The Vampire Diaries #10: Destiny Rising (The Hunters #3) (2012)

The Hunters: Destiny Rising

Author: L.J. Smith

Category: Fantasy , Young Adult

Series: The Vampire Diaries


Destiny Rising (The Vampire Diaries: The Hunters #3)

Destined for danger...

Elena has faced countless challenges - escaping the Dark Dimension, defeating phantoms, discovering she's a Guardian. But nothing compares to choosing between the two loves of her life: Stefan and Damon Salvatore.

Elena has reunited with Stefan, while Damon, hurt by the rejection, has become dark and unpredictable.

Now Elena's torn between saving Damon's soul and staying true to Stefan.

But before Elena can decide who her heart belongs to, Dalcrest College's campus is overrun with vampires determined to resurrect Klaus, the wicked Old One who will stop at nothing to destroy Elena - and everyone close to her.

As Elena learns more about her destiny as a Guardian, a protector against evil on earth, she realizes that before she can defeat Klaus, she has to sacrifice someone close to her.

Elena must decide how much - and who - she's willing to give up before it's too late....


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Chapter 1

Dear Diary,

Last night, I had a terrifying dream.

Everything was as it had been just a few short hours before. I was back in the Vitale Society's underground chamber, and Ethan was holding me captive, his knife cold and steady at my throat. Stefan and Damon watched us, their faces wary, bodies tensed, waiting for the moment when one of them would be able to dash in and save me. But I knew they would be too late. I knew that, despite their supernatural speed, Ethan would cut my throat and I would die.

There was so much pain in Stefan's eyes. It broke my heart to know how much my death would hurt him. I hated the idea of dying without Stefan knowing that I had chosen him, only him - that all my indecision was behind us.

Ethan pulled me even closer, his arm as tight and unyielding as a band of steel across my chest. I felt the cold edge of the knife bite into my flesh.

Then without warning Ethan fell, and Meredith was standing there, her hair streaming behind her, her face as wild and determined as a vengeful goddess's, her stave still raised from the killing blow she'd put through his heart.

It should have been a moment of joy and relief. In real life, it was: the moment when I knew I was going to live, when I was about to find myself safe in Stefan's arms.

But in the dream, Meredith's face was blotted out by a flash of pure white light. I felt myself growing colder and colder, my body freezing, my emotions muffled into a chilly calm. My humanity was slipping away, and something hard and inflexible and . . . other . . . was taking its place.

In the heat of the battle, I had let myself forget what James had told me: that my parents had promised me to the Guardians, that I was fated to become one of them. And now they had come to claim me.

I woke up terrified.

Elena Gilbert paused and lifted the pen from the page of her journal, reluctant to write any more. Putting what she was most afraid of into words would make it feel more real.

She glanced around her dorm room, her new home. Bonnie and Meredith had come and gone while Elena slept. Bonnie's covers were flung back, and her laptop was gone from her desk. Meredith's side of the room, usually painstakingly organized, showed evidence of how exhausted Meredith must have been: the bloodstained clothes she had worn to fight Ethan and his vampire followers had been left on the floor. Her weapons were strewn across the bed, mostly shoved to one side, as if the young vampire hunter had curled up among them to sleep.

Elena sighed. Maybe Meredith would understand how Elena felt. She knew what it was like to have a destiny decided for you, to discover that your own hopes and dreams meant nothing in the end.

But Meredith had embraced her fate. There was nothing more important to her now, or that she loved more, than being a hunter of monsters and keeping the innocent safe.

Elena didn't think she could find the same kind of joy in her new destiny.

I don't want to be a Guardian, she wrote miserably. The Guardians killed my parents. I don't think I can ever get past that. If it wasn't for them, my selfless parents would still be alive and I wouldn't be constantly worrying about the lives of the people I love. The Guardians only believe in one thing: Order. Not Justice. Not Love.

I never want to be like that. I never want to be one of them.

But do I have a choice? James made it sound like becoming a Guardian was just something that would happen to me - something I wouldn't be able to avoid. Powers would suddenly manifest themselves, and I would change, ready for whatever horrible thing comes next.

Elena scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. Even after her long sleep, her eyes felt gritty and strained.

I haven't told anyone yet, she wrote. Meredith and Damon knew I was upset after I saw James, but they don't know what he told me. So much happened last night that I never got a chance to tell them.

I need to talk to Stefan about this. I know that when I do, everything will start to feel . . . better.

But I'm scared to tell him.

After Stefan and I broke up, Damon made me see the choice I needed to make. One path led to the daylight with the possibility of being a normal girl with an almost-normal, almost-human life with Stefan. The second into the night, embracing Power, adventure, and all the exhilaration the darkness can hold, with Damon.

I chose the light, chose Stefan. But if I'm fated to become a Guardian, is the path of darkness and Power unavoidable? Will I become someone who can do the unthinkable - take the lives of people as loving and pure as my parents? What kind of normal girl could I be, as a Guardian?

Elena was jolted from her thoughts by the sound of a key in the door. She closed the velvet-covered journal and shoved it quickly under her mattress.

"Hi," she said as Meredith came into the room.

"Hi yourself," Meredith said, grinning at her. Her dark-haired friend couldn't have gotten more than a few hours of sleep - she'd been out hunting vampires with Stefan and Damon after Elena had gone to bed, and she'd left before Elena had woken up - but she looked refreshed and cheerful, her gray eyes bright and her olive-skinned cheeks slightly flushed.

Purposefully tucking her own anxiety away, Elena smiled at her.

"Been saving the world all day, superhero?" Elena asked, teasing her just a little.

Meredith raised one delicate eyebrow. "As a matter of fact," she said, "I just came from the reading room at the library. Don't you have any papers due?"

Elena felt her own eyes widen. With all that had been happening, she hadn't really been thinking about her classes. She'd enjoyed her college courses so far, and she'd been an honor roll student in high school, but lately different parts of her life had taken over. Did she have something due?

What does it matter, though? The thought was heavy and dispiriting. If I have to be a Guardian, college won't make any difference.

"Hey," Meredith said, clearly misinterpreting Elena's sudden expression of dismay. Meredith reached forward and touched her shoulder with cool, strong fingers. "Don't worry about it. You'll get on top of everything."

Elena swallowed and nodded. "Absolutely," she said, forcing a smile.

"I did a little world-saving last night with Damon and Stefan, though," Meredith said, almost shyly. "We killed four vampires in the woods at the edge of campus." She lifted her vampire-slayer's stave carefully from her bed and wrapped her hand around its smooth center. "It feels really good," she said. "Doing what I've trained for. What I was born for."

Elena winced a little at this: What was I born for? But there was something she needed to say to Meredith that she hadn't said last night. "You saved me, too," Elena said simply. "Thank you."

Meredith's eyes warmed. "Anytime," she said lightly. "We need you around - you know that." She flipped open the narrow black case for her stave and put it inside. "I'm going to meet Stefan and Matt back at the library and see if we can get the bodies out of the Vitales' secret room. Bonnie said her concealment spell wouldn't last very long, and now that it's dark we should dispose of them."

Elena felt a twinge of anxiety in her chest. "What if the other vampires have come back?" she asked. "Matt told us he thought there was more than one entrance."

Meredith shrugged. "That's why I'm taking the stave," she said. "There aren't many of Ethan's vampires left, and they're mostly pretty new. Stefan and I can handle them."

"Damon's not coming with you guys?" Elena asked, climbing off the bed.

"I thought you and Stefan were back together," Meredith said. She fixed Elena with a quizzical gaze.

"We are," Elena said, and felt her face getting hot. "At least I think so. I'm trying not to . . . do anything to mess that up now. Damon and I are friends. I hope. I just thought you said Damon was with you earlier, hunting vampires."

Meredith's shoulders relaxed. "Yeah, he was with us," she said ruefully. "He enjoyed the fighting, but he got quieter as the night went on. He seemed a little . . ." She hesitated. "I don't know, tired, maybe." Meredith shrugged and her voice lightened. "You know Damon. He's only going to be useful on his own terms."

Reaching for her jacket, Elena said, "I'm coming with you." She wanted to see Stefan, to see him without Damon. If she was going to try to take that day-lit path with Stefan - Guardian or not - then she needed to bring her secrets out into the light, and face Stefan with nothing to hide.

When Elena and Meredith got to the library, Stefan and Matt were already there, waiting in the nearly bare room with the words RESEARCH OFFICE stenciled on its door. Stefan met Elena's eyes with a small, serious smile, and she suddenly felt shy. She'd put him through a lot the last few weeks, and they'd been apart so much lately that it almost felt as if they were starting over.

Next to him, Matt looked terrible. Drawn and pale, his face was set grimly and he clutched a large flashlight in one hand. His eyes were bleak and haunted. While destroying the Vitale vampires had been a victory for the others, those vampires had been Matt's friends. He had admired Ethan, thinking he was human. Elena slipped up beside him and squeezed his arm, trying to silently reassure him. His arm tensed in hers, but he shifted slightly closer to her.

"Down we go, then," Meredith said briskly. She and Stefan rolled back the small rug in the center of the room to reveal the trapdoor beneath, which was still covered with scattered herbs from the locking and protection spells Bonnie had hastily cast the night before. They were able to lift the door easily, though. Apparently, the spell had worn off.

As the four of them trooped down the stairs, Elena looked around curiously. The night before, they'd been in such a panic to save Stefan that she hadn't really observed much of their surroundings. The first flight of stairs was quite plain, wooden and a little rickety, and led to a floor filled with rows and rows of bookcases.

"Library stacks," Meredith muttered. "Camouflage."

The second flight was similar, but when Elena stepped on the first stair, it didn't shake slightly under her feet the way the previous flight had. The banister was smoother beneath her hand, and when they reached the landing, a long empty hallway stretched into darkness in both directions. It was colder here, and as they hesitated for a moment on the landing, Elena shivered. Impulsively, she tucked her hand into Stefan's as they started down the third flight. He didn't look at her, his eyes focused on the stairs ahead of them, but after a moment his fingers tightened around hers reassuringly. Tension flowed out of Elena's body at his touch. Everything's going to be all right, she thought.

The third flight of stairs was solid and made of some heavy, polished dark wood that gleamed beneath the dim lights. The banister was twisted with carvings. Elena could see the head of a snake, the elongated body of a swiftly running fox, and other shapes that were harder to make out in passing.

When they reached the bottom of the last flight, they faced the elaborately carved double doors that led to the Vitales' meeting room. The design followed the same motifs as she'd glimpsed on the banister: running animals, twisted snakes, curving mystical symbols. In the center of each door lay a large stylized V.

The doors were chained shut, as they had left them. Stefan reached out with the hand that wasn't holding Elena's and easily pulled the chain apart, dropping it to the side of the doors with a heavy clunk. Meredith flung the doors wide open.

The thick, coppery smell of blood came out to meet them. The room stank of death.

Matt held his flashlight steady while Meredith searched for a light switch. Finally, the scene before them was illuminated: the altar from the front of the room lay on its side, the bowl of blood smashed a few feet away. Extinguished torches had left long lines of greasy black smoke smeared on the walls. Vampire bodies lay limply in pools of sticky, half-dried blood, their throats torn by Damon's or Stefan's fangs, or their torsos punctured by Meredith's stave. Elena glanced anxiously at Matt's pale face. He hadn't been down here for the fight; he hadn't seen the massacre. And he had known these people, known this room when it was decorated for a celebration.

Eyes scanning the room, Matt swallowed visibly. After a moment, he frowned and spoke, his voice thin. "Where's Ethan?" he asked.

Elena's eyes flew to the spot before the altar where Ethan, leader of the Vitale vampires, had held a knife to her throat. The place where Meredith had killed him with her stave. Meredith made a soft sound of denial.

The floor was dark with Ethan's blood, but his body was nowhere to be found.

Chapter 2

Warm blood, sweet with desire, filled Damon's mouth and inflamed his senses. He stroked the girl's soft, golden hair with one hand as he pressed his mouth more firmly to her creamy neck. Beneath her skin, he could feel her blood throbbing with the steady beat of her heart. He drew her essence into himself with great, thirst-quenching gulps.

Why had he ever stopped doing this?

He knew why, of course: Elena. Always, for the last year, Elena.

Of course he had still occasionally used his Power to coax victims into willingness. But he'd done it with the uncomfortable awareness that Elena would disapprove, chastened by the image of her blue eyes, serious and knowing, sizing him up and finding him wanting. Not good enough, not in comparison to his squirrel-chewing baby brother.

And when it seemed like Stefan and Elena might be done for good, that he might be the one to end up with his golden princess after all, he had stopped drinking fresh blood. Instead he'd drunk cold, insipid-tasting old blood from hospital donors. He'd even tried the revolting animal blood his brother lived on. Damon's stomach turned at the memory, and he took a deep, refreshing swallow of the girl's glorious blood.

This was what it meant to be a vampire: you had to take in life, human life, to keep your own supernatural life going. Anything else - the dead blood in stored bags or the blood of animals - kept you only a shadow of yourself, your Powers ebbing.

Damon wouldn't forget that again. He had lost himself, but now he was found.

The girl stirred in his arms, making a small questioning noise, and he sent a soothing dose of Power to her, making her pliable and quiescent once more. What was her name? Tonya? Tabby? Tally? He wasn't going to hurt her, anyway. Not permanently. He hadn't hurt anyone he'd fed from - not much, not when he was in his right mind - for a long while. No, the girl would leave the woods and go back to her sorority house with nothing worse than a slight spell of dizziness and a vague memory of spending the evening talking with a fascinating man whose face she couldn't quite recall.

She would be fine.

And if he'd chosen her because her long golden hair, blue eyes, and creamy skin reminded him of Elena? Well, that was no one's business but Damon's own.

At last he released her, gently steadying her on her feet when she tottered. She was delicious - nothing like Elena's blood, though, nowhere near as rich and heady - but taking any more blood tonight would be unwise.

She was a pretty girl, certainly. He arranged her hair carefully over her shoulders, hiding the marks on her neck, and she blinked at him with dazed, wide eyes.

Those eyes were wrong, damn it. They should be darker, a clear lapis lazuli, and fringed with heavy lashes. And the hair was, now that he looked at it closely, obviously dyed.

The girl smiled at him hesitantly, unsure.

"You'd better go back to your room," Damon said. He sent a current of commanding Power into her, and continued. "You won't remember later that you met me. You won't know what happened."

"I'd better get back," she echoed, her voice wrong, the wrong timbre, the wrong tone, not right at all. Her face brightened. "My boyfriend's waiting for me," she added.

Damon felt something inside him snap. In a fraction of a second, he had pulled the girl roughly back to him. With no care or finesse, he ripped back into her throat, gulping her rich, hot blood furiously. He was punishing her, he realized, and taking pleasure in it.

Now that she was no longer under his thrall, she screamed and struggled, beating against his back with her fists. Damon pinned her with one arm and expertly worked his fangs in and out of her neck to widen the bite, drinking more blood, faster. Her blows grew weaker and she swayed in his arms.

When she went limp, he dropped her, and she landed on the forest floor with a heavy thud.

For a moment, he stared into the dark woods around him, listening to the steady chirp of the crickets. The girl lay unmoving at his feet. Although he had not needed to breathe for more than five hundred years, he was gasping, almost dizzy.

He touched his own lips and brought his hand back red and dripping. It had been a long time since he'd lost control of himself like that. Hundreds of years, probably. He stared down at the crumpled body at his feet. The girl looked so small now, her face serene and empty, lashes dark against her pale cheeks.

Damon wasn't sure if she was dead or alive. He realized he didn't want to find out.

He backed away a few steps from the girl, feeling oddly uncertain, and then turned and ran, swift and silent through the darkness of the woods, listening only to the pounding of his own heart.

Damon had always done what he wanted. Feeling bad about what was natural for a vampire, that was for someone like Stefan. But, as he ran, an uncharacteristic sensation in the pit of his stomach nagged at him, something that felt more than a little bit like guilt.

"But you said Ethan was dead," Bonnie said. She felt Meredith flinch beside her and bit her tongue. Of course Meredith would be sensitive about Ethan's possible survival; she'd killed him, or had thought she had. Meredith's face was hard and guarded now, revealing nothing.

"I should have cut off his head to make sure," Meredith said, sweeping her flashlight from side to side to illuminate the stone walls of the tunnel. Bonnie nodded to herself, realizing something she should have guessed: Meredith was angry.

Meredith's call alerting Bonnie to Ethan's disappearance had come while Bonnie and Zander were having a late dinner at the student union. It had been a sweet, easy date: burgers and Cokes and Zander gently trapping her foot between his two bigger ones under the table as he sneakily stole her fries.

And now, here she and Zander were, looking for vampires in the secret underground tunnels beneath the campus with Meredith and Matt. Elena and Stefan were doing the same thing in the woods around the campus overhead. Not the most romantic we-just-got-back-together date, Bonnie thought with a resigned shrug. But they do say couples should share their hobbies.

Matt, striding along on Meredith's other side, seemed grimly determined, his jaw clenched and his eyes fixed straight ahead down the long, dark tunnel. Bonnie felt sorry for him. All the strain the rest of them felt had to be a hundred times worse for Matt right now.

"You with us, Matt?" Meredith asked, apparently reading Bonnie's mind.

Matt sighed and kneaded at the back of his neck with one hand as if his muscles were strained and stiff. "Yeah, I'm with you." He paused and took a breath. "Except . . ." He trailed off and then started again. "Except maybe some of them we can help, right? Stefan could teach them how to be vampires who don't hurt people. Even Damon changed, didn't he? And Chloe . . ." His cheeks were flushed with emotion. "None of them deserved this. They didn't know what they were getting into."

"No," Meredith answered, touching Matt's elbow lightly with one hand. "They didn't."

Bonnie'd known that Matt was friends with the sweet-faced junior Chloe, but she was beginning to understand that he'd felt much more than that. How terrible to know that Meredith might have to thrust a stave through the chest of someone he was falling in love with, and how much worse to know that it was the right thing to do.

Zander had a soft expression in his eyes, and Bonnie realized he was thinking the same thing. He took her hand, his long strong fingers wrapping around hers, and Bonnie snuggled a little closer to him.

But as they rounded a dark bend in the tunnel, Zander suddenly let go of Bonnie and stepped protectively in front of her as Meredith raised her stave. Bonnie, a beat behind the others, didn't see the two figures entwined against the wall until they were already breaking apart. No, not entwined like lovers, she realized, but a vampire clinging to its victim. Matt stiffened, staring at them, and let out a soft involuntary sound of surprise. There was a sudden snarl and a flash of white teeth in the darkness as the vampire, a girl no taller than Bonnie herself, pushed her victim violently away. He fell to the ground at her feet.

Bonnie stepped around Zander, keeping a careful eye on the vampire, who was now huddled against the wall. She flinched involuntarily at the vampire's stare, the feral, fierce look in the dark eyes fixing on her, but kept going until she could kneel down next to the victim and reach to check his pulse. It was steady, but he was bleeding pretty badly, and she took off her jacket and pressed it against his throat to staunch the blood. Her hands were shaking and she concentrated on stilling them, on doing what needed to be done. Beneath the young man's eyelids, she could see his eyes moving rapidly back and forth, as if he was caught in a bad dream, but he stayed unconscious.

The girl - the vampire, Bonnie reminded herself - was watching Meredith now, her body tensed to fight or run away. She cringed back as Meredith stepped closer, blocking her in. Meredith raised her stave higher, aiming it at the middle of the girl's chest.

"Wait," the girl said hoarsely, holding out her hands. She looked past Meredith and seemed to see Matt for the first time. "Matt," she said. "Help me. Please." She was staring hard at him, visibly concentrating, and Bonnie realized with a start that the vampire was trying to use Power to make Matt do what she wanted. It wasn't working, though - she must not be strong enough yet - and after a moment her eyes rolled back and she sagged against the wall.

"Beth, we want to give you a chance," Matt said to the vampire. "Do you know what happened to Ethan?"

The girl shook her head emphatically, her long hair flying around her. Her eyes were flicking back and forth between Meredith and the tunnel behind her, and she edged sideways. Meredith followed her, moving closer, the stave pressed against the vampire's chest.

"We can't just kill her," Matt said to Meredith, a slightly desperate note in his voice. "Not if there's another option." Meredith snorted in disbelief and angled even closer to the vampire - Beth, Matt had called her - who bared her teeth in a silent snarl.

"Hang on a second," Zander said, and stepped over Beth's victim's unconscious body, brushing past Bonnie. Before Bonnie really understood what was happening, Zander had pulled Beth away from Meredith and pressed her against the wall of the tunnel.

"Hey!" Meredith said indignantly, and then frowned in confusion. Zander was gazing intently into Beth's eyes, his face serious and calm. She was staring back at him, her restless eyes still now, her breathing hard.

"Do you know where Ethan is?" Zander asked in a low, calm voice, and it felt to Bonnie as if something, some invisible blast of Power, flew between them.

In a second, Beth's wary face emptied of all expression. "He's hiding in the safe house at the end of the tunnels," she said. Her voice sounded half-asleep, disconnected from her thoughts.

"Are there other vampires with him?" Zander asked, his eyes steady on hers.

"Yes," Beth said. "Everyone's staying there until the equinox, when all Ethan's hopes will be fulfilled."

Two days, Bonnie thought. The others had told her that Ethan had planned to resurrect Klaus, the Original vampire. She shivered at the thought. Klaus had been scary, one of the scariest things she'd ever seen. But could they really do it? Ethan hadn't gotten Stefan's and Damon's blood, and he couldn't do the resurrection spell without it. Could he?

"Ask her what their defenses are like," Meredith said, getting with the program.

"Is he well defended?" Zander asked.

Beth's head jerked into a stiff nod, as if an invisible puppeteer had pulled her strings. "No one can get to him," she said in that same sleepy monotone. "He's hidden, and every one of us would give our lives to protect him."

Meredith nodded, clearly weighing the words of her next question, but Matt broke in. "Can we save her?" he asked, and the pain in his voice made Bonnie flinch. "Maybe if she wasn't so hungry . . ."

Zander focused in even more strongly on Beth, and Bonnie again felt a wave of Power emanating from him. "Do you want to hurt people, Beth?" he asked quietly.

Beth chuckled, a rich, dark sound, although her face stayed blandly expressionless. That laugh was the first emotion she had shown since Zander had somehow charmed her into blankness and truth. "I don't want to hurt - I want to kill," she said, with a hard amusement in her tone. "I've never felt so alive."

Zander stepped back with a quick animal grace. At the same moment Meredith smoothly shot forward, shoving her stave through Beth's heart.

After the tearing noise of wood through flesh, Beth fell without a sound. Matt's gasp broke the silence, a startled, pained little noise. At Bonnie's knees, Beth's victim stirred, his head turning from one side to the other. Bonnie automatically patted him soothingly with the hand that wasn't keeping pressure on his neck wounds. "It's okay," she said quietly.

Meredith turned to Matt defiantly. "I had to," she said.

Matt bowed his head, his shoulders sagging. "I know," he answered. "Believe me, I know. It's just . . ." He shifted from one foot to the other. "She was a nice girl, before this happened to her."

"I'm sorry," Meredith said quietly, and Matt nodded, still looking at the ground. Then Meredith turned to Zander. "What was that?" she asked. "How did you get her to talk?"

Zander blushed a little. "Um. Well," he said, and shrugged one shoulder self-consciously. "There's this thing some of us Original werewolves can do, if we've practiced. We can make people tell the truth. It doesn't work on everyone, but I thought it was worth a try."

Bonnie stared up at him quizzically. "You didn't tell me that," she said.

Zander lowered himself down onto his knees and faced her across Beth's unconscious victim. His eyes were wide and sincere. "I'm sorry," he said. "I honestly didn't think about it. It's just one of the weird little things we can do."

The unconscious guy's bleeding seemed to have slowed, and Bonnie sat back on her heels. Zander raised his eyebrows at her, looking hopeful, and she smiled back at him. She'd have to find out what these other "little things" were, she guessed.

"Seems like that's something that could be pretty useful," she said, and watched Zander's face relax into a sunny, joyful grin.

Meredith cleared her throat. She was still watching Matt, her eyes full of sympathy, but her voice was dry. "We should get everyone together as soon as possible. If Ethan's still trying to resurrect Klaus, we need to come up with a plan now."

Klaus. The stone of the tunnel floor beneath Bonnie's knees was suddenly freezing. Klaus was darkness, violence, and fear. They had only defeated him back in Fell's Church by an extraordinary intervention, by Fell's Church's ghosts rising against him. That wasn't something they'd be able to recreate. What could they do now? Bonnie closed her eyes for a second, dizzy. She could picture, vividly, darkness rising up from below them, thick and choking, eager to consume them. Something evil was coming.

Chapter 3

Elena laced her fingers through Stefan's, thrilling at even this little touch. It felt like it had been so long since they had been alone together, so long since she'd even been close enough to Stefan to touch him. All this evening she'd found herself leaning against his side, brushing her thumb over his knuckles, wrapping her arm around his waist, tracing her finger along his collarbone: any little touch she could have. Anything to feel the simple, satisfying reality of Stefan, here with her at last.

It was a pleasantly warm night, and there was soft moss underfoot. A breeze rustled the leaves of the forest trees all around them, and through the trees' branches she could glimpse a sky full of stars. It had all the elements of a romantic stroll through the woods, except for the fact that they were searching for bloodthirsty vampires.

"I don't sense anything," Stefan said. His hand was reassuringly tight around hers, but his dark green eyes held a faraway look, and Elena knew he was using his Power to scan the forest. "No vampires and no one in pain or afraid, as far as I can tell. I don't think there's anyone around."

"We'll keep looking, though. Just in case," Elena urged. Stefan nodded. There were limits to Stefan's searching Power: someone much stronger than he was could hide from it; someone much weaker might not catch his attention. And some creatures, like werewolves, he couldn't sense at all.

"I know I shouldn't be thinking about this with everything that's going on, but all I want is to be alone with you," Elena confessed quietly. "Things are happening so fast. If Ethan brings Klaus back . . . it feels like we might not have much time."

Stefan let go of Elena's hand and touched her face lightly, his fingers brushing over her cheeks and the curve of her eyebrow, a thumb ghosting across her lips. His eyes darkened with passion, and he smiled. Then he kissed her, softly at first.

Oh, Elena thought, and then, yes.

As if he'd been waiting for her confirmation, Stefan's kisses became more passionate. His hand fisted gently in her hair, and they moved backward until she was pressed against a tree. The bark was rough against her bare shoulders, but Elena didn't care; she just kissed Stefan fiercely, hungrily.

This is right, Elena thought. This is like coming home, and she felt Stefan's agreement and the strength of his love. Yes, he thought, and more.

Their minds entwined and Elena relaxed into the slow familiar spiral of Stefan's thoughts and emotions. There was love there - solid, constant love - and there was a steady bruiselike ache of regret at the time they'd lost. Strongest of all, there was a sense of joyous relief. I didn't know how I was going to live without you, Stefan thought to her. I couldn't live forever, knowing you weren't mine.

At the thought of forever, a thrum of anxiety shot through Elena. Barring a death by violence, forever was a given for Stefan. He would go on, unaging and beautiful, always eighteen. And Elena? Would she grow old and die with Stefan eternally young by her side? She didn't doubt that he would stay with her, no matter what.

There were other possibilities. She'd been a vampire once, and she'd suffered, being separated from her human friends and family, divided from the living world. She knew Stefan wouldn't wish that life on her. But it was an option, although they never talked about it.

Her mind touched on a certain bottle tucked in the back of her closet at home, and shied away again. She'd stolen a single bottle of the water of eternal life from the Guardians when she and her friends had traveled in the Dark Dimension. Its existence, and the choice it offered her, was always at the edges of her mind. But she wasn't ready to make that decision, to end her mortal life. Not yet.

She was still growing, still changing. Was the person Elena was now really the person she wanted to be for the rest of her life? She was so flawed, so unfinished. Drinking the water of eternal life, or becoming a vampire, would close doors Elena wasn't ready to shut yet. She wanted to stay human. She ached inside at that: Would she be human now? Could she be human, if she had to become a Guardian?

All of this she considered in a private corner of her mind while most of her was focusing on the sweet sensations of Stefan's lips and body against hers and the steady thread of love passing between them. Enough of her emotions must have broken through to Stefan, though, that he responded. Whatever you want, Elena, he thought to her, gentle and reassuring. I'll be with you. Forever. However long that might be for you.

She knew that meant Stefan would understand even if she decided to live a natural life, to grow old and die. And there would be reasons to do that. Stefan and Damon had both lost something by never aging, never changing. They sensed that part of their humanity was gone.

But how could she face someday abandoning Stefan? She couldn't imagine dying again, dying and leaving him behind. Elena pressed her back more firmly against the rough bark of the tree and kissed Stefan harder, feeling more fiercely alive with the almost-painful contrast of sensations.

Then she pulled back. She'd kept so much from Stefan since she'd come to Dalcrest. She wasn't going to go down that path again, wasn't going to love him while locking him out of parts of her life.

"There's something I have to tell you," she said. "You need to know everything. I can't - I can't hide things from you, not now." Stefan frowned questioningly, and she dropped her gaze to her hand against his shirt as she twisted the fabric nervously. "James told me something yesterday, before the fight," she blurted. "I'm not who I thought I was, not exactly. The Guardians chose my parents - they made me - and my parents were supposed to hand me over when I was twelve to become a Guardian. My parents refused and that was why they died. It wasn't just a random accident. The Guardians killed them. And now after learning this, I'm supposed to become one of them?"

Stefan looked flabbergasted for a moment, and then his face filled with sympathy. "Oh, Elena," he said, and pulled her close again, trying now to comfort her.

Elena let herself relax against his chest. Thank God Stefan understood that the idea of becoming one of the Guardians, those cold regulators of order, was nothing to celebrate, even if it would bring her Power.

"I'll help you," Stefan said. "If you want to try to bargain your way out of it, or fight this, or go through with it. Whatever you want."

"I know," Elena said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face into his shoulder.

Suddenly, she felt Stefan's body tense against hers and realized he was looking around. "Stefan?" she asked.

He was looking off into the distance over her head, his mouth tight and eyes alert. "I'm sorry, Elena," he said as Elena pulled away and met his gaze. "We'll have to talk about this later. I just felt something. Someone in pain. And now that the wind has changed, I think I smell blood."

Elena tamped down her emotions, forcing herself back into calm rationality. All of this, all her own problems and questions, could wait. They had a job to do. "Where?" she asked.

Stefan took Elena's hand and led her farther into the undergrowth. The trees blocked out more of the stars here, and she stumbled over roots and stones in the darkness. Stefan steadied her, guiding their way.

A moment later, they burst into another clearing. It took Elena's eyes a second to adjust, to see the dark shape Stefan was already moving toward cautiously. Huddled on the ground lay the body of a human.

They dropped to their knees beside it, and Stefan reached out and carefully, gently turned the person over. The body flopped heavily onto its back. A girl, Elena realized. A girl about her own age, her face pale and empty. Golden hair shone in the starlight. There was blood on her throat.

"Is she dead?" she asked in a whisper. The girl was so still.

Stefan touched the girl's cheek, then carefully ran his fingers across her neck, below the trickle of blood, not touching the thick red fluid. "Not dead," he said, and Elena let out a sigh of relief. "But she's lost a lot of blood."

"We'd better get her back to campus," Elena said. "And we'll tell the others the vampires are hunting in the woods. We can come back and find who did this."

Stefan was staring down at the girl's wounds, his mouth oddly twisted in an unreadable expression. "Elena, I - I don't think this was Ethan's vampires," he said hesitantly.

"What do you mean?" Elena asked, puzzled. A root was digging into her knees, and she shifted to get more comfortable, pressing one hand against the cold ground. "What else would have done this?"

Stefan frowned and gently touched the girl's neck again, still careful not to come into contact with the blood. "Look at the marks," he said. "The vampire who did this was angry and careless, but he was experienced. The bite is clean and in the perfect place to get the maximum amount of blood without killing the victim." He smoothed the girl's hair carefully, as if to comfort her. He looked like he was in pain, his teeth clenched, his eyes narrow. "Elena, Damon did this," he said.

Everything in Elena tightened and she shook her head, her hair whipping around her. "No," she said. "He wouldn't just leave someone in the woods to die."

Stefan had a far-off look on his face and she instinctively reached out to touch his arm, trying to comfort him. He closed his eyes for a second and leaned into her. "After five hundred years, I can recognize Damon's bite," he said sadly. "Sometimes it seems like he's changed, but Damon doesn't change." The weight of Stefan's words seemed to hit him just as strongly as they hit Elena, and he hunched his shoulders.

For a moment, Elena couldn't breathe, and she gulped, feeling dizzy and sick. Damon? Images flashed in her mind's eye: Damon's fathomless, dark eyes hot with fury, sharp with bitterness. And softer, warmer sometimes, when he looked at her or at Stefan. A hard kernel of denial formed in her chest.

"No," she said, and looking at Stefan, she repeated it more firmly. "No. Damon's hurting, because of us - because of me." Stefan nodded almost imperceptibly. "We're not going to give up on him. He has changed, he's done so much for us, for all of us. He cares, Stefan, and we can pull him back from this. He didn't kill her. It's not too late."

Stefan was listening to her carefully and after a moment he drew his hand wearily across his face, his features firming with resolve. "We have to keep this a secret," he said. "Meredith and the others can't know what Damon's done."

Elena remembered Meredith's expression as she wielded her stave, and swallowed hard. The hunter in Meredith wouldn't hesitate to kill Damon if she thought he was a real danger to innocent humans. "You're right," she said thinly. "We can't tell anyone."

Reaching across the body of unconscious girl, Stefan took Elena's hand in his again. She clasped his hand tightly, her eyes meeting his in a silent pledge. They would work together; they would save Damon. It was going to be all right.

Chapter 4

Elena didn't tell anyone about the girl they'd found in the woods. Elena and Stefan had shaken the girl and poured cool water on her face, trying to wake her up without having to take her to the hospital. Blood had pooled through the bandages they'd put on the girl's wounds - Damon had bitten too deeply, Stefan said - and finally Stefan had fed her blood from his own wrist, grimacing, to help her heal. He didn't feel right doing that, Elena knew: the exchange of blood was too intimate, meant love to Stefan, but what else could they do? They couldn't let her die.

When the girl finally regained consciousness, Stefan Influenced her to forget what had happened, and he and Elena helped her back to her sorority house. By the time they'd left her, near dawn, she'd been flushed and giggling, sure that she'd just been out too late drinking on a fabulous night.

Back in her dorm room, Elena had tried to sleep, but she'd been too worked up. She tossed and turned under her clean cotton sheets, remembering the frustration in Stefan's eyes as he told her, Damon did this, and the suppressed flash of panic she'd seen when he said, We have to keep this a secret.

She'd known Damon still fed off humans, although she usually managed not to think about it. But he hadn't done any real harm, not for a long time. Now he used his Power to convince pretty girls to give him their blood willingly, and then left them with nothing but a vague memory of an evening spent with a charming and mysterious man with an Italian accent. If that. Sometimes they just had a hole in their memory.

And, sure, it was wrong. Elena knew that, even if Damon didn't. The girls weren't in their right minds. He fed on them, and they never really understood. Elena was sure that if it happened to her, or Bonnie, or anyone she cared about, she would have been outraged and disgusted. But she'd been able to ignore the facts when the end result - Damon satisfied, his victims seemingly unscathed - appeared to be so benign.

But this time he clearly hadn't bothered to be careful with the girl, or to make it easy on her. She'd been bleeding alone in the woods, and when she'd finally woken, she had been screaming. Elena shuddered at the memory, sick with guilt.

Was this the reality she'd been ignoring? Maybe Damon had been attacking people all this time and hiding it from her, and the idea of the woozy, unaware, and happy victim was a lie. Or maybe there had been a change, and it was Elena's fault. Had Damon done this in a rage, because Elena had chosen Stefan?

Elena tried once more to reach Damon, but when it rang through to voice mail, she pushed the "end call" button on her phone. She'd been calling Damon on and off all morning and had left a couple of messages already, but he hadn't picked up or called her back.

"Was that Stefan?" Bonnie asked, coming out of the bathroom toweling off her hair. Red strands curled wildly over her face in all directions. "Is he on his way?"

"Everybody should be here any minute," Elena answered, not correcting Bonnie's assumption. They had decided to meet today to start planning their defense against the Vitale vampires, and to try to figure out how to stop them before they could resurrect Klaus.

And soon, everyone (except Damon) was there: Meredith sitting on her bed, gray eyes alert as she carefully sharpened a hunting knife; Matt, still looking pale, hunched over in Elena's desk chair; Bonnie and Zander cuddled together on Bonnie's bed, adorably happy with the flush of new love despite the seriousness of the situation. As Elena looked over at them, Zander murmured something in Bonnie's ear and she blushed.

Stefan joined Elena on her bed, taking her hand in his. Still, after a year, Elena felt a jolt of excitement move from her fingertips straight to her heart. Elena stared at him for a moment, looking for some indication of how upset he'd been the night before, a clue about whether he'd managed to talk to Damon yet, but there was nothing.

"Okay, everybody," Meredith said, running her thumb along the sharpened blade of her knife. "We know that Ethan is hiding - "

"Wait," Elena said. "There's something I need to tell all of you." Stefan's eyes snapped to hers, hard and bright, and she realized she had been wrong about him being calm. The secret about Damon had him tightly strung.

"Um," she said, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. She remembered how they had all felt about the cold, didactic Guardians they had met in the Dark Dimensions, the ones who had stripped her of her Powers (painfully - she couldn't forget how much it had hurt when they cut her Wings) and who had refused to bring Damon back from death. But she pushed her jaw out proudly, stubbornly, and kept going.

"I just found out that I'm a Guardian," she said flatly.

There was a blank silence.

Finally, Zander broke it. "A guardian of what?" he asked tentatively, glancing to Bonnie for clarification.

Bonnie, frowning, waved one hand in the air in a grand, encompassing gesture. "Of everything, really," she said vaguely. "If Elena means a Guardian Guardian." She looked at Elena for confirmation, and Elena nodded. "They're these awful women - at least they look like women - who are meant to keep things running in the universe the way they're supposed to. I don't really understand how Elena could be one, though. They don't live here. It's an alternate-dimension kind of thing. They're not really people, I don't think." She turned to Elena, her face open and confused. "What do you mean, Elena?" she asked.

Elena looked away from her, staring at the wall. The skin on her face felt like it was too tight, and her eyes were burning. "James - my history professor - knew my parents when they were in college. He was really close to them," she told her friends, forcing herself to keep it together. "He told me that they agreed to have a child who would be a Guardian on Earth. He said I was supposed to be trained by the Guardians when I was twelve, but my parents didn't want to hand me over." Her voice shook a little, and she stared very hard at the Matisse print she had hung above her bed. Pressing her shoulder against Stefan's, she took comfort in the solidity of his body next to hers, and didn't look at anyone.

Then Meredith was next to her, and her narrow hand took hold of Elena's. In a moment, Bonnie had squeezed herself onto the bed as well and was gazing at Elena with wide, sympathetic brown eyes.

"We're on your side, you know that, Elena," Meredith said calmly, and Bonnie nodded.

"Velociraptor sisterhood, right?" she said, and Elena cracked a tiny smile at their old private joke. "If the Guardians take on one of us, they take on all of us. Even though they're pretty scary. We'll fend them off."

Elena gave a short, half-hysterical laugh. "Thanks," she said. "Really. But I don't think there's any way to get out of this. I don't even know what it means exactly, being a Guardian on Earth."

"Then that's the first thing to find out," Meredith said sensibly. "Alaric's coming up to visit this weekend. He might know something, or at least be able to discover what the story is on Earthly Guardians." Meredith's more-or-less fiance, Alaric, was working on a doctorate in paranormal studies, and the various contacts he had often came in handy.

"We will figure something out, Elena," Bonnie promised.

Elena blinked back tears. Bonnie and Meredith had drawn closer to her, shutting everyone out for a moment, even though Stefan was still strong beside her. She could always rely on the three of them coming together when one of them was threatened. They'd been watching out for one another since the worst thing they had to worry about was elementary school bullies and mean teachers.

Stefan pulled her closer against him. From their seats, Matt and Zander were watching her with almost identical expressions of sympathy and concern. Meredith was right: Elena wasn't alone. She let out a breath, and her shoulders loosened, releasing some of the misery she'd been holding since James had told her the secret of her birth.

"I'm glad Alaric's coming. And it's a good idea to ask him what he can find out. Maybe James can tell us more, too," Elena said. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, thinking. "Actually, he'd better be able to tell us something. He's known about this since before I was born. He's had about twenty years to find out something useful." Then she clapped her hands once, and tried to push all her fears aside. "For now, though, we need to focus on Ethan and the vampires." Elena felt her old self coming back to the surface, forceful and energetic and ready to make plans.

Stefan squeezed Elena's knee as he climbed off the bed. "Tonight is our last chance to stop Ethan," he said, standing in the middle of the room and looking at them all seriously. His face was shadowed and intense, his normally leaf-green eyes dark. "Tomorrow is the equinox, when the separation between the realms of the living and the dead is at its weakest. That's when they'll try and resurrect Klaus. Meredith, what's our weapons situation?"

Meredith rose, too, and opened her closet, pulling out her various bags of weapons: her special hunter's stave with its spikes of materials from silver to ash to tiny hypodermic needles, made to affect all the different creatures a hunter might fight; an assortment of knives of various sizes, from a long silver dagger to a thin, practical boot knife, all razor-sharp; staffs and throwing stars and machetes and maces and a number of things Elena couldn't even begin to guess at the names for.

"Wow," said Zander, who had rolled onto his stomach on Bonnie's bed to watch her. He looked at Meredith with new respect and a bit of trepidation. "You're like a one-woman army."

Meredith flushed slightly. "It might be overkill," she said, "but I like to be prepared." She pulled out a wooden trunk from her closet. "And I have this. Alaric helped me gather it all before school started." She opened the box with a half-apologetic glance at Stefan, who flinched and stepped backward, away from the trunk. Elena craned to see. It looked like some kind of plant in there, filling the box to the brim.

Oh. The box was crammed full of vervain. There was probably enough there to incapacitate a whole colony of vampires, if they could only figure out a way to rub it on them, or get them to eat it. At the very least, they'd all be able to protect themselves from being Influenced.

"Good," Stefan said briskly, recovering from his instinctive reaction to the vervain. "That should come in handy. Now, Matt, what can you tell us about the underground tunnels?"

Elena felt a little pulse of pride run through her as Stefan turned to Matt, quickly getting him to sketch out on paper what he remembered and what he had heard about the Vitales' safe house and network of tunnels. Stefan was nodding and asking questions, gently nudging Matt's memory, encouraging him to share even the smallest detail. Matt's eyes widened, his voice gaining strength as Stefan's questions continued, as if Matt was beginning to piece together the bigger picture in a new way.

Stefan had changed. When he had first come to Fell's Church, he had been so quiet and distant, reluctant to make any kind of mark on the humans who surrounded him. He had felt, Elena knew, like he was diseased, like he couldn't be among mortals without spreading death and despair.

Now he had the quality of a natural leader. As if he felt Elena's eyes on him, Stefan glanced up at her, his lips forming a small, private smile just for her. She knew this change in Stefan was due to her and to all that had happened in the past year. Surely, whatever Damon had done - even if he was sinking into violence again because of Elena - here in Stefan was something that she could be uncomplicatedly proud of?

"Couldn't we do something with all that vervain?" Bonnie asked suddenly. "Like, burn it, or make it a gas somehow and fill the tunnels with its smoke? If we blocked the other exits, all the vampires would go into the house. We could trap them and burn the house down, or at least get to all of them at once."

"That's a good idea, Bonnie," Stefan said. Zander agreed enthusiastically and Bonnie's face lit up with pleasure. It was funny, Elena thought, that they were all used to thinking of Bonnie as sort of the junior member of the group, the one who needed to be protected, and she really wasn't; she hadn't been for a long time.

"What other resources do we have?" Stefan asked thoughtfully, pacing back and forth across the room.

"I could get the guys to help out," Zander suggested. "We've been after the Vitale vampires for a while. We won't be as strong as we would be if it were the right lunar phase, and not all ten of us can transition without the full moon. But we work pretty well together . . ." His voice trailed off. "If you want us," he added. "I know you don't all feel comfortable with werewolves, and, to be honest, we're not usually big fans of vampires. No offense." He looked from Stefan to Meredith, who still held the knife against her leg.

Meredith, of course, was the one most likely to object to bringing a Pack of werewolves into their group. Bonnie had assured them that Zander's Pack was different than the werewolves they'd met before - that they were good, more like guard dogs than wild animals. But Meredith had been raised to hunt monsters.

Now she nodded slowly to Zander, though, and said only, "We can use all the help we can get." Bonnie and Meredith locked eyes across the room and Bonnie's lips tipped up in a tiny, satisfied smile.

"Speaking of 'all the help we can get,'" Meredith said. "Where's Damon?" She looked from Elena to Stefan when they didn't immediately answer. "This is one time when we can really use him. You should call him and get him in on the plan." Her expression was sympathetic but determined, and Elena realized that Meredith thought they were hesitating because Elena had almost-dated Damon while she and Stefan had been apart. If only Meredith knew the truth, she thought, but she can't ever know. Stefan and I need to keep Damon safe.

"Maybe you could call him, Elena?" Bonnie asked tentatively.

Elena's and Stefan's eyes met. Stefan's face was blank and controlled again, and Elena couldn't see the tiniest crack in his armor as he cut in, smoothly and casually, "No, I'll call Damon. I need to talk to him, anyway."

Elena bit her lip and nodded. She wanted to see Damon for herself - she was desperate to see him, to know what was wrong with him, wanting to fix it - but he wasn't taking her calls. Maybe what Damon needed right now from Elena was space. She hoped that Stefan, at least, could get through to him.

Chapter 5

When Stefan knocked on the door of Damon's apartment, Damon opened it almost immediately, glared at Stefan, and tried to slam the door shut in his face.

"Stop," Stefan said, inserting his shoulder in the doorway. "You must have been able to sense that it was me."

"I knew you'd keep knocking or find a way in if I didn't answer," Damon said fiercely. "So I'm answering. Now go away."

Damon looked wrecked. Nothing could take away from the elegance of his features, but they were tense and drawn, the skin over his cheekbones white with strain. His lips were pale, his dark eyes bloodshot, and his usually sleek black hair disarranged. Stefan ignored his words and leaned closer, trying to make his brother meet his eyes.

"Damon," he said. "I found the girl in the woods last night."

Anyone who hadn't known Damon as long and as well as Stefan had - and so anyone except Stefan - would have missed the split second of stillness before Damon's face settled into cool disdain. "Have you come to preach to me, baby brother?" he asked. "I'm afraid I don't have the time just now, but perhaps another day? Next week sometime?"

He slid his eyes over Stefan, then glanced away dismissively. Just like that, Stefan felt like a child again, back home all those centuries ago, and his daring, charming, despicable, infuriating older brother was putting him in his place.

"She was still alive," Stefan said steadily. "I took her home. She's all right."

Damon shrugged. "How nice for you. Always the parfait knight."

Stefan's hand shot out and gripped Damon's arm. "Dammit, Damon," he said, frustrated, "stop playing with me. I came to tell you that you have to be careful. If you had killed that girl, it would have caught up with you."

Damon blinked at him. "That's it?" he asked, his voice the smallest bit less hostile. "You want me to be careful? Don't you have an overwhelming urge to scold me, little brother? Threaten me, maybe?"

Stefan sighed and slumped against the doorframe, his urgency sucked away. "Would scolding you do any good, Damon?" he asked. "Or threatening you? It's never worked before. I just don't want you to kill anyone. You're my brother, and we need each other."

Damon's face tightened again, and Stefan reconsidered his words. Sometimes talking to Damon was like walking through a minefield. "I need you, anyway," he said. "You saved my life. Which, in case you didn't notice, you've done a lot this past year."

Damon leaned against the opposite side of the doorframe and studied Stefan, his face thoughtful, but remained silent. Wishing he knew what Damon was thinking, Stefan sent a questing tendril of Power toward his brother, trying to catch his mood, but Damon merely sneered, easily shutting him out.

Stefan bowed his head and kneaded the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Was it always going to be like this, for the next long centuries together? "Look," he said. "There's enough going on with the other vampires on campus without you starting to hunt again. Ethan's still alive, and he's planning to try to bring back Klaus tomorrow night."

Damon's frown deepened for a moment, then smoothed out. His face could have been carved from stone.

"We can't stop him without you," Stefan continued, his mouth dry.

Damon's night-dark eyes gave nothing away and then he flashed his briefest, most brilliant smile. "Sorry," he said. "I'm not interested."

"What?" Stefan felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. He had expected Damon's defensiveness and sarcasm. But after Damon had saved him from Ethan, the last thing he had expected was indifference.

Damon shrugged, straightening up and adjusting his clothes, brushing an imagined speck of dust from the front of his black shirt. "I've had enough," he said, his tone casual. "Meddling in the affairs of your pet humans has gone stale for me. If Ethan brings back Klaus, then he can deal with him. I doubt it'll go well for him."

"Klaus will remember that you attacked him," Stefan said. "He'll be after you."

Cocking one eyebrow, Damon smiled again, a quick, savage baring of his white teeth. "I doubt I'll be his first priority, little brother," he said.

And it was true, Stefan remembered. In that hideous last battle with Klaus, Damon had stabbed the Old One with white ash, keeping him from striking the final blow against Stefan. But he hadn't been responsible for Klaus's death. Stefan had engineered the fight against Klaus, had done his best to kill him. But, in the end, he had failed, too. It was Elena, bringing an army of the dead against the Original vampire, who had killed him.

"Elena," Stefan said desperately. "Elena needs you."

He was positive that would do it, that Damon's armor would crack. Damon always came through for Elena. But this time Damon's lip curled in a sneer. "I'm sure you can handle things," he said lightly, his voice brittle. "Elena's well-being is your responsibility now, not mine."

"Damon - "

"No." Damon held up a warning hand. "I told you. I'm done." And with one quick motion, he slammed the door in Stefan's face.

Stefan rested his forehead against the door, feeling defeated.

"Damon," he said again. He knew Damon could hear him, but there was only silence from inside the apartment. Slowly, he backed away from the door. It would be best not to push Damon, not when he was in this mood.

In this mood, Damon might do anything.

"I'm so glad you came to see me, Elena," Professor Campbell said. "I was worried about you after" - he glanced around surreptitiously and lowered his voice, although they were alone in his office - "our last talk." He peered at her cautiously, his usually inquisitive and rather smug face clouded with uncertainty.

"I'm sorry I ran off like that, James," Elena told him, staring down into the cup of sweet, milky coffee he had given her. "It's just . . . when you told me I was a Guardian and the truth about what happened to my parents, I needed some time to think. Last summer, I met a few Guardians. They were powerful, but so inhuman."

She still couldn't accept that she was supposed to become like them. The whole idea was so big and horrifying that her mind kept scuttling away from it, focusing on solid and immediate concerns like the vampires on campus instead.

Elena's hands shook a little, making the coffee swirl and eddy. She carefully steadied her cup.

James patted her gently on the shoulder. "Well, I have been doing some research, and I think I have good news," he said.

"I could use good news," she said softly, almost pleadingly. "I don't really understand what a human Guardian would be like. Would I be different than a Celestial Guardian?"

James smiled for the first time since she had walked into his office. "After we spoke," he said, "I started to contact all my old colleagues who have studied mythology or magic, anyone who I thought might know something about the Guardians."

Now that he had information to impart, James lost his tentativeness and seemed to expand, his shoulders relaxing as he hooked his thumbs into his suit vest. "Legend has it," he said, his voice taking on its lecturing tone, "that human Guardians are rare, but there are always two or three in the world. Generally, their parents are recruited in the same way the Guardians recruited your parents, and then the children are handed over to the Guardians for training as they enter adolescence."

Elena closed her eyes for a moment, wincing. She couldn't imagine being given to the Guardians and losing her human life so young. But if she had been, her mother and father would still be alive.

"When the human Guardians reach young adulthood - about your age, Elena," James continued, "they're stationed where there are high concentrations of ley lines and, therefore, large amounts of supernatural activity."

"Like here," Elena said. "And Fell's Church."

James nodded. "The evidence shows pretty strongly that the Guardians recruit prospective parents from ley line - heavy places," he said. "So the human Guardians can stay near their homes."

"But what are the human Guardians for?" Elena asked. "What am I supposed to do?" She realized she was gripping her cup so tightly she might break it, so she put it down on James's desk and held on to the arms of her chair instead.

"The role of the human Guardians is to protect the innocent from the supernatural on Earth," James said. "They maintain balance. And it seems that the Guardians develop different powers depending on what is needed where they live. So we won't know what your exact powers are until they begin to form."

"Protecting the innocent, I can handle," Elena said. She gave James a shaky smile. She wasn't so sure about "maintaining balance." In her opinion, the Guardians of the Celestial Court had been so obsessed with balance and order that they had forgotten about the innocent. Or perhaps the innocent were only the concern of the Guardians on Earth. But if that was true, wouldn't someone have looked out for her parents?

James smiled back. "That's what I thought. And," he said, with an air of having saved the best for last, "my colleague has located one of the other Guardians on Earth." He pulled a sheet of paper from a folder on his desk and passed it to her.

It was a printout of a color photograph, a little grainy. In it, a dark-haired man, maybe a year or two older than Elena, smiled at the camera. His brown eyes were narrowed in the sun's glare and his teeth were bright white against his tan skin.

"His name is Andres Montez, and he's a human Guardian who lives in Costa Rica. My sources didn't have a lot of personal information about him, but they're going to try contacting him. I'm hoping he'll be willing to come to Dalcrest to teach you what he knows." James hesitated, then added, "Although, as a Guardian, I imagine he probably already knows all about you."

Elena traced Andres's face in the picture. Did she want to meet another Guardian? Those dark eyes seemed kind, though.

"It would be good to talk to someone who could tell me what to expect," she told James, looking up. "Thank you for finding him."

James nodded. "I'll let you know as soon as I can get him here," he said.

Despite the news that there was someone else out there like her, someone who might understand, Elena's stomach lurched and she felt like she was falling, spiraling down into something deep and dark and unknown. Would Andres be able to tell her what she most needed to know? Would she still be Elena once her fate caught up with her?

Chapter 6

Stefan, Elena, and five werewolves watched alertly from a hill overlooking the Vitales' darkened safe house. They were waiting for any sign that would indicate Meredith and her team's part of the plan was working and that the Vitale vampires were being driven through their secret tunnels and into the house.

When consulted over the phone, Alaric had suggested that the Vitale vampires would perform the resurrection ritual at midnight on the night of the equinox, so Stefan and Meredith had decided to go on the offense before sunset, when the vampires would be more likely underground and inside, avoiding the daylight. Now late afternoon sunlight reflected off the windows of the safe house, shielding any movement inside from view.

One of Zander's Packmates, Chad, a chemistry major, had been instrumental in making the gas out of Meredith's stash of vervain and the bomblike time-release gadgets that would unleash it into the tunnels. Somewhere beneath their feet, Stefan thought, Meredith and her team - Matt, Zander, and three more werewolves - were placing container after container of the gas, closing off one escape route after another until the vampires would have nowhere to go but the house. Bonnie, protected by another member of Zander's Pack, was at the library, working her spells and charms to keep the vampires from coming up through the tunnel there. Stefan shifted restlessly, wishing he was with the others beneath ground. He could hear distant explosions underfoot, although only someone with a vampire's hearing could have. By his side, Chad stirred, and Stefan amended his thought: a vampire's hearing, or a werewolf's.

Chad, like Zander, was one of the werewolves who could change form without the moon's influence. He was a wolf now, padding around silently past Stefan and Elena, eyes on the house. He whuffed gently through his nose and sat down, his ears twitching back.

"Chad says the vervain gas should have filled the tunnels by now," one of the other werewolves - this one in human form - said, translating the wolf's language. "We ought to see something soon."

Elena moved closer to Stefan and they shared a glance. It was weird seeing the Pack at work: they'd changed from a bunch of scuffling, swearing, goofy boys into a serious, competent team. Each of the wolf-form werewolves was alert and active, their sleek, powerfully muscled bodies clearly attuned to every sound or scent coming toward them. And the human-form werewolves were swift to react to their wolf-brethren's every movement, acting as if there was a constant, silent communication among the Pack.

Maybe that was true. Stefan didn't know, but he thought that being a werewolf was probably a lot less lonely than being a vampire. If you had a Pack.

Chad rose to his feet, the hair along his back bristling, his ears pricked up.

"They're in," one of the human-form werewolves - Stefan thought his name was Daniel - said briefly, and Stefan nodded. He'd heard the trapdoor in the house's basement open, too, and the noise of Meredith, Matt, and the other half of the Pack climbing out of the tunnels. If the vervain bombs had worked, the vampires should have been herded into the house ahead of them.

"Let's go," Stefan said. Zander had ordered the Pack to defer to Stefan on this mission, and they fell in line behind him without argument, the humans shoulder-to-shoulder, the wolves ranging out beside them.

Elena nodded in reply to Stefan's questioning look: Stefan should hurry and leave her to follow. Meredith and the others were walking into a fight, and he should be with them. Stefan turned away from her with what felt like a physical wrench - she'd been in danger so often - but he knew he would hear her if she needed him.

Stefan channeled his Power and began to run. The werewolves kept up with him easily, men and wolves strangely alike with their long, loping strides. Their Power, so incomprehensibly different than his own, was strong and focused. The full blast of it, alive and wild and raw, wrapped around Stefan. It was exhilarating.

They stopped short in the clearing by the Vitale Society's safe house, isolated in the woods near campus. Something was wrong.

Chad cocked his head and gave a soft, low whine. The other wolves picked up on it as well, two anxiously pacing past the front of the house.

"They say the vampires aren't there," Daniel reported.

Stefan had already realized that. Listening hard, he could hear footsteps and muffled swearing as Meredith and her team walked through the small house. But nothing else. More than that, Stefan's Power should have been able to pick up on a group of vampires as large as the Vitale.

"Come on," Stefan said, heading for the front door. He was able to break the lock with a quick flick of his wrist, and entered easily - no human had lived here for a long time. The faint scent of vervain rising from the tunnel entrance in the basement clouded his head for a moment, but he shook it off.

"It's us," he called softly as their friends' feet hesitated upstairs, and one of the wolves curled a long lip as if he was laughing at him. They, of course, had no need to alert the others; their Packmates always knew exactly where they were.

The whole group trooped upstairs to meet the others, crowding the narrow hall of what had probably once been a hunting cabin. Zander, who had turned out to be a stunningly beautiful wolf, pure white with the same sky-blue eyes he had as a human, growled quietly, and his Pack moved closer to him while Stefan made his way to Meredith and Matt.

"The tunnels were empty when we went through," Meredith said grimly. "Either they had other exits we didn't know about, or they weren't there when we set off the gas."

"Do you think they're all out hunting?" Matt asked, his eyes wide and worried.

Stefan shook his head. "Even with their Vitale pledge pins protecting them from the sun, they wouldn't hunt during the day. The sunlight's too tiring for new vampires," he said flatly. "We're too late. They must have already left to begin the resurrection spell. Maybe they're doing it at moonrise instead of midnight." Frustrated, he turned and smashed his fist against the wall, leaving a long crack running through its plaster.

There was the sound of a brief startled movement somewhere on the other side of the now-cracked wall. All the wolves' heads went up at once, and Stefan stiffened with them.

"There's someone here," Daniel translated. "Zander says she's in the room at the end of the hall."

She. Not Ethan, then, but one of his followers.

Stefan led the way toward the door quietly, Zander padding at his side, Meredith just behind him with her stave ready. He was aware of Matt and the rest of the Pack, tense and alert, hanging back to give them room.

With a sudden brutal kick, Stefan burst through the door, raising his arms to fend off an attack.

At the end of the room farthest from the door, a curly-haired girl cowered, her arms up to protect her face, her eyes wide with fright. She looked so vulnerable that Stefan hesitated for a moment, even though he knew immediately what she was.

Meredith shot past him and held her stave to the girl's chest, right above her heart.

"No!" Matt shouted from the doorway, pushing his way through the crowd of werewolves. "Stop, you guys." He crossed the room and stopped in front of the girl. The girl lowered her arms, her face wondering.

"Matt?" she whispered.

"Oh, Chloe," Matt said mournfully. He raised a hand toward her but hesitated before making contact, his hand hanging in midair.

Matt's friend Chloe, Stefan remembered. Chloe, the first girl Matt had seemed to care about since he'd dated Elena, since before Stefan had met him.

Matt's hand dropped back to his side and Stefan wondered if Matt was remembering the vicious murderer his friend Beth had become, if he was already resigning himself to Chloe's fate.

"Where are the other vampires?" Meredith asked coldly, pressing the stave against the other girl's chest.

"They've gone to the woods," Chloe said in a small, terrified voice. "They're going to do the resurrection spell there."

Stefan shook his head. "Ethan can't do the resurrection spell without Damon's blood," he said, hearing the almost pleading tone in his own voice.

Chloe half shrugged, looking back and forth between him and the others. "I don't know," she said helplessly. "He said he had everything he needed."

Ethan had cut Damon during the fight. It was just possible that he had managed to collect some blood, or find enough after the battle, for what he needed. Stefan swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Why aren't you with them?" Meredith asked.

"I didn't want to go," the girl said, her voice shaking. Her gaze settled on Matt, and she frowned anxiously, as if it was important that Matt understand her. "I feel like . . . with part of me I feel like Ethan is the center of the universe, but with my mind, I know how terrible he is. I'm trying to fight it. I don't want to hurt anyone." Her eyes were full of tears, and Matt clenched his jaw, looking miserable and uncertain.

"You're trying to fight off the sire bond," Stefan said gently. "It's hard, but it can be done. And your compulsion toward Ethan will wear off before long. You can reject this life if you really want to."

"I want to," Chloe said desperately. "Please. Can you help me?"

Stefan began to speak, but Matt broke in. "Stop," he said again. "Stefan, Beth said the same thing - that she didn't want to hurt anyone, that she needed help. But she was lying."

Zander, swift and silent, padded forward. Approaching Chloe slowly, he sniffed at her hands. He rose up on his back legs, placing his front paws on Chloe's shoulders. She cringed, but he nosed her face unconcernedly and, for a long moment, stared directly into her eyes.

"Is she telling us the truth?" Meredith asked.

The huge white wolf dropped back to all fours and turned away, glancing at the human-formed members of his Pack.

"He says she's being honest," Daniel reported, "but that she's weak. Fighting her nature is almost too much for her."

Chloe sobbed, a rough, hopeless sound.

Meredith, still poised with her stave for the kill, raised a questioning eyebrow at Stefan, irresolute. Matt turned to him, too, his eyes shining with anxious hope. They were all looking to him, he realized, to make the decision.

"We'll help you," he said slowly, "but first you need to help us."

Matt let out a breath of relief and closed the distance between him and Chloe. She leaned against him gratefully but nodded at Stefan, tears running down her face. "If you want to stop Ethan," she said, "we'll have to hurry."

Chapter 7

As Elena and the others entered the woods, the sun was setting. She had caught up with her friends as they left the safe house and Stefan, his voice low, filled her in on what had happened as they followed Chloe's lead. They wandered in the dark woods for what felt like a long time, all of them tense and quiet.

Branches smacked Elena in the face and she wished for the night vision of a vampire or a werewolf, or for Meredith's well-honed hunter's instincts. Even Matt, tromping along stoically beside her, his eyes fixed on Chloe up ahead, seemed to be running into fewer things than Elena was.

She was on the verge of wishing her Guardian Powers would just kick in already; this was probably the kind of thing they'd be good for, never mind whether she actually wanted those Powers or not.

Finally, a sliver of flickering orange light appeared in the distance, and they headed toward it without speaking. Elena was jogging, her breath coming in harsh pants. At least now that Stefan and the Pack had slowed their pace to accommodate Meredith and Matt, she could just manage to keep up with the group.

As they got closer, she realized the flickering light was from a bonfire. The wolves ahead of her pricked their ears up. Then, suddenly, they and Stefan were running, long strides eating up the distance and leaving the humans behind. Chloe trailed a few paces after them.

Matt's and Meredith's strong hands closed over Elena's arms and they pulled her along between them, running after the others. She stumbled, a sharp pain shooting through her side, but they held her up and she kept moving.

A moment later, they could hear what Stefan and the Pack had heard. A heavy chant of many voices seemed to throb and reverberate through Elena's head. Above the murmur rose a single voice, calling out sharply.

She couldn't tell what language they were speaking, although it sounded ancient and guttural. Not Latin, she thought, but it could have been Greek or Old Norse or something much older, from the early days of the world. Sumerian, she thought wildly. Incan. Who knew?

As she broke into a clearing, her eyes stung from the smoke and light of the fire, and at first all she saw was a confusion of writhing dark shapes against the light. As her eyes adjusted, she saw Ethan, still looking incongruously like the preppy college senior he had been not long ago, leading the chant. His forehead was slightly wrinkled in concentration, and he held up a goblet full of rich, dark blood as if it was nothing more than wine.

Why aren't they stopping him? Elena thought, and then the struggling bodies before her came into focus.

Stefan, brutally graceful, was ripping into the throat of a tall, slightly stooped vampire. Elena recognized him vaguely as someone she'd seen around campus, before the Vitale Society pledges had all been changed into vampires. Nearby, the werewolves fought, too, the wolves flanking and protecting the humans as they battled together, each perfectly attuned to the others' positions. The vampires not currently locked in battle had formed a circle around Ethan, blocking him from attack as he continued his ritual.

Meredith pitched herself into the fight, the silver ends of her stave flashing in the firelight. Elena and Matt, all too aware of their lack of supernatural Power, hung back at the edge of the clearing. Chloe stood at a little distance from them, her eyes fixed on the battle. She was biting at her lip, her arms wrapped around herself, and Elena felt a sharp pang of sympathy for her: she remembered the anxious cravings of being a new vampire, and the way your sire's every move seemed to call out to you. It must be agony for Chloe to keep from flinging herself into the fight.

Matt was watching Chloe, his forehead creased with worry, but he kept his distance, angling himself to protect Elena from Chloe as well as from the other Vitale vampires. He must remember how volatile a new vampire could be, too. Elena pressed his arm gratefully. Once again, she thought: If I have to be a Guardian anyway, now would be a good time for some Powers to kick in.

She tried to sense if anything might be changing inside her, feeling as if she was probing a loose tooth with her tongue, but she didn't feel any different. There was no sense of potential unfurling within her, as she had felt during the brief period after her resurrection, when she had been ripe with the mysterious and dangerous Wing Powers. Just mortal, everyday Elena, with no way to help now.

As she watched, a vampire gripped the sides of a huge white wolf - Zander - and with great agility and strength, tossed him aside. The wolf's body slammed heavily to the ground near the edge of the clearing and lay still. Elena's heart froze. Oh, no, she thought, stepping forward involuntarily, but Matt held her back. Oh, Bonnie.

The wolf lay still for a moment, and Elena couldn't see if he was breathing. Then, slowly, he clambered to his feet, his sides heaving. There were streaks of blood and mud on his pure white fur. Zander wavered on his feet, then seemed to find his balance and, snarling, threw himself back into the fight. With a sudden charge, he brought a vampire to her knees and Daniel, stake in hand, finished her off with one quick blow.

When Elena had arrived at the clearing, the fighters had seemed evenly matched, and there was no way to break through the wall of vampires to stop Ethan as he performed the ritual. But Meredith had gone in whirling like a dervish, her weapon flying, and the tide of the battle was slowly but clearly turning.

Meredith and Stefan exchanged a glance and she began to fight her way closer to the fire, moving steadily toward Ethan even as she angled her stave to strike a vampire, bringing him to the ground. Elena's eyes could barely follow her as she unsheathed a hunting knife from her side and, with one vicious swing of the blade, cut off his head. The body toppled backward, and suddenly a path opened through the crowd between Stefan and Ethan.

Stefan pushed away the vampire he had been fighting and leaped in one great bound over Meredith's head, landing on his feet in front of Ethan.

The chant stuttered to a halt. Stefan reached out and wrapped his hand around Ethan's throat just over the windpipe, tightened, and squeezed. The younger vampire choked and mouthed wordlessly, his hands desperately scrabbling at Stefan's. Reaching down with the hand not holding Ethan by the throat, Stefan felt at his side and brought out a stake. Ethan's golden eyes widened as Stefan pressed the stake against his chest. Elena heard Chloe whimper slightly, but the vampire girl didn't move.

"Good-bye, Ethan," Stefan said. His voice was quiet and matter-of-fact, not angry, but Elena heard, and so did the others. Everyone had paused in their fight, arms straining against one another, eyes turned toward Stefan and Ethan. It was as if they were all holding their breath. Then the vampires began to snarl and shriek, fighting to reach their sire. But the wolves moved faster than Elena could have imagined, flooding into the circle around Ethan and Stefan, holding the vampires back. Elena sucked in a long, relieved breath. Stefan had gotten there in time. The worst wouldn't happen. Klaus, the madman, the Original vampire, would stay dead.

Ethan glared at Stefan, but his lips slowly curled upward into a terrible smile.

Too late, he mouthed silently, and the glass in his hand toppled backward. Rich, red blood poured out onto the fire.

As soon as the blood touched the fire, it exploded into high blue flames. Elena cringed and shielded her eyes against the sudden burst of light. All around her, the others cowered, vampire, human, and werewolf alike.

The flames and the clearing filled with smoke. Elena was shaking, coughing, her eyes watering, and she could feel Matt wheezing and shuddering beside her.

As the smoke began to clear, a tall, golden-skinned figure took shape and stepped out of the flames. Elena knew him. She thought, as she had the first time she saw him, that he looked like the devil, if the devil were handsome.

He was naked as he came out of the fire, his body lithe and well muscled, and he held his head up proudly. His hair was white, his eyes blue. His smile was joyous and insane, and every move held the promise of destruction.

Lightning cracked overhead, and he threw back his head and laughed with what sounded like sheer malevolent pleasure.

Klaus had risen.

Chapter 8

Elena couldn't move. She felt numb, her limbs heavy and frozen. Her heart beat faster and faster, the rush of blood thundering in her ears, but she stayed still.

Before the fire, Klaus stretched and smiled, holding his hands out in front of him. He turned them slowly, examining them, admiring his long fingers and strong forearms.

"Unscarred," he said. He spoke softly, but his words resonated across the clearing. "I'm whole again." He tipped his head back to see the three-quarter moon high above him and his smile widened. "And back home," he said.

Ethan wriggled out of a shocked Stefan's loosened grip and dropped to his knees. "Klaus," he said worshipfully. Klaus glanced down at him with an indifferent sort of curiosity. Ethan opened his mouth to say more, his face ecstatic, but before he could, Klaus reached out, wrapped his strong, graceful hands around Ethan's jaw, and pulled.

With a terrible noise of tendons ripping, Ethan's head came away from his neck like a stopper lifting from a jar. His body slumped lifelessly to one side, abandoned. Klaus lifted up the head and held it above him as blood streamed down his arms. Around him, Ethan's followers quivered in fear, but none of them moved. Near Elena, Chloe gasped.

Stefan, his face spattered with Ethan's blood, was watching Klaus narrowly, angling his body to find a good position to attack. No, Elena thought, frightened, willing Stefan back. She hadn't forgotten how strong Klaus was. As if he'd heard her thoughts, Stefan eased back a little, darting an alert glance at their assembled troops, all watching Klaus now with horror.

Klaus gazed at Ethan's slack face for a moment, then tossed the head aside. Holding his right hand up to his mouth, he licked at Ethan's blood thoughtfully with a long pink tongue, and Elena's stomach turned uneasily. Seeing him kill Ethan so casually had been horrible enough, but there was something obscene in the thoughtless sensual pleasure he took in tasting the rivulets of blood.

"Delicious," Klaus said, his voice light. "I like the taste of human better than vampire, but that one was young and fresh. His blood was still sweet." He glanced coolly around the clearing. "Who's next?" he asked.

Then, across the firelit clearing, his eyes locked on Elena's, and his head went up like a dog catching a scent, his face changing from indifference to alertness. Elena swallowed, her throat dry, her heart still beating like a small, frantic bird trapped in her chest. His eyes were so blue, but not the kind light blue of Matt's or Zander's tropical sky blue. Klaus's eyes were like thin ice over dark water.

"You," Klaus said to her, almost gently. "I've wanted to see you again," and he smiled and opened his hands. "And here you are at my rebirth to welcome me. Come to me, little one."

Elena didn't want to move, but she staggered forward toward Klaus anyway, her feet shuffling forward without her consent, as if they were being operated by someone else.

She heard Matt's panicked whisper behind her - "Elena!" - and he gripped her arm, bringing her to a grateful halt. There was no time to thank him, though: Klaus was closing in.

"Should I kill you now?" he asked her, his tone as intimate as a lover's. "You don't seem to have your army of angry ghosts around you this time, Elena. I could finish you in seconds."

"No." Stefan stepped forward, his face hard and defiant.

Meredith came up beside him and they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, glaring at Klaus. Behind them Zander and his Pack, both wolf and human, crowded closer, staying between Elena and Klaus. Zander was staring at Klaus, his eyes wide, his hackles raised and quivering. Slowly, his lips peeled back from his teeth and the werewolf growled.

Klaus looked at them all in mild surprise, then laughed in genuine amusement. "Still inspiring devotion, are you, girl?" he asked Elena across the crowd. "Maybe you have some of the spirit of my Katherine after all."

In one smooth movement, he reached forward and picked Stefan up by the throat, then tossed him aside as easily as he might have thrown a scarecrow. Elena screamed as Stefan landed with a heavy thud on the other side of the fire and lay still.

Meredith, poised and ready, instantly swung her stave toward Klaus's head. Klaus put one hand up and grabbed the stave from midair, ripping it from Meredith's grasp without even looking at her. He flung the stave aside as casually as he had thrown Stefan's body and waded quickly through the crowd, knocking Zander's Pack and Ethan's vampires aside with a brutal, careless efficiency.

On the other side of the fire, Stefan was climbing to his feet. But Elena knew that, even with his vampiric speed, he wouldn't be able to get to Klaus before Klaus reached Elena.

Before she could blink, Klaus was standing directly in front of her, his fingers holding her jaw bruisingly tight. He tipped back her head, turning her face up toward him, forcing her to meet his icy, laughing eyes.

"I owe you a death, pretty one," he said, smiling. Elena could feel Chloe quivering beside her and Matt's hand on her arm, cold with fear but still holding tight.

"Leave her alone," Matt said, and Elena knew him well enough to know how hard he was working to keep his voice from shaking.

Klaus ignored him, his eyes fixed on Elena's. They stared at each other, and Elena tried to make her own eyes as defiant as possible. If Klaus was going to kill her now, she wouldn't go down weeping and begging for mercy. She wouldn't. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, trying to focus on the physical pain instead of her fear.

Then Stefan was suddenly there, wrenching at Klaus's arm with all his strength, but it didn't make any difference. Klaus's hand was as firm on her jaw as ever, his eyes steady on hers. The moment seemed to stretch out into years.

A new madness, more heated than Elena had seen before, bloomed in Klaus's eyes. "I will kill you," he said, almost affectionately, squeezing her face between his fingers so that Elena made an involuntary moan of pain and protest. "But not yet. I want you to be waiting for me, to think of me coming for you. You won't know when, but it will be soon."

Quickly, shockingly, he pulled her toward him and planted a soft, cold kiss on her mouth. His breath was rank, and the taste of Ethan's blood on his lips made her gag.

Finally, he opened his hand and released her. Elena stumbled back several paces, wiping at her mouth furiously.

"I'll see you again, little one," Klaus said, and then he was gone, faster than Elena's eyes could follow.

Matt caught Elena before she could fall. A moment later, Stefan's strong arms were around her, and Matt let her go.

Everyone was blinking and dazed, as if Klaus's exit had left a vacuum. The Vitale vampires were looking at one another uncertainly and, before Meredith and the rest could collect themselves enough to begin fighting again, the vampires were leaving, running away in a panicked, disorganized mob. Meredith reached for the stake in her belt, but it was too late. Frowning, she silently crossed the clearing to pick up her stave, turning it over in her hands to check for damage.

Zander, his fur bloody and bedraggled from the fight, lowered his head, and the rest of his Pack crowded around him anxiously. One of the other wolves licked quickly at his wound, and Zander leaned against him.

Chloe had not disappeared with the other vampires. Instead, she stood by Matt, biting at her lips with blunt teeth, staring at the ground. After a moment, Matt put his arm carefully around her and Chloe huddled close to his side.

Elena sighed wearily and let her head drop onto Stefan's shoulder. She could still taste Klaus's vile kiss, and tears stung her eyes.

Ethan was dead, but nothing was over. The fight was just beginning.

In a tree high above the clearing, a large black crow ruffled its feathers, eyeing the battleground below him. He had watched the fight critically, thinking that there were things he would have done differently, more aggressively. But no, this wasn't Damon's place anymore. He hadn't wanted to be seen, hadn't wanted to get involved with Elena and Stefan and all their problems. But the scent of blood and fire had led him here.

After everything, he still wanted to save Elena and Stefan, didn't he? That was what was pulling him to the fight, an almost unnatural urge to do what he was built to do: to kill. When he'd seen Klaus fling his brother aside, everything in him had tensed to attack. And when the arrogant Original vampire had dared to touch Elena - Damon's Elena, his heart still insisted - Damon had flown to the edge of the clearing, his normally slow pulse hammering with rage.

But they didn't need him, they didn't want him; he was done with them. He'd tried - he'd done his best, he'd changed - all for Elena's love, and for the friendship he'd found with his brother at last. After centuries of caring for no one but himself, Damon had suddenly been caught in Elena's world, wrapped up in the lives of a handful of mortal teenagers. He'd become someone he barely recognized.

And it hadn't mattered. In the end, Damon was still left on the outside.

Klaus was gone and they were fine. This wasn't his fight. Not anymore. Now, all he had was the cloak of night and the cold comfort of once again relying on no one but himself.

Damon was, he told himself fiercely, free.

Chapter 9

Matt craned to look over Stefan's shoulder and through the creaking door of the abandoned boathouse. It was dark and musty inside, and Matt's hand tightened automatically on Chloe's.

"This should be a safe place for now," Stefan told them.

Elena and the others had headed back to campus, shaken and quiet from the fight, but Chloe had nowhere to go. "I don't know what to do now," she'd said. "I can't go back to the Vitale house. Will you help me?"

Matt had taken her hand, feeling a wave of guilty compassion wash over him. If only he hadn't trusted Ethan. The other Vitale pledges had been innocent victims, but Matt had known vampires. Why hadn't he suspected? "Wherever you go, I'm coming with you," he'd said stubbornly. So Stefan had brought them here.

Matt rubbed the back of his neck and looked around. Safe or not, the old boathouse certainly was grim-looking. Stefan had said that students didn't come here anymore, and Matt could easily believe it.

This had once been the boathouse for the Dalcrest crew team, but new docks and a boathouse had been built closer to the river. Since then, the small artificial lake this boathouse fronted had silted up. Now algae-scummed, brackish water lay shallowly across the muddy lake bottom, and the boathouse itself had been left to rot. Foul-smelling water sloshed below damp, softened wood underfoot. Above their heads, the rotting roof let in glimpses of the night sky.

"I'm not sure Chloe should be living like this," Matt said slowly, not wanting to offend Stefan.

Stefan's lips curled up in a bitter smile. "The first lesson you both need to learn is that she's not living like this. She's not living at all - not anymore."

Next to Matt, Chloe hunched her shoulders protectively and crossed her arms. "I feel alive," she muttered. Matt waited for the wry, dimpling twist of her mouth he'd gotten used to from the human Chloe, but she just gazed down at her feet somberly.

"This is what it is, Chloe," Stefan said to her. His voice was dispassionate. "Until you can learn to survive without hurting humans, you can't stay near them. Any scent or sound might set you off. It takes a long time to get to the point where you can trust yourself, and until you do, you'll be skulking in the shadows, existing in the places where no human would go. Sewers. Caves. Places that make this boathouse look like luxury."

Chloe nodded, looking up at Stefan with wide, earnest eyes. "I'll do anything I have to," she said. "This is my second chance - I understand that. I'm going to fix myself."

Stefan gave her a small smile. "I hope so, Chloe," he said. Rubbing the bridge of his nose between two fingers in a familiar weary gesture, he turned to Matt. "There are things you can do to help her," Stefan told him. "She's young. It's important she have plenty of blood or she won't be able to think about anything else."

Matt started to speak and Stefan cut him off. "Not your blood. Animal blood. If you go with her into the woods when she's hunting, you can help keep her grounded and away from humans. You can bring her animals when she doesn't feel like she can go out." Matt nodded, and Stefan turned to Chloe. "You're fast and strong now; you'll be able to catch deer if you want to. If you concentrate, you should be able to call smaller animals - birds and rabbits - to you. You can try not to kill them if you want, but you probably will anyway, at least until you learn to control yourself."

"Thank you, Stefan," Chloe said solemnly.

"Practice deep breathing," Stefan told her. "Meditation. Listen to your own heartbeat, learn the new slower rhythm it has now that you've been turned. You're going to get pretty agitated sometimes, and you should find out how to calm yourself down. Do it with her, Matt. It'll help her focus."

"Okay." Matt wiped his sweaty hands against his jeans and nodded again. "We can do this."

His eyes met Stefan's, and Matt was surprised by the look on the vampire's face. Despite the matter-of-fact tone Stefan had been using, he could tell Stefan was concerned. "It's dangerous for you," Stefan said gently. "I shouldn't leave you with her."

"I wouldn't hurt him," Chloe said. Her eyes filled with tears and she angrily brushed them away with the back of her hand. "I'd never hurt Matt."

Stefan turned the same sympathetic gaze on her. "I know you don't want to hurt him," he told her, "but I also know you can hear the rushing of Matt's blood as his heart pounds, that you can smell the overwhelming sweet blood-scent of him all around you. It's hard to think straight when he's near you, isn't it? Part of you just wants to tear into him, to rip at that soft skin of his throat, to find the vein that's so full of rich, warm blood, just there below his ear."

Chloe clenched her jaw, but the white edge of a tooth slipped past the firm line of her mouth, cutting at her lip. With a shudder, Matt realized that Chloe's sharp vampire canines had descended while Stefan was talking, that she was ready to bite.

Steeling himself, Matt pushed down the instinct to run away from her and instead moved closer and put an arm across her shoulders.

"We'll get through this," he said firmly. Chloe took a deep, slow breath and then another, clearly trying to calm herself. After a moment, her shoulders relaxed a little and, looking at the looser set of her jaw, Matt thought that her teeth had gone back to normal.

"What else should we do?" Chloe asked Stefan, her voice determined.

Stefan shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He walked back to the doorway and looked out over the dark water of the lake. "In the end, the only thing that matters is that you really want to change," he said. "If you want it enough and if your willpower is strong enough, you will. I won't lie to you, it's not easy."

"I do want to," Chloe said, her eyes shining with tears again. "I won't hurt anyone. That's not who I am, not even now. These last few days - I can't be that thing." She closed her eyes, and the tears spilled over her lashes, running in silvery lines down her cheeks.

"You can't feed on anyone," Stefan warned her. "If Matt or anyone else gets hurt, even if you're sorry, I'll do what I need to do to protect the humans here."

"You'll kill me," Chloe agreed, her voice thin. Her eyes were still closed, and she hugged herself, wrapping her arms around herself defensively. "It's okay," she said. "I don't want to live like that."

"I'll take responsibility for her," Matt said, his voice sounding loud in his own ears. "I won't let anything bad happen."

Chloe inched closer to him, seeming to find comfort under his arm. Matt held on to her. Chloe could be saved; he knew it. He hadn't been careful enough, hadn't realized what Ethan was. But Chloe wasn't lost to him, not yet.

"All right," Stefan said quietly, looking between them. "Good luck." He shook hands with Matt and then he turned and was gone, faster than Matt's eyes could follow, no doubt headed back to Elena.

Chloe pressed against Matt's side and laid her head on his shoulder. He rested his cheek on the top of her head, her dark, curly hair soft where it touched his face. This was dangerous, a small unhappy knot in his stomach reminded him, and he didn't really know what he was doing.

But Chloe was breathing slowly beside him, and all he could think was: at least they had a chance.

"I'm fine, Bonnie," Zander said, half laughing. "I'm tough, remember? Supertough. I'm a hero." He tugged on her hand, trying to pull her onto the bed beside him.

"You're hurt is what you are," Bonnie said sharply. "Don't try that macho stuff on me." She pulled her hand away and shoved an ice pack at him with her other hand. "Put that on your shoulder," she ordered.

They'd met up outside the library a little while after dawn, and she'd immediately seen that Zander was wounded. Back in his human form, he had seemed almost as graceful as always, running along with his Pack with his usual easy, loping stride, but he'd held himself aloof from the rest of the guys' playful shoving and tussling, the rough hands-on affection that was their default mode when they weren't on duty. As he'd stepped lightly out of range of Marcus's and Enrique's grappling arms and ducked away from Camden's headlock, Bonnie had realized Zander must be hurting.

So she'd taken him to the cafeteria and filled him up with eggs and bacon and the sugary cereal he loved. They'd come back to Zander's dorm room and she'd gotten him to take his shirt off so she could examine the damage. Normally, Bonnie would have been happily ogling Zander's chiseled abs, but right now, the purple-black bruise beginning to bloom on his shoulder and stretch down his side was ruining the view.

"I'm not really hurt, Bonnie," Zander insisted. "You don't have to baby me." He lay back on the bed, though, and didn't try to get up, so Bonnie figured that Zander was feeling a lot worse than he was willing to admit.

"I'll get you some ibuprofen," she said, and he didn't argue. She rummaged through his desk until she found the bottle and rattled the last couple of pills out into his hand, then brought him a bottle of water. Zander hitched himself up onto his elbows to swallow the pills and winced.

"Lie down," Bonnie told him. "If you promise to stay in bed and try to nap, I could go get you some of my special healing tea."

Zander grinned at her. "Why don't you lie down with me?" he suggested. "I bet I'd feel a lot more comfortable with you here." He patted the mattress next to him.

Bonnie hesitated. That was actually pretty tempting. She was about to snuggle up to him when a brisk knock came on the door.

Bonnie waved Zander back onto the bed as he started to rise. "I'll get it," she told him. "It's probably one of the guys." Not that Zander's Packmates bothered to knock much, but maybe they were using their best manners, assuming Bonnie would be there.

Another sharp tap came as Bonnie crossed the room. "All right, hold your horses," she muttered, opening the door.

In the hallway, her hand raised to knock yet again, stood a complete stranger, a girl with hair cut in a long blond bob. Her small, precise features mirrored Bonnie's own surprise.

"Is Zander here?" the girl asked, frowning.

"Um," Bonnie said, feeling thrown. "Yeah, he's . . ."

Then Zander came up behind her. "Well, hi, Shay," he said, his voice slightly unsure. He was smiling, though. "What're you doing here?"

The girl - Shay, Bonnie thought, what kind of name was that? - glanced at Bonnie instead of answering, and Zander flushed. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, Bonnie, this is Shay, who's a friend from back home. Shay, this is my girlfriend, Bonnie."

"Nice to meet you, Bonnie," Shay said coolly, raising one eyebrow. Her eyes traced over Zander's naked chest, lingering for a moment on the purpling bruise, and his cheeks flushed pink. "Been busy?" she asked.

"Come on in," he said, and backed away from the door, reaching for his shirt. "I, uh, was just putting some ice on my shoulder."

"Nice to meet you, too," Bonnie said, a little late, as she made room for Shay to pass her. Since when did Zander have female friends? Other than Bonnie, and Bonnie's friends, he lived in an exclusively male world.

"I need to talk to you. Alone," Shay said to Zander, shooting him a meaningful look and then cutting her eyes sharply to Bonnie.

Zander rolled his eyes. "Subtle, Shay," he said. "But it's okay. Bonnie knows about me and the rest of the Pack."

A second eyebrow climbed up Shay's forehead to join the first. "Do you think that's wise?" she asked.

Zander's lips quirked into the half smile Bonnie loved. "Believe me, it's not the weirdest thing Bonnie knows," he said.

"O-kay," Shay said slowly. She fixed Bonnie with a long, speculative look and Bonnie stuck out her chin defiantly and glared right back at her. Finally, Shay shrugged. "I guess I lost my right to give you advice a while back," she said, then lowered her voice, as if she was afraid someone might be eavesdropping from the hallway. "The High Wolf Council sent me," she said quietly. "They're not happy with what they're hearing about the vampires at Dalcrest. They thought maybe I could help you guys find some direction."

Zander's jaw tightened. "Our direction's fine, thanks," he said.

"Oh, don't be like that," Shay said. "I'm not trying to Alpha you." She reached out and touched his arm lightly, letting her hand linger on it. "It was a good excuse to come visit," she said, even more softly. "I was sorry about how things ended the last time we saw each other."

Bonnie glanced down at herself. Shay was so focused on Zander that Bonnie had started to wonder if maybe she had disappeared and left them thinking they were alone together. But nope, same solid Bonnie.

"Oh," she said, startled, as everything Shay had said suddenly clicked into place. "You're a werewolf."

She should have seen it immediately: despite Shay's neat, swinging bob and feminine features, she moved the same way Zander and his Pack did, with a kind of solid grace, as if she was completely aware at all times of her body, without even having to think about it. And she had touched Zander the way he touched the guys in his Pack, easy and as if her body was almost part of his own.

He didn't touch Bonnie that way. Not that Bonnie had any complaints at all about the way Zander did touch her, which was sweet and sure and as if she was the most precious thing he'd ever held. But still, it wasn't quite the same.

There was no one there to overhear, but Shay pinned Bonnie with a glare. "Keep your voice down," she whispered fiercely.

"Sorry," Bonnie said. "I just didn't know there were girl Original werewolves."

Shay's lips curved into a smirk. "Sure," she said. "Where do you think all the little Original werewolves come from?"

"The High Wolf Council usually divides younger wolves up into Packs of either guys or girls when they send us out to keep an eye on things," Zander told Bonnie. "They think mixing together distracts us from our jobs."

"Apparently they're not considering the other ways some of us can get distracted," Shay said acidly. Her eyes were cold on Bonnie's, but Bonnie hadn't been through hell and back in the last year to let any bossy and self-important werewolf girl push her around.

Bonnie was just opening her mouth to tell Shay that she'd better lose the attitude when Zander, seeming to sense her reaction, grabbed hold of Bonnie's hand.

"Listen, Shay, I really need to get some rest," he said quickly. "We'll catch up later, okay? Call me or one of the other guys and we'll get together." Bonnie had a brief impression of Shay looking startled, and then Zander hurried Shay right out of the room and shut the door behind her.

"So . . . friend from back home?" Bonnie asked after a moment. "I don't think you've mentioned her before."

"Um," Zander said. His gorgeous long lashes brushed his cheeks as he looked down, away from Bonnie, and she might have been distracted by how sweet that made him look. Except that Zander also looked distinctly guilty.

Bonnie suddenly felt her stomach sink. "Is there something you're not telling me?" she asked. Zander shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, his cheeks flushing, and Bonnie's stomach plummeted even further. "No more secrets, remember?"

Zander sighed. "I just think this is going to sound like a bigger deal than it is," he said.

"Zander," Bonnie said.

"The High Wolf Council wanted Shay and me to be together," Zander confessed. He glanced up at her tentatively through his lashes. "They, um, I guess thought we'd be like mates? Get married, maybe, and have werewolf children together when we finished school. They thought we'd make a good team."

Bonnie blinked. Her brain felt numb, she realized. Zander and Shay had thought about getting married?

"But we couldn't get along," Zander said hurriedly. "I swear, Bonnie, we just never clicked. We fought, like, all the time. So we broke up."

"Uh," Bonnie said. She was so blindsided by this, it felt like a huge effort to even put words together. "So the High Wolf Council controls who you marry?" she asked finally, picking the most general of the questions swarming her mind.

"They try," Zander said, looking at her anxiously. "They can't . . . they can't make me do anything I don't want to do. And they wouldn't want to. They're fair." His sky-blue eyes, that heavenly tropical blue, caught hers, and he smiled tentatively, his hands warm on her shoulders. "You're the one I love, Bonnie," he said. "Believe me."

"I do believe you," Bonnie said, because she did; it was shining out of Zander's eyes. And she loved him, too. Zander flinched a little as she hugged him, and Bonnie loosened her arms, mindful of his bruises. "It's okay," she said softly.

But even as she turned her face up to Zander's kiss, Bonnie couldn't help the word that resounded in her mind, making her twitch with anxiety.

Uh-oh.

Stefan and Elena curled together on his bed, her head on his shoulder. Stefan let himself relax under her touch, feeling the softness of her hair against his cheek. It had been a seemingly endless day. But Elena was safe, for now. Just for this moment, she was in Stefan's arms and nothing would hurt her. He tightened his hold on her.

"Is Chloe going to be all right?" Elena asked.

Stefan bit back an incredulous little laugh and the corners of Elena's lips turned up in response. "What?" she said.

"You're worried about Chloe," Stefan said. "Klaus has promised to kill you, and you want to hear if Chloe, who you barely knew when she was human, is going to be all right." He should have known, though. Elena had a core of steel running through her. And nothing was more important to her than protecting her friends, her town, the world.

Maybe, Stefan thought, she's always been a Guardian.

"I haven't stopped thinking about what Klaus said," Elena told him, and Stefan felt her body shudder against his. "I'm afraid. But I can't stop caring about everyone else, either. Matt needs Chloe, so she matters to me, too. I worry that there might not be a lot of time left. We should all be with the people we love." She kissed Stefan, just a light brush of her lips on his. When she spoke again, her voice trembled. "We just found each other again, Stefan. I don't want to miss anything. All I want to do is hold on to you."

Stefan kissed her, more deeply this time. I love you, he told her silently. I will protect you with my life.

Elena broke the kiss and smiled at him, her eyes full of tears. "I know," she said. "I love you, too, Stefan, so much." She pulled her hair back and tilted her head invitingly, exposing her long slender throat. Stefan hesitated - it had been so long, not since before they broke up and came back together - but she drew his mouth down to her throat.

The rush of Elena's blood - so intoxicating, so full of vitality that it was like champagne and sweet nectar at the same time - made Stefan light-headed, flooding him with warmth. There were no barriers between them, no walls, and he felt a great wonder at the steadfast tenderness that he found in Elena.

They fell asleep wrapped around each other. Darkness threatened them on all sides, but for this night, they would be together, be each other's light.