Chapter 3.1
Bonnie showed Damon how to work the complicated fixtures in her bathroom, and then she left him alone so he could use the shower. It had crazy shower heads in all the walls so that the water hit at all angles.
"It's like being in a dishwasher," Damon shouted right before she closed the giant, frost-glass door behind her.
She tried to fight her smile as she moved to her closet, and then stopped herself. Why shouldn't she smile? She had found Damon, and she had found her peace. There were no more roadblocks standing between her and happiness, and that felt more foreign to her than anything. The weightlessness that came with not having to worry.
All of the clothes in her closet were white. She wasn't sure why. Every other person she'd met wore neon summer colors, but she wasn't going to complain. She picked out a simple white dress to wear to the party the elders were throwing in her honor. It was shorter than the dress she'd worn in the desert, but it had sleeves and silver buttons trailing down the back.
Something chirped in her room. She peeked out the closet door. Her bed sat on the far wall closer to the windows, which she was still afraid to open. There was a small blue loveseat in front of what Samael and Paula called a Screening Board. The Boards linked the entire building to the announcement system, and they were supposed to chime to announce Apex and other important events.
Bonnie figured that the Board had chirped to announce that it was after dark, and so it was safe to go outside.
Until it chirped again.
She took her dress and spread it along the foot of her bed, staring up at the large white rectangle, suspended from the brown wall. The screen was covered in crackling white noise, like the advertising boards in Times Square had been before they'd all zeroed in on her face.
"Bonnie," she heard Damon say. Except the shower was still going, and the bathroom door was still closed, and his voice had come from the Board.
"Bonnie," he said, singing it this time.
Suddenly, she could make out a face behind the static. She gasped and backed against her bed, plopping on her butt.
"I found her," Damon said as the screen cleared. There was Damon in dark pants and a button down with his hair grown out and scruff along his jaw. He was sitting on a brown swede couch in a living room with modern glass and chrome accents. She could see the cherry wood cabinets of a kitchen behind him.
"You mean you found me," another voice said. And then she was in the shot. A woman with her dark hair long and straight. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, and she was very obviously pregnant. She was also Bonnie Bennett.
"What's going on?" Bonnie, the real Bonnie, asked. The two people on her Screening Board weren't real. They couldn't be. How could Bonnie be here, in Elysium, and there, wherever there was? How could she be pregnant?
"No, see," Damon said to the Other Bonnie, staring at her with all seriousness. "I am completely and unchangeably in love with you." There was a pause where he continued to stare at her, and then he faced forward looking right at the Real Bonnie. "Her, not so much," he said.
"She is me, Damon," the Other Bonnie insisted.
"That's where you're wrong. She's a version of you, but this version is all doe-eyed and confused and she's clearly been brainwashed by a cult."
"You noticed it, too," she said, rubbing her huge stomach with concern in her green eyes. "She's made her choice. And it's the wrong one."
The wrong choice? Was she talking about the decision to stay in Elysium? Bonnie had only just made the choice, and she wasn't sure why it would be wrong.
"I'm not surprised," Damon said, grabbing a glass of brown liquid from the coffee table. "You're always impulsive when you think you believe in something."
The screen flickered. The image of Other Bonnie and Other Damon became distorted but not enough for Real Bonnie to miss her whack him with a throw pillow.
"Talk quick," he said when the screen was clear again. "The connection won't last long."
Holding her stomach, Other Bonnie shifted to the edge of the couch. Real Bonnie couldn't deny that the woman looked exactly like her, and she even had the same wide-eyed look when she wanted to be serious. But she was different. Older? How could she be older? No one ages in death.
"We picked the wrong time to listen to Grams," Other Bonnie said. "It's a long, long story, but I'm you from the future. You should know that a lot happens between now and then."
Bonnie noticed how close Damon was sitting to Other Bonnie. How he stared at her when she talked. He'd said he was in love with her. That meant that somewhere in the future, the two of them were together.
She could hear the shower shut off in the bathroom, and her heart jumped in her chest. Real Damon was in the next room, oblivious to what was happening with the Screening Board. She was staring at a window into their future, and she wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about it.
"You have to get out of Elysium," Other Bonnie said.
"How?" Bonnie shot back, half-listening to Damon's footsteps. Her eyes flashed to the door and she could see his shadow behind the frosted glass.
There was static noise. The connection on the Screening Board was failing. The woman continued to talk, but Real Bonnie could only hear her in patches. She caught three words—mountains, condensation, and death. Nothing that made any sense at all. Then the screen went blank.
Real Bonnie was now the only Bonnie.
Blinking in confusion, she pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed her chin into them.
"What am I supposed to wear?" Damon came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist while he dried his hair with another. "Not that I'm opposed to the whole Chippendales look, I just wouldn't want to make anyone jealous."
Bonnie looked from his blue eyes to his dripping abs. Then she closed her eyes, wishing that when the screen had gone blank, it had taken him with it.
Chapter 3.2
Bonnie chose not to tell him. What she'd witnessed on her Screening Board—her pregnant future self demanding she leave Elysium, future Damon declaring his love for her—these things would remain her secret until she could figure out what to do about them.
For now, she and Damon would attend the party together, pretending that everything was normal even though she now questioned the motives of everyone else they came across.
"My confidence has never been lower." Damon stood beside her in front of the mirror. She'd put in a request for his clothing, and Paula had dropped a box off an hour before. Now, he stood in skinny shorts and a striped tank top. "I look stupid. I hate looking stupid."
Bonnie shook her head to make him feel better but she couldn't stop laughing.
"Not stupid," she said between laughs. "Just…pale."
His long arms and legs were so white compared to the tan and orange that composed his outfit.
"I'm a winter. It takes a certain amount of black to do these eyes justice," he said, staring down at her with the full intensity of his baby blues.
She took a breath, remembering future Damon's words. Completely and unchangeably.
"The warm colors suit you," she said. "They make you look a little less dead."
"I've been a walking corpse for 150 years, and I have never felt deader."
"What do you mean?" She ducked into her closet to find shoes and to put as much distance between herself and Damon as possible.
"What do you mean?" he asked, probably still agonizing over his appearance in the mirror.
"That thing about being a walking corpse." She was bent over several rows of shoes, skimming for a pair she liked.
Suddenly, Damon was blocking the entrance with his hands on either side of the frame and a wicked smile on his face.
"So you've forgotten everything."
"It was the price of staying."
And the wrong choice to make, apparently.
"Humor me a bit and tell me what you do remember because I am dying to know."
She held a pair of strappy heels to her chest and tried to think. According to the elders, she wasn't supposed to remember anything other than Elysium. Part of her wondered if she was supposed to remember Damon, but she did, and she held onto that because it was the only thing that made even a tiny bit of sense.
Mountains, condensation, death.
The words were gibberish, but they were the last ones her future self had spoken.
Bonnie took a step toward Damon before she said anything.
"I remember the simple stuff. I am Bonnie Bennett, and you are Damon Salvatore. I remember that we died, and now, we're here. Together."
"Nothing else?" he asked, eyebrow quirked.
"Everything before the desert is like the first chapter in a book that got ripped out before I could read it, and even the part after that is blurry at times. I try to guess most stuff. Like I figure we probably weren't that close before."
"And why would you think that?"
Because you're so sarcastic all of the time. Because you're clearly miserable, but you're pretending that everything is fine. Because you won't tell me anything unless it's veiled in dry humor.
She shrugged and sat in the lone chair in the corner, undoing the buckle of a shoe.
"Am I wrong?" she asked, waiting for him to either confirm or deny. When he did neither, she continued, "I just have this feeling like there are blank spaces in my head and I'm waiting for someone to fill them."
Damon crossed his arms and his cynical grin deepened. "Then this should be fun."
Outside was different after dark. For one thing, Bonnie could breathe. Another, the sky was a velvety shade of purple. Plush grass covered everything and made her regret wearing shoes. As more and more people introduced themselves, she found herself wishing she could run around barefoot, toes wriggling against the earth.
"You're lying," Bonnie said as Damon led her in a two-step waltz. "Wait, explain it to me again."
"I'm a vampire." He spun her around in a quick circle. "Or I was a vampire. That means I thirsted for human blood, sucked the life right out of them. It was easier than it sounds."
They continued to dance with his hand on the small of her back and her arms wrapped around his neck. Dancing like this was the only thing that kept other people from asking her questions. The same questions over and over again. Did she like Elysium? Where did she get her dress? What was so special about her? Apparently, the elders did not pay as much attention to the other inhabitants of their world.
Even though the music was fast-paced, Damon refused to do any of the strange thrashing the other party attendants were passing off as dancing. Under the flashing, blinking lights, the others looked like they were having seizures, and that was somehow scarier to Bonnie than being in the arms of a killer.
"So you murdered people, then?" she asked.
"Murder is such a unilateral word. Vampirism is nothing if not multifaceted. Planet earth is an ecosystem, and I was at the top of the food chain."
"Why would you tell me this?" she asked as he angled her away from another couple, thrashing beside them. "Why is that the first thing you tell me about our old life? Are you trying to scare me?"
"That depends." His eyes flashed. "Is it working?"
There he goes again, she thought. Using words as smoke signals. Fanning flames to hide what was really bothering him. She refused to let him get off that easily. She wouldn't trust him if he couldn't be honest with her.
"You didn't have many friends," she said.
"Is that a question?"
"No. You hide behind your words, and I bet you hid behind the vampire thing, too. Did you use it like a shield to keep people from getting too close?"
"Getting too close? You mean like this?" He tightened his hold on her waist. Her breath left in a loud whoosh as she felt his chest pressed firmly against hers.
They were close. So close she couldn't resist noticing the jarring contrast between the shades of their skin. One of his fingers trailed along the buttons on the back of her dress, and for a second, she thought her heart had started to beat again.
Still, she stared into his eyes and pretended to be unaffected.
"You don't fool me. I can see straight through you."
"Now, see that," he said, his face inches from her own, "is the part that should scare you."
"Mind if I cut in?" Samael had appeared in Bonnie's line of sight and was standing with his arms behind his back. "The elders are dying to get to know you better."
Damon turned them around so that he was staring at Samael over Bonnie's head.
"Yes, I mind."
"No, it's fine."
The two spoke simultaneously and then glared at each other. Bonnie broke the stand-off first.
"I'll be all ears when you're ready to say something real." Then she extricated herself from his arms and turned to follow Samael.
Chapter 3.3
The elders sat at the head of the clearing. They watched with straight faces while everyone else danced, flitting across the perfect grass and adding a laugh track to the busy music.
Bonnie watched everyone as Samael led her through the crowd. Hundreds of happy smiling faces. Were they people like her? If Elysium really was Heaven, then that meant they had died before in another dimension and then somehow wound up here. But if it was Heaven, why would it be important for Bonnie to get out? Death was one of the last words she'd been able to hear on the Screening Board, and she couldn't figure out why it would still be a threat.
Ben moved from his seat as Bonnie approached with Samael. He was barefoot, wearing a long red tunic and tights. Bonnie thought about how Damon would look in the outfit and couldn't stop herself from laughing.
"Glad to see you're enjoying yourself," Ben said.
"Yeah," Bonnie said, looking up at the purple bruise of sky above them to stop her giggles. "It's really beautiful here."
"Of course it is." He stared at her a moment through narrowed eyes and then turned to Samael. "You're free to go."
Samael nodded so hard he almost bowed. To the other elders he placed a hand over his heart. They dismissed him with a simultaneous head bob, and then he was gone.
Now practically alone with the elders, Bonnie felt a pang at her core. She shifted uncomfortably in her heels and waited for Ben to tell her why he wanted to see her, no longer believing that he would ask the same questions as everyone else. Maybe because she was certain he already knew the answers.
"Walk with me, Bonnie. The darkness is too sweet to sit still."
Ben extended his arm for her to take. She stared into his eyes. They were darker than the night, and any desire to reject him fizzled away as his lips quirked into an anticipating smile.
She linked her arm with his, and once again, she was moving through the mass of dancing bodies. This time the eyes were on her.
"Everyone's staring," she said. "I believe that has something to do with you."
Ben shrugged. "I'm an elder. I make the laws. I enforce them with an iron fist. It makes them curious."
"So that's what sets you apart? You make the laws?"
"That among other things."
The crowd broke around them and she could see Damon, standing completely still and staring back at her. Someone approached him. A girl with wavy hair and a short flower dress. They exchanged words and then she grabbed his hand, goading him to dance. Eventually, he gave in, twirling her and dipping her once. Bonnie wished it was that easy to get him to be honest.
"And what do the others have to be curious about?" she asked, turning her attention back to Ben, who had yet to look away from her.
"I'm an elder. That's what makes me different. Secrets are what sets me apart. There are some things no one needs to know, but that doesn't stop them from asking questions."
"I'd imagine not. I have enough questions myself."
"Care to share them with me?"
Sharing them were the whole reason she brought them up. She was more confused than ever, and she figured the best way to fix that was to get her answers from the top of hierarchy. Ben was the leader of the elders. If he didn't have her answers, no one did.
"I just wonder why I'm here," she said and Ben nodded.
"That's the question that plagues existence. In this universe and the next. When you've been around long enough, you know better than to bother with it." He positioned himself in front of her, the serious look in his eyes absolute. "You're here because you need to be. You're here because you want to be, and you're not the only one. After the expansion, everyone will be dying to get here."
"The expansion?"
"Elysium is growing, branching out and developing into its own plane. You and your friend are just in time for the show."
The way his expression changed when he mentioned Damon, her friend, put Bonnie even more on edge.
"So what happens to us now?" she asked, desperate for something concrete she could hold onto. "Besides watching this place get bigger?"
"Now, you relax and trust that everything is under control." He patted her shoulder and nodded goodbye. She watched him walk away, standing alone and feeling nothing at all like the guest of honor.
After the celebration had ended, she and Damon returned to her room because no one was going out of their way to give Damon a room of his own.
"I need a drink," he said, collapsing sideways onto the couch.
"Is that a reference to your vampire blood thirst?" Bonnie closed the door and searched for a lock. There wasn't one, and that only added to her uneasiness.
"My vampire blood thirst disappeared the moment I died. I need alcohol, my other addiction. You wouldn't happen to be able to think me up a glass of bourbon, would you?"
Bonnie sat at the foot of her bed and began to remove her shoes.
"I don't know how I moved us from place to place earlier, but I don't think I can make things appear that don't exist. No one needs to eat or drink here, so good luck finding a drink that will fry your non-existent liver."
"You remember how alcohol works?" he asked, staring at her over the back of the couch.
"I told you. I remember the simple things." She grabbed her shoes by the straps and moved toward the closet. "By the way, I think we should find a way to do some experiments."
"What kind of experiments?" he asked.
"We need to know how my…power works," she said, unsure of what else to call it. "If it has limitations and if those limitations can be stretched. I think we might need it. Soon."
"And why do you think that?" he asked, appearing at the closet door as she searched for something to sleep in. "My hearing isn't what it used to be, but it's good enough. Bald guy in a dress seemed to think we didn't have anything to worry about and yet those worry lines in your forehead are deeper than the Grand Canyon. There something you're not telling me?"
She looked at him. His dark hair was as wild and erratic as his crazy eyes, and he was waiting for a response. She still wasn't sure what to make of the message from her future self and she sure as hell wasn't sure if she could save herself and Damon if it came to that. Turning her back to him, she pulled a shirt from a drawer and said, "Not nearly as much as you're not telling me." And she left it at that.
The day had seemed to drag on forever, but finally, she was in a bed. All of the lights in her room were out. She lay on her back, staring up at the domed ceiling in the dark. Damon was sprawled across her couch, awake. She didn't know how she was sure of that, only that she was. She felt as if she could feel his breath in the dark, but with him on the other side of the room, she knew that couldn't have been possible.
She sank deeper into the mass of pillows. Her eyes grew heavier and heavier by the second, and she was suddenly very thankful that she could still sleep.
When she woke up, she was screaming.
"Bonnie?" she could feel Damon standing over her, but it was dark and every nerve in her body seared with pain is if she were being burned alive.
Another cry ripped from her throat. She rocked onto her side, clutching her stomach. She wasn't sure what part of her body hurt worse. The skin on her back was ripping apart, it felt like something was clawing at her from the inside, and her head. Her head was exploding.
The lights came on. Damon was sitting beside her on the bed, staring down at her. His eyes intense but unsure.
"I need you to tell me what's going on." His voice was terribly calm compared to Bonnie's gut-wrenching screams. He leaned over her, trying to catch her gaze. "Hey, hey. Look at me."
Her eyes went everywhere. Focusing too long on any one thing only made it harder to ignore the pain.
"My back," she gasped and then buried her face in a pillow. Suppressing the next round of screams.
"Alright, Bennett. Bear with me because this is about to get a little personal."
With quick hands he turned her on her stomach and winced when it caused her to cry louder. On the fringes of her agony, she could feel his hands under her shirt, cool to the touch. Then the shirt was ripping. She bit down on a pillow as his fingers trailed lightly over the hot skin of her back.
"Would you look at that?" he said. She would have asked him what he meant if his fingers hadn't pressed down too hard. Her vision turned red and she couldn't stop sobbing.
Damon shifted from the bed and squatted on the floor so that he was at eye level with her. Bonnie could barely make out his face, but through the haze of colors surrounding her were his eyes. They were steady, and she used them as a means for steadying herself, preparing for what he had to tell her.
"It'll be fine," he said, brushing her hair out of her face like he was afraid to touch her again for fear it might cause her more pain. "I know right now it feels like your entire body is trying to implode, but I've seen this before. You're growing wings."