"I'm being beset by demons," Valerie answered without meeting anyone's gaze.
Bonnie huffed in frustration. "Well who isn't these days," she grumbled. "Care to be a bit more specific?"
Stefan was curious where this conversation was going, but he watched silently and let Bonnie take the lead. It had been awhile since he had eaten, so he was tired enough that he didn't want to waste any energy he didn't have to.
Valerie paced back and forth a bit and took several deep breaths. "Well…to be more specific… In an effort to return my family to me, I unintentionally released quite a few things other than them into our world."
Bonnie already didn't like that woman and she was just digging that hole deeper. She would've been certain right up until this moment. "All of these god-awful, absurd months of danger in the darkness have apparently been not only caused by you, but you had the unmitigated gall to come to us for help with? With anything? And that only come to us for help, but do so while actively lying to us about what's going on. You're a real piece of work." Bonnie was shaking with rage and the only reason she had run this woman through with the sword already is that she had the feeling that there was more to this story.
"Valerie… Were you successful?" Stefan asked quietly. At this point he wasn't angry, just exhausted. Partially because it been frustratingly tense dealing with the women's obvious dislike of one another, and partially because he was starting to get hungry. Bonnie's mind hadn't even gotten around to considering the question of whether or not Valerie had succeeded.
Valerie folded her arms and began to pace. "Honestly, I don't know."
Bonnie snapped and drew her sword and pointed it at Valerie for emphasis. "I suggest you figure it out. Fast. Stefan, could you be a dear and give her some blood so she can do a locator spell? While she's working on that, I'd like to have a quick chat."
Her tone brooked no disagreement, so Stefan grabbed a shot glass and filled it for Valerie. Not looking that gift horse in the mouth, Valerie took the proffered blood and scurried off in search of spell ingredients. While she was busy with that, Bonnie went to her trove of dark objects and lit the candle that would trap them inside the house. Nobody was leaving until Bonnie put out the flame. That lacked the dramatic flair of simply chaining Valerie up and putting her in the basement, but had the benefit of preventing them from knowing that their captive until they actually make an attempt to escape. With that business handled, Bonnie motioned for Stefan to follow her and headed upstairs. He nodded and did so agreeably.
She marched right into Stefan's bathroom and turned on the shower. "I know that we could just turn on the sink, but that would only be effective if I managed to keep my voice down. I'm pissed and I kind of want to scream."
Stefan raked his fingers through his hair and just kind of stared at her. His mind was reeling. It seemed they had just put their mother and the rest of the heretics in the ground, and now there was a possibility they were back. He wasn't sure if he would want to see her again, and if he did, just what he would say to her. An even worse thought was with Damon's reaction would be. "This is not good."
Bonnie could do nothing other than laugh at that. "It's not good that I've had to take on a full-time job as a demon slayer. It's a disaster that Mommy Dearest is back from the dead."
Even after all she had done, Lily was still his mother and had still brought him back from the brink so Stefan bristled a bit at Bonnie's blunt statement. "Tell me how you really feel about my mother…" he grumbled.
"Seriously?" Bonnie asked incredulously. As if she didn't already have enough to deal with. "I would apologize if she hadn't stabbed me in the neck, but..." He could fill in the rest on his own. While his gears were turning, she hopped up on the sink and crossed her legs. Something told her this conversation would be long enough she ought to get comfortable.
Stefan closed the door behind him and leaned his back against it. He was already tired and his hunger was just beginning to tip his mood from broody into irritated. "Fair enough," he snapped back at her. "But before we head too far into that discussion, we might as well wait for the results of Valerie's spell."
They'd never been lucky enough for the disaster of the day to simply be a false alarm, so Bonnie wasn't holding her breath. "Fine, let's pretend our next problem isn't your mother and her new friends."
"Thank you," Stefan answered with a small smile.
"So, taking the question of your extended family off the table, what're we gonna do with Valerie?" Bonnie asked, taking that little smile right back off his face.
All he could do was groan and knock the back of his head against the door in response.
Bonnie's gut was telling her that something was going on with Stefan. "Are you all right? I know this is all kind of a lot, but you've looked out of it all day. I meant to ask earlier, but..."
Stefan's unfocused gaze snapped to Bonnie in a bit of a panic. Having scared her half to death only a few days ago with his hunger, the last thing he wanted to do is bring it up now that they've managed some measure of comfort around one another. "Just the usual brooding," he joked.
Bonnie didn't actually believe that at all. Stefan was no better than Damon at successfully lying to her. She raised a suspicious brow and waited for him to actually answer.
Rather than doing so, he weighed a few different possibilities in his mind. All of a sudden he made up his mind and walked across the small space between them to stand right in front of her. Her eyes widened, and she instinctively leaned back having to move her hands out of her lap to catch himself. He gave no indication he noticed her discomfort and bit into his left wrist hard.
That action was more than successful at distracting Bonnie from her inquiry. "Stefan?"
"Just in case," he answered calmly. "I'd like to put faith in our house-guest not murdering you when we leave, but…"
Bonnie rolled her eyes and did her best to make a fast calculation. Heads, it's unnecessary and the blood is out of her system in a day or two. Tails, and it winds up being terribly necessary and at least she can rip Valerie's head off with her fangs and lived to tell Damon until he finally gets home. Besides personal discomfort there wasn't really a downside to taking him up on it, so she did.
Blood sharing always has potential to be a rather personal experience. Well, personal was the word he used to describe it to Elena, but that's woefully insufficient. It would've been much more accurate to say the blood sharing can be a powerfully sexual experience for a vampire. Stefan normally only found himself sharing his blood in situations that were life and death, so there was enough distraction not to get caught up in that. In this case, the only thing more distracting than her drinking his blood was how close she was to his body. That was definitely making it worse.
His blood tasted different than Damon's; that was to be expected. After all, was a different person besides that he was definitely not feeding himself adequately. Of all people, Bonnie had gotten herself into enough circumstances where she found herself drinking vampire blood that she could tell the difference. When this was over, she was going to have to make sure that Stefan ate unless she wanted another incident where he tried to eat her. But now wasn't the time or place, and apparently, she had been lost in thought long enough that the wounded had closed. Much to Stefan's genuine surprise, when she was done feeding she licked his wrist clean.
Bonnie was threatening to make him forget what they were trying to do entirely. He abruptly backed away from her toward the door, which was about as far away as he could get in small space. After a few seconds of collecting his breath and catching his thoughts, he met Bonnie's gaze.
"Are you ready?" She asked him with an amused smirk on her face. Apparently, he hadn't done as well as he hoped he had with concealing what was going through his mind. Another problem for another time.
Having decided the part of their conversation that needed to not be overheard was done with, Bonnie hopped down off the sink and walked over to shut off the shower. "Mind letting me out, Salvatore?" Bonnie asked as Stefan was still leaning against the closed door like they were going to stay in there all day.
"I did have one more question," he answered with narrowed eyes. "But I guess it'll have to wait. Let's check on our guest." Not quite the answer she had been expecting, but she put her game face on, picked up the sword and followed him.
He opened the door and motioned for her to pass him and then followed her towards the stairs. By the time they were halfway down, it was still dead silent besides them. Stefan didn't like that, so he grabbed Bonnie lightly by the arm to get her attention and silently mouthed his thoughts to her. It's too quiet. I can't even hear anything.
That was suspicious. Let's try this the easy way first. "Valerie! How's the spell coming?"
Still no answer. Bonnie wasn't too worried. There was no way she had left, and even if she had somehow managed to outsmart the candle their question was still answered. The only reason Valerie would take off on a tear without saying anything is if she had indeed found something when she did the locator spell. Stefan was more concerned with the silence, but before they could say much to each other about it, Bonnie's phone rang.
While they were dealing with that, Damon was dealing with Lorenzo St. John. The singular most annoying man he had ever met. He couldn't help but wonder how it is that nobody had murdered Enzo yet. He was snarky, self-centered and disloyal. In his long life, Damon had seen dozens of men cut down within decades but here is Enzo well after a century. Still (more or less) living, breathing and annoying the hell out of him.
Having his least-pleasant bloody slumber party to date with the man answered that question. He was still alive because he's manipulative as hell.
"Come on now, mate. We both know you don't really want to kill me. If you did, you would have already done so," Enzo drawled with far more certainty that someone wearing that much of their own blood should be able to summon.
Damon tensed, closed his eyes, and counted backward slowly. "Dead men tell no tales, and you've talked a lot but still haven't answered the fucking question that brought me here."
Mentally Enzo smiled at the obvious display of impatience. An impatient torturer that doesn't intend to kill you is someone you just need to wait out, and that was something he could do. "Maybe you're getting the wrong answers because you're asking the wrong questions, love."
Time-wasting, games, riddles, jokes, chit-chat. Damon was fed up enough to snap his neck and since Enzo was a vampire he could actually do so without jeopardizing his ability to get answers once he cooled his head. So he temporarily sated his need to murder this asshole by snapping his neck. He needed to think and more than that, he needed his Bon Bon. Besides the fact that he needed a bit of advice, it was also high time to make sure his brother hadn't eaten her.
It was tempting to get some space between himself and the person so annoying he made Damon feel like the prisoner, but he resisted that urge and just called while sitting right in front of him. He was unconscious, and when he finally started to stir he could simply hang up if the phonecall wasn't over by then. Unpredictable breaks from suffering created an anxious mental state that could be useful in a torture situation, but that didn't start to kick in until it had been ongoing for awhile. It took a very long time to get Stockholm Syndrome to set in well enough to turn a captive into an ally and he'd be damned if he stayed there that long. So full-court press it had to be.
As he hoped, Bonnie picked up his call very quickly.
"Damon," she breathed. "Are you alright?"
He groaned. "That's one word we can use for it..."
Recognizing frustration and not pain in his voice, Bonnie correctly intuited the problem. "What's the hold up?"
"Before I kill this guy, I need to know why he told me that particular lie. "
Of all the ridiculous reasons to wind up stuck in a house with Valerie and Stefan for days, this took the cake. "You wanted to know why Enzo lied to you? The only person that's spent more time lying to you and betraying you in this lifetime is Katherine."
"Exactly," he countered. "And it turned out that every time she did it there was a reason. And most of those reasons were trying to kill us."
"Fair enough," Bonnie granted with a sigh.
Not wanting to waste time as he had an unconscious captive, Damon cut to the chase. "What should I do?"
"Find out what it is that has him more frightened than you in a bad mood."
Damon raised a skeptical brow. "Frightened?"
"If he's risking you running out of your infamously-low patience and ripping his heart out, then that means he's worried about someone doing worse than that if he tells you the truth. Find out who that is."
His Bon was a genius; he knew he made the right call. "Thanks, Bon Bon," he offered warmly.
Bonnie flushed at his mushy gratitude. "Whatever, just get back here." Bonnie tactfully failed to mention they had just had a much more successful interrogation back home.
"Will do, Bon Bon. One more thing...how are you and Stefan getting along?"
Stefan took the phone. "We're doing fine, but we've got to be going," he answered.
"What's going on over there?" Damon demanded with a renewed sense of urgency.
Bonnie frowned at Stefan and put out her hand for her phone back. She was unsurprised to receive a device that Damon was growling on the other end of. "Damon..."
"Bon. Tell me the truth. What's happening?"
She sighed. She couldn't lie to him any better than he could lie to her. "You know how it is with houseguests," she answered evasively as the house suddenly went dark and Stefan pulled her protectively towards his chest. "We have to go deal with that. Be safe, Damon."