Chapter 25 ━━ Prayer For The Dying

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Lorna makes it to the altar at the time, where she takes her place on her side. Damon in the last moment rushes to his side and starts to whisper to Alaric as Elena stands beside the blonde.

Jo walks, escorted by her father, and everyone turns to watch them meet Alaric and the bridesmaids and groomsmen at the altar.

Once everyone is in position, the Reverend begins his homily. Alaric is stunned speechless by the sight of Jo, and they both beam at each other.

"Welcome, family and friends, on this magical evening to the wedding of Alaric Saltzman and Josette Loughlin. Josette and Alaric have prepared their own vows." The reverend announces.

Alaric clears his throat nervously. "Ahem. Neither one of us should be here right now. We've spent our life dodging fate and beating the odds. But, because we did, I got to meet you, the most beautiful, hilarious and intimidatingly brilliant woman I have ever known. You inspire me, you've shown me that happiness is actually something that I can have in my life. And so..." He grabs the ring from Tyler. "I promise to be with you, and love you, and to dodge fate with you-" He puts the ring on Jo's finger and Jo begins to cry. "- for the rest of our lives."

"Josette?" The reverend calls out.

"Oh god, that's a tough act to follow." Jo says making everyone laugh including me. "Here it goes- Alaric Saltzman, you are..." She stops suddenly and gasps loudly, looking weak and in pain. 

Alaric looks alarmed. "Jo? Jo? Jo? Oh my god. Jo? Jo? Jo?"

Jo starts to sway on her feet as blood begins to pour from the front of her dress, as though she's been stabbed from behind.

"Jo? Oh god, no!" Alaric panics.

"Aah! Aah!" She falls forward and is caught by Alaric, revealing that Kai is standing behind her with a bloody hunting knife in his hands.

"No!" Alaric yells. "No, no, no, no."

"I was gonna wait 'til the 'death do us apart' bit, but it seemed a little on the nose." Kai says. "Am I right?" 

Alaric is on his knees on the ground now, and he's holding Jo, who is white as a ghost and looks as though she's in bad shape.

Lorna stands frozen at her spot gazing with pure disappointment at Kai who avoids her eye contact at all cost.

Joshua stands up from his seat and rushes toward Alaric and Jo, but Kai holds up a hand, magically creating a high-pitched noise that incapacitates everyone at the ceremony. 

They all grab their ears and scream in pain as Kai smiles gleefully. "This is fun."

The noise Kai has magically created is so powerful that all of the glasses and windows shatter, causing Damon, Elena and Lorna to fall to the ground as the wedding ceremony erupts into chaos.

The wedding ceremony has descended into chaos, and people are screaming across the room. Some of the attendees of the party are already dead, and many more are injured or dying. 

Lorna stands on her feet, covered with blood from the broken glass and projectiles hitting her. 

Alaric is holding Jo, whose eyes are closed and whose abdomen is bleeding heavily, soaking Alaric's hands and clothes. He looks devastated to the point where he can do nothing, but sob desperately. He seems distraught. "Oh god. Someone, please help."

Joshua struggles to stand to his feet by bracing himself on a chair. He is furious as he looks around the room. "Kai!"

Damon and Elena kneeling on the floor at the front of the altar, where Elena's clutching Bonnie's unconscious body against her lap and desperately trying to awaken her. "Bonnie?" 

Bonnie remains unconscious and limp in her arms.

"Come on. Hey, wake up. Bonnie?" Elena shouts worriedly, making Lorna to rush to them.

"Bonnie." Lorna bites her wrist and tries to feed Bonnie vampire blood, but she's not conscious enough to be able to actively drink it. "Come on, just drink it." The blood simply dribbles down Bonnie's chin. "No!" 

Damon starts looking around for the others. "Stefan? STEFAN?" 

Stefan and Caroline, who was knocked backwards by Kai's magic, are now awake. But when they see Elena clutching Bonnie's unconscious body, their eyes widen in alarm. 

"She won't wake up." Lorna cries with stress.

"Oh, my God." Caroline says.

"She won't wake up. I don't understand."  Lorna sobs, desperately shaking Bonnie to open her eyes.

"Let's get her to the hospital, now." Stefan suggests and Lorna realises that this is the obvious solution.

"Yeah." She nods in confirmation and Stefan scoops Bonnie up in his arms and vamp-speeds away with Elena. 

She turns to Caroline with fearful eyes. "She's human, what if she doesn't wake up? I should have listened to her. I can't believe anything. I thought-I thought he's all good now." 

"Everything is gonna be alright. Let's find a way to stop Kai." Caroline suggests.

Lorna pauses a minute before speaking up. "I have a plan." 

On the other hand, Kai turns and sees Alaric, still sobbing desperately as he clings to Jo's lifeless body, his hands becoming more and more blood-soaked from her fatal wounds. "Tsk. Oh."

Joshua finally comes back, holding an Ascendant in his hand and shouts an incantation to a spell, chanting loudly. "Sanguinem filio. Sanguinem effurgarex perpetuum."

Kai sighs. "Let me guess, Prison World?"

The other Gemini Coven members who are still alive stand to their feet and begin to chant as well. "Sanguinem filio. Sanguinem effurgarex perpetuum."

Kai seems to be unimpressed. "I mean, you can't kill me. Or else you all die too, right."

Alaric is still sobbing. "Ohh, ohh."

Kai turns to Alaric with fake sympathy and softly says. "Hey, I'm sorry about your twinsies. I just don't feel like competing for leadership with future Gemini twins." He kneels down next to him. "See... when your family decides that you're nothing, but an irredeemable piece of trash, well... I guess the best thing to do is prove them right, right?"

The witches are still chanting and Kai stands and turns around to his father. "This ought to do it."

Suddenly, all the Gemini coven members' necks start instantly snapped in mid-air one by one and fall to the floor.

"Magic can help you to solve family matters easily." Kai says, proving that he's using his magic to break their necks.

Joshua manages to stumble onto his feet and desperately looks around the room as he calls out for his family. "Where's my daughter? Liv! Liv!" Joshua is horrified. "No!"

Kai smirks in satisfaction and holds out his hand towards his father, who is desperately trying to crawl away.

Kai chants. "Vodux." 

The spell Kai cast telekinetically pulls his father toward him. "Here's to being different, Dad."

Kai snaps his head, ending Joshua falling into the ground. "Poof. Gone."

He looks around at the dead bodies shattering around. "Hello? Anyone still alive, hmm? Anyone alive just raise your hand." 

"Unfortunately, yes." Lorna tells, regaining her strength when he turns to face her. "Jo's dead, you killed her."

"I did it for vengeance, Lorna." He says exasperatedly. "You can't even imagine the things they all did to me." 

Lorna laughs coldly. "Do you remember the things you did to me? Making me fall in love, hurting me to the edge, dumping me away, repeating everything again."

He frowns. "I didn't dump you."

"Oh really? Then what is happening now? Yesterday you proposed to me saying that you want to spend with me your fucking entire life and now, starting to kill people I love just because you wanted vengeance!" She yells at the top of her lungs. "Where did you learn to act all that shit of your love for me?!" 

"It isn't fake." His voice is stern. "I still love you."

"Nice joke. So, the sick humour's your thing, I'm just the one that does magic." She raises her hand, which causes the same high-pitched noise Kai magically caused before, and Kai starts clutching his head in pain this time.

"You betrayed me again." Shs shouts at him unamused and thrusts out her hand. "Ossox!"

Kai's leg snaps, and he doubles over.

"You lied to me, again!" She yells in frustration. Another one of Kai's bones breaks, and he falls over onto the floor and in pain.

She finds a turned over table and breaks a leg off into a makeshift stake, but suddenly Kai uses his magic to pull her off the ground, where she hangs in the air for a moment.

She yells terrified "No, no!"

"Motus!" He thrusts his hand forward, causing her to be thrown back into a wall before she crumples on the floor in a heap. 

"Malachi Parker!" Alaric stands with a loaded pistol as Kai heals himself using his magic.

Kai turns and takes note of his devastated appearance. "Bad time?"

Alaric shoots Kai multiple times with his gun, but it has no effect as a result of him blocking them from his magic.

"Freaky, right? It's really incredible, actually." Kai smirks.

Alaric, emotionally exhausted beyond belief, points the gun to his own head and pulls the trigger. Fortunately, he is out of bullets, and he looks upset that it didn't work.

Lorna gets up as her wounds heal slowly.

Kai mockingly says. "Ooh. Looks like somebody's having a very bad day."

"Maybe not." Lorna spells and uses her magic to collect all the wooden bullets magically places back in Alaric's gun, making him look at her where she gives him a nod in response.

Alaric then fires the gun and it directly goes past Kai, almost touching his shoulder.

"No!" Damon yells, entering the barn to see that it's too late.

"Missed me!" Kai smirks at Alaric.

"My targets never fail." Alaric shrugs.

Kai looks confused, but as he hears someone gasp, his eyes widen and quickly turn back to Lorna who now has a wooden stake pierced her heart, causing her to fall into the ground.

"No!" He yells and rushes, kneeling next to her and pulls the stake out of her chest as she gasps in pain.

"Okay, okay." He assures even though he already knows that the stake has damaged her heart. 

"I will heal you." Kai's face scrunches up as if he is about to cry, he pulls her into his lap as she pants in pain, sweating.

"Kai, it's-it's late." She tells. Her breathing laboured.

"No. No, no, no, no. Hey, look at me. You're not dying." He assures, mostly himself.

She shakes her head, gasping in pain. "Now's the time."

"I can heal you. I'm the leader of Gemini coven. I have the power." He says, stroking her hair. "Please, don't leave. Come on. No."

Lorna's breathing hard as she uses her magic to slow down her death. She uses her remaining strength and crawls to him changing her position where she can place her head on his shoulder. "Kai, you have to promise me that you're not going after anyone for vengeance including Ric." 

"I can't." He shakes his head and grits his teeth. "I will kill him." 

"Vengeance is nothing when it comes to love." She says placing her hand over his heart. "Promise me, please."

He finally nods, giving up. "I promise you." 

Kai crosses his heart and holds tight onto her, eyes scrunching shut-in repressed emotion.

She looks up at him weakly, before kissing him for the last time.

"I love you, Kai. I always did and always do. I'll wait for you at the other end. Goodbye, Malachi." She whispers weakly before her heartbeat stops and her head collapses onto his neck, lifelessly as her skin turns into grey, confirming her death.

"No!" Kai yells and starts to cry, hugging her tightly. "You can't do this to me! Get up! Please!"

Damon's eyes fill with tears as Alaric looks like he wants to kill himself at the moment. 

"Kill me, I'm ready to die. I killed an innocent to get to you and I don't want to get haunted by my own heart for this." Alaric speaks up, his voice breaks.

FLASHBACK - WEDDING LOCATION.

Lorna starts to explain her plan to Caroline. 

"No, I can't ask Ric to kill you. You know that he'll never do that." Caroline shakes her head. 

"You have to, Care. This is the only way to stop him, stop the number of lives he's going to get in the future. Ric has to do it." 

"At least for Jo and his children, this is the only way for him to take revenge on him." She adds.

Kai picks Lorna up and looks at Alaric with red puffy eyes, which are full of hate and anger. "I wish I could tear you apart. But I can't, because I promised her!" He disappears into the air along with her.

Week later, Damon and Bonnie enter the Eclipse residence which used to be filled with Lorna's laughter. It is now hallowed by dead silence.

"What is that awful smell?" Bonnie asks, covering her nose as they walk further into the house.

"I'm sure that it's a corpse." Damon says as they continue to check around.

"You mean a dead rat or something?" Bonnie asks.

"Maybe." Damon says, looking around the living room.

"Where do you think Kai got lost with her corpse?" Bonnie asks. "It's been a few days. We couldn't even do her funeral properly."

"No idea." Damon shrugs. "I wish we can bring her back." 

Bonnie walks to Lorna's bedroom as Damon walks into the kitchen.

"Damon!" Bonnie suddenly yells and Damon vampire speed to the bedroom.

The bad smell burns his nose, making him cringe but he walks into the room.

"What is it?" He asks as he notices Bonnie looking at the bed making him follow her gaze. All he sees is Kai laying on the bed, who seems unconscious and his arms are wrapped around Lorna's dead corpse, holding her closer to him as possible.

Bonnie walks near Kai and holds her hand near his nose to check his breathing. "He is… dead?"

Damon notices a champagne bottle on the floor making him go for it and pick it up. He smells it. "It is poisoned." Damon announces.

FLASHBACK - ECLIPSE RESIDENCE, WEEK AGO.

"You think I was gonna let you leave all alone, huh?" Kai chuckles as he grabs the champagne bottle which he poisoned a few minutes ago. 

He leans to Lorna's dead body which is laying on the bed next to him and caresses her face. "I miss you." He kisses her forehead and sighs before he opens the champagne bottle.

"Cheers." He chugs large gulps until he starts to cough making the bottle drop into the floor. 

He laughs as he feels the poison starting to push him to death. Wrapping his arms around his dead fiancée's corpse, he whispers to her. "I love you too." 

Kai begins to breathe heavily as blood starts to drool out of his mouth and with that he lets go his last breath.

"You think he poisoned himself?" Bonnie asks and Damon shrugs.

"I can't believe that he really killed himself keeping his promise."

"Neither can I." 

"Does that mean he truly loved her?" Bonnie shakes her in disbelief. "So... another epic love story ended?" 

Damon sighs. "Looks like it is."

Even the devil changed for love.

THE END…