Chap 3:
5 years ago:
"Enzo!' Bonnie yelled frantically, jumping at the locked door. There was a painful thump when she smacked her body into it. "Damon! Can you hear me?"
Caroline arrived shortly after, wrapping her arms around Bonnie's waist and hoisting her up and away from the door. "Get off me!" she shrieked, struggling violently, but Caroline didn't notice.
"Bonnie, stop, it won't work. Stefan's tried." Caroline pleaded, continuing to carry her out of the corridor.
"No! NO!" She continued to struggle against her uselessly. Her magic had abandoned her, and now all she had was her physical strength, which paled in comparison to Caroline's.
"Stefan! Stefan, what - do something, please!" Bonnie shrieked at him, as Caroline threw her back into the hallway, but he didn't move, looking at that them all emptily.
"That door's not opening any time soon, we can do is just...wait." Stefan had said tonelessly.
And wait they did. For three days, whilst Alaric managed to find and deactivate the lock on the door. It would have been a lot easier if they had a tech whiz resident, but the closest they had was Damon, who unfortunately, was...unavailable.
When it finally opened, they all waited outside with baited breath whilst Stefan opened the door. His shoulders slumped in relief.
"Thank God!" Stefan sighed. He widened the door, revealing Damon and Enzo as they emerged from the vault. He reached out and hugged his brother tightly. "Damon!"
Damon squeezed him back. "Hey." he muttered quietly.
"Are you alright? What happened?" Bonnie fired off questions rapidly at Enzo, tightly hanging onto his shoulders.
"Okay love, I'm fine." Enzo laughed, his hands wrapping round her waist. His façade faded when he looked at Damon.
"What is it?" Caroline said sharply, glancing back and forth between them.
"Damon?" Stefan looked at his brother searchingly. "What was in there? What happened to you?"
Damon and Enzo looked at each other again, like they were communicating silently, then simultaneously faced the group. "That's the thing." Damon said shakily. "It was completely empty. Like one of those old caves, rocky and dark and abandoned by any living thing."
"Whatever was in there, it's gone now."
-X-
"Hey," Matt turned towards the voice. Bonnie stood there, unsmiling, holding out a cup of coffee. He took it, and turned back towards the window, looking in on a sleeping Tyler.
"What's the verdict?"
"Uh, the nurse said his operation went well, he just going to need a few weeks to heal."
"A few weeks? But he doesn't need nearly that long, he should have been out of here by this morning."
"I know, which definitely makes me think more than violence was involved when Katherine attacked him." He flipped open Tyler's medical chart and showed Bonnie his X-rays and photos of his injuries before and after surgery.
"Look, his internal injuries are fine, see how his scarring and bleeding have reduced, but the lacerations to his face and body aren't healing like they should. If he can't heal, he'll be scarred for life, and possibly have nerve damage that'll restrict his movements."
"She cursed him." Bonnie said. "With black magic. That's the only way magic would have conformed to her will, to act against nature."
"Do you think she's slowed his healing by blocking his ability to turn?"
"It's possible," Bonnie shrugged. "But that's not my biggest worry. In the space of a few hours, she managed to track and curse Tyler, and using a spell of disfigurement and anti-healing? That's serious black magic that requires a lot of power and emotion that she wasn't able to do when she returned from Oblivion."
"She's getting stronger. That could mean the others are too."
"We need to keep up the searching. I'll call Enzo to get any updates." Bonnie closed the medical chart.
"It's vital that we find them before they find us."
-X-
"Do you think we'll find them in time?"
"Hmm?" Katherine looked away from Silas as he did a locator spell on Damon at Stefan, slouching on the bed. He looked empty inside, and she felt for him. God knows how she would be if she hadn't found Silas in time. As if reading he thoughts, he looked up at her in the middle of the spell and smiled, and she realised she'd gone back to staring at him. She pushed the thought away and sat back down next to Stefan.
"Damon and Caroline." He continued. "Do you think we'll find them before they do with the trackers?"
"Yes, Stefan. We will." Her hand came to rest at the nape of his neck. "We always do."
"What if we find Damon, but he's not with Caroline? What if she never got out?"
Katherine stroked his hair absentmindedly. "We'll cross that bridge later. First we'll find Damon, then meet up with him to find out if he has Caroline with him or knows her location. Then we find a way into the Armoury. Power in numbers, remember?"
He stared at her, and she smiled, but it didn't feel real enough to reassure her, let alone him.
"It's nice that one of us still has hope." He smiled back.
"Damon's in New York." Silas said suddenly.
Katherine straightened and glanced back at Silas, who was sat upright, away from the map. He was looking over at them, a blank expression on his face. She let go of Stefan's hair, trying to destroy the tension between them. "What? I just came from there." She slouched down on her elbows. "Just our luck."
"Yeah, and I'm guessing your arrival was his only lead."
Stefan sat up. "Do you think he took Caroline with him?" He asked Silas desperately. "Did you see her?"
Silas shrugged. "I didn't get a visual but it's possible. The only way to know for sure is, like Katherine said, to get a message to him or meet him."
Katherine stood up from the bed. "Do you have a phone?" She asked him. "Like a smartphone that has internet?"
"Yeah," He passed his over to her. "What are you doing?"
"Sending a message to Damon." She smirked, typing rapidly. "Oh, Stefan, go and stop the delivery taking our trackers out of the country."
The two men looked at each other, dumbfounded. "Uh, why?" Stefan asked. "That'll just lead us right to them."
"Not if we're careful." She smiled at them.
"Trust me. I have a plan that'll lead us right to vengeance."
-X-
"Damon, when I said book us into a motel, cheap and third-class wasn't what I had in mind." Caroline grumbled as she came back into the bedroom. "That bathroom makes me want to go running back to the Armoury."
"Hey, tactics, Blondie," Damon shook his head. "They won't think we'll book ourselves into a cheap, third-class motel after they discover our trackers have been removed. Classic evasion skills."
"Great, and how long do we have to stay here for?" She asked, peeking out of the window blinds. "I'm concerned for my hygiene in this room just by standing in it." She grimaced at the dusty windowpane.
Damon sighed, never looking up from his laptop. "However long it takes for me to search the internet for any clues my brother may have left us, Blondie."
"Please, you've been on that thing for two hours now. Haven't you found anything?"
"No, not with you breathing down my neck and having to do this solo."
"You were the one who insisted that I stay away from the laptop!"
Damon glared at her. "Just come over here, maybe your mouth will stop moving uselessly if you can give some suggestions."
Caroline folded her arms and reluctantly made her way over to him. The last three hours since arriving here had been nothing but fruitless, apart from the tracker removal at the hospital. Now all they were achieving was hiding out in a dingy motel and poring obsessively over the Internet.
"Try looking up animal attacks in Mystic Falls."
"Done that. Last news report was two years ago."
"What about disappearances near that area?"
He looked at her. "You mean from West Virginia? The Armoury?"
She shrugged. "Yeah, maybe one of them attacked someone and a police report was made."
"No, they'd want to keep this a secret. They wouldn't release it to anyone."
She dragged her hands through her hair. "How about any news stories in New York? One of us was here, and they may have caused a scene."
Damon glared at her condescendingly. "I checked already Blondie. Nothing abnormal of any sort."
"Yeah, but that was like two hours ago. There could be updates." She snatched the laptop from him.
"Hey, put it down!"
"Hang on, jerk! I promise I won't damage your precious screen." She typed furiously and refreshed the page. She clicked on news articles, and one written an hour beforehand popped up and she clicked on it.
"'Man found in severe condition in car park.'" She read aloud, and scrolled to the text. Her eyes widened in shock. The man was unidentified, but even from his disfigured face and the grainy photo she'd know him anywhere.
"Oh my God!" She muttered. "Tyler!"
"What?" Damon demanded, grabbing the laptop back and looking at it. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I've known him my entire life, Damon, I'm sure!"
"Then that means…"
"Katherine's the one in New York. She's the only one who has true motivation and reason to attack him."
Damon whistled. "Damn, she got him good. Remind me not to piss her off -"
"Damon, stop wittering for one moment, and use your brain for something else like contacting her."
Damon shot her a withering look. "It's not like she stamped a forwarding address on Tyler's forehead before she packed him in, Caroline." He replied dryly.
She ignored him and continued focusing on the photo. Maybe Katherine had left something there, a clue as to where she was. She zoomed in, though the quality of the image meant that everything in the background was nothing but a blur. She gave up and scrolled down to the bottom of the page, which showed a comment section. Only three had been posted, and one that caught her attention.
"Wait, maybe she did leave something for us after all."
"What? Where?" Damon grabbed the laptop from her.
"The comment section." She pointed out. Damon looked at the most recent one, left twenty eight minutes beforehand anonymously, and glanced at Caroline.
"Looking for two at the place where it all began, and where life as we know it ended. Bring a headstone.' A headstone? Why -" Realisation hit him.
"The place where it all began. The world's first immortal being, the immortality cure. Qetsiyah's headstone." he muttered.
They grinned at each other.
"We have to go to Nova Scotia."
-X-
"Enzo, call me back." Matt said hurriedly into his phone. "You and Bonnie need to meet me now. We found three of them, and they're currently just outside of Mystic Falls." He hung up, and started the car, veering out of the carpark onto the road. He'd been watching the trackers for hours, and when they came close to Mystic Falls, and with CCTV footage showing two men similar in build matching Stefan's description, and a disguised woman getting into a van and heading towards the woods, pinpointing their hideout was easy enough, and he'd immediately set off there with a team.
He wasn't ready to lose this battle, and he certainly wasn't taking any chances that whatever he had started would be finished by them.
As he approached the site where the trackers were, he stopped about half a mile away to avoid being seen, and the other patrol cars stopped right behind him. Looking up, he saw a large forest ahead, and began approaching. The team spread out into smaller groups, and it took about five minutes before an officer identified a van in a clearing, and another five for him to arrive on the scene with most of the team.
Matt made a circling motion with his finger wordlessly at the van, and the officers rushed to surround it, wooden bullets at the ready.
Two pulled open the back doors and the guns swung up.
The van was empty.
Matt blinked several times to clear the seething red in his eyesight. Then he took a deep breath very slowly and approached the van.
"Well, they were here, but it seems they were tipped off, because they're not here anymore." One of his colleagues said. He heard a walkie-talkie buzz.
He grabbed his phone from his pocket and looked at the map with the tracking devices, showing their exact location.
Which unfortunately happened to be right on top of the van itself.
Matt jumped up into the van, kneeling down, searching frantically for them, hoping for an explanation, hoping that their one lead, their one way to stay ahead of them, hadn't been foiled. That this wasn't a set up.
His hope failed when he saw the three trackers in the middle of the floor.
And, right next to the pile of trackers, there was a folded piece of paper, with his name written on the back in a recognised font.
He opened it.
Dear Matty,
Only amateurs seek something they think is easy, when it is never found. It finds you. We're coming back for you, Matty, and you know what happens next.
Right underneath the threatening note, was the scribble that meant everything. The one that sent chills down his spine, a hidden promise.
"Sir?" An officer finally spoke. "Sir, what would you like us to do now?"
Matt tore the paper into strips, and then flung them into the ground, before turning on his heel and marching off.
"For now we leave it. Go home."
Please drop a review, tell me how you're finding my "season 8" so far.
