Kismet | Damon Salvatore

Chapter 11

Everything was dark for a moment.

She registered the sounds of screams, the sounds of attempts at chants. None of it stopped the car from bursting into the building. Her powder had worked. No matter how many Travelers held their hands up to try and create a shield, one couldn't be made.

They all burst into flames.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the forest, in front of Bonnie, and beside Damon.

"What the hell are you doing here?" demanded Damon, shaking her as if to check that she was really there. "You're not supposed to be here!"

"What the fuck is this?" said Maribel. "No, no, no, this wasn't supposed to happen! Oh my god, I don't know if Liz got out, she was trying to help me get out, they knew who I was and Markos wasn't letting her leave!"

"It's okay," said Bonnie, trying to soothe her. "Look, I'm going to touch you, and you're going to pass through me. You'll wake up with your bodies on the Other Side. I need you to get back here as fast as you can. We'll bring you both back. I'm sure Liz is fine."

She grabbed both of them. Maribel blinked, and found herself laying on the floor of the Mystic Grill, looking up at a charred ceiling.

She screamed when, upon turning her head, she saw a burnt body beside her. She scrambled to her feet, examining the scene before her. Damon's burned car, all the dead bodies, some small fires still lit around the Mystic Grill.

"MARIBEL! A little help over here!"

She rushed to the back room when she heard Damon. "Look!" he said, showing her that Sheriff Forbes was breathing, but her foot was trapped under a beam. "We have to get her out—"

"I've got this side," she said, doing her best to hold on. "On three?"

"Now," he urged. "Lift—"

She gritted her teeth, doing her best to try and pull the ceiling beam up and off of Sheriff Forbes's foot so she could be free to walk out on her own. "Damon, I can't," she said, straining. "I'm not strong enough, I'm trying—"

Another hand appeared beside her, and she gasped in relief as the pressure was alleviated with Alaric helping them lift and toss the beam to the side.

"Friendly advice," said Alaric, "when you make new pals, don't blow them up."

Damon laughed. "Good to see you, too, buddy."

"And you," said Alaric, raising a brow at Maribel. "Your sister told me you were trying to stay out of this whole mess."

"I tried," she said. "And failed, obviously."

"Yeah, but why are you here?"

"I have no idea. Is Sheriff Forbes gonna be okay?"

"She's breathing, she'll be fine. Let's go."

They sprinted back to the cemetery, where Bonnie was waiting for them. It seemed like they were the last ones that needed to be resurrected, if one could judge by the fact that Bonnie was alone. Surely Enzo had been clinging to her side, waiting patiently to be brought back. If he, Stefan, and Luke weren't there, they must already be back in the real world.

"Thank god!" said Bonnie when she saw them. She grabbed Alaric's arm, and he vanished. She then tried to grab onto Maribel, but nothing happened.

Maribel let out a small groan of disbelief. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me! I'm not supposed to be here! What the fuck?!"

Bonnie tried Damon instead. The same thing happened. "No," whispered Maribel, sinking back against a tree. "No, this can't be happening. I can't die! This isn't supposed to happen! I wasn't supposed to die! None of us were! Bonnie, you're barely eighteen, you can't be dead! And I was just starting to enjoy my life again and oh my god, Meredith and my mom don't know what's going on, they won't know I'm dead..."