CHAPTER SIXTEEN | A BIRD IN A GLIDED CAGE

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THE NEWS HAD QUICKLY SPREAD THAT NOT ONLY WAS CAROLINE HUMANITY-FREE, BUT NOW, SO WAS STEFAN. The newfound information only made Damon even determined to get his mother back. And, considering that she would do anything to assist Damon, Evelyn called Bonnie and Kai to help get Damon's mother from the 1903 prison world.

Kai's eyes were fixed on the large knife that Bonnie had pulled so that she could slice her palm in order to get Bennett blood for the spell to work. "Damn. Crocodile Dundee called. He wants his knife back."

"Yeah. You know, he's no longer a thing, and neither is that joke." Bonnie spat back with a roll of her eyes as Damon and Evelyn both walked in wearing thick winter coats.

"Oh, wait, both of you are going?" Kai glared at Evelyn more so than the Salvatore, he knew that obviously, Damon would be going but he didn't count on Evelyn joining for the ride too. "As powerful as I am, there's a limit to how many people one witch can transport with this spell."

"Right, which is why there's two of us." The Bennett witch snapped with an irritated glare as she poured her blood onto the Ascendant before she turned back to Damon and Evelyn. "Shall we?"

"Fine. Let's go get Mama." Damon nodded to himself. He stepped forward and intertwined his fingers with Evelyn's just as the two witches began to chant.

Within a few moments, the comfort of the Salvatore house was stripped away and they were in a snowy forest, presumably Mystic Falls, 1903. The winter breeze hit them by force causing Evelyn to melt into Damon's hold for warmth.

"Well, isn't this is a picturesque slice of hell?" Damon glanced around at the scenery whilst Evelyn's grip tightened on his hand.

"You guys go ahead." Bonnie's eyes fell on Damon and Evelyn with a nod. "Kai and I will start the locator spell on the Ascendant."

"Wait, Kai was just holding it?" Evelyn raised a perfectly shaped brow toward the Bennett witch.

"The Ascendant can't travel between worlds, which means we gotta find its mirror image here in 1903." The Parker witch vaguely explained for the benefit of Evelyn.

"Page-ten on the world-jumping rule-book." Damon sarcastically rolled his eyes before he turned to his fiancé "Shall we?"

Evelyn grabbed his hand and began to walk until they stopped then turned around to look at Bonnie once again with fear in her eyes. "Wait. No, I can't just leave you alone with him, Bon.

"I'll be fine." Bonnie smiled reassuringly as she glanced to Kai, whose mouth was open in an attempt to catch snowflakes on his tongue. "He's good now, remember? New leaf."

Evelyn nodded reluctantly and turned back around to walk with Damon. Their walk was fairly quiet and the female knew that Damon was obviously scared, he had every right to be. "I just wanna let you know, no matter what happens I love you, okay?"

"I love you, too." He nodded back with a smile when they finally made it to the Old Salvatore Estate. "Okay, we're not here to socialize. We get the Ascendant, we find my mother and after she flips Stefan's switch, we figure out what the hell we're going to do with her."

"Damon, if I were in your position, I would have a million-and-one questions running round in my head. I mean, this is your mother we're talking about." Evelyn shrugged as she looked at all the pictures on the mantelpiece. "Maybe, at least give her a chance."

"Give her a chance to what exactly?" The Salvatore scoffed in disbelief. "Disarray another literal boatload of people?"

"You can't really use that as your argument though, can you? I mean Stefan's a Ripper, we don't knock him for it." She pointed out before she turned around to make sure Damon's attention was taken elsewhere, then she shoved a few pictures from the mantlepiece into her jacket pocket.

"And, where was Lily from 1858 to 1903? She was blood-binging through Europe while Stefan and I carried the loss." He explained while Evelyn looked at him sympathetically. "Not exactly maternal, Eve. Far as I'm concerned, my mother died when we buried her empty coffin. The woman we're looking for is just a tool to get my brother back."

"Damon?" A voice spoke from the door that opened behind them. The vampires both turned around to see Lily, who had clearly been collecting firewood from outside.

"Hello, mother."

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Lily beamed with happiness, then motioned to the set of chairs just in front of a small coffee table. "There was a time I marked the days on a calendar. I gave up after a few years, but, judging from your bizarre attire—"

"You've been here for quite some time," Evelyn explained awkwardly, not really knowing how to act around the woman that was soon to be her mother-in-law. "Over a century, in fact."

"Yeah, I would have come by sooner, but I thought you were safe and sound in the family crypt," Damon spoke with a little sarcasm and a hint of irritation due to her consistent lies. "My bad."

"Technically, I did die in 1858, after a nurse in the TB ward fed me her vampire blood." Lily sighed out whilst she vaguely explained her history to her son, who seemed rather hostile.

"And you never thought to stop by and clear things up?" Damon bitterly questioned back as Evelyn placed her hand on his thigh in an attempt to keep him calm, though it didn't seem to work.

Lily immediately caught sight of the engagement ring on the brunette's finger and smiled. "Evelyn, it is lovely to see you and my son together. I think the last time I saw you, you were but a child."

"It's nice to see you too, Mrs. Salvatore." Evelyn awkwardly cleared her throat as soon as she noticed Damon shoot her a glare. "How exactly did you end up here? We've heard a story, but I guess I just wanna see if it matches up."

"It was October 31st, 1903. I had just arrived at New York Harbor. The night sky was alive with this beautiful shimmering light. Then, out of nowhere, a coven of witches attacked. When I woke, they were gone. Everyone was gone. That night, the sky danced with colors again, and it's done so every night since." The Salvatore female explained as she handed Evelyn a cup of tea.

"It's called prison. You must have pissed off a lot of people." Damon remarked whilst Evelyn just glared at him.

"That life seems like forever ago."

Damon's attention was taken and he picked up the dropper next to the jar of blood, then examined it with furrowed brows and confusion on his face. "You on a diet?"

"I depleted every slaughterhouse within walking distance, and every butcher's shop along the hellish trek from New York to Mystic Falls." She answered then held up a small jar. This is the last of the blood here. Two drops a week just to stay awake."

"Oh, my God. That sounds— that sounds awful," Evelyn spoke with a hint of sympathy for the woman.

"I manage." Lily shrugged with a light smile, then she turned her attention back to her son. "I heard you and your brother turned during the War. Your father must have been horrified."

"He was. And then, Stefan ripped his throat out." The Salvatore responded with a smirk.

Lily also let out a little chuckle before composing herself. "I apologize. It's cruel to laugh but— good for Stefan. I truly hated that man."

"Oh, I know you did. So much that you left your kids with him, faked your own death, and then went out to join the Ripper coalition." Damon commented bitterly.

"Well, it's nice to see that you've grown into yourself, Damon." She answered back before immediately changing the subject. "How's your brother?"

"About that," Evelyn spoke just before Damon even got the chance. "Stefan has flipped his humanity switch, we're here to see if you could help us get him back to his old self."

"You believe I can reconnect Stefan with his humanity?" Lily looked at the couple with confusion as her eyebrows knitted together.

"Apparently the last memory Stefan has of you is a vision of an angel telling him everything is going to be okay." Evelyn continued on while Damon remained quiet.

"So, you're gonna be an angel again. He doesn't need to know how screwed-up you really are." Damon sat forward with a stern glare on his face while Lily just looked bewildered for a moment but then the look faded.

"Of course I'll help. I'd love nothing more than to see him again."

"Pack your bags," Damon ordered and the brunette vampire jumped up to their feet to grab their jackets.

"Wonderful! I'll alert the others."

Both of the vampires immediately stopped in their tracks at the mention of other vampires. They slowly turned on their heels with eyes wide, "You'll alert who, now?"

"You knew so much about me, I assumed you'd heard of my traveling companions," Lily answered with a bewildered look and a shrug. She led the two vampires down into the basement, where Damon and Evelyn saw dozens of desiccated vampires sat around a vampire. "Everyone, meet my son, Damon, and his girlfriend Evelyn. They're here to take us home."

"These vampires have been trapped with you the whole time?" Evelyn questioned in utter shock at their state. It looked like that had been starved of blood for longer than the brunette vampire could imagine.

"We went everywhere together. They happened to be on the boat that night, poor souls." Lily answered softly as she stroked one of the desiccated vampires' faces delicately.

"These poor souls don't happen to have the same affinity for rolling heads, do they?" Damon anxiously asked as he examined the vampires around him.

"On the contrary, these people saved me from that part of myself. I was banished here because I was a monster. I drank with no remorse from whatever human I could sink my teeth into. But, locked in this cage, I was forced to confront the animal I had become. And as we ran out of resources, my friends sacrificed their rations for me. And I knew if I drank everything, as every bone in my body demanded, there wouldn't be enough to wake them. So, I learned to control my bloodlust, for them. These people made me feel human again." She shrugged. "I'll fetch the rest of the blood so we can revive them."

"Not only is she a Ripper—" The minute that Lily had hurried out of the basement Damon moved over to Evelyn. "—she's an insane Ripper!"

"She's acting like they're her family," Evelyn whispered back to him. "Maybe she feels responsible for them. We're not seriously bringing them back, are we?"

"What, are you kidding me? Vampire dollhouse?"

Evelyn looked to her left and noticed the Ascendant on a nearby dresser, she wandered over it and hold it in the palm of her hand. "If this is the Ascendant, where's Bonnie?"

Damon let out a small sigh and looked at her with guilt. "Because Bonnie isn't looking for the Ascendant, Eve."

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Night had soon fallen, and the Aurora Borealis had suddenly lit up the sky beautifully while Lily put on her jacket and carried a jar of blood with her just as Evelyn and Damon returned downstairs with their coats.

"Your vampire-menagerie is going to have to take the next train out. We're down a witch." Damon explained to his mother without the slightest hint of sympathy after hearing that Bonnie had turned on Kai and planned to leave him behind.

"You want to leave them behind?" Lily glared at him in disbelief before she began to vigorously shake her head. "No, Damon. You can't save me without them."

"We'll come back for them. Promise." He gave her a bitter smile, though Evelyn knew that there was no way Damon would let a boatload of random vampires into Mystic Falls. "Let's go."

"Wow, that's beautiful." Evelyn pointed out of the window with a smile on her face, never in her life had she seen something so simply wonderful.

"Also known as our ticket out of here." Bonnie's voice carried the moment that she swung the Salvatore door open and turned to the brunette vampire. "You got it?"

"Yup." She pulled the Ascendant from her pocket and handed it to her Bennett witch best friend.

Damon went to walk out of the house, but he soon noticed Lily had disappeared. "You gotta be kidding me!" He turned his gaze toward the girls in frustration. "Go. Start the damn spell. I'll go get her."

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"You better check the inventory of the blood cooler before Lily wakes up," Damon spoke from the doorway just as he turned to see Evelyn's eyes fixed on a photograph within her grip. He wandered closer and noticed it was a baby picture of himself. "You brought that back? Why?"

Evelyn narrowed her eyes. "It's the only baby picture of my boyfriend in existence. Of course, I brought it back."

He took a step forward and playfully began attempting to grab the photograph from his fiancé's grasp. "Give me that!"

A small chuckle left Evelyn's lips. "You know, as much as you dreaded it. and I completely understand why, I liked seeing that side of you today."

"What? Disappointed and disillusioned?" Damon scoffed then smirked toward her. "You see that every day."

"No." The Austin girl rolled her eyes and moved her arms effortlessly around his waist just as she placed the picture down on the kitchen counter. "The little boy I grew up with. And, I know she's not the mother that you deserve. But she is your mother, Damon, and she's here. Please don't take that for granted because I would do anything for a chance to see my family again."

"You're lucky I'm so in love with you because your eternal optimism is super annoying," Damon commented with a laugh. "This woman left her kids to go be the den mother to a family of vampires. I think we're going to be looking for anything redeemable inside her for quite a while."

"Well, it's a good thing you and I have forever." She commented with a smile before their lips were inches away from each other's "I love you," Evelyn whispered against his lips.

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