Out of Time ❧ Kai Parker ✓

Chapter Fifteen

Right now Bonnie is doing the locator spell for the Ascendant inside the boarding house, while Damon makes paper airplanes out of the newspaper and throws them in the front yard. I stand beside Kai and he silently tells me that what he is fixing to do it to gain their trust.

Bonnie starts the spell, "Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem" She looks down at the drop of blood on the map, which hasn't moved. "It doesn't feel right. Maybe I need a bigger map?"

Damon comes inside and drops the newspaper on the table, "Maybe you're just out of practice and you suck at magic now."

"Ignore him, Bonnie. Pretend he's a white-noise machine. That's how I used to tune out my siblings. I grew up with a ton of little sisters and brothers. You know, all of them constantly yammering." Kai comes closer to Bonnie. "But it taught me how to focus." He looks like he's about to kiss her. Then I understood what Kai was trying to tell me.

Once Damon sees what is going on he looks at Kai, "Easy there, big brother! She doesn't know you. At least buy her a drink."

I quickly go and grab a map and hand it to Bonnie. She continues working on the spell, this time, with a map of the entire United States. As she does the spell, Kai's blood travels across the length of the country.

Bonnie chants in Latin as she works the spell. "Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem. Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem."

"The spell's moving towards Virginia. That can't be right." I announce, knowing that Kai had the ascendant with him in his jacket.

"Mm-mm, the spell's working. It's showing me, Mystic Falls. It feels so... close." She turns toward Kai and holds up her hand. The candles' flames intensify around them. "It's right here."

As soon as she touches Kai's chest, the candles' flames go out completely. Kai reaches into his pocket and pulls out the real Ascendant, which is made of silver and gold-colored metal.

I see Kai's eyes look over at mine and we share a small smile, one that is hardly noticeable. "Very good," I tell her as I clap my hands together.

"That's the Ascendant?" She asks.

"The one and only," Kai responds. I hear Damon call us jackass but we ignore him. "It was just another little test. To make sure Bonnie's magic was precise enough for the spell. I do believe you're ready. Pack your bags - we're going home." Kai explained to them.

...........

The four of us are out in the yard, where Kai is using the Ascendant by looking at the sky with it through a small hole in the device.

I hear Damon ask Kai questions and I have a bad feeling this is not going to go our way. Once again Bonnie and Damon are fighting so I use that as an opportunity to speak with Kai.

I grab his arm and pull him to the side. "Kai, I have a bad feeling about this," I tell him.

He looks down at me and then back at the others. "Everything is going as planned." He assured me.

He started to walk back but I stopped him by grabbing his arm again. "Okay, but what if things didn't go as planned?" I could tell that he was thinking about what I said. "Like what if they were to kill one of us, I mean we wouldn't die, but they don't know that. What do we do then?"

Kai is silent for a moment, thinking about my question. "If they were to kill one of us, then the other should act as if we would stay dead. Kill the vampire and take the Bennett blood and wait for the other to wake up." Kai explained and I nodded. We started walking again.

Bonnie and Damon are walking a few feet behind us. "Hey, what's up with the nature walk?" Damon asks.

"I used the Ascendant to figure out where we need to be standing during the eclipse," Kai explains.

I hear Bonnie whisper a word, "Oregon." And then Damon asks her what she talking about. "I read this paper like a thousand times, and there's something in it about Oregon." I glance up at Kai who holds the ascendant out in front of him. I see a smile on his face.

"What about it?" I hear Damon ask.

"You know, Kai said he had all these brothers and sisters." Bonnie started.

I smile up at Kai, "Now's your time to shine."

Bonnie reads the paper aloud. "Family massacred in Portland. The only one missing was the oldest boy, a 22-year-old named Malachai."

Kai doesn't turn to look at them as he speaks. "Who names a kid Malachai? It's like they expected me to be evil." He finally turns to face them.

"All these kids were murdered!"

"Hello! Not everyone died. I had a soft spot for one of my sisters. 'Cause otherwise, I would've cut her lungs out, and not just her spleen." I remember the first time I met him and he told me his story and how he scared me. But then I remembered I wasn't much different, we both had messed up childhoods.

"What?"

Kai looks at Bonnie, "You can survive without a spleen." He states as if it was obvious.

"Something tells me you're not speaking hypothetically."

Kai walks over to Bonnie, he points at the photo on the front page. "Look, well, these two, I, uh, hung off a stairwell railing. Then I put a hunting knife in her abdomen, and him, I drowned in the pool. But, he kept fighting me. I was like, 'I saved you for last, you ungrateful little...' Anyway, that was that."

Bonnie looked at him with disbelief, "You just killed your whole family?"

"Coven, to be precise. Oh, you know, a family of witches." Kai corrected her.

Damon, clearly annoyed, asks, "You're making us jump through hoops, and you're a witch?"

"Sort of, yeah. No powers, obviously. Oh, and of course, Gemini Coven did not take it too well when they heard what I did in Portland. It's why they banished me here."

I hear a bonnie whisper to Damon, "This place is a prison." She then speaks to Kai, "They created it for you."

Kai looks at me, "Well actually this place was already created when I was sent here. The Gemini's just thought they created it, but actually, this place was created for Angelyn. This place isn't your hell, Damon. It's ours."

The two of them then decided we weren't good enough to go to the real world. "Oh, come on, Bonnie. You wanna go home to your friends, I wanna go back and give the rest of the Gemini Coven an excruciating death. Win-win."

"Look, Bonnie, I know this guy's not a model citizen, okay, but I gotta get back. Not just for Elena, but for my brother." Damon tries to convince Bonnie.

She looks at me, "What's your story? Why were you sent here?" She then turns go, Damon. Bonnie answers guilty, "I'm sorry, Damon."

I stare at her with a smirk on my face, "I don't give away all of my secrets on the first date." I see her roll her eyes.

"Sorry doesn't work for me." Kai is about to grab Bonnie when instead Damon grabs him.

"We may be having a bit of a disagreement, but don't ever lay a hand on her."

I look up at the sky, "Kind of a non-issue now. We missed the day's eclipse. Rain check for tomorrow?" I tell the two of them.

"No." Bonnie quickly responds.

............

We all headed back to Damon's house and the two were starting to argue again. Damon suggested that they just steal the ascendant from us. They said it would be easy to ditch Kai since he doesn't have any powers but then he demonstrates on Bonnie. Siphoning her magic and Damon starts moaning in pain and a fire starts on the stove.

I walk and stand beside Kai, "Besides, did you forget that I have magic too?"

They then ask me why I can't perform the spell and I sit down and start eating some pancakes.

Kai explains to them why he didn't get along with his coven and starts eating pancakes beside me.