A/N- Sorry for the day-late update. I had trouble writing this chapter. It was originally meant to be Bonnie all the way but I couldn't make that work.
So here we go.
My love always to my lovely fans and I hope TVD and TO Seasons premier is everything we hope it will be.
My Alpha Female readers will hopefully pick up on the reference I make in this chapter.
It was a good thing that Caroline didn't have any checked in baggage because she was first off the plane the second it hit the ground and before it was even cleared to disembark.
She stood on the tarmac and looked around frantically, seeing the airport in front of her and decided to race around the building as opposed to through it in the hope that she would draw less attention.
She didn't even know whether or not her actions would draw security out or whether she'd get caught on camera but she would worry about that later.
She rounded the corner and sighed with relief when she saw the drop off section of the airport, there was a young man waiting there with her name on a sign in front of an SUV.
"Hey!" she called out to him as she approached, realising only when he glanced down at her feet that she must have lost a shoe at some point,
"I'm Caroline Forbes"
"Oh thank God!" he breathes, "Both Mikaelson's have been calling me every ten minutes for the last hour"
He hands her a cellphone, "You need to get in touch with them immediately, I'm told my life depends on it"
Oh God.
Please don't let her mom be dead.
He must see how close she is to losing it because he opens the driver's side door and ushers her in to sit down while she tries to press the numbers on the phone, he takes it from her when she misdials a second time and hands it back to her when she hears Klaus' familiar voice distorted by technology,
"Caroline! Caroline…speak to me, tell me you are alright!"
She stares at the driver in disbelief, "I'm fine Klaus, but I don't have time for this! Jesus it was a two hour flight and I'm not the one in the hospital…"
"It's a trap" he interrupts and she blinks in confusion,
"What?!"
"I spoke to your mother, she was fine she hasn't been injured in any way but somehow communication with anyone from Mystic Falls has been disabled, we can't seem to contact any of your friends or even the hospital…"
"So wait" she holds out a hand, palm up even as she realises that-of course- Klaus can't see her,
"My mom is okay but my friends aren't?"
On the other end of the line, Klaus growls with frustration,
"I don't know love but Elijah and I are headed to Virginia on the next flight, we will be there shortly and I want you to wait until we get there alright?"
She runs a hand through her hair and wishes someone could just explain to her what's going on.
"No I won't hang up this damn phone" Klaus is arguing with someone, "I don't care if it's airline procedure…oh go on try to arrest me I dare you…"
"Caroline" Elijah's voice is difficult to hear over the sound of a man screaming on the other end of the line and what sounds like metal crashing against metal,
"We believe that you are being lured back to Mystic Falls and we wish for you to remain at the airport until we can arrive so as to ensure your safety. Niklaus will be staying in Richmond and providing back up support lest whoever it is that set the trap has a white oak stake and I shall go with you into the town to fetch your mother and friends, now assure me that you have heard and understood me"
"Okay" Caroline says, "I understand you perfectly"
Somehow conversations with Elijah always had her and Elena modifying their speech until they sounded just like him, she wondered if they hung out long enough whether she would start drinking tea and hosting soirees.
She was probably in shock or her adrenaline was just running so high that now she was sitting still her brain was just going into overdrive and jumping about like a pinball machine.
Elijah hangs up just as the sound of an animal- probably Klaus- roars on his end and Caroline hands the phone back to the driver,
"Thank-you…" she trails off, realising that she didn't know his name,
"Rodney" he supplies, "Nice to meet you" he shakes her limp hand, "So…uh…what size shoe do you wear?"
"Huh?" She looks down at her bare feet with her bright red toenail polish, "Oh…um…thirty-six I think"
"Okay" he picks up her legs and tucks them into the car,
"I'm going to buy you some flip-flops or whatever's available and maybe some juice or something…unless you need blood?"
She shakes her head, "No…no the last thing I need right this second is an energy boost but…uh…thanks I guess?"
He shrugs, "No problem, I'll be back in five minutes"
He locks the car and slips the security guard a fifty as he heads into the arrivals terminal.
Meanwhile Caroline is watching as a minivan pulls up in front of her and a family of five moves forward from the doors, dressed in floral print shirts with patches of red skin from where the sunscreen didn't reach or protect them.
The teenager already has his headphones on and the twins are proudly showing off their souvenirs to the elderly couple- probably their grandparents- who are picking them up and helping them load the suitcases into the trunk.
A tear slips down her face, she never had that, vacations in warm tropical locations and someone waiting to pick her family up afterwards.
Between her mom working and her dad going away for 'business trips' her holidays were spent with Elena at the Lake house.
Not that she minded at the time.
But now she tries to imagine herself at forty years old, with three sunburnt exhausted kids and a husband to wrangle out of the airport.
She is so relieved that her in-laws were able to pick them up but she's also tired and wants to go straight home so she can dump the bags, throw on something a little warmer and do the supermarket shopping because there's nothing in the fridge and she can't do one more restaurant dinner-
She jumps as she realises that someone is knocking on the window of the car, thinking that it's Rodney she almost turns to open it on habit but realises quickly that it isn't him.
For one thing, she doubts anyone under Klaus' employ would be using the butt of the gun to gain her attention.
And he isn't knocking, he's trying to break the window.
She jumps to the passenger side and hits her head on the roof handle just as glass shatters everywhere, she hisses and her eyes go red with her fangs protruding as a gloved hand reaches inside the car, fumbles around and finds the lock.
The passenger door is yanked open and another hand tangles itself in her hair and pulls her bodily from the car.
She throws her hair back and when she doesn't come into contact with anything, spins around so quickly that she loses a chunk of hair but the bone of arm connected to the hand holding her snaps in several different places.
There is a shriek but her left foot was raised for a roundhouse kick and she only sees her attacker when they go flying across the road to hit and dent the taxi parked across from them.
Woman. Early thirties. Muscled. Dressed in fake army gear. Kevlar.
Out for the count.
Pain explodes in her back and she arches before dropping to the ground and rolling onto her stomach, under the car.
Whatever hit her didn't go through to her stomach so she reaches blindly behind her and feels the scratchy hard structural tissue known to all as wood.
She'd been staked.
Praying that the stake was whittled properly she yanks it out and feels a momentary sense of relief when her back heals and no splinters lodge themselves under her skin.
But she's not out of the woods yet.
Pun not intended- she's definitely in shock.
The attacker drops to the pavement with a crossbow aimed to fire under the car.
He'd been expecting her to hide under the car or perhaps to go forward to the now available space in front of them.
But Caroline Forbes likes to surprise people.
So she'd rolled back out to the passenger side and thrown herself over the car, landing on the man's back and aiming her foot for his spine.
She hears a definitive crack.
She has little medical knowledge, she might have studied microbiology but she'd decided to break the spine without knowing how high up she had to aim her foot to make him either a paraplegic or quadriplegic.
Still, she'd figured a broken spine was a broken spine, nobody could fight with one.
The man who'd broken the window moans and gurgles with pain and she flips him over onto his stomach.
He tries to glare at her but his eyes are flooded with tears from the pain,
"Who are you?!" she demands, "Why the hell did you just attack me?"
He spits at her and she grabs him by the collar and smacks his head against the concrete, not hard enough to kill him but painfully enough to get her point across,
"Tell me why you attacked me!"
"Or what?" he sneers, choking on bile, "You'll kill me?"
She shakes her head and moves her jaw back and forth, trying to find a comfortable place for her fangs and the rest of her teeth,
"I won't kill you" she warns, "I'll turn you"
She holds her wrist to her mouth and bites down loudly, for show more than effectiveness.
Her blood drips down onto his face and he throws his head to the side quickly to avoid any of it landing in his mouth,
"I was hired!" he tells her, "We all were"
"We?" she snarls, "Who are you?"
"Hunters…vampire hunters" he adds as if it wasn't obvious, "We were told there was a hundred vampires in Mystic Falls and we'd get paid a thousand bucks for each kill. Two thousand for some of the more dangerous ones, like you!"
One hundred vampires?!
There wasn't even one hundred vampires in New Orleans, let alone in Mystic Falls.
An official population of seven thousand- which was more like five thousand with the high mortality rate- and only one hospital and blood bank couldn't sustain fifty vampires without notice let alone one hundred.
And who would put a two thousand dollar bounty on her head?!
"Who sent you?" she demanded, "Give me their name"
But he had gone pale and blood was bubbling at his mouth,
"They told me I could become a Five hunter" he whispers dreamily before he falls unconscious.
Dropping him, she climbs to her feet, ignoring the sounds of sirens in the distance and the security guards who had now gathered to point their guns at her, shouting for her to 'Get on the Ground' whilst simultaneously ordering her to 'Don't move, put your hands in the air'
Klaus had been right. It had been a trap.
Someone had lured vampire hunters to Mystic Falls with the promise of thousands of dollars and the chance to become Five hunters, she figured at least one of those was a bald lie.
Did this mean they had only lured five vampire hunters or more?
Likely more.
Five men and women wouldn't stand a chance against four vampires and an actual Five hunter, not in a town they'd all grown up in and knew like the back of their hand, not a town where they'd all survived a lot worse than a paltry group of Buffy wannabes.
Which likely meant someone had placed the hunter equivalent of an ad on Craigslist and hoped they would all flock with the promise of money or supernatural power.
So Klaus had been wrong.
Her mother was in danger.
They all were.
And she couldn't wait for him and Elijah to get there.
She hears a sizzle and holds out her hand, catching the strings of the taser.
They give her a shock but she throws them back and they land on the guard, causing him to drop to the ground and jerk violently.
She turns back to the car and sees that the tires had been slashed at some point, well, she wasn't driving that then.
With a sigh she holds up her hand,
"Taxi"
The Emergency Room of Mystic Falls General Hospital was in chaos.
Fortunately, several years of frequent pandemonium had taught the response team to consider this run-of-the-mill.
First thing they did was get the wounded out of the area, clearing it and notifying police as they moved the victims further into the hospital, activating bomb procedure and only noticing in passing that the shrapnel was all wood splinters.
Whoever had blown up the ER had done so with a bomb made with large fragments of wood.
But Mystic Falls always rolled out its own special brand of crazy.
"Alright people!" Meredith Fell takes control of the situation with her no nonsense tone and the clipboard that all in-control leaders seemed to magically acquire,
"I want the more serious patients on the left side of the ward, the less serious on the right. Security, I want you to disarm the bomber in the ambulance bay and do a sweep of the hospital. I want somebody to get me the Sherriff and the Mayor on the phone asap!"
"Phone lines are down" a paramedic tells her as he washes the stomach wound of a ten year old boy who'd come in with an over worried mother and the chicken pox. "We've already tried, internet, telephone, two cans connected with string- everything is down"
She stops and considers this, feeling the distinct disgusting sensation of fear.
This wasn't some crazy random who might have found out about vampires.
This was a co-ordinated attack.
And not one of the Founding Family members either. They would never have risked civilian casualties on such a large scale.
No.
They had outsiders invading their town.
"Right!" she turns to Dr Smallwood, the man was Founding Family and would know a supernatural attack if he saw one.
He'd also have no qualm about burying enough lead to build another Liberty Bell into anyone who tried a second attack on the hospital.
"I'm going to find the Mayor" she tells him, handing him the magical clipboard of leadership.
Stepping out of the hospital is like waking up from a nightmare.
The rest of Mystic Falls appears to be completely fine, instead of running for their lives or panicking, the citizens who heard about the commotion are gathered out the front of the building to rubberneck and some are in the parking lot to eagerly ask her for information as she brushes past them.
"I don't know" is all she offers them as she climbs into her car and revves the engine to let them know they only had seconds to get out of her way before they themselves needed medical attention.
The drive from the hospital to the town hall is barely five minutes. She parks right out front and hurries inside, exhaling with relief when she sees Mayor Hopkins standing in the centre of the main hall surrounded by several people.
She calls his name and starts striding towards him, wondering why he looks up at her with bewilderment,
"The hospital was attacked" she tells him breathlessly, "One dead, several more injured"
He nods and holds up a hand to silence the man beside him, Meredith glances at the man and wonders why the hell he looks like an extra from the Matrix.
"What about the vampires?" Hopkins asks her and she starts, turning her head to take in the crowd and not seeing a single one of them look surprised that the Mayor is asking about the existence of supernatural creatures like it was ordinary business,
"I…uh…I don't know" she recalls that she'd run into Stefan last week at the Grill,
"I'm…uh…pretty sure they're out of town on vacation"
He nods curtly, "So you don't know anything?"
Behind her a voice snarls, "Doesn't matter, she's with them"
A hand grabs her shoulder and she wants to turn around but something is drawn across her neck and something must have been spilt on her because suddenly the collar of her t-shirt is soaked.
She touches the collar and holds it away from her chest confusedly, someone spilt blood on her.
Oh.
Oh no.
That's her blood.
Someone slit her throat.
"Oh my God!"
Bonnie shrieks as the body of Meredith Fell hits the marble floor.
She had just come through the large oak doors and ignores everything in favour of rushing to the woman and turning her onto her back.
But the doctor is already dead. Her eyes still wide open in disbelief, her hand now slack on her throat from where she had tried to staunch the bleeding.
"Throw her in the back"
Bonnie is pushed to the side as two men grab the woman's arms and legs and carry her through the swinging side door.
She drops her gaze to where the body had been and sees a large pool of blood slowly spreading to stain her knees and her father's shoes,
"Bonnie, get up sweetie"
Shakily, Bonnie climbs to her feet, "Dad," she holds out her hands, "What the hell is going on?!"
Rudy Hopkins grabs her by the arm and begins steering her to the hallway,
"Bonnie," he says in a stern voice, "You need to go to my office and stay there, it's warded so the vampires can't get in"
She shakes her head. Why would she need to hide from the vampires? She knows the vampires.
She grew up with Elena and is friends with all of them.
Well, she was friends with all of them but at the moment that isn't relevant,
"What the hell is happening?" she demands,
"First the hospital is attacked and now the main street looks like there's a Supernatural cosplaying convention happening out there! What is going on?"
He sighs and pushes her into the office, sitting her down on the couch with the sunken seats that hadn't been upgraded since Richard Lockwood had likely banged his mistresses on it.
"I'm dealing with the vampires Bonnie" he explains to her slowly as if she is a child,
"I've figured out a way to get rid of them"
She doesn't understand and shakes her head, "What are you talking about?!"
"These vampires are a menace, they take what they want when they want. I've brought in your mother's relatives to spell the town so they can't leave and we're going to hunt every last one of them as a message to any vampire who thinks they can come into our town"
She stares at him in horror, "Are you insane? You can't! Damon Salvatore will kill anyone who comes after him"
Her father humphs with pride, "Unlikely, I've got a solid two dozen hard-core vampire hunters in the town with more on the way, even he couldn't fight every last one of them!"
She grabs his hands and grips them, trying to make him see reason,
"Call it off dad, if you don't Elena will call Caroline who will come running back with Klaus in tow"
"The reception towers are down, no-one can call out" he smiles patronisingly,
"Besides, we've already lured Caroline back here we called her pretending that Liz had been injured"
"Oh God" Bonnie thought she was going to be sick, "That's even worse, if Caroline comes back and Klaus can't contact her, or anyone else he'll definitely come for her and he might bring an entire army with him…or worse his siblings"
Rudy gets to his feet and pats her on the head, "It's okay Bon Bon, you just stay here and wait for me, your cousin Lucy is in the woods holding up the barrier but once all the vampires are dead she can come in and you two can have a sleepover or get drinks or something- won't that be nice!"
"No!" she shakes her head, "Dad, you have to listen to me, if the Originals come you'll die, everyone will die!"
He smirks, "Don't worry sweetheart, Daddy has a secret weapon"
He reaches into his jacket and draws out half a crudely carved white oak stake,
"Mr Mortensen grabbed some of the scrap wood from the old bridge to whittle his Christmas decorations" he explains nonchalantly as if he isn't holding one of the deadliest weapons in the supernatural world.
"Now wait for me here Bonnie" he orders as he steps out of the office and closes the door behind him, "I'll be back by nightfall"
She throws herself against the door and pulls on it with all her might but her father has already locked it and when she lifts up his paperweight to try and break the glass she realises that he's had it replaced with bullet-resistant panes.
She's trapped while her friends are out there being lured into a trap and will have to fight for their lives.
She's trapped and won't be on hand to try and stop Damon Salvatore when he begins massacring people left and right.
She's trapped and won't be able to warn Klaus not to enter the town because if he dies, all her friends are lost.
Oh God.
She didn't want this.
Not this.
This would ruin all her plans.
She runs her hands through her hair and begins weeping.
Rodney had left Caroline Forbes alone for ten minutes.
Ten goddamn minutes.
He'd known she was a Mystic Falls vampire and dating Klaus but still, she should have been able to avoid trouble for ten minutes.
The pick-up/drop-off section of the airport resembled a war zone.
The SUV was smashed and slashed probably beyond repair and there was two dead bodies lying on the footpath while security guards stormed around in cheap footwear and all shouted into their phones in a blind panic, having been trained to deal with emergencies but never having to have actually dealt with anything more serious than a drill.
Christ.
He'd have to deal with Klaus- Egomaniac- Mikaelson.
Or perhaps even worse Elijah- What do you mean everything isn't perfect?!- Mikaelson.
Bloody Hell.
"Bollocks" he swore under his breath and then closed his eyes to focus on burying his natural accent.
Figuring he needed to make himself scarce lest somebody see him and remember that this was his car, he feigns casualness as he strolls down the road, stopping at the first café he sees and leaning against the side of the building, out of sight from the main road but looking for all the world like a guy just making a call.
Which he definitely has to do.
But not to the vampires.
She picks up on the second call.
"Why are you calling me?" she demands, "I totally told you we were over Blake!"
Code.
It's not a good time for her.
Tough shit.
He's got a problem of fucking epic proportions on his hands.
"Something's going down in Mystic Falls" he tells her, hoping like hell she doesn't have him on speakerphone.
"Caroline Forbes was headed there after being told her mom was sick or something. Elijah hired me to pick her up from the airport but when I got here he called me saying that under no circumstances was I to take her to the town and to phone Klaus the minute I found her. Turns out there's some sort of trap being set for the vampires, she was attacked by two wannabe soldiers while my back was turned and now I have two bodies on my hands and two Original vampires headed my way to find her gone!"
"Fucking Bonnie Bennett" she cursed, "The dumb bitch must have done something stupid…fuck…okay, I'll have to call the higher ups and report this"
"Should I say something to the Mikaelsons?" he asks but she shouts him down,
"Fuck no, do you want to be disembowelled?! Stay quiet, stay undercover until I tell you otherwise"
He hangs up and takes a deep breath.
And now to call the Hybrid.
A/N- There we go.