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(tvd) unexplainable
Title: unexplainable
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Universe: supernatural detective AU
Relationships: Bonnie Bennett / Damon Salvatore
Summary: Figures that just this once, she'd have to team up with her least favorite vampire to solve a serial murder case.
Word Count: ~4,900
Notes: Written for![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
stephaniethebamonfangirl as a Secret Santa present!! I really hope you enjoy it, and Merry Christmas! ♥
Grams once said that every case was like a multi-layered puzzle. Every piece was connected, and once they were aligned in their proper places, the entire picture would be unfold. But Grams also had a talent for unraveling the truth. Grams had been the best and brightest detective that Mystic Falls had ever known, and only bitter racism had prevented her from rising through the ranks.
Bonnie wished she were half as good. She also wished that she had the same work ethic and drive as her mother, and her grandmother before her.
Mom had become Virginia's first black female federal judge, and Bonnie? Well, Bonnie was still pouring over case files at her Grams' old desk. The path was a slow, but steady one. Crack the case and get one step closer towards lieutenant, which in turn would promote her to captain, which would promote her to Lieutenant Colonel, and so on.
("I couldn't break through the ceiling," Grams had told her one night, upon kissing her good-night, "so you should give it a fair shake.")
This case, however, was a doozy. Young womanizers - all attractive men between 25-30 - had been dropping like flies. Each victim had been discovered in the woods, or the edge of town, or even at the bottom of Lake Lockwood with two distinctive neck wounds. No other wounds were visible, other than signs of a struggle. No huge scratches or injuries.
Had it been one or two men, Bonnie could've chalked it up to a rabid animal or tragic car accident. Problem was, the victims were piling up (no pun intended), and Bonnie was now looking at seven young men who had died in the past six months.
Sheriff Forbes called these unfortunate circumstances "vicious animal attacks." The rest of the precinct called it "vampires."
In a town this small, everyone knew that the undead walked among them. Everyone also knew the Salvatore brothers had lived for a century and a half, instead of the mere 20+ years they pretended to have. Old sepia photographs and grandparents' memories had betrayed them long before they had crossed the town border. Yet everyone humored them and their attempts at playing human. Better than the alternative of becoming a brother's next meal.
That was also before seven young men had supposedly become a vampire's next meal. Bonnie didn't want to believe it. Surely the brothers wouldn't be this stupid and callous towards the innocent.
Officer Donovan - her subordinate and trusted confidant - seemed to be the only one who agreed with her. Whenever he would hand over evidence, he would take some time to visit her desk and check up on her. It was a habit he must've kept from high school, she realized, but - she also didn't have the heart to turn him away. She never did.
"Just hang in there, Bonnie." He would say, pulling up a chair and resting a head on her shoulder. "Knowing the other vampires that've roamed in, they'll get bored after a few weeks. Move onto another town. Become someone else's problem."
"Yeah, but they're still annoying." Bonnie pressed her lips together. "Whether they're ours or Fell's Church doesn't matter much, does it?"
She could've asked any part-timer to edit her spreadsheet and add the evidence, new and old, to each column. But Bonnie liked the monotony. She thought better when her hands were clacking away at her keyboard, and she could better focus on her case. Right now, she had clarified the true cause of death. Every victim had the same tell-tale neck wounds, with two punctures the size of a human canine tooth.
No beaten up car, no body dumped in the river could mask that signature detail. No matter how much the vampire in question may wish otherwise.
But the outside world would believe a rabid animal, and Bonnie knew that Donovan or Detective Lockwood would forge the necessary evidence. This wasn't their first rodeo with vampires. This wouldn't be their last.
She just hoped it would be their least bloody one yet.
"Look, we've got the usual witness-slash-suspect in." Donovan was rising to his feet, motioning for Bonnie to follow him into the back room. He slipped Bonnie the case file and the latest obituary. Local bartender Ben McKittrick had passed away from the same circumstances last night, and his family was demanding real answers.
Bonnie could fend off angry parents, but her patience was wearing thin. Ben had been the seventh. Seven too many, as far as she was concerned, and a vampire like Damon could feed without killing his victims.
(She'd seen him in action! Happily feeding off poor sorority girls from Alpha Beta Kappa!)
"- I hope you won't need to use your magic on him in case he really is responsible," Matt was saying, as they turned the corner and entered the hallway where all suspects and witnesses were held. "We could barely explain the last fire away as a wiring glitch."
"Sorry." Bonnie wasn't really sorry. Her usual had deserved every popped brain vessel. Yet when Matt was the one asking her, she had to oblige. She would behave, and she would glean the truth by her lonesome. "Don't worry, Matt. I've got this."
Skimming the obituary and the necessary files, she turned the doorknob. Then she opened the door, and found Damon Salvatore sitting - more like lounging, with his legs flung on top of the table - across the room.
If she were an evil witch, Bonnie would've hexed him into the next century. Or the Sheriff's holding cell, whichever was closest.
But she wanted that promotion, and so she fought every instinct - every desire - to fry his brain into a million pieces and shove his unconscious body straight through the mirror.
"Cat got your tongue?" Now he was just taunting her, with a smug arrogance that made him more human than immortal. "I thought you would've been thrilled to see me, Bonbon."
"You thought wrong, Salvatore." Bonnie bristled at the familiarity, slamming the massive case file onto the table.
Case HK-9 was unmistakably supernatural, given the numerous victims, their untimely demises, and the lack of evidence surrounding each death. Cars had been smashed with far more strength than a bear could wield. Bodies had been unceremoniously dumped into rivers. Neck wounds were completely devoid of blood. Every detail pointed towards a vampire, and the only vampires in town (to Bonnie's knowledge) were the Salvatore brothers.
Given the murky circumstances, the case had been booted to her department: Special Affairs. Named after their sister branch in Chicago, they explained away the unexplained. Vampires became rabid animals or meth addicts. Werewolves became hungry bears. Fae became roaming nomads. Hybrids were annoying hipsters. The general public would believe anything, given that everything followed an internally consistent logic.
No one could control every single circumstance, and truth was always stranger than fiction. Bonnie knew from past experience.
Magic was only science that mortals couldn't explain. Compulsion was unnatural charisma and persuasion. Thresholds and verbal invitations were an old-fashioned form of manners. Bonnie must've pulled dozens of these explanations from thin air for the Sheriff. She wove stories out of thin air and prayed that the public - that journalists like her best friend Caroline - wouldn't tug at the fraying threads.
Damon's mere presence was another fraying thread. He should've died over a century and half ago, and he should've left some storied legacy that included a ridiculous Confederate statue. Instead, he was raising his eyebrows at her and taunting her with his impossible truth.
"Well, I didn't do it."
Bonnie frowned. "That's what they all say."
"You've gotta believe me." He leaned forward, sitting upright. Although he was staring straight at her, his voice shook as he insisted, "Stefan and I are innocent."
Now he had her attention. Damon almost never brought up his younger brother. Stefan had chosen to live an honest life, and in turn, properly embed himself into the fabric of Mystic Falls life. Last Bonnie had heard, he was a doctoral student at Whitmore University, working on his fifth or sixth Ph.D.
Whatever Damon had to say, it may somehow implicate an innocent - and a person Bonnie hadn't previously considered. Stefan kept a strict animal blood diet. The local halal and kosher butchers regularly vouched for his innocence. She's seen the receipts of cow's and sheep's blood.
Stefan couldn't be responsible. Damon and Bonnie both believed this - and on this, she found herself agreeing with her worst enemy.
So Bonnie rested both arms on the metal table and finally dared to look her witness in the eye. "Prove it. Show me where you and your brother were on the evening of the 9th."
Damon drove her to the Velvet Room, a local coffee shop owned by Pearl Zhu and her darling daughter Anna. Bonnie had spent more money and time than she'd honestly cared to admit. (When a girl was running on spite and caffeine and far too little sleep, a barista and a well-brewed cup had become her closest friends.)
"Here?" Bonnie raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Don't they stop serving coffee around 6?"
"One, I'm a little disturbed that you know that, and two, Anna always re-opens the place for karaoke night."
Damon holds the door open for her as they stroll in. Given the hour, the place is mostly empty, with a few scattered customers peering at their brightly-lit laptops. Empty coffee mugs and scattered plates indicated that they must've been there for hours. Bonnie couldn't blame them. Good coffee and free wi-fi couldn't be found anywhere else in town.
Damon gestures towards the conspicuous security cameras installed by the cash registers, and more importantly, by the front and back doors.
"Check the footage. Stefan and I were here 'til it closed with everyone else."
"But you could've faked the time stamps," Bonnie reminded him, almost like she was his babysitter. "Who else could vouch for you?"
"Elena and Caroline," Damon retorts, all-too-amused. "Or are you going to call your best friends liars?"
As misplaced as Elena's and Caroline's priorities were, they wouldn't lie about their whereabouts. Bonnie had known them too long for such a lie to slip past her careful eye.
So she shook her head, knowing that between the cameras and other patrons, Damon's and Stefan's alibis would be rock-solid. As for the other supernatural creatures in town? Detective Lockwood had been assigned to a grand larceny case, and Detective Parker, the only other witch in town, had been working alongside him.
Knowing them, they were too busy making out to do much else. But more importantly - if the local vampires didn't murder all these young men, who did? A desperate wannabe?
"You swear you were here all night?" Bonnie dares to say as she heads towards the counter and flashes her detective's badge. "I don't want to make poor Anna pull the footage if she doesn't have to."
"Do you think I wanted to be here all night?" Damon scowled like a petulant kitten. "Stefan started singing Bon Jovi and it all went downhill from there."
Bonnie couldn't quite reconcile that ire with the smug, arrogant vampire who had taunted her in the interrogation room. For all of his blustering and posturing, perhaps he was a lot more dorky than he wanted to let on.
( . . . she hated that she kind of liked that about him.)
"Living on a Prayer is a karaoke staple," she gently chided, recalling one too many drunken karaoke nights from her college years.
"Again, you haven't heard my brother."
For an immortal with centuries of knowledge under his belt, Stefan Salvatore could not sing. No amount of alcohol could hide the off-tune, off-key, and somehow off-pitch notes blaring from that recording.
Damon winced, tilting his head as if that muffled the sound any better. "I rest my case."
The time stamps were accurate too: Stefan and Caroline "serenaded" the Velvet Room the whole night, while the poor patrons tried - multiple times - to kick the local vampire off the stage.
"Wow." Bonnie truly had no words. "Remind me to give him a restraining order."
"That would mean a lot," Anna piped in, passing through the room to pick up her car keys. "Just lock up when you guys are done, okay?"
Somehow, the karaoke hostess had not only lived to tell the tale, but also not gained the desire to bar Stefan from the premises.
Or maybe someone else did it for her, because at 11:59 PM, because that sure was Pearl forcing both brothers out of the Velvet Room's doors. Bonnie paused the footage there. Stefan and Damon had unceremoniously left together. But before the other patrons headed home and the shop closed up for the night, Pearl followed them out the same door.
Bonnie frowned. 11:59 PM. Ben's estimated time of death had been between 11 PM - 12 AM. Even though the Salvatore brothers had a solid alibi for the first hour, they had been booted before the second.
"Where'd you go after all uh, all of that excitement?"
Damon shook his head, unwilling to look at the footage. "Home. Stefan was in no shape to go anywhere."
Secretly, Bonnie was inclined to agree. Vampires may metabolize alcohol faster than the average human being. Vampires may also regrow their livers when their previous ones died from alcohol poisoning. Vampires like Stefan, however, could not hold their liquor if their immortal existences depended on it.
"Can anyone else vouch for that?"
"A phone GPS, maybe..." Damon's voice was soft, almost solemn now. "Beyond that, no. You'll have to believe me."
Which she almost never did. They both knew she wouldn't.
"Let's keep going." Bonnie sighed. "Maybe something will crop up."
At 12:45 AM, Pearl had returned through the same door with blood dripping down her lips. Her eyes were pitch-black, devoid of light, and her entire face was pulsing with giant veins. As she licked her lips and then the blood dripping off her fingers, Bonnie recoiled.
The blue-tinted lights of the Velvet Room could no longer mask Pearl's true nature. Her favorite coffee shop - her wi-fi haven - had been a secret vampire's den. The strange hours, the willingness to lurk in the shadows - it all made sense now.
"Holy shit." Bonnie paused the footage before turning to face Damon. All this time, she thought he had been the menace killing off his competition. All this time, he had also been completely innocent.
Damon punched the wall, murmuring swears she hadn't heard since her childhood.
Just like that, a few puzzle pieces re-arranged themselves. Bonnie drew in a deep breath, "And you had no idea."
“The hell I didn't!” Damon huffs, turning towards the door. “Pearl's got some nerve pinning all those meals on me.”
"Hey!" Bonnie turned the footage off and rushed right after him. With those long, quick strides, she was practically sprinting to stay at his side. "Let me remind you, I'm the detective here?"
If Pearl killed all those men in cold blood, Pearl would have to answer to the court. Vampires still had to obey the laws and regulations set upon them; their immortality didn't grant them immunity. Damon had to understand that. He must have.
(Matt had said that once upon a time, back when Damon had been human, he had served his country. Of all vampires, Damon should know. He should obey.)
Except he was huffing and puffing like the Big, Bad Wolf, and Bonnie couldn't hold him back much longer.
"You were also going to arrest me. Call me an addict, probably from meth or coke." Damon didn't deign her the decency of eye contact. He kept his focus straight ahead as he pulled out his car keys. “Which is bull. I drank a shitton of Coke back when it still had cocaine in it.”
As fascinating as that impromptu history lesson was, Damon wasn't thinking straight. His eyes were darkening, and his fangs were revealing themselves, and - and he was shifting. He was flat-out caving into that instinct for blood and violence.
"Yeah, well - " Bonnie reached out for his wrists. She really didn’t want to electrocute him with a spell, but his entire body was shaking now. "I don't always give that excuse."
“Then what were you gonna label me?” Damon stood at his full height, almost ready to push her back against the nearest wall. “Jealous psychopath? Guy with rage issues? What wool were you gonna pull over their eyes?”
She swallowed thickly, staring up at him. She couldn't find the courage to lie to this broken, shaking man. For all of his immortality, for all of his confidence and swagger, Damon was - he was just as broken as the rest of them. An innocent, falsely accused of a murder he couldn't have possibly committed.
And she would've been the detective who put a false suspect behind bars, all for a promotion. Ambition never, ever justified the means. Grams too had taught her that, so, so many years ago.
"No wool, no tricks," she managed to say, gently holding onto both wrists and peering down at them. "I tell people the truth in a way they can understand it."
"Oh, that's reassuring." He scoffed, with maybe a fourth of his usual blustering. "You're still lying to them."
"I explain the unexplainable." On this, Bonnie wouldn't budge. Like Grams and her mom before her, Bonnie was the sole detective in Special Affairs. Her line would protect the innocent from the vampires and werewolves that lurked in the shadows. She could wave her hands and cast a spell that would protect man from monster.
Funny how she couldn't protect a monster from himself and his worst insecurities.
So she bit on her lip, before asking, "Hey, Salvatore?"
"Hm?"
"We'll get her together." Bonnie forced herself to make eye contact and to stare back into those pitch-black eyes. The darkness never scared her. It never could, when it was wielded by the ones who needed its shadows the most. "You and me, okay?"
His entire body stilled, and for a moment, she thought this was how her career would end: in the jaws of a hungry, reckless vampire.
Then the darkness melted into those crystal-clear blue eyes, and he lightly squeezed her hand.
"Yeah. Just this once."
The security footage grants them two search warrant from the Chief. One for the Velvet Room (conducted by Officers Lockwood and Parker), and one for the Zhu family home. In the early hours of the morning, they headed for the Zhu household on the edge of town. At this hour, Anna was undoubtedly battling the morning rush. Pearl would (and should) be the only one home.
Bonnie knocked on the door a few times, calling, "Mystic Falls police department!"
No answer.
"The direct approach won't get us anywhere," Damon surmised, kneeling sown and picking out a couple of tools from his pocket. After a few minutes of fiddling with the lock, the front door opened - and Damon held it for her, as always.
Bonnie raised an eyebrow at him. "Where'd you learn that trick?"
"The army," Damon replied without a moment's hesitation. "Probably the only useful thing I learned there."
Again, an interesting history lesson, but not the one she sought to learn. Bonnie took that tentative step forward and waited for her partner to follow.
Damon lingered by the door instead, drawing in a breath as he held his arm towards the threshold. No invisible barrier lingered.
"I don't think anyone owns the place," Bonnie called out to him as she turned the lights on. "Hurry up, will you?"
"Yes, dear." Damon laughed, though even he couldn't hide his relief as he crossed the threshold and entered the house with his loud, clanking boots. No verbal invitation necessary (for once).
The house was quiet, but filled to the brim with necessary evidence. A fridge filled with labeled blood bags and mason jars. Envelopes with purchases of cow's, sheep's, and lamb's bloods from local butchers. Foundation and make-up scattered around the house, just to hide the natural pallor and sunken-in expression on a vampire's face. Sunscreen with SPF 50-100.
Most peculiarly, a single houseplant was on each and every windowsill. Bonnie reached out to caress its leaves, lightly brushing her fingertips against the edges of the leaves.
"She grew vervain."
Vervain - or as it was more commonly known, verbana - was the one herb that could stop a vampire in their tracks. Bonnie, and her mother, and Grams, all grew vervain in their backyards as instant vampire repellent. The entire precinct ground it into their tea and coffee every morning, just in case.
She'd never seen a whole bunch of vervain in an actual vampire's house, though. Not this close and personal, like it was well-cared for.
"Huh." Damon glanced up from the business receipts he had been reading. "I wonder why."
"Better the enemy she knows than the enemy she doesn't?" Bonnie shook her head, pocketing a few sprigs for herself.
That was a question better suited for an interrogation. They had the evidence. They had the suspect. They even had the time, and a list of victims written on the fridge door. Ben's had been hastily scratched out, as if he were an afterthought. No other information, save for names and cell phone numbers.
Save for their ages - and this list - the victims had all lacked a common link. This just might be the one thing tying them all together.
"She's not home," Damon finally said, craning his head to really listen.
"Should we come back?"
"Not necessarily." He closed the envelope, tucking it back into its original position. "If she's anything like me, she'll come back for a meal sooner or later."
The rev of a car engine roared over their footsteps, and Bonnie turned towards the garage door.
"Or she's home now."
The kitchen door clicked open behind them, and sweet, darling Anna stood there, illuminated by the bright sun. Like her mother, her eyes were devoid of color, and the veins under her eyes were pulsing and growing larger than usual. Her fangs were bared, and her red, manicured nails were more like claws.
Bonnie immediately reached for her gun. "Anna?"
"I did it." Blood was dripping from her lips. Anna licked it off, drawing in a deep breath. "I saw the footage, and the officers came with a search warrant and I knew they were going home and - and Mom isn't responsible."
Damon stepped forward, inserting himself between monster and witch without a second thought. "So you're just going to turn yourself in."
"Isn't that what you were going to do?" She stared him down, snarling with a strength Bonnie didn't know she possessed. "Detective Bennett here was going to blame Stefan before you intervened."
Bonnie tried to protest, "I wasn't going to - "
"Shut it," both vampires yelled back at her.
This was honestly the longest stretch of time Bonnie had ever lived through, and she remembered studying for her police exams. The academy never prepared her for a vampire versus vampire brawl. It never prepared her for falsely accusing the undead.
But it did prepare her for desperation, and it did prepare her for understanding why a young 20-something vampire might prey upon the womanizers. The men who two-timed and three-timed every other young woman in town. The ones who thought their deeds would be erased, simply because of their gender and the color of their skin.
Bonnie grew quiet, steadily aiming her gun at Anna's heart. "He cheated on you, didn't he."
Anna shook her head. "He cheated on my friends."
A sudden understanding washed over Damon's face. "You never meant to kill them."
"No." Anna's voice and entire body shook. "Not really. I wanted to scare them, make them think twice about the hearts they broke over and over again - "
"But then you got hungry." Damon took that tentative step closer. "I know how that feels. You think you're gonna go crazy 'cause guys like that? They think the entire world's in the palm of their hands."
"Doesn't excuse the murder." Bonnie's voice was firm. "Seven guys didn't go home to their families those nights. What do we say to those people?"
"The same thing you always do," Damon reminds her, as if he's the babysitter this time. "You explain the unexplainable. Could someone like Anna really kill these guys with only two little neck wounds?"
No. Not without revealing the truth - and certainly not without uncovering the veil that tenatively kept the peace in Mystic Falls.
Anna sunk to her knees, pulling Damon down with her.
Bonnie weighed the possibilities. One, she turned Anna in, and she took that step towards her rightfully-earned promotion. Two, she let Anna go. She would concoct a story about a rabid raccoon or dog or wildlife creature, and Officers Lockwood and Parker would fabricate the evidence necessary. Seven families would sleep with the knowledge that their sons, their brothers, their lovers eschewed fidelity and love for lust and attractive young women.
Was the truth worth the extra heartache and the unnecessary burden?
Now or never for that judgment call.
"Okay." Bonnie drew in a breath, and slowly lowered her gun. "We'll tell them the same truth we always have. Never trust the wildlife in Mystic Falls - "
"Or the vampire detectives who want you rotting in jail," Damon added as he pinned Anna against the wall, motioning for Bonnie to follow his lead.
She nodded, crafting impromptu handcuffs from the sprigs Pearl had grown around the house. Despite the burning, despite the red-hot marks on her wrists, Anna didn't scream. She didn't flinch. She merely stared down at the tiled floor and drew in a deep breath.
"I should've figured," she murmured.
Damon flicked her nose. "Murder is murder, no matter how you slice it."
Once Anna had been properly subdued and placed in her holding cell, the real paperwork began.
Bonnie stared at the growing mountain before her and willed it all to their proper places. A levitation spell would make this more manageable. She could chunk these into manageable bits, and maybe she would go home at a reasonable hour tonight. Maybe.
"Hey, Bennett," Sheriff Forbes called upon opening her office door. It's a testament to her character that she doesn't flinch at the levitating papers. "I figured you could use some help, so..."
She stepped aside, allowing Damon to walk in.
"Um... didn't we clear him of murder?" Bonnie blinked back surprise. "What's he doing here?"
"Why, Bon-bon, that's awfully rude." Damon smirked, pulling up a chair and sitting across from her. "Especially considering we'll be working together."
"You said you needed some extra hands, and Damon's apparently a licensed detective. You'll figure it out as you go, I'm sure." Sheriff Forbes patted Bonnie on the shoulder before she turned towards the door. "Just let me know if you need anything."
The door closed behind them, and Bonnie couldn't help resting both arms on the table as she peered at her local vampire - no, sorry, at her new partner.
"Well, Salvatore?" Bonnie laughed, handing him their newest case file. "Let's get cracking."
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Universe: supernatural detective AU
Relationships: Bonnie Bennett / Damon Salvatore
Summary: Figures that just this once, she'd have to team up with her least favorite vampire to solve a serial murder case.
Word Count: ~4,900
Notes: Written for
Grams once said that every case was like a multi-layered puzzle. Every piece was connected, and once they were aligned in their proper places, the entire picture would be unfold. But Grams also had a talent for unraveling the truth. Grams had been the best and brightest detective that Mystic Falls had ever known, and only bitter racism had prevented her from rising through the ranks.
Bonnie wished she were half as good. She also wished that she had the same work ethic and drive as her mother, and her grandmother before her.
Mom had become Virginia's first black female federal judge, and Bonnie? Well, Bonnie was still pouring over case files at her Grams' old desk. The path was a slow, but steady one. Crack the case and get one step closer towards lieutenant, which in turn would promote her to captain, which would promote her to Lieutenant Colonel, and so on.
("I couldn't break through the ceiling," Grams had told her one night, upon kissing her good-night, "so you should give it a fair shake.")
This case, however, was a doozy. Young womanizers - all attractive men between 25-30 - had been dropping like flies. Each victim had been discovered in the woods, or the edge of town, or even at the bottom of Lake Lockwood with two distinctive neck wounds. No other wounds were visible, other than signs of a struggle. No huge scratches or injuries.
Had it been one or two men, Bonnie could've chalked it up to a rabid animal or tragic car accident. Problem was, the victims were piling up (no pun intended), and Bonnie was now looking at seven young men who had died in the past six months.
Sheriff Forbes called these unfortunate circumstances "vicious animal attacks." The rest of the precinct called it "vampires."
In a town this small, everyone knew that the undead walked among them. Everyone also knew the Salvatore brothers had lived for a century and a half, instead of the mere 20+ years they pretended to have. Old sepia photographs and grandparents' memories had betrayed them long before they had crossed the town border. Yet everyone humored them and their attempts at playing human. Better than the alternative of becoming a brother's next meal.
That was also before seven young men had supposedly become a vampire's next meal. Bonnie didn't want to believe it. Surely the brothers wouldn't be this stupid and callous towards the innocent.
Officer Donovan - her subordinate and trusted confidant - seemed to be the only one who agreed with her. Whenever he would hand over evidence, he would take some time to visit her desk and check up on her. It was a habit he must've kept from high school, she realized, but - she also didn't have the heart to turn him away. She never did.
"Just hang in there, Bonnie." He would say, pulling up a chair and resting a head on her shoulder. "Knowing the other vampires that've roamed in, they'll get bored after a few weeks. Move onto another town. Become someone else's problem."
"Yeah, but they're still annoying." Bonnie pressed her lips together. "Whether they're ours or Fell's Church doesn't matter much, does it?"
She could've asked any part-timer to edit her spreadsheet and add the evidence, new and old, to each column. But Bonnie liked the monotony. She thought better when her hands were clacking away at her keyboard, and she could better focus on her case. Right now, she had clarified the true cause of death. Every victim had the same tell-tale neck wounds, with two punctures the size of a human canine tooth.
No beaten up car, no body dumped in the river could mask that signature detail. No matter how much the vampire in question may wish otherwise.
But the outside world would believe a rabid animal, and Bonnie knew that Donovan or Detective Lockwood would forge the necessary evidence. This wasn't their first rodeo with vampires. This wouldn't be their last.
She just hoped it would be their least bloody one yet.
"Look, we've got the usual witness-slash-suspect in." Donovan was rising to his feet, motioning for Bonnie to follow him into the back room. He slipped Bonnie the case file and the latest obituary. Local bartender Ben McKittrick had passed away from the same circumstances last night, and his family was demanding real answers.
Bonnie could fend off angry parents, but her patience was wearing thin. Ben had been the seventh. Seven too many, as far as she was concerned, and a vampire like Damon could feed without killing his victims.
(She'd seen him in action! Happily feeding off poor sorority girls from Alpha Beta Kappa!)
"- I hope you won't need to use your magic on him in case he really is responsible," Matt was saying, as they turned the corner and entered the hallway where all suspects and witnesses were held. "We could barely explain the last fire away as a wiring glitch."
"Sorry." Bonnie wasn't really sorry. Her usual had deserved every popped brain vessel. Yet when Matt was the one asking her, she had to oblige. She would behave, and she would glean the truth by her lonesome. "Don't worry, Matt. I've got this."
Skimming the obituary and the necessary files, she turned the doorknob. Then she opened the door, and found Damon Salvatore sitting - more like lounging, with his legs flung on top of the table - across the room.
If she were an evil witch, Bonnie would've hexed him into the next century. Or the Sheriff's holding cell, whichever was closest.
But she wanted that promotion, and so she fought every instinct - every desire - to fry his brain into a million pieces and shove his unconscious body straight through the mirror.
"Cat got your tongue?" Now he was just taunting her, with a smug arrogance that made him more human than immortal. "I thought you would've been thrilled to see me, Bonbon."
"You thought wrong, Salvatore." Bonnie bristled at the familiarity, slamming the massive case file onto the table.
Case HK-9 was unmistakably supernatural, given the numerous victims, their untimely demises, and the lack of evidence surrounding each death. Cars had been smashed with far more strength than a bear could wield. Bodies had been unceremoniously dumped into rivers. Neck wounds were completely devoid of blood. Every detail pointed towards a vampire, and the only vampires in town (to Bonnie's knowledge) were the Salvatore brothers.
Given the murky circumstances, the case had been booted to her department: Special Affairs. Named after their sister branch in Chicago, they explained away the unexplained. Vampires became rabid animals or meth addicts. Werewolves became hungry bears. Fae became roaming nomads. Hybrids were annoying hipsters. The general public would believe anything, given that everything followed an internally consistent logic.
No one could control every single circumstance, and truth was always stranger than fiction. Bonnie knew from past experience.
Magic was only science that mortals couldn't explain. Compulsion was unnatural charisma and persuasion. Thresholds and verbal invitations were an old-fashioned form of manners. Bonnie must've pulled dozens of these explanations from thin air for the Sheriff. She wove stories out of thin air and prayed that the public - that journalists like her best friend Caroline - wouldn't tug at the fraying threads.
Damon's mere presence was another fraying thread. He should've died over a century and half ago, and he should've left some storied legacy that included a ridiculous Confederate statue. Instead, he was raising his eyebrows at her and taunting her with his impossible truth.
"Well, I didn't do it."
Bonnie frowned. "That's what they all say."
"You've gotta believe me." He leaned forward, sitting upright. Although he was staring straight at her, his voice shook as he insisted, "Stefan and I are innocent."
Now he had her attention. Damon almost never brought up his younger brother. Stefan had chosen to live an honest life, and in turn, properly embed himself into the fabric of Mystic Falls life. Last Bonnie had heard, he was a doctoral student at Whitmore University, working on his fifth or sixth Ph.D.
Whatever Damon had to say, it may somehow implicate an innocent - and a person Bonnie hadn't previously considered. Stefan kept a strict animal blood diet. The local halal and kosher butchers regularly vouched for his innocence. She's seen the receipts of cow's and sheep's blood.
Stefan couldn't be responsible. Damon and Bonnie both believed this - and on this, she found herself agreeing with her worst enemy.
So Bonnie rested both arms on the metal table and finally dared to look her witness in the eye. "Prove it. Show me where you and your brother were on the evening of the 9th."
Damon drove her to the Velvet Room, a local coffee shop owned by Pearl Zhu and her darling daughter Anna. Bonnie had spent more money and time than she'd honestly cared to admit. (When a girl was running on spite and caffeine and far too little sleep, a barista and a well-brewed cup had become her closest friends.)
"Here?" Bonnie raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Don't they stop serving coffee around 6?"
"One, I'm a little disturbed that you know that, and two, Anna always re-opens the place for karaoke night."
Damon holds the door open for her as they stroll in. Given the hour, the place is mostly empty, with a few scattered customers peering at their brightly-lit laptops. Empty coffee mugs and scattered plates indicated that they must've been there for hours. Bonnie couldn't blame them. Good coffee and free wi-fi couldn't be found anywhere else in town.
Damon gestures towards the conspicuous security cameras installed by the cash registers, and more importantly, by the front and back doors.
"Check the footage. Stefan and I were here 'til it closed with everyone else."
"But you could've faked the time stamps," Bonnie reminded him, almost like she was his babysitter. "Who else could vouch for you?"
"Elena and Caroline," Damon retorts, all-too-amused. "Or are you going to call your best friends liars?"
As misplaced as Elena's and Caroline's priorities were, they wouldn't lie about their whereabouts. Bonnie had known them too long for such a lie to slip past her careful eye.
So she shook her head, knowing that between the cameras and other patrons, Damon's and Stefan's alibis would be rock-solid. As for the other supernatural creatures in town? Detective Lockwood had been assigned to a grand larceny case, and Detective Parker, the only other witch in town, had been working alongside him.
Knowing them, they were too busy making out to do much else. But more importantly - if the local vampires didn't murder all these young men, who did? A desperate wannabe?
"You swear you were here all night?" Bonnie dares to say as she heads towards the counter and flashes her detective's badge. "I don't want to make poor Anna pull the footage if she doesn't have to."
"Do you think I wanted to be here all night?" Damon scowled like a petulant kitten. "Stefan started singing Bon Jovi and it all went downhill from there."
Bonnie couldn't quite reconcile that ire with the smug, arrogant vampire who had taunted her in the interrogation room. For all of his blustering and posturing, perhaps he was a lot more dorky than he wanted to let on.
( . . . she hated that she kind of liked that about him.)
"Living on a Prayer is a karaoke staple," she gently chided, recalling one too many drunken karaoke nights from her college years.
"Again, you haven't heard my brother."
For an immortal with centuries of knowledge under his belt, Stefan Salvatore could not sing. No amount of alcohol could hide the off-tune, off-key, and somehow off-pitch notes blaring from that recording.
Damon winced, tilting his head as if that muffled the sound any better. "I rest my case."
The time stamps were accurate too: Stefan and Caroline "serenaded" the Velvet Room the whole night, while the poor patrons tried - multiple times - to kick the local vampire off the stage.
"Wow." Bonnie truly had no words. "Remind me to give him a restraining order."
"That would mean a lot," Anna piped in, passing through the room to pick up her car keys. "Just lock up when you guys are done, okay?"
Somehow, the karaoke hostess had not only lived to tell the tale, but also not gained the desire to bar Stefan from the premises.
Or maybe someone else did it for her, because at 11:59 PM, because that sure was Pearl forcing both brothers out of the Velvet Room's doors. Bonnie paused the footage there. Stefan and Damon had unceremoniously left together. But before the other patrons headed home and the shop closed up for the night, Pearl followed them out the same door.
Bonnie frowned. 11:59 PM. Ben's estimated time of death had been between 11 PM - 12 AM. Even though the Salvatore brothers had a solid alibi for the first hour, they had been booted before the second.
"Where'd you go after all uh, all of that excitement?"
Damon shook his head, unwilling to look at the footage. "Home. Stefan was in no shape to go anywhere."
Secretly, Bonnie was inclined to agree. Vampires may metabolize alcohol faster than the average human being. Vampires may also regrow their livers when their previous ones died from alcohol poisoning. Vampires like Stefan, however, could not hold their liquor if their immortal existences depended on it.
"Can anyone else vouch for that?"
"A phone GPS, maybe..." Damon's voice was soft, almost solemn now. "Beyond that, no. You'll have to believe me."
Which she almost never did. They both knew she wouldn't.
"Let's keep going." Bonnie sighed. "Maybe something will crop up."
At 12:45 AM, Pearl had returned through the same door with blood dripping down her lips. Her eyes were pitch-black, devoid of light, and her entire face was pulsing with giant veins. As she licked her lips and then the blood dripping off her fingers, Bonnie recoiled.
The blue-tinted lights of the Velvet Room could no longer mask Pearl's true nature. Her favorite coffee shop - her wi-fi haven - had been a secret vampire's den. The strange hours, the willingness to lurk in the shadows - it all made sense now.
"Holy shit." Bonnie paused the footage before turning to face Damon. All this time, she thought he had been the menace killing off his competition. All this time, he had also been completely innocent.
Damon punched the wall, murmuring swears she hadn't heard since her childhood.
Just like that, a few puzzle pieces re-arranged themselves. Bonnie drew in a deep breath, "And you had no idea."
“The hell I didn't!” Damon huffs, turning towards the door. “Pearl's got some nerve pinning all those meals on me.”
"Hey!" Bonnie turned the footage off and rushed right after him. With those long, quick strides, she was practically sprinting to stay at his side. "Let me remind you, I'm the detective here?"
If Pearl killed all those men in cold blood, Pearl would have to answer to the court. Vampires still had to obey the laws and regulations set upon them; their immortality didn't grant them immunity. Damon had to understand that. He must have.
(Matt had said that once upon a time, back when Damon had been human, he had served his country. Of all vampires, Damon should know. He should obey.)
Except he was huffing and puffing like the Big, Bad Wolf, and Bonnie couldn't hold him back much longer.
"You were also going to arrest me. Call me an addict, probably from meth or coke." Damon didn't deign her the decency of eye contact. He kept his focus straight ahead as he pulled out his car keys. “Which is bull. I drank a shitton of Coke back when it still had cocaine in it.”
As fascinating as that impromptu history lesson was, Damon wasn't thinking straight. His eyes were darkening, and his fangs were revealing themselves, and - and he was shifting. He was flat-out caving into that instinct for blood and violence.
"Yeah, well - " Bonnie reached out for his wrists. She really didn’t want to electrocute him with a spell, but his entire body was shaking now. "I don't always give that excuse."
“Then what were you gonna label me?” Damon stood at his full height, almost ready to push her back against the nearest wall. “Jealous psychopath? Guy with rage issues? What wool were you gonna pull over their eyes?”
She swallowed thickly, staring up at him. She couldn't find the courage to lie to this broken, shaking man. For all of his immortality, for all of his confidence and swagger, Damon was - he was just as broken as the rest of them. An innocent, falsely accused of a murder he couldn't have possibly committed.
And she would've been the detective who put a false suspect behind bars, all for a promotion. Ambition never, ever justified the means. Grams too had taught her that, so, so many years ago.
"No wool, no tricks," she managed to say, gently holding onto both wrists and peering down at them. "I tell people the truth in a way they can understand it."
"Oh, that's reassuring." He scoffed, with maybe a fourth of his usual blustering. "You're still lying to them."
"I explain the unexplainable." On this, Bonnie wouldn't budge. Like Grams and her mom before her, Bonnie was the sole detective in Special Affairs. Her line would protect the innocent from the vampires and werewolves that lurked in the shadows. She could wave her hands and cast a spell that would protect man from monster.
Funny how she couldn't protect a monster from himself and his worst insecurities.
So she bit on her lip, before asking, "Hey, Salvatore?"
"Hm?"
"We'll get her together." Bonnie forced herself to make eye contact and to stare back into those pitch-black eyes. The darkness never scared her. It never could, when it was wielded by the ones who needed its shadows the most. "You and me, okay?"
His entire body stilled, and for a moment, she thought this was how her career would end: in the jaws of a hungry, reckless vampire.
Then the darkness melted into those crystal-clear blue eyes, and he lightly squeezed her hand.
"Yeah. Just this once."
The security footage grants them two search warrant from the Chief. One for the Velvet Room (conducted by Officers Lockwood and Parker), and one for the Zhu family home. In the early hours of the morning, they headed for the Zhu household on the edge of town. At this hour, Anna was undoubtedly battling the morning rush. Pearl would (and should) be the only one home.
Bonnie knocked on the door a few times, calling, "Mystic Falls police department!"
No answer.
"The direct approach won't get us anywhere," Damon surmised, kneeling sown and picking out a couple of tools from his pocket. After a few minutes of fiddling with the lock, the front door opened - and Damon held it for her, as always.
Bonnie raised an eyebrow at him. "Where'd you learn that trick?"
"The army," Damon replied without a moment's hesitation. "Probably the only useful thing I learned there."
Again, an interesting history lesson, but not the one she sought to learn. Bonnie took that tentative step forward and waited for her partner to follow.
Damon lingered by the door instead, drawing in a breath as he held his arm towards the threshold. No invisible barrier lingered.
"I don't think anyone owns the place," Bonnie called out to him as she turned the lights on. "Hurry up, will you?"
"Yes, dear." Damon laughed, though even he couldn't hide his relief as he crossed the threshold and entered the house with his loud, clanking boots. No verbal invitation necessary (for once).
The house was quiet, but filled to the brim with necessary evidence. A fridge filled with labeled blood bags and mason jars. Envelopes with purchases of cow's, sheep's, and lamb's bloods from local butchers. Foundation and make-up scattered around the house, just to hide the natural pallor and sunken-in expression on a vampire's face. Sunscreen with SPF 50-100.
Most peculiarly, a single houseplant was on each and every windowsill. Bonnie reached out to caress its leaves, lightly brushing her fingertips against the edges of the leaves.
"She grew vervain."
Vervain - or as it was more commonly known, verbana - was the one herb that could stop a vampire in their tracks. Bonnie, and her mother, and Grams, all grew vervain in their backyards as instant vampire repellent. The entire precinct ground it into their tea and coffee every morning, just in case.
She'd never seen a whole bunch of vervain in an actual vampire's house, though. Not this close and personal, like it was well-cared for.
"Huh." Damon glanced up from the business receipts he had been reading. "I wonder why."
"Better the enemy she knows than the enemy she doesn't?" Bonnie shook her head, pocketing a few sprigs for herself.
That was a question better suited for an interrogation. They had the evidence. They had the suspect. They even had the time, and a list of victims written on the fridge door. Ben's had been hastily scratched out, as if he were an afterthought. No other information, save for names and cell phone numbers.
Save for their ages - and this list - the victims had all lacked a common link. This just might be the one thing tying them all together.
"She's not home," Damon finally said, craning his head to really listen.
"Should we come back?"
"Not necessarily." He closed the envelope, tucking it back into its original position. "If she's anything like me, she'll come back for a meal sooner or later."
The rev of a car engine roared over their footsteps, and Bonnie turned towards the garage door.
"Or she's home now."
The kitchen door clicked open behind them, and sweet, darling Anna stood there, illuminated by the bright sun. Like her mother, her eyes were devoid of color, and the veins under her eyes were pulsing and growing larger than usual. Her fangs were bared, and her red, manicured nails were more like claws.
Bonnie immediately reached for her gun. "Anna?"
"I did it." Blood was dripping from her lips. Anna licked it off, drawing in a deep breath. "I saw the footage, and the officers came with a search warrant and I knew they were going home and - and Mom isn't responsible."
Damon stepped forward, inserting himself between monster and witch without a second thought. "So you're just going to turn yourself in."
"Isn't that what you were going to do?" She stared him down, snarling with a strength Bonnie didn't know she possessed. "Detective Bennett here was going to blame Stefan before you intervened."
Bonnie tried to protest, "I wasn't going to - "
"Shut it," both vampires yelled back at her.
This was honestly the longest stretch of time Bonnie had ever lived through, and she remembered studying for her police exams. The academy never prepared her for a vampire versus vampire brawl. It never prepared her for falsely accusing the undead.
But it did prepare her for desperation, and it did prepare her for understanding why a young 20-something vampire might prey upon the womanizers. The men who two-timed and three-timed every other young woman in town. The ones who thought their deeds would be erased, simply because of their gender and the color of their skin.
Bonnie grew quiet, steadily aiming her gun at Anna's heart. "He cheated on you, didn't he."
Anna shook her head. "He cheated on my friends."
A sudden understanding washed over Damon's face. "You never meant to kill them."
"No." Anna's voice and entire body shook. "Not really. I wanted to scare them, make them think twice about the hearts they broke over and over again - "
"But then you got hungry." Damon took that tentative step closer. "I know how that feels. You think you're gonna go crazy 'cause guys like that? They think the entire world's in the palm of their hands."
"Doesn't excuse the murder." Bonnie's voice was firm. "Seven guys didn't go home to their families those nights. What do we say to those people?"
"The same thing you always do," Damon reminds her, as if he's the babysitter this time. "You explain the unexplainable. Could someone like Anna really kill these guys with only two little neck wounds?"
No. Not without revealing the truth - and certainly not without uncovering the veil that tenatively kept the peace in Mystic Falls.
Anna sunk to her knees, pulling Damon down with her.
Bonnie weighed the possibilities. One, she turned Anna in, and she took that step towards her rightfully-earned promotion. Two, she let Anna go. She would concoct a story about a rabid raccoon or dog or wildlife creature, and Officers Lockwood and Parker would fabricate the evidence necessary. Seven families would sleep with the knowledge that their sons, their brothers, their lovers eschewed fidelity and love for lust and attractive young women.
Was the truth worth the extra heartache and the unnecessary burden?
Now or never for that judgment call.
"Okay." Bonnie drew in a breath, and slowly lowered her gun. "We'll tell them the same truth we always have. Never trust the wildlife in Mystic Falls - "
"Or the vampire detectives who want you rotting in jail," Damon added as he pinned Anna against the wall, motioning for Bonnie to follow his lead.
She nodded, crafting impromptu handcuffs from the sprigs Pearl had grown around the house. Despite the burning, despite the red-hot marks on her wrists, Anna didn't scream. She didn't flinch. She merely stared down at the tiled floor and drew in a deep breath.
"I should've figured," she murmured.
Damon flicked her nose. "Murder is murder, no matter how you slice it."
Once Anna had been properly subdued and placed in her holding cell, the real paperwork began.
Bonnie stared at the growing mountain before her and willed it all to their proper places. A levitation spell would make this more manageable. She could chunk these into manageable bits, and maybe she would go home at a reasonable hour tonight. Maybe.
"Hey, Bennett," Sheriff Forbes called upon opening her office door. It's a testament to her character that she doesn't flinch at the levitating papers. "I figured you could use some help, so..."
She stepped aside, allowing Damon to walk in.
"Um... didn't we clear him of murder?" Bonnie blinked back surprise. "What's he doing here?"
"Why, Bon-bon, that's awfully rude." Damon smirked, pulling up a chair and sitting across from her. "Especially considering we'll be working together."
"You said you needed some extra hands, and Damon's apparently a licensed detective. You'll figure it out as you go, I'm sure." Sheriff Forbes patted Bonnie on the shoulder before she turned towards the door. "Just let me know if you need anything."
The door closed behind them, and Bonnie couldn't help resting both arms on the table as she peered at her local vampire - no, sorry, at her new partner.
"Well, Salvatore?" Bonnie laughed, handing him their newest case file. "Let's get cracking."