evil. There were several citations to other journals all detailing stories that ended badly – alliances betrayed, witches compromised and enslaved, covens destroyed – when witches had associated with vampires. The tome itself contained detailed information on how witches could defend themselves from, attack and kill vampires. Studies were done on a lot of vampire phenomena – who'd have guessed that the sire bond was a genetically peculiar variation of vampire compulsion? – and apparently, the joke she had shared with Elena once upon a time about the many uses of the Cure to Vampirism was not a joke at all. According to this Grimoire, the Cure was an ingredient in some of the most powerful and elaborately dangerous spells that could be thought of – creating an infinite source of magic, the basis of a Discerno Coniugo – some form of dangerous separation spell, even a key ingredient in a spell that could cause a magical Armageddon, whatever that meant… But its most important use would always be to disable, and then destroy a vampire.
It was rather fascinating, Bonnie thought, focusing on that almost to distract herself from the rest. But she reasoned that most of the other uses had to be theoretical. There was only one known cure for vampirism in the entire world and it had been a myth until a few years ago. But then again, she realised almost at once, the Gemini could build Prison Worlds that duplicated the real one, right down to magical objects. Perhaps some of these spells had actually been tested?
The possibilities were mind-blowing.
Liv would probably know, Bonnie thought. Not for the first time, Bonnie imagined what it would have been like, being brought up with a proper Disciplina, studying these Grimoires leisurely, over the course of years and under the guidance of seasoned witches, not self-tutoring like she had been forced to do, looking for quick fixes to some immediate emergency.
Of course, if she had been given a proper Gemini Disciplina, Bonnie might never have thought twice about leaving Stefan Salvatore locked up in a tomb.
And Grandma Sheila would still be alive today.
The nebulous voices that started haunting her in 1994 used to fill her head with thoughts like that.
And thoughts like that, Bonnie told herself firmly, will buy me a one-way, all-expenses-paid ticket on the Cuckoo Express Train to Insanity City.
A witch could do a lot of things. But even she couldn't change the past.
She swallowed hard, then took a deep shuddering breath, and forced herself to think of something else. The first thing that came to mind was Liv Parker. Bonnie hadn't got any messages from the witch yet, but it was only a matter of time before Liv noticed that Bonnie had 'borrowed' her grimoires for a bit longer than they had agreed upon. With a sigh, Bonnie realised she'd better do some pre-emptive damage control and call the other witch. Make sure she wasn't freaking out too much over the missing spell-books.
She got up from her chair and went to sit on her bed. Her phone was under her pillow.
She had turned off the ringer last night and now she gaped at the list of missed calls and messages from Caroline, Matt and Damon. Bonnie groaned as she realised that she had forgotten all about the morning pow-wow. Damon was going to kill her.
She was in the middle of a quick text in apology to them when a cold aura suddenly filled her room.
"Good morning, Miss Bennett."
Bonnie jumped to her feet.
Tall, ginger-haired, cherub-faced, dressed in denim from top to toe but still standing with the posture of someone who had lived in an era of charm schools.
Their small gang of misfits had had two skirmishes with the heretics and both times, Bonnie had only caught glimpses of the vamp-faced duo, sensing their empty lightning-fast essences better through magic than with her own eyes. It had been enough to place the man from the wedding – it was hard to forget a face that was attached to a head you had literally cut off. But Bonnie was certain that until now, she had never had a good look at the woman.
Yet there was something oddly, strikingly familiar about the face that now regarded her with clear malice.
"We've never been properly introduced. My name is Georgiana Parker and you are in possession of something that I am in desperate want of."
Instinctively, stupidly, Bonnie threw a motus which the heretic just absorbed with a gleeful laugh and then in blur of red she was on Bonnie, hands clamped around Bonnie's wrists, and fangs buried in Bonnie's neck.
[1] Abominable creatures
A/N: Thanks a lot to my dear beta, keenan24, and to all the reviewers who left reviews, I really appreciated them. I have mid-terms so I'll be offline for a bit. Cheers everyone!
