Chapter Four.

"So let me get this straight..." I started, afterthey'd all caught me up on their 'Kai' problem. "He's half vampire, halfsort-of witch, who killed his sister - your friend's would-be wife and originalmother to his twins - but now it's kind of Caroline and then basically helpedunleash literal Hell onto the town."
"Basically, yes." Damon shrugged.

"He sounds fun..." Niklaus said, sarcastically.
"I'm sure you'd get along splendidly." Bonnie mumbled.
"I wonder what'd happen if Niklaus bit him..." I pondered out loud, dazed in my own little world.
"What did you just say?" Damon asked, a lightbulb going off in his head.
"I was just thinking, he's already a Heretic. What would happen if you added Werewolf venom?" I shrugged.
"That could actually work." Niklaus grinned.
"Or it could turn him into a Hybrid of all three." I sighed.
"No, he'd need Human Doppelganger blood to pull off something like that." Damon replied.
"Either way, we need to find an excuse for Klaus to get that close to him." Bonnie pointed out.
"Or I could just sneak attack. I'm only an Original Vampire, for crying out loud, love." Niklaus sighed, sarcastically.
"Klaus." Caroline glared at him.
"My apologies, Miss Bennett."

I knew this was probably going to fail. I liked to think of myself as an optimistic pessimist. Expect everything to go terribly, so that if it doesn't, you're always pleasantly surprised.
Now, this... Kai, didn't seem like someone I'd want sticking around in my business for long - if at all – Yet Damon, Stefan and their friends have been dealing with this boy for four years on and off. So naturally, I wanted to help them.

"Okay. We need a plan." I started.
Just as I said that, Elena shot up, gasping her first breath for at least an hour.
"What the... What happened? Why am I here?" Elena gasped. "Wait... Oh my God... Where's Kai?"
"It's okay, Elena, you're safe." Caroline said, rushing to sit next to her.
"We need to find out what Kai wants before we go doing anything rash." I mentioned.
"No. Not a chance. We've given him too many of those in the past and it's only got people killed." Damon replied, gravely.
"Okay... So the plan is... Attack?" I suggested in a questioning tone.
"We don't need to find out what he wants, but we do need some sort of strategy. We can't just waltz in guns blazing. Kai is way too smart for that. He'd manage to kill at least one of us." Stefan sighed, putting his hand to his mouth in thought.

It'd taken us almost all night to come up with a plan that could actually work.
But we got there.

Bonnie texted Elena's phone to tell Kai to meet her at the Mystic Grill, much to her disgust.
"I'm not sure about this, guys..." She sighed.
"You have to. He texted you. You're the one he's always had this fixation on, you need to be the one to go and see him." Damon replied.
"If only we could just send him back to that Prison World..." I pondered aloud.
"The Ascendant was destroyed, though." Elena pointed out.
Then it clicked.
"Bonnie... How powerful would you say you are at the moment?" I asked the witch.
"The most I've ever been... Why?" She hesitated.
"Well, call me a realist – because I am – but if this plan fails, we need a backup, yes?" Everyone in the room nodded in agreement. "So... If we fail and Niklaus isn't able to get to him in time, or something unexpected happens, we need to find a way to at least keep him under control."
"And what exactly did you have in mind?" Damon asked, leaning over the couch, towards me.
"Simple. We make another Ascendant." I shrugged.
Everyone's faces turned to that of thought and confusion.
"We'd need a member of Kai's bloodline to do that." Bonnie said.
Everyone looked disappointed.
"What about the twins?" Caroline suggested.
"Wait, what?" I asked.
"My kids... They have Parker blood running through their veins. Take some of their blood, make a new Ascendant, trap Kai in the prison world. Done." Caroline shrugged.
"I can't believe you're even suggesting this, Care." Stefan sighed. "You've never let the twins be involved with that we do. Not if you can help it, anyway..."
"Yeah, but we don't exactly have much of a choice right now, do we? Alex is right. If something goes wrong, we need a secure back up plan." Caroline said, surely.
"Kai just texted me back." Bonnie said, reading her phone. "He wants to know when."
"If I go to Dallas now, I can give you the twins' blood by tomorrow night." Caroline started gathering her things as she spoke.
"I'll go with you. It's a long drive." Stefan suggested.
"That's settled then. Plan A and B are covered." Damon smirked.

Caroline and Stefan had gone, Bonnie went home to mentally prepare herself for the spell she had to do to make a new Ascendant, Elena had gone home to check on her brother and Klaus had gone to the Mystic Grill to babysit the bar.
Just Damon and I left.
"You've fit in rather well, rather quickly." Damon smirked, looking up at me from his Bourbon glass.
"I'm used to vast adjustment changes." I shrugged, sipping from my own glass.
"It's a two way street though, hotness. The squad seems to like you as well." He countered.
"The squad?" I laughed, ignoring the 'hotness' comment.
Damon shrugged. "Been trying to blend in with the times more. And 'squad' makes us sound kinda badass."
I chuckled, taking another drink.
"You get along with everyone really... You're sensitive and forward-thinking for the girls, have a similar style of doing things to Stefan and you can do all that and still have a drink or sixteen with me, all whilst making sarcastic comments." Damon tipped his glass to me before taking a sip.
"Like I said, I'm good at adjusting." I smiled.
"Oh no. You're not just good. You've got this down to a T."
I simply shrugged.
"I've had plenty of time to practice."
Damon sighed and moved couches to sit next to me.
"So come on, girl talk. You know most things about me, yet I only know how old you are and who you've sired. Tell me something no one knows about you." He said with an eager look in his eye.
I couldn't hold back the smile as I thought.
"Vervain doesn't really bother me..." I concluded. "I created a tolerance."
"Na. Something about you. Not just a random vampire fact." Damon shook his head.
"Okay..." I took a moment to think really hard. There was so much, but nothing in particular was coming to mind.
In the moment of me thinking, I could feel Damon studying my face, intently, as if trying to figure me out. It felt odd, but a good odd, you know?
"Alright. Back in Iceland, not long after Niklaus turned me, I went on a spree. Niklaus had left me after I turned and I had no idea what was happening to me, or why I craved human blood so much. I found this lonely hut, out by what is now known as Reynisfjara, or the Black sand beach. It belonged to this woman and her daughter. The woman was out collecting herbs at the time, so I took my chance and went to kill the daughter. The woman returned just before I was able to sink my teeth into her, but something she said stopped me." I paused, replaying that night in my mind.
"What did she say?" Damon asked, genuinely intrigued.
"She said... dόttir." I felt tears pricking in my eyes, so turned away from Damon, not wanting to feel weak.
"What does that mean?" He pressed.
"Jörmungandr is a child of Loki, the trickster God. He is depicted as a snake, known as the 'World Serpent'. Dόttir translates as 'Daughter'. She called me a child of the snake. It made me realise how evil I was. I ended up releasing her daughter and simply apologising before I vamped myself out of there and far away. But what could I have done? There were no blood bags back then and the thought of animal blood never even crossed my mind." I sighed, pressing my fists to my eyes to stop any tears from escaping. "So I became more careful. Snatch, eat, erase for over a century. Until I found out that I could feed on other vampires and still be just as strong."
Damon looked at me wearily.
"Now that, I've never heard of." He said, matter-of-factly. "Any time a vampire feeds off another vampire, it's usually just to sustain them for a few hours - A 'desperate times' kinda thing."
"Well here I am. Vampire blood could sustain me for up to three days. I went on my own personal Vampire hunt, not just to feed, but to rid the world of everyone like me. I hated myself for what I was – for what Niklaus turned me into. But that's how I survived for most of my life. I reluctantly discovered that there were no shortage of Vampires to feed on."
Damon sat there in deep thought for almost a minute, just the two of us, sat in total silence.
"So what made you drink human blood again?" He finally asked.
"In the nineteenth century, when doctors figured out that they could use blood donors to help people, they started to gather the blood in glass jars, as you well know. I was passing through a town in England, I hadn't fed for almost four days and hadn't come across another Vampire. So I broke into a hospital. There was no way I was feeding straight from the vein, so I sat in the darkness of the hospital and I fed for all I was worth. I survived over seven hundred and fifty years on Vampire blood. Tasting Human blood again almost made me go over the edge."
"You almost rippered?" Damon raised an eyebrow.
I just nodded.
"I hated myself for what I'd resorted to. For a while, I tried to desiccate, but everytime I tried, the thirst became unbearable and I couldn't stop myself. I may have stopped myself from becoming a ripper, but I couldn't stop myself from feeding. So I did the next best thing. I became the Vampire equivalent of Bulimic. I'd purge and I'd bring myself to the brink of desiccation, repeat. It was mainly just so I could remind myself that I still had control over my urges."
"But now you're feeding 'normally'. What took you out of that cycle?" Damon shifted where he sat, opting for an Indian-style seating position.
"I just got used to it all. More and more hospitals where using blood jars, more and more people were becoming donors. So I had no shortage of food. I just lived with it and I suppose I've just been existing ever since. I've been to every country and Island on the known map, I've travelled by most forms of transport, I know more languages than I can count on both hands and I have met the best and the worst of both species. And that's me." I shrugged, reaching for Damon's decanter to pour us another drink.
Damon picked up his glass after I'd filled it and we said our cheers.
"To existing." Damon smirked.
Clink and drink.