The Vampire Diaries #11: Unseen (The Salvation #1)

Author: L.J. Smith

Category: Fantasy , Young Adult

Series: The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation

Unseen (The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation #1)

The greatest threats are the ones unseen….

For what seems like the first time, Elena and her friends are happy. Elena and Stefan have built a home for themselves in Dalcrest, and all of Elena’s friends are as in love as she and Stefan are. Even Damon is enjoying visiting his favorite old haunts in Europe, and is more surprised than anyone that he’s traveling with Katherine. But lately, Elena’s Guardian senses are on edge, and she can’t ignore the feeling that danger is coming.

When a new threat arrives in Dalcrest, Elena’s worst fears become a reality. Soon, she and Stefan are battling a vicious Old One who is always just out of their reach. And when Damon and Katherine are confronted with a strange and mysterious enemy, Elena worries the attacks are linked.

As dark forces close in, Elena, Stefan, and Damon struggle to survive the only way they know how—together. But their lives are hanging in the balance, and every moment they share could be their last…

转载请保留当前帖子的链接：https://www.beimeilife.com/thread-34470-1-1.html 谢谢

Chapter 1

Dear Damon,

Yesterday, I felt happy. Not my usual everyday glow, but a wild, fierce happiness that ran along my veins like fire.

I would have known, even without the slight tug of the bond between us, that it came from you. It felt like you. What were you doing? Where were you yesterday?

I'm glad you're happy, Damon.

I miss you. Thanks to the bond the Guardians forged, we're never really far away from each other. I'm constantly aware of you, with a low-level hum of Damon-ness running through me. But I'd like to see you in person.

I can't believe it's been four years. I think of how we said good-bye, that last evening at Dalcrest, the bond between our auras so new, and how I cried, and I keep wishing I could have convinced you to stay.

Stefan misses you, too. We keep saying that soon, we'll take a few weeks and come find you, wherever you happen to be. Stefan can show me around streets he hasn't walked for centuries, and you can take us to the hottest nightclubs, and we'll all be together again. Family.

Sometimes I feel like I'm losing so much of my past. Aunt Judith told me yesterday that she wants to sell our house in Fell's Church and move to Richmond. It makes sense: Robert won't have so far to commute, and my little sister can go to a terrific school in the city. And after all, I don't live there anymore.

But I can't help remembering how my mother and I redecorated my bedroom there before she died, how many nights Bonnie and Meredith and Caroline and I spent there, having sleepovers and telling secrets. How you and Stefan each held me in your arms there, at different times and for different reasons.

I can say good-bye to that house, even though it hurts, but I can't say good-bye to you, too. Please, Damon, promise me we'll see each other again.

Elena Gilbert groaned and ran her fingers through her long blond hair. Why was it so hard to get to the point? She was getting distracted by her emotions, when she had meant to e-mail Damon for a reason.

But you already know I miss you, she typed. Now there's something I have to warn you about.

Elena looked up from the laptop, glancing around her living room. Everything in her and Stefan's apartment was serene. Warm, golden lamplight illuminated the pale walls lined with framed reproductions from art exhibits she and Stefan had attended: an abstract of a couple embracing, their bodies melting into each other; a stern-faced Renaissance angel; a field full of wildflowers. Elena's little sister, Margaret, grinned up from her elementary school graduation picture on a table by the couch; in another photo, Bonnie and Elena stood in silver bridesmaids' gowns on either side of Meredith, whose face was lit up in a rare smile. Heavy brocaded curtains covered the windows, shutting out the darkness. Sammy, their long-furred white cat, stretched out luxuriously across the couch cushions, only a sliver of one golden eye showing he was awake.

On the top of a heavy mahogany cabinet rested the small collection of things Stefan had carried with him through all his years of roaming the world: a few gold coins, an ivory-hilted dagger, a stone cup mounted in silver, a gold pendant watch, and a small iron coffer. And finally, the most recent addition to his treasures: a silky apricot-colored hair ribbon, stained with mud, which Elena had once lost in a graveyard.

Elena remembered when she'd first seen these objects in Stefan's rooms in Fell's Church, back when he had been a mysterious, almost frightening, stranger. Now she knew the story behind each of them, understood all these talismans of Stefan's past.

The quiet apartment was practically the exact opposite of wherever Damon was right now, which was probably full of bright lights and fast cars. Elena had been so restless for so long-but, here, in the home she and Stefan had made together, she was content.

Of course, they were never completely safe. But since Klaus's defeat five years before, nothing more dangerous than a rogue young werewolf or newly made vampire had been drawn to the ley lines that crossed the Dalcrest area. They'd had to go farther afield to fight true evil; here they felt protected.

And she was happy. Mostly.

There was just ... a persistent sense of danger that had been creeping up on her lately, invading her dreams with shadows, tugging insistently at the corners of her mind. And in the middle of this danger, she repeatedly sensed Damon's dark, fiery presence.

Frowning, she began to type again.

Wherever you are now, Damon, please be careful. I just know that something is wrong. I've tried and tried to find out what it is-stretched my Guardian Powers to their limit and even called Andres in Costa Rica to see if he knew a way to pinpoint what I'm sensing-but I can't figure it out.

All I know is that something awful is going to happen. And, somehow, you're involved. Please, Damon, be careful. I need you to be safe.

Elena hit "send" on the e-mail just as a key rattled in the lock. Sammy leaped from the couch in one smooth flow of movement. Elena jumped up, too, and hurried toward the door.

"Stefan!" she exclaimed, pulling it open. "Welcome home!"

Even though Stefan felt as familiar and as essential as breathing by now, sometimes the sight of him still knocked Elena back a step. He was just so beautiful, with his classical Roman profile, his dark curls that made her want to tangle her fingers in them. His bottom lip dipped into a sensual curve as he smiled at her, his face opening in a way only Elena ever got to see, and she ran forward to kiss him. She threw all her love into the kiss and felt Stefan's love in response, warm and reassuring.

Sammy twined around their ankles, sniffing Stefan, and then stalked away, his tail waving.

Finally Elena pulled back to look Stefan over and saw that, despite the dark shadows under his leaf-green eyes, his face was serene. The hunt had gone well, then. He was safe; Meredith was safe. Elena sighed gratefully and laid her head against Stefan's shoulder. He was home, and everything would be okay.

His arms tightened around her. The leather of his jacket was smooth under her cheek. Then she felt something sticky against her face. "Stefan?" she asked, pulling back and touching the wet spot on his black leather jacket. Her fingers came away red with blood. "Stefan?" she asked again, her voice rising, and began to feel frantically over his chest and sides, looking for injuries.

"Elena, it's okay." Stefan took her hands. "It's not my blood." His smile widened. "We killed Celine."

Elena sucked in a breath of surprise. They'd been hunting Celine for months. She was an Old One, one of the Original vampires-an ancient, vicious monster who'd stalked the night of every continent for countless centuries. Celine was the last of the three Old Ones they'd been able to find traces of, the last they'd needed to kill to make this part of the world safe.

At first, Elena had tracked her with Stefan and Meredith ...

"Watch your head," Stefan told Elena, holding back a trailing vine for her to duck under. Behind it was an ominous, dark opening, the entrance to a hidden cave. Meredith followed them inside, her stave held at shoulder level in one hand, ready to strike. Stefan's stave dangled more carelessly, held loosely in his grip.

"Celine's here; I'm sure of it," Elena said. She could feel the Old One's presence, could see the trail of Celine's aura, peacock blue twisted with gold and black, tarnished with the sickening rust red of old blood. "She's really powerful," Elena whispered. "And she knows we're coming."

"Terrific," Meredith muttered. They carefully felt their way down the tunnel, half-blind in the darkness, Stefan leading the way. The ground was rocky and uneven underfoot. Elena pressed her hands against the cold stone walls to keep from falling. The tunnel led deeper and deeper underground, and Elena breathed slowly, trying not to think about the tons of earth and stone above her.

"It's okay," Stefan murmured, squeezing her hand. "She can't hurt you." Nothing supernatural could hurt Elena-a benefit of her Guardian Powers, and one they had to keep secret.

On the silver spikes at the ends of each stave was a telltale darkness-tiny amounts of Elena's own blood, poison to any Old One. Only her blood would kill Celine; only she could track Celine's aura. And she could feel her other Guardian Powers readying for the fight, gathering like thunderclouds.

Elena was ready. She wasn't afraid, she told herself fiercely. Stefan was right. Nothing supernatural could kill her.

They stepped cautiously around a curve in the tunnel and blinked, dazzled by a sudden flood of light. The sun shone through an opening somewhere high overhead, hitting the crystals that studded the cavern's walls, sending brilliant shafts of light everywhere. It took Elena a moment to realize there was a figure in the middle of the room, a pillar of darkness in the light.

The vampire stood as still and upright as a statue, her thick dark hair hanging heavy and long around her shoulders. Her aura swirled around her, tracing gold and rust red across her features, as though she were dripping with blood. She looked young, her face smooth and serene-until she raised her eyes to meet Elena's.

Her eyes were dark, empty-and old, very old. These were eyes that had seen civilizations rise from tiny villages to great cities and then fall into ashes, over and over again. Celine's delicate eyebrows arched, expectant and amused, as she gazed at them.

Elena stayed still in the entrance while Stefan and Meredith fanned out, heading in opposite directions along the side of the cavern, their staves poised, watching for their chance. Celine was too powerful for them to attack head-on, but if she were distracted, or if Elena used her Guardian Power against her ... Meredith caught Elena's eye, and Elena reached for her Power, understanding. Could she hold the Old One still long enough for one of the others to strike?

Celine stayed motionless, those cruel dark eyes fixed only on Elena. She can't hurt me, Elena reminded herself. She took a deep breath and managed to snag the right trigger for her Power, like pulling a string. The energy gathering in her mind began to coa lesce  . She centered it, feeling the Power as solid as an arrow, directing it at Celine.

The Old One's lips quirked into a smile. "I don't think so, little Guardian," she said, her voice rich with laughter. "I know your secret."

She raised one hand and made a quick plucking gesture at the ceiling. A heavy crack rang out through the air as the stone ceiling above them began to split.

"Elena, run!" Stefan shouted. Before she could move, the rocks began plummeting down.

"Stefan ..." she managed to say, just as everything went black.

Elena winced, remembering how she'd woken up with a bad concussion, Celine long gone. After that, Stefan and Meredith had refused to let her come on the hunts. Since Celine somehow knew Elena could be killed by natural means-like a rock slide-but not supernatural ones, they thought it was too dangerous to let her get anywhere near the Old One. Elena had wielded her Guardian Powers from a distance, just as Bonnie and Alaric had researched and used magic to try to track Celine.

But now Celine was dead.

Ignoring the bloodstains, Elena tugged Stefan to her and kissed him, tenderly at first and then more deeply. "You did it. You're wonderful," she murmured against his lips.

She felt his mouth twitch into a smile, and he pulled back, cupping her cheek in one hand as he looked into her eyes, his clear-eyed gaze so full of love that Elena felt light-headed. "We couldn't have done it without you," he said.

"Well, yeah," Elena joked, glancing down at the slim leather case at their feet, which held Stefan's stave, the tiny silver hypodermics at each end filled with her deadly blood.

"More than just that," Stefan said, shaking his head. "I couldn't have done any of this without you. Elena, everything I do is because of you." His eyes shone, and he ran his fingers softly over her cheek. "And you're safe. This is the end. Now that Celine is dead, there are no more Old Ones."

"Not that we know of," Elena said, twisting her lips ruefully. If there was one thing she had learned over the past few years, it was that it was never truly over.

"But we're safe for now." He kissed her again, his body solid against hers. Elena let herself fall into the kiss. Their minds intertwined, sending each other love and desire, and then she reluctantly pulled away.

"We need to leave for Bonnie's birthday party in a few minutes," she said firmly.

Stefan smiled and pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head before stepping back. "It's okay," he said. "We've got plenty of time."

He headed for the bathroom to wash up, his stride loose and relaxed.

Elena looked after him thoughtfully. It was true. Now that Elena had drunk from the Fountain of Eternal Youth and Life, she would be beside Stefan forever. They had all the time in the world.

She knew she should be content. But with every steady beat of her heart, she couldn't help returning to the apprehension in the back of her mind. Despite their shared immortality, despite Celine's death, Elena had a bad feeling that time was running out.

Chapter 2

Today, Bonnie felt happy. She had woken up to Zander cooking her a delicious breakfast, and the sun shining in her honor, on what really felt like the first day of summer. And then her entire kindergarten class sang "Happy Birthday" and presented her with a giant card that included twenty-one little painted handprints and twenty-one names, from Astrid to Zachary, printed in little-kid wobbly letters that she, Bonnie, had personally taught them to make over the course of the year.

"It was the cutest thing ever," Bonnie said, gazing happily around at her assembled friends. "One of the moms even baked me cupcakes."

And now she got to sit on a velvet chaise longue in a lovely bar full of Christmas lights and pink cocktails and enjoy herself.

Meredith, elegant as ever in a classic black dress, handed Bonnie a bubbling glass of champagne as she sat down beside her. Meredith's husband of six months, Alaric, patted Bonnie's shoulder affectionately before turning to pull over a seat of his own.

"Your class sounds adorable," Meredith said. "But I think the cutest thing ever might be that you got Zander to come to a cocktail lounge called the Beauty Mark."

"Zander likes to make me happy," Bonnie said simply. She glanced over to where her boyfriend straddled a tiny ornate golden chair with a pink leopard-print seat. She watched as Zander tilted the chair onto two legs and flung his arms wide, saying something to his Packmate Jared. The chair creaked and wobbled alarmingly under his weight. Bonnie winced. "It's possible this isn't his natural setting, though," she admitted.

Werewolf guys always seemed too big and rowdy to be inside, as if they might accidentally break things. Werewolf girls, on the other hand ... Zander's second in command, Shay, met Bonnie's gaze and raised her own glass in a silent toast. Shay didn't get to do girlie stuff much and looked like she was enjoying herself. Bonnie squinted a little, catching a glimmer from Shay's pale skin. Was she wearing body glitter?

"Thank God Shay started dating Jared, right?" Elena said, plopping down on Bonnie's other side and following her gaze. Stefan, standing beside them, inclined his head to Bonnie in what was almost a formal bow.

"Happy birthday, Bonnie," he said solemnly, handing her two packages. The larger one was wrapped in polka-dot paper and tied with a pink bow; the smaller was much heavier and wrapped in a dark silk that shimmered with subtle rainbows.

"The big one's from us," Elena said. "The other one's from Damon. He sent it to us to give to you."

"Ooh, thank you," Bonnie said, looking at the packages with interest. She'd never gotten a gift from Damon before, but she had a feeling it would be something special. Damon was so elegant, so sophisticated, so intriguing, with his sleek dark hair and sharp smile that every so often softened for Bonnie ... he was unlikely to give a girl, say, a DVD. Not that there was anything wrong with a DVD.

She politely opened Elena and Stefan's present first: a delicate filmy top she'd had her eye on when she'd gone shopping with Elena a couple of weeks earlier. "Gorgeous," she said with a wink, holding it up to herself amid a chorus of approval. "Thank you so much." She held out her wrist to Elena and Meredith, showing them a bracelet of gold filigree dotted with semiprecious stones. "Look at what Zander gave me! And he got me about a year's supply of dittany of Crete-an herb, for charm making," she added, for Elena's benefit. "It's really hard to find. He must have had to order it especially for me."

"It's beautiful," Elena said, and Meredith nodded approvingly. For such a guy's guy, Bonnie reflected, Zander was surprisingly good at buying presents for a girl. At least if that girl was Bonnie.

She couldn't concentrate on Zander's many wonderful qualities just now, though, not with a mysterious package from Damon in her lap, waiting to be opened.

She carefully unwrapped the silk. Inside was a small, rounded box that fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. It looked almost like a river rock, polished gray with a slight blue sheen to it. Opening the box, she found inside a delicate carved bird, in the same bluish-gray material, on a thin silver chain. There was also a note on thick, creamy paper, folded small.

"Wow," Elena said, bending to peer more closely at the bird. "What is it? It looks old."

Bonnie unfolded the note. In Damon's elegant script, she read:

My little redbird, congratulations on reaching the age of twenty-four. It's still ridiculously young, but at least you're not a child anymore. The enclosed comes from Egypt, and is older even than me. The bird is a falcon. A witch I met in Luxor tells me that it represents power, wisdom, and guardianship-all of which I wish for you. Be strong, be wise, be safe.

Bonnie smiled. Damon could be surprisingly sweet and sentimental sometimes.

Underneath, in a different ink, scribbled in as if he'd added it at the last minute, was:

I hear you're still running around with the overgrown wolf boy. Tell him to behave himself or he'll answer to me.

Still sort of sweet, Bonnie decided, and tucked the note in her pocket.

"Here, let me fasten it." Zander came over and swept her hair aside, hooking the necklace firmly and then placing a swift kiss on the back of her neck.

"Damon called you an overgrown wolf boy," Bonnie told him. "You're supposed to behave yourself."

"Aw, he mentioned me?" Zander said affably. "I'm touched."

Jared snorted, and Shay's eyes narrowed. Most of Zander's Pack had never really understood Damon.

Or, Bonnie admitted to herself, they'd understood him too well. When the Pack had met Damon, he'd been going through a ... difficult time. Truthfully, he'd been dangerous, and despite the fact that he'd fought beside them once or twice against greater threats, the small band of Original werewolves that protected the Dalcrest area didn't trust him.

But now that the Guardians had connected him and Elena, he wasn't so dangerous anymore. Because if Damon ever harmed a human, it would hurt Elena. If he killed anyone, Elena would die. And anyone who had seen Damon's fierce desperation when Elena was in danger knew he would never hurt her.

Besides, Bonnie thought pragmatically, the falcon weighing cool against her neck, it seemed like Damon was gone for good. Part of her missed him-there'd always been a special connection between her and Damon-but it might be better here without him. It was certainly calmer.

"Matt's here," Stefan said, glancing up from murmuring into Elena's ear. You could never surprise a vampire, Bonnie thought wryly.

But now they all saw Matt working his way over to their corner of the bar. He kissed Bonnie on the cheek and handed her a small package. "Hey," he said. "Happy birthday. Sorry I'm late."

"No problem," Bonnie said, surreptitiously feeling the present to see what it was. A DVD, she thought. "Where's Jasmine?"

Matt grimaced. "She really wanted to come, but she's on call for the emergency room," he said. "She said to tell you happy birthday and she'll take you out to lunch sometime next week instead."

"It's a pretty good excuse," Bonnie said. "You know, come to Bonnie's birthday drinks or be ready when they need you to save lives."

"Since Jasmine couldn't come," Matt said, smiling at Meredith and Stefan, "you can tell me what happened with Celine. She's dead?"

That was the one problem with Jasmine, Bonnie thought, taking a swig of her drink. She'd been dating Matt for a couple of years, and everyone really liked her, but she didn't know the truth about him, about all of them. Jasmine knew Bonnie liked fortune-telling, herbs, and "New Agey" stuff, but she didn't know she was really a witch. She knew Alaric had a doctorate in paranormal studies and folklore, but she didn't know any of that was real either; she just thought he was an academic. And she sure didn't know the truth about Stefan, or Zander and his friends, or Elena. She didn't even know Matt, not really, how he'd fought evil again and again, how strong and brave he was. She just thought he was a nice, ordinary guy.

Maybe Bonnie needed to slow down on the champagne cocktails, because she opened her mouth and heard herself say, loudly, "Matt. How can you love Jasmine, when she doesn't even know who you are?"

Matt's face stiffened, his mouth forming a tight line, and a hot flush of embarrassment ran over Bonnie. Wasn't she ever going to learn to keep her mouth shut? After a moment, Matt said stiffly, "It's safer for her this way." His light blue gaze met hers. "I just want Jasmine to have a normal life."

Bonnie's throat tightened. She remembered when she and Zander had finally told each other the truth about themselves, more than five years ago. How she'd held his hand, nervous. Normal is overrated, she'd told him, and they'd kissed, sweetly and honestly, everything open between them. She couldn't imagine keeping secrets from someone she loved for so long.

She managed to smile at Matt, although the smile felt pinched on her face, and nodded, blinking away the stinging in her eyes. "Okay," she said in a small voice.

There were an awkward few moments of silence.

"Anyway," Meredith said, with a brittle little laugh. "Since you asked ..." She began to describe to Matt the battle she and Stefan had fought with Celine.

It was a dramatic story. There were secret passages and close calls and much use of Meredith's skills and Stefan's vampire speed and strength before they'd even gotten close to Celine. But finally they'd tracked her down in Atlanta, evaded her vampire soldiers, and killed her with Elena's magic blood.

The first two times they'd told the story tonight, Bonnie had been hanging on Meredith and Stefan's every word.

This time, though, she politely stifled a yawn and glanced around. Everyone else was still riveted. Even Alaric, who was usually Bonnie's compatriot in being more interested in the magical side of fighting monsters than the physical side, was asking intelligent questions about weaponry.

She sighed, dutifully fixing her eyes back on Meredith. It was possible, Bonnie admitted to herself, that she was a little bit jealous. They hadn't asked her for help at all in tracking down Celine.

Bonnie was good at fighting evil. It was just that, as her friends had become even more superpowered-faster, stronger, in Elena's case immortal-it was possible that they didn't really need her.

Bonnie pushed the feeling away and took another sip of her drink. Stop being ridiculous, she told herself firmly.

Meredith was reaching the end of her story-Stefan was about to cut Celine's head off, as the Old One writhed in her death spasms-when Zander caught Bonnie's eye and suddenly hopped to his feet, knocking his tiny gilt chair over with a clatter.

"Whoops," he said, winking at Bonnie as he sauntered closer. She grinned back at him. Maybe she hadn't been doing as good a job of hiding her emotions as she'd thought. "Time to toast the birthday girl," he announced, and everyone climbed to their feet.

"Okay," Zander said thoughtfully. "I'll go first. What is there to say about Bonnie McCullough that you don't all know already?" He pulled her closer, wrapping a warm, strong arm around her shoulder, and she leaned happily into him. "Well, there was the first night we moved into our apartment. It felt weird being in this brand-new place, and I couldn't sleep. But then Bonnie started telling me all about these myths she'd been reading about selkies. She was so smart and looked so gorgeous with the moonlight shining on her, that I would have fallen in love with her right then and there if I wasn't already fully and completely in love. And I thought, as I fell asleep, Moving in with Bonnie is the best decision I ever made." He kissed her briefly, the corners of his sea-blue eyes crinkling affectionately, and raised his glass. "Which of course I already knew. To Bonnie!"

They all drank, and then Meredith cleared her throat. "I couldn't have gotten through the wedding without Bonnie," she said. Her olive cheeks flushed slightly as she added, "You all know what my parents are like. When I couldn't stand them taking over the wedding planning anymore, Bonnie and Elena would kidnap me and take me somewhere on a 'sanity outing.' The very best sanity outing was Bonnie's idea."

Elena started to laugh. "This was completely Bonnie's idea."

"They took me to the batting cages down at the park," Meredith went on, "and slapped a batting helmet on me and turned on the machine, and I whammed balls around until I didn't feel like running off to Vegas to elope anymore. And Bonnie sat there and shouted advice at me and bought me a hot dog when I was done." She slung an arm around Bonnie and hugged her tightly, pressing a cool cheek to hers. "Best friends ever."

"Me next," Elena said, as Meredith let go of Bonnie. "So, as you'll recall, Bonnie and Meredith and I spent all four years of college rooming together. When we graduated last summer, it was"-she shrugged-"scary. We weren't going to be there for each other every minute anymore. That last night, Bonnie decided we were going to have a slumber party just like the ones we had in junior high. We did one another's hair and nails and prank-called our boyfriends-"

"I was very surprised," Alaric added solemnly.

"It was a silly night," Elena said, "and it took Meredith and me a little while to get into the spirit of it, but Bonnie coaxed us along, and it ended up being perfect. Sisterhood." As Elena raised her glass, Bonnie suddenly remembered how Elena had looked that night, her usually perfect hair in a hundred sloppy braids, laughing in pink pajamas. Elena, she thought, needed to laugh more.

"Velociraptor sisterhood," she corrected, and Elena smiled at their old private joke.

Matt stepped forward a little. "My favorite memory of Bonnie this year is from Alaric and Meredith's wedding," he said. "Jasmine was still feeling awkward around you guys-she knew we'd been friends for a long time, and I guess it's weird for new people-"

"It is," Zander agreed loudly. "And Jasmine and I are both awesome."

Bonnie shushed him. "We're talking about me now, honey."

"Anyway," Matt went on. "At the reception, Bonnie took Jasmine under her wing, and before I knew it she was out dancing with all the girls and having a great time."

"Her dance moves put me to shame," Bonnie told him. Jasmine had looked gorgeous that night, her short teal dress setting off her long dark curls and caramel-colored skin. Most beautiful of all, though, had been the way her eyes shone every time she looked at Matt. Matt deserved someone who saw how great he was, Bonnie thought, and so she'd tried really hard to make Jasmine comfortable.

When Matt fell in love, he fell hard and for the long haul, and he hadn't had much luck in the past. Even if he wouldn't tell Jasmine the whole truth about himself, Bonnie wanted them to work out, for his sake.

Stefan raised his glass. "Bonnie, when I first met you, you seemed so sweet and innocent and young. I didn't take you as seriously as I should have. But it wasn't long before I came to realize how wrong that was. You are spontaneous and intuitive and have a warm, loving heart. Here's to your twenty-fourth year being even better than the last."

All Bonnie's friends were smiling at her, their glasses held up to toast, and she smiled back, warmed by the combined affection of their gazes. It was fine. Even if she wasn't essential to the monster fighting, she knew everyone loved her.

Today, Bonnie was happy.

Chapter 3

"You're being very boring, you know," Katherine called up to Damon from the piazza. "Come join us." Damon languidly waved at her from the balcony without looking up from the screen of his laptop. The sun had just set, but some light still lingered; dark shadows spread across the floor.

Something awful is going to happen, he read. I need you to be safe. He closed the laptop without replying to Elena's message and leaned back in his chair, frowning a little.

Then he felt for his connection with Elena-tentatively, as if he were lowering himself slowly into a deep, swirling river. The bond between them was always there, but Damon had gotten better at keeping it in the background, a mere comforting hum reminding him Elena's there. Elena's there, and she's fine.

But now he let his barriers fall. The sense of ELENAELENAELENA hit him like a tidal wave, and Damon went under for a minute, his senses flooded by Elena's emotions, Elena's essence. He could almost smell her: her pomegranate body wash, the faint coconut scent of her shampoo, and underneath it all the warm, tantalizing smell of Elena's rich blood. He caught a flash of quick images from her: the red of Bonnie's hair, something shiny glittering at the edge of Elena's vision. She was content right now, he realized, enjoying herself, and that told him all he needed to know. She was fine, and his brother, Stefan, was safe. Whatever new disaster was hovering at the edges of Elena's life, and of Damon's own, it had not yet arrived.

Maybe it never would. There would always be danger; Damon had accepted that centuries ago. And threats rarely came when you were expecting them. Even a Guardian like Elena could be wrong.

He stood up and stretched with a liquid grace, pushing his connection with Elena back to the edge of his consciousness. Sometimes, in the very early morning when he was settling to rest, Damon would open himself all the way to Elena just to feel her with him, the sense of her flooding through him as he lay back on his silken sheets. Usually she was sleeping then, deep in the dark of a Virginia night, and Damon could lose himself in Elena's dreams.

But touching Elena's mind like that always left a strange ache in Damon's chest afterward, so he tried to resist as long as he could. He didn't quite know what the sensation was. It couldn't be loneliness, because Damon was never lonely.

He wandered to the edge of the balcony and looked down into the piazza below. There were a few tables set around the grand fountain in the middle of the square, but only one was occupied. Katherine was not in the mood to mix with the locals, and so the locals had found themselves deciding to stay inside tonight.

Katherine looked up at him, her long golden hair falling over the back of her chair, and beckoned imperiously. Beside her, her current boyfriend, Roberto, glanced at Damon and then down at the table. "Come here," she said. "It's time for dinner."

Sometimes Damon couldn't believe he was still traveling with Katherine. He had never expected to see her again. But then, two years ago while wandering the streets of Tokyo, he'd caught sight of her through the crowd, felt the familiar brush of her mind, and she'd turned and smiled at him. He hadn't mistaken her for Elena-he never did, although they looked so much alike. And somehow, even after everything they'd been through, it had felt like the most natural thing in the world to cut through the crowd and take her hand. After all, he'd spent most of his long life loving her.

They'd been traveling together since then. And this much could be said for Katherine: She was infuriating at times, selfish and conceited, but she was never, ever dull.

More quickly than a human eye could have followed, Damon gracefully dropped from the balcony to the piazza below, his feet landing cat-soft on its cobblestones. Katherine smiled at him and patted the seat of the chair next to her.

"I'm starving," Roberto said sulkily, as Damon sat. "Where's the waitress?"

Roberto was always complaining, always on edge. Damon remembered what it was like to be a young vampire, restless and unable to settle, but surely he had never been as petulant as Katherine's latest toy. At least, Damon consoled himself, Roberto wouldn't be with them for long.

He wasn't the first handsome young man Katherine had picked up in their travels. There'd been Hiro in Tokyo and Sven in Stockholm, Nigel in London-Damon had actually liked Nigel, who'd at least had a sense of humor-and Jean-Paul in Paris. Roberto, with his dark hair and cleanly cut features, was just the latest. After a while, Katherine always left them behind.

But for now, she was still enjoying her new toy, and so Damon would tolerate him. Katherine patted Roberto on the arm soothingly. "Look," she said. "Here she comes." A pretty girl from the restaurant at one side of the piazza was hurrying toward their table, carrying a tray piled high with food and drink.

Damon smiled briefly at the girl as she placed a platter of figs and prosciutto before him. Picking up one of the ripe, firm fruits wrapped in salty meat, he bit into it and licked his lips. He didn't have to eat human food, of course, but sometimes he enjoyed the novelty of it.

"Bianca, come here," Katherine said to the waitress.

The waitress came and stood beside Katherine's chair, her face half-eager and half-shy. "Si, signora?" she said breathlessly, "You want-you want something from me?"

"Yes." Katherine stood and cupped the girl's face gently, gazing into her eyes. Damon felt a whisper of her Power. "You remember what I want," she said softly, soothingly. "It's all right with you. In fact, you'll enjoy it. Afterward, you won't remember anything about this until I tell you to. You'll just know that you want to do whatever makes us happy."

"Of course, yes." The girl nodded enthusiastically, her long chestnut hair falling across her face, brushing over Katherine's hand. "Whatever you want." She held out a hand to Roberto and he took it, cradling it against him as he bit deeply into her wrist and began to drink from the vein there.

Katherine turned Bianca's face toward Damon, both girls gazing at him with wide, untroubled eyes. "Do you want some?" Katherine asked. "I'm the one who's compelled her, so it won't violate your precious agreement with the Guardians."

Damon flinched involuntarily, then covered his reaction with a smile. Taking a sip from his bubbling glass of prosecco, he shook his head. "I don't want her," he said coolly, and watched, his face carefully blank and bored, as Katherine angled the girl's head and sank her fangs smoothly into Bianca's neck while Roberto continued to suck steadily at her wrist.

He could, technically, have drunk from the girl. Katherine was right: His deal with the Guardians was that Damon could not compel people to let him feed on them, not without hurting Elena. He could have spent eternity following Katherine, or any other vampire, around the world, feeding on humans they'd compelled for him, like a parasite. But the very notion disgusted him. He was Damon Salvatore, and he was no one's parasite.

Besides, he was doing just fine on his own.

Damon looked up to see Vittoria coming toward him, skirting around the fountain, where the dancing water reflected the lights of the piazza and made soft shadows across her skin. She was young, a university student, and still lived with her parents; she would have had to lie to them about where she was going. Her dark curls were knotted in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, and she held herself very straight, walking with the grace of a dancer. He got to his feet to meet her.

Vittoria glanced at Katherine and Roberto, drinking steadily from Bianca, then walked around them gingerly, averting her gaze. She stopped to stand before Damon.

"It doesn't hurt her," he said. "She'll be all right; she won't even remember."

"I know," Vittoria said solemnly, her eyes wide and disconcertingly trusting. Damon held out his hand, and Vittoria took it. Hand in hand, they crossed the piazza and sat on the edge of the fountain together.

"Are you sure about this?" Damon said, tracing the shape of Vittoria's fingers with his own. "I don't love you; you know that."

"I-I don't mind," Vittoria said, her cheeks flushing. "What you do to me. I like it," she added in a hushed, half-embarrassed voice.

"As long as you're sure," he told her, and she nodded, swallowing hard. Damon stroked a stray strand of hair back behind Vittoria's ear and pulled her closer. His sensitive canines extended and sharpened, and, as gently as he knew how, Damon slid them into the vein at the side of Vittoria's neck.

She stiffened in pain and then relaxed against him, her blood bursting into his mouth like the juice of a ripe plum. It wasn't as rich as Elena's, but it was sweet, filling Damon's mind with the images of young, soft-featured girls from his distant past, looking up at him with love and desire.

He remembered how nervous he'd been when he'd left Elena, how worried that, if he couldn't compel humans to let him feed, he would go hungry, or be reduced to stalking squirrels and foxes like his little brother. But it had turned out to be surprisingly easy.

He couldn't use his Power to compel human girls, but he could charm them. He could talk to them, flirt with them, smile into their eyes just as he had in Florence five hundred years ago, back when he was human and angling for nothing more than a kiss or two. It surprised him, how easily it came back to him. And he liked the girls he charmed, even loved each of them a little in his own way. Though he forgot them as soon as he and Katherine moved on.

It was very late by the time he'd finished and released Vittoria. She brushed a shy kiss against his lips and hurried away with a murmured good-bye, twisting a silk scarf around her neck to hide the mark of his bite.

Damon leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the stars. He felt someone sit down beside him, and shifted over to make room for Katherine.

"It's a nice night," she said, and Damon nodded.

"Clear, too." He pointed. "Polaris, the North Star," he said. "Leda, the Swan. They don't change, any more than we do."

Katherine laughed, a high, silvery sound like the ringing of a bell. "Oh, we change," she said. "Just look at us."

It was true, Damon thought, smiling despite himself at the challenge in her eyes. He'd known quite a few Katherines: the shy, clinging girl he'd met back home when he was human and she was newly made; the madwoman who'd pursued him to Fell's Church; and then this harder, brighter Katherine who had become, strangely, a friend. And he wasn't the angry young vampire who had woken on a cold stone slab beside his brother all those centuries ago, not anymore.

"Perhaps you're right," he admitted.

"Of course I'm right. Now, I'm thinking we should stay here for a while," Katherine said. "Roberto says the palazzo's owner wants to sell. We could settle in."

Damon sighed. "Everyone here knows who we are already," he said. "You feed on anyone who catches your fancy. It'll all end in pitchforks and torches, like a horror movie."

Katherine laughed again and patted his knee. "Nonsense," she said firmly. "They love us here. We haven't killed anyone at all, thanks to your newfound morals. To them, we're just the beautiful rich people in the palazzo who sleep all day."

Damon looked back up at the stars. Katherine was probably right; they were in no danger. He imagined staying here for a few years: eating figs, tossing coins in the fountain, drinking from sweet Vittoria and eventually her replacement.

But sooner or later, they would leave and continue their wanderings across the globe: Beijing next, maybe, or Sydney. He'd never been to Australia. He would charm another girl into loving him, taste the richness of her blood, be irritated by Katherine's latest toy, gaze up at the stars. They were all the same after a while, Damon thought, all the places of the world.

"It doesn't matter," he said finally, closing his eyes and reaching again for the faint thrum of Elena inside him. "Whatever you want."

Chapter 4

"Bonnie liked her present, don't you think?" Meredith asked, straightening the pillows on the couch. She cast her eye over the rest of the living room: her law books lined up neatly; the coffee table dusted and cleared of Alaric's research; the carpet vacuumed. She'd been gone for three days tracking Celine with Stefan, and she'd had some tidying to do when she returned. Alaric wasn't a slob, but he didn't keep things exactly the way Meredith did.

As she walked over to twitch the curtains straight, she caught Alaric's eye. He was leaning against the doorframe and looking amused, a mug in one hand.

"You knew I was compulsive when you married me," she said, and Alaric's face split into a grin.

"I did," he said, "and I married you anyway. But yeah, I think Bonnie loved the earrings." He crossed the room and laid his free hand on Meredith's arm, nudging her gently toward the couch. "Sit down and drink your tea. And then let's go to bed, it's late." She let him pull her onto the couch with him and leaned against him, nestling in Alaric's warmth. He smelled good, clean and soapy with an underlying Alaric-y whiff of spice.

"I'm glad to be home," she told him, and snuggled closer still. She was getting sleepy. "I'd better study some before I come to bed, though," she added dutifully. "Mock trial Monday. We're all really stressed out." The mock trials competition was a big deal, and she was the prosecuting attorney for her team.

Meredith adored law school. It was a culmination of all her love of logic and study, rules and case histories and solvable problems lining up in neat rows for her to master.

Kicking off her shoes, she curled her feet under her and sipped her tea, grimacing at the bitter, acidic taste of vervain. The mix of herbs Bonnie concocted for her friends was heavy on the vervain-which protected the drinker from being compelled-but the first taste was always unpleasant.

"More honey?" Alaric asked, but Meredith shook her head.

"I want to taste all of it," she said, and tried another sip, concentrating. The second time, it wasn't quite so bad. Underneath the bitterness of the vervain was the faint sweetness of lavender and a rich touch of cinnamon.

"I don't know why you won't just sweeten it up," Alaric said, shifting so that he could dig his thumbs into her vertebrae, kneading her shoulders with his fingers. "That's nasty stuff."

"I want to taste it all," Meredith repeated sleepily. It had been a long day, several long days, and she was ready to spoon up against Alaric in their wide, soft bed and go to sleep. Work, she reminded herself. You're going to win this trial.

Alaric worked a knot out of her shoulders, and Meredith moaned in pleasure. "You have no idea how tight my back got while we were gone," she told him.

"Oh, Stefan doesn't do this?" Alaric said teasingly. "Thank God, I was wondering what I had to offer that your hunting partner couldn't."

"Trust me, you've got lots to offer," Meredith said with a smile. Alaric brushed her hair aside and focused on the massage while she looked happily around the room. Her law books sat on the shelf, her slim silver computer on the desk next to a stack of Alaric's old manuscripts. Her hunting stave, in its case, was tucked in the corner. On the side table were various pictures of their friends, their wedding.

And a picture of Meredith, ten years younger, her arms around her twin brother, Cristian, both of them grinning. She didn't really remember Cristian-this reality where they'd grown up together was one the Guardians had created-and she didn't like to think about his death. Becoming a vampire was one of the worst fates she could imagine for a hunter.

Half-consciously, she leaned back against Alaric's hands, and he kneaded her muscles harder, comforting. Lately, she'd been coming to terms with the idea of Cristian. He'd grown up part of her family, in this life, and he mattered, whether Meredith remembered the young boy in the picture or not.

All the elements that made up her life-hunting, school, becoming a lawyer, her friends, her family, Alaric-they all mattered. She'd been so used to thinking of hunting as what defined her-that everything else was a gloss over her secret life, part of her disguise. That all she truly was, was a hunter.

But Meredith was going to be a lawyer now. She was somebody's wife. She was a friend and a daughter, and once she'd been a sister. These things were real to her, and they all mattered. Just like Bonnie's vervain tea, the bitter and sweet and spicy all mixing together, making up a whole.

"I want to taste it all," she murmured a third time, sleepily, and Alaric snorted with laughter.

"You're just about talking in your sleep," he said. "Time for bed. Everything will still be there in the morning." He swung her up into his arms, and she buried her face in the crook of his neck, giggling sleepily, as he carried her to bed.

It was a beautiful night. Stefan opened his senses to everything around him, unusually eager to drink it all in. He could smell magnolia flowers in the yard of a house a few blocks away, the spices and grease of three different restaurants on the street he and Elena were walking up, the sour scent of beer coming from a bar halfway down the street, the warring perfumes of three girls getting out of a car near the curb. He could hear a hundred conversations, from the drunken argument of four frat boys in the bar to the loving whispers of a newly engaged couple in the Indian restaurant. In the apartment over a storefront farther down the block, a sad song played on a cheap radio.

The world had so much in it. He could feel the slow beat of his own heart, slower than a human's, and for once, its pace didn't feel like a reproach. For once, despite everything, despite what he was, Stefan felt alive.

So much to hear, to smell, to see, to feel. And most of all, Elena. Her hand was soft and strong in his, and she smiled at him, radiating love like a vibrant, glowing sun. His mind brushed against hers, and he could feel her welcoming him home, the familiarity and warmth of her.

He stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and kissed her. All the sensations and impressions that had been flooding through him narrowed down into one thing: Elena's lips, soft against his. Elena's warm breath. He sent her thoughts of love, and of forever, and she sent them back to him.

When they broke apart, they clung to each other for a moment breathlessly. Then Elena smiled and pushed her hair back behind her ears. "You're happy to be home," she said.

Stefan took her hands in his. "Now that Celine is dead, there can't be too many Old Ones left," he said. "When we find them, we can kill them, and then we'll be able to do anything we want, go anywhere we want."

Elena frowned, her eyes puzzled. "We can do anything we want now, Stefan," she said. "We don't have to wait and be sure all the Old Ones are dead. We can't wait for that."

Twining his fingers with Elena's, Stefan smiled down into her eyes. "Remember how, when you drank the water from the Fountain of Eternal Youth and Life, you told me you finally knew what our future would look like?" he asked. "I've always known-I've known for so long that you were my future, that you were the only thing I needed."

Elena's eyes shone. "I know," she said. "Stefan, I want that, too. I want forever." Then her mouth lifted into a mischievous grin. "But we've got forever, don't we?" She moved closer to him still, her soft hair brushing his cheek, her lips only millimeters from his, teasingly light. "I want to enjoy right now."

Stefan was lowering his head to meet her lips once more when someone suddenly lurched against them. Elena's breath puffed out in a soft huff of surprise, and she stumbled back a little, away from Stefan.

Immediately tense, Stefan felt himself fall into a fighting stance, his hands drawn up in fists. It took him a moment to realize there was nothing sinister here, no one he needed to defend Elena from. Just a group of people coming out of a bar, accidentally brushing against them. He shook off his aggression; he'd spent too long on the hunt lately.

"Sorry, sorry," one of the guys said, holding up his hands apologetically. He smiled at them. "My fault. Are you okay?"

The stranger was tall, taller than Stefan, with sharp cheekbones, longish sand-colored hair, and curiously yellowish-green eyes, glowing like a cat's, or a coyote's. He wasn't a vampire, though, Stefan sensed with a quick brush of Power-just another human out for an evening with his friends. Elena murmured that everything was fine, no harm done.

"It was our fault," Stefan said courteously, and moved aside. But the stranger didn't walk on right away. He was looking at Elena. Their eyes caught for a moment, Elena's face creasing into a tiny frown as her clear blue gaze met the stranger's yellowish-green one-and then the moment was over. Stefan shook off the strange feeling their locked gazes had given him. Elena was beautiful; he should be used to people looking at her. With another murmured apology, the stranger moved on down the street, his friends reforming into a group around him.

Elena turned her attention back to Stefan, putting her arms around his neck and pulling him back down for another kiss. "Where were we?" she said, laughing up at him. "Right here? Right now?"

Chapter 5

"If your little pet is going to drag us all over the countryside, you're taking me out for a drink later," Damon told Katherine in an undertone, flashing a false, bright smile as he climbed the winding tower stairs.

"Oh, don't be a grouch, Damon," Katherine said sweetly. "You have to admit it's lovely here."

"I don't have to admit anything," Damon said, but he felt the edges of his mouth tugging up in a more honest smile.

For days, Roberto had been begging to explore the white medieval tower they could see from the windows of their palazzo, in the rolling green hills outside of town. Tonight, Katherine had finally agreed to take him, like an indulgent parent giving in to a petulant child. For lack of any better options, Damon had consented to come, too.

Roberto ran eagerly ahead of them; Damon could hear his feet clattering on the stairs above their heads. The top of the first stairway opened into a large square room with a worn wooden floor, empty except for a huge fireplace at one end, but by the time Damon and Katherine stepped inside, Roberto was already climbing the next set of stairs.

"Avanti!" He called back in Italian, urging them on.

"Modern Italian doesn't sound right to me." Damon sighed, a little wistfully. "Back in my homeland, and the children here speak garbled trash."

"Things change," Katherine said with a shrug. "Like we said last night, even we do. I was born in the Hapsburg Empire, and it doesn't even exist anymore. You and I, we just adapt and keep going." She slid him a sidelong look as they entered the next stairway, and her voice dripped with false sympathy. "Are you having a midlife crisis, Damon? Do you want me to hold your hand?"

Damon sneered halfheartedly at her. "As if I actually care about the decline of the Italian language," he said. "It's only that ... this was home once, and now it's just another place." What was curious, and a little alarming, he admitted to himself, was that the thought of home now brought to mind a small town in Virginia and the faces of a bunch of American children. Principally, of course, a face much like the one laughing back at him as Katherine sprang ahead up the stairway.

At the top of the tower, the starlit countryside stretched out before them. The surrounding area was full of vineyards, and the smell of growing grapes and warm earth rose up all around. The sun had set more than an hour ago, but the air was clear, and Damon could see the lights of the town in the valley below them. The moon was full and large, hanging low in the sky-a harvest moon.

"It's so beautiful here. I love places like this." Roberto took Katherine's hand. "Was it like this, did you live somewhere like this, when you were alive?" His voice was full of longing, as if he was about to burst into an ode to Katherine and how he wished he could have known her always. Damon almost snorted when Katherine's eyes softened in response. It looked like Katherine was still finding little Roberto charming, which meant the boy would be traveling with them for a while longer.

Katherine was just beginning to answer when Damon stiffened and held up a hand to quiet her. There had been something ... it came again. A small sound, the brush of a quick light step.

"Someone's coming up the stairs," he said.

Katherine cocked her head questioningly, and Roberto frowned, listening.

And then feet pounded on the stairs, all attempts at quietness abandoned. Alarmingly fast, before even Damon could move, a pack of people burst through the doorway and were upon them.

One caught Damon by the arm and threw him hard, so that he landed sprawling at the edge of the tower roof. He rolled quickly to his feet. Not people, then. Too fast, too strong. Something else.

The leader, a tall woman, bared her teeth, and Damon realized. Vampires. How had he not sensed them?

The tall vampire who'd led the charge held Katherine's arms pinned behind her and was angling to bite at her throat. Damon leaped toward them, throwing the attacker back while Katherine turned to quickly tear out her throat. A gout of blood sprayed across the white stone of the tower. Damon recovered quickly, back on the offensive, but there were too many of them, and they were already pressing closer, undeterred by the first vampire's death.

Instinctively, Damon and Katherine moved back to back, uniting against the threat, and Katherine pulled Roberto behind them, shielding the young vampire. Damon could feel her breath speeding up, and then she snarled, her hands bunching into claws. She was a good ally to have at his side.

There were so many of them, though, at least fifteen. Where had they come from, and what did they want?

Then several attacked Damon at once, snarling, coming from all three sides. The one in front of him, a dark-haired man, punched him in the face and moved back before he could respond, then punched and dodged again as the others worried him with teeth and nails from either direction. They were trying to get him away from Katherine and Roberto, Damon realized, trying to separate them so their opponents could use their greater numbers to overwhelm them.

Quick as a striking snake, Damon snapped the neck of one of the vampires attacking him from the side. He bared his teeth in a wild, joyous smile, then charged forward to grab hold of the dark-haired vampire in front of him, propelling him backward to the edge of the tower and sending him over in a flurry of flailing limbs. Not that the fall would kill him, but it would get him out of the picture, at least for now.

As Damon turned back from the edge of the tower, though, his heart sank. There were still far too many of them. And these weren't weak, newly made vampires either-they were strong and fast.

Katherine was holding her own, her face drawn into a snarl as she grappled with one of the attackers, ignoring another that was clawing ineffectively at her back.

But Roberto was in trouble, cornered on the far side of the tower.

Another vampire clutched at Damon before he could move toward the boy, and they tussled for a moment. His opponent swung him around, and Damon barely managed to dodge the stake a second vampire was aiming at his chest. Angry, he tore the stake from the second vampire's hand and stabbed it into the vampire's throat.

Shoving past them, he headed toward Roberto, who was struggling frantically, his face pale. The boy had probably never been in a fight before, not even when he was human, Damon thought in annoyance. But then Katherine screamed, and Damon turned to snap her attacker's neck.

"Katherine! Help!" A desperate gasp.

Katherine and Damon both looked toward the other side of the roof just in time to see Roberto's terrified face. A fierce-looking girl, younger even than Roberto when she was made, grabbed hold of his head as he fell and pulled. With a terrible ripping sound, Roberto's head was torn away from his body.

Katherine gave a strangled cry.

A few feet from them one of the wounded vampires struggled to her feet, her torn throat already healed.

"That's it; we're leaving," Damon said sharply. Taking a firm hold of Katherine's arm, he dragged her the few steps to the edge of the tower. Before any of the vampires following them could catch them, he leaped out into the darkness, taking Katherine with him.

They landed in a crackle of grape vines and the smell of dry earth. Catlike, Damon was on his feet in an instant. The vampire he'd thrown over earlier didn't seem to be anywhere around, he noted thankfully. He was probably already back up on top of the tower.

"What's going on?" Katherine asked, her voice harsh, her blue eyes narrowed with fury. "Why-who hates us? Who would want to kill us now? Klaus is dead. There's no one-"

"We don't have time for this," Damon said tightly, cutting her off. He could hear steps on the tower stairs. Their leap into the night had bought them a few minutes at best, and their attackers weren't going to give up so easily. "Come on," he said, taking Katherine's hand and pulling her roughly after him.

Damon and Katherine ran through the vineyards, plants crunching beneath their feet. They hadn't fed yet tonight and had used up too much Power in the fight to shift shape and fly, as Damon would have preferred. The most important thing was to get away.

At last, deep in the woods outside the little town where they'd been staying, they stopped to listen.

"I think we've lost them," Katherine said.

"For now." Damon frowned. "This wasn't a random attack. They must have been tracking us."

Katherine nodded. "Is there anything at the palazzo you can't stand to lose?" she asked.

Damon thought briefly of his favorite jacket, of a bracelet he had bought with the vague intention of sending it to Elena, of sweet Vittoria and her warm, fresh blood. "Nothing that can't be replaced." Hesitantly, he touched Katherine's arm. "I am sorry about Roberto," he said.

Katherine's jaw tightened, and Damon thought he caught the shine of tears in her eyes, but her voice was level. "It happens," she said. "But he was awfully young. I would have liked to have taken him somewhere he'd never seen before."

Damon glanced up at the moon, which hung high in the sky overhead. It wasn't late yet; the trains would still be running. If they made it to the station, they could be across the border before dawn. "I think it's time we left Italy," Damon said softly.

Chapter 6

Elena drove slowly down one of Dalcrest campus's side streets, looking for a parking place. There was an antiquarian bookstore around the corner, and she knew they had a collection of the medieval poetry Stefan liked. It would be nice to give him a little welcome-home present, she thought, smiling in anticipation.

Suddenly and without warning, her throat constricted and a bolt of panic shot through her. Damon. Somewhere, Damon was in trouble.

She involuntarily jerked the wheel aside and just managed to avoid sideswiping a parked car. His emotions ran through her, much stronger than usual, overwhelming her senses. Anger, and a sharp sense of fear, rage, a sort of adrenaline-fueled exhilaration. Was he fighting? What was going on? Panicked tears rose in her eyes-her own, she thought, not Damon's-and she blinked them back.

She needed to go home. She had to get to Stefan, let him know something was wrong. Taking a deep breath and trying to calm down, Elena took a sharp right and headed back toward the highway.

The road was clear ahead of her. Pushing Damon's emotions away, she risked fumbling in her purse for her phone. It was evening right now in Italy, where Damon had been the last time she had heard from him. But he could be anywhere, really. He traveled from country to country the way most people crossed streets.

Just as her hand closed around the phone, another flash of emotion from Damon broke through-fury, followed by a feeling of cold calculation. Whatever was happening to Damon, he was plotting a way to get through it. It made her feel a little better. If Damon was good at anything, it was surviving.

Elena quickly punched Damon's number into the phone, but it went straight to voice mail.

"It's me," she said to the electronic silence, the full distance between her and Damon stretching into infinity. "I felt something from you all of a sudden, something bad. Are you okay? Please call me."

As she ended the call, she pushed down hard on the gas pedal, the tires squealing as the car jumped forward. Stefan would know what to do. Suddenly she was desperate to get home to him, to his comforting arms and his always-practical mind.

She pushed her foot down on the gas again, and this time, the pedal sank unresistingly to the floor of the car. Jerking, the car sped faster, much faster than Elena had expected.

Instinctively, she hit the brake, but nothing happened. Trees and telephone poles whipped past in a blur of green and brown.

Tightening her grip on the wheel until her hands ached, Elena slammed down on the brake again. The car didn't slow, but the wheel began to vibrate in her hands, small tremors at first, becoming faster and faster. Her heart raced, and a tiny panicked whine came from Elena's throat.

The car was beginning to drift across the highway, and another car swerved around her, honking loudly. She yanked on the wheel, trying to get back into her own lane, but it only spun uselessly under her hands.

"Come on, come on," Elena whimpered, pleading with the car, or the universe. "Please, no."

This is it, she thought with a blank feeling of wonder. After everything that had happened, after all she'd survived, she was going to die here, in an out-of-control car on a bright, sunny afternoon.

Something huge and dark rose up in front of her. I'm sorry, Stefan, she thought, and then everything went black.

"Elena? Elena?" A faint, unfamiliar voice was calling to her through the darkness. Elena twitched with irritation. She didn't want to talk to anyone; she wanted to sleep. Her head hurt and her chest ached terribly. Was she sick?

"Elena!" A pounding noise, somebody banging near her head.

With a huge effort, Elena managed to drag open her eyes. Everything was blurry and white, too close, and she pushed at the whiteness, trying to shove it away. It shifted under her hands with a rustling of fabric, and slowly the world came back into focus.

The white stuff was an air bag, she realized, and it filled the space in front of her. I must have hit something, Elena thought dazedly, and raised her hand to the pain in her head. Her fingers came away bright red, wet with blood. There was an aching, bruised feeling in her chest, and she scrabbled at her seat belt, smearing the blood across her shirt.

A wave of panic washed over her. She could have died.

"Elena!" the voice snapped at her again, and she jumped.

A guy a few years older than she was, with short dark hair and heavy brows, stood just outside her window, rattling her door handle. "Elena!" he said sharply. "Hurry! You have to get out of the car."

The intensity in his voice had Elena reaching automatically for the door handle, but then she drew back her hand. "Who are you?" she said warily through the glass. "How do you know my name?"

"There's no time to explain. Please just trust me. I'm on your side." His hazel eyes were steady, pleading with her. "You have to get out of the car."

Something in his voice made her hurry to unfasten her seat belt and open the car door. But before she could say anything, he locked onto her arm and dragged her down the side of the road, away from her car.

"What are you doing?" Elena exclaimed, trying to dig in her heels and pull away. "Let go of me!" It was broad daylight. "Help!" she screamed, her voice shrill in her own ears, but no help came. She glanced around wildly, but there were no other cars in sight. The guy's hand was like an iron band around her wrist, yanking her on.

She was drawing her breath in to scream for help again-surely there must be someone within earshot-when her captor came to a halt and let go of her.

"Okay," he said, resting his hands on his knees and taking in great gulps of air. "This ought to be far enough."

"What the hell do you think-" Elena began hotly.

And that was when her car exploded.

It went up in a great orange ball of flame and an ear-crunching boom, just like in the movies. A heavy cloud of oily black smoke rose from the flames.

Elena's body felt numb. Her stomach rolled with nausea as she blinked in shock at the dark smoke, the hungry flames.

She'd felt so safe as a Guardian. She didn't have to worry about getting old, or getting sick, or dying at the hands of vampires, or demons, or werewolves, or any other kind of supernatural being. All she'd had to worry about, Elena had thought, were very human causes of death-a knife, a gun, strangulation.

A car exploding in the street, with her inside.

Her mother had died in a car accident, even though she had been a Guardian, even though she'd been hundreds of years old at least, and Elena wondered why she had never really considered the same thing happening to her. She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to tear her gaze away from the burning car.

The dark-haired guy was standing next to her, watching the fire with a mildly intrigued expression, as if it were a TV show or science experiment. He was only about Elena's own height but had well-muscled arms and shoulders, like an athlete. "I'm Jack," he said, seeming to feel Elena's gaze on him. She automatically gathered her Power and used it to see his aura, which seemed warm and brown, sincere.

"That's not supposed to happen," she said, and flushed, because the words sounded stupid to her own ears. "I mean, I read an article about movie cliches, and a lot of it was about how cars almost never explode. Certainly not just from running into a tree." As she spoke, she felt her heart steady. If they could talk logically about the why and the how, maybe she wouldn't have to think about the what. The fact that she could have been gone forever, never see Stefan or Damon again.

"It was a telephone pole," Jack said drily, and then the corners of his mouth turned up in a sudden and unexpected smile. It changed his whole face. He looked friendly and open, and Elena knew her earlier instinct to trust him had been the right one.

She tried to take a step and stumbled, feeling suddenly sick. Jack hurried forward to steady her, concern etched on his face.

"We need to get you home," he said, his hand under her arm, supporting her. "And you're right. This doesn't just happen." They both turned to look back at the steadily burning car.

"I don't understand," she mumbled. She felt like she might laugh, or scream. Possibly she had a concussion, because nothing seemed to be making any sense.

Jack wiped his hand across his face in a quick, nervous gesture. "Elena," he said, "this was no accident."

Chapter 7

"I should have been there to protect you," Stefan said wretchedly, wrapping his arms around Elena and burying his face in her hair. "I'm so sorry." While he had been relaxing in the apartment, Elena had almost died. And he wouldn't have even known until the police came to their door.

The world swung dizzyingly, and he clutched at her for balance. The thought of Elena dying was like an endless fall into a dark void. Elena had never been safe, never would be, no matter how many Old Ones he killed.

"There's nothing you could have done, Stefan," Elena said calmly, steadying him. She glanced around the room at all of her worried friends. Her eyes landed on the stranger-Jack-who had gotten her out of the car after the crash and brought her home. "It all happened so fast."

"Thank you for helping," Stefan said to Jack. Jack nodded pleasantly from his seat on the couch. He seemed to be taking everything in, his dark eyes flicking over the whole group with interest-maybe too much interest. He hadn't called the police, hadn't taken Elena to the hospital; he had just brought her home. Jack was an outsider; what did he think was going on?

"The important thing is to make sure that Damon's all right." Elena let go of Stefan and sat down beside Jack on the couch, closing her eyes with a little frown. Stefan knew she was reaching for her bond with his brother. He did his best to push down the jealousy that threatened to break the surface. Elena loved him; he was the one she'd chosen. But it was hard to accept the fact that she and Damon shared something that he couldn't really understand. "Whatever's going on, it doesn't feel like he's in danger now," Elena said after a moment.

Stefan breathed a sigh of relief, realizing belatedly that Jack must think they were crazy. But his gaze remained polite and attentive.

Meredith came back in from the kitchen with a washcloth, brushing past Bonnie and Matt, and sat down between Jack and Elena to dab carefully at the blood on Elena's forehead. "It looks like the cut's all healed up," she said. "And your pupils are normal, so you're probably not concussed anymore."

"Score one for the amazing properties of vampire blood," Elena said, smiling up at Stefan.

Stefan flinched backward, feeling his eyes widen. Meredith frowned in surprise, and Bonnie looked up from the floor by the couch where she was going through a bag of herbs, her mouth open in surprise. Matt had been worrying silently in the side armchair nearby, but now he unclenched his jaw to protest, "Elena ..."

"It's okay," Elena said, tipping her head back to smile reassuringly up at Stefan. "Jack knows all about us. He was following me because he wants to talk to us."

A chill ran through Stefan-all about them?-and he felt his eyes narrow suspiciously. In a second, he was looming over Jack. Grabbing the front of his shirt, he yanked him to his feet. "You were following her?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous.

Jack held up his hands. "Wait," he told Stefan, "I'm on your side. I helped Elena."

"I have to ask," Meredith said dryly, folding the washcloth and dropping it on the coffee table. "If you weren't the one who tampered with Elena's car, how did you know it was going to blow up?"

Jack chuckled and leaned back, pulling his shirt out of Stefan's hands. "I like you," he told Meredith. "I bet your dad's really proud of you."

Before Meredith could snap a reply-after all, Stefan thought, it was a patronizing thing to say-Jack raised his hands and crooked his pinkie fingers together, balling his other fingers into fists and bringing his thumbs together above them to make a triangle.

The sign meant nothing to Stefan, but Meredith gasped. "You're a hunter," she said, in a far less confrontational voice. "You know my father?"

Jack smiled. "Not personally, no. He doesn't have contact with hunters anymore; I guess you know that. But 'Nando Sulez is a legend. It's an honor to meet his daughter."

The hard line of Meredith's mouth softened in surprise, and Stefan backed off a little, still suspicious. "The fact that you're a vampire hunter hardly gives me a reason to trust you," he said. Elena reached a hand out to touch his leg, her thumb running comfortingly across his calf.

"It's okay," she said softly. "I've looked at Jack's aura. He's good."

Sighing, Stefan thought about all the ways that someone could be a good person and still want to kill vampires. Still, he had to trust Elena: Her instincts about people had always been sound, even before her Guardian Powers were awakened. "You haven't answered the question," he said to Jack, keeping his voice polite. "How did you know the car was going to explode?"

"My team-there are quite a few of us in town now-we know how powerful Elena's blood is, that it's the only real threat to the Old Ones." Jack's eyes flicked around the group. "When we realized that Solomon was headed for Dalcrest, we assumed he was coming to eliminate Elena. And when I saw Elena's car crash, I felt sure that Solomon was involved. It seemed smartest for her to get away from the car."

"Wait a second. Who is Solomon?" Bonnie asked. Elena's white cat, Sammy, had stretched out on his back in her lap. Bonnie rubbed his belly without looking down at him, her fingers twining through his fur affectionately.

"Solomon's an Old One," Jack said heavily. "Maybe the last of the Old Ones."

Stefan's heart sank. Elena had been right; there was always danger. How naive of him to think that, just because they'd killed all the Old Ones they could track, there weren't others tracking them. And this one must know about Elena's secret weakness, if he had tried to kill her with a car accident. Elena was frowning worriedly, obviously having realized the same thing.

"I think I know a spell that'll help protect your next car," Bonnie said, her jaw stubbornly set. "I don't know how well it'll defend against deliberate attacks, though. I'll do some research."

Meredith took Elena's hand. "Hey, we've killed Old Ones before," she said reassuringly.

Stefan felt a surge of affection for Elena's friends: stepping up immediately, ready to protect her.

Jack gave a short laugh. "You've never killed one like Solomon," he said.

Stefan felt his fists clench. "You're surprisingly well informed," he snapped at the newcomer. "Who told you about Elena's blood?"

"We keep our ears close to the ground," Jack said. "When Old Ones started turning up dead and we figured out that blood had killed them, we were able to put that together with rumors about a new Guardian on the scene. Once we knew you existed, Elena, it wasn't hard to find you." Stefan, already tense, felt his canine teeth sharpening. He turned his back to the others and breathed deeply, gripping tight to the chair beside him, and, slowly, his teeth slipped back to normal.

"What's different about Solomon?" Elena was asking behind him. "Meredith is right-we've fought other Old Ones before. Klaus, Celine, Davos. They were all cunning and ruthless and terribly strong. They had to be, to survive as long as they did." Elena's voice was steady, but Stefan noticed the flash of panic in her deep blue eyes, the pink flush of her cheeks.

Jack leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "We've been tracking Solomon for years. I've never even seen him, just evidence that he's been somewhere. Most of the Old Ones, they're flashy. They want hunters to see how powerful they are, to show that they're not afraid of us. Solomon, though, he keeps to himself." Jack spread his fingers wide. "He can get anywhere, do what he wants, and, by the time we figure where he was, he's long gone. He has more power than you can imagine, and he's always a few steps ahead of us." He paused. "We think Solomon won't stop until he's killed Elena."

Stefan automatically moved closer to Elena. "He's not the first one to try, and I'm still standing," she said, looking pale but stubborn.

"I want to help protect you," Jack said intently, his eyes locking with Elena's. "It's been my mission for so long to bring Solomon down. But I've never gotten close. I think if we band together"-he glanced at the others again-"we might have a shot at defeating him. Meredith, I know you haven't known many hunters outside your family. You've done so much on your own, and with Stefan-but you could do even more with a team of hunters backing you up."

"I had another hunter I worked with for a while. Samantha," Meredith said. "But she died. Vampires killed her." Her face seemed impassive, but Stefan had known Meredith long enough to notice the strain at the corners of her mouth when she thought of Samantha. There was a longing there, he knew. Like werewolves, hunters did best in a pack. Elena bumped her knee comfortingly against Meredith's.

"These rumors," Stefan asked, "how widespread are they? Even if we manage to kill Solomon, will there be other Old Ones coming after Elena? Should we be running instead of fighting?" He reached for Elena's hand, his fingers tightening protectively over hers.

Elena shook her head, squeezing his hand in return. "We can't run forever, Stefan," she murmured.

Jack interrupted, his voice brisk. "Like I said, I think Solomon is the last. I've been hunting all my life, and there aren't any other Old Ones I know of, not now that you"-he nodded to Stefan and Meredith-"have killed so many. So, are you with me?"

Matt, who'd been following the conversation in silence, gave a quick jerk of a nod. "Anything we can do against Solomon," he said, like a pledge. "We have to stop him before it all begins again."

"We can do this, Stefan," Meredith said, her gray eyes shining. "We've already tracked down and killed three Old Ones. If Solomon's coming to us, that just makes it more convenient." She grinned. "We won't have to travel."

Rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Stefan thought carefully. "If hunting Solomon gets too dangerous for Elena, she and I will leave town," he told Jack. "Her safety is the most important thing." Jack nodded solemnly.

"We'll work as a team," Stefan went on slowly, "like we always do. Bonnie and Alaric can use magic-Bonnie, maybe you can ask Mrs. Flowers what she knows about divination for evil creatures?" Bonnie nodded at the mention of her elderly mentor back in Fell's Church. "Elena, keep your Guardian Powers on alert. If there's an Old One near Dalcrest, there ought to be some signs of evil you can pick up on." He let go of Elena and began to pace the room, his steps quickening as he thought. "Jack, we should get together with your team, figure out how we can best work together."

He crossed to the closet and pulled out his hunter's bag, trying to think what they would need. More vervain for Meredith's weapons, to keep Solomon and any other vampires he might have with him from clouding the humans' minds. Stakes of white ash. Iron.

He unzipped the bag, and for a moment his mind stopped, unable to process what he was seeing. There was a fine dust all over his weapons. Wood dust, he realized, soft under his hands except for a few small splinters. Something cut into his palm and he pulled it back quickly, wincing. It was a tiny shard of metal. There was an ache in his gums as his canines extended slowly, throbbing in time with his beating heart, and he realized that he was smelling blood. Elena's blood.

"My stave," he said, slowly. "It's-it's been destroyed."

He could hear his friends exclaiming, getting to their feet, Sammy meowing in complaint as Bonnie unceremoniously dumped him off her lap. They were crowding behind him, all but Jack, who was standing a little away from the rest of the group. Elena touched Stefan's arm gently. But his gaze was riveted on the pulverized remains of his best weapon against the Old Ones. Nothing else had been touched.

"He came right in," Stefan said, amazed. "Without being invited. All the safeguards and charms we have on this apartment, and somehow he knew where our only real weapon against him was hidden and came straight to it." He finally dragged his gaze away from the remains of his stave, and his eyes met Jack's. They were dark and full of what looked like pity.

"You see what I mean about Solomon," the hunter said softly. "He broke through all your protective charms like they were tissue paper and disappeared without a trace. This is what we're up against. This is what we have to fight." His voice grew somber. "This was a warning."

Chapter 8

Matt was late meeting Jasmine. When he jogged around the corner, she was standing outside the little vintage movie theater, her arms wrapped around herself to ward off the chill of the late spring night.

A fierce, protective happiness lit up inside Matt at the sight of Jasmine. She glanced at her watch, clearly a little irritated-she didn't get much time off from her residency at the hospital-but she wouldn't be instinctively worried by Matt's lateness. Jasmine didn't automatically assume horrible things had happened. Because they never did, not to her.

Matt tried to shove aside the thoughts of Elena in danger, of Stefan's face that afternoon as he had gazed down at the remains of his stave. Now he was here, with Jasmine, in the normal world.

"Hey," he said, halting in front of her, panting a little. "I'm really sorry."

Jasmine crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at him. "Monster," she said sweetly. "The only way you can make it up to me is by buying me a very large popcorn and getting lots of fake butter."

As they waited in line at the concession stand, Matt wrapped his arms around Jasmine's shoulders, and she reached up to twine the fingers of her hand with his. "So what held you up?" she asked. "It's not like you to be late." Her big brown eyes fixed on his expectantly.

Matt froze. He hadn't thought about what to tell her. His silence was long enough that Jasmine's eyebrows rose slightly.

"Elena was in a car accident," he blurted, not lying, but not telling the whole truth.

Jasmine gasped, pressing her free hand against her mouth. "Oh my God," she said. "Is she okay?"

"Oh, yeah, she's fine, but she got a little banged up," Matt said, and then hurriedly corrected himself, remembering how Stefan's blood had healed Elena. Jasmine was a doctor; she would want to see Elena's injuries. "I mean, she's okay, but her car got pretty banged up. She hit a telephone pole."

They ordered popcorn and sodas and headed into the theater.

"That's terrifying. How did she manage to hit a telephone pole?" Jasmine asked as they settled into their seats, her hand still in his. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Wait, was she on the phone? I told her, driving while using a phone is just as dangerous as driving drunk."

"No, I don't think she was on the phone," Matt said, although he wasn't sure.

"Well, what happened, then?" Jasmine asked again. Matt could feel himself stiffening and rolled his neck to let go of the tension building up in him. It wasn't Jasmine's fault he didn't know what to tell her about Elena's accident; these were perfectly natural questions.

"Elena wasn't drinking, was she?" Jasmine asked him, her forehead crinkling.

"No! God!" Matt said. "There's nothing to tell. It was just a normal accident, and we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again." A woman in the row ahead turned to look at them, and Matt realized his voice had risen.

"What do you mean you're going to make sure it doesn't happen again?" Jasmine asked in a low, persistent voice.

For one crazy moment, Matt wondered if maybe he could tell Jasmine the truth. She wouldn't believe him at first-no one would. But he guessed she'd probably noticed things that didn't quite add up about them in the past. And she cared about all his friends. If he shared some of the worries that weighed him down, maybe Jasmine could help him bear them.

Something in him immediately recoiled from the idea. It was selfish of him to even consider it. Jasmine existed outside of all the violence and fear that had been Matt's life ever since high school, ever since the Salvatore brothers had first come to Fell's Church. She reminded Matt of the way he'd been before this all started.

Everything they had suffered-Elena's death, Klaus's attacks, hunting the Old Ones-had marked Matt and all his friends. Even Bonnie, the sweetest of them, had something hard-edged and fierce about her now. This new toughness had saved their lives more than once. But he didn't want Jasmine to have to change like that.

"I don't know," he told her. "I don't know why I said that. It was an accident."

Jasmine turned to look carefully into his face, then frowned, clearly aware that he was hiding something. She'd let go of his hand, Matt realized, and his fingers felt cold without hers.

Matt clenched his jaw, swallowing his urge to beg her forgiveness, tell her everything. But then he thought of what could happen. Chloe had died because of her involvement in the mess of vampires and werewolves, warriors and demons that Matt's life had become. Even if Jasmine resented him for it, he would never tell her. He would keep her safe, no matter what.

"Duck!" Bonnie shouted wildly, scrunching down as far as she could in the passenger seat of the car.

"I can't duck; I'm driving," Zander said calmly. "Anyway, your parents aren't going to see us."

Bonnie sat up and turned in her seat to look back at her parents' house. There was no car in the drive; they must be out. "I just feel guilty, coming to Fell's Church and not letting them know," she said.

"You're on a very important mission," Zander told her. "Anyway, we're having dinner with them next week."

"I know," Bonnie said. "I just hope Mrs. Flowers has some ideas about how to search for Solomon. Elena's Powers aren't picking up anything." The elderly, powerful witch had taught Bonnie a lot of what she knew.

"Hmm," Zander responded, taking a left toward Mrs. Flowers's house. Bonnie's eyes drifted to his arm muscles flexing beneath his golden-tanned skin. Werewolves were naturally strong, of course, but ever since Zander and a couple of his Packmates had started a landscaping business after college, he'd only gotten buffer. She sighed appreciatively.

"There's a car in Mrs. Flowers's drive," Zander said curiously as they pulled up. Bonnie blinked; there was a car, a shiny little blue Honda. That was strange. Mrs. Flowers was basically a recluse and, anyway, she had known Bonnie and Zander were coming.

"Maybe it's somebody selling something?" Bonnie wondered aloud as they trailed through the untidy herb garden and up the path to the front door.

In the kitchen, they found Mrs. Flowers sipping tea with a girl about their own age. She didn't look like she was selling anything: She was as tiny as Bonnie herself, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with wild curly blond hair and a spattering of freckles across her cheeks.

"Hey!" the girl said as soon as she saw them. She put her teacup down a little too hard, sloshing tea into the saucer and onto the table. "Oops," she added, grinning.

"Hello, children," Mrs. Flowers said serenely. "Help yourself to some scones. Alysia, if you look behind you, you'll see napkins to wipe up that spill."

They settled at the table, Bonnie squirming impatiently as Mrs. Flowers poured two more cups of tea and handed around plates for scones and little sandwiches. She needed to talk to Mrs. Flowers about serious business, but Bonnie couldn't see a way to bring up the subject of Old Ones in front of this stranger. And who was she, anyway?

From across the table, Alysia kept smiling at her. Bonnie shifted uncomfortably. Next to her, Zander bit happily into a scone. "These are amazing," he told Mrs. Flowers, who smiled at him.

"Um," Bonnie began, growing impatient, "Mrs. Flowers, did you manage to find anything on the ... problem I called you about?"

"There are some books of protection charms and divination spells on the table in the hall," Mrs. Flowers said briskly. "You may take them with you when you leave. I'm afraid, though, that I don't think the spells will do anything Elena can't do on her own." She put down her teacup and looked at Bonnie seriously, her blue eyes sharp. "I think Alysia might be able to assist you, though. She works with a group that could help you strengthen your Power."

"What kind of a group?" Bonnie asked, confused.

Alysia straightened, her voice becoming formal, as if she was reciting a prepared speech. "It's nice to meet you, Bonnie," she began. "I represent an association of people who work together through the manipulation of natural forces to oppose negative elements. Mrs. Flowers is"-she shared a look with the older woman-"one of the chief contacts of our group, and she's recommended that we invite you to join us." The girl smiled eagerly, making her look even younger. "She had a lot of good things to say about you, Bonnie. You sound like one of the most talented recruits we've come across."

"What do you mean, 'recruits'?" Bonnie asked suspiciously. "What exactly are you recruiting me for?"

Alysia flushed pink to the tips of her ears. "I'm sorry," she said. "I should have explained better. This is the first time I've coordinated a gathering. We'd like to invite you to our retreat for a few weeks, to share your abilities with others who have a deep connection to the natural elements, and they'll share their talents with you. If you find it useful, you can come back every year or two and work with the same team. We all help one another focus and hone our abilities. We're stronger when we work together."

"Like ... a workshop?" Bonnie asked.

"Sort of," Alysia agreed, dropping the formal tone. "We're really just a bunch of people who have magic powers and good intentions, and we think that if we work together we can get stronger, and counter some of the bad things in the world."

"Oh," Bonnie managed. She wasn't sure what to say. It sounded like a good idea, but did she really have time to join-what was this, a coven? "I've never really worked with anyone else. Except for Mrs. Flowers, of course."

"It'll just be for a few weeks. And I can guarantee it's a great way to take your abilities to the next level. Watch."

Alysia raised her hand and, her forehead wrinkling in concentration, made a complicated gesture, too quick for Bonnie to follow. There was a flash of red, and Bonnie heard birdsong as something fluttered past her, disappearing near Mrs. Flowers's china cabinet. Shadows of vines spread across the wall, and the scent of flowers and warm rain blossomed all around them. In the middle of Mrs. Flowers's kitchen, Alysia had conjured up a pocket of tropical rain forest.

"Wow," Bonnie said, as the illusion faded and the normal kitchen reassembled around them. "That was really neat."

"I'm good with illusions," Alysia said, shrugging. "But I never could have done that before I met the others."

"It sounds interesting," Bonnie said carefully. "Would you mind, though, if I checked something out for myself? No offense, Mrs. Flowers."

The older woman waved away the disclaimer. "I understand perfectly, my dear," she said.

"Don't be scared," Bonnie told Alysia, then turned to Zander. "Can you see if she's telling the truth?"

Zander got to his feet, accidentally jostling the table so that the delicate cups rattled, and took a deep breath. Then suddenly his body twisted, his face lengthening into a snout, his hands forming into claws. Alysia gave a startled yelp. In just a few seconds, a huge, beautiful white wolf stood beside them, gazing intently at Alysia with his sky-blue eyes.

"Oh, my God," Alysia said faintly, scooting her chair back from the table. Her face had paled so that the freckles stood out like little dark dots.

"Just stay still for a minute," Bonnie said. "He won't hurt you."

Zander walked around the table to sniff at Alysia, his furred jaw almost pressing against hers.

"Is everything you've told me the truth?" Bonnie asked. Alysia nodded. "You have to answer out loud," Bonnie added gently.

"Y-yes." Alysia's voice shook.

"Do you have any evil intent toward me?"

"No."

Zander changed back-always, Bonnie thought, a less painful-looking process than turning into a wolf-and rolled his shoulders, stretching. "She's good," he told Bonnie.

Alysia had her hand pressed against her chest and was breathing hard. "Oh my God," she gasped. "You control a werewolf?"

"What? No," Bonnie said. "I don't control him."

"Don't listen to her," Zander said affably. "She totally owns me."

"It sounds good," Bonnie said, ignoring her boyfriend. "I'd like to be able to channel more Power." She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she'd sort of plateaued-she was handy with herbs and charms, and could work a finding or protection spell pretty well, but her Power hadn't grown much in the last few years. "When does it start?"

"Tomorrow," Alysia said. "I know it's short notice, but we had some trouble getting the whole group that we wanted together."

"Tomorrow?" Bonnie shook her head, giving an incredulous little laugh. "I can't. I have a job. And Elena's in danger; I can't leave her now."

Mrs. Flowers's lips thinned. "Your best chance of helping Elena is by expanding your Power. You need to give this serious consideration, Bonnie."

"I don't-tomorrow's too soon," Bonnie said.

"I think you should go," Zander broke in unexpectedly. Bonnie turned to stare at him.

"You do?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, obviously, I'd miss you like crazy, but this seems like something you need to do. You owe it to yourself to try. And the school year just ended, so you have time off work."

Zander was right. Bonnie envisioned herself full of Power, protecting Elena, protecting everyone. In her imagination, she waved one hand and a shimmering, clear wall came down around her friends, separating them from danger.

She thought of how she'd felt the other day-that no one needed her, that she wasn't useful anymore in protecting Dalcrest from the supernatural. This was her chance.

"Okay," she said, turning to Alysia, who clapped her hands and smiled. Mrs. Flowers nodded approvingly. "I'm in."

Chapter 9

"I can't believe Bonnie just took off like that," Elena said, swinging Stefan's hand as they walked. They'd had lunch with Meredith, but then she had gone to the law library to do some studying-law school seemed to mean constant deadlines-and now they were heading back to their apartment alone. Zander had driven Bonnie to the airport that morning.

"She'll be back," Stefan said. Bonnie had left them with as many safety provisions as she could: charm bags for their cars and apartments, herb mixtures to drink or scatter for protection. She must have been up all night making them.

"I know. But I'll still miss her." Elena leaned against Stefan for a moment. "I just worry that someday ... I'll lose her for good. And Aunt Judith told me the house is officially listed with the realtor now. She's looking for a place in Richmond."

"Bonnie will be back," Stefan said reassuringly. "And your family won't be far away."

"I know," Elena said, sighing. "But can you indulge my self-pity, please?"

"I'll indulge." Stefan tugged her closer as they reached the building. "Let me distract you for a while. Tell me what we'll do once we get rid of Solomon."

Hand in hand, they wandered through the double doors of their apartment building and started up the two flights of stairs.

"I'd like to go back to Paris," Elena said dreamily. "I spent the summer there just before we met, did you know that?"

Stefan, putting his key in the door, was about to answer-of course he knew that, he remembered everything Elena had ever told him, everything he'd ever been told about her-when he stopped.

"Stefan, what's wrong?" Elena asked, sounding worried, and he held up his hand to quiet her. He smelled blood.

"Stay here." He heard Elena's heart begin to pound faster, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly before letting go. "There's blood in there. I need to check it out." He carefully opened the front door and went inside. Everything looked normal, but the scent of blood grew stronger. Elena gave a faint, choked-off cry, and he knew that she could smell it now, too.

Gesturing at her to stay back, Stefan crept silently toward the kitchen, staying close to the wall. He sent tendrils of Power through the apartment, but found nothing-no one, human or otherwise, inside. But the smell of blood was overwhelming, hot and sticky and flooding through his senses. He felt his canines lengthening, beginning to ache, and his senses sharpened.

There were drops of blood scattered across the kitchen floor, leading toward the closed bedroom door.

Not just drops, he realized, as his heart sank. Paw prints.

Stefan swung open the bedroom door and the smells of blood, of pain, hit him like a physical blow. There was something small and pale on the bed. Blood was spattered across the comforter, leaving it soaking wet and dark red in places. The pale thing, Stefan realized, was Sammy. Their cat had been torn to pieces, his white fur matted with gore.

"Stefan?" Elena's voice reached him from the kitchen.

"Wait-" he said, but it was too late. A soft, hurt cry burst from Elena as she stepped inside. She rushed to the bed, to the sad remains of her pet.

"Elena!" Stefan said. "Don't look."

But Elena shook her head and stretched out a hand, carefully touching Sammy's head with one finger. The blood was dripping-Stefan could hear it falling off the comforter to pool on the floor. "Who would have done this?" Elena asked, tears running down her face. "He was just a harmless cat."

"Elena," Stefan whispered in warning, pulling her close to him. Something was very wrong.

With a loud crack, the windows began to frost over. The mirror turned silver with ice. Elena shuddered, and Stefan could see her breath coming in small clouds of vapor.

"What's happening?" she whispered. Stefan just held tight to her. He wanted to protect her, but how could he when he didn't know what they were facing? He turned toward the door, but that was freezing over, too, the lock encased in frost.

Everything was turning to ice, even the pool of blood on the floor hardening at the edges. As Stefan looked around helplessly, the ice over the windows and mirror gave a loud snap and split from top to bottom, the cracks forming a jagged S.

In the sudden stillness, Stefan and Elena stared at each other, shocked. Her face was pale, her lapis lazuli eyes wide with terror.

"Solomon," she said, her voice shaking. "S is for Solomon. He's been here again."

#TVD11SolomonWasHere

The walls were dripping. Matt wiped the floor below the kitchen window with a dish towel, but the long trails of water from the melting ice had streaked the paint all the way down the wall. It was too big a mess to fix with a few minutes and a towel. After swiping at it a few times, he gave up and settled for taking a cup of tea out to Elena.

She was sitting on the sofa between Stefan and Meredith, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. "Thanks," she said weakly when he handed her the cup. Matt had known Elena long enough to see that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Poor little Sammy's body had been tucked into a box by the front door; they would bury him tomorrow when it was light out.

Alaric and Zander came back in the front door of the apartment, the door banging behind them. They'd been patrolling the halls of Stefan and Elena's building, checking to see if there were any other signs of Solomon's invasion.

"Not a whiff of a scent," Zander said, in response to the others' anxious looks. "And no one I talked to had seen any strangers."

Alaric carried a small brass triangle, from which hung a crystal on a chain. He tilted it from one side to the other, the crystal swinging, then shook his head. "There's nothing paranormal resonating anywhere in the building, so far as I can tell," he said. "Not even in here."

"Jack said that Solomon could go anywhere without leaving a trace," Meredith said.

"Are we sure it was him?" Matt asked, his gaze drawn to the sad box by the door. "I don't understand how he's getting in and out of the apartment. No one invited him."

Elena drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her pointed chin on top. "I don't know," she said. "But who else could it be? In some ways, it's more frightening to think that we might have two enemies."

"Or maybe," Matt began, hesitant, "maybe he doesn't need to be invited."

They all fell silent as the implication sank in. If Solomon could come into their homes without an invitation, then the normal rules that governed vampires didn't apply to him. Nowhere was safe.

There was a soft knock on the door. Zander answered it, his usually genial expression tense and wary. If he'd been in wolf form, Matt thought, the fur on his hackles would have been bristling.

"It's Jack and his team," Stefan told him, rising to greet them, and Zander stepped back to let them enter.

"Thanks for coming so quickly," Stefan said, clasping Jack's hand. He gestured back toward Matt and the others. "We haven't found anything yet."

Jack's face was grim. "Meet my team. This is Roy, and Alex"-two tall dark-haired men who might have been brothers each raised a hand in greeting-"Darlene"-an Asian woman probably in her thirties smiled tightly at them-"and Trinity." Trinity, younger than the others, had light brown shoulder-length hair and large blue eyes. She gave a dorky little wave when Jack introduced her.

They were all different physically, but Matt thought that he would have recognized them as hunters without being told. They shared a kind of competent grace, as if they were fully in control of what every part of their bodies was doing at any time. They all had those wary, alert eyes that took in everyone in the room.

"Give me all the details," Jack said, looking at Meredith. She told him in just a few sentences about the slaughter of Elena's cat and the ice that had cracked to reveal the letter S.

"Thank you, that was very clear," Jack said approvingly. Meredith's olive cheeks flushed slightly with pleasure, and Matt felt his eyebrows lifting. It wasn't like cool, suspicious Meredith to care what a newcomer thought of her.

Then again, Meredith was a hunter by nature. Her parents had cut off contact with others of their kind when they stopped hunting themselves. Of course Meredith would be excited to finally meet more hunters.

"Are you sure it was Solomon?" Elena asked. "You said he wasn't flashy like the other Old Ones, that he hardly left a trace. This was flashy, and took a lot of Power. And the blood ..." Her voice trailed off unhappily, and she twisted the edge of her shirt between her fingers.

The young brown-haired hunter named Trinity knelt down next to Elena. "I'm so sorry about your pet," she said sympathetically, laying her hand on Elena's arm and stilling her anxious movement. Trinity's eyes were warm with sympathy. Elena smiled weakly at her.

"It's definitely Solomon," Jack said. "You're right; he doesn't usually show off like this. As long as I've been tracking him, he's managed to be practically invisible."

"He doesn't even leave bodies behind," Darlene added. "People just disappear into thin air if he wants them to. He doesn't typically leave any evidence at all."

"So he wanted you to know he was here," Jack said. "He's sending you a clear message. He wants you to know he's after you."

"I have tracking Powers," Elena said. "Usually. But I haven't been able to find him."

"I wish Bonnie were here," Zander said. "Maybe she could do a spell that would show us something."

But Jack was shaking his head. "We've tried magic," he said. "Somehow Solomon's able to block it. It's like he's invisible and intangible to every sense we have, even the magical ones."

"How can we search for someone who's invisible?" Meredith snapped. Her hands had balled into fists, and she looked ready to leap up and start fighting.

"I wish I knew," Jack said, sighing.

"There's a funny smell in here," Zander said suddenly, cocking his head.

"Blood?" Matt asked. He could smell the coppery scent of blood throughout the apartment, and it was making him feel sick.

Zander shot him a wry look. "Something else," he said, prowling across the living room to the kitchen, sniffing. "Over here, maybe," he said, sticking his head through the kitchen doorway.

"I don't smell it," Stefan said, following him. He said it mildly, though: They all knew that Zander's sense of smell was stronger than anyone's, even Stefan's.

In the doorway between the kitchen and bedroom, Zander bent down and scraped his nails across the floor, then straightened and brushed something into his palm. "Huh," he said. Matt craned forward to see what looked like plain old dirt in Zander's hand.

"What is it?" he asked.

Zander looked up, then came back into the living room, his hand extended. "It smells like apples," he said.

"There's that apple orchard to the west of town," Matt said thoughtfully. "Have you guys been there lately?" Stefan and Elena shook their heads.

"Could it be a clue?" Zander said, looking hopeful.

Jack's eyes widened, then he grinned and slapped Zander on the back. "Maybe what we needed was a werewolf's nose," he said. "Looks like we're going apple-picking tomorrow."