MONSTER, stefan salvatore [2]

The World Has Turned and Left Me Here

CHAPTER 36: THE WORLD HAS TURNED AND LEFT ME HERE

The Woods

Natalie Saltzman sometimes promised herself things that were infinitely important. The kinds of thing that she hoped would get her life on a better track, maybe allow herself to make better decisions in the future. Some of them she had broken. Like, two and a half years before when she had promised herself to never act on her feelings for Stefan (which definitely happened). Then there were those she kept, like her promise to try to avoid killing people that much, which she had done her best to keep. Now, she had a new one. Never let Damon get a hold of a stick again. 

As her, Bonnie and Damon were strolling through the woods, Damon used his newfound stick as entertainment. He mostly used it to poke Natalie in the side as he whistled cheerfully. She wasn't a fan of his poking or his whistling. 

Bonnie smiled a bit at him actually seeming to be in a good mood, because she wasn't the one who was getting poked every five seconds. "You're in a good mood for the first time this decade."

Damon didn't respond to her that quickly, opting to poke Natalie in the side again. She turned to him abruptly, a harsh glare on her face as she waved the stick away from her body. "Stop that!"

He ignored her and decided to finally respond to Bonnie's words. His lips tugged up into a dreamy smile at what was going to happen that night. "Because I have a hot date with my girl tonight."

"If Kai's telling the truth," Natalie muttered, only for him to poke her in the side again. "And if you don't stop doing that, you won't be able to get home because you'll be a bit too dead to do anything."

He hummed as if there was not a thing in the world that could go wrong anymore. "I'm thinking dinner and a movie, you know what? Screw the dinner and a movie. Skip straight to the good part."

The reincarnated vampire tried to keep herself from gagging at the thought. "Hey, remember when you said that hearing about Stefan and I in compromising positions was too much information? Yeah, as Elena's sister, allow me to inform you that it's a whole lot of too much information in that statement."

As usual, his response was to poke her. Finally she had gotten tired of that stupid stick he seemed to have fallen so much in love with. She grabbed it straight out of his grip, putting her hands on either end of it as she snapped it in two and threw it away. 

Bonnie couldn't help but chuckle at the interactions between the two. Natalie sent her a look, it was easy for her to find it funny when she wasn't the one who had been getting poked every five seconds. "And we're gonna have to be assuming I can do the spell, which I won't know... until I see it."

"Whatever happened to hope, guys? Remember when I was all like boo, grr," Damon growled to himself at their pessimism before making his voice high-pitched to imitate the girls. "And you were like hooray, hooray. We're getting out of here?"

The Bennett witch sighed, not finding his mockery to be the sincerest form of flattery. "Look, I want to go home more than anything but Kai's a sociopath, who's to say he won't screw us over?"

"Me, I say, because I will kill Kai and anyone who comes in the way of me going home," he smiled, sounding way too happy for someone who was talking about killing people who got in his way. 

"Us," Natalie corrected, only for him to furrow his eyebrows at her in confusion of what she was talking about. "You'll kill anyone who gets in the way of us going home. Right?"

Out of nowhere, Kai appeared and was for some reason carrying an axe. "I heard my name. All good I hope.  The eclipse will happen directly overhead. In perfect alignment with the Gemini constellation." He then turned to Damon. "As the strongest vampire, you need to dig into the tunnels below us."