CHAPTER TWELVE
May 2013
Kai half-expected Bonnie to be gone by the time he came back, was already steeling himself for the disappointment of meeting the hotel suite abandoned. So when he felt her aura radiating through the door, and pushed past it to see her standing in the cutest, softest, fluffiest white bathrobe in the small kitchenette, fumbling with the coffee machine, he had to turn away for a moment to hide the grin of sheer glee that threatened to split his face into two.
She must have caught it all the same, because when he turned back, she was frowning up at him. "I don't suppose it occurred to you to get some of my stuff when you ported back to your flat?" Her eyes made a quick once-over of his new jeans and tee.
Her flippant question did nothing to hide the way her face had coloured slightly during that quick once-over and he smirked broadly, putting a hand over his chest. "You thought I'd break into your college dorm and raid through your lady-things? What do you take me for?"
He hadn't even planned the innuendo. It just slipped out. And he saw with no small gratification the way her eyes darkened, before she turned her gaze back at the machine, fidgeting.
"Do you need any help?"
"No," she snapped.
"Alrighty," he retorted, biting back on the flash of hurt. He hesitated for a half-second, then he came close enough to lean by the counter beside her, where he could better enjoy the view of her flawless skin, her heart shaped, makeup less face, her hair black from her shower, and curly too so that her neck was exposed.
"I ordered room service before I left. They should be here in," he glanced at his watch, "a half hour or so. With coffee," he added pointedly.
She didn't deign to respond to that, just bent closer to her task, exposing another inch or so of her upper back. The urge to bury his face against her neck was unbearable and he discreetly, held onto the counter for dear life, knowing from the way her body had stiffened when he came nearer that she won't welcome it.
Not at first, maybe.
She said nothing. Kai, never one to be comfortable with long silences, went on, "I could have cooked up something myself but I'm paying for bed and breakfast so…"
Bonnie glanced at him from beneath her long lashes and his breath caught at the flash of green intensity. "Yeah, because the last time I got a home-cooked meal from you, it ended so well for you." Her voice was as sweet and cool as poison.
His grip tightened on the counter, this time because he had to fight the urge to punch himself in the face for his own stupidity.
She set her jaw, her chin lifting slightly in that characteristic gesture of defiance. "About last night…" she started, and there was nothing about the detached, resolved tone of her voice that he liked.
"And the evening before that, and the early hours of this morning," he jibed, quickly cutting off her words.
It was so gratifying to see her face color with a different emotion from anger.
"If you want to get technical," she said curtly, making a show of returning her attention to the machine that she had probably destroyed already.
"Oh, I do," he murmured, inching nearer. "I want to get very, very technical with you…"
"Kai!" she gasped.
It did something to him, hearing her say his name. Burnt right through him, and for a moment it was all he could do not to throw himself at her.
"What?" he said, his voice strangled.
"What happened doesn't change anything," she muttered.
His heart, already unsteady, started beating erratically, and he knew there was no hiding the emotions on his face.
It was a good thing Bonnie wasn't looking at him then, her gaze fixed on the machine in front of her, her shoulders tightening with clear resolve. "Yes, I get that you've changed… become this new person… But this… this was a mistake. Just because-"
"Got it," he said tightly. She threw him another quick look, then away.
Kai forced the muscles in his face to unclench, forced his mind to push past the wall of panic that was threatening to overshadow it. He knew she'd try to pull something like this. Had thought about it during his short trip this morning. At least she wasn't playing the 'Jeremy Gilbert' card. That was another thought that had crossed Kai's mind, and curse his new-found empathy for feeling the smidgen of guilt about that. But Bonnie hadn't once mentioned that name in the past 72 hours and Kai wasn't going to be the idiot that brought up her ex.
So that meant her reservations had nothing to do with the other man but just Kai himself. Which, yeah, was a pretty huge mountain of a roadblock, but as the past 72 hours had proven, not as insurmountable as he once thought.
It was up to him to change her watched her face now, her eyes narrowed, her lips screwed with resolve as she fought with the coffee maker that she was clearly using to distract herself from the tension that was between them. He remembered her looking just like this in 1994, in the time she struggled to find her magic back. Even then he had wanted to reach out a hand, smoothen out the crumples from her face.
"Let me help you with that," he said brusquely, and in one swift movement, he had trapped her between his body and the counter, ignoring her sharp gasp as his long arms went around her fluffy robe to rescue the poor coffee machine. His hands brushed against hers, slowly, deliberately as he fiddled with the device, until she snatched her hands away, pressing them flat on the counter in front of her.
Her magic was flashing across her skin, rushing at his own, and he could smell brimstone in the air, as the charge built up between them.
"Kai…"
"It'll just take a moment," he said, with a casualness he didn't feel as his magic made quick work of the device, the parts pulling apart to float in the air, then falling back into place. He pressed the button and it whirred into life. When he switched it off, the silence that followed was almost deafening.
Bonnie broke it with a shaky sigh. "OK, that's-"
"No thank you?" he murmured, moving just a fractional inch closer, lowering his face nearer to the skin that was practically begging him to touch it.
"Kai…"
"Shh…" He said, and finally gave into his earlier urge to bury his face in her neck. He felt, more than he heard, her breath catch in her throat and he pressed against her, closing the microscopic space between their bodies so that she could feel just how badly he wanted her.
"We can't…"
"Why not?" he demanded, his mouth open against her skin, her scent driving him mad but all he did was stay in place, his hands sliding to cover her own, the machine completely forgotten.
For a moment, they were silent, she was frozen, while he was fighting the urge to rock his hips into the amazing ass in front of him. He could feel her response to him, in the way she trembled, the little wet breaths she inhaled, the rapid beat of her pulse against his cheek, but more than that, in the way her magic rose to her skin to ignite against his own, little sensory explosions setting off between the two of them. He almost came from the sheer heat of it all.
Then she sighed deeply, and she shifted, slowly, deliberately against him.
Stars flashed across his eyes, and he only barely heard what she said. "You want more from me than I'm ready to give you."
Now that she had given him permission, albeit overtly, his hands made quick work of the ties of her bathrobe, and his hands were finally, finally, on the smooth skin of her stomach. He felt her muscles clench under his touch, but his fingers moving quickly until they were brushing the apex of her thighs. She gasped, and spread her legs apart and he felt it again – that sense of awe that had hit him the first time, that she was letting him do this, that this was finally happening.
The little blood left in his brain was barely enough to string words, let alone form sentences, but he was fighting for his life here. "All I want is for you to give me another chance," he said – lied, really because oh, he wanted so much more from her. More than he had even realized at first when the constant thoughts of her had threatened to drive him mad, and he thought that an unburdening of his new-found emotions was all that he needed to exorcise himself of her ghost. But time passed and he just kept wanting more. And she had betrayed him and hurt him and still he hadn't been able to stop, hadn't been able to not hold onto her coming back for him, and feeling so fucking grateful to her for that. And now they had finally had sex and he realized that even that was not going to satisfy him.
That was his problem, wasn't it? He was a greedy bastard. He wanted all of her.
"Give me a chance, Bonnie," he groaned, his lips tracing from her earlobe down her cheek, as his fingers finally slid into slick, hot, wetness of her. She moaned, her eyes falling shut as her head fell back to land on his chest. He now had an amazing view down her front, and not for the first time in the past 24 hours, he wandered if he wasn't still trapped in 1903 and having an incredible series of dreams.
But this was no dream. This was reality, him in this hotel suite, finger-fucking Bonnie Bennett as she rubbed her remarkable ass against his throbbing dick while the curtains and the windows rattled with the force of the wild magic that was igniting between them.
"Please, Bonnie," he begged, his lips just pressing the corner of her mouth. The angle and their height difference made it impossible for him to get close enough to kiss her, and he wanted to, badly, but just as badly, he wanted to keep rocking against her, and keep feeling her muscles clenching around his fingers.
Then she was turning around in a swift, smooth motion that kept his fingers inside her as she reached to wrap her fingers through his hair and bring his mouth to hers. From the corner of his half-closed eyes, he saw something explode and he wandered if it was the coffee machine but whatever worry that caused vanished in the wake of consuming her mouth with his own. The kiss was as frantic as their hands on each other. In minutes, his tee and jeans were in burnt shreds on the floor, and her robe was a soft, fluffy pool of white beside his clothes as she hopped onto the counter, lifting her knees while she pushed him down to his own with her fingers in his hair.
Then the scent, feel, taste of her flooded his senses, short-circuiting his brain and for the next thirty minutes, there was no talk of regrets, of things that did not matter, just Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie, and her moaning, then screaming his name.
August 2013
Rijswijk, Netherlands
"So… on a scale of one to ten."
"You really want to go there?"
"Truth or dare, Elena."
Elena sighed heavily, made a show of swirling her wine glass, then sighing again and made a show of flipping her hair. Which was ridiculous considering that her hair was now shorter than Bonnie's old bob.
By the end of it, the other two girls were ready to strangle her.
"Elena!"
She burst out laughing, her eyes sparkling like her glass. "Fine! On a scale of one to ten, I'll say… thirteen."
Caroline fall back, deflated. "Wow. That good?"
Elena grinned smugly, her cheeks reddening ever so slightly. Whether from the memory or from the wine, Bonnie couldn't tell. "Yep. Stefan is very …" She cleared her throat. "… attentive to detail."
Bonnie hooted and the other two girls burst out laughing.
It was their last night in Europe and they were getting wasted. Not that that was much different from a lot of their nights in Europe– well, a lot of Bonnie's nights in Europe – but they were doing it in the privacy of their shared cottage for a change, and not some seedy bar.
The seedy bars had been fun, Bonnie thought, her mind wandering a little as Caroline pestered Elena for more details. And dancing on tables was something she was never going to regret doing. But this, this pocket of time with her girls, was even more precious.
Especially with the sense of finality that hung heavy over them, even as they steadily drank their way through the night.
"But come on, you had the whole humanity-switch off sex spree," Elena was saying now.
Caroline shrugged and it was a testimony to how wasted they all were that a taboo topic had been so casually raised.
"Not having emotions makes the kind of feelings you need … well, that I need to enjoy sex… mostly absent." She shrugged again.
Elena shuddered. "Tell me about it." Her eyes cut to Bonnie, and despite the glasses she had consumed, her eyes sharpened. "You're awfully quiet, Ms. Bennett. It's your turn."
"Oooh," Caroline said, rubbing her hands together. Or trying to. She kept missing them, and ended up fist-bumping the air instead. "This is good. Was it Henri from Belgium or Roberto the Italian?"
"Your guess is as good as mine because all their names are jumbled up in my head," Bonnie retorted, sipping her glass.
Elena coughed. "Now that I think about it, I will plead the Fifth for Bonnie." Over Caroline's cries of 'No Fair!' Elena continued, "Because Jeremy is in the running here and depending on Bonnie's answer, I'll be either offended or nauseated."
Bonnie leaned over and clinked glasses with Elena. "Smart move."
Caroline glared at both of them. "Well, with all due respect, Big Sister, I doubt it's Jeremy," she snapped, "or someone in Europe, now that I think about it. Remember after Jo's wedding, Elena? When after two days of worrying and wondering where the eff she was, Bonnie showed up with Jo's brother? That hawwwwt specimen of a man. What was his name? What was his name?"
"Unless it's a she or two," Elena cut in, talking over Caroline's words like if she hadn't heard her. "Those girls, Nora and Freya? Just how up close and personal did you guys get?"
Bonnie made a show of rolling her eyes but inside, her heart was pounding and she reached for the bottle, and filled her glass with shaky hands. "Give it a rest, Elena."
"I just want to know. For science. Since we lost a lot of easy money in Belgium because Miss Prude here refused to make out with me."
"I'm sorry that I didn't think pandering to a couple of frat boys was worth a few lousy euros."
"A few thousand lousy euros."
"Bonnie, that was total fail," Caroline declared, shaking her head. "Especially after hooking up with your groupies. You can make out with some random chicks but not with us, your BFFs?"
"I did not hook up with Freya and Nora!" Bonnie declared, half-laughing.
"So you admit you hooked up with Freya or Nora?"
"Care, I didn't know you felt this way… I mean… you know I love you… as a friend…"
Elena snorted, choking on her wine.
Caroline waved her glass threateningly. "Really, Bonnie? Really? You just ditched us for a week in the middle of Paris to run off and not have a lesbian threesome?"
"I needed some air. You two were getting on my nerves, and spoiling my fun. Elena broke a bottle on my date's head, for goodness' sake."
"That was bad-ass, by the way," Caroline said, leaning over to hi-five Elena. "Wish I had been there."
"Thank everything that you weren't," Elena retorted. "Bonnie and her groupies were dancing on the table. Without underwear. It wasn't pretty."
"The fuck-load of euros that we got beg to differ. Plus open invitation to all the bars on the Strait." Bonnie pumped a fist up and whooped.
"OK, so then you had no problem with pandering?"
The night continued in pretty much the same vein, as they all relived the best and the worst of their time in Europe. The bottles finally ran out and now, too wasted to navigate to their respective beds, they managed to drag down a duvet and cover themselves, huddling on the floor together.
There was time when the duvet would have fitted them with spare, but now Caroline's feet stuck out and one side of Elena's body was cold. It was Bonnie, snug against the wall that was the most comfortable.
"Remember when Bonnie gave me a black eye?" Elena whispered.
"You deserved it!"
"Like you deserved Care biting you?" Elena retorted.
"Why did you have to bring that up again?" Caroline yelled. "Bonnie, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"Oh get over it, Care. We all took shots at each other. Elena snapped your neck."
"I still don't know how she did that!" Caroline shouted. She was a loud drunk. "Oh my god, you are so freakishly strong!"
All of them burst out laughing then, at nothing in particular. Then they fell silent, drifting slowly.
"Are you ever going to come back?" Bonnie wondered.
She didn't realize she had asked the question out loud until Elena answered, "I'll always be with you. Here." She touched her heart, then shifting awkwardly, she reached over to touch Caroline's, then Bonnie's.
Bonnie swallowed the lump in her throat. Beside her, Caroline was already sniffling.
"I'm going to miss you so much!" Caroline shouted.
"Shhh," Elena said softly, but whether she was comforting her or trying to get her to quieten down, Bonnie didn't know. Elena was mumbling something to Caroline. Something about Stefan. Or Matt. It was hard to keep track of the guys they had shared. The conversation barely registered in Bonnie's head, most of it not making a lot of sense to her in her inebriated state.
She had probably even fallen asleep all the way when she heard Elena's voice again. "Pssst. Bonnie. Pssst."
"What?"
"There're still two more weeks until the end of summer," Elena said, her voice sounding surprisingly lucid. "Enough time to go to Portland and back."
Bonnie laughed softly, sadly. "Bad idea, Elena."
"Why?" Elena sounded almost as sad as Bonnie felt. When Bonnie didn't answer, Elena pressed on, "Because he was a monster? He changed, Bonnie."
Bonnie swallowed the lump that threatened to choke her. Could barely get the words past her throat. "Elena. Stop." And because she was drunk, and it was the last night in Europe and tomorrow would be the first of many days, weeks, years that she won't see her childhood friend again –
(but not for him, never for him)
– tears slipped past her lids.
"Bonnie."
"He didn't change," she sobbed in the dark. "I thought he had, but he didn't. He's still a-"
"A monster. So what? He can be your monster, Bonnie."
"I don't need any monsters," Bonnie thought sadly. "I'm monster enough for me."
And once again, she must have spoken out loud because Elena reached over Caroline's sleeping body, to entwine her fingers with Bonnie's. "We're all monsters, Bonnie."
"Not you, Elena. You're human now."
She could hear her friend's head shaking. "We're all monsters. In the dark, when our backs are against the wall, when the people we love are in danger, when we think we've got nothing to lose, and revenge is all that matters. We're all capable of being monsters – human, witch, vampire, or werewolf. It's not what we are that makes us monsters, it's what we can do. Have done."
Her voice trailed off. There was a long moment of weighty, guilty silence, as goose-bumps crawling on Bonnie's flesh as she fought her mind to not remember…
"So we're a perfect pair, aren't we?"
When Elena spoke again, Bonnie almost gasped in relief.
"There's nothing you can't move past, if you want to. Look at us. Look at everything we said and did to each other this summer." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Look at everything I've done to you. Bonnie, I almost killed you once. I told you once that I didn't deserve that. What you said to me. I was wrong. I deserved worse."
Bonnie didn't say anything. There was nothing to be said.
"But Kai… Kai did more to bring you back than any of us did." Elena breathed deeply, the admission painful even now, probably always. "And even before that, before the Merge, before he got his emotions, he was fixated on you."
Bonnie scoffed.
"Don't pretend you didn't know. Did I ever tell you how, back when he was… well, evil, he torture-practiced on me and spent most of the time talking about you?"
"…is that supposed to be a point in his favour?"
"You were on his mind even then. He couldn't shake you off. Even when he couldn't understand why. And when he got his emotions back…"
"He didn't get emotions back. It's not the humanity switch."
"It isn't? He didn't have emotions and was dangerous. He got emotions and was a mess. Sounds exactly like a humanity switch to me. And" – she raised a hand as Bonnie tried to speak – "between the two of us, only one person is qualified to know."
Bonnie looked away. "You make it sound so simple, but it's not. He… I… We aren't… we can't…" She took a deep, shaky breath. "What if we make each other monsters? What then?" Her voice hardened, challenging. "What if we bring out the worst in each other and everyone else gets caught in the crossfire?"
"Then I think that if two people are so destructive when they're on opposite sides, it might be the most important thing in the world that they stand together."
Disbelieving, bitter laughter surprised itself out of Bonnie. "My God, Elena…"
The grip on Bonnie's hand tightened, literally pulling her attention and surprising her into silence. There was a strangely earnest, almost pleading strain in Elena's dark eyes.
"Bonnie, listen to me. That short time after the wedding, you were… Well, you weren't exactly happy, but you looked like if you were going to be. I've known you all your life and I've never once seen you come close to that. Not with Jeremy. Not ever."
"Wow. That's comforting-"
"It made me happy, Bonnie! Knowing you had that waiting around the corner for you. It made everything worth it. Don't throw it away."
Even with her pain, and drowsiness, and alcohol, something in Bonnie – call it her Elena-switch – flickered at that. "Made every what worthwhile?"
Elena was silent.
"Elena?"
Elena sighed. "Going away. Leaving Mystic Falls. You all. I thought I was leaving you in safe hands."
The memory of Kai's hands suddenly sent a rush of heat through Bonnie, and she looked at the wall, and snorted with laughter even as the tears kept pouring down her cheeks.
Elena's fingers left Bonnie's and then she felt them on her face. "You've been such a good friend to me, Bonnie. I love you so much. I need to know you'll be happy someday."
It only made the tears run faster. "I will."
"Promise?"
"I promise." She swallowed her sobs enough to say, "I love you, too, Elena. Be safe here, OK?" She sighed. "And I'm sorry I hurt your feelings when I didn't make out with you at the bar."
Long after she fell asleep, and for many weeks after that, she could still hear Elena's surprised laugh echoing in her head.
June 2014
Whitmore
"Rise and shine!"
Bonnie's eyes bleared open and then shut back immediately at the sight of Caroline's overly bright smile.
"Go away, Caroline."
There was a huff, then she felt strong hands clamp around her arms and shake her.
"Hey!" she yelled, eyes still closed and hoping this was all a bad dream.
"Bonnie! Get up!"
Her eyes re-opened reluctantly, and she finally got a good look at Caroline's jogging outfit.
"You have got to be kidding me."
"Nope. You asked me to put you on a schedule this summer, remember?"
Bonnie groaned with regret at her foolishness. "Caroline, I barely got any sleep last night. My body is three hours out of sync."
"And if you don't force yourself back into our time-zone, you'll be out of it for days. Vampires don't need workouts. Witches do. Now say thank you and get up!"
Bonnie moaned plaintively. "Go away!"
In a half-second, Caroline had flown across the room and opened all the window blinds. The bright light seemed to tear right through Bonnie's eyes and she sat up with a yell.
"Get up, Bonnie! You know you'll love it the moment you start moving."
There was no stopping Caroline Forbes once she was in this mode. Bonnie knew this from long, sad experience. So slowly, miserably, grumbling with every inch, she crawled out of bed; after a trip to the bathroom – Caroline drill-sergeanting her loudly and obnoxiously through the door – she pulled on the running outfit that her friend had already laid out and dragged her ass out of the room, and through her front door.
They were already in the elevator, when her tired brain finally woke up and registered the still-ruffled sofa and pillow she had passed by in the living room. "Where's Stefan?" she asked.
"He was taking a shower when we left," Caroline said curtly in a voice that brooked no further question, as the lift opened.
Huh. "Looks like he spent the night in the living room," Bonnie said, not giving a damn about Caroline's voice.
"That was the plan," Caroline deadpanned.
Bonnie decided to drop it – for now.
They were already outside then, and the early morning coolness hit Bonnie's face, waking her even further.
"Get your ass moving, Bennett!" Caroline yelled, shouldering Bonnie as she kicked into a jog.
"Ow," Bonnie muttered, rubbing her shoulder; but she twisted her baseball cap around her head and took off.
Caroline was obviously running far slower than she could, but still fast enough for Bonnie to take a while to catch up with her and match her pace. Much as Bonnie loathed admitting it, it took mere minutes before her body moved from grumbling slouch-mode and entered 'the zone'. The wind was in her face, delightfully cooling her heated skin. Her Nikes pounded on the pavement alongside Caroline's, and her own long, deep breaths were more music to her ears than the stream of hip hop sounds from an mp3 player.
"I told you," Caroline yelled, grinning at her friend, no doubt smelling the endorphins that were rushing through Bonnie's veins, intoxicating the witch more than any of those binge-o-manic nights in Europe had.
"Shut up, vampire freak," Bonnie yelled back, and Caroline huffed.
"Just for that I won't tell you all the latest campus gossip."
Bonnie scoffed. "Yeah, right." Caroline would implode if she even tried.
And sure enough, it didn't take long before the blonde broke her word – 'to put Bonnie out of her misery' – and started a running commentary of the latest campus gossip, which was surprisingly still very juicy even during the summer break.
They wove round their usual circuit through campus, and waved at the few familiar faces that remained over the summer. A particularly cute boy from Bonnie's Occult Studies class whistled long and low as they jogged past him. Caroline actually did a 360, still running, to wave back at him, making Bonnie splutter as she laughed and panted at the same time.
They jogged past the old student cafeteria and its 'marked for demolition' sign. A new modern cafeteria on the other side of the block had been opened at the start of summer, and this plot was going to be turned into a park. All courtesy of the new owners of Whitmore who seemed to be constantly revamping the real estate on campus. Bonnie sighed nostalgically. She had pulled many overnighters at the campus library during the year; and she usually popped over at the cafeteria before returning to her flat or going to an early morning class. Sometimes, she found a familiar face to sit with and she'd catch up on the latest campus gossip herself – which professors were sleeping together (or with a student), the odds on Friday's game, even more pertinent news like politics and world affairs would come up.
They were jogging back now, the apartment building looming ahead, and were moving slow enough to have a two-sided conversation. Bonnie waved a hand at the Deputy's cars parked at a reserved spot.
"Someone's not abusing their parking privileges," she observed wryly.
Caroline grinned. "Perks of the job."
Bonnie snorted.
Caroline ran into her, making Bonnie almost lose her balance. "Ow! Watch it, clumsy vampire!"
"So what's up with you and Mattie?"
Bonnie slowed to a walk, rubbing her side. "We plan on going to the morgue to look at the body of that witch that died while I was away. We've done it for all the victims so far. Nothing ever comes out of it…" She trailed off at the exasperated look on Caroline's face. "What?"
Caroline shoved at her again. "You really don't know?"
"All I know is that the next time you run into me, I'm going to fry your brains!"
Caroline shook her head and threw up her hands. "You are hopeless, Bonnie Bennett."
What the hell?
But no matter how much Bonnie kept pestering, firing question after question at her friend as they marched into the building and went up the lift, Caroline stayed mute. Verbally, that was. She was very loud with her sighs, the dramatic head shaking, and the narrow-eyed 'you-are-so-hopeless' glances she kept throwing at Bonnie.
By the time they were entering the flat, Bonnie was this close to aneurysming the other girl for real. She got distracted at the sound of familiar voices coming from the kitchen, where apparently Stefan's, Damon's, Tyler's and Matt's. Caroline, whose vampire hearing must have picked up on the others much sooner, had already speed-walked to her room, leaving Bonnie to trudge into her own, and a much-needed shower. The cool water was a balm to her sore, slightly out of shape muscles, and by the time she was dressed in her shorts and loose blouse, she had forgotten about her friend's weirdness, and was already planning her day.
Her first instinct was to drift towards the Grimoires on her table, avoid the others completely and put finishing touches on the plan that had germinated before she slept. But her thoughts of studying were arrested by a sudden, amazingly pleasant smell that wafted into her room. As if on cue, her stomach rumbled. Almost blindly, Bonnie left her room, and followed her nose to what it recognised as the aroma of rich pastries, and even richer coffee. It lured her towards the kitchen, and she could hear voices coming from within:
"And that was the first and last time, I saw the insides of a creature with two sets of guts," said Matt.
"You're very sure that was the last time, Donovan? You got a crystal ball hidden somewhere in that utility belt of yours?" That was Tyler, talking with his mouth full. Bonnie made a face.
"Come on. Two dragons in one lifetime? I think your bad luck only runs with women." That was Damon's voice, with a slur that said he was having his usual breakfast of bourbon.
"What would you know?" Tyler countered promptly. "You weren't even there. Had to make a sudden trip out of state, my ass. You turned tail and ran."
"Watch it, Lockwood or I'll be tasting Stefan's cooking the best way I like it – intravenously."
"You're not scary anymore, Damon," Matt retorted, lazily. "Not after we met Demon Santa."
"You know who else met it?" Tyler added. "Enzo. He was the one who stuck around and saved all our asses while Stefan here rescued Caroline. Can you believe it, Donovan?"
"Still can't. If anyone had told me that it'd be Enzo that I'd owe my life to someday…"
There was a moment of silence. Bonnie, who had paused just outside the door, felt a small pang herself. She and Damon's old friend had barely interacted after her return from 1994. But he had proved his worth to the gang in his own way.
Matt continued, "I was lucky to live to tell the tale. I still can't quite figure out how I did. I can still smell its ghastly breath as its jaws closed…"
"Care to join us, Bon or are you just going to keep lurking outside the door?" Damon asked suddenly.
Bonnie rolled her eyes and strolled into the kitchen
"Lovely breakfast conversation guys," she muttered, pointedly ignoring him and making a beeline for the coffee pot.
He was leaning against the other door in his typical black tee and jeans, and waved his bottle at her, leering at her legs out of habit. Stefan nodded at her from where he stood in front of the stove, a prim flower-patterned apron over the slacks he slept in, and that explained the small crowd that converged in the kitchen.
And probably why Caroline was probably sitting this get-together out. Not for the first – or last time – she wondered what was going on with her best friend and the Salvatore junior.
Tyler and Matt were in uniform, sitting at the small table. They looked up when she entered. Tyler grinned his good morning but Matt frowned.
"Where've you been?" he asked curtly.
Stefan sighed heavily.
"Jogging with Caroline," Bonnie said, surprised at the attitude.
"Just like I said already," Stefan added lowly while Damon snorted into his drink.
Matt scowled at the vampires, then at Bonnie, surprising her even further. "When you didn't answer your phone, I got worried."
"I left it in the flat. Didn't think I needed it with Caroline."
"Well, a crazy heretic almost killed you yesterday, Bonnie. So excuse your friends for worrying a bit."
Bonnie rolled her eyes. "You didn't sound so worried a few minutes ago while you guys reminisced about jingle bells, blood and guts. By the way, now that I'm here, can we not talk about jingle bells, blood and guts for the next fifteen minutes? Kinda ruins the appetite."
She filled her cup, then squeezed in between the two deputies at the table. Matt still had an upside-down smile so she made a face at him, and shoved his shoulder. It took a while, but he finally caved, his face softening into a rueful grin, and he shoved back.
She reached for the bowl of delicious looking pastries as she turned her smile at Tyler; but he didn't return it. His face was tense as he eyed the big donut she had just grabbed.
Bonnie blinked. Seriously?
"You sure you don't want to hear more about last Winter, Bonnie?" Matt asked, his mischievous voice distracting her from Tyler. "You missed all the fun. Nothing says Christmas spirit like meeting the Santa version of the IT Clown."
Bonnie shuddered.
"No, thank you. So what're you all doing here? As if I can't guess?" She took a bite of a hot bun and hummed happily and loudly – for Tyler's benefit. His eyes had never once lifted from her donut. Really, how greedy could he be that he'd begrudge her eating food cooked in her own kitchen?
"I wanted to see if you and Damon were up for going to the M.E. this morning," Matt said, looking outraged. "I've got some paperwork to pick up there. I sent you a message but I guess you didn't have your phone with you…"
Oh. "I forgot that," Bonnie said sheepishly.
"Then you weren't home and no one was sure where you were…"
"I was sure, not that it matters," Stefan murmured.
"And we hung around to make sure you were OK," Tyler concluded for his friend, looking away long enough from Bonnie's food to act wounded.
It was almost enough to make a girl feel guilty. Almost. "Nothing whatsoever to do with…" She cleared her throat and started singing. "Stefan's baking brings all the boys to the yard. Damn right it's better than yours, damn right it's better than yours…"
She stopped singing when the younger Salvatore laughed out loud, surprising her. Their eyes met and they shared tentative grins, last night's conversation still fresh in memory.
Matt and Tyler were protesting while Damon barked out a laugh from where he leaned on the door, chugging a bottle.
Bonnie raised a brow at him. Really? She hoped it said. A whole bottle?
He grinned around it and chugged on with gusto.
"You know, just for that stupid song, I will talk some more about the Demon Santa," Matt said with a mock glare at her. "Now I've seen some seriously disturbing things down at the morgue."
"I'm eating, Matt."
He ignored that. "… even though it had horns that looked like phallic worms with teeth, and I threw up all of Stefan's Christmas pudding when I looked down its jaws…"
"I swear I will throw up on you right now."
"… and it was pretty horrible at the time, and I'll never see a Santa the same way again, and yeah, Christmas is ruined for me forever, and I probably lost ten years of my life from the sheer horror of it all…"
"Where is this going?"
"I'm trying to say that I got a chance to see a real live dragon, Bonnie and you didn't," Matt teased.
Bonnie fake-gasped, "Shoot! There goes my bucket list."
Matt shoved her again and she shoved back, while the others laughed.
Even as she joined in the laughter, a part of Bonnie's mind couldn't help thinking how strange all this was. How strangely easy it had been to slip back into this life, where monster talk was something to crack jokes about. Where monster talk was something that happened around her at all, at least with this group of people.
Over the past year, there had been several times when she and Caroline had shared breakfast, and instead of trading school gossip, Caroline had filled her in on the latest Mystic Falls supernatural drama – on Bonnie's request. Caroline was fully aware and in full support of Bonnie's year-long vow of keeping away from supernatural feuds and schemes in general, and Salvatores in particular. But Bonnie had also wanted to have a vague idea of goings-on, nothing too specific, just enough not to get any nasty surprises.
Caroline had been the only exception. Upon their return from Europe, Bonnie had subtly but undisputedly laid down the law, banning any "shop talk" from their Mystic Falls friends in her flat, or to her in any form. Now that she thought about it, it had been easier than Bonnie had expected to get the vampire brothers and her ghost-busting friends to back off from using her as a magical fail-safe. Sure, she had got the occasional call from Damon – which stopped when she blocked his number – and Stefan would pop over, ostensibly to visit Caroline and drop a few hints, as did Matt and Tyler, but after a few not-too-subtle dismissals from Bonnie, even those stopped all together.
It was both enlightening and… well, strangely disheartening just how easily Bonnie got her space when she put her foot down firmly. Made her wonder if all those times in the past, she had felt backed in the corner, it had less to do with the forcefulness of the demands on her and more to do with her own inability to stand her ground.
It was also strange, she thought as she watched their smiling faces now, strange and amazing just how OK everyone was joking about this now. For some reason, Bonnie had imagined that they'd be holding her 'checking out' on them over the past year against her for probably the rest of her life. But although it still came up once in a while this past month of her 'return', no one ever brought it up in a way that was more than good-natured teasing.
It really made one think.
She reached for yet another bun – Stefan's pastries really were the best – and noticed Tyler staring again.
She heaved a loud sigh. "Tyler."
He started, as if surprised that she had noticed his obvious glares. "What…"
"There's enough food to go around," she said, pointedly.
"Oh… Sorry, I was…" He laughed a little, but she noticed he was still staring at the half-eaten bun in her hand. "I was actually wondering where you got that tattoo."
Oh.
Bonnie felt some of the blood leave her face as four pairs of eyes locked on her wrist. The sleeve of her blouse had fallen back when she had reached for the food, and her souvenir from a certain coven leader was in clear view of everyone. In the early morning sun, the black ink was stark against her bronze skin.
She shrugged her wrist, turning it so that her hem slid to cover it, but the harm was already done. The curious eyes went from her hand to her face. She shrugged, making a show of chewing her food slowly.
"That's a very… ordinary looking tattoo," Matt said finally, clearly searching for words. "I won't have thought it was your style, Bon, but it… fits you somehow. Nice."
"Didn't notice that a while ago," Stefan said sharply. "Where did you get it?"
Bonnie gave him a curt, warning look, then she shrugged, sipping her coffee. "Where do people get tattoos?" She said, deflecting, and looked around at the others. "Why're you all clutching your pearls? I'm too straight-laced to get some fancy ink?" She asked scornfully, going for the offensive.
"It depends," Damon drawled, "on where else you have a tattoo."
That got a hoot from Tyler and a disapproving grunt from Matt. Damon went on to make some more comments on needing to perform an inspection, and Bonnie let that go on for a little while before she turned his bourbon into hot coffee. He was still spluttering in outrage as she got up.
"Gotta get ready for our date with dead people, Matt," she quipped, with a bright smile and a light step. She got to the door and, like an afterthought, said over her shoulder to Tyler. "Hey, Ty, do you have a sec? I need someone to help grab something off the top of my closet."
"So you ask Tyler?" Damon scoffed.
Tyler was on his feet at once, pointedly ignoring Damon. "Sure, Bonnie."
"I can help, Bon-" Matt started.
Damon groaned loudly, and was it her imagination but did Stefan snicker?
Matt fell silent, and it definitely wasn't Bonnie's imagination that his face seemed to brighten with colour.
"Er…" Bonnie started, wondering what she was missing here, but Tyler had already grabbed her elbow and the two left for her room.
They stepped in; he shut the door and leaned on it, folding his arms. "Spit it out."
Bonnie covered her eyes, laughing ruefully. "I thought I was being subtle."
"Picking me out of those guys 'to help grab something off the top of my closet'?" He mimicked her voice, making her roll her eyes. "I'm confident with my height but nope." His face turned serious. "It's your tattoo, isn't it?"
She answered by pushing back her sleeve. Both of them stared at her wrist.
Bonnie swallowed. "Mind telling me what's the deal with a little ink anyway that's got you so worried, Lockwood?"
He frowned. "Bonnie, you and I both know that's not really a tattoo."
His voice was ominous and a shudder ran through Bonnie.
Why had she got so comfortable carrying this thing around?
She stared into Tyler's worried face and it was on the tip of her lip to just fess up – wasn't she the one that made the rule about full disclosure at all times in the team? – but she had a sudden, vivid mental image of that look of concentration on Kai's face as he strapped the black band around her wrist, the surge of magic as it tightened around her wrist – and she felt her face burn, and her throat closed for a moment.
She said nothing.
Tyler's frown deepened. "Where did you get that, Bonnie?"
"I can't say."
"Bonnie…"
"Tyler, please don't ask. Just tell me what you know about this."
"I know it's got some serious mojo in it. Gemini mojo, to be specific. But I can't tell if it's good or bad. That's what worries me the most."
Bonnie stared at her wrist. Tyler's werewolf instincts picked up on these things.
"Can you at least say what it's meant for?"
Bonnie opened her mouth –
A knock on the door made them both jump.
"Hey, BonBon, are you and Lockwood making out or something? Because someone's going to be seriously piss…"
Bonnie pushed past Tyler, yanked open the door and glared at Damon. She wasn't worried that he had overheard them. She understood that vampires developed selective hearing, as a form of protection against an otherwise bombardment of auditory overload. So Damon would need to be actively eavesdropping to hear her conversation with Tyler. And if he had been, he won't have interrupted her when he did.
But his rudeness gave her an opportunity to vent at someone.
"Scram."
He gave her and Tyler a clearly disappointed look. "Oh. Clothes on. How boring…"
"Scram," she repeated, less politely.
"I'll leave you to it in a minute but Donovan's on a clock and we're waiting on you to go to the M.E.."
Bonnie nodded. "I'm on my way."
He shuffled off.
She waited until he was out of sight. But she didn't shut the door when she turned to Tyler and gave him a hesitant look.
"Bonnie…"
"I can't say, Tyler," she said honestly. "I… just can't."
He opened his mouth – then closed it, clearly checking what he was about to say. "Just be careful with that thing, Bon," were his unnerving parting words.
Bonnie shut the door behind him, and for a moment, she rubbed at the band, feeling tendrils of his magic.
It still didn't worry her. Maybe it should. But it didn't. And, if she were honest with herself, it was not just because she had so many more pressing things to worry about first.
She let go off her wrist, shoved off the door, and got a move on. Her day had barely started and it was already full.
May 2013
Whitmore
"Do you have plans for today?"
"Look, Kai…"
"Do you?"
Bonnie sighed. "No."
She could hear the grin in his voice over the phone. "Well, you plan on eating sometime, don't you?"
"Y-yes," she said warily.
"So why don't we do that, together? Let's say in two hours? My place? I know you know where I live."
"Kai, I don't think…"
"Or we could go out to eat? It'll be like a proper date and everything." His voice was light enough but there was the edge of a challenge in it.
She twisted the sheets of her dorm bed with her hand, and stared at the wall across from her. "I don't think this is a good idea, Kai."
"You promised you'd give me a chance, Bonnie." The determination his voice both beguiled and frightened her. How did her giving him a chance translate to having dinner with him? She wondered, despairingly.
"Kai…"
"It's just food, Bonnie. I promise. Nothing else."
Unless you want it to be more. She didn't need him to say the rest of the words, they were already echoing loudly in her head.
A few days ago, she'd have laughed – or thrown up – at the idea that she'd ever want anything more of that from Kai Parker.
Not anymore.
The idea of sitting across a table from him after everything that had just happened between them was enough to send her hyperventilating. And no way would it stop at just a harmless meal. As much as Bonnie had always liked to think that she had eons of self-control, she was fast finding out that that wasn't the case where Kai Parker was concerned. The best thing, she had told herself just that morning, was to avoid him completely until he left Virginia.
But at this moment, hearing his voice in her ear, tugging at her heart, making her body flush with memories and anticipation, a storm was churning through her and Bonnie couldn't think past it to anything she could do or say to get away from him.
She looked despairingly at Ms Cuddles lying beside her, and not for the first time in the past few days, Bonnie wished the bear could talk. Wished she had anyone to talk to. But Caroline had disappeared shortly after the wedding, gone back to wherever she had gone to before to deal with her mother's death and the horrible decisions that had followed that. And Elena was, as always, too caught up in her own drama to realize what was going on with anyone else.
"OK," she said, quietly. The word echoed in her room with a sense of finality. Not for the first time in the past couple of days, she felt like if the walls of a trap were closing in on her.
"Great," he said, and his voice tried to play it cool but she could hear the triumph in it. "Er… dress as you like. Just come with an empty stomach."
"Sure. Bye, Kai." She hung up, quickly.
Empty stomach, Bonnie thought, wrapping her arms around her waist and stared at Ms Cuddles. That was going to be hard. Right now, said stomach was full of butterflies and dread.
This was a mistake. She and Kai Parker. It was a bad idea in every possible way. A train wreck. A disaster just waiting to happen. And she was damned if she could think of anything she could do to stop it.
June 2014
Ranger, Wyoming
"You're making a mistake." Patrice Lang had spat a few moments after meeting the leader of the coven he had self-exiled from.
"Am I?" Kai had wondered, amused smirk on his face. Then he had reached for the man's throat and pulled out his magic, stopping just before the man had a fatal heart attack.
It was still enough to make the man faint away from shock, and Kai had placed a sleeping spell on him to be doubly sure. He had shoved the man into his own truck, put his own motorcycle in the back and driven the truck to his cabin. He let them both in, found somewhere to dump Patrice on, and then Kai progressed to take a ten hour nap. Porting across the greater United States for the past forty-eight hours, calling in favours from his allies and reeling in renegade witches took a toll on a warlock. Even a mega-powerful coven leader like himself.
The next morning, he woke up in top form. Lang was still down for the count, so Kai got busy, running magical traces over the wizard, reconstruction and Memorian spells through his house, and rifling detective-style through the man's things – mails, phone, even the decrepit looking computer in his office. There hadn't been much. His magical traces were routinely purged. His phone and mails were routinely cleared. Of course, that could have been down to habit – as the saying went, once an Envoy, always an Envoy.
Or maybe Patrice Lang had something to hide and was covering his tracks.
Kai's money was on the latter. His suspicions had formed when Rudolph reported that the ex-Envoy was proving difficult and now Kai was convinced. Patrice Lang knew a lot more about the strange goings-on with the heretics than he should. One way or the other, Kai was going to get to the bottom of things.
But first things first. Kai made himself a hearty breakfast. He found a fresh buck, of all things, skinned it, and made some good old venison stew. When it was ready, he even revived the old geezer and set a plate for him. Then Kai asked Lang to tell him the story about what he'd been up to since he deserted the Gemini. With the mildest of verbal motivations, the ex-Envoy spilled his tale.
A short tale, it was. Consisted mostly of hunting and mountain-climbing and a few get-togethers with some other renegade witches who had already chosen to return to the Gemini.
A short, harmless tale with no mention of heretics, or dealings with Joshua Parker. Or any of the things he had hinted at during his meeting with the Rudolph pack the night before.
A false tale.
Kai put a fork of venison in his mouth, savoured the taste with each chew before swallowing and washing it away with good ol' standard beer. "This is awesome. Nothing beats eating what you killed, right?"
Lang glared at him from across the table. His own plate of food was untouched.
Kai glanced at it as he cut his meat. "Most people are happy when I make breakfast for them. And you, my friend, look like someone who needs to keep an eye on his blood sugar."
"I'm no friend of yours, Malachai Parker."
"Nope, you are not. What you are," said Kai, talking as he chewed because the man clearly didn't deserve that much regard and the food really tasted that good, "is a grubby old timer, who licked the wrong boots and is now too busy licking his wounds to hear the sharks that've seen blood."
"Sharks?" barked Lang. "More like wolves. Wolves that you've let into our coven."
Yeah, someone like Lang would think that, Kai thought, giving him a mocking look. Old-school, and bigoted, the type of warlock that rose high during his father's watch. Kai remembered him from way back when. He had been close enough to Joshua and Micah that he had been a regular fixture in their house, and there was talk of him becoming the next Chief after the old one passed on. Talk that had even allowed him to weather over the scandal of trading in his twenty year old marriage for a union with a girl half his age.
His closeness to Kai's parents had also given him a great deal of leeway in the way he treated their oldest son, the potentially next Praetor. Lang had never been overtly offensive or abusive, but he had disliked and – Kai also realised in retrospect – he had been afraid of what Kai was, and hadn't bothered hiding it.
Now that Kai thought about it, he was certain that Lang had been one of the Envoys present on May 10, 1994.
That really should have been his first clue that Jo had planned to screw him over.
But that was two decades ago. Now Kai was Praetor. Lang's career as envoy ended after a skirmish with a rival coven had left him impaired; and, karmically, his young wife had immediately traded him for a much younger Lovegood. Now he was a fugitive, and a traitor and at Kai's mercy in every possible way.
Now, Joshua Parker was the head of the Council, and supposed to be at peace with – and even in active support of – his son's leadership. But, a nagging voice murmured in Kai's head, Lang's insinuations had hinted the opposite.
Kai eyed the aged ex-Envoy seated across from him, and mentally replayed the words he had overheard the previous day.
"He publicly endorses Malachai."
"Publicly."
What amounted to dirty politics was nothing, common fare in the coven, even in the family. But a twisted alliance with heretics?
"You've dragged the Gemini into dealings with wolves, shapeshifters, banshees and all manner of accursed creatures," Lang was still ranting.
"And all of them far more pleasant company than yours," Kai remarked with a sigh as he swallowed the last of the venison. He looked at his empty plate regretfully. "So, you ready to talk, yet?"
Lang glared at him, now choosing silent mutiny.
Well, Kai could play this game.
"Fun fact: The mundanes developed sodium penthotal to treat World War I vets suffering from PTSD. The chemical removed anxiety, fear, so to speak."
Lang blinked.
"Well, after that," Kai continued cheerfully. "it was a hop, skip and jump from thinking that if this drug could remove the fear of bad memories and experiences, it could also remove the fear of guilt. Ergo, truth serums." He smiled. "Ever heard of Veritork?"
The stoic look on Lang's face wavered.
Kai's smile broadened. "Ever watched the truth ripped out of someone's skull?"
The blood was slowly leeching out of Lang's face.
"Obviously, we're light years ahead of mundanes in the truth confession department, our method being actually effective when done properly, and therefore not against our laws. But the thing is… only very, very talented Envoys have actually performed a Veritork without leaving permanent damage on the subject. Maybe one Praetor back in the 13th century? You know, I never actually got the proper training to be one. Obvious reasons. Who knows what's going to be left of that brain of yours if I mix a little siphoning into the casting? There isn't much grey matter there to start with and by the time I'm done…"
"I told you everything I know!" Lang shouted. He was in a sorry state by now, pale and sweating.
"Really?" Kai wondered. "OK, let's try this again. We're going to be on a plane soon to Portland. And while we're on it, we're going to have a long talk. Maybe a change of environment is what you need to loosen your tongue a little. I'll even throw in some non-complimentary airplane wine, as well. Oh did I forget to mention that we're travelling first class?"
He winked at Lang, who just stared at him.
Kai shrugged. "There's no pleasing some people, is there? Well here's the deal. After you spill your guts – and I don't care if you do it by your own free will or if I have to use Veritork, but you will tell me everything, I promise you – you can come along with me and testify to the Council about my father's scheming, any other traitors and all the other stuff you claim you don't know but that I can practically see scurrying behind your eyes."
He waved his fork in the general direction of Lang's face. He might have waved them a little too close to the man's eyes. Might have also created a small illusion that had them flickering against Lang's lashes. Kai grinned at the look of fear on the other man's face. "You can do that, or you can do…" He let his words trail off menacingly then widened his eyes dramatically, and gasped in mock-surprise. "Oh, wait a minute! You don't actually have a choice here. It's one of those deals where you have to do exactly what I say or I invoke my mega-powerful leadership clot and squeeze out the life from your body. After I tear open your skull to get what I want, as you do." He winked.
Lang was ashen by now.
"So if you're not eating that," Kai said as he swapped his empty plate for the other man's, "then you'd better get packing. It's a long flight to Portland and you're never leaving there."
"You're throwing me into prison?" Lang said, his belligerent voice almost masking his palpable fear.
"It's all above book, you know. You used to be an Envoy. What's the going sentence for the witch who forswore allegiance to the leader and deserted the coven without due process? We'll start with treason and see where it goes from there."
"Treason?" Lang's laughter sounded like angry barking. "That's what you want to call it? Treason? Too cowardly to call it by the right name?"
"And what name will that be?" Kai asked pleasantly.
"Revenge. That's what you've been up to, haven't you? You and those heretics of yours. Abominations all of you. Taking us out one by one. Will I even make it to Portland or will I have an accident along the way?"
The smile on Kai's face vanished as his fist clenched and the man's larynx closed. "Firstly, they are not my heretics," he said, his voice like steel.
Lang boggled at him, his face turning purple as his liver-spotted hands clutched futilely at his throat.
Kai's hand fell open and the man almost fell, face-forward on the table. He stretched out his hands in time, catching himself, rasping painfully.
"Secondly," Kai continued, "if you want to know who's behind the deaths of the other witches in exile, then think about the person that's asked you all to remain in exile and out of the protection of the coven."
Lang opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes were angry, teary with pain, but there was a slyness in there as well.
Kai didn't like it.
"Get out of my sight before I mess up my own plans by killing you on the spot."
The man didn't need telling twice. Kai finished the venison, relishing every last bite, as his eyes stared sightlessly ahead of him. The kitchen windows faced the back, and all he could see were sparse trees and mountains in the distance. His senses were stretched, and he could feel Lang as he pottered through his room. He almost hoped the man would take a chance and try to escape. Take a chance that when – not if – Kai caught him, he won't really exercise his coven-anointed right to murder him on the spot.
Abominations, all of you.
That was the pesky thing about emotions. Words, of all the most ridiculous things, suddenly had power over you. To make you feel like a fucking King. Or to make you feel like someone had put a knife through you back and abandoned you in a cold hell to rot.
This was a mistake.
You haven't changed, have you? Deep down inside, you're still the same monster.
It was nothing. A moment of … madness. Magic. It meant nothing to me. Except for wishing it never happened …
The plate in front of him cracked. Kai cursed, his hand waving over it quickly, fixing it back. But the mess of stew was also running into the veins of the wooden table underneath, and spilling onto the floor.
He remembered another meal that had ended in a similarly disastrous way and he felt an invisible hand clamping over his ribs, pressing down on the muscle beneath it.
Damn her. Damn her a thousand times over. And damn him too for not being able to get her out of his heart, out of his head, out from under his skin. He thought he had done well enough that first night in Portland, his veneer of aloofness only cracking towards the end of that tense-filled conversation in the kitchen. But the next day, her words to Alaric were still fresh in his head, in his heart and he had been absolutely wrecked by the time she saw him again. And, of course, that was when she had offered herself up oh so completely in Jo's kitchen, and for a moment all he could see were her eyes, her mouth and all he could hear was his own blood roaring through his ears with the sheer want that had flooded him, mingled with the need for revenge.
Even now, Kai still wondered if he hadn't been a fool not to take up the offer that she was oh so easily, oh so foolishly making. Bonnie wanted to sacrifice herself and who was he to refuse her? The old him wouldn't have hesitated, would have delighted in screwing with her head and every other part of her that was on offer. Even the not-so old Kai, the one who was fresh out of the 1903 prison world, would have jumped at the chance to make her pay for daring to manipulate him yet again, to get back at her for hurting him even unknowingly, and let the pieces fall as they might.
But he was neither of those creatures now. It had been a year since he started letting himself sink into the discipline and isolation that came with his position, a year of learning and adapting to the new personality that had metamorphosed from his merge with his brother, a personality that he still wasn't quite sure he understood himself, or could define. Not for the first time Kai wondered – burdened as he was with this damned empathy that managed to both curse him with feelings and curse him with the inability to do anything about them – if Luke hadn't been the victor after all.
Take his father for another example. A year of working side by side hadn't stirred up any affection in Kai for the man but the thought that Joshua Parker was plotting against him left a bitterness in his mouth that tasted like betrayal.
He shivered a little under his light jacket, and it was from more than just his gloomy, despairing thoughts. It was colder than he had expected in this mountain country. What was taking the old man so long? Kai reached out magically to check on Lang, and that was how he caught the edge of it – void-like, cold, familiar and alien all at the same time.
Heretic.
In a flash, he was on his feet. In another flash, he was in Lang's room.
Gingerdee was there. He held the old warlock up against the wall with one hand, his fangs out and dripping while his other hand was raised above their heads, spelling out dark magic.
Mystic Falls
Like Gabriel and Victor Briggs, the two old wizards that the heretics had previously murdered, Judith Stewart, the old lady found in the motel the night before Bonnie left Portland – all bore identical injuries leading to death. There were two neat little bite holes in their necks, and, according to the M.E., some degree of blood loss. But not enough, she explained to Bonnie, Matt and Damon, to cause a heart attack-induced death, not even for people this age. Which contradicted what she had written in her autopsy report – an animal attack that led to blood-loss induced shock. But the old M.E. was pushing sixty, had lived in Mystic Falls all her life and was no stranger to the goings on of that town. She was familiar with all three and gave them not only a copy of the autopsy report, but her own unofficial, off-the-record conclusion:
Death by unknown natural causes.
After briefing them, the M.E. then gave Bonnie the usual opportunity to do what Bonnie regarded as one of the most traumatic part of this business – examining the new corpse. Bonnie donned disposable gloves, braced herself, and got down to it, concentrating on being as methodical as possible, even as she was flinching at the total lack of essence that was left within the body.
It only took a few basic spells for Bonnie to confirm what the others had already concluded – old Judith Stewart had definitely been a witch. And that was what made it even more horrifying for Bonnie.
Naturally, anything that was alive, or had been alive, should have some degree of life force, even if it was just an echo of it. It was why power could still be drained from the remains of long-dead witches, from Questiya's blood in the tomb, or the graveyard of a hundred witches. The body of a witch, even the corpse of one, should have been vibrant with life force.
Judith Stewart's body was an empty shell. Like the old wizards before her, nothing was left. The magic suckers had drained every last drop.
After it was over, Bonnie disposed of her gloves, smiled graciously at the M. E., picked up the reports, and signalled the guys that she was good to leave. On their way out, she stopped over at the bathroom on their way out and threw up Stefan's pastries.
She was still shivering as she and Damon drove back in the Camaro. Matt had said his good byes outside the M.E.'s office and headed back to the station.
Damon, in one of his rarely sensitive moments, hadn't said much to her, but when they got out at her building's garage, he gave her shoulder a reassuring rub.
"We'll get them soon, BonBon."
She threw him in a grateful smile.
He walked her all the way to her door, handing her over to his brother at the door. Stefan was apparently still doing guard duty at their flat.
When Damon left, they regarded each other with strained smiles.
"When does your shift end?" Bonnie asked.
Stefan chuckled softly. "In a hurry to get rid of me?"
Bonnie squeezed out a little more smile. "Just figured you needed a break from baby-sitting me." And last night's tete-a-tete aside, I think we still work best together in small doses. Also, my roommate seems to be avoiding you. Which means she's avoiding our flat.
While in the M.E.'s office, Bonnie had got a message from Caroline saying that she'd be out for most of the day, doing random chores. Now that Bonnie met Stefan in the flat, she knew why.
"Damon will take over tonight at the Lockwood mansion."
Bonnie blinked. "Huh?"
He tilted his head. "You and Caroline are moving out for a few days so that Matt and his deputy friends can vervain paint the flat."
Oh. That.
Bonnie nodded, and started walking to her room.
"Bonnie…"
She halted, turning her head to stare at him.
"About that tattoo…"
Stefan never finished that sentence, his voice trailing off at the look that must have been on her face.
"It suits you," he said finally.
The smile she gave him this time was almost wholehearted. He was learning.
She took another shower, washing away the stink of the dead and unnatural from her skin, then changed in the bathroom to a loose maxi dress that was hanging off the hook on the door.
Which turned out lucky for her, because it would have been very awkward if Bonnie had stepped out in her bra or less, to meet the black-haired vampire that was hovering over her desk, picking up the Gemini spell-books, examining each of them gingerly in the light through the window, a thoughtful frown on his face.
The sudden, unexpected, uninvited sight of him made her jump. She bit back a yell. "Damon!"
He started with alarm, one hand slamming so hard on her desk that she felt the vibration of magic from his lapus lazuli ring.
She marched up to him and tried to grab the book he was still holding on to. "What the hell are you doing here?"
He held on to it, grinning weakly. "Hey, witchy."
"Give that back," she snapped, trying – and failing – again to snatch them back. She folded her arms in exasperation. "Did you forget something?"
"Well, I-"
"Why are you snooping through my stuff?"
His face flickered rapidly through a series of looks too fast for her to understand – and finally settled on a mock-innocent one that was apparently supposed to disarm her.
It didn't.
"Give that here!" she said, and the book flew out of his hands into her own. She placed it carefully on the desk, and then whirled to face him.
He took a wary step back, arms raised high. "Hold your horses, love. I came in to tell you something then I got curious, OK? Wanted to see for myself what you've been up to. Anything good yet?"
Bonnie rolled her eyes, exasperated at him. She sat at her desk. "Between when I left you in the car and now? No. No new brain waves, Damon. Especially if I keep getting distracted." She gave him a pointed look.
He ignored that, waved a hand at the books on the table. "Not much to distract in these, is there? Looks like a whole lot of gibberish to me."
She snickered. "Well, it would, won't it?" She said. "The Gemini are hard-core, Damon. To read their spell-books you're going to need some witch blood in your DNA."
"Paranoid freaks."
She snorted, opening the Medeis Bestia and flipping through it. She paused at a page that carried a creepily familiar looking image, and read the text rapidly, humming softly to herself. Just as she had thought.
She whispered a temporary decryption spell over the page, and raised it towards Damon. "Look familiar?"
It was the image of a grotesque reptilian creature, its head crowned with four twisted and serrated horns.
He jumped. "Bloody hell!"
"That's your dragon from Christmas, isn't it? The one you guys talked about this morning…?"
"Father Christmas from hell," he said with a low whistle, staring at the page with morbid fascination. "Not the same guy per se. Give or take a few horns, a few extra limbs. But close enough, I reckon. He didn't start out looking like this, though. Won't have got away with so many murders if he had."
"OK, firstly, there are many scholars who don't even believe dragons exist because guess what? No one gets close to a dragon and has lived to tell for sure what a dragon even looks like."
"Bonnie–"
"Original shapeshifter? Original animagus? Demon? There isn't one definition in this book from about half a dozen different journal excerpts and this is a grimoire from one coven! Imagine how many different covens have tried to explain what a dragon is? The only thing they all agree on is that dragons are huge. I'm talking mind-breaking, astronomic proportions. Literally mind-breaking because they possess advanced mind control, and can appear to different things to several people in several places at once. Mundanes, witches, supernaturals — we're all vulnerable. Then that's saying nothing about their super strength, ability to do magic, breathe mystical fire that burns souls, inflict mass scale destruction on entire countries, -"
Damon scoffed. "Relax, sweets. I went mano o mano with one of these dupes last year. They're overrated."
"That's the other thing. It's impossible. I didn't want to say anything this morning because I wasn't sure and I didn't want to hash your squee. But I just checked and I'm certain now. You guys couldn't have defeated a Dragon on your own."
He scoffed. "Bonnie, I'd like to think-"
"No, Damon. You just couldn't have. Not without a Guardian."
He stared at her. "A Guardian? Like an Angel?"
"Well, sort of, yes. I mean, if – and it's a big if – then the theory goes that there are Guardian Spirits everywhere that act as Nature's counterbalances to demonic spirits of Dragons. They are immortal creatures, from which all magical bloodlines are culled. Only, you can't really invoke one. They only intervene on your behalf if you are found worthy…" Her voice trailed off as she noticed the glazed look creeping into his eyes.
"It sounds to me like someone is over-compensating for abandoning her friends to live a normal life as a mundane college student."
Bonnie slammed the book shut and folded her arms. "Fine. So how did you defeat your Dragon?"
He shrugged. "We managed. Cut a few deals. Ripped a few hearts. Tortured an Order of satanic monks into giving up some one-time-use-only super weapon and used it to kill Ugly here. The usual."
"That just proves that this must have been the usual run-of-the-mill fey shape-shifter then. Because there are no one-time-use-only super weapons that kill Dragons. Not unless a Guardian is wielding it!"
"So says your witch-geek textbook," he said with a dismissive sneer. "Those who can't do, teach. And what does this have to do with the heretics anyway? You know… our very real-and-present-danger?"
She deflated. "Not much."
"Get your head in the game, love."
She scowled. "It is. I busted my ass all night trying to get us out of this mess. Then Caroline dragged me out of bed before I could throw off my jet lag. Frankly, I'm exhausted so if you only came up here to micro-manage me…?"
"OK, OK." He shook his head ruefully and turned to go.
"Damon?"
He turned back. "What?"
She gave him a disbelieving look. "What? Didn't you have something to tell me?" When he looked puzzled, she shook her head at him. "You know, the reason you were here in the first place? Or did you really just come in here to poke and pry?"
"Oh, yeah. That." His face cleared; then became grave.
Apprehension crawled up her spine. "What is it, Damon?"
He gave her a look that was almost sympathetic. "I got the message after I left you. There were more attacks last night. A co-ed hall at Whitmore. Five died. All mundanes. A friend found them this morning and what he found…" He whistled softly. "It wasn't pretty."
"Oh my god," Bonnie whispered, sadness and anger warring inside her. "They haven't gone after humans in a while."
"Beggars can't be choosers. I guess after trying for you yesterday, they decided to take what they could."
Bonnie felt bile rise up in her throat. She didn't feel guilty. She didn't.
But still…
The vampire in her room didn't notice. He had filched another one of the spell-books and was flipping through pages he couldn't read. "With word of the heretics spreading, supernaturals have started giving this place a wide birth. And you're all sticking together like a pack. No breaching the lines here."
"We are sticking together like a pack because we learnt that the hard way," she said softly, her mind still on the deaths. "After Enzo."
He froze at that, his whole body becoming rigid.
Bonnie nearly kicked herself. She hadn't been particularly fond of Enzo – her memories of him were few and they were more bad than good – but his death had given the rest of them a chance and she had been grateful to him for that.
Damon's attitude after Enzo's death hadn't changed much. He had been bitter for about a day, but it seemed at the time, more anger at being 'beaten' by the heretics than loss of his oldest friend. So it was easy to forget just how close Damon had been to the dead vampire.
She guessed he had been mourning his friend in a way, all this while. What a far cry from the man that had been characterized by how obvious and volatile he was with his emotions. These days, he either seemed to keep them very well hidden, or he simply didn't feel things so deeply anymore.
Bonnie wasn't sure which was better.
"Sorry," she muttered now.
"Don't be, BonBon. We've all moved on splendidly since then, haven't we?" He threw her a glance with a smile that had too much teeth.
Bonnie ignored it, unwilling to delve further. Besides, she had other things to worry her. "What were their names?" She asked now.
"The what, love?"
"The names of the dead, Damon. What were their names?"
He shrugged. "No one important."
Why am I even surprised? She asked herself, glaring at him. "Of course," she snapped. "They were only mundanes."
He looked up then, his eyes wary. Then he shrugged, tried another of his flashy smiles. "Don't start again, BonBon," he said in the bored tones of a man who's had this discussion far too many times.
And he was right. Bonnie dropped it, already tired. "It wasn't that long they were found, right? Caroline and I were on campus this morning and everything was still normal. I guess Matt didn't get the news in time. But I'd have thought the M.E. would have been one of the first called to the scene."
His clumsy fingers dropped her book, and she cursed in the split-second it took for him to grab it before it hit the floor.
"Oops," he cackled.
"Give me that!" she snapped, snatching it.
"Sorry," he muttered. "Butter fingers. Your nagging is making me nervous."
"My nagging?" At that moment, there was a familiar beeping noise from the other side of her room, next to her pillow.
She gave him a "this isn't over yet" glare then rushed to get her phone. With a little shock, she realised that she had not only left it at home earlier, but she hadn't once checked it all day. She blinked at the number of voice messages, missed calls and text messages waiting for her. Most of them, she realized with a gulp, were from Liv Parker.
And a couple of them were from….
"Council Envoy Quentin Parrish?" She read out loud.
He was beside her in a flash. "Who?"
She rolled her eyes in exasperation that Damon had forgotten so soon. "Asshat from Portland. He…" she read his message quickly. "He got my message. He's in Virginia, and he'll be here this afternoon."
"Good," he said.
That was a surprise. "You're OK with this?"
"Why won't I?" he shot back, moving away.
"Because in Portland, you promised – and I quote – that you'd gift-wrap him and ship him off to the heretics if he ever stepped foot into town."
He didn't look back. "I changed my mind. We need all the help we can get, right? Especially after what happened to you yesterday and then the attack again last night."
Bile rose again in Bonnie's throat. "Yeah," she said, her voice strangled.
"Later, Bon."
She didn't look up as he left. Her eyes had turned inwards, as she remembered the last time she laid eyes on April Young and her unfortunate friend, the Martin kid. Blood. Gore. A crumple of ancient looking bodies, wearing incongruously 'hip' clothes. That strange emptiness even in death.
Horror filled her and despite the warmth of the day, she shuddered.
Ranger, Wyoming
Lang's face was a mask of fright and Kai thought, vaguely, that the man looked like if he was on the verge of a heart attack.
The heretic and the warlock both turned with equally horrified faces, when Kai stepped in, and the distraction was enough for Kai to motus the freakshow across the room.
Lang fell to his knees, choking. Kai rushed to his side, throwing a generic healing spell at the old man as he turned to face the heretic who was already on his feet.
"Kai Parker. What an unexpected delight," said Frederick Parker, Second of His Idiotic Name, or as Kai affectionately nicknamed him:
"Gingerdum. The pleasure should be all mine but didn't I kill you already?"
Frederick's mouth twisted scornfully. "You always did have a peculiar sense of humour. It manifested at the oddest of times. Particularly when we were feeding from you, I recall."
Anger flashed through Kai, burning him up like a torch and he only – barely – managed to hold back from striking with magic.
"You thought I was funny then? You should see me at a Gemini wedding. I have to be present for all of them as Praetor. Give a speech, too. I always try to make it funny, lighten things up. And you know the punchline that always gets them? It's when I re-enact how I lit up your family like a big, heretic bonfire last Spring. It gets everyone rolling on the floor every single time."
Frederick's face went from scornful to wrathful.
"Whoever thought that witches would find a joke about burning other witches so funny?" Kai mused.
The slicing spell was a doozy, hard, brutal, and fast; and enough to send a lesser witch to the floor in exactly sized slivers. Kai braced himself for it, his hands stretched out and ready to catch it, and when it hit, he absorbed the spell, feeling the charge of it, before he sent it back at the heretic with a little boost.
Frederick wasn't quite ready, dodging instead of absorbing it, and it clipped his shoulder.
Blood and gore sprayed against the wall beside him.
Kai didn't have time to savour drawing first blood. Eyes never leaving his foe, he pulled the old warlock to his feet. "Run," he hissed.
The ex-Envoy hesitated, his eyes wavering from Praetor to heretic.
Kai half-turned to shoot the man an incredulous look. "I don't have time for your suspicions, old fool," he snapped, and he shoved. Lang vanished.
"That was most impolite," Frederick said mildly. He had recovered somewhat, his shoulder – and arrogance – back intact. "I had not completed the act of murdering him."
"Yes, you and I need to talk about that. Murdering my witches. I think someone is trying to get my attention. Or trying to make me look bad. Or both."
"That statement implies that some degree of effort is required to discredit you. By my comprehension, your reign over the coven is unpopular and precarious."
"You know so much about me, already? I'm touched. Stalker." They were circling around each other now, tense and ready to counter-attack but knowing that whoever struck first put himself at an immediate disadvantage.
It was almost fun, Kai thought giddily. If you skipped over the part where he was going to yank out Frederick's spine via his throat and strangle him with it.
No, on second thoughts, that made it even more fun.
"I consider it of great import to decipher the weaknesses of the ones I am determined to destroy."
That made Kai laugh. "Pretty big words from a guy whose ass I kicked the last time when he came at me with a bigger army. If you ask me, someone here has a death wish." He dropped his voice into a mock whisper. "Spoiler alert: it's not me."
Frederick's balled his hand into a fist, magic flashing across his ringed knuckles and Kai grinned.
"The last time," he snarled, "we were insipid enough to put some degree of trust in your worthless person. In return, you broke faith with us. It is a mistake that will never reoccur, you treacherous viper."
"Famous last words. By the way, word of advice? You keep using these expressions – broke faith, treacherous, etc. I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
"You swore to us, syphons alike to your own nature, victims of a shared prejudice…"
Kai laughed bitterly. "And you were stupid enough to overlook the small fact that you… I dunno… fed and tortured me for weeks… totally destroyed whatever bond of syphon-brother-hood we could have had … and fell for that."
The heretic growled.
"But since you've brought up the topic of past encounters, maybe we can discuss the whole 'I killed Gingerdee and Gingerdum a year ago' and yet here you both are, alive? Can you run it by me again, how that did not happen the way I remember it? Because clearly my killing you didn't take."
Frederick glared. "I cannot commence to comprehend what inanity you speak! Your deplorable use of contractions and concocted idioms will send me to the asylum!"
"OK, let me put in smaller words then: How the fuck are you and your bitch sister still alive?" Kai snapped.
For the first time, Frederick smiled. "By my admittedly limited grasp of contemporary vocabulary, I understand that there is an appropriate expression for this. I believe it goes thus: 'won't you like to know?'"
And with a small 'pop', he ported.
For a moment, Kai blinked, staring dumbly at the space where the heretic had stood a few minutes ago. Then it hit him. While they had been circling each other, the bastard had turned him around completely. They were now standing in each other's starting positions – and Frederick hadn't just ported from some random location. He had ported from exactly where Kai had shoved Lang out of the room.
Frederick the heretic had come for Lang, not Kai. And now he had gone after his original target.
With a curse, Kai went after both.
Whitmore
Quentin Parrish stepped into the flat, visibly shuddered at the sight of so many vampires, and muttered a curse under his breath.
"Are these necessary?" he asked Bonnie, his gaze shifting warily from Stefan's calm demeanour, to Caroline's bubbly smile, to Damon's sinister grin, fangs and all.
A few moments ago, Bonnie had been grateful that these three made it. Tyler and Matt were still on duty. Damon had turned up so late, she half-suspected that despite his earlier words, he had considered avoiding the Gemini. She was certain that Caroline had almost bailed to avoid Stefan.
But now, watching the look on Quentin's face, she wondered if she hadn't been better off meeting him with just Stefan instead of three vampires.
Over his shoulder, she glared at Damon until, with a wink at her, he retracted his fangs.
She bit back a sigh, and turned her gaze back to Quentin. "We're all in this together. You are safe with them. I assure you."
That was apparently the wrong thing to say because he bristled at that. "I'm not worried about myself, Ms. Bennett. I am the Envoy to the Council of the Gemini Coven. Believe me when I say I can take care of myself." He frowned at her. "I'm more worried about you. Why do you surround yourself with so many of these nefaria?"
The air in the room became frosty.
"What does that mean?" Caroline asked, innocently, smile still bubbly.
From the look on his face, Quentin probably found her ignorance even more offensive than her being a vampire.
"I don't think-" Bonnie placated.
"It means 'Abomination'." It was Stefan that answered in a cold, quiet voice. "That's how vampires are regarded by the Gemini coven."
Caroline's bubbly façade switched to her bitch face in a heartbeat – and unlike Damon, she didn't need fangs to look intimidating.
"Excuse me but these abominations are standing right here."
Quentin opened his mouth – and Bonnie jumped in before another supernatural fight kicked off in her flat. They had only just got out the bloodstains from the carpet.
"Please, let's get this over with quickly. In your messages, you mentioned something about a magical scan? A way of filtering through the scene of the attack for traces or clues?"
"Clues to what?" Damon barked. "It's not exactly a whodunit when we know who did it."
"Damon," Stefan warned.
"What?" his brother retorted. "This is a waste of time. Unless you like being insulted on your own turf, then I guess you're having a rollicking good time then. By the way, I remember saying something about never seeing Asshat's face in my town…"
He was getting to his feet, and Bonnie was already stretching out a hand to immobilise him, when Caroline crept up behind him and snapped his neck.
"Ouch," Stefan deadpanned.
Caroline shrugged.
Bonnie covered her face with her hands, but not before she saw the disgusted look on Quentin Parrish's face.
His voice was positively frosty. "Shall we proceed?"
Bonnie was feeling a little disgusted herself. So much for Damon's pragmatic, 'we need all the help we can get' attitude that morning. The moment someone had brushed against his enormous ego, he had reverted to his typical brat-mode.
Bonnie had got the names of the five students from Caroline – who had acted surprised that Bonnie knew. Bonnie imagined that there must have been some sort of deal to keep it from her, to make her not feel bad or something since the attack had directly followed the foiled attempt on her. Only one name had sounded vaguely familiar and when Bonnie checked it against the campus directory, she realized that he had been one of those people she used to bump into during her mornings in the old cafeteria.
Gone too soon. For reasons he would never understand.
Bonnie told herself again that she didn't feel guilty.
She didn't.
Now, flanked by Caroline and Stefan, Bonnie led the Gemini Councillor to her room, the scene of the attack. The three stood back and watched him cast a complicated series of spells and suddenly the room which was lit up through the open curtains with the afternoon sun, suddenly plunged into darkness, silent except for the sound of his chanting.
Bonnie gasped as her head jolted with a sudden sharp spike, that fizzled into a dull throb.
In a flash Caroline was by her side. "What-?" she started, but her words stopped, when the darkness was suddenly filled with an eerie ghostly light. Bonnie could see her room again, but it was as if she was looking through layers of thick film. And there was a certain oddness about the room – her luggage had returned, unpacked, to the foot of her bed, the spell-books she had carefully concealed in her closet were back on the desk – that confused her until it hit her.
She turned to Caroline, and registered that in contrast to the rest of the room, her friend and the others – Stefan, Quentin – looked vividly normal.
"He's recreated the room as it was yesterday, before the attack." She whispered to Caroline and the words were barely out of her mouth before her own image appeared, sitting at her desk.
"I felt something. Pain in my head. Not an aneurysm, more like a quick migraine," Caroline said. Across the room, Stefan nodded in agreement.
Quentin's chanting stopped. "I'm conjuring the scene, calling up from your memories, both conscious and subconscious, and the lingering auras what happened here. Hence the one side-effect – a slight headache that would soon pass," He turned on his heel. "Come."
"You might have mentioned the side-effects first," Caroline snipped.
He didn't deign to response; grumbling slightly, they followed him out of the room, through the rest of the eerily distorted house, and watched the front door open to let in the fiery-headed heretic. Not for the first time, Bonnie wondered if the Invitation Barrier really didn't work on them because of their hybrid nature, or if they simply siphoned it off.
"Even images you did not directly witness can be recalled, with a powerful enough aura," Quentin continued.
Just looking at the heretic made Bonnie shudder.
Caroline's arm went round her shoulder at once. "She can't hurt you."
"She is just shadows and memory," Quentin added. His gaze turned thoughtful. "I remember this creature from the Battle of Mystic Falls."
"I know she can't," Bonnie said in answer to Caroline. "I still feel like kicking her face in."
Caroline chuckled.
"Shhhh," Quentin said prissily. "Your chattering will disturb the casting."
Bonnie and Caroline exchanged identical looks. Seriously? Because he hadn't been worried about his casting when he was giving a running commentary.
So much for her resolve not to call him by the nickname she had given him.
Asshat.
But everyone fell silent as they followed the heretic as she made her way through the house. She moved quickly, deliberately towards Bonnie's room in a way that made Bonnie's skin crawl.
When the heretic attacked the Bonnie sitting on the bed, the real Bonnie looked away, disturbed at the scene.
Caroline turned Bonnie's face into her shoulder.
"I demand your Expression. Yield it to me or face your demise."
"Expression magic? You had Expression?" Quentin's voice was sharp, almost accusing.
Bonnie lifted her face from Caroline's shoulder to look at the man. He was standing beside the wall where the image of Bonnie being held up by the fiery heretic was frozen.
"Past tense. I used it up when I drew on it to fight off the heretics in the 1903 prison world."
"When you fetched them?"
That made her snap to attention. "I didn't fetch the heretics from there, what the hell?"
"Apologies," he said quickly, turning back to the ongoing scene. "The details are not important."
"Of course, they-"
"Shush for a moment, please. I need to observe. The spell can not be repeated."
So Bonnie had to wait, bristling with anger and a rising headache, watching herself be mauled at by the heretic. Watching her and her friends roundly kick ass, too. The concentrated loathing on Georgiana Parker's face as she saw Damon, just before she turned into a human-shaped torch made Bonnie feel slightly better.
Slightly.
When it was over, Quentin did another series of complicated casting, and the darkness descended. Then lifted. The room was back to normal.
Bonnie left Caroline's side to glare down the other witch.
She was smaller, shorter but her fury made him take a step back.
"You and I are going to need to iron out these details of yours. Because we're not going to make much progress working together if your coven suspects that I'm in some conspiracy with the same heretic you just saw try to eat me."
"I never said-"
"Oh, come on," Stefan drawled from where he stood near the door.
Quentin glared at him, obviously infuriated at another vampire speaking out of turn. Then he turned back to Bonnie with a semi-apologetic expression on his face. "Our coven is suspicious of everything and everyone. It is how we have survived this long. Don't take it personally."
If that was supposed to mollify Bonnie, it failed spectacularly. "Too late."
He nodded. "Fair enough." For a moment, they stared each other down. He broke the gaze first, and instead his eyes travelled from the top of her head to the bottom of her shoes.
What the-
He glanced around Bonnie, then actually walked around her, his pale eyes clearly scrutinising every aspect of her person.
"What the hell are you doing?" Bonnie cried.
"Trying to find…" he murmured absent-mindedly, still walking around her. His hand lifted and she felt the warm stroke of probing magic touch her.
Her right wrist burned.
"Hey!" She yelped.
In a flash Caroline was between her and the wizard. "She said, 'hey'," Caroline snapped. "Translation: 'back off or I'll define abomination on your face.'"
Quentin sniffed. "Your vampire's threats are not appreciated, or necessary. I was only trying to see what kind of protection or ward you had that prevented the heretic from siphoning you."
"You could have just asked," Bonnie snapped.
He bowed his head. "Of course, my apologies, Ms. Bennett." He paused, expectantly staring at Bonnie.
Bonnie and her friends stared back at him. What now?
"May I know what you used to protect yourself?" He asked, finally.
Bonnie started. Ordinarily, she would have just admitted that she didn't know – had no idea why Georgiana Parker had failed – but he had already raised her hackles and she hesitated. Instinctively, her right arm went behind her. She was wearing long sleeves, precisely to keep her strange band covered, but in her clumsy nervousness, she did precisely what she was trying to avoid and drew his attention to her wrist.
"What is that?" He said at once, trying to turn to catch a glimpse of it. But Caroline kept standing in his way.
If Bonnie had a dollar for every-time Quentin Asshat had sniffed since he stepped into her house, she'd have enough money to get a matching tattoo on her left wrist.
"I felt a surge of magic from there." He pointed vaguely towards Bonnie's right hand, craning his neck around Caroline. "Is that a ...?" Suddenly, his eyes sharpened and he drilled them into Bonnie's face. "Where did you get that from?"
Get what from? Bonnie felt like screaming. First Tyler. Now Asshat. What the hell had Kai put on her?
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Stefan shift into increased alertness, his eyes also sharp and probing on her.
Great. Just what Bonnie needed from that corner.
"She got it from a tattoo parlour," Caroline snapped. "Can you stop talking to Bonnie like if she's a suspect here? She's the one that was attacked, remember? She came to your stupid coven, remember?"
He glared at her. "Your comments have been noted, vampire. I am done here. I will report my findings to the Council. But before I leave…"
He lifted a hand, blinked hard – and a familiar set of tomes flew right into his hand almost as if from thin air.
Bonnie gasped. The other two vampires tensed at once.
"Excuse you?" Caroline managed to ground out.
"I thought I recognised the Gemini grimoires," Asshat muttered, examining the books.
"Those are-" Bonnie started angrily, then fell silent.
He eyed her sternly. "Borrowed with the authorisation of the Council, I presume?"
"I guess this explains why nothing ever gets with the Gemini Council. You're too busy being over-zealous librarians," Bonnie said waspishly, not caring that she probably wasn't helping things. Damn it. She should have called Liv back, or texted or something.
Damn it!
"The Council approves the distribution of any part of the Gemini Coven's body of knowledge to parties outside the coven. Where did you get these from?"
Bonnie was silent.
"Never mind. I will find out."
He marched to the door where Stefan stood blocking his way.
Quentin sighed. "Ms. Bennett, kindly tell your vampire to get out of my way."
Stefan merely raised an eyebrow. Then he looked over the man's shoulder at Bonnie.
Bonnie shrugged helplessly.
Stefan stepped aside. With one last sniff of disapproval, Quentin Asshat, Envoy to the Council of the Gemini Coven, was gone. Along with Liv's spell-books and probably the last foundations of Bonnie's shaky standing with the Gemini.
Everyone looked at everyone else when the door slammed.
"What the heck just happened?"
Ranger, Wyoming
How the heck did I let this happen?
Kai was too late.
The heretic was already fangs deep in Lang's throat, and the old warlock was twitching, as his life was drained out of him.
Cold fury rushed through Kai and he let his rage out in a combined vatos and motus. It sent the heretic flying through the cabin, loose furniture and objects flying with him in small explosions that propelled him from the end of the cabin, through the wall and out.
Kai didn't give chase to finish him off, but rather he rushed to Lang, grabbed the old man with both hands and ported them out of the cabin.
They landed in the middle of the motel room that Kai had rented for his brief stay in Wyoming.
Lang slid onto the floor, his limbs cold and flopping, but the gushing blood that rapidly soaked through the dirty motel carpet meant he was still alive. Kai fixed that quickly, staunching the flow, then he leaned over the man, pressing his hands on his chest as he drew on everything he had to force the life to stay inside.
Lang's eyes had been shut all this while, and now they flew open, and stared at Kai intensely.
He shook his head. "Too… late…"
"Don't you dare die on me, you old bastard," Kai muttered, and he sent a bolt of power that must have felt like an electrocution through the man's heart.
Lang jerked, gasping, and for a moment Kai thought the magic had taken. Then he fell back to the floor, and the wound on his neck re-opened.
"No!" Kai shouted.
Lang moaned a low "Oh" and his hand found Kai's wrist. "Live…"
"Keep quiet and let me fix you," Kai snapped.
"Too… late… for … me…" Lang managed. He coughed, and blood sprayed on Kai's face. "Betty. Find… Betty."
"Bethany Stewart?"
"Help her… tell her… o…" His next words were drowned by the flood of blood that gushed out of his mouth.
"Stop talking," Kai said urgently. "You're making it worse."
Somehow Lang managed to gargle out the next words. "Tell… her that… live… her… We… were wrong. Don't… trust…"
"Don't trust who?"
"Live… you must…"
"I will," Kai said as fervently as he could. "I will live. Tell me. Don't trust who?"
The man shook his head, his eyes desperate. He took a deep shuddering, bubbling breath. "Pa… Par…"
"Don't trust who?!"
But all that came out of Lang's mouth was another gush of blood. Then his eyes turned glassy.
The magic that Kai had been pushing into the old man, recoiled furiously, all but shoving Kai across the room.
Patrice Lang, ex-Envoy, almost-Chief, honourably discharged after an injury in the line of duty – was dead.
And with him, his secrets.
Whitmore
"Spill it, Damon."
"What?"
"The secret, elaborate scheme you're plotting to get back at Caroline for snapping your neck."
His eyes widened with innocence. "BonBon, I already said it was no big deal."
Her head was pounding and Bonnie almost tore at her hair in frustration. "We don't have time for your pettiness! You'll start something and it will escalate and I have so much more important things to worry about right now. So just snap her neck already and call it even."
"You wound me, Bonnie, with your suspicious mind." He placed his hand over his heart, and she almost used magic to tear it out.
Instead she glared as he smirked away, leaving her frustrated.
At least, Matt, Tyler, and a few of their fellow deputies were here to start vervain-painting the rest of the house, and therefore there were more buffers between the two vampires. At least until they got to the Lockwood Mansion, where she and Caroline were supposed to crash until the work was done.
Where Damon was supposed to take over sentry duty from his brother.
Bonnie groaned. It was bad enough that her non-vampire physiology meant that, unlike Caroline and Stefan who had shrugged it off almost immediately, Bonnie still nursed a headache from Asshat's memory spell. But now this? She did not have time for this! She had luggage to pack, and heretics to murder. If Damon tried anything with Caroline, she'd aneurysm him until he passed out, grab his daylight ring and lock him up in the Lockwood's cellar.
Moments later, she was in her room, almost done packing. Her spell-book was the last thing she packed. After the initial shock, Quentin Asshat's high-handed confiscation of her Gemini reference texts had been more embarrassing than anything else. Thanks to Bonnie's own drive, and maybe the nagging of the Salvatore brothers, she had gleaned as much pertinent information from the Gemini Grimoires as she could do while she had them. Enough that, she had come up with something that – if she said so herself – was a brilliant game plan in their battle against the heretics.
She just needed a few hours to fine tune it before she told the rest.
A few restful hours. And being stuck in a Mansion with Caroline and Damon at the moment was not going to get her that.
She was zipping up her bag, still fighting that headache, when her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She pulled it out and gulped at Liv Parker's name flashing on the screen.
The phone stopped ringing; Liv was probably leaving her twentieth voicemail in Bonnie's inbox now.
It was the crappiest of the crappiest of crappy bad timing. Bonnie had no idea what to tell Liv. It was bad enough that she had taken the Grimoires without properly asking for them – but to have got them confiscated by a member of her Council?
Bonnie was about to turn off the phone's LED light when it started ringing again – startling her so badly that she tapped it open.
Shit!
"Hello? Bonnie?"
Silence.
"I can hear you breathing, you know."
"Er… Liv. Hi. How are you doing?"
There was silence. Bonnie was just about to quickly end the call – when Liv spoke up. "Can someone say Hallelujah? Bonnie Bennett actually picked up my call."
Bonnie cringed at the clear irritation in the other woman's voice. "Yeah, er… Sorry about that. Been kind of busy. You know, fighting against witch-vampires that your coven refused to help us kill."
"Are you guilt-tripping me, Bonnie, really?"
"A little?"
Liv snorted. "Just tell me my spell-books are safe."
"Yeah. About. That."
"What?"
"Liv, are you sitting down?"
"Am I…" She must have taken the phone away from her mouth to hyperventilate – or curse quietly. When she spoke again, her voice was eerily calm in a way that did not calm Bonnie at all. "Bonnie, where are the Grimoires?"
"It's kind of hard for me to explain over the phone right now," Bonnie said weakly. "Maybe I can call you back?"
"Oh, don't worry about that." On cue, Bonnie heard the doorbell of her apartment ring. "I'm right outside. You and I can have a nice, long, face-to-face chat."
May 2013
Whitmore
Kai tried to put the long tête-à-tête with his father out of his mind. Joshua Parker thought he was close to figuring out his son's secret but all he had were vague suspicions that would never amount to anything more. The heretics were all dead and gone, and with them the truth.
All the conversation had succeeded in doing was throwing Kai off his game when he had more important things to worry about – like the sauce taking longer than he expected, and the pan of onion rings that he had only just put on the burner.
Then the doorbell rang, for the second time in less than half an hour and his magic spiked, all but jumping out of his skin, and sending flames flaring out of the pan. He put that out with a dishrag and another oath, and paused at the sink, trying to make himself calm down. The bell rang again and all thought of calm flew out of his head as he rushed to door, his hands clenched into tight fists, and his heart jumping fast. Bonnie was going to be here any moment and if Joshua had another barrage of questions for him, pax or not, Kai was going to punch his father in the –
He yanked open the door and his mind seemed to stop working for a few seconds.
Bonnie Bennett stood on his threshold. Dressed in her trademark sinfully short denims, a loose green blouse, and the look on her face indecipherable as she stared up at him.
For a moment, they just regarded each other in silence. Relative silence, that is, since Kai's heart was pounding in his chest as he struggled to get a hold of his magic that had been rushing towards her from the moment she was near, aware of her presence long before his mind had registered it.
Struggling to get a hold of his body, too. That was all too recently, and too intimately acquainted with her own.
She broke their locked gaze first, her eyes glancing slightly towards his ear as a single eyebrow went up.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?"
Kai opened his mouth to say something – what he didn't know – but no sound came out. One dainty eyebrow climbed higher on her smooth forehead and he felt his face flushing. Wordlessly, he stepped to the side, holding the door out wide.
She stepped across the threshold, after throwing a passing glance at him, then turning quickly, her eyes scanning through the house, stopping at the dinner table with the place mats already set.
Not quick enough for him not to see the slightly rosy hue of her cheeks.
It gave him a bit of confidence.
"I'm sorry, dinner isn't quite ready. I-I er had an unexpected visitor earlier."
Bonnie nodded, turning slowly, so that her body was angled just a little towards him. He came to stand beside her, and felt her tense. A few days ago, he would have said for sure that it was with hate, with fear, but now he wasn't so sure.
He wanted to touch her. Badly. He had to curl his hands back into fists to fight the urge. She was right there with her skin, smelling ever so slightly of oranges, her hair long enough now to cover her nape, making him perversely want to lift it up to feel the flesh underneath. Her hands were resting on the chair in front of her, lightly he thought at first, but on closer look, he saw how the skin stretched across her knuckles.
"Dinner," she said, her voice low and Kai bent his head towards her, partly to catch it and partly because he needed an excuse to come closer.
"Yeah," he said, his voice breaking slightly, making him turn red again. "It'll be ready in a few minutes." He recollected himself enough to straighten up, and pull out a chair.
She took it, after a wary glance at him, and he pushed it in. But not before he got a glimpse of more golden skin as her shorts rode up her thigh, or the pink lace of her bra through her wide collar.
The blue flame of the gas burner flared up a little.
Bonnie jumped, startled.
"Sorry," Kai muttered, rushing to the stove, and making a show of turning down the burner. The sauce was done, perfect. Dishing the food gave him something to do.
"Need any help?" She asked.
"N-no," he managed. Even though it was slightly risky, with his pulse jolting erratically, he muttered the spell that sent the plates landing perfectly on the table, as well as the bottle of white wine and even lit up the candles.
He turned to see the look of reluctant admiration on her face. "Nice," she said. "You're gonna have to teach me that one." Then her face twisted but not before his lit up. Because the idea of Bonnie thinking about a future where they hung around each other enough and she trusted him enough for him to teach her magic filled him with glee.
He sat down across from her, watching her as she watched him, then eyed the plate before her warily.
"You're going to love this. The guy on the Food Network listed it as one of his top three most delightful and most difficult meals ever."
She picked up her fork, looking at him through her lashes. "You don't seem worried about the most difficult part."
Kai shrugged, smiling smugly. His own fork stayed on his plate, his eyes on Bonnie as her lips closed around her food. He knew the exact moment the nerves from her taste buds reached her brain. The way her eyes widened, then closed from sheer pleasure. The exhalation of breath that had barely suppressed a small moan.
Under the table, he felt himself tighten and even though his mouth was empty, he swallowed hard.
Whose bright idea was it to have dinner in his house with her? The next hour or so was going to be torture.
She chewed and swallowed with her eyes closed, her shoulders twitching slightly all throughout and when she opened her eyes to see him watching her, her face reddened a little.
"What do you think?" he asked, cool as a cucumber, even managing a little smirk just before he popped his own forkful into his mouth. He hummed happily. Even he had to say so himself, he was damn good.
Bonnie smirked back. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're a good cook. Your thanksgiving dinner was the nicest I'd had in a long time."
The food in his mouth turned into sand.
Kai stared at her, his heart pounding now for a completely different reason as he stared at the cool anger on her face.
He put down his fork slowly. "I'm surprised you remember what the meal tasted like. You barely touched your food."
"I had enough to remember. I remember how I kept wishing that I could relax and enjoy it but I couldn't stop feeling that the moment I dropped my guard, you were going to try and stab me in the back." Her lips twisted wryly. "Considering what happened next, that's almost funny."
He felt like if he was the one being stabbed now. "No," he said hoarsely. "No, it's not."
Bonnie shrugged. "I think it is. Two days later, Damon and Elena showed up and I spent the whole day driving across country to meet them. And well, you know how that ended." He felt another knife stab through him. "I kinda knew somehow that they weren't coming back."
She snorted softly, and he bit back a plea to ask her to stop. "But I hung in there for a bit. Hung out in Elena's room for days, told myself it was all that driving that made me feel like I couldn't get out of bed. I finally put myself together long enough to go back to the boarding house. But it was days before I made myself a proper meal."
Her eyes were faraway in her bleak face. "There was one night when I literally woke up from hunger, and I went rifling through the Gilberts' fridge for snacks. And I couldn't stop thinking, of all things, of how I should have finished my thanksgiving dinner when I had the chance. Goodness knows, you gave me more than enough time to."
"Bonnie…" He all but begged.
"In case you're wondering why I'm telling you all this, it's because I'm wondering how the heck you thought it was good idea for you to ask me over for another one of your home-cooked dinners. And how the heck I agreed to this in the first place."
Her words were so calm, so levelled that it was only the sense of her magic flaring that warned him a split-second before she shot out of her chair, and marched towards the door.
Kai had been frozen in his seat all through her narration, but now he was on his feet like a jack-in-the-box and, moving so fast that he must have subconsciously ported, he was between Bonnie and the door a split second before her body slammed into him.
Shock filled her face, her hands hitting his chest to push herself away but he grabbed onto her bare arms, held on for dear life.
"A chance. You promised. Remember?"
Her eyes were too angry, the blood and magic under her veins spiking so violently, that his palms burnt where they gripped her skin, fiery, silky and slippery as she struggled in his grip, but he didn't let go. "This was a mistake."
"No," he said urgently, desperately, speaking so quickly his words fell over each other. "It wasn't. I know I'm new at this emotions thing. But I wasn't being some insensitive jerk when I set this up."
"Let me go, Kai."
"Just listen, OK? I read about this in a book. You can't imagine how many books there are out there for people like me. Or at least, people who were like me. Like I was. I mean… I read this book, and it said this was something we had to do. Redo the bad memories. Take away their power."
Bonnie stopped struggling to stare at him, incredulity streaked across her face. "You read a couples' counselling book for sociopaths? Don't you think that was, I dunno, a hell lot of being presumptuous?"
He squeezed her arms, drawing her nearer, almost reflexively. "I don't know everything, Bonnie… I'm learning. I'm trying to do this right. I'm trying to do right by you."
She shoved at his chest again, but weakly now. "This was a mistake."
"No, it wasn't."
The look she threw at him was tired. "I got carried away. We both did. There's no way this was ever going-"
Kai bent down and kissed her, partly to get her to stop talking before she said something she felt she couldn't take back and partly because he had been burning to do so for the past fifteen minutes, no, the past forty six hours, and eleven minutes and he couldn't hold himself back a second longer.
Bonnie froze in his arms, her body stiff and still as a rod, and for a horrible moment, he thought he had made another mistake. Another bad move. Another thing that he won't be able to take back.
Then her arms slid across his chest to grip his back and she opened her mouth, deepening the kiss as she stepped right into him.
Stars exploded behind his eyes as he groaned, his hands slid up her arms, stroking her neck under her hair, then sliding over the back of her head, holding her in place as their mouths mated desperately. He could feel her small hands on his skin through his shirt, and it wasn't near enough and so he sent it away, feeling her gasp when her small hands now burnt palm-shaped prints into his bare skin.
Her gasp broke the kiss, and he quickly slid his mouth down her throat to see if she still tasted the same, and damn, she did, like everything delicious and intoxicating and when she gasped again, her body arcing into his own as he bent her half over, his hand sliding down her back to grip her ass, slam her hips right into the ache in his groin.
Dimly, he heard the curtains in his room flapping wildly, the overheard lights dimming in and out but only dimly, because he had turned them around so that her back was against the door, lifting her by her ass so that her legs could hook around his waist, all the while without lifting his mouth from her skin.
"Kai," she gasped, her voice so low it thrummed through his bones, and her hand was clutching his hair, keeping his head in place as he pushed down her blouse, his greedy eyes desperate for a proper view of that lace, and his mouth all but watering at the memory of the delicious skin underneath it.
The knock on the door sounded so far away, like something from someone else's bad dream, that it took Bonnie's hand, painfully yanking his head up by his hair and her wild eyes, staring at him, before he heard it.
"Kai! I need to speak to you right now."
Joshua.
The murder in his heart must have shown on his face because Bonnie's own face twisted, and before he could blink, she had slipped out of his arms and was standing beside her chair. As he watched, her hands raised up to fix back her hair, she murmured a spell, and he felt the trickle of magic as she 'fixed' her entire appearance. In a split second, her outfit was unruffled, her makeup was unblemished and that wild, flushed look on her face had disappeared.
It killed him a little. He was walking to her, instinctively, without any other thought in his head but to make her look as dishevelled as she did a moment ago, and her hand came up. Her magic held him in place.
"Bonnie…"
"You should see to that."
"Bonnie," he tried again, wanting to explain, to wipe away that split-second that she had looked into his face with fear. But every-time he tried to make a move towards her, his feet froze.
"Malachai!" Joshua yelled through the door.
"I'm coming, dammit!" Kai yelled.
The knocking ceased.
Bonnie flinched.
It was enough to make someone go mad, Kai thought half-hysterically. The more Joshua angered him, the more it frightened Bonnie; the more she was frightened, the more he felt like sending a wave of magic through that door to implode his father's skull.
"Bonnie," he tried again.
"You really should get that," she said quietly. She turned towards the table, and the spread on it. He had no idea how much time had passed since they both left the table. The glasses had overturned, probably from the force of magic a few moments ago, and the wine stained the cloth, dripping on the floor. But the food still looked warm and tempting and that almost set him off again.
"This will just take a minute," he said finally. "Coven business."
She nodded.
"Don't…" He managed a gasp of laughter. "Don't go anywhere."
She gave him a thin-lipped smile.
He nodded nervously, then went back to the door, and he reached for the knob.
"Kai," she called out.
He turned back at once. "Bonnie?"
She waved a hand in his general direction, her face flushing. "Your shirt." What she actually meant was the lack of one.
Not for the first time, he felt his face flood with embarrassment in front of Bonnie. But it was worth it to see the way her eyes glanced over his chest, then looked away, her skin darkening even further.
He snapped his fingers, and he was in one of his t-shirts.
"And your…" One hand twirled over her face, then pointed at him. "You might want to fix that, too."
He smirked. "Do I?"
She shrugged, still flushing. "I'd prefer it, actually."
Disappointment filled him. "Of course," he said, with bite. She clearly didn't want his father to walk in and get the right impression about what just almost happened between them. He muttered the spell she had used – useful thing that, he had never known it before – and he almost felt his blood cool somewhat. "Satisfied?"
She shrugged again, and looked away.
His jaw was clenching as he yanked open the door to glare into his father's equally furious face.
"Listen, Joshua," Kai started.
"No," his father growled. "You listen, Malachai. I've been in the flat across from yours."
Shock went all the way from the top of Kai's head to the bottom of his shoes.
Oh no.
He hadn't had the time to go through that place. Too much had happened since the wedding and he had only barely muttered a simple Erasorio spell the night he had stumbled into his own apartment.
"Joshua…"
"Start talking, Malachai."
Somewhere at the back of Kai's mind had lain the thought that he needed to scour that place magically and ensure that no trace was left of what had been there. But it had been vague, buried under too many other things. It had raised its head a little this afternoon when Joshua had shown up with his questions and suspicions but Kai had something… someone more important to worry about.
Someone who was standing in his kitchen now, listening to every word that was about to be said.
Without a backwards glance, he walked out of his flat, shoving his father into the hallway as he slammed the door shut behind him.
"Get out of my building," he snarled.
"Not until I get to the bottom of this."
"I don't have time for this and you're forgetting that Head Councillor or not, you don't call the shots here."
"You're going to make time, Kai. Or I'm going and then I'm coming back with the Council, and the Elders, and the Envoy chiefs and I'm going educate you on just how much power you think you have."
Magic rushed to his fists and he felt his father's aura flare right back. Kai almost laughed. "You want to duel, Dad?"
"I want the truth." If Kai didn't know any better, he could have sworn that laced into the anger in his father's voice, was disappointment. "I vouched for you. I brought the coven to your side. So you'd better start talking about what really happened in 1903 with those heretics, Malachai."
Kai dragged his father into the apartment across his own, cast a muffling spell, and told him everything. He didn't hold anything back. What was the point? Afterwards, he listened to Joshua's scorn. And rage. And accusations. And when it was all over, he left his father to decide his fate and went back to his flat.
Kai knew before he opened the door what he would meet.
The food was cold. The candles had burnt out. The spilled wine was a messy pool on the floor.
And, of course, Bonnie was gone.
Author's Note #1: Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it! I am thankful for my dear beta, keenan24 (of "By and Down" - ). I am thankful to everyone who's been reviewing and leaving comments here and tumblr for this story and others. And despite everything, I am thankful for Bonkai. Please don't forget to review and long live Bonkai (in our hearts)!
AN #2: Thanksgiving! I can't believe it's been that long since I posted 100% new chapters on this story. (Although there's lots of new material in most chapters. For example, this chapter was originally 13K words. Now it's 21K+!) Thanks so much to your constant reviews, encouragement, feedback. Please keep them coming because they really meant a lot to me, really inspired me to not give up on this story even though there were times I was sorely tempted to.
Just a reminder that if fanfiction-net is not letting you leave a signed-in review because you reviewed before, you can always leave one without logging in, and just sign off your name manually so I'll know who it's from. Thank you!
Last but not the least:
HAPPY BONKAI DAY! (MAY 10TH)!
