A/N: I'm back. Finals are done and now I can focus on my little darlings. I'll try not to kill them. Enjoy.
Mission
The first order of business was a drink.
Damon went down to the cellar, passed the rooms where many, including himself, were imprisoned on pain of death or desiccation, and took another flight of stairs down into a spacious cool room lined with bottles. He had no interest in the century old wines or scotch or whisky—there was only one bottle in mind.
Stefan scrubbed a hand over his face as he chucked his keys in an ashtray. The clink of crystal directed him to the seldom used kitchen.
Damon stood at the island, an open bottle of Hennessy and a glass resting on a wooden board in front of him. Stefan could smell the damp coming off Damon. The yellowed paper and broken red wax of the bottle told him everything he needed to know about this occasion.
"Who did you piss off now?"
Damon filled the glass. "Wrong question, Stefan." He drank down the cognac and did a little shake. Damn, the stuff was strong. It was almost strong enough to overcome the strange flush that had been on him since the pact made with Bonnie.
Stefan shook his head. "Where were you last night anyway?"
"In Elena's closet," Damon answered. They shared a quick, strained smile, and Stefan went to the fridge. He took out a bottle of Bambi blood.
"No, really. I came home, you were gone. I left for school and I must admit, I missed the usual harassment."
"I was in Richmond. Two words: sorority mixer. Dear God." Damon clutched his chest. "They get friskier and more entertaining every decade."
Stefan gulped down half the bottle. "Glad to know you're back to your usual menu."
"Not all of us are pure of heart, Saint Stefan," Damon said sweetly. He poured another glass and discreetly checked the time.
They both turned upon hearing a tires crunching on the gravel. Stefan frowned. "Not Elena's car."
Damon swallowed the rest of the Hennessey, grabbed the last good leather jacket he owned (a bone to pick with the witch), and sprinted out the door into an ungodly bright morning.
Bonnie was just stepping out when Damon slid into the passenger seat.
"Hit it, McQueen."
"Good morning to you too."
Damon just looked at her. Bonnie suppressed a sigh and soon they were speeding down the drive. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Stefan stood on the porch, staring after them. He could feel the worry chasing the car. He reached into a leather pocket and put on a pair of shades. He leaned back into the seat, shut his eyes, and wished Bonnie would go at least five miles over the speed limit.
Bonnie was in upstate North Carolina by late afternoon. She left Damon in the car and went into one of those small town restaurants with the crisp white tablecloths and multicolored plates and black and white photos on the wall. She sat in a smooth pale green leather booth and spread out a map of the state.
It didn't take her long after Damon left last night to start tracking down the remaining tomb vampires. They had scattered out of Virginia. Smart move. Something sent them away, probably her. Bonnie took a saltshaker and sprinkled fine white grains on the upper region of North Carolina. She whispered a few words, there was slight breeze, and she knew the district, city, even street the vampires inhabited.
By the time Damon ambled inside, Bonnie was eating waffles.
"I thought girls like you only ate three times a week."
"Girls like me?"
Damon sat across from her and picked up a menu. "Girls with halos and complexes and misplaced anger issues."
Bonnie set down the fork. "So, this is Damon after a bender—bitchy and an even sharper pain in my ass."
"What gave it away?"
"The blood on your breath."
Bonnie went back to eating while Damon perused the menu. He had a headache. Those Richmond girls were a little too rich. Or maybe it was the cognac. He chose the wrong night to get twisted. Her hand entered his field of vision. The syrup was on his side.
"So what did you find out?"
"They set up camp about an hour from here. Daylight would've been preferable, but—"
"But you had a Chemistry test," Damon said.
"It was a Bio test. I thought you were a better stalker than that."
"I only took the time to memorize Elena's schedule."
Bonnie nodded. "Of course you did." She finished her waffles. Right about now she regretted her decision to go along with this deal. It would have been easier and less painful if Damon had run off like a good little asshole and told Elena the truth. He was still in the clothes from last night, he smelled like an ashtray, and he was paler than normal. In short, he looked a mess.
Bonnie figured he was getting hungry and it made her uncomfortable. Damon set aside the menu and stared at her.
"Let's go," she said.
The drive to Edmont was quiet. The only spat they got into was over the radio. It was a silent battle culminating in her turning off the radio and putting down all the windows. Damon laid in the backseat, shades on. Bonnie periodically glanced at the long prostrate figure and sighed. A part of her, a significant part, wondered if this wasn't some ploy to sabotage her. The rest knew Damon was only here for Elena.
Bonnie parked two blocks from the house. Damon hadn't moved in forty-five minutes. She looked in the rearview mirror, inhaled, and exited the car.
A light drizzle began as she approached the only darkened house on Crompton Ave. It was a large, brick, two-story house with a white picket fence and rooster weather vain on the mailbox that read 'Alabaster'. There was a large tree in the front yard with a tire swing attached. A family lived here. She saw no car in front of the house or in the car lane on the side of the house.
Bonnie pushed at the gate. She walked quickly to the porch steps, thought better of it, and darted low across the lawn to the side of the house. There was a cellar entrance. The door was padlocked, but that was easy to undo.
She switched on her flashlight and descended into a chilled darkness. Fear made her tread carefully. There were boxes, a workstation, various bikes, ski equipment. Her eyes caught the fluorescent white of a freezer light near the staircase. It hadn't closed properly. Her hand gripped the flashlight tighter as she edged closer. A creaking of floorboards above halted her advance. She turned off the flashlight and was in pitch dark save for a sliver of fluorescent light. The footsteps were heavy and sounded near. Her heart pounded in her ears. She was immobilized by the thought of discovery. The steps grew fainter and Bonnie bent forward, drawing in deep droughts of air. She wasn't this shaken the first time. It must have been the near-death experience. Maybe she had trauma.
Bonnie shook herself. The freezer light attracted her again. Did these vampires have blood bags like Damon? God, she hoped so. Her hand reached for the silver handle of the freezer.
A hand gripped her shoulder and pulled. Terror electrified her muscles. Bonnie dropped the flashlight and sucked in air to scream when another hand clamped down over her opened mouth.
"Nancy, I thought we had a deal?"
Bonnie paused, then slumped against the hard body, then broke from the grasp with an angry hiss. "You fucking asshole."
Damon held the flashlight to his face. "Did I scare you? 'Cause I totally meant to."
"I could have killed you."
"When?"
He raised his eyebrows. She snatched back the flashlight. "I left you in the car so I can avoid this situation."
"We haven't reached any situations yet that would necessitate regret," Damon admonished. His gaze flashed to the deep freezer. "There's about five of them up there. I propose we leave the Great Freezer Mystery of 2010 and handle business."
He moved to the bottom of the staircase. Bonnie went to the freezer and pulled it open. Damon examined her face. The white light threw inky shadows over her features. Emotions moved too rapidly to classify. He supposed he could have told her but this was a messy thing they were doing, and he wanted to see how strong her will was to get it done.
She bent forward a little, tugged, and dropped the freezer door. The flashlight turned off and they were alone in the blackness of a strange cellar. He saw her approach even though she could not. His hand quivered to guide her, but she moved past him, not even brushing him as she climbed the first three steps.
"What are you—"
There was a loud crack and then the door at the top of the stairs was a column of pale orange flames, spitting and hissing. Damon crouched back from the sudden light and heat. His hand collided with her back. It was stiff, the muscles hard. The flesh of his palm burned as though sunlight shone directly on it. The instinct to remove his hand died when she darted her eyes down at him.
There was something primordial in her gaze. It was stark and massive; it ate up the green of her eyes. The door fell to pieces. Oxygen was sucked away by the fire as it raced around them and out into the first floor of the house. There were screams, shouting. He heard glass breaking.
"They are trying to get out," Bonnie whispered.
Damon saw a path through the flames. He did not look at her as he sped out of the house and caught the first fleeing vampire. He dispatched him by putting a fist through the chest and heart. He did this until there was heart muscle beneath his nails and blood staining his cuticles.
By then the fire had overtaken the entire house. The sound brought back memories of the first war. There was citronella, straw, and kerosene in the air. Damon watched the house burn through a silver mist, gray, shriveled bodies at his feet. Memories. Sunlight on his neck. Throwing a hard rubber ball to his brother. The whish of skirts across crisp spring grass. He swayed towards them.
"Damon."
Bonnie stood beside him. The green eyes were back and so was the haggard expression. She cast a look at the dead vampires on the lawn.
"Go get the car, I'll take care of the rest."
She gave him the keys and turned from him, raising a hand.
They were leaving the neighborhood when fire trucks, medic buses, and cops howled by in the opposite direction. Damon tracked the whirring mixture of sounds and colors in the rearview mirror until they were only dim beats and indents in the night.
Bonnie sat next to him in the passenger seat. He didn't like how she sank into the seat, as though she were some collapsing diagram. He didn't like the slight shake of her hand as she buckled up. He didn't like the strangled sigh that came fifteen minutes into the drive back to Virginia.
Obviously she was on the verge of emoting something other than vexation. Damon flexed a hand. The skin had puckered. The blood was flaking off. He had a memory from his human life, before Katherine. He was wholly unprepared for this. At least with Elena there were visible tears, a pulsing vein splitting the smooth forehead, dark, dark eyes. He could deal with those emotional displays.
"We did well tonight," Damon said. Bonnie inhaled then exhaled a ragged breath. Chill, wet air swirled into the car and he heard rushing and tires and smelled gasoline and oil. She rested her head on the door and closed her eyes, the wind dragging strands of dark hair across her face.
She stood before the freezer, breathing in the darkness. It was so absolute as to be palpable. It rushed over her like water against bare skin. She touched the burnished metal of the freezer and it glinted as though sun kissed. There was something in this freezer. Bonnie pressed a hand on the door. She closed her eyes and smelled wood burning, flesh. The heat was unbearable but it did not harm her, it did not mark her. It came from her. So much fire. But what did that have to do with this cool box?
She lifted the door. Glacier blue light lit the air around her. Ice swirled on the surface. Beneath the mists were shadows, indistinct but human. She reached for the shadows, her fingers slipping into the fog.
A white hand shot up and grabbed her wrist. A soundless scream escaped as she jerked back. Damon's face materialized out of the fog, his eyes two dark stains.
"Leave it alone," he snarled.
Damon released her wrist and she tumbled back from the freezer. Darkness swallowed her the second she hit the ground.
In the rush to get away from Stefan, Damon forgot his overnight bag of tricks. Aside from a change of clothes, there were three blood bags, a sharpened knife, and a little charm from harm he obtained in the 30s from a lovely witch (no relation to a Bennett). Usually he had the bag in the trunk of his car, and usually he wouldn't be caught going anywhere outside of Virginia riding in a foreign car, but dammit if this little venture hadn't completely scrambled his brain.
Damon flashed a smile to the small blonde barista who made his frappe and stepped outside to sit beneath a green canopy. He reached into his jacket, took out a tube of blood, and quickly poured it into his drink. So this was what he was reduced to, breaking into hospitals and not even stealing a couple of bloodbags. Damon sipped his spiked coffee with relief.
It had been a long time since he was in the presence of that much fire. It took a toll on his energy, that and the dreamwalking. The blood would hold him up for a couple of hours, but he needed a few pints to return to peak performance.
As he reached the end of breakfast, his senses began to clear. Bonnie's mind was an acid trip on top of a fevered dream on top of a teenage nightmare. He suspected it was because of the witchiness that some of her consciousness still clung to him upon retreating. Her voice reverberated through his skull when he was about to make a meal out of a jogger. He felt compelled, compelled, to go to the hospital. And instead of just drinking the five tubes he lifted, that loud, annoyingly condescending voice directed him to conserve the blood and try something new. Blood and hazelnut coffee and cream. It would take some getting used to.
Damon checked his watch, then his cell. Stefan called him three times, Elena twice, and he got a "What the fuck are you doing?" text from Alaric. All before 10:30 am. He was becoming popular. He called the one person who would give him the least amount of shit.
"Damon, what the hell," Alaric answered.
"You sound like hell. And hushed. A bender that ended in bed with everyone's favorite redhead?"
Alaric only sighed. Damon laughed. "I'm returning your concerned text with a call to say that I am fine, all is well, no one has died that didn't deserve it."
"And Bonnie?"
"Oh she's okay," Damon said.
"Okay? You can't mitigate a teenage girl's worst fears for her best friend with a simple 'okay.' I need proof. Like her home, alive, preferably not traumatized."
"Tell Elena that Bonnie is with me, I will keep her out of harm's way. Tell her to trust me. Tell her what ever sounds good."
"Damon…"
"New topic. I know you don't like to kiss and tell but what about screw and tell? Do the same rules apply?"
"I am going to hang up now. There are kids who need teaching."
"Come on, Rick. Just when we're becoming bros? How about I promise I won't dip my feet in the same Rick pool twice?"
Damon chuckled when the phone beeped. It was too easy sometimes.
Fed and partially satisfied, Damon ambled the three blocks to the downtown-parking garage where he left the car. He could tell from a hundred yards away Bonnie was gone. Damon hurried to the passenger side and peered inside. The seat was upright, the blanket thrown aside. Her purse was missing. Her warmth was cool.
Damon stared at the concrete wall. There were two scenarios: Bonnie decided to play truant and seek out the rest without him or the rest searched her out and kidnapped her. There wasn't a mark on the car but there were ways to get to someone out of a car and into danger. In either case, he was fucked. He couldn't go back to Mystic Falls without the girl and he couldn't leave without killing these assholes, assholes he couldn't find in a timely fashion without the girl.
The girl. It was always about a girl.
Bonnie stepped off the bus. Clouds passed over the sun. Trees swayed in a cool wind. The town was small. A thirty-minute walk and she was in a residential area. Upper class, brick houses, fences. She walked the sidewalk as if in a trance. Her footsteps were sure even though she wasn't. The air was different.
Grams started to teach her about signs, tells. It was important to recognize the signature of another witch before one stumbled upon them. But the only witch Bonnie knew of was Grams, and Grams was dead. And so she left the teachings and readings about signs and concentrated on protection spells and strengthening her power. It did her no good when she was the only witch in Mystic Falls. She could have been the only witch in the world for all she knew. For a while, she was.
But the minute she stepped off the bus and into Greenfeld, she knew. The air was different.
Bonnie approached the end of a cul-de-sac. The house there was old, made out of wood. Oak trees crowded the yard and formed a living barricade from the rest of the street. Wind chimes tinkled from the porch. This was the house.
Bonnie stood between two oak trees. Her hand tightened on the strap of her purse. She took another step and paused. The door creaked open. A tall body came out from the shadows and into the dappled sunlight of the porch. It was a woman, her hair hidden in a bright blue cloth. She wore a multicolored skirt that swept the wood and a fitted gray sweater.
"You're young."
The voice hit her like wave of ice water. The instinct to run nearly overwhelmed her senses. Bonnie stood her ground.
"I'm looking for vampires."
The woman came to the top of the steps. "To kill them?"
Bonnie nodded. The woman sat. Her face was in the full ray of sunlight. She was beautiful, ageless, like a statue. It was a startling face, brown and gaunt, but the eyes. They were wide and almond-shaped. They were the color of amethyst.
"Yes."
The woman looked up to the trees. "The vampires residing here are under my protection."
Bonnie frowned. "Witches can't be compelled."
"I have not been compelled."
"Then why?"
The amethyst eyes turned on her. "A century ago, Emily Bennett extracted a promise from a vampire, to protect her kin. She saw something in him. Today, you journey with him. Why do you not kill him?"
Bonnie dropped her gaze to the concrete. If it came to it, she wasn't strong enough to battle this woman. Her words had power in them. Bonnie knew if the woman wanted to, she could kill her with just a change in tone. Right now, she was curious.
"Because he's useful," Bonnie answered,
"Useful?" the woman laughed. It was warm and bright. It reminded Bonnie of Grams. "That was a different answer."
"Why are you protecting them?"
The woman beckoned her to come and sit next to her. Bonnie looked beyond her to the open door. There stood a figure, watching her.
"He will not hurt you as long as you do not hurt him."
"That's not very reassuring."
"And what will reassure you, Bonnie?"
It was the first time the woman said her name. Never before had it sounded so dangerous.
"We meet in the sunlight. Surrounded by fire."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "What will the neighbors say?"
Bonnie said nothing. The woman stepped lightly down the stairs to stand in a pool of sunlight. Bonnie, after a minute of hesitation, joined her. A ring of fire enclosed them a second later.
"Very efficient. You surprise me. A fledgling witch without guidance casting spells with such ease. You will be powerful," the woman said.
"I am only surviving. Why are you protecting them?" Bonnie asked.
"They are the ones who did not join with the group who would seek revenge on Mystic Falls. They came to me and I accepted them."
"Wait, what?"
The woman smiled. "Will you listen?"
She didn't come all the way to West Virginia to listen. And she wanted to tell this woman, but what could she do? Leave and come back, go in there and get killed? She was stupid for leaving Damon, only because she was alone in this.
It was intense, it was momentary, but she wished, with every fiber of her being, that Damon were with her.
Bonnie nodded. The woman suddenly pressed a hand to the side of her face. There was a sharp prick at her temple and the world went white.