Blood Witch

8

Damon chose the first place of shadow to hide in, which was the barn that Bonnie had been standing in front of when he had last seen her. He dropped to the ground the moment that he was safe and clutched the raw skin of his face with his hands. His fingers and palm were burnt too, but not nearly as severely as his face. He wondered fleetingly whether he would put his abilities to heal under so much stress for anyone else and knew the answer immeadately. No one was worth this kind of agony, no one but her. She was worth dying for, his little Red Bird, and he would gladly pay that price for the certainty that she would be safe from all the evil in the world. Stefan might think that he knew the meaning of true passion, but he doubted that his little brother had any idea.

He needed blood, but he knew for a fact that the nearest person around was atleast a mile to the east. Nothing but the blood of a human would surffice for the amount of damage he had incurred, but he was desperate and needed something, anything, to keep himself from dying right here on this disgusting floor. Some kind of cattle had been housed here once, that much he could tell by the pungent stink of urine and other things he didn't wish to think about, but not for a long time. Maybe the human who owned this land had fogotten the barely-more-than-a-shed even existed, both a blessing and a curse. While he appreciated the solitude it offeered, there was likely no human's close enough to snack on. There was no way that he could venture out into the day-light again without his ring to protect him from meeting a hot and painful end, but if he waited the hours until nightfall, he was certaub that any trail Klaus left behind would have been erased by the gusting wind. What was a well-meaning vampire to do?

Closing his eyes in concentration, Damon used a bit of what precious little power he had at his disposal to send out a probe into the fields around him. He had once vowed never to be reduced to drinking the blood of animals, but even Elena would have to agree that it was the only option left to him, especially if there was to be any hope in catching up with Bonnie. That last thought made him feel absolutely vindicated, and the strength of his will alone lessened the pain of his charred flesh.

"Finally... I thought something awful might have happened..." Rebekah drawled, the moment that Klaus bounded into the clearing where they all waited. She was tierd of just standing around, doing nothing, bored. Nicklaus had made it very clear that they were to wait for him, but there were many other, better, things she could be doing with her time. She had been invited to a girl named Caroline's birthday party tonight, a party she'd promised to be at, but it seemed that once again her damn family was going to ruin any chance of her having fun. She wasn't even allowed to feed off of the witch, although she was hardly likely to object in her current condition.

"Put her at the centre," Esther told Klaus, wasting no time at all in directing him to do what she saw as the correct thing. She had a thick volume propped open in front of her and was scanning it quickly with her eyes even as she spoke. She had studied the spell before this moment, of course, but the language was foreign even to her eyes and she practiced saying the words in her mind. If this spell had been attempted before, she had no knowlege of it. She could only hope that the results would be just as described in the elegant script. The paper was thick and ancient beneath her finger-tips as she ran them over the verse. The circle formed around Bonnie consisted of herself, Mikael, Finn, Elijah, Klaus, Kol, and Rebekah, but the chanting sounded like one voice. They wasted no time in conducting the ceromony to awaken the power of the Blood Witch.

Damon pounced, catching the deer by the neck and bringing it to the leafy floor of the forest. It's blood was sharp, like raw lemons, but he forced his jaw to clamp down until the animal stopped moving entirely. He raised his gory mouth and saw that the shadows were starting to combine into one with the setting of the sun. If he knew anything about Klaus, it was that he enjoyed putting on a show, and would probably want to see Damon in the audience—meaning that he would not begin the sadistic ceremony until Damon arrived. That gave a little time to come up with a plan. Although he was willing to do anything to make sure Bonnie came out of this alive, he would not put his own life down as compensation. If all went to plan, they would both get out of this alive.

Klaus and Kol both smiled as they bound Bonnie's wristing and ankles and brought her to the thick wooden pole they had errected in the centre. Her stuggling didn't seem to trouble them at all, as if she were a kitten with it's claws removed. She was no threat to them, only a means to an end. Esther spoke in a strident tone as she dropped various herbs at regular intervals at the edge of the circle. She was confident that nothing could stop this from happening now, and once the Blood Witch was released, her children would have the power to smite all their enemied.

"Is there any way you can stop her moving so much?" Kol asked, the glance he gave Bonnie filled with distaste. It was clear the contempt Kol showed for mear mortals, but she did not find this too disheartening since she had known that these particular vampires saw all human's as beneath them. Unlike all the other vampires in the world, this group had never been human and thus felt no need to restrain their snide comments.

"Why don't you ask her? I'm sure she'll stop wriggling if you ask her nicely." There was a smile in his voice that made her think he had meant something other than what his words implied. Kol bent one of her fingers back until the bone broke with a snap, "We would appreciate it if you stopped moving. Thank you for being so considerate – happy?"

TBC