AN: Hey, peeps. All I can do is apologise for taking so long. I lost my mojo.

New readers, beware. This is completely AU. It doesn't follow the series at all. It takes root round about the part where Bonnie was still going to Shane with help to get her magic back. Beremy is still broken up. Elena is still under the influence of the sire bond. They haven't gone to the island to get the cure or anything like that. Klaus has just killed out his bunch of hybrids. Tyler's on the run.

This fic is a "What if" scenario. What if Shane is really just Silas's puppet? What if the cure gimmick is just bullshit he's using to manipulate them all, in order to get his hands on Bonnie to teach her expression? What is expression and why are they invested in Bonnie learning it.

What do they want, he and Silas? Are they working together? Is Silas possessing him?

Damon and Klaus and the gang want to get their hands on the cure, so they trusted him. Meanwhile, Shane's been sacrificing people and teaching Bonnie dark magic.

What if Bonnie went straight up evil, and went berserk and killed out the population of Mystic Falls, preempting that whole cure saga?

It's very AU. Most importantly to note. Silas is around six thousand years in this. He's not a Stefan clone either. He looks like Sydney from Vagrant Story. Look for images on Google.

\(*o*)/ Vagrant story was the best game!

And I'm beggin for feedback. I'll take them in the form of tweets. tenlegdragon

Drop a review, drop a PM or send me a tweet. Even if you don't like it. Even if it's just to say meh, or rant at me for going on hiatus. I'll try to answer any questions.

Extra special shout out to Chromeknickers and leilani

Disclaimers and all that jazz…

Oops.

Klaus paced up and down the aisle.

Jesus Christ.

There he was, pristine on his cross, looking down on him with that perpetual frown.

Yeah, I fucked up.

Fucked up didn't even begin to describe what he'd done. Letting himself get desiccated had been fucking up. Daggering his family for centuries on end, that was fucking up. Not killing Stefan. Not killing Damon. That was fucking up. His mother coming back from the dead in order to kill them all, that was fucked up. Finn volunteering to help…

This, though. This was on a whole different level.

He was the one who'd set in all in motion.

If he could time travel, he'd go back in time to that day when he saved Connor from the trap. That whole Sword-Hunter-Silas-Cure shit… How could he fall for it?

How in the fucking hell had he fallen for that same fake-ass prophecy bullshit? He was the one to come up with the idea of fake-ass prophecies! And he'd let someone use that same trick on him?

He should kill himself.

Seriously, he should.

He should kill somebody…

Except people to kill were starting to become a scarce commodity.

Klaus looked around the church. Stefan Damon and Elena, the three rats who never went down with the ship. Jeremy, the ever-persistent, multi-gifted/cursed emo teenager. Shane… And the Sherriff…

She's expendable…

He flash-stepped behind her, grabbed her scrawny little neck with both his hands and just ripped her head off.

Not even a sound.

Not even the scream of a dove.

Scream of a dove?

"What the hell are you doing?" Stefan yelled.

Damon had the good sense to stay quiet.

"What's it look like I'm doing, love?" Klaus replied, smirk in place, as he held the sheriff's decapitated body over the basin of holy water. The blood poured and mixed with the water beautifully. Beauty.

Life without beauty is nothing.

"I hadn't had the chance to grab breakfast, I'm a bit hungry. Nervous stomach, me."

"What do you have to be nervous about?" Damon, the smartest most genius vampire ever asked, "You're the one who's immortal. You can walk right out of here."

Yeah?

He didn't want to gamble on it.

"The Witch-Bitch has devoted the last year of her life to killing me, and now that she's actually gone batshit insane with power, you want me to just put myself in harm's way? To jump into the arms of death itself?"

He should, though.

In 1192, when he'd been spending some time in Japan playing Go with the new Shogun, Minamoto no Yoritomo, they'd talked a bit about seppuku. Minamoto had said that he'd consider it if word ever got around that he was a practising homosexual.

Klaus wouldn't kill himself if people thought he was a homosexual. He wasn't. He'd not had a single gay encounter in his life, but he could understand it. There was a certain beauty to the male body as compared to the female. A male had power. Virility. Prowess. And beauty. The complete package.

He'd often thought about becoming a homosexual. Just for the fun of it. Just to say he'd tried everything twice. He could appreciate a beautiful man as well as the next homo. Take Damon, for instance. For all intents and purposes, the sexiest man west of the Greenwich Meridian…

And what was I thinking about…

Yes. That he'd never once ever considered killing himself. Even when he was under the Hunter's Curse, he'd never even come close to putting his own lights out. Kicking over your own bucket, as they say. As empty as his life was, as boring, as monotonous, as devoid as it was of love or any true emotion, as plagued with surprising but inevitable betrayals… he'd never once considered suicide.

He was a thousand years young and looking forward to ten thousand more. Maybe when he was old(er) and grey (less blond) he might think about it seriously. When he'd literally fucked/fed on every woman in the world, maybe. And funny thing about women, they reproduced. A new woman was born every six or seven seconds. Renewable resource, them womenfolk.

If he ever douched it up on such a level again? Yeah. He'd kill himself. Light a candle, sharpen up a katana and spill his guts in the back yard.

The torrent of blood from Liz Forbes neck slowed to a trickle, then drops. He let the body fall to the floor, walked over to the water cooler, took a paper cup off from the stack, walked back over to the basin of holy/bloody water and scooped out a cup. Then casual as any monster, he took a seat on the pew next to Shane.

Atticus Shane.

Puppetmaster. King Manipulator. Badass Hypnotizing Motherfucker.

He'd played them all, hadn't he? The soft-spoken, thirty-something, curly-haired, gypsy-looking school teacher.

Shame on me.

But what was it that the humans had a way of saying, 'fool me once, shame on you'?

Shame on you, Atticus Shane. Eternal shame and ignominy upon you.

And just a little shame on me, because really.

A warlock named Silas gets a witch friend of his to co-write an immortality spell with him. He uses it on himself and presto, Warlock is immortal. Warlock tries to use said spell on his main squeeze, and the secondary squeeze, (Witch who co-wrote the spell) goes all "hell hath no fury" and flat out murders the main squeeze and imprisons Mr All-Powerful Warlock in a tomb forever.

Meanwhile, massive centuries later, another witch, most likely a Bennett, sacrifices her life (as Bennett witches are wont to do) to create five super humans called Hunters (note the capital H) whose sole purpose is to kill vampires. And when they kill a vampire they get a tattoo. The more they kill, the more the tattoo grows. And when it all grows together you get a map.

And every good witch-map needs a decipher code, so there's a magic sword too to help with that.

And the map leads to "The Cure."

Also, the map leads to Silas… making Silas and "The Cure" one and the same?

And the only way to open the tomb of Silas/get the cure is for Bonnie to learn a special, extra dark, dark magic called "expression."

And Atticus, the Gypsy/Moor is just your friendly neighbourhood college professor of occult studies who just happens to know where the tomb is, (making the map and the sword utterly useless), and also just happens to be an expert at hypnotizing seventeen year old girls and teaching them "expression". Which is necessary for the opening of the tomb of Silas/obtaining the cure, which he needs to turn Elena back to a human, to make more hybrids.

Ergo…

Concordantly…

Oh, and also, human sacrifice is necessary. Vampire sacrifice is necessary. Hybrid sacrifice is necessary. Really… it doesn't matter what you kill or who does the killing as long as there are twelve dead bodies in the end. So Shane takes the liberty to sacrifice a good baker's dozen (12 not 13) of Mystic Falls population. Repeatedly. All in the name of powering up Bonnie's "expression". And damn the questions, right? All so that he can get more hybrids, just because he was bored, basically, and wanted to have a fun adventure with Steff-Steff, his bro from another mo.

He'd not really wanted the hybrids, shitty bunch of weak disloyal fucks as they were. Being honest.

He'd killed a whole lot of them himself…

And he really didn't give much of a fuck about Elena, or "The Cure", or Silas, the Great and the Powerful.

What he did give a fuck about was not looking like an ass. And that was what was happening. Shane, the Gypsy-Moor had him holed up in a church like some twisted fucking version of Anne Frank. Sure he could brave it, test the waters, step outside and let fate have its way with him…

Or he could go ape-shit and kill everybody else who was witness to this little goof. Stefan, Elena, Damon, Shane, Jeremy. Nobody's laughing at him if he just goes ape-shit and kills everyone.

Or he could play cool…

As if nothing mattered.

Nothing really matters…

How fucked up is the world when the vampires are hiding out on holy ground?

"So," Klaus sipped his beverage. Watered down a bit, but still good. Eau de Liz Forbes. Rest in peace. Ex-wife of a gay mindfreak. Mother of the beautiful but treacherous Caroline Forbes, (also dead, rest in peace despite your constant backstabbing). "Since we're all apparently dancing to the tune of your flute, how about you educate me on the steps so I don't look clumsy on the dance floor."

"Klaus," the man greeted him. As if they were random normal human beings. The fucking nerve.

"Professor," Klaus crooned, having fun for some reason.

It was hard to describe, but he was strangely happy. For some strange unknown and unfathomable reason. Excited. Borderline aroused, in fact.

And it had nothing to do with the gypsy's marvellous complexion and casually tousled locks.

Nothing to do with Stefan, the Ripper/the Brooder.

Nothing to do with Damon Bright-Eyes.

Nothing to do with Elena, the vampire princess.

Nothing to do with ripping Liz's head off… Okay, maybe a little to do with that, but mostly he felt it was due to the electricity in the air. The mayhem. The raw bloodlust. The chaos.

The church was like a trench. In a battlefield.

War.

It had been a long time since he'd had something to fight.

A long time since he'd cared about anything, and now… now he was a bundle of excitement and fear and anxiety and….

Oooh….

Death.

Exciting.

Motivating.

Arousing?

If death was a person, would he fuck it?

Because, basically, that's what had happened. Bonnie Bennett had become walking death.

Grim Reaper. Minus the scythe, and the robes. A hotter, naked-er wickeder version.

Shinigami. Only not Japanese.

Giltine. Only pretty and cute instead.

Thanatos. But female. And African-American… or biracial maybe… And without the wings.

Focus…

"So Professor…" he began again. "What now?"

"Bonnie –"

"Are we still calling her that?" Klaus chuckled. "Seems as though she's a bit beyond that now. Maybe it's just me, but Bonnie Bennett, 17 year old cheerleader hardly seems to describe her now that she's slaughtered, oh… let's say everybody in Mystic Falls besides us?"

"She's still Bonnie."

Seriously?

Klaus swallowed and finished off his cup of blood wishing it was something alcoholic. "That thing out there is the exact opposite of Bonnie Bennett."

"I can get her back to normal," Shane mumbled.

"SAY WHAT!?" Damon shouted from the other end of the church and immediately they were all gathered around him and the gypsy like the holy triumvirate. Damon had Gypsy up by the collar in a millisecond. "Professor…" he growled.

Calm as a stoned junkie, the gypsy replied, "I turned her on."

"What?" Elena.

"I switched her on. She's under hypnosis."

Jaws dropped. Eyebrows raised. Gasps. Deep Breaths. Stuttering.

Klaus observed.

The first person to recover was Stefan. "You hypnotized her into killing out the population of Mystic Falls?" he asked, shock and awe in his voice.

Damon raked his hands through his glossed up hair. "This is insane."

"Actually, it's not," Atticus continued. Then because, his life wasn't in enough danger apparently, he had the gall to look annoyed. "This is the plan. This was always the plan." To Damon, "I told you about this. To get the cure we need Bonnie to be at her maximal potential. We need her to be the most powerful witch that she can become."

"We signed up to get the cure!" Stefan got in the gypsy's face. "We did not sign up for genocide!"

The gypsy scoffed, "Slaughtering the population of one sleepy-town, rat-infested, vampire-infested, hybrid-infested hole in the world hardly counts as genocide."

True.

"And up until now, I've handled all the dirty work getting Bonnie to sacrifice all those people–"

Damon, "Bonnie didn't kill anybody!"

"Well, I organised it all in her name, so same diff," the gypsy shrugged. "I've done all I can do, sacrifice-wise. It's up to Bonnie now to harness her full potential."

"You mean mindlessly kill everyone in sight?" Stefan. Always on that high horse, Stefan. Hypocritical son of a bitch.

The gypsy shrugged. "Tomato, tomato," he responded, cleverly pronouncing the word the same way twice.

Klaus smiled. He liked that.

"So she just keeps on with this rampage until…" Elena prompted.

"Until I stop her."

Klaus had to admit, the guy had gumption.

Too much gumption, for a human surrounded by vampires.

And just like that, Klaus decided that he had had enough. There was only so much entertainment to be had from sitting in the back seat and watching it all unfold. Albeit it was all unfolding splendidly, blood and chaos in the air. General mayhem. He was always a fan… But there was always a time when a proper licensed driver was required to take the wheel. And he was the only one licensed to operate this level of heavy machinery. Fuck Stefan. Fuck Damon. Fuck Elena. Fuck Dead Sheriff. Fuck Jeremy the Hunter. And fuck the gypsy/moor.

Klaus grabbed Shane by the collar.

Compulsion Time.

"Tell me, love, who are you and what's your game? Huh. Why don't you give me the low-down?"

A moment passed.

The staredown intensified.

Odd.

Everything about him was odd. This strange little gypsy man... His skin felt wrong. He smelt wrong. Everything about him was wrong…

Klaus looked a little deeper, squinting those baby blues.

And what do we have here?

"Silas?"

The gypsy creature laughed. "You got me." He shrugged effortlessly out of Klaus' grip.

Confused, Damon Stefan and Elena, "What's going on?"

Question of the day, that.

He wasn't afraid. Not of whatever this Silas was. He was just a warlock at the end of the day. An interesting, shady, sneaky, blood-mongering warlock. Dark magic? Ha. I laugh in the face of black magic.

Ha, ha, ha.

Except it was magic that had made him what he was today. It was magic that had brought his witch/bitch of a mother back from the dead to destroy him. It had been magic that had desiccated him not so very long ago… Magic that made the white oak dagger. Magic that created Alaric the Super-Vampire/Vampire Hunter. Magic that had nearly killed him and all his siblings… Nothing really to laugh about when you think about it, but fuck it, Ha, ha, hearty fucking ha.

He was Klaus. Whatever the fuck Shane/Silas was, it didn't change the fact that he was still and forever will be Klaus.

Klaus the fucking baddest of all bad guys. There was never and never will be a big bad as big or as bad as him. He could be an angel when he wanted to be, but down to his core, he was pure demon. He could dance with the best of them. Do the fucking tango blindfolded if he had to.

In half a millisecond if so long, he ripped the gypsy's right arm off. Just from under the elbow leaving raw bleeding flesh exposed under the torn sleeve of farmy flannel shirt. "I will make you suffer–"

"Please," the gypsy scoffed, staring at his arm in open wonder. "You think I'd engage in a plan as epic as this, Klaus Mikaelson, without insulating myself from any and all danger?"

Stefan, "What's going on here?"

Klaus flashed his old pal a smile. "It's alright, sweetheart. Don't wet your knickers. Us immortals are having a bit of a convo, if you don't mind."

"Immortals?"

Klaus shot him a glare. Shut it.

"Immortals?" the gypsy thing asked, switching effortlessly to the Hebrew language, accent and all. "You dare to class yourself with me?"

Okay… Hebrew…

"I'm over a thousand years old," Klaus replied. His Hebrew was a little bit rusty, but say what? "I'm as immortal as they come."

The thing with one arm smirked, "And I've seen six millennia pass. I'm as far above you as you are above them."

"Except I'm the most powerful being on the planet."

"For now."

"Enlighten me, then. One Machiavellian villain to another."

The gypsy smiled. "It all begins very long ago. Before the birth of Christ..." his gazed lingered on the crucifix for a moment. A long moment… Then he smiled again. "Once upon a time, in the old days of Egypt, there was a little boy named Silas, and he was a warlock. The first warlock. The first being who had power over nature. Me. I had no teachers. No cookie-baking grandmother. No loving mother. I was just an orphan slave boy in Egypt. My mother had been a slave. My grandmother had been a slave. To put it simply… I come from a long line of whipped, shit-fed slaves. And I was a slave. A little boy slave with power over the wind and the sand and the rivers and the birds and the fish and the crocodiles and… well, you get the idea.

"I didn't know what to do with this power though. I couldn't control it. Except to make the flowers bloom. To make the harvest healthy. I was the good luck charm. Go get Silas, he'll interpret your dreams for you. That sorta thing. How do you think it works out? Well, I'll tell you how it works out. Little eight year old pretty boy Silas winds up getting raped up the ass by one of the pharaoh's people. And I didn't like it. So I killed the fucker, cut his heart out with a knife and ate it, 'cause I was hungry… as slaves are wont to be. And because human flesh actually tastes good, I indulged myself in what was up for offer. I think I ate at least half of the royal family before they had the priests entomb me.

"Buried me alive… Yup, sucked to be me. But on the bright side, solitary confinement without food or light or air, really does make you stronger. What doesn't kill you? Yeah. So it didn't kill me, and I spent the next six, seven years slowly losing my mind…

"And then… And then this freaky woman digs me up and releases me on the contingency that I heal her son who was dying from some plague or the other, and I was like, fuck that. So I killed her and went on to devour her entire village. By the time I was done with them, I wasn't even human anymore. I had claws, I had fangs. Elf ears. All kinds of crazy shit. And the power? I was like the phoenix version of Jean Grey plus Voldemort plus Imhotep plus Superman plus Achilles plus Avatar Aang plus Bruce Willis… It was just like ugh, How powerful am I? A god am I. And I'm around fourteen years old by the way.

"Moving from village to village, growing in power, and bored out of my fucking mind, I started experimenting. I made the first vampires. Yeah, in your face, you're not an Original. There are others older than you. Stronger than you and your pathetic family. I made werewolves. All sorts of creatures. I made them all. I am the father of all things that go bump in the night. And still, I was just a little bit lonely. All I could make were monsters. Blood-drinkers. Flesh-eaters. I wanted to create something a little purer. A brother. Kin. And that took me some time. A couple centuries of trial and error. Until I realised that I wouldn't be able to do it on my own. I'd need somebody to do it for me. So began the hunt for someone else like me. Someone powerful. Someone who could control nature and bend it to its will.

"Needless to say, there was no one quite like me. But there was one woman who came close. Deep in the bowels of Africa, Makasha. When you're talking about the Wild Ones, you have to talk about Makasha. Girl was crayzay. So I decided to teach her. Just because I had naturally discovered my talent, didn't mean the same talent couldn't exist in others, maybe just in a dormant way, waiting for someone to release it. And Makasha had the talent, deep inside of her. So I trained her. Opened her mind to the supernatural. Opened her mind to her own power. And we were friends.

"We did everything together. Kill, slaughter, feed, fuck each other's brains out… and then dun, dun, dun. Bitch gets pregnant, as bitches are wont to do. My plan was to sacrifice the foetus and then eat it… And that didn't sit too well with her, because she wanted to, I don't know, have a nuclear family, or something. I wasn't into that shit. So behind my back, using the shit I'd taught her, she came up with a spell to bind me. Not only bind me. But split my power in half. The good and the evil. The white magic and the black magic. She sucked it all out of me, all my fucking power. She took the evil into herself and put the pure magic into our unborn child. Me, now powerless, she trapped in a tomb. Again. Note, this is the second time I'm being buried alive.

"And centuries passed, as they do. Ever so slowly. Centuries became a millennium. Then two. Then three. Then, voila, I was free again. By accident this time around. They were doing some excavation work and just stumbled across my sarcophagus. Good luck, at last.

"But everything is different. The world isn't what I left behind. Everything's changed. Makasha is long dead, so is our child. So guess what I have to do? Yeah, I have to go hunt down my descendants because guess to fuck what, they still have my powers and I'm powerless as jack shit. Immortality is nigh pointless without power.

"I tracked down the descendants of my son - don't ask how - to Greece. I find him, my great, great, great, tra la la, great grandson and I proceed to take my power back from him–"

"How?" Klaus interrupted, as much as he enjoyed a good monologue, he just had to ask.

"Hypnotism, my dear boy, hypnotism. You really underestimate the power of the mind. The poor lad was some kind of temple priest. Didn't even know about the power he had. I simply jacked into his mind, and took it. It belonged to me. The power is mine, it wants to return to me.

"So, anyhow, here I was with half of my powers back. The lame half of my powers back. Making the grass grow, keeping the cows fat, keeping off the locusts, saving drowning sailors, that kinda shit… And I actually did that for a while. I went to India and became a pundit. I went to a lot of countries, selling myself as a holy man, spreading rainbows and sunshine and all that good stuff… That's what I am now, a travelling do-gooder…" Shane sighed. "But I miss my other half."

"So I possessed this sad dude, Atticus Shane, the anthropologist who came to learn at my feet and I sent him out to find my better half. What I had not expected was for Makasha to make up all this "Servants of Nature" bullshit. She wrapped my power up under so much rules and regulations. So much seals and locks, that being a witch nowadays involves lighting candles, and floating feathers. Once again, I'm fucked up the ass. What do I do now? Wallow in it? No, I'm not that type of guy. Me and Mr Atticus Shane – me really, because this body is just a mindless, good-looking drone – sat down and figured out a way to reactivate my true power. My full power. I call it "expression". You know, after the song, "Express Yourself" N.W.A. 1988? Get it?"

Klaus' stomach was beginning to turn. The sick, twisted smile on the Shane's face… Liz's body continuing to trickle out on the floor. Stefan, Elena and Damon, spectating like little vampire children. His vampire children. The human boy who used to love Bonnie… Poor, dead, pretty, blonde Caroline, disembowelled and eviscerated by her best friend. Poor Tyler, disloyal fuck as he was, didn't deserve that mind-numbingly slow torturous death. Eaten alive? Not a way for anyone to go.

And worst of all, Bonnie. This Bonnie Bennett. The witch bitch who had tried to kill him on several occasions all for the sake of her precious friends. This poor, little girl that he had used and abused. That they'd all used and abused… They'd let her fall into the hands of this sick twisted thing and they'd not batted an eyelid because they were too focused on getting what they wanted. A cure for the precious vampire princess Elena.

What made the bile rise up in his throat, was that he could completely relate to this sick, twisted monster man. He had had his own fun brainwashing and manipulating poor, neglected witches. His last victim, Greta… Oh, the fun he'd had with her… They made excellent toys, witches…

Even Bonnie. He'd always enjoyed making her suffer a little. Her tears always had a way of making him feel… better somehow. He'd threaten her, threaten the people she loved, force her to do his bidding… and feel… proud about it. As if he were training a new puppy. Grooming a mastiff. Making her his personal bitch. That sense of owning…

"You could have chosen any other witch…" Klaus barely managed to whisper.

"Yeah, but the blood is strongest in the Bennett line. She even looks like Makasha." A beat. "She even fucks like Makasha. Makasha was twelve years old the first time I fucked her, and she wasn't even a virgin. How does a girl like Bonnie make it to seventeen without somebody sticking a cock in that? Really? You? Stefan? Damon? Jeremy? Nobody hit that?"

"You raped her?"

"Ooh, ugly word that. Let's just say that while she was under my hypnotism for countless hours on end, I might have suggested that she fuck me as if her life depended on it." Shane smiled. "As if you've never compelled some woman to service you."

Klaus bristled. The insinuation. He'd never in his life done that. He'd never had to. He'd never even considered it. When you're immortal, sex… becomes ritualistic. Without procreation, sex always just seemed… bland. Pointless. Insignificant.

"I mean," Shane continued. "It's a little bit weird, fucking somebody while you're in somebody's else body, but Bonnie's… Bonnie's a good fuck. You should try it. Grade A cunt. Certified fresh." A beat. "Exquisite. Especially when you really have her blitzed out of her mind. She's a little nympho under all the cheerleader pom poms."

Klaus' forehead furrowed. "So, your witch is expressing herself… She's killed a couple thousand people over this past week. What now? What's the next step from here?"

"Oh, she's not done!" Shane smiled, bubbling over with glee. She's nowhere near the monster she needs to be. I've just got her started. But baby's all grown up now. She doesn't need me holding her hand showing her the way. She knows what she has to do, now. She wants to wake up that power more than me at this point. It's in her. It's ingrained so deep in her, all I had to do was dig, until I found it. Until I found that bloodlust. She was a monster since she was born. I just took her out of the closet. This is Bonnie Bennett. My little malyshka." And again, that smile. That toothy, content, cat-got-the-canary smile. As if he'd won. As if he was the champion of the world. "When she's ready, she'll come to me. We're like magnets. She's literally my soulmate. I own her. I own everything about her. I–"

Klaus grabbed a handful of black curls and just ripped. He'd had enough of the gypsy anthropologist puppet. He'd had enough of the demented preacher Silas, the Great and the Powerful.

Enough.

"You guys might want to stay here…"

Stefan stepped in front of the door, blocking his exit. "What's going on?"

What's going on? Blue eyes met green. Silence. There were no words. Nothing to say.

The game was afoot.

And they were losing.

Compelling them all quickly, "Stay inside the church. Don't leave until I tell you to. And get out of my way."

He stepped out.

Into the open.

His boots squelched down into a carpet of blood and gore. Dead animals. Eviscerated carcasses. Men, women and children. Bodies that she'd halfway eaten and flung over the picket fence.

Gore.

Chaos.

Evil.

Big blocks of hail. Shrubs on fire… Ash and snow in the air. And beautiful, cloudless blue sky.

He took a cautious step forward, then another.

She was standing right there, one millimetre from the entrance. Hovering. Like a vulture. Like the Grim Reaper… Except naked. And beautiful.

Her hair had gone stark white now. And it was longer. Rapunzel length. And tossing this way and that above her head in a non-existent wind.

Her eyes were larger. Greener, no trace of that muddy brown anymore. Sharper. Brighter.

Fangs. Bloody lips, bloody chin, blood down her front. Blood all over her breasst, clotting in her pubic hair, trickling down the inside of her thighs. He could smell her arousal in the air, hot and heavy…

Claws… No more pretty fingernails.

And the ears.

Cute.

Elf ears. Flicking this way and that, catching every sound on the wind.

Poor girl.

Poor sad girl. They'd all turned a blind eye, and look at what they'd done to her.

"Send out the human," she spoke. In Gaelic.

"Jeremy?" Klaus took another step forward, closer to the monster. "What do you want with Jeremy?"

She giggled, blood erupting from her throat, trickling down her chin. Evil. Tortured. Beautiful. "I want to eat his guts…" she laughed.

"Now that's a bit extreme love, don't you think?"

She shook her head, big doe eyes reminding him that she was a child. Just a little girl. Only seventeen years on the face of the earth. Abandoned by mother, father, friends… A little girl with no one to care about her… Little Red Riding Hood without a Woodsman…

"He hurt me."

"He kissed a ghost. That's a killing offence, nowadays?"

She shrugged. Blood dripping off of her. "Maybe." This time in French. Archaic French.

"Look at me," he responded, closing the distance between them. She smelt like blood and sex. He could feel it, as he drew closer, the non-existent wind that was blowing her hair up. Power. Pure power. The concrete under her feet was charred and cracked. The asphalt the entire street up was steaming.

A bird. A brown dove flew out of a tree and he watched it. Her eyes followed his. Then she smiled, as the bird passed overhead.

Then the bird exploded into blood, guts and feathers.

She smiled wider. All fangs. Elf ears slicked back in joy. "Look at me," she repeated. This time in old rustic German.

He looked at her. Blue eyes meeting green again. This time monster meeting monster.

She could kill him. The little five foot two, hundred and ten pound beautiful naked monster. Just as easily as she had killed the bird. He knew it. She knew it.

"What are you doing, Bonnie?" he asked. English.

She looked at him confused.

"You know who I am?"

"Elijah?"

"Klaus."

"Klaus…" She pronounced the word slowly.

"Klaus," he repeated with her, taking the moment to slip into her mind… "Peace."

She cleared her throat and hawked up a mouthful of bloody sputum. Laughter. Old English now, "Peace? I hate the word, as I hate hell–"

Using every ounce of power within him, Klaus tried again to reach her. The Bonnie Bennett from last week had to be somewhere inside the monster. Every monster has that weakness. You never completely lose that part of you that used to be human. And he would know. How many countless years had he wasted trying to eradicate that vulnerability? Or pretending that it didn't exist?

"Pax!" Latin, for the part of her that would understand it.

She took a step back away from him, confusion all over her face. Fear…

He crossed the threshold. Officially putting himself in her power. In her domain. Her power blistering his skin. She could kill him just as easily as the bird… He grabbed hold of her face in his hands. Calloused hands on soft, young skin. Monster meeting monster… Monster greeting monster.

Her marvellous green eyes widened. Panic. Anxiety…

Fear.

He could recognise fear. This was Bonnie's fear. The old Bonnie's fear of him. The fear he'd instilled in her. Eyes dilated and large. Elf ears slicked back against her head, this time in fear. Like a startled fawn…

Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

The scream of a dove…

AN - Feedback please, new readers!