Do food stamps really not buy diapers?

That didn't sound right. What kind of society would give out food stamps but not let you get diapers with it?

If they didn't buy diapers, they'd probably not buy blood bags… Not that he ever paid for the blood, but how much easier would it have been if somebody gave out vampire food stamps? He'd go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, join the line and pick up a couple of bags. That way he'd not have had to kill those hundreds of people that he had.

He licked his lips and got to his knees, flicking the dirt and wool off his hands… the new blood in his system dizzying, like fine red wine. Or heroine. Mm… He wiped his hands in the sides of his jersey, not caring at all about stains. Not his clothes anyway, and besides all that he was dead. Who gave a fuck?

Which way is Bonnie again?

The sheep-man had pointed, but in all the hurly burly he'd… forgotten.

A grand fucking waste of time he'd been, the sheep-man. And in the end, he hadn't tasted that much different from a normal man… just a little fatty, maybe.

I feel… but he couldn't recognise the feeling. It was halfway between feeling drunk, feeling drugged and feeling ecstatic. Maybe if he fed some more, it'd get better… The sheepman was already drained dead, but one of the unicorns might do the trick.

…

He frowned as a drop of blood on his eyelashes coloured half the world pink. One sheep-man, three unicorns… He really shouldn't overeat. Bonnie was waiting for him, possibly half naked in the shade of some jungle tree or the other, wallowing in despair and need of him. Her urgency ought to speed him on his way. So what if he wasn't in heaven, he was with Bonnie, which was better than heaven. He'd find her and touch her and fuck her forever and be happily ever after.

Except, he'd have to find her.

And the journey might be long...

He should stock up on some more blood, maybe… So as not to starve off halfway along the way. When he finally ran into her, he shouldn't be hungry and thinking about draining her.

And the unicorns were easy on the palate… They looked like horses, but the flavour? Definitely more refined. Cured. Way better than horse.

It was the summer of 59 when he'd tried his hand at animal blood. Done a stint on a by-road farm tossing hay and preying on the populace. Not a whole lot happening on the farm in way of entertainment, but there'd been Mr Birchall's three daughters, the big, buxom bitches of Bixley County who'd done their best to make his nights exciting at least.

Good times…

See?

As he thought about it, some of the best times in his life had come after he'd been turned. He had no reason, really, to be some surly whirlpool of regret. So what if he was a mass murderer? A lot of normal humans are mass murderers and they did it for fun. I do it for food.

And fun.

Should he be ashamed of himself? Of what he was? Were lions ashamed of being the king of the jungle? Were sharks ashamed of the bad PR the get?

Bitches and witches and sheep-men would argue that yes, he should be ashamed. Yes, he should take his ring off and go sunbathing… But… I like being a vampire.

I like being a vampire in Witch Country.

It seemed as though the very air itself had nourished him. And the blood was better. Richer. The unicorns were still frolicking nearby. Not the smartest apples in the pie, unicorns. He'd have to skin one probably for them to notice him. A real pride of lions would have a feast.

Skin one and make a coat out of the skin…

Unicorn skin ought to be better than leather… except he'd have to find a seamstress.

A sharp wind blew and snapped him out of his daze.

Focus, Damon.

How many more unicorns before we go look for Bonnie? Two. Two? Four. Five. Nine? Pick a number and stick to it.

It had to be the weight of the horns, he figured, interfering with the development of their brains. No wonder unicorns went extinct in the real world… stupider than dairy cows…

As he shoved the carcass of his twenty-third unicorn off of him, he gave up hope of witnessing a stampede.

Boring…

Moving on…

Just ten more.

A couple actual flying squirrels, but they tasted like shit.

He only had about six of those.

A couple dwarves. When he'd spotted them, he'd assumed they were the magical kind of dwarf. Turned out they were more the little people kind of dwarf. Regular old humans…

He washed the taste of midget out his mouth with the blood of another sheep-man. A sheep-woman, to be correct.

Stefan would love it over here… There was another centaur species around – all female. Half-woman, half-Bambi. Sure to get Stefan's boat rocking.

They hadn't tasted too bad, either.

Better than the squirrels at least.

And there was something he was supposed to be doing.

Someone he was supposed to be hunting… He shut his eyes and took in the sounds and the scents on the air.

Bonnie…

Her concentration faltered, her fingers wavered and she broke the power circle. She gasped, then tried to stifle the sound as the other witches reformed the circle without her. The leaves rustled, the wind stilled and silence returned awkwardly to the grove.

"Bonnie…" her grandmother mouthed, employing words for the first time in a long time. The old woman's eyes turned to the sky, to the dark grey clouds rolling over each other blotting out the sun and its golden warmth. "Something is destroying the balance," she intoned. "The Aventine is in chaos."

Yeah… Bonnie swallowed and shifted her gaze towards a wilting carnation… Not something. Damon. "Klaus. Klaus crossed over."

Sheila gave her a look. "I know Klaus. Klaus," she pointed to the sky, "doesn't do this. He might be just as crazy as the next bloodsucker but he doesn't disrupt the balance. He moves through magic like an otter down a river. This smells like Salvatore."

Bonnie's eyes went wide in open guilt and innocence simultaneously. "I didn't–"

"You did. You saved him and brought him here–"

"I couldn't just let him die!" she ground out. "He–"

Sheila seized her by the shoulders, shook her hard. "He's already dead! He's been dead for a long, long time, girl. He might look as if he just walked out of one of your magazines, but that thing isn't some human that you have to save."

Bonnie swallowed, for some reason fighting back tears already. When she'd pulled Damon over, she hadn't been thinking clearly. She hadn't thought it out; she hadn't worked out a roommate situation with rules on what and who was and wasn't for feeding on. She'd been watching the anarchy unfold horribly in Klaus' flat and she'd seen the hybrid move to kill her, and she'd seen Damon step in between the two of them, cover her heart with his…

So what if he was evil and a jackass and a mass murderer – he wasn't mass murdering her. She wouldn't ever cherish being the damsel in distress, but it was nice seeing Damon, selfish, perpetually-in-love-with-Elena, impeccably dressed, impossibly good-looking Damon volunteer to be her knight in armour. Could she put that into words? How mind-blowing it was having someone actually step up to die for her, instead of the old humdrum… Could she explain that to Sheila? "Damon–"

"Save it, child. I can see the infatuation in your eyes. Damon's good at that, charming and soothsaying. Very handsome, eyes like lightning… And it won't bother you at all that he's looked like that since my grandmother was alive. Damon…" Sheila sighed and her face looked pained. "The first time I saw him… he was just settling into depravity. Not half so attractive as he is now. Not half so evil, either. He's cultivated an air around him, this attractive essence – like nectar, if you will. And you're the little hummingbird flitting around him because you just can't resist. You can't save Damon, baby girl. He's got just enough of his humanity left to realise what he's becoming, enough, it seems, to trick you into thinking that you can trust in him. Maybe it's not even intentional. Maybe he's holding on to the remnants of that humanity, maybe he even wants to love you, but he can't. He can't do anything but what he's been doing for the past century. He can't love anyone other than that vampire he's been in love with since he was human. He's static. Frozen. He can't– Love is exclusive to living things."

"He likes me. He cares–"

"Whether you live and die, maybe. Vampires like having a witch in the wings, just in case they need a magic ring or a tomb opened. You'd settle for that? You're so jaded that you'd settle for a vampire being in like with you? You'd allow yourself to be an accessory? A ring, a necklace, a pretty pendant just dangling off some dead thing's fingers? You're powerful, Bonnie, and the only thing a man appreciates more than power is beauty. You've got both in spades. You don't have to hold on to some newborn infatuation as though Damon is the only man in the world who'll look at you twice."

"More than twice," she responded, but under her breath because it wasn't the snazziest comeback in the world. Good old grams always had a way to make her feel like shit, but in a good, uplifting sort of way. "I couldn't let him die, grams. Dead or alive, hero or scum of the underworld, I owed him one. I had to save him."

"You saved him alright." Sheila turned away and sniffed the air. "Saved him and set him down at the buffet table. Can't you smell the blood in the air? Things like him aren't supposed to be here. His darkness… isn't supposed to be here. All the shadows are flocking towards him, making him strong and weakening us. His kind are anomalies of nature. We have no power over them here…" her voice dropped to a whisper. "Your vampire is power drunk, blood drunk, magic drunk and on a little bit of a rampage… It's just a matter of time before he helps himself to some witch-blood and then all hell breaks loose…"

Ominous words. It had been a while since Bonnie had thought her grandmother was a loony… "Damon's not going to unleash hell… He's changed. Since that time when–"

"When you blamed him for my death? Whatever happened to all that hate?" Sheila frowned, her eyes distant, trained on the shifting clouds in the sky. "Not that it was justified, but I slept better when you were swearing vengeance on every Tom, Dick and Harry. Now you're falling in love with every pretty vampire to bat his eyes at you–"

"I'm not–"

"Don't lie to me, baby girl. Don't lie to yourself. I've been watching over you like a hawk. Ben – he was vampire number one. Then, you had that thing for Stefan. A little thing, but I didn't like it. All he has to do is smile at you and you turn into a one woman Make-a-Wish Foundation."

"Stefan's a good guy."

"Stefan's a vampire. Since when are vampire's good?" The woman frowned. "He's fresh off a murder tour, blood still under his fingernails and you're swearing to all God that he's a good guy. Listen to yourself."

"That was because of Klaus."

"He's another culprit," Sheila scoffed. "Klaus… Every time he calls you 'love' your heart does this stupid little flutter. What is it exactly that Klaus does to you girls? To have you tripping over yourselves, bending over backwards for him?"

"Bending– I've spent months coming up with a way to kill Klaus. I'm here– I gave up my body to kill Klaus so don't you–"

"You're not trying to kill Klaus, you copped out!"

"I copped out?" she was crying now. "I copped out? You're the one who died!"

Ooh. That was low. The knot in her throat tightened, strangling her.

The old woman nodded, digesting it coolly. "You copped out when you passed the baton over to Magwyr. Anything you want to do, you do it with your own strength or it doesn't matter. You want to save your friends, do it with your own strength. You want to kill your enemies, do it with your own strength. You can't use another witch, or allow another witch to use you."

"I'm not strong enough to kill Klaus."

"You aren't," she agreed flatly, "You aren't mentally strong enough. You're not strong enough to kill anybody and you don't even want to be. That's what you want to borrow – Magwyr's stone-cold ability to kill. But some people need killing Bonnie and you need to be able to do it with your own hands. Klaus is one of those people."

"I know that."

"Do you? You've had exactly three daydreams about him, though…during math class. By the way, I won't guide you to an A come exams, so study that calculus or prepare to flunk high-school math and not graduate… unless you're looking into ways to stay in high school forever. Some vampire or the other will probably change you so you'll get to be seventeen forever, stay in senior year forever, never give me grandchildren and suck people's blood for the rest of your life. That's what you want, right?"

"Grams–"

"No. Don't deny it. Denying it is what got you into this mess in the first place. Admit it. Admit what you feel for them, and move on. Put it behind you."

"Grams–"

"I see it in you. Even now, every time you see Stefan a little piece of you hopes that's he's just swinging by to say 'hey, how ya doing', and every time you're disappointed because all he cares about Elena, and that little piece of you wonders why Elena and not you. Then Ben, into you for all of one day… just to lure in Elena. Luka, worse than most of them because he should have known better. He put a piece of pretty stone in front of you… And now, Damon. Elena's flat out rejected him, Stefan's lost his compulsion, in theory it's your turn. It's your time to have a vampire obsessing over you, right? And if that vampire's Damon, the most eligible and ironically the least fertile bachelor in Mystic Falls, then you've won. Right? You beat Elena by default. You beat Caroline. You beat all the women he's killed and all the women he's yet to kill. And a win's a win, right?"

"It's not like that."

"Not like what? Not like you're professional at playing second fiddle? Not like Jeremy embarrasses you because he's a living, breathing white surrender flag. You don't have to pretend. Not here. Not now, at least."

Bonnie swallowed. Enough with the jabs, already. "Here's what," she got up and dusted off the flimsy, witch-dress thing she'd been wearing since they'd sat down to form the power circle days ago. It had started with Sophie needing to guide her niece out of a tough time involving with an intoxicated trip down the highway at 150 mph and somehow the guiding had gone on for days. They were currently guiding the girl from slitting her wrist in the bathtub. "You guys can manage this without me, I'll go find Damon."

"And do what, swoon?"

"I'll send him back."

"Back?" Sheila's eyebrows arched. "Your vampire lover has come to kill us all and feast on our blood. He's not going back. Without you? His little Bonnie? His little bird… He's invested too much of his charm into bamboozling you to leave empty-handed. And we can't get him to go either."

"We can resurrect him. Send him back to life."

"Not without him putting up a fight."

"Fight? Damon's… His bark is worse than his bite."

"Well, you'd know I guess. I couldn't say myself. I've never let one bite me."

"Grams?"

"Baby girl?"

"I'm not signing up to be his chew toy. The most we'll ever really be is friends. And I know how you feel about them. For the most part I agree with it. There's no one in Mystic Falls who's spent as much time as me hating Damon but–"

Thunder clashed, and she forgot what she was saying.

The storm clouds broke, big, heavy, wet, cold drops landing on her face. Just in time, just in case she had to cry again. The other witches startled out of their guiding trance, their faces blank and incomprehensive. Stares, glares, open confusion and panic broke out.

"Demon?" a little one, ten years young with violently red hair and peppery freckles asked at Bonnie's elbow. "Someone let a demon in?"

Sheila's mouth tightened.

"Jaxxon…" Alice mouthed… "But he's gone now. It's someone else… Something else. Something worse."

The girl turned her face up to the sky, the grey clouds making her own grey eyes seem black. "Look at that," she pointed.

Bonnie followed her finger.

It's just a bird…

"It's not a bird," little Savitra bounced excitedly around Bonnie. "It's a… It's a new monster. He's says his name is Damon! Who's Damon, Bonnie? It's looking for you!"

I know…

Sophie grabbed the child's pointing hand and wrenched it down. "Don't call it. We need to get out of here. The Aventine is lost. The demons–"

They needed to run. They needed to get out. Bonnie felt the hunger in the air, felt the bloodlust… A large black feather came down in the torrent. Then another one. Then another one…

Eliza shrieked and took off.

Esme screamed.

"We have to cast it out!" Sophie shouted and before Bonnie knew it she was being pulled into a new circle. An old school circle made up of the old pros. Sophie, Claudette, Jessie, Gloria, Bree, Alice… "Focus, people." Her grams finished the circle, joining with Claudette and Sophie.

Bonnie squeezed the hands of the women at her sides. Could they do it?

The gloom coming down on them… Damon…

Could they fight it? That open, wild rage? She couldn't think. Her body was stiff with fear. The words to chant froze on her tongue. He'd come for her. In a very twisted, terrifying way, he'd come for her. That had to count for something. She'd could smell the bitter hint of iron on the air. Bloodshed… Bloodshed for her. Dizzying.

A force pushed her out of the circle, flung her off her feet and clear of the witches.

"Grams!"

"Run," the old woman shouted back. "Something wicked this way comes."

Inappropriately enough, a half smile started on Bonnie's face. A little flicker of excitement. Who speaks like that? "Something wicked this way comes…" she mouthed, "For me."

"Run!"

AN: Inspiration for this taken from True Blood – that episode where Bill follows Sookie into Faerie land and just goes berserk because of the Faeriness of the place. High Damon, lol.

The adventure of Damon continues. Witch Side Part 2. All the chaos that is Damon Salvatore simmers. The catalyst of his mania just under his nose…