The neighborhood is having their own fall celebration. Forget all that masks and high sididdy shit on Royal street.
The real Harvest moon party is taking place across the bridge.
And the streets are full of people, mostly black and shining, the way black people shine when they get together for a celebration, and some white people too, the curious ones and the ones who know where to go for a good time, and there is loud music playing on each block, Frankie Beverly out of open front doors and some bounce out of rolled down car windows, and there are sidewalk vendors, old men selling charbroiled oysters and crabs, and grandmothers selling fish plates off the steps of the parish church.
But all that joy halts with startled children, abrupt frowns and angry shouts as the vampire and the hybrid carrying a dead and bloody witch in his hands walk into the ninth ward.
Cursing and throwing glass bottles, the celebration takes a turn.
"Get the fuck outta our neighborhood."
The men shut down the block, a clip is unloaded in the air, and it quickly becomes apparent to Damon that they might not make whatever destination Klaus is heading towards. And then one of the men holding a piece of old wood, shoots the sliver of tree over the streetlight, impaling Damon in the chest, missing his heart by inches.
Klaus carries on through their human blockade, breaking through their shoulder to shoulder formation, despite the threats and the electricity of their magic in the air, and despite a dead Bonnie and a fallen Damon, who he orders between clenched teeth to not retaliate. Bonnie wouldn't want them to harm the witches.
More bodies gather in front of their passage and Klaus continues as if they aren't there, walking towards the house of the one witch who cared to hear him even though she was no longer alive.
But the same kid, on the same bike, who gave him directions the last time he was in the neighborhood rides up and jumps off his seat, bike crashing into the concrete. "Are you lost again?"
Klaus walks around the kid and his bike to Mama T's house. "Bring me Antoinette."
BKBKBKBKBK
The house is empty, but Klaus can still cross the threshold when he breaks down the door, leaving a healing Damon to guard the entryway on the porch.
All of Mama T's pictures are turned down, the furniture is covered in worn sheets, the knick knacks are cleared from the curio and there are aged marks on the wall from where 'The Last Supper' and MLK lived.
The house is a ghost, and the lights don't work, and Klaus expects at any moment that whatever is underneath those sheets to wake and rise up.
Bonnie is light in his embrace, and when he lays her down on the couch, her blood smears and soaks through the sheet.
He immediately tears Bonnie's shirt, the gash at her side bleeds and bleeds, and he grabs the sheet from the lay-z-boy and tears it into strips, rolling Bonnie from side to side, wrapping the cloth strips around her waist to bandage the wound.
He doesn't think, all action, lifting the shirt off his own back to ball up and prop up under Bonnie's head for her comfort, even though she doesn't need comfort.
She's dead.
Damon peers into the open space where the front door used to be, and he stares into the dark, at Klaus rummaging through the kitchen for candles and at Bonnie, her face soft and still, and there are words stuck in his throat and pain in his eyes, but there is a quiet in the house, that was absent in the car and in the trek through the witches, so that he can finally hear what is propelling Klaus.
"How the fuck does she have a heartbeat?" He asks loudly, to Klaus and to himself.
Klaus sticks the wax tapers into mismatched glasses, lighting them one by one with a plastic Bic, "The heartbeat does not belong to her."
Before Damon can utter the preposterous question that is erupting out of him, a middle-aged black woman appears on the porch next to him, dressed down in tight jeans and a bedazzled top, she pushes past him like he's not a killer, and immediately goes over to the witch's body and asks him why he didn't give her his blood.
"She could not keep it down," Klaus answers flatly, "Where is Antoinette?"
"I'm Paulette. Her auntie," She says, eyeing Bonnie, "The other covens came here wanting us to band with them for what Bonnie did," She stopped, shaking her head, "'Nette went to go warn her and bring her back here."
Klaus rises slowly from being crouched on the floor beside Bonnie's body, his eyes never leaving his love as he flips through all of the emotions and events of the night until he forces himself to stick with what will give him what he wants. He turns his yellow eyes on Paulette and in a careful and measured voice, he says, "Bring her back."
Paulette nods, silent.
More women and girlchildren arrive, huddling around the couch, their brown hands lay on Bonnie and some swarm in and out of the bedrooms, coming back with gifts in their hands, trinkets and herbs and Mama T's bible.
They speak to one another like Klaus and Damon don't exist, they speak to one another like they love each other and they speak to Bonnie like she's one of them.
"Someone call 'Nette and let her know Bonnie here," Paulette says, arranging all of the found items on the coffee table in front of Bonnie, "Lydia, you think you got the mind to help me?"
Lydia, another auntie, who looks like she was partying wherever Paulette was because she is dressed similarly, but instead of flowing braids like Paulette has, she has on a bob-cut blonde wig.
Also, unlike Paulette, Lydia has had a little too much to drink and she struggles out of the lazy-z-boy and slurs when she says, "Yeaaah, but who are we gonna trade her life for?"
All of their eyes settled on Klaus, who to Damon's astonishment, steps forward, ready for them to get to work with expelling him of his murderous soul, but as soon as he did that, the women and girls quickly looked away in anger, and Paulette announces to Klaus, "The Gatekeeper won't let us take a damn thing with you as an offering."
And Damon, who is fed up with being useless in the saving of his best friend blurts out into the room from the porch, "She has a heartbeat!"
Quickly, Paulette drops her ear to Bonnie's chest and raises an eyebrow and turns her face up to Lydia like she should try because she just can't hear the heartbeat and she wants to make sure, and after Lydia does her own examination of a heartbeat and shakes her head, "Ask them where the heartbeat at?"
Paulette turns to Damon for answers, and Damon shoots a look over to Klaus to reveal what they both can clearly hear pounding and pumping blood inside of Bonnie.
"She's pregnant."
Author's Note
All the cliffhangers. I'm sorry darlings, but I write and post and lately this is how its flowing out of me. I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter and I hope to update the next chapter very soon.