Teleporting hurt.
It hadn't when she'd done it alone that first time. That first time had been a real beauty. Emancipating. Snazzy. Very dreamlike, crossing leagues and leagues of land and ocean in less than a blink. The caress of the salty wind on her face... Just wonderful. Like tumbling through Downy blankets… or like wrestling with a cotton-candy man.
Carrying two vampires along for the ride, though?
Not so nice.
The shit fucking hurt.
Blood was in her eyes, burning. It was in her nose, coming up or going down her throat, seeping out from the creases of her fingernails… She couldn't tell if her feet were on solid ground or if she was walking on a cloud. She couldn't see past the red blur. She couldn't hear. She couldn't breathe… Her hands reached out for Damon. She hoped.
She couldn't feel her hands either, to tell the truth, but Damon was supposed to be there, somewhere. He was an ass, no doubt or denial about that, and homicidal and evil and despicable and all of that… but he was a dependable kind of evil, homicidal, despicable ass. An evil, homicidal, despicable ass she could trust to step up when the going got hard. The kind of taunting, mischievous ass that would give her shit for fucking up the spell, but in a way that would be more condescending than malicious. If she'd teleported them into a volcano or deep ocean trench (she really couldn't tell where they were), he'd be –'aww shucks… Bonnie the fuck up fucks up once again'. And if she ended up permanently blind or paraplegic, he'd be – 'she's not Elena, so no problem'.
The problem was Elijah. Elijah with his thousand and one death glares. Elijah and his not so subtle hatred. She'd started the teleportation without too much concern over him, but now, stranded, drained, vulnerable… Her hands quested out for Damon again with disturbing desperation.
"You're gonna have to kill him, Bonnie."
"Huh?"
Mags, "Elijah."
"Now? I can't kill him! He's an Original! I can't even see! I can't even breathe! I can't–"
"Let me, then. I can kill him. I have a spell with his name on it."
"We need him!"
"Need? All we need from him is the sword. He's just dead weight attached at the hilt," Magwyr answered, her voice screaming through Bonnie's brain like a bullet. A slew of bullets. Not helpful in the least. "Too much dead weight," she continued. "You're not strong enough to carry so much weight!"
Her body heaved, and her stomach emptied. It had been too much, no doubt or denial about that either. Even with two litres of Elijah's blood in her, teleporting herself and the two vampires had been way too much. It hurt. Every nerve in her body was on fire. A nail gun was firing off loose in her head. Her insides were becoming her outsides.
The shit fucking hurt.
It hurt worse than resurrecting Jeremy.
Even worse than that time she'd tried to materialise DiCaprio out of a Titanic poster. And that had been bad.
"We're gonna have to kill him," Mags reiterated, and her scratchy voice seemed to echo on forever.
"He's on our side!"
"Side?" the woman chuckled. "We witches don't work with sides; we work with circles, and this road-show is a two woman thing. Stop trusting them, Bonnie. You think they care whether you live or die? You think Elijah cares? He'll kill you as soon as he gets the chance. Rip your heart out and feed it to his dog. If he still keeps dogs…"
"I'm not killing Elijah."
"We need the blood if we're going to do this. Damon's heavy. The Original's heavier, and Klaus will be a mountain."
"We're not carrying Klaus back."
"Aren't we? I'd think delivering the prey to the slayer would be the most efficient way to get the beast slain."
"I'm not killing anybody!"
"The amount of blood we're gonna need is bound to kill somebody, baby Bonnie. With great power comes a great death toll. Isn't that something you say?"
"I won't do it. I can't!"
"That's why you have me, Bonnie. To help out…"
…
Now… He really should have seen that one coming.
The vomit was hot on his hands. Mushy noodles, yellow pieces of corn, chunks of grilled chicken, bits of parsley, a little green slime thrown in too… Some blood…
It was on his shoes… and some splatter had ricocheted up from the tile to his face…
"Ahhh…" Damon half-laughed half groaned. "Some serious reflux you got going on, Bon," he said, but his eyes were taking in the surroundings.
For a rat bastard, Klaus had style. No curtains… Huge glass windows overlooking some city or the other – the lights blinking on and off against the night sky backdrop was breath-taking. A lot of space… Sparsely furnished… A bed/lounge chair/something… Two or three adjoining rooms. Kitchenette… White leather recliner… A massive 3D TV with the glasses on the ground… iPod on the floor… Black Bösendorfer imperial grand piano in the corner, right next to a blow-up pool… Yellow, blood-speckled rubber duck in the blow-up pool… Hardcover Breaking Dawn on the table with a bookmark halfway through… A potted fern with Christmas decorations in another corner…
It could almost be the wrong place, except for the bloody rubber ducky.
And the vomit in the living room… He wiggled his foot, trying to shake some of it free of his shoes. His never-to-be-worn again shoes. "I'm sure Klaus won't mind. It blends in so well," he directed at the coughing girl who'd delivered them into Klaus' den, and simultaneous ruined any element of surprise they could ever hope to have with all her gagging and gasping… "And speaking of pimped cribs you've destroyed–"
The girl collapsed. Straight up face-planted into his chest.
Wrong place… wrong time…
In so far as there could ever be a wrong time for a girl to swoon in his arms and…
"Ughhh…" he stood frozen for a moment or two, half panicked half confused, rapid-analysing the situation and trying like hell to ignore the flecks of carrot on his vomit covered hands.
Without her, they were screwed. And stranded. Which was worse. He'd been in dire situations before he couldn't remember the last time he'd been in one half so dire. The stakes were too high, he'd waged too much and he was too distracted.
Bonnie doesn't chew her food. That had been his first coherent thought.
And after that: How gross would it be if I lick my fingers?
It was hard to think. What with Klaus' particularly violent aura reeking to high heaven, emanating from some place he couldn't put a point on, flooding every pore in his skin. The hybrid could by hiding under the rug or swinging from the chandelier, for all he could tell. Waiting to pounce from atop the bookless bookcase, maybe.
Then there was the all too familiar cloying, dark vibe of a dead body.
And one other person.
One other person that he couldn't get a fix on, a less lethal but sharper aura than Klaus'. Nearer, coming from somewhere in the sprawling, very clean, well-lit room.
My dead carcass is going to ruin the décor. Worse than Bon's vomit.
They had to leave. Duh. The question was, how. Obviously not back the way they'd come in… Bonnie didn't look quite as though she had another long distance jump in her.
Elevator, maybe?
Or hurl ourselves through one of these windows?
"Damon…" Bonnie muttered, barely audible as she started to slide down his chest. He grabbed her. With his vomit covered hands.
"I've got you." You threw up on my hands. "I've got you. Don't panic."
I say that, and I have no plan… We're bleeding men in a shark pool. Fucking–
"She fainted?" Elijah whisper-barked, the vein up the middle of his forehead pulsatile. To the untrained human ear it might have come across as gentle as the ruffle of flower petals, but Damon had trained vampire ears. He could hear fleas on Persian cat, so picking up on the angry scorn was no biggie. "Two fucking litres and a half," Elijah hissed, "And she passes out now?"
Damon gathered the girl in his arms. Her lips were moving but there was no sound. Only blood. Her gums… Her teeth... Everything was red… Her heart was beating at a rate he couldn't even count. Just a hum… One continuous, vibrating, resounding hum… Her lips were saying, but there was no sound and he couldn't concentrate to read them.
A racing heartbeat is better than no heartbeat.
He pushed her hair back… God… He didn't even have to feel her pulse, he could see it. He could hear it. Hear the blood pounding through her arteries like a tsunami through a storm-pipe. Help.
Elijah distanced himself.
No, no, no, no. Not now.
The vampire in the black blazer was doing it again. "Not to spit in your eye, Damon," he said, with his forked, two-timing tongue, "But when you put your life in a witch's hands, it helps if she's out of high-school. Less prone to… nose-bleeds and fainting spells. Now that your Plan A has epically failed, I think it's time we initiate Plan B."
"We don't have a Plan B."
"I have a plan B."
Fuck… The air came out of her in a soft, weedy sigh. Her body went limp. Her hands dangled lifelessly. The shiny talisman on her neck shimmered uselessly. "Bonnie?" He looked down at the girl, then back up at Elijah. Don't. Fuck. Fucking fuck! Little pools of red were forming at the corner of her eyes. Her skin was cold… Red and sweating, but cold. Fuck… His wrist went to his mouth and then to hers almost automatically. "Elijah! Help me!"
Elijah didn't spare them a glance. He picked the iPod off the floor and set in on the lounge chair. "That's not part of Plan B, Damon."
"What fucking plan? There's no fucking plan without Bonnie!"
"It behoves me to improvise."
Behoves? "She's fucking dying here, you bastard!" He pulled his hand away for a split second to tear the wound open wider then pressed it to her mouth again, watching his blood . No response. "Help me! You're blood's better than mine! For fuck's sake, Elijah! Do–"
He saw it coming, at least. For whatever good there was in seeing it coming. Not like there was anything he could do about it with his ass planted on the floor, Bonnie in his lap and his wrist in her mouth. Not like he could have ditched her and escaped through a window. Not like he was one for saving himself. Not like he could he could have used her 5'4'' frame as a shield. Not like he knew capoeira… The pin-striped knee collided with the left side of his skull, shattering bone and turning the world back to front, upside down. Deaf, or not deaf, blind, or not blind, he couldn't even open his mouth to scream. Fingers like claws raked his hair and scalp back. "Baby bones, Damon. You runt… stay conscious now. There are people who want to see you."
The refrigerator door that Damon hadn't noticed was open closed, and someone chuckled. Chuckled. "That's funny. Coming from you, Elijah." The other person, a woman, Greta, he presumed, hefted a blood bag in her hand then punctured it with a straw. "I mean, we're just about five minutes away from putting up Wanted posters with your name on it. 'Wanted dead or alive – one Original Vampire by the name of Elijah, last seen with The Sword of White Bone, answers to Betrayer… Heart-Grabber… Judas…" She moved lazily around the kitchen counter and slumped herself on a stool, slurping at her blood bag as if it were a juice box.
Cool as a fucking cucumber on ice, Elijah cruised over to the woman and set the sword, The Sword, down next to her. "Thought I stole it?" he asked flatly, "What would I do with it? Maddox asks me to keep it safe, I kept it safe, and better yet, I return baring gifts. One witch imbibed with the power of her dead ancestors–"
"And a little something on the side, if I'm correct in placing the jewellery around her neck as Magwyr's chain?"
"That too. And Damon, for your pleasure."
"Aren't you the regular tinker?" she said, with a pleased, content smile.
Elijah smiled.
Damon didn't smile. He couldn't. The part of his brain responsible for moving his lips hadn't healed yet, and besides, there wasn't too much for him to smile about anyway. He was being betrayed by the most notorious double-crosser to exist.
Fool me once…
He couldn't tell exactly what she was wearing, but it wasn't foreboding in the least. Very earthy, a vest with a shawl… or a poncho… "So…" he cleared his throat of pieces of bone that had broken off from the base of his skull and come down through his nose. "How you doing?"
"Pretty good," she shrugged. "Dying was tough. Had a little paranoia for a while about people standing behind me. Then there's this…" she slushed the blood bag, "…and the murder of my father and brother… But otherwise, I'm pretty good. How 'bout you? Miss Hot Mess doesn't seem so… hot."
There used to be a time when he'd inspired terror in the likes of shawl wearing girlies like Greta. When he'd set towns on fire and mothers to tears. There was a time when priests used to refer to him by name in their sermons, warning the faithful about the restless dangers prowling in the night. Even with Katherine, when he'd been a little puppy-dog on a leash, he'd been fearsome. Dreadful to behold.
How was it that that Damon had come to this?
This pathetic thing? Begging for his life from a girl? Not even begging for his life… Begging for the life of another girl? "The two of you being witches and all that… Sisters in the occult…" he tried his hardest to smile, or make any kind of facial expression. "Might I be so forward as to persuade upon you to not kill her while she's totally out of it? It won't be honourable."
"Honourable…" She raised her eyebrows slowly as she slurped on her blood. "You know about being honourable… Vampire like you? Who specializes in distraction? Sneaks up from behind and snaps my neck when I'm not looking… honourable?"
"Holding a grudge over that?"
"You bet, love."
Elijah folded his arms and sank onto a stool. "She keeps the torture room set up for you, just in case you stop by," he said darkly.
"What kind of torture?" Damon swallowed. Really and truly, he didn't care. He was only hoping to stall it out long enough for Bonnie to come to. If she could teleport herself out at least, that would be enough.
"The bad painful kind you won't need a dick for," the woman answered with a smirk.
"Really, cause if Klaus doesn't mind, I'm up for–"
"Yes, Damon, you're up for it," she sing-songed. He'd admit, she had a nice voice. Calm. Calm torturers are always the best. "You're up for anything and everything, farm animals included. No, Damon, we are not going to have sex. You can't seduce me with your clever charm or sculpted physique. You're in for some classical torture. Using your spine as a skipping rope kinda torture. Eyes in my jewellery box kinda torture–"
"So you like my eyes."
"They're all right."
Damon nodded as best he could in the vague direction of Elijah. "And you completely trust Mr Turncloak, here?"
"Completely trust Elijah?" She swivelled on her stool to face the Original. "Do I completely trust this well dressed bastard?" She looked him up and down in exaggerated scepticism. "Mama Original didn't raise no fools so I know he knows better than to try to betray Klaus, again. He's not chromosome deficient, I don't think. I completely trust that he has a sense of self-preservation. I completely trust that he knows what'll become of him if he falls short on what Klaus expects of him in way of brotherly loyalty."
"Implying something, Greta?" the Original asked, tracing his fingers languidly through the pattern of tile on the counter.
"No," she shirked her shoulders, "Just saying that you raised some concerns with your absenteeism. Then you swagger in here with Damon and the witch, and I don't know quite what to make of it. Pretty sneaky, for a stand-up, reliable guy like yourself… After all, it's a couple of weeks now that no one's heard from you. You don't answer your phone, don't login on Facebook… " She took a long noisy drag of blood and swallowed. "You smell like London fog… How were the crumpets?"
Elijah looked off. "Lovely. The gentleman next door took the liberty of watering the plants."
"Good for you."
"Yeah…" Elijah smoothed out the wrinkles in his clothes. "Actually I was kinda hoping for a face to face with my brother, as pleasant as it is dealing with the secretary."
"You have an appointment?" she asked, twirling a curl of hair around her finger.
"I thought I'd just walk in."
"See… that's why you should make an appointment. He's out."
"He's never out."
"He's out out."
"Oh."
"Left me in charge…"
"Oh."
"Right. And while I'm in the mood to go crazy and kill everybody. I'm thinking I'll leave you to Klaus. So, you can stay until he gets back, at least. Best I can do for you."
Elijah clapped his hands together, and slid off the stool. "I'm ever so grateful for your mercy. Where's Maddox?"
"Out."
"Right. So…" They rounded on Damon simultaneously. "Keep the witch, kill the vampire?" Elijah asked. "Or kill them both?"
Before Damon could blink, the witchy woman was squatting on her knees right there next to him and the unconscious Bonnie. The movement was so fast, he hadn't even been able to follow her with his eyes. He managed not to gasp when she popped up half a foot away from him, but just barely. "Kill Miss Baddass here?" The woman's smile faded. Her expression sobered. "Why would I want to do that? She's got talent. I have six different barriers around this place as she still managed to get through. With not only one, but two, hitchhiking vampires? The sword alone should have drained her." She brushed back Bonnie's hair. "I can see why Klaus wants her. Give her here."
"What? Just like that?" he managed a quarter smirk. "Without a fight?"
"I'm not that severely opposed to skipping the torture and just killing you, Damon, so let me paraphrase. We can do this the easy way…" She smiled again, this time showing off her fangs. Really neat, sharp looking devils.
"Exceptin' I'm a sucker for the hard way." Two can play this fucking game. I've never backed down from a fight in all my life and besides... You're a girl." Damon flashed her one of his especially crazy toothy smiles. "Anything you can do…"
With that faster than light speed she had, her hand, her claws were inside him and around his spine. "You didn't hear?" she teased, running a claw from her free hand over the bloody wound Elijah had made, "I'm the new model."
AN- I have to work on the next 3 or 4 chapters at the same time to make sure i get it right, so I'll have to leave you on this cliff hanger for a while (a week, maybe). Sorry. Also, like or dislike, reviews are appreciated. Mad love for everybody who reviewed! Or added my fic for a story alert, or favourite story. Mad love for you, too.
Still no Bonnie on the show... I find my Bamon love withering. I kinda hope Bonnie goes evil and runs away with Klaus. That'll show them to not invite her to birthday parts... lol
Also, I have just now noted that the file you upload to the editor in this is not uploaded perfectly. You actually have to run through the entire thing again. I had one whole line running together without spaces between the words in the first sentence paragraph so i noticed it. and there were other missing words and stuff throughout. I'm using word 2010, is it a problem from my end, or has anyone else noticed that?
Bottom line - thanks