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CHAPTER ONE I'M TELLING YOU — THIS PLACE SUCKS
"go ahead and watch my heart burn"
BONNIE BENNETT WAS SUSPICIOUS. Ever since Rose had revealed to Elena that Elijah, who Damon had killed, was just a 'foot soldier' for Klaus, she had been searching for ways to kill the oldest vampire in history. Any creature can die at the hands of the servants of nature — but she was not powerful enough on her own. Over the past two days, the only spell of any remote use that she had found was one which would allow her to harness the energy of all of the magic from one spot. But she was still convinced that this would not be enough to kill him.
Then something strange had happened, a grimoire which she had never seen before was sat on the outskirts of her piles of them. It looked out of place, red leather which appeared to be of a far greater age than her own. Sceptically, she reached for it and held it gingerly as she examined it before turning the cover. Bonnie was greeted by a looped cursive script written in dark red ink, it read: go no further if you do not wish to make the deal of your heart's desire. She had slammed the cover shut, horrified by the feeling of dark magic which had seemed to pulse from the very pages of the grimoire. But the words repeated on a loop in her head and she could not help but think that this was exactly what they needed to kill Klaus.
The Salvatore Boarding House was much busier than usual, the couches in the living room were covered with people sat on them as they spoke amongst themselves tensely. After considering it carefully, Bonnie had decided to tell everyone about what she had found — something was better than nothing she supposed. She was sat cross-legged on one of their antique rugs, her hands fiddling with the cover of the grimoire nervously. The bad feeling it had given her had not left her since the day before.
"This grimoire appeared to me yesterday," she said, her fingers still messing with the cover idly as she spoke, "I think I can use-," she cut herself off before correcting herself, "I think it wants me to use it." She did not speak of the darkness that seemed to throb from the centre of the grimoire as though it was its life force.
The group seemed to lean forward curiously, their eyes flicking between each other and the red-covered book. Damon was the first to speak, seemingly more eager than the others, "Well, what does it say?" Before answering, Bonnie looked towards Elena to make sure that she wanted to go through with it.
Once she had received the affirming nod, she took a deep breath and turned the cover. Flinching at the darkness pouring from it, she began to read aloud, "'Go no further if you do not wish to make the deal of your heart's desire.'" Bonnie pauses, looking around and Elena nodded at her reassuringly. Shaking her head, she continued, turning the page, "'The Phantom Queen. The Lady of Crows. The Morrigan.'" There was a double-page spread, the title written in a more dramatic and bold version of the same handwriting as the page before. At first glance, the script on the page seemed to be in a long-dead language that she could not identify. Looking again, the words stood out clearly to her in plain English as though someone had translated them whilst she blinked. Taking up half of the left-hand page was a diagram drawn in chalk which could have easily been mistaken as a pentagram by a human. Bonnie knew it to be a summoning circle — the entire process was already filling her with dread.
