Visitation (Vampire Diaries) (Book Six)

Chapter 22__I'm Thinking of You All the While

The wedding ceremony had descended into chaos. People were screaming across the room.

Some of the attendees of the party were already dead before of the avalanche of broken glass from the windows, and many more were injured or dying.

I sat up, just now waking, a piece of glass wedged into my stomach, blood gathered all over my dress. I pulled the glass out, sighing in relief when I felt myself healing. I stood, walking along the disastrous wedding, looking around for anyone I knew. "Stefan? Damon?" I looked around at all of the dead or bleeding, dying horribly people of the Gemini Coven. The blood was almost enough to make me give in, making me transform hungrily. I took a deep breath, returning to normal, looking around. "Caroline? Elena?" I looked around desperately, a hand going to my head. "Tyler!"

I could hear Tyler coughing weakly further on. "Nikki." I turned to see Tyler lying next to a dying horribly, bleeding Gemini male, a large piece of glass embedded into his stomach. "Nikki."

I shook my head, barely able to breathe. "Ty. Ty, no." I rushed toward him, kneeling next to him instantly. "This isn't happening. You're not dying on me." I pulled the glass out of his stomach, making him groan in pain. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Tyler told me weakly, taking one of my hands.

I looked at the blood hungrily for a moment, fighting through it, raising my wrist to my mouth to bite.

When I was magically thrown back across the floor.

Tyler looked toward me weakly in worry. "Nikki!"

I looked up, breathing heavily.

Kai stalked closer to me. "Nicola Salvatore. Little niece Nikki. Just the girl I was looking for." He held a hand toward a broken wooden chair, using magic to throw a broken chair leg into my stomach, making me gasp and groan in pain. "Did you really believe that you could do what you did with the little stunt to get the hex taken away and not pay the consequences?"

I slid away from Kai weakly, a hand around the stake. "What I did to Jo was nothing compared to what you've done to all of us."

I tried to pull the stake out of my stomach.

Kai used magic to push it back in, making me groan in pain. "Oh, no, I couldn't care less about Jo anymore. What you and Bonnie did? It cured me of any feelings I might have had before. Thank God. No, I'm talking about..." He used magic to tilt the stake toward my heart, making me groan a scream. Tyler was still watching in weak, worried horror. "The feelings you made me feel. Guilt. Sadness." Kai used magic to tilt the stake further toward my heart. "Helplessness." He stepped closer, using magic to drive the stake further in, making me slide further away, groaning and gasping. Tyler turned to the weak, nearly dead Gemini male next to him, picking up the piece of glass that had been in his stomach. Kai knelt in front of me, pushing the stake in further, using magic to bring back little snippets of the hex, the images, the pain that it had brought, only a hundred times worse, making me groan and scream, making the images of everything I had already seen the only thing that I could see. "You see that? You went through all that trouble to get the hex taken away only to die with it again. You get to die seeing every moment of pain, sadness, loneliness, despair, prief or helplessness you've ever experienced. Which is practically every day of your pathetic, little life. Allow me to put you out of your misery."

I felt the stake being pull out, sensing that Kai was raising it to finish me off.

We heard bones cracking, breaking, Tyler groaning and screaming.

Kai let the images of the hex fade away until it was gone again, until there was nothing there.

We both looked toward Tyler.