CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart
and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
xxxxXxxxx
"Do you see them anywhere?" Jeremy asked over the wheel as he drove the huge muscle car through a long crowded street that so closely resembled Mystic Falls that he had to remind himself that it wasn't.
Bonnie leaned over the leather dash to peer at the crowds that were giving her the side eye for riding in a car at all. Apparently, the entire populous of the town seemed to consider the roads more of a sidewalk than an actual road. She roamed her eyes over the fast moving crowds, looking for a flash of Caroline's bright blonde hair, but saw nothing.
"No," she said to Jeremey. "I've tried calling Caroline three times, but it goes straight to voicemail-It doesn't make any sense! They should've beaten us here."
"What about Elena and Stefan?" Jeremey asked.
"I couldn't even get through to voicemail on either of them." Bonnie said this as the apology that it was as she watched Jeremey's face fall into worry. "They're together Jer, I'm sure they're okay-"
"They're together with hunters Bonnie," Jeremy turned to her, "None of this is okay."
Bonnie set her hand on his arm, and tried to look reassuring, but the look Jeremy gave her silenced her into the reality that she truly felt.
She glanced out over the crowd again, looking for Caroline, or Matt, or even Stefan and Elena, when she saw it. She leaned over, the well-worn cracked leather seat shifting audibly with her.
"What is it?" Jeremey turned to her.
The sun had already gone down and streetlamps illuminated the blue hazed night sky. The road they drove on curved to the right into a crowd of people at restaurant with sidewalk outdoor seating that spilled into the street like everything else. The crowd was thick outside and the pumping of loud music came though even with the windows of the car rolled up.
Bonnie peered into the group, harder like she couldn't believe what she saw. A woman stood there, waving the car down as she saw them approach "Is that Katherine?"
Jeremy and Bonnie both watched as Katherine Pierce separated herself from the crowd and jogged over to the Impala, so close to it that Jeremy almost ran her over. He pulled the car to the side of the road next to someone's steel blue pickup truck.
Katherine ripped open the door before the car even stopped. "Why the hell are you parking?!"
"What the hell are you doing here?" Even in the dark Bonnie saw the torn and bloodied state of Katherine's clothes. "Where's Stefan and Elena?"
"I don't know-" Katherine returned.
"What do you mean you don't know?!" Jeremy demanded.
"Bonnie!" Caroline's bright blonde hair finally emerged through the darkness, Matt close behind her. "Thank god!" Caroline's voice was full of relief. "I kept trying to reach you, but there was no signal-" her relief soon melted into hostility like ice on a summer sidewalk when she spotted Katherine. "What the hell are you doing here?! Where are Stefan and Elena?"
"She says she doesn't know," Jeremy answered for Katherine air quoted the last two words.
"What the hell do you mean you don't know?!" Matt cut in, repeating what Jeremy said seconds before. "You were with them!"
"And clearly I'm not anymore!" Kathrine snapped. "We got ambushed in the woods by other vampires, and I got separated-"
"Other vampires?" Caroline "Wait, what other vampires?
"As in blood thirsty psychopaths that tried to kill Stefan and Elena, and me! But nice job jumping to the less important fact Caroline."
"How do we know you're not lying about this?" Caroline snapped.
"Because I'm not a vampire anymore," Katherine retorted. "I don't bloody up my good clothes for something to do, and because it's the truth, whether you believe it or not-"
"You ran to save yourself Katherine," Matt returned. "Don't pretend it was for any other reason than your own skin-"
"I did it to make sure that psycho group of vampires didn't capture all of us like they wanted Matt," Katherine retorted. "My own skin may have been in the equation, but so was everyone else's."
"If you don't know where they are then how did you get here?" Bonnie asked.
"Just because I'm human now Bon Bon doesn't mean I've forgotten my 500 year past life." Katherine shot back. "I may not know exactly where they are, but Giuseppe Salvatore took me riding to Parkesburg on several occasions to visit the abandoned home of some widowed tobacco heiress who died up north from distemper or something; Stefan and Damon used to join us." Katherine seemed to not register, but more importantly not acknowledge the look of disgust from the crowd was with. "That plantation's only three miles from here, that's not a coincidence."
"Then we need to go!" Caroline had to shush her voice when a passing woman glared at her in reproach. Her words were like a catalyst to Jeremey and he opened the front door of the Impala.
Katherine immediately slammed the door on him, close to severing off his hand. "You don't drive there, Jeremy," She said it like he was a kindergartener on the slower end of the comprehension scale. "This is an Underground Railroad Stop, the entire town's zigzagged with underground tunnels, first one starts over at the livery." As she talked, she walked around to the trunk, reaching down into her tattered shirt to her bra, and what was underneath.
"What are you doing?" Jeremy cut in, watching as Katherine unearthed a bobby pin from in between her breasts with a filed end as sharp as a dart tip.
"You can enjoy it later Little Gilbert," Katherine manipulated the sharp end of the bobby pin into the lock, working and twisting until the trunk popped open with a snap. The interior was littered with old candy wrappers, empty beer bottles and an army surplus bag that regurgitated clothes out of its half unzipped state. Katherine shoved all of this aside until she got to the floor of the trunk and began to work the bobby pin into a rounded groove.
"Enough with the stupid one liners Katherine!" Caroline snapped. "I don't know what you're trying to do by stalling but we need to find Stefan and Elena!-"
"That's what I'm trying to do Caroline!" Katherine barked.
"No, you're wasting time!" Caroline barked back, her hostile voice turned a young couple around.
"Is everything okay?" The man had a navy blue Baby Bjorn strapped to him, the bald head of a baby peaked out from above it.
"Yeah, we're fine," Jeremy said quickly, trying to drown out the sounds of Katherine's lock picking.
The man wasn't convinced and stared down at Katherine spilling out the contents of the trunk onto the ground. "What is she doing?"
"She lost a hairpin in the trunk," Matt lied a half ass kind of lie that got him the full-on death glare from Katherine as she hoisted a leg into the trunk and started tugging upwards with both hands.
The man's face turned to disbelief at what he was witnessing Katherine doing, also seeming to notice the blood on her clothes for the first time. "Is this even your car?"
"We've been traveling cross-country, lost the key somewhere in Spokane." Bonnie tried to wave off Katherine's less than not noticeable movements in the trunk.
"I'm calling the cops!" the man's wife spoke up beside him and whipped out a cellphone.
Caroline quickly snatched it from her.
"What the hell are you doing?" the woman snapped.
"You're not calling the cops," Caroline's pupils dilated around hazel eyes; she didn't blink as she stared right into the woman's green eyes, then did the same to the man, trying to hold both of them in her line of sight. "You're going to go straight home and forget everything you just saw, it's late-"
"It's late," the man repeated, his voice slow and syrupy.
"Your baby is tired," Caroline said "You need to put him to bed."
The baby started to cry like it was a stage cue, reaching a high pitch in a matter of seconds.
"The baby is tired honey," The woman turned to her husband slowly like all of her movements were being controlled with puppet strings. "We need to put him to bed."
The man looked down at the baby and nodded. He placed a hand on his wife's back and the two of them started back down the sidewalk like they never had most recent encounter at all.
"Not a half bad compulsion Forbes," Katherine retorted in a back handed compliment. "Not good, but not totally sucking either."
Caroline whipped her head back to Katherine, eyes fuming as she watched her continue to yank on the car. "Seriously? Enough with the lame cat burglar attempts; okay? We have to go!- there's nothing there!-"
Katherine gave one last hard tug and a mechanism popped open and the floor of the trunk raised up. Katherine tucked the bobby pin back into the deep curved crevice of her breasts and held the door open. "You were saying?"
Caroline's eyes widened in shock, as she, Bonnie, Matt, and Jeremey stared down through the false bottom of the trunk.
Matt bent his head down closer. "What the hell?"
The space carpeted with weapons: hunting rifles, sheathed knives in numerous lengths, cigar boxes rattling with heavy shot gun shells that leached a smell of dry salt, grenades hanging from the false bottom's hatch. Along with these weapons were things that seemed not to make sense: leather pouches that held handfuls of dirt, a wooden long neck flask, a dream catcher, hanging next to the grenade, a pile of dark ash in a jar.
"How the hell did you know that they would keep an arsenal in the trunk?" Jeremy watched as Katherine shoved the jar of ash aside and pulled out a wicked looking serrated knife as long as her arm from its sheath.
"Because I didn't get to be 535-years-old by stupidly underestimating my enemies Jeremy." Katherine shoved a single barreled sawed off shotgun at him, barrel first. "Consider it a practice you might want to indoctrinate into your daily routine if you want to keep that Gilbert body out of the Other Side." She walked across the street, tucking the blade down the leg of her jeans as she went like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.
Jeremy closed the trunk of the car and locked the doors because it was their only way out of Parkesburg, and he needed to keep it that way, he just hoped no one noticed the hole in the window. He jogged into the street to keep up with Katherine, Matt, Bonnie, and Caroline quickly following. Non-Vampire or not, one of them were about to let Katherine Pierce wander off armed with a wicked looked blade alone.
The street Katherine followed curved down into a line of outdoor cafes and restaurants. Dogwood blooms spilled in pots out from the trellises of one café with a black overhanging sign proclaiming its name above it. People were packed inside, the tables and the smell of baked breads and cheese laden pastas mixed with the smells of the flowers. After a distance of 50 feet or so the restaurants dissolved into shops with brightly light windows laden with tourist trinkets.
Katherine stared down at the storefronts like she was apprising a piece of jewelry, and she found the sight of it all wanting. "God, they sure whored this place out for the tourists-"
"Aren't you supposed to care about Stefan or something?" Caroline snapped just as they passed an Apple Store made of pure white. "Wouldn't that mean that you didn leave him to fend off rabid vampires in the condition that he's in!-"
"Green isn't your best shade Caroline," Katherine retorted casually like they were walking down the street just taking in the air.
"Knock it off Katherine!" Bonnie demanded, eyes glowering at her.
"You're a vapored ghost Bonnie, remember?" Katherine snapped began walking again, throwing the remark over her shoulder like Bonnie wasn't worthy of face-to-face contact. "You don't witchy have powers to order me around anymore-"
"You're not a vampire anymore," Bonnie snapped back. "I don't need witchy powers, all I have to do is kick your ass and you stay down for a long time, so answer her question."
Katherine slowed down, and turned around at an intersection, the broken heals she wore clacked against the pavement. Cars moved fast down a two lane road in the center of town. "Bonnie Bennett, so sassy-" Her dark eyes colored in amusement.
Bonnie stared down Katherine in a dead stone glare.
Katherine rolled her eyes. "None of you may want to accept it, but I've known Stefan longer than any one of you have- Damon too for that matter. Did you think I would just let myself get ripped to pieces by mutated vampires just to claim a loyalty oath rather than actually do something practical to help Stefan get his brother out?"
None of the faces watching Katherine fully believed what she said to be hard truth, but what she said didn't pass over them without impact, so none of them were able to speak on either account.
Kathrine rolled her eyes again, and started across the road, cars honking at her because she didn't wait for the cross walk signal.
"Okay, that's a load of crap!" Caroline said the minute Katherine disappeared. "She's clearly lying! Shedoesn't care about Stefan! She used that attack she talked about as a distraction to get her deserter ass away!-"
"Maybe not-"
Caroline whirled on Matt and what he said. "Seriously Matt? You believe her-?!"
"She has no reason to lie-"
"She has every reason to lie!" Caroline hissed back. "She's Katherine Pierce, she lies like it's her job!"
"I'm not saying that Katherine's turned a new leaf Care," Matt insisted. "But she's right. She's known Stefan and Damon longer than any of us have."
"She manipulated them Matt!" Bonnie cut in. "She's the reason they're vampires in the first place!-"
"It still doesn't make the first part not true," Matt insisted. "Whatever the reason that she wants to find them, she wants to find them." Matt Donovan was the human in the town full of monster friendships, the boy that everyone loved, the ordinary one, the one who they all used to be before the supernatural life turned them out into who they were now. Which made what he said resonate like a struck bell. "And I for one want to be there when she does-" Matt moved away from his friends and jogged across the street, waving off the cars who honked at him.
Matt moved past the crowd of people leisurely walking along the sidewalk, brushing past a young mother with her child with a hand on her back and an 'I'm sorry' after he bumped her, eyes tracking Katherine's long dark hair moving through the crowd. The road he was on hugged a sidewalk where the buildings were more spaced out, tall oak trees intermingled in the empty spaces. Just past two such oak trees Matt watched Katherine disappear into a bricked open faced bricked building surrounded by a wooden fence. He'd been to his uncle's farm enough times in Lancaster to recognize a horse coral when he saw it. The front of the horse coral was made of packed dirt and it was empty. The soft whinny of sleeping horses echoing from behind darkened spaces of stable doors. Across from the stables the fence opened partway at an access point where there was another open area of dirt. It seemed to serve as a parking lot because of the old Ford pickup truck and the one white Lincoln that was parked sideways in the middle of it.
Matt stepped down the walkway that led up to the building. He opened his mouth to call out Katherine's name but before he could a scream cut across the night, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He regretted not taking one of the weapons from the Impala trunk as he balled his hands into fists and ran to the left where the noise seemed to be coming from the front of the white car.
When he drew closer to the front of the Lincoln he saw a line of dark blood running up the right side. The windshield was completely smashed, leaving nothing but the metal framework – and a woman was spread eagle across the hole, hands and feet punched into the metal.
And leaning over her was Katherine, the blade she had stolen pressed up against the woman's neck; the woman's face was covered in blood and she was in ragged sounding heaved breaths.
"Katherine what the hell are you doing?!" Matt yanked Katherine's arm back.
"Back of Mattie," Katherine snarled and yanked her arm out of Matt's grip. "I got this!"
Matt grabbed her arm again, intending to help the woman, however he could. But as he took a step towards her, a series of spiked teeth descended over her normal set, and she snarled at him.
"You heard her Mattie- Back. Off." the woman, the thing shouted.
Katherine brought the blade back down and up into her neck, trickles of blood falling down her skin. "I didn't give you permission to talk to him honey, now did I?"
The woman panted, and turned hate filled eyes to her. "You and your friends are nothing but putrid garbage!-"
Katherine pressed the blade in harder, drawing a line of blood across the woman's neck as thick as a scarf. "Well aren't you a mean little thing?" she traced the blade around in long strokes. "How about you stop name calling and elaborate a little more?"
The woman growled in pain.
Katherine leaned over in her broken heels and stared down at her. "Let me guess: 5'11", ripped, luscious hair?" She glanced up at the woman's body spread eagle on the car. "Don't feel bad, it's hard to resist not lying down for those hazel bedroom eyes of his-"
The vampire growled, hostile.
Katherine shoved the blade in deeper still, ripping the cuts on the woman's neck like rivers, silencing her growl into a gasped choking sound. "Tell me where he went and I'll kill you faster than I want to."
"You won't be killing anyone."
The voice turned Matt and Katherine around.
The couple from the street stood there, bodies cloaked in the semi darkness from the night and the lanterns overhead in the stables overhanging roof. The man still had the Baby Bjorn strapped around his body. He removed it and dropped it to the ground in a heap, a plastic baby doll tumbling out onto the ground, crying the same high pitched cry from earlier.
The woman smiled, like Matt and Katherine were two children that had snuck out late at night to watch an R rated movie. She stared up at the vampire pinned to the car like she was the friend who had told them to sneak out. "We'll deal with you in a second, Cara," her eyes were hostile before they roamed back over to Katherine, the hostility reaching dangerous intensity.
"It was rude of you to run away, Ms. Katherine," The man said. "Darius doesn't appreciate rudeness."
"Well I don't appreciate Darius, so let's just call it even all around." Katherine snapped back.
The man smiled. "You are feisty, girl-" He eyed Katherine like she was exposed completely before him. "I'm willing to give you a fair shot." He knelt down underneath the fallen baby doll, and pulled a black handgun. He aimed the gun at her. "Regular bullets, tipped with a little Vervain from Darius stock. Enough to incapacitate vampires like you, until we bring you to him." He cocked the gun. "Let's see who's really the faster vampire species."
Matt glanced at the gun, then at Katherine holding the blade, watching her eyes do the same to the gun. "Why don't you both go to hell?"
The woman turned to Matt. "Katherine Pierce has a Champion-"' amusement crossed her face. "How quaint." A noise emerged from her smile, and a set of razor sharp teeth covered her original teeth.
There came a thudded, slicing sound, and both vampires and Matt turned to see the head of Cara drop off of her neck, blood pouring out of the stump.
Katherine stared down the woman, blood on her face, leaking down her the blade to her hand. "I don't do quaint."
The man raised the gun, aiming. Matt reached and jerked his hand, making his aim go high, catching Katherine in the shoulder. She dropped to the ground with a grunt.
The male vampire flung Matt to the ground, snapping a mouthful of fangs at him, he squirmed and moved trying to dodge the attack, a sticky foul liquid pooling down his neck. The vampire's roar died in his mouth and his head went one way, his body tumbling the opposite way.
Katherine stood over Matt, the machete stained higher in blood, clutching at the bullet hole in her shoulder. "Sorry, Mattie Blue-Blue is sort of off limits." Katherine made a painful grunted noise, dropping the blade and grabbed at her shoulder harder.
The female vampire came up behind her and grabbed at the same shoulder and Katherine screamed.
A shot gun blast tore a huge, jagged hole through the woman's chest, right through to the other side. She stumbled back, but instead of falling, she roared in indignation.
A hand grabbed the woman back, Caroline torqued her hands behind her back, and tore into her neck hard, flung backwards, with the other vampire's body on top of hers. Caroline reached her hand into the woman's shredded cavity, and she roared, then jerked in a stop as Caroline ripped her heart up and out of the hole.
Caroline laid there in shock, letting the heart fall out of her fingers to the ground.
"Caroline! Hey!" Jeremy ran over to her and rolled the dead vampire body off of her, pulling her to her feet. "Are you okay?"
Caroline looked shaky, but nodded, her breathing hard on adrenaline, blood both stained and ran down her hands.
Bonnie yanked Matt up off the ground. "Are you guys okay?" starring at the headless vampire at her feet, then at Katherine standing there with a blade and a bloody shoulder.
Matt stared at Katherine too until he was able to find his voice. "Where did they go? Did she tell you?"
Katherine stared at him like he already should know the answer. "It's here somewhere, at least it used to be-" Her voice wasn't at all snarky, instead it was full of a real uncertainty.
Jeremey glanced behind him, looking up and down the walls until he saw something. "What is that?" He pointed back behind him, cutting off Katherine's words.
Behind them was a double set of doors opening to the livery itself. The floor was lined with a layer of hay. There was one section where it was flung up and askew like there was something heavier underneath it.
Jeremy ran over, Bonnie turned and followed him. She found him pulling aside the hay, to reveal a trap door caved partway into a hole of equal size, a metal lock was half shot off, and the hinges on the other side were nearly torn off.
Someone had wedged a piece of wood into the door, but it was broken halfway, like the weight of the door had snapped it apart.
Katherine grabbed at the brass ring and pulled up, but was only able to make the door rise two inches before she dropped it back down with a groan.
"Caroline-!" Jeremy called over as Caroline moved over to door handle that Katherine. "Grab that end!" He knelt down and grabbed one end of the door, watching as Caroline grabbed the other. "Pull!-"
Katherine fell back, looking at the heavy door like it was a personal insult.
Caroline pulled up and hard at the same moment Jeremey did, even with Vampire strength and Hunter strength they were both straining, the door not moving at all. They yanked harder, Caroline felt her muscles liquefy, Jeremy grunted a scream, and the door finally flipped back.
Staring up at them was a hole of darkness.
Bonnie stared into the yawning darkness. "Where does this even go?"
"Only one way to find out-" Jeremey jumped down into the hole, falling for a good 10 feet before his feet hit packed earth.
Caroline dropped in next, landing right beside him. She turned and shouted: "Come on!" back up the hole:
Bonnie lowered into a crouch and jumped, Jeremy reached out to grab her arms to buffer her fall.
In a moment that didn't allow for thinking Matt grabbed a hold of Katherine around the waist and jumped with her in the hole.
Katherine swore loudly in his ear as they both fell, beating him across the chest with her good arm as soon as they hit the ground.
"Relax!" Matt let go of her after she nearly took out his eyes with a double elbow block.
Katherine shot him a murderous glare. "You will never do that again!"
"You're welcome." Matt tore off a piece of his shirt sleeve and wrapped it around her shoulder, Katherine eyeing him in the half darkness, still glowering, but lessoning with each wrap of the dirty blue cloth.
They were standing in a darkened hallway that went on endlessly in stone and high beams, the smell of blood hung heavily in the air.
Caroline traced her hand along the stone, feeling it damp in places with moss and water, though she had no idea where the water came from. "Okay, what is this place?"
"It's an Underground Railroad Tunnel." Katherine grunted out under the pain of the wound in her shoulder, but moved forward, pushing past all of them like she was taking in something that she had seen before, but only heard about. "I heard rumors that Lady Rosenbaum was an Abolitionist, supposedly she begged the local Quakers to create a tunnel to her home for runaway slaves- Apparently they're true."
"So this should lead all the way back to the Plantation house?" Jeremey asked.
"A + Little Gilbert," Katherine returned in slight amusement.
"But I don't get it," Jeremy returned. "The Plantation House is open for tourists every season, you couldn't hide secret experiments."
"You could if they were all down here," Katherine returned. "This town was huge on Pro Abolitionism during the Civil War, These tunnel goes on for miles, and it connects to other tunnels in the town's system. More than enough space to carve out a torture dungeon for endless anti-vampire fun." She paused and stared at all of them. "So, who's still upset that I ran off?"
xxxxxXxxxx
Damon hadn't felt this badly since he'd been hung over last week. At least then he had the pleasant blur of what he had done in his drunken haze as satisfaction.
Now he was pinned down to a table with lights that scorched his skin like he was over an open flame. His head felt like a paper bag filled with broken glass.
The light turned from burning to ice picks, as gloved fingers pried open his eyes, taping them into place. Wes Maxfield stared down at him, his own eyes were filled with red clots, but the look of mania wasn't hidden by the all the blood.
"What the hell are you doing?" Damon's words were a slurred wince, he looked up and over and saw the hanging bag of vervain still there, but empty, the needle and tubing dangled to the ground.
"What needs to be done."
The voice came from behind Wes, and Damon tried to look behind the psychopath doctor, but his head was held down firmly by the leather strap.
A face emerged from behind Wes, and Damon felt like a rush of vervain had gone in him at who he found himself staring at.
["Wait!" Damon ran down the steps of Abilene's plantation house, his white shirt untucked, his boots half laced, his hair flying at a crazy angle. His boot steps squelched in the mud of an afternoon April rain. "You can't do this!"
The overseer turned to Damon, just as the boy came within a foot of him. The muzzle of the overseer's pistol was drawn in between the shoulder blades of Darius whose arms were bound tightly behind him with a triple length of rope.
"You better get back into the house Mr. Damon, this one has broken the law! The overseer stared at Darius like he was nothing but a trapped animal caught on his farm. "Trying to consort with a white lady is a hanging offense!"
"I did a lot more than try Sir," Darius voice was quiet, but he didn't mutter; what he said was very clear and very defiant.
The overseer became enraged, he cuffed Darius hard on the back of his head with the butt of the pistol dropping Darius to his knees. "You worthless piece of shit!" The overseer grabbed Darius by his neck and drew him up.
"Stop it!" Damon yelled, seeing Darius choke and gag, eyes beginning to roll out in his head. He stared to turn, but the overseer drew a shot on him with his pistol.
"I said get back, boy!" The overseer turned back to Darius and glared at him like he was worthless. "We need to exterminate this threat before it taints our community!"
"Damon!"
The voice erupted from the house, the front door slammed hard and Stefan propelled down the stairs in bare feet.
"Stefan!" Damon whirled around to his brother, trying to block the sight of Darius from his view. He hurried towards him. "Get back in the house!"
Stefan didn't listen and continued to run towards Damon. The overseer's face drew from impatient to pissed off at the interruption of his duties. He swung his gun back around pulled the trigger at Darius' head just as Stefan came within two steps of Darius.
Darius body's rocked forward onto his knees, and fell forward and Damon ran and grabbed Stefan away, his brother's screams deafening him as Darius's body landed into dirt of the road.]
"Darius?" Damon's face filtered into a confused as hell moment as Darius pinned his head down with surprising strength, strength above any human. "You're a vampire?-"
"Very good Master Damon," Darius leaned up right next to him, his breath blew on his face; Damon smelled the taint of blood on it. "I daresay you're better at analysis that your brother."
"Where's Stefan?" Damon's reaction was instant after Darius' words.
"You'll see him soon enough," Darius' moved his hand from Damon's head and grabbed him around the throat. "Which means we have to get you prepared." His mouth opened with a loud crinkle and over a dozen of tiny thorn like teeth dropped down from his mouth. His hand raised, grasping a syringe and he plunged it into his gums, extracting a syrupy amber colored liquid.
Damon had only a fraction of a second to try and understand what the hell had just happened before Darius plunged the needle deep into his jugular.
Damon roared in pain, the injection burning like hot wax in his body, his arms tightened, his eyes dilated to pinpoints. "You're not a vampire, what the hell are you?"'
"I'm a Vampire Damon, I assure you of that," Darius pulled back the needle and slammed it down on a metal tray. "The same vampire who ripped that pathetic overseer's head off when he tried to drag me off into the woods for the animals. The same vampire who made all of this happen." He swept his eyes around the cold metal exam room like it was a castle. "I created this project to exterminate your half breed kind." Darius fangs drew back up into his mouth. "Your kind who try so hard to assimilate, act like everyone else. But it's a lie Damon. You're cockroaches pretending to be people. "You know how exterminators kill cockroaches?"
"No, but you're probably about to tell me anyway," Damon drew out, his body still jerking from the sensation of whatever Darius had shoved up his neck.
"They give them this chemical laced food, it turns their appetites ravenous, but from food sources except their own kind, and they devour each other. That's exactly I'm doing to you, Damon," Darius snapped the restraints off of Damon's arms and feet like he was breaking plastics twist ties, he grabbed Damon, and jerked him to his feet so fast that Damon felt a rush of nausea. "With the last full concentrated dose of my venom your craving for the blood of your own kind will overpower you."
"Thanks for the gory visual, but I'm going to have to pass," Damon's fangs retracted faster than he'd ever experienced, even in the last few days. He threw himself at Darius, but even with his heightened senses, Darius deflected the attack, and hurled Damon onto his back.
Damon collided hard into a table and the wood splintered apart, he grabbed the biggest piece and shoved it hard into Darius chest, the stick protruding clean through to the other side of his body.
Darius reared back from the attack, but didn't fall, and pulled the entire stick of himself back the way it came, it squelched in the thick sound of blood, he held it up and stared at it like it was a useless twig and threw it aside.
Damon had been alive for 177 years, and in that time had seen a shit load of odd and weird things, but this ranked up there as one of the highest. Darius wasn't an Original Vampire, and Damon didn't miss, that stake should've killed him.
"You're just full of surprises aren't you?" Damon found himself completely non-plussed by all the blood on the stake only a few feet away from where he stood, his adrenaline and his heart competed in a marathon through his body.
"It's called Evolution, Master Damon," Darius picked up the stake again, but threw it across the room. "Just so you don't get any misguided suicidal ideas."
"I'm more of a murder man myself-" Damon heard the sound a second before it happened, the noise of a cocked gun from behind him, and he turned and snatched the gun out of Wes' hand slamming it to the wall, dislodging the clip from the handle, sending them skittering away from each other.
He glared at Wes, with all the pent up anger and hate that had led him to still keep him alive for an unknown reason. "Nice try-"
He saw the next moves in increments, small seconds, heard a thundering voice behind him shout "Hey!" moments before a precisely carved and sharpened stake ripped through him and a blinding pain shot through his body.
Wes's voice was cold and calculating. "Thank you."
"No!"
Damon dropped hard onto his knees, the pain heavy, and thick, somewhere in the distance he thought he heard Stefan's voice, though it might have been just the pain. Then came the sound of gunshot, a metal bullet.
"Damon, Hey!" Stefan was right next to Damon, leaving Damon to wonder just how the hell things were being run now if he was still alive, and his brother had somehow found him, or maybe his mind had finally gone crazy from all the torture. The stake had missed his heart by millimeters, but with each breath Damon felt it scrapping close against the beating thing.
"Stefan-" Damon saw his brother through hazed pain that got bright red hot as Stefan pulled hard and ripped it back out of his body. Damon reared in a scream. "Get out of here-" he turned his head down in the pain. "-or I'm going to kill you!-"
"No you're not, come on," came Stefan's idiotic reply as he jerked Damon none-too-gently too his feet.
Damon's vision began to turn from red to the normal colors of the shitty world that he found himself in, Darius stood, doing nothing but watching him. Inches from Darius stood a man, insanely tall, aimed a silver Beretta at him.
Darius was watching the man, but his attention was more on Wes, who was standing behind the metal exam table.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Darius question was molten hot on Wes, who was the one who had staked Damon moments ago. "You almost sacrificed the entire project because of flawed human anger!"
"I wasn't going to kill him Darius," Wes said to Darius like he was arguing with a bratty child. "I'm trying to regain the control you so obviously lost-" Wes attention shifted to the tall man in the room like he had just materialized there out of thin air. "I know you," he stared down the man, and Damon watched as Stefan glanced over to the man too.
Damon had learned to read the expressions of people in almost minute detail, a skill he adapted after becoming a vampire, to determine the best way to manipulate someone through compulsion. The man's expression was as tight as his grip on the trigger of his gun, but Damon watched as his expression shifted over like tumbling pebbles from a building that was starting to crumble.
Wes pointed a finger at the man, a Cheshire smile at his face. "You're the hunter who gave me my sweet little friend in the white dress."
The man's eyes shifted from tumbling into hostility to an emotion that encompassed rage, hate, and murder in the same image. "Shut up-" his voice echoed in the steel room.
"I'm trying to thank you," Wes snapped. "She's proven very useful for the success of our operations."
"I said shut up!" the man waved the gun at Wes, like it was a dare, a one-more-movement-and-I'm going-to-off-you kind of dare.
Damon's brain felt masticated, but he looked back and forth in rapid fire motion, analyzing whose head to rip off first. Wes was a prime target, but the other man was a close second. But, Stefan glanced at him with the smallest shake of his head.
"She's dead," the man's voice the Hunter's voice was thick and heavy, and pissed off. "You son-of-a-bitch!"
Damon processed this information with a sting of shock, the girl in the white dress, the one he tried to help-
"You killed her?" Wes sounded both confused and manically upset. "She was mine! I don't know what the hell kind of second class orphanage you got those other ones from, but they didn't last a day; she was my best one! Now who will test my experiments on? " He stared at the man like he was a mangy dog and grabbed another thick black large barreled gun off of a tray table and aimed it at him.
"You waste time with your anger Maxfield," Darius's voice was insistent and old, older than Damon remembered it sounding.
Wes turned on the Vampire, the aim of his gun never leaving the hunter. "Whose side are you on?" The cuts and scratches under his eyes began to leak tears of blood from the pumping of his heart. "You're project was just a half buried excuse in the ground before I found it; I made you what you are!-"
"You speak out of turn," Darius voice was calm, eerily calm, like the last moment of the eye of a Hurricane before the first brutal reentry into the storm. "I'm more powerful than you can comprehend boy, I think it wise to not to piss me off." He turned to the hunter. "Isn't that right Sam?"
"What the hell is going on?" Damon side barred in a half mumbled mumble to Stefan.
"I'll tell you later," Stefan mumbled back, keeping most of his attention on Darius and Wes, but absorbing the sight of his brother standing right there.
Wes blew off the statement like Darius was a particularly annoying bully on the playground, before shifting his gaze over to 'Sam'. "Since you cost me one of my Feeders," he cocked the gun in his hand. "Maybe I'll just use you as a replacement."
The click of a second gun echoed from behind Wes, and there emerged a second, freakishly tall man aiming a silver Colt flat against Wes's neck, blood coated the man's hairline, but he didn't seem to notice, and Damon didn't notice at all, not in the way that he was supposed too. "You better rethink that statement."
"Damon!"
Damon couldn't comprehend what he was seeing or how stupid things suddenly got. She looked like crap, her face was covered in soot and dirt and her mouth and shirt front was stained in blood. "Elena-" he backed away from her as she started to run towards him. "No-stay back!"
The stake that Wes had stabbed Damon with was lying on the ground, and Wes crouched, hand reaching out to grab it.
"Don't move!" Sam barked, cocking his gun and placing it on the back of Wes' neck before he could complete his action.
"You really need to teach your children better table manners Darius," the second man spoke through a growl. "Leaving all those poor tourists they've been snacking on for anyone to find." He pulled something out of his jacket, a 20 millimeter syringe filled to the top with blood "Leaves room for me to extract enough dead man's blood to kill every last one of your entourage."
"It always amazes me how much cockiness can be packed into you Dean Winchester," Darius addressed the other man by name.
"Yeah well get in line," he withdrew a blood stained machete from behind his back and wielded it at Darius. "Now give us Mr. Salvatore's daylight ring and we'll get the killing of your operation underway."
Damon now really had no idea what the hell had gone on, or if he should just risk the now acrid taste of human blood and just kill these two gun wielding hunters, but Stefan snatched his arm back, his dark eyes half a glower, half a 'don't' look. And as much as Damon wanted to punch his brother in the face for not leaving when he told him too, there wasn't exactly time for throwing blows.
Darius smiled the same smile he had given Damon the summer when he taught him how to bridle a horse. "Did you really think it would be that easy?"
Dean's expression was eerily calm. "Did you?"
Out of the corner of his eye Damon watched as Sam crept up behind Darius, another bloodstained machete raising in the air.
Darius turned at the last moment and deflected the blow, tossing the man hard into the exam table, where he fell hard, metal instruments and needles raining down on him from the tray table. But despite all of this he still had a hold of his knife, and he aimed another strike at Darius' neck. The blade missed again and was thrown to the side in a hard slicing sound that landed at Elena's feet just as Sam was hurled into the air and smacked down hard against the steel exam table, this time with a bone cracking sound that dented the table.
Stefan had heard the noise of vertebra popping in a constant loop in his head for nearly 20 years, it was the same noise that he heard the second Sam hit the exam table. The hunter's face contoured in guttural pain, but his scream died on his mouth as Darius pinned him down by the neck squeezing a tortured, dying gasp out of him. He squeezed harder, and Sam's breath went from tortured to non-existent, the hands grabbing Darius' neck went slack.
"Sam!"
The ultra-heightened senses of the vampires picked up the earth shattering magnitude that Dean Winchester screamed his brother's name.
"If you so much as breathe in my direction Dean," Darius stared over the slack body of the hunter stopping Dean's movements. "I am going to flay your brother alive and feed his scraps to my children."
Elena felt a rippled tremble that had nothing to do with fear course through Dean's body, his eyes were stony, hard, angry. Her heart pounded furiously as she watched as Damon flicked his gaze over to her, a part of her 'happy' that he was alive, but the part being terrified was still overriding it. Her boot brushed against Sam's fallen machete, the point of the blade was angled at the tip of her shoe. She didn't glance at it to not give any indication that she knew it was there.
"Now that we have an understanding, we can proceed."
Elena had only a second to process what Darius meant before her arms were jerked behind her back, a second later Dean followed suit. Wes soon emerged on her right, but the strength she felt wasn't human, something else was holding her down. But she couldn't look behind her before the doctor pulled out a hypodermic needle and plunged it into her carotid artery.
"Elena!" Damon's shout for her was murderous.
"Try anything Damon, and I will kill Mr. Winchester here outright," Darius threatened over Sam's unconsciousness form.
Damon didn't know these two hunters from the man down the street that he ate for breakfast year ago. But he knew his girlfriend, and he wasn't about to listen to Wes, he was about to kill him. He moved a fraction, about to hurl himself on the shit ass doctor but his arm was jerked back by Stefan.
"Damon don't!-" Stefan didn't' try to hide or mumble his warning. His heart pounded at the sight of Elena being held in the arms of a vampire who looked at her like she was trash; Wes was breathing down her neck, looking at her like she was something else- But she was still present, able to fight - Seeing Sam, a man who had risked his life for him even when he shouldn't have, so easy to be killed-
"What is wrong with you?" Damon snarked angrily at him.
"Your brother is loyal to a fault Damon. The only reason he's here at all is because of our former benefactor there," Wes nodded at Sam's unconscious body pulling back on the needle in Elena's neck, filling the syringe with blood. She gasped at the pain.
Damon's face crawled with spider webbed veins at the smell of blood, he felt his fangs retract, he forced himself to stay away even with every part of him that screamed to attack the source of the blood until it was emptied.
Wes walked casually with the syringe of Elena's blood to the still form of the hunter. "If there are any objections," Wes stared at Darius. "By all means-"
Darius moved a step away from the table, but his eyes were far from compliant.
Dean jerked hard against the vampire that was holding him. "If you touch him I swear to god!"
Wes plunge the needle into Sam's neck.
"You bitch!" Dean roared, struggling harder against the vampire, bucking like a horse, nearly breaking the hold on him.
The vampire sensed it and turned his shoulder up a hard right, the joints popping to a near dislocation.
"You're dead!"
"See, the thing is I'm not," Wes plunged the entire contents of the needle into Sam's neck, discarding it casually a moment later. "But he will be. Your brother cost me a valuable source for my experiments Mr. Winchester," Wes bent down low to the floor and when he stood back up he had the hunter's silver gun in his hand.
Elena moved the blade at her foot again, shifting with slow movements so that the flat of the blade was on her shoe, hovering there like a balance beam.
Wes placed the muzzle right against Sam's forehead. "It's only fitting that he procures my replacement."
Elena reared her head back and smacked it into her capturer, it stunned him enough so that he let go of her, she drew back her fangs, but she didn't attack, she waited, until the second vampire released Dean to attack her in retaliation, and flung the machete blade up and at him.
It was a badly calculated aim, but Dean caught it by the base of the blade, blood slashed out of his palm, he swung back at the vampires in a hard fast movement that took his head clean off his body.
Wes's grip on the gun had become distracted at all the noise, but he quickly re-aimed his shot.
Stefan finally took his opportunity and slammed Wes hard into the wall, the gun firing into the table leg.
The vampire that had grabbed Elena glared at her with hate that walked the edge of sleaze, like he wanted to work her over after she was a corpse. "Time to die bitch." He retracted his multiple fangs and ripped into her neck.
Elena screamed, the pain was red hot; but then it all ended abruptly. The vampire's body fell on her in a boneless heap, Damon holding his still warm beating heart in his hand, he let it drop into a rolled mess of blood.
"Damon-" Elena breathed his name out in a terrified whisper.
Damon pulled the body off of her and dropped it like a pile of wood to the ground.
Elena reached out and threw her arms around his neck, finally able to touch him. She felt his heartbeat slamming against her chest, felt his hands in her hair.
But it was only a brief moment before Damon pulled her off of him; his pupils were wide and dilated as he stared at the blood on her neck. "You need to go-"
Elena shifted her gaze over to Sam; he still wasn't moving. Dean ran to him, shaking his jacket, the edge of the collar stained in blood. Stefan had Wes pinned up against the wall and Darius had vanished from the room entirely.
"Sam, hey!"
Elena watched Dean slap his brother's face, and then started CPR with a terrified calling of his name.
"Elena now!" Damon jerked her back and started to pull her along.
"No, we can't!" Elena shouted back. "We have to help them!"
Damon glanced over at the two men for only the briefest of moments like he was just examining a scrap of paper that he didn't drop on the road. "Are you kidding me?"
"They saved our lives!" Elena moved past him before he tried to force her back again and ran to the exam table where Dean was compressing cupped hands hard into Sam's ribs. Sam lay completely still, his face taken over by a color leaching gray. She drew her ear down to his chest there was no movement of air from his diaphragm, but she heard his heart faintly thumping in his body.
She moved back and pushed hard on his sternum, hearing his ribs crack from her single amount of pressure.
"Damnit Sammy c'mon!" Dean placed one last breath in Sam's mouth and Sam jolted like he'd been electrocuted, shooting up with a choking sound, his large hand slammed into her. Sam still looked dazed, and hurt, but breathing, he took in the sight of Elena hovering over him.
Dean instantly grabbed his arm "Hey, you back with me?"
"Come on," Elena repeated Dean's words, and helped him haul Sam to his feet. Even with her extra strength he nearly toppled her over, and he stood like it was painful. But he pulled his weight off of her and grabbed his gun back from where it had landed askew on the table, wobbling to his feet, but stayed there once he found them.
Damon's mind was still half fuzzy from days of constant torture, but adrenaline coursing through started to cancel out that feeling, splitting his thoughts into two areas: the one where Elena stood next to men who were trained to kill her, and the one where Stefan pinned Wes high against the wall of the lab in a hold that was Damon knew was one to snap his neck. Elena almost fell over under the weight of the man she tried to lift, a sign that something had drained her earlier.
But the scent of blood on her neck was strong, even from where Damon stood away from her. The odor of it filled his nostrils and threw his veins into a black spider webbed pattern across his face.
Stefan felt the carotid artery in Wes's neck like it was a plump grape between his fingers.
Wes coughed out stunted puffs of breath. "You came just in time."
Stefan squeezed harder, ending Wes's words at that. "You don't get to talk, not anymore, not after what you did to Damon, and that girl, and to Sam-"
"Sam?" Wes pulled on the last dregs of his breath. "You're on a first name basis with hunters? " A fractured smile emerged from Wes's face like a badly choreographed cabaret act, blood staining his teeth. His eyes rolled over to Sam who stared at the scene along with Dean and Elena. "Must've been quite a story. The only thing I did to that girl was turn her into one of you," Wes pulled on the last dregs of breath.
Stefan applied tighter pressure, Wes' mouth hung open in a silent gasp. Stefan lifted him up off the floor a good five inches by the throat. "I thought I told you not to talk-maybe I'll just squeeze your neck until I your vocal chords sever so you don't have the option anymore-"
"You probably should stop being a dick about this," Damon emerged beside Stefan, at an almost slow pace that only had half to do with all that had been done to him before, making no move to intervene any move to intervene. "People who call me a psychopath have never seen my brother when he's pissed off-" Damon began groping Wes' lab coat pockets, yanking out a wallet, and an extra clip of bullets.
"Get out of here Damon, I have this." Stefan retorted, in a low, threatening growl, never taking his eyes off of Wes's. He watched the doctor's go opaque from the lack of oxygen.
"Back off from the head popping for a second brother, I need to ask him a question while his neck is still intact," Damon watched Stefan release Wes's neck long enough for Wes to take the tiniest fraction of a breath to keep from asphyxiating then he got down right next to Wes' blood shot eyes. "Where's my ring? And before you answer, the phrase: 'I don't know' equals a broken leg," Damon placed a hand on Wes's lower leg and pulled back hard.
Wes reared back, not saying anything but a grunted scream.
"You know, I didn't quite catch that-" Damon returned, applying more pressure.
Wes screamed again. "I don't have it anymore!"
"But you did-" Sam moved to stand beside Stefan. "Darius gave it back to you for safe keeping, but you put it somewhere else didn't you?"
Damon gave a side eyed looked to the hunter, who's enormous boots clunked over the concrete floor with huge thuds, like the Clydesdale horses that used to pull his father's carriage during a holiday.
Sam's eyes were deadly serious. "Where is it now?"
Wes didn't speak, and Damon was pretty sure it wasn't because he couldn't', because he'd been proving that theory wrong this entire time.
"Ordinarily I like to kill hunters rather than listen to them, but consider it Opposite Day," Damon applied tighter pressure to Wes's leg, bending it sideways at angle that made the bone rip out of alignment. "Answer the question."
Wes screamed louder "You won'," Wes couldn't get the 't' out of "You won't be able to find it in time."
"Oh I'm pretty sure we will, because of the all the bullshit you just told us," Dean looked high up at the half choked face of Wes Maxfield pinned to the wall. "Darius never gave you the ring, he still has it because you thought that keeping it with that fanged tooth bitch would protect it so you could keep busy playing Dr. Frankenstein," Dean's eyes grew hard, like marble. "It's just too bad you're wrong."
Dean moved away from Wes. Elena following him, which piqued Damon's interest, not because he was jealous, but because the man was a hunter and she was the thing that hunters hunted. Both walked out the opened doorway to the lab that Damon didn't even realize was open until that moment because he was too busy being tortured. But he didn't leave, not yet.
"We're done here," Stefan released Wes's neck, at the same moment Damon broke off the top of the IV pole. He snatched Wes by the collar of his shirt and slammed him up against the metal exam table, bending the metal like it was a twisty tie around Wes' left wrist like a handcuff.
"At least for a moment," Damon stood back up slowly, eyes boring like nails into Wes' He walked out after the two hunters into the hallway, the lights burning his eyes, and sizzling his skin. It was painful, but because it wasn't the actual sun, it would never kill him, only torture him endlessly. But right now, the pain from being shot at overrode anything the light was doing to his skin.
"You two," Damon made the two men turn the moment they stepped into the hallway, both sets of eyes watching him with a hairline trigger. "My charity reserves for hunters just plummeted, so you have three seconds to plead a case as to why I shouldn't rip your throats out."
"Here's my case," Dean held up a gleaming machete, thick with blood, sharp end out. "I've killed enough vamps to pass the number of candles on your birthday cake." His eyes were harder as granite. "But your brother over there gave us enough reason to save your ass, don't make me regret it."
Damon turned to Stefan with a look like he had done something stupid. "Trusting hunters has never led to anything good."
"It saved your life Damon," Stefan threw back. "So how about you drop it so we can find your ring?"
"Right my ring," Damon returned in dripping sarcasm. "You mean the one that Darius, a man we thought we watched die 155 years ago but actually survived because he's an all-powerful dick vamp who just spent the last five days and five years torturing me has, that ring? Sure Stef, piece of cake-"
"You're wasting time arguing," Sam cut in and Damon shot daggers at him for at the intrusion on his and Stefan's argument.
Damon turned to the hunter, about to decide how much blood someone of his height had running though his body. "I'm sorry, was I asking anything of you?"
Sam wasn't fazed. "If Darius leaves with your ring, then you're stuck here."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Damon returned, but his eyes weren't on the hunter, or on anyone. The anger, and the pain of being trapped back in this hole, even after Stefan had rescued him burned as hotly as a candle, because of the time Stefan hadn't come to rescue him.
The look Stefan gave Damon was heavy, like bricks tumbling off of a cliff from a dilapidated house. "Damon, I-"
Damon reared back his fist and pummeled it into the side of Stefan's head, watching Stefan go down like a felled tree.
"Damon!" Elena yelled in outrage.
Damon ignored her. "I know Brother. Let's not talk about it okay?"
Stefan climbed up to his feet, shrugging off Elena's hand, torking his jaw back into alignment in a painful maneuver. After all the beatings he'd taken before, this was almost like a paper cut. Sam and Dean watched, but didn't intervene. And Stefan suspected it had nothing to do with them being hunters, was everything to do with them being brothers.
Stefan was only on his feet again for a second before he was jerked forward like he'd been shoved. His face contorted in pain, a moment later he looked down at a blooming stain of blood on his shirt.
"Stefan!" Elena's voice shouted in horror, for the millionth time that day watching as Stefan dropped into a crouch, groaning, blood leaking in-between the fingers of the hand that he placed on his chest.
Damon turned to look into the opened doorway of the exam room. Wes was still firmly shackled to the table, but he was holding a gun in his hand, the trigger of it still smoking.
The hunters drew a bead on the doctor with their guns. Damon eyed the blood leaking on Stefan's shirt in hostile rage. "Dick move, Wes!"
"I doubt you'll think so in a minute," Wes said, calmly, too calmly.
The doctor's voice reached Damon like the words were echoing off a long tunnel. He turned back around and fully took in the sight of the blood on Stefan's shirt, he heard Stefan's heart beat pumping it out bright red through the wound.
Stefan looked up from groping at the hole, over to his brother, whose blood crept up the veins of his face like fast moving insects. "Damon-"
Damon's fangs pulled down like they were spring loaded, the blood was strong up his nose. He tried to fight it off, to resist. But he couldn't, there was just so much of it. He found himself completely unable to resist what his body was craving anymore; he jumped at Stefan in a blur of speed.
Stefan dodged Damon's attack moving to the opposite side of the hallway, Damon drew nearer like lion attacking prey, blurring Stefan into a wall.
"Damon don't!" Elena screamed She ran to Damon and pulled his arms. "Damon!" She jerked at him harder, but he didn't move.
Stefan grabbed at Damon's arm that reached for him and pinned it down behind his back, but Damon broke free, and threw Stefan hard across the floor.
Stefan jumped back up to his feet, watching Damon's launch itself at him again.
Dean's machete blade was up by the back of Damon's neck, the flat of the blade moving in an arch to his skull. But before he could connect Damon turned and threw him into the wall hard, Dean landed in a hard daze.
Sam raised his knife and slashed it clean through Damon's shoulder. Damon lurched for just a moment but the adrenaline from the venom in his system barely allowed him to feel anything. He ripped the knife out of him, and sped past Sam so fast that the hunter was thrown into the opposite wall.
Damon ran again at Stefan, but Elena jumped in the way, grabbing at his shoulders in a death hold. "Stop!"
"I can't help it!" Damon could smell Stefan's blood leaking into every orifice of his body.
"Elena get out of here, you're bleeding, he's going to kill you-" Stefan saw the cagey feral look in Damon's eyes, but also the tortured anger behind what he couldn't control.
"Go!" Damon clenched out he words in his teeth into one long desperate sound.
"He's your brother Damon!" Elena grabbed his face, exposing the still bleeding wound at her carotid. "You can fight this! I know you can fight this!-"
Damon's breath grew heavier, turned to a different sight, the blood of Elena's carotid inches away from his mouth.
"Elena," his voice sounded pained, tortured, he bit hard into her neck and she screamed.
"Hey!" Sam was back on his feet, the stake he'd used in the dark little room stained in Marissa's dried blood. He raised the stake at Damon's back.
Stefan saw the hunter take aim at Damon. He tore hard into his wound with his hand, opening it up to more leaking blood. "Damon, hey, look over here!" He held up his blood red palm. "You smell that?"
Damon pulled off of Elena's neck in a sucking motion; she jerked back with a cried gasp.
Damon's eyes went almost black from dilatation, staring at the blood on Stefan's hand like it was a neon sign.
"That's good right, it's what you want isn't it?" Stefan backed up slowly down the long hallway "Feed on me Brother, not her-"
Blood dripped from Damon's fangs as he half staggered to the overwhelming scent of Stefan's blood, eyes watching it leak and patter down Stefan's shredded shirt.
Dean was back on his feet, and watching as Damon walked closer to Stefan, inch by inch like he was hypnotized. A foot away from the hunter Sam watched the same scene, eyes widening looking from Stefan to Damon. They both saw what Stefan saw, the full on hunger in Damon's eyes.
"Stefan don't!" Sam shouted as Stefan led Damon away like a horse to a stream of water.
"He's too far gone," Dean shouted. "You can't fix this!"
"You heard them, getout!" Damon's voice was fast and angry like he was crushing marbles in between his fangs.
"I'm not afraid of you Damon," Stefan stopped backing up and stood in front of Damon, Damon's once green blue eyes had turned almost black from all the blood rushing up in them.
Damon started to breathe hard almost like he was hyperventilating, Stefan's blood mere centimeters from his face.
Stefan heard the sound of a blade being raised in a slice through the air. "Guys don't!" He never took his eyes off of Damon as he yelled this to Sam and Dean. "It's okay," Stefan spoke slowly, almost softly. "Just feed on me," Damon stared at the blood on Stefan like a half starved curious child to an entire plate of food; he moved down towards the bleeding bullet hole-
Stefan placed his hands on Damon's throat, fingers starting to torque, to break Damon's neck. But he underestimated the strength that Damon now possessed.
Damon jerked free of Stefan's grip before the maneuver could be completed. He slammed Stefan hard into wall and was on him before Stefan could catch his breath.
Stefan jerked, trying to buck Damon off of him, grunting a scream as Damon's fangs broke into the bullet wound, tearing it wide.
"Damon stop!" Elena's scream tore over the sounds of Stefan's, she ran to Damon, jerking up at his body as Stefan's scream reached a higher pitch. "STOP IT!" She pulled with as much strength as she possessed, but she still couldn't move him. Stefan's head was arched up in pain.
Damon heard Elena, but he couldn't stop. The blood was warm, flowing, it filled his mouth to capacity, pumping in thick veins from a fast beating heart.
Elena watched Sam throw a piece of jagged wood over to Dean who grasped it and raised it high over Damon's back, in a blow that wouldn't miss this time.
"No!" Elena screamed, taking off in a run to stop him.
Then there came a hard tearing sound, and one last baying sound from Stefan; his body jerked back hard. A spray of blood so dark that it was black arched up and out like an overflowing fountain.
"No!-Stefan!" Elena jolted like she'd been snapped back by a rubber band, watching in horrified shock as Stefan listed to the side and fell hard on the concrete.
Damon jerked the moment he heard the resonating thud of Stefan's body hitting the ground. His eyes had burned with such a bright clarity as he fed, but then the colors faded back into their sharp realness. "Stefan-?! "
Stefan lay splayed on the concrete – his shirt was spread apart in blood, his heart was half torn from his body, his skin a deep gray, eyes open in glazed pain.
"Stefan-" Damon tasted the still warm blood in his mouth.
["Stefan!" Damon ran through the woods, the baying scream resonated like a struck masonry anvil. He emerged from a scratchy thicket into a clearing. Stefan was groped on the ground, his foot in an iron bear trap.]
"Stefan-!" Damon slammed hard onto his knees by Stefan head. He shook him hard, blood coating his hands like gloves. Stefan's head jerked lifelessly under Damon's hands, not moving. "Stef-Stefan!-"
["Stef!" Damon dropped into a crouch in the grass and purple Heather. He jerked at the bear trap, but the iron claws didn't lift.
"Damon," Stefan called out Damon's name in a warbled plea.
"Hold on Brother!" Damon tugged harder, trying to remove the trap with just his bare hands.]
Elena was on her knees beside Damon, her face torn in jagged crying as she said Stefan's name in a shredded sound over and over again.
"No," The hunters moved, Damon could hear their heavy resonating footsteps, but they became drowned out by the slamming banging of his heart. "Nonono," Damon grabbed at Stefan's neck, his brother's blood coating his brother. "Nonono! You're not- STEFAN!" Damon's scream ripped through the air.
xxxxXxxxx
The tunnel continued on the way it started, very long and extensive, and none of them knew where they were going, Caroline was now in the lead with Katherine who looked like she didn't know how to work a flashlight, she kept clicking it on and off on and off, while grabbing at her shoulder wound.
"Do you see anything?" Jeremey asked from darkness behind them. He kept his ears tuned behind him, to make sure that they weren't being followed by any of those vampires out for revenge.
"This hallway goes on for miles," Caroline stepped over a broken piece of something that snapped so much like human bone that she didn't want to think about it. "I don't even know where I'm going!"
"That's not exactly helpful," Katherine pointed out like Caroline was simple.
Caroline stopped walking for a second and shined the light right in Katherine's eyes. "Seriously?" You know, I should've just left you back with those weirdo creepy vampires instead!"
"They were hardly Vampires, Caroline," Katherine returned with her usual arrogance, despite the fact that they had nearly killed her not an hour ago. "Disgusting half breed things who needed to learn how to fight and brush their teeth is a better description-"
"Yeah, and they still would've killed your ass if it hadn't been for me."
"What do you want- A muffin basket?" Katherine snapped back to Caroline.
"Enough you too!" Matt shouted, walking right by Jeremy and Bonnie. "Those vampires-"
"Stop calling them Vampires, Mattie," Katherine snapped. "You're insulting my race."
"Those vampires," Matt continued staring Katherine down. "They almost killed you Katherine, and who knows how many of them are down here-"
"So don't think about it," Katherine pointed out. Her broken shoe heel cracked over more human bone like things. She stared at it with an almost fascination. "They appear to be well fed."
"Shut up Katherine!" Jeremey called up to her. "Just keep your eyes in front of you and let us know if you see anything trying to kill us," His voice lowered as he stared at the blood on her shoulder leaking out from the torn fragments of Matt's shirt. "And try not to fall over, that's not a flesh wound."
Katherine grasped at her shoulder and glared at him and was about to retort that she didn't take orders from a Gilbert when Bonnie suddenly turned around, aiming her flashlight behind her.
Jeremey turned with her, watching her shine her beam across a hallway made up of stone bricks in a pattern of disarray. "What is it?"
Bonnie's light cut through the murky darkness, moving over the rights, lighting up a figure standing there: a young brunette girl in a white dress half soaked in blood.
"What is it?" Caroline echoed Jeremey's words and turned to Bonnie's lit flashlight, seeing nothing but the rock. "Bonnie-"
"Where am I?" The girl's head moved frantically back and forth like a caged butterfly. "What's happening?-"
"What the hell is going on?" Katherine snarled, the pain from her injuries seeping into her words like her blood soaked into the fabric of the makeshift bandage.
The girl turned to stare at Kathrine, her eyes so shockingly green they seemed to glow in the beam of Bonnie's flashlight.
"Am I DEAD?"
"I'm sorry," Bonnie didn't know what else to say, she didn't even know what the girl was. She usually got a sense of what kind of supernatural creature had just died, but whatever this girl was, she hadn't been it for long, so the only thing Bonnie got from her was that she was scared.
"Where's my mom?"
"It's going to be okay," Bonnie stepped forward with a sad kind of reassuring smile, reaching out her hands towards the girl.
She backed up like Bonnie's touch was a lit blow torch. "No no- I saw her, but then she was gone! I keep looking, but I can't find her!"
"It's alright, I promise," Bonnie opened her palm her index and thumb brushing the girl's bare arm, feeling her spirit start to dissolve, but at the last minute she jerked back.
The moment where Bonnie began to feel the pain of her death burned and melted into the resistance the girl used to pull away, sending Bonnie toppling to her knees, her flashlight clattering to the hard ground.
"Bonnie!" Jeremy reached down and grabbed her arm. "Bonnie, are you okay?"
The girl's spirit stared at Bonnie, eyes a sheen of tears. "I want my mom-" She turned and fled, footsteps soundless, her body half dissolving into mist as she ran.
"Bonnie!" Jeremey's voice was scared because Bonnie hadn't answered him, just remained in his grasp in the darkness created by her fallen flashlight.
"It was a ghost-" Bonnie's fingers closed around the neck of her flashlight and she picked it up. "She broke my hold-"
Caroline stared at her in disbelief. "Is that even possible?"
"I felt her, but then she kept saying she wanted her mom, and I felt all this need -" Bonnie raised her flashlight. Her beam sweeping back over the spot where the girl had just been, to someone else standing there, and she started.
"Stefan?"
Stefan stood only half a foot from her, watching her.
Caroline turned immediately at the sound of the name, looking where Bonnie's light was shining. "Stefan?" Caroline added her own light over top of Bonnie's "Where? Bonnie-" Her light illuminated nothing but the jagged wall of bricks. "I don't see anything-"
Bonnie's expression dropped from confusion at the realization of what Caroline had just said.
Stefan's form was solid, but half transparent, he stepped closer to Bonnie, watching her. "Bonnie?" His dark brows furrowed in confusion. How'd you get here?" he looked back behind him at the maze of a hallway half swallowed in darkness. "How did I get back in the tunnels?-"
"Something happened Stefan," Bonnie interrupted him, her voice gone from shock to something else. "We haven't found you guys yet-"
"Stefan-" Caroline voice broke into a shiver the understanding of it all settling over her like a blast of frigid air. "No-" her voice shuddered, and streaked apart into tears.
Matt and Jeremey's faces fell as they looked around to the empty space that Bonnie was talking too, Katherine closed her mouth hard, looking like someone had drowned her, the hand on her bloody shoulder falling lax to her side, her breathing growing heavy.
The realization finally crawled across Stefan's face, part shock, part disbelief. He stared down, as if noticing himself for the first time. His shirt was a shredded mess of torn blood and jagged flesh. "No, I'm not – I can't be- Bonnie listen to me," He took another step to her, his feet making no noise on the ground. "I can't go yet-not now."
"Bonnie?" Caroline's words leaked more tears out of her eyes. "What's he saying?"
"Damon's back there," Stefan's words were pleading "Wes injected him with a stronger Ripper venom. The hunger, he can't turn it off- he's going to destroy himself-"
xxxxxxXxxxxx
[ "What'd you go and do Brother?" Damon got out through half frustrated tears at trying to rip the trap bare handed off of Stefan's foot. He could see the pin hole waiting for the pin that would release it, the one that he didn't have. Stefan began to shake from the pain. Damon pulled up harder. The trap sprung free blood coating his hands in long jagged cuts.
Damon ripped off the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped it around Stefan's bleeding foot.
Stefan whimpered, "I'm sorry Damon, I was trying to find you-"]
Damon fell forward staring at Stefan's pale skin and sightless eyes. "What did you do? - What did you do!?" He drew Stefan to him, arms going around his neck in a half choked hold, fingers deep into the flesh, a choking shudder of tears shook through him like an earthquake, then exploded into a sob; his heart ripped open and split out his body just like his brother's.
Far off and away he could hear Elena crying, but all Damon felt was the lifeless body of his little brother in his hold. His voice broke into a keening sob, he pushed his face forward into Stefan's neck, tears burning hotter than vervain down both their skin.
xxxxxXxxxx
"You have to find a way to keep me here," Stefan felt like he was floating, even though he still saw his feet on the ground. The feeling was pulling him towards Bonnie, towards another plane.
"Stefan I don't know how-" Bonnie's voice falling like a heavy stone. No one does -" her voice cracked.
"You just said that that girl did it!" Caroline's voice wept. "She ran from you-you can try it-"
"I didn't do it, Caroline!" Bonnie's shout was something horrible, a jagged slash across her palm. She turned to Stefan with shining eyes. "I can't-"
"Please," Stefan couldn't feel himself breathing anymore, what was left of him started to pull apart. "Find a way. You've done it before, you've saved us before. I just got him back-"
Stefan's figure was starting to lighten into a vapor, one that seemed like it would dissolve with a single touch. It was same kind of thing that Bonnie had seen become of all the supernatural ghosts moments before they passed through her to the Other Side.
"I can't leave," Stefan's voice began to shake. "I don't want to leave, he's my brother Bonnie-"
Bonnie could no longer contain the tears that broke all over her face. "I'm so sorry Stefan-"
Stefan's form began to tremble, Bonnie watched him bite his lip, tears emerging and spilling from his vapored form.
xxxxXxxxx
The blood burned in Damon's mouth, choking him as he couldn't catch his breath, Stefan's face was a mess of Damon's bloody hand prints on it. He swallowed all the mess the crying had produced, an acrid metallic taste in his mouth that tasted nothing like his brother's blood.
Elena was next to Stefan's head, carding fingers through his hair, her face soaked in tears. Damon set his brother down on the cold concrete, fingers curling on Stefan's still warm arm. He stood back wobbly on his knees like he was drunk, clothes now coated in blood. He moved his eyes over the hunters, but he didn't see them.
"Damon," Elena's voice thick and so full of sadness it was about to break apart. She didn't know what to do, she couldn't swallow, she couldn't breathe.
Damon roared a horrible noise vivisected in pure agony. He punched two huge creators into the wall, causing one of the hunters to jump back before that move was on his head.
The man took a fighting stance, but didn't do anything more than watch as Damon tore his fist out of wall, raining hailstorm of concrete pebbles over himself, sending the hallway into a fog of dust He turned to attack the opposite wall in the same manner, punching another fist through the wall, ringing the hole in Stefan's dried blood. He half felt his feet want to fall out from under him, but then spotted the open door to the exam room.
He pulled up from the wall, and walked towards the opened room.