Hello all!

This chapter is kinda fill-y feeling to me, but I couldn't fix it so here it is. I'm getting really anxious to get to the next chapters, so hopefully they won't take as long to be posted. :)

Anywho, I own nothing and happy (hopefully) reading!

"You left her alone in your room? After what happened with Elena? Damon." I really can't believe you is the silent, expected (and relatively mild) tack-on.

"For five seconds," Damon clarifies with his hands in the air. He stands against the liquor table, agitated but hiding it.

Stefan continues, his exasperation and mild panic evident, "So now she's running loose in Mystic Falls." Elena sags against him, worn and burdened.

"Unless she left town," Damon corrects, sipping from his glass, "yes." Stefan has half a mind to take the scotch from his brother's hand and down it himself, but refrains when he notes that his brother needs it more.

"How're we gonna find her?"

Damon begins to respond, but Bonnie interrupts him coolly as she comes forward. "I can do a locator spell."

"When'd you get here?" Damon mumbles, annoyed by her interruption. Bonnie ignores him.

"Do you have anything that belongs to her?"

With a flourish, Damon answers, "I'll do you one better. I've got her blood. All over a very expensive designer shirt," he adds.

"It won't just tell us where to find the people she…ate?" Elena asks, perplexed, looking from Stefan to Bonnie.

"No, the unique mixture of all their blood will only point to Rose." Behind the vampire, Bonnie nods, grudgingly confirming Damon's response. Elena settles back into the couch and her boyfriend, wondering why she assumes that not everything will fall apart at once.

"Is Caroline coming?" she whispers to Stefan when Bonnie begins the spell with Damon looking on.

He pulls his face back from her hair to nod. "I called her."

"Here!" Caroline announces and strides into the room. "Oh, sorry, witchy stuff going on." She perches on the arm of the sofa with more comfort than Elena would have thought she'd have here.

"It's okay, Caroline," Bonnie assures her with a tired smile, "I'm done."

"So where is she?" Damon demands, ever impatient.

Bonnie gives him a dirty look, which he ignores. "Near the school, to the east."

Under Elena's worried gaze, Stefan stands.

"I'm coming with you," Caroline proclaims, like it's obvious.

"No you're not," Stefan protests; he made a promise.

"Yeah I am. She's five hundred something years old; you guys need all the help you can get."

She's right and Stefan knows it and before his brother can prolong the moment with more indecision, Damon decides for him. "Don't screw it up."

Caroline beams and the three come together, exchange a nod and a look, and run.

~V~

She hasn't been this hungry in six hundred and fourteen years.

With her little bit of lucidity, she knows she must look a holy terror. Damon cleaned her face, but the blood refuses to retreat from her eyes and her fangs are filling her mouth. Her body jerks with want for more speed, for the hunt.

She hears a heartbeat and her sanity gushes away.