12

The Execution

The twins didn't bother with disguises. Each sporting a backpack of supplies, they strolled into the apartment building like if they owned it. In one hand, each carried a sharpened piece of wood, cloaked to be invisible to non-magic eyes. In the other hand, they carried nothing except their own power, charged to their fingertips with ready hexes.

They were going vampire-hunting.

They reached the Salvatores' door and with a whispered spell, Luke pushed it open, charging ahead while his sister stayed at the door, murmuring shield and defensive spells under her breath.

In a few moments, she stopped as she and her brother looked at each other in confusion.

"They're gone."

"Damon's Camaro was still in the lot when we scouted round," Luke pointed out. He gestured at the evidence of occupancy – a journal lying on the coffee table, shoes lined up by the door. "We must have just missed them."

Liv fidgeted by the doorway. "So… what do we do? We wait? Do a sweep and scorch before they're back?"

"That'll give us away, won't it?" Luke retorted, as he picked up the journal, flipped through the pages. "Our orders were clear. This was supposed to be a surprise attack."

"Well, the surprise is on us."

"And us, apparently."

The twins whirled around, magic at the ready, as the heavy barrier spell that had protected the sudden intruders lifted, to face –

Melissa, Faye.

And Bonnie.

Whose heart-shaped face was filled with betrayal at Liv.

Liv gulped. "Bonnie… look…"

"Save it," Bonnie snapped. "You told Luke after everything that you promised."

"I-"

"Liv did the right thing," Luke said, stepping forward with a stern yet compassionate look on his face. "The last time you got involved with these vampires, you… you died, Bonnie. Liv did what you should have done and told me about it. Told the coven."

"I told Joshua about them the last time and he did nothing," Bonnie said bitterly. "So forgive me if I chose to take matters into my own hands."

"Well, that's all changed now. Father agrees with you. The Salvatores are a menace and we're here to put them down."

Bonnie should have been gratified. It was what she had always wanted.

So why did her instincts tell her not to trust a word out of Luke's smooth mouth?

She snapped a glance at Liv, and her suspicions grew. The other girl didn't meet Bonnie's gaze which was just as well. Bonnie turned around to look at -

No one else. It was just the twins on one side of the room, and Bonnie on the other side. Faye and Melissa were standing guard outside, having given the Gemini witches privacy to hash things out.

"Where's everyone else?"

Luke raised an eyebrow. "Everyone who?"

"You're on an assassination mission and it's just you two?"

Luke scoffed, his manner easy. "I think one of us would have been more than enough to handle two adolescent vamps."

"The play is always three witches for the kill. Two to chant, one to hex. Where's your third?"

The twins shared guilty glances. They all three knew who their third was supposed to be – she was standing right in front of them. For as long as Bonnie, Luke and Liv had been deemed skilled enough to carry out unsupervised missions, they had always been a team. As long as it was official Gemini business – and until recent events, even 'unofficial' business – they had worked together.

Now Bonnie wasn't sure if the twins looked guilty because they had deliberately pushed her out of this … or if it was something else.

She snapped another hard glance at Liv.

"We didn't ask you," Luke said finally, "because we knew this was personal for you."

"Damn right, it is!" Bonnie declared. "Do you know these two snatched me last night?"

"What?" Luke exploded. Liv looked outraged. It clearly seemed to be news to them.

Bonnie watched them carefully, not in a hurry to assume anything. "Yes. They grabbed me from the library after you left, Liv. They had dosed themselves with witch-bane. I didn't have any choice but to go along with them."

"What did they want?"

Bonnie shrugged. "They were going to tell me the truth about my father's death in exchange for something. What that thing was, they never got round to telling me before I got away."

"But… they were dosed with witch-bane so… how did you do that?"

It was Liv who asked, her voice worried.

Bonnie hesitated. Images of a body lying on the road, strong arms around her waist, being lifted against a tree and fucked within an inch of her sanity hovered briefly in her mental vision – and was brusquely pushed away.

She shrugged, as casually as she could. "Before we got here, the Salvatores had a run-in with a rival group of vamps. Left the car to settle it. I saw an opening, took their car and drove like hell. I got Melissa and Faye to meet me at my dorm and take me to their hotel so the Salvatores couldn't trace the car to them. It's still parked outside the dorm."

Luke gave her a proud nod. "That was smart. Damon's Camaro is in the lot downstairs so they must have chased you to the dorm sometime in the night."

"It wasn't that old car he drives. It was some red sports-car. Stefan was driving."

He frowned. "Are you sure?"

"I don't know cars, Luke, but I can tell the difference between blue and red."

The twins exchanged glances.

"What is it?" Bonnie prompted.

"We thought we had just missed the Salvatores but from what you're telling me, they never got back after you escaped from them."

Bonnie's eyes widened. A certain Gemini siphon wasn't the only thing she was keeping away from the twins (one twin, at least; she still didn't know what Liv's play in this was). Bonnie was also deliberately keeping Caroline out of her narration of last night's events. As angry as she had felt towards her childhood friend last night – as angry as she still felt towards Caroline, truth be told, for everything – from lying about her father, to telling the Salvatores, to kidnapping Bonnie… Bonnie wasn't angry enough to sign her death sentence. And that was almost certainly what putting Caroline in Gemini cross-hairs was going to amount to.

"Tell me about the rival vamps," Luke insisted.

Bonnie shook her head, a good way to avoid meeting his sharp, blue gaze. "I barely caught a glimpse of them. One… walked into the road, almost made us crash. He cursed them… They jumped out, started fighting. Another one joined in, I think. Or maybe it was only just the one, moving at vamp-speed? I don't know. I was too busy escaping to notice. They were too busy fighting to notice that I had got the car and was leaving."

Luke asked her for descriptions and Bonnie gave vague images of long-haired, leather-cloaked generic-as-they-come creatures of the night, playing it safe rather than going into details that would trip her up. All the while, she glanced at Liv, and several times caught Liv in the act of glancing back at her.

Those glances, and Liv's strange silence during this part of the conversation, convinced Bonnie even more than that car had.

Liv knew about Kai.

Liv was in contact with Kai.

And Liv was hiding this from the Gemini Coven.

When they were done, Luke heaved a sigh and gave the other two weary looks. "From what you say, they're probably dead and their bodies in ashes somewhere. Two witchbane-dosed versus one or two full-powered vamps? There's really only one outcome, isn't there?"

"We'll know for sure after we do a tracking spell," Bonnie countered. "You're the best in the business, Luke. Get to it."

She glanced again at Liv, and didn't miss the flash of alarm that crossed the other twin's face.

"How could you?" Melissa hissed at Liv, her voice low to not startle Bonnie and Luke doing the tracking spell in the corner of the living room.

Faye rolled her eyes and gave Liv a look of contempt. "Are you really surprised?"

Liv couldn't be bothered to respond with a mean glare. Her mind was spinning.

She could see his hand in this – her brother, she meant. Not the one that stood with his future wife, golden and good in his righteous. She meant the other, the opposite. Dark and evil in his devilishness.

She had spent hours with Luke last night, popping only briefly in her room to shower and change before they suited up for this morning's mission. There had been no sign of Kai's return. Her car was still gone. In the meanwhile, no calls, no messages. Concerned, she had activated the tracking app in her phone to find the whereabouts of her car. It was somewhere on the dirt trail between Whitmore and the inner town; had been there for hours. A dirt trail not unlike the one Bonnie described the Salvatore brothers driving her through.

But that was not what had pinged Liv's 'Kai alarm'. No, that was Bonnie.

She had never been a good liar. Never had to be, really. While Joshua had pushed his twins and future heirs to the brink of their limits, more of a task-master than a father, he had doted on his future Bennett daughter-in-law, and the rest of the coven had followed suit. Liv and Luke had learnt deception to survive. Bonnie only needed to bat her overlong lashes and she got everyone falling over their feet to please her.

So although Liv did not doubt that Bonnie had really been kidnapped by the Salvatores last night, it was patently obvious she was keeping some details back.

And between Bonnie's lies, and Kai's absence, and the weird vibes she got from her brother where Bonnie was concerned – Liv was sure that Bonnie was hiding news about Kai.

But why?

From everything Liv had been told, Kai had terrorized Bonnie in 1994. Was it possible that the fear he had instilled had taken such deep roots in Bonnie's psyche than even out of 1994, he had a hold over her? From her own experience Liv could believe it.

She stayed silent as Luke and Bonnie did the spell, and ignored the baleful glares that Melissa and Faye threw at her. When they were done, and they had a location, the witches prepared to move.

Liv didn't miss the look of apprehension on Bonnie's face.

"What do we do when we find them?" she asked Luke.

He looked startled. "We?

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Of course, I'm coming."

"You don't have to-"

"Did you miss the part where I said they met up with other vampires? We don't know what numbers we're dealing with. Besides, I need to speak with them. Get information about my father."

Luke hesitated. "Bonnie," he said in the quiet voice that meant no good news was coming next. "Our orders were clear. We're to kill the Salvatores without discussion."

Bonnie exchanged frantic looks with her Circle friends. "Luke, I need them alive. I have to know what they know about my father."

"You can't trust the Salvatores, Bonnie. You know that."

"I'll take my chances."

"Our orders-"

"Luke, this is important to me. I need this… please." And Liv swallowed a snort at Bonnie's wide-eyed look of beseeching. How often had she seen that look growing up and known what soon followed? Utter capitulation.

Which was why Liv was completely taken aback when her brother looked torn – but resolved.

"I'm sorry, Bonnie. The Praetor's orders were crystal-clear. The Salvatores have to die."

"You're not really going to let them kill the vamps before we find out more, are you?" Faye asked as her car pealed rubber down the highway.

Naturally, Bonnie was riding back to the woods with Melissa and Faye while the twins followed in their own vehicle.

"Not if I can help it," Bonnie said, grimly.

She had never known she could feel this way about Luke. She and the older twin had always got along the best, the closest 'boy' friend she ever had. But it was all she could do back in the Salvatore's hotel suite not to hex him.

It was all very well for him. This was just another assignment. To Bonnie, this was a matter of literal life and death. Why was it so hard for him to see that? Luke was usually so understanding.

"Are you really going to defy your coven leader?" Melissa asked from the backseat, her voice hushed with concern.

Bonnie set her jaw. "He's not my leader." At Faye's gasp of surprise, she continued. "It's not my coven."

The engine of the car rumbled with her magic as they both sped towards their destination. She wasn't going to let Luke kill the Salvatores until she got what she wanted. It was three against two. She had never used magic against the twins outside a practice duel, but she knew that if it came to it, she could easily outmatch them. Between Luke's refusal to see reason and the secrets Bonnie knew Liv was hiding about Kai, she was this close to declaring war.

Bonnie, calm down, a little voice whispered in her head. Luke is one of your dearest friend, the man you're going to marry in a matter of days now. Liv is the closest thing you'll ever have to a sister. They are not your enemies.

"Anyone who stands between me and finding out what happened to my father is an enemy right now," she whispered back.

"What was that?" Faye asked.

Bonnie glared at the road ahead of them, and willed the car to fly. "Nothing. Just keep driving."

The Chamberlain girl drove like a maniac. She must have had a police scanner in her car or was doing some speeding illusion because there was no way she could have moved at that speed and not got pulled over.

Luke was frantic by the time they pulled over to the highway, behind Bonnie's friend's car. "Come on, Liv," he snapped, as he jumped out the car. "We've wasted enough time already."

Liv glared at him as she jumped out after him. "Excuse a girl for needing a bathroom break. Now cloak us before your whinging exposes us."

She had had the good sense to get the co-ordinates of the vampires's location before they started driving, and that was how she confirmed what she already suspected – that Kai was involved in this. The vampires's location and the location of Liv's car were metres from each other. So Liv had had a bathroom emergency, during which she sent a bunch of frantic texts to Kai. He didn't reply, but after a few minutes – during which Luke all but cursed her out as he repeatedly came to the door to ask her to hurry – Liv checked her app and saw that her car was moving away from that spot.

Luke had floored the pedal, desperate to catch up with Bonnie and her friends, as suspicious of Bonnie's intentions as Liv was. No doubt he was still reeling from Bonnie's earlier fury. Welcome to the club, Liv thought spitefully.

But there was no keeping up with Faye's crazy driving and Liv was sure that they had arrived minutes after Bonnie.

Luke bitched about it all the way through the woods, as they followed the tracking spell to its target.

"If we've messed this up because of you…"

"Might be a good thing if it'll make you finally own up to whatever's going on with you," Liv muttered.

Luke glared at her. "What does that mean?"

"You've always been a stickler for rules, but a short Q & A before an execution? What's the harm in that? What exactly were these mission parameters?"

"I told you everything last night," Luke said testily. "Father doesn't want the Salvatores in Bonnie's life again. She almost died the last time. Who knows what they'll drag her into this time around?"

"And Father got this epiphany in the space of 24 hours, when she was missing, presumed dead and he never bothered to hunt them down and kill them?"

"You ask Father when you get the chance."

Liv fell silent, knowing that was a challenge she couldn't take up anytime soon. Not when she was still unofficially in disgrace from her actions of last year.

Luke was ahead of her, and he rounded into the clearing and stopped so suddenly she walked into him.

"What the-"

"We got here too late as well," Faye's voice called out from ahead.

Liv walked around her shell-shocked still brother to look – and gasped.

She, Bonnie and Luke made the points of a triangle around the carcasses on the floor. The younger brother had been staked. His desiccated features were still recognizable. The older brother – well, Liv assumed it was the older brother. The truth was, that it was hard to recognize what was left of the other dead vampire. Had to understand exactly what how he had died, either. Some limbs had been scorched, exposed to the sun. Some had the flesh peeled back, like if they had soaked in vervain. A fleshy eyeball stood a few inches from the well, its lid-less gaze staring up into the sky.

Liv felt her stomach turn, and looked away. She caught sight of Melissa near the edge of the woods, hurling. The sight only made Liv more nauseous and she looked away, turning until her eyes landed on Bonnie, at the look of utter blankness on her face.

For the first time since she had met the younger girl, Liv had no idea what Bonnie was thinking.

"Who did this?" Luke whispered, staring down at the pink-spotted skull that must have once been inside Damon Salvatore's head.

Bonnie turned her head, returned Liv's gaze with a stark one of her own.

"I have no idea."