A/n: Hey all, I'm glad some of you like this fic, this was an experiment or me and I'm hoping to turn this into a kickass bamon romance. So, R&R?

Something woke her up. She wasn't sure whether it was a noise or a dream, but there was a feeling. The same eerie feeling she had felt when leaving the grill, someone or …something was watching her. She was too groggy to be sure about which. A sane person could argue Bonnie was overreacting but her house seemed much quieter than usual, little tell-tale creaks and bangs were not present at all. There was definitely something wrong.

Ever since her dealings with the supernatural, Bonnie had resorted to stashing weapons all over the house. A large kitchen knife, a classic weapon, lay under her mattress. She reached a hand out in front of her and saw…nothing.

Total darkness.

It seemed doubtful that power failure was what woke her up, so she reached for her hidden knife anyway, determined not to let the dark be an estranging factor. As if on cue, just as her hand grasped the knifes handle a floorboard creaked somewhere nearby.

Someone was in her house. Crime rate in mystic falls with no supernatural ring to it was very few and far between. She had nothing valuable a burglar might want except for a book of spells it had to be someone who knew she was witch or someone looking to exact revenge for Klaus's cause. An unwanted tremble creeped up her arm at the thought of the Original swaggering through her house.

Oh damn, was it Klaus? Now? For some reason she felt an irrational need to remember what attire she fell asleep in and of course there was the odd need to pee.

Wonderful.

Another creak later she purged the urge and got under her bed. The thought of doing a no violence protection spell was tempting but there was no way in hell she could get to the ingredients in time, she'd have to cross over to the kitchen bypassing whatever or whoever it was. Unless, she knew where the attacker was she couldn't really make the move.

Element of surprise was probably not going to work for the attacker, Her bedroom door was slightly ajar, not that it made much difference in the pitch black darkness. She only wished the other guy had bad night vision. The only other sound as far as she could count was her laboured breathing, even though she was fairly confident of her power being greater than the attacker her heart was still doing sit ups, not the good kind.

There was another uneasy lurch outside her room, like shuffling newspaper or jeans.

Something about the creaking floor boards and the newspaper Damon gave her sparked a memory from her dreams.

Someone was digging in the graveyard under the quiet full moon with a shovel and strange murmurings or chanting's were going on in the background, a bloody bite mark on an arm.

Wait, was that a real moan? Suddenly her eyes snapped open and her room was dank with a smell she could only describe as rotten eggs and meat, her throat convulsed with the oppressively thick stench, Bonnie covered her nose. It hardly helped, her bedroom door creaked slightly so did her insides and her hand tightened on the knife.

And then somebody was knocking loudly on her window, she almost jumped out of her skin. Damon was outside her window. She could make out his silhouette and bumped her head getting out from under the bed. So help her, if this was his idea of pursuing each other for some bout of general irritation she would stake him right here right now.

'What the hell are you doing? What time is it?!' she demanded, opening only half her window to him. He gave her a once over as if he were surprised but looked in some sort of hurry, 'it's 3 am the witching hour, surprise , surprise …Cute PJ's by the way…I was in the neighbourhood and realized you've never invited me into your home' He said this gently as if it were to explain everything to her.

Bonnie only blinked patiently at his expectant stance, 'Okay. I'm confused, Am i still dreaming?', He sighed and looked at her like she was crazy and asked to be let in again. She would have told him to get lost and magicked her window shut when a painful moan behind her caught her and Damon's attention and his, 'I told you…' trailed behind her like a spiteful prank.

Bonnie turned around slowly, like in the movies and was confronted by the source of the stench. It was rotting alright. Rotting flesh, hanging off what only she could describe as an animated corpse. The corpse seemed to shuffle as if on bad feet towards her the rest of it hardly in sync with the speed of its lower extremities. But worst of all were the pained moans it was emitting and they were the most distracting.

She wanted to tell Damon to come in but could only get out 'in…in' in a very soft, strangled voice.

'Unless you want to be a zombie chew toy I suggest you say the whole thing!' Her eyes wide and unblinking she managed to squeak a 'come in already!' before the zombie was upon her, Damon smashed his way in and struck the zombie as hard as he could. It stopped making the awful moaning noises and dropped to the floor like…well, a dead body.

Damon stared it down completely non-plussed, as if this were some everyday occurrence and not shocking at all. 'You can close your mouth now, and I did try to warn you judgy…'

Bonnie obliged with his request and held herself tight, unable to respond to his taunt. Dirt, blood and the horrible smell trailed into her room like a casual invasion by school kids of a birthday party. Irrational thoughts were the just on a roll tonight, as she thought who would clean this mess up now. And if she could hire a professional carpet cleaner service and her response to the obvious questions that would undoubtedly arise. Maybe a memory altering charm could help.

'Well, shall we?…' he asked casually as if he's just had a bug quashing tournament and was going to take her for a victory drink. 'Shall we what Damon?…'

'Get out of here? I don't know if this is the only one…'

Bonnie gaped at him horrified 'You're kidding, there are more of these things walking around town?' Before he could answer her there was that sordid moan again and the zombie he'd struck dead so easily had come alive once again, knocking Damon down with it. The zombie seemed to have come back with greater strength then before and was not giving Damon much of a fighting chance.

Bonnie still had her knife, she teetered over the rumbling duo on her floor while the zombie held Damon in his choke hold refusing to let go. Only after a pained prompt from the vampire she realised she was meant to do something in this situation, she unglued herself form the spot she was standing and raised her weapon, asking him to stop moving around so much which only earned her a dirty look from the vampire but he did as told in an attempt to be saved as the zombie prepared she unceremoniously plunged the large knife into the zombies back. It stunned the zombie but she supposed it didn't feel much pain because it kept going and was about to take another large mouthful of a cursing Damon.

She just thought of a spell, the only one that could probably help loosen the zombies hold. 'Bonnie..Oww!…I know I can be a real jackass sometimes, but think of how upset Elena may be if she comes to find me with a missing arm …or leg…or HEAD!' The zombie was on top of him and had chewed through some of his arm already.

She shut her eyes, searched her memory for the right one and whispered the spell over the zombie. There was large wet sound and then an ugly 'thud'.

Damon cursed loudly.

==—==—===

Bonnie sat in silence for a while and Damon continued the curse parade while lifting off pieces of rotten flesh off of himself. She sat in the other corner praying none of 'it' had landed on her hair when she did the exploding spell. Bits and large chunks of the zombie had rained all over her room, she and Damon were covered with blood and guts. And he was the only one showing his dislike for the spell she chose.

'Well, it was either that or your body parts all over my room.'

He gave her another dirty look and finally heaved himself off the floor with some effort, considering he was bleeding far more easily then healing. Her window was shattered, she had just pulled a shard from her toe whose sting she hardly felt because she was still slightly numb from the terror of it all.

'I need blood …' Damon told her casually sagging down on her bed, as if this were her cue to step up.

'You're not getting any of mine..' to which there was that, 'are you ridiculously out of your mind?' look from him to her which was probably meant to shame her in some sort of way, but luckily when it came to dealings with his kind of vampires she was strictly shameless. The dramatic eye roll in her direction said it all. She found this passive aggression between them uniquely odd that despite being unconventional, at times casual acquaintances, they recognized each other's nuances so well.

'Uh, I didn't know that was an option…just drive me, and if you do without changing that's just a bonus for me.' The fake smile with the come on line was just a front for the pain and she saw no reason to comment on it, not that she couldn't give him a 'drop dead' look but with her nerves at the moment the magic in her might just fulfill the fleeting wish.

Bonnie realized then that she has by far done many then a few favours to the Salvatore brother willingly, unhappy with the knowledge, she almost felt like refusing Damon the drive home to recuperate with a blood bag. His suffering a little more might make her slide into the inevitable vicious cycle of assisting what she thought was the 'other' side easier. Unfortunately for her the humane side of her still counted him as living in some form, and it felt morally wrong to let him continue bleeding on her bed between her stuffed cats, which were splashed with large helpings of the gore already.

How was she going to ever rid the stuffed animals of that? The idea of having to get rid of a reminder of her childhood upset her a lot more than Damon's state of pain, she must have shown the current discontentment because Damon told her if she didn't get moving he would rip up the damn stuffed toys and then she wouldn't have to worry about the mess, she only spared a fleeting murderous look at him as his hand hovered over her prized zebra.

'Give me five minutes to change…'

Bonnie watched Damon with morbid curiosity as he sucked on blood bag after blood bag trying to replenish lost muscle and energy, which she had to fetch for him because he hardly made it through the door to the boarding house before crashing in the hallway. And he didn't seem to care about the mess he was making. She tried to mask the growing disgust inside, after the zombie attack this was just making her nauseous.

She's been here a number of different times. .Every time a crisis was brewing, none of her visits had been social and all occurred when Stefan was around to make sure Damon didn't manhandle her into anything she didn't want to get into. Too bad he had gone off and disappeared with Klaus. The atmosphere around her seemed suddenly quite hostile and awkward. She was unsure of where to seat herself, whether to pretend to make herself at home, or just act as uncomfortable and unsure of herself as she really felt.

It seemed like Damon had recovered somewhat too because after the 5th blood bag he was aware of her watching him and wiped the corners of his mouth with a torn sleeve, 'You don't have to stay you know?...I'm good.'

She nodded assuming her offence to the lack of gratitude from him would go unnoticed. 'You're the one who said we need to get out of my house because of the unidentified number of zombies walking around town?' He paused mid drinking to get a good view of her, letting her feel self-conscious of his searching gaze even though she was wearing her jeans and sweatshirt over the awfully revealing pj's she'd been supporting just before getting attacked.

'OK...then why don't you settle down somewhere in my humble abode instead of looking like I'm about to bite you...because you're kinda making me nervous.' Bonnie wanted to say something rude but decided to restrain herself. Damon was filthy with blood; his dark hair was matted to his head in an unattractive way with congealed blood. She suppressed her anxiousness and sat down on a Victorian seat far enough not to seem too uncomfortable, nor near enough to exchange recipes and pleasantries unless badly required, 'So?...i don't know where to start..'

He threw the emptied blood bag into the fire place, there was a crackling of pause and then he got up dramatically, ' Let me help you...Zombies. There are another three of these roaming in some part of this lucky, lucky town.' Another bag was opened and the blood poured into a small glass for a more leisurely course of drinking. He also handed her another copy of the same newspaper he gave her earlier when they parted outside the Grill, 'I figured you didn't pay much attention to it the first time you laid eyes on it..' yes, it was a question and she refused to answer it for fear that he expected her to apologize for her latent indiscretion to his warning.

Well, whoopee doo.

'You kept talking about Alaric and something being wrong with him... i figured you're just being an insensitive ass again, how was i supposed to know we suddenly have a zombie infestation in town?' Maybe she touched a nerve because he looked like he wanted to hit her with the newspaper. 'Oh great, i forgot i don't get a vote of confidence just because i don't have my brothers poster boy for Prozac charm!'

True, Stefan would have had a better approach to the whole matter, but she doubted it would do any good to mention him for now, especially, since there was no way he was going to be back any time soon and if the town was filling up with flesh eating corpses then she'd just have to put her trust in the mostly impulsive and restless. The paper mentioned disturbed graves and missing bodies. There were no suspects, which was hardly a surprise, but what did surprise her was in the given picture; Alaric standing a couple of scant steps behind the yellow crime tape and authorities, looking like he had during Jenna's funeral, brooding and somewhat unkempt. She cringed asking the question 'Was Jenna's grave one of the five...?'

Damon's body language as he held his glass said everything, 'All five were recent deaths including Jenna.' She wasn't sure what to say to this, had Alaric done this? It made her sick just thinking about it. She was glad Elena and Jeremy were out of town. She re-read the paper trying soak in any details that might have escaped her exhausted eyes. Now that the adrenaline from the attack had succumbed to just general fear of the unknown locations the other three zombies might be and who they might be eating the rest of mind met with a staggering wall of sleepiness.

'I told you, Ric's been acing weird and I don't mean 'grieving over his girlfriend's death weird, he's been making allot of out of town visits.' after a beat he added, 'And just so we can get the whole moral high ground thing out of the picture... yes I have 'actually' been following him around lately.'

She wanted to exclaim disgust for the unabashed confession but tried in the interest of counting her chickens to take a higher road, 'I'm still going to say you're creepy but moving on ...what out of town visits has he been making?'

Damon looked like he was a bit reluctant to share any information with her as if he were a school boy asked to divulge a dirty secret of a naughty best friend about to prank the principle. Better yet, she was struck by how any minute action that betrayed a slightly more human side to his vampiric one, made her feel as though her genuine mistrust of him was an unqualified bet. After a raised eyebrow from the relented, 'He's been visiting the dragons den...'

Okay, she assumed since she wasn't a certified telepath Damon would elaborate on the subject matter he knew all about and she knew nothing about. He didn't. A headache was slowly making its way to her temples and stifling any attempt keep her eyes from squeezing shut in pain. He disappeared from view for a few minutes and when she opened her eyes he was buttoning a new black shirt over startlingly pale torso. Bonnie meant to avert her gaze but didn't on pretence she might miss an impression that might give her some answers because she was physically tired to ask. 'You're not going to even shower?'

He grinned at her in a suggestive way and Bonnie waved him off before he could fill the silence with equally suggestive sentences she didn't have time to reprimand him for 'What's the dragon's den?'

'I can't believe you actually don't know something...' Silence on her part didn't not spur him any quicker to get to the point, the half-drunk glass was in his hand again and he took a quiet sip before settling down opposite from her. He sighed 'They're witches, powerful ones...'

'I'm a powerful witch.' she reminded him to which he nodded genially, 'They're powerful in an evil kind of way, they don't save puppy dogs and shit...They bring about degradation and destruction in the world.'

This was news to her, why hadn't she heard of them before? Why hadn't gramps mentioned them? Her silent questioning didn't go unanswered, 'They exist in small pockets around small towns, don't attract allot of attention to themselves...Only people with allot of juice go see them...Alaric and i knew about them, we found them out when Klaus and his minions started making life miserable around here...We thought it's best to keep it from the rest of you, in case you way-ward's got tempted to ask them for help.'

Bonnie found it hard to believe Alaric kept something helpful from them. If these witches were as powerful as Damon was making them out to be they could have helped in killing Klaus, Jenna would be alive and Stefan would not have been AWOL. But Damon continued drinking at an unconcerned pace like none of it was of any real consequence, 'They don't do favours Bonnie, these bitches grant wishes for a price... nothing less than a soul or a sacrifice' He didn't look at her while saying it, as if he didn't want to her to read his mind.

Oh shit. She sat up straighter when her brain starting connecting the unlikely dots together.

'Damon we need to find Alaric...'

Said vampire's only response was an unhappy pout.