The Vampire Diaries #12: Unspoken (The Salvation #2)

Chapter 10

The trapped vampire let out a high, wordless shriek and tried to scrabble away from Damon, his chains clanging against the bars of his cage. Streams of gasoline ran down his legs, leaving long, wet patches on his clothes. Elena gritted her teeth and kept herself from looking away. This was important. This was to avenge Stefan, to save Damon. Besides, she thought wearily, he would be healed again in a matter of seconds.

“Stop fighting,” Damon said, his voice flat. The young vampire kicked at him, but Damon grabbed hold of his leg through the bars and pinned it for a moment as the vampire tried to twist away. “Hand me the lighter, Elena.”

Holding her breath to keep from inhaling the fumes, Elena reluctantly pulled the lighter from her pocket and handed it over, then backed a few steps away, watching them nervously. Damon flicked it and reached through the bars to touch the flame to the edge of the vampire’s pant leg.

The cloth burst into flame immediately and burned fast, green and blue flames flickering off the vampire’s body, his skin blackening. He screamed again and kicked free of Damon’s restraining hand. Losing his catlike grace for a moment, Damon stumbled back into Elena, knocking her forcefully into the wall.

“Elena!” he cried.

“I’m okay, I think,” she said, rotating her shoulder experimentally. It hurt where she’d hit the wall and her mouth had a coppery taste of blood, but she would be fine.

Damon picked up a fire extinguisher from the floor beside him and sprayed it across the young vampire, quenching the flames. “Cooperate,” he said again, his voice low and threatening.

“What’re you going to do if I don’t, set me on fire? That’s not working out too well for you so far,” the vampire said, breathing hard. His face was smudged with smoke and his pants were in tatters, but the skin beneath the clothes, which had been blackened a moment before, was already pink and healthy again. “When I get loose, I’m going to kill you.”

Damon laughed, sounding genuinely amused. “Okay, kid, you do that.”

Scrambling to her feet, Elena grimaced. Their prisoner was glaring at her defiantly, dark eyes in a pale pointed face.

“So fire doesn’t work either,” Damon said thoughtfully to her, tapping his fingers against the bars of the cage. “We’re running out of ideas on how to kill him. I fed him rat poison yesterday, but it didn’t do a thing.”

Elena felt a twinge of discomfort, and she knew Damon sensed it by the way he tensed in response. “I’m not sure we should keep torturing him this way, Damon,” Elena said reluctantly. Damon was enjoying this too much. He’d been careless and ruthless, sometimes, but he’d never really struck her as vicious, not before Stefan died.

A warm feeling of affection came through their bond. Damon loved that she wasn’t as ruthless as he was, Elena knew. He loved the human side of her. All he said, though, was, “He’d killed three teenagers that I know of before I caught him, if that’s any comfort to you. Friends of his. I buried them to stop from causing a panic.”

The vampire boy, already recovered from the flames, shot Elena a narrow smile and rattled his handcuffs against the bars of his cage. The sound echoed throughout the cavernous empty basement. “They were delicious,” he said, eyes tracing over the vein on her throat. “I’d do it again if I had the chance.”

Elena leaned back against the bars of the storage unit on the other side of the aisle, as far as she could get from the vampire boy’s malicious gaze. “Did you try to influence him?” she asked Damon.

“No use,” Damon replied. “Watch.”

He leaned in close to the bars and looked into the boy’s eyes, his gaze intent. Elena felt the stirring of his Power as he pulled upon it. “Bite your own wrist,” he said to the boy soothingly. “Tear it open. It won’t hurt.”

For a moment, Elena thought it might work. The young vampire turned his wrists thoughtfully, pulling against the handcuffs. Then the boy’s lips curled into a sneer, and he spat directly in Damon’s face.

“Ugh,” Damon said, pulling back and wiping at his face. “Nasty little thug. We’ll go on seeing how long it takes him to starve then, shall we?” This was said with a sharp glare at the boy.

“What will that prove? It’s not like we can starve Jack,” Elena said uneasily. Again, she felt that flash of affection from Damon. He liked when she disagreed with him, liked their verbal sparring. She glanced up to see him watching her, his dark eyes intent. He was sensing her anxiety and trying to make her feel better, she knew, and something in her relaxed. He couldn’t be going off the deep end, not if he still wanted to make her happy.

Elena didn’t quite know what to do with the warmth of the feelings passing between them. Stefan, she thought, and bent her head, hiding her face behind her long fall of hair.

Damon cocked his head, listening to sounds too faint for Elena to hear. “Finally. They’re here.”

It smelled stale and musty in the basement, and Matt’s sneakers and Jasmine’s boots kicked up little clouds of gray dust as they walked. Jasmine had a black bag full of medical supplies dangling from one hand, and she looked tense and expectant, her lips tight.

“You don’t have to do this,” Matt said suddenly. He couldn’t lie and say that having a doctor on their side wasn’t a big help, but they could figure something else out if they had to. He didn’t want to involve Jasmine in this—at least, any more than she was already.

Jasmine shook her head, frowning at him. “I told you, I’m all in.” Her lips twitched in a small smile. “Besides, how many doctors get the opportunity to study this kind of physical transformation?”

They rounded the corner into another row of barred storage rooms. Smoke hung in the air, and there were scorch marks on the concrete floor. Damon and Elena were outside the only occupied one, Elena leaning back as far from the locked cage as she could get. Above their heads, a fluorescent light flickered dizzyingly.

“Thank God you’re here,” Elena said. “We really need a new tactic. Just attacking him isn’t doing anything.”

As they drew level with the cage, Matt took another look at the vampire Damon had caught. He seemed like some little high school punk, the kind who, when Matt had been in school, would have had a skateboard and worn a lot of black clothing. “He doesn’t look like he’d be hard to handle.”

Damon stiffened. “He’s stronger than he looks,” he said defensively, and Matt managed to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Damon was so touchy sometimes.

A slow, metallic tapping noise drew his attention back to the young vampire. The kid was staring at Jasmine, clinking his handcuffs steadily against the bars of his cage. As Matt watched, he inhaled deeply and his mouth opened a little, showing his canines, extended and slick with spit. His tongue licked over them briefly, pink against the white of his teeth, and his lips tilted into an unfriendly smile. Instinctively, Matt pulled Jasmine closer.

That reaction came from the part of him that would have kept his caveman ancestors crouching by the fire, he thought, the quick instinctive knowledge that there was something terrible out there in the dark.

“Hold on,” Damon told them. Almost faster than Matt’s eyes could follow, he whipped open the door of the cage and dashed inside. The young vampire snarled at him, and there was a brief vicious scuffle. It ended when Damon grabbed his opponent’s head with both hands and twisted sharply. There was a loud cracking sound and the kid slumped and slid down the bars, dangling from one chained hand. Jasmine gasped.

“That should keep him down for a little while,” Damon told her. “Better hurry.”

“He’s not dead?” Jasmine asked, stunned.

“That wouldn’t even kill me, doctor,” Damon said, amused. “And he’s a lot harder to kill.”

Hesitantly, Jasmine came into the cage and knelt down by the young vampire’s side. She felt for a pulse and frowned. “His heart’s beating,” she said, and Damon nodded, backing out of the cage to give her room.

“It’ll do that,” Damon said.

Gaining confidence, Jasmine pulled a syringe from her bag and briskly felt for a vein in the vampire’s arm. She drew one vial of blood and started a second. Matt loved watching Jasmine work. Anything nervous or shy about her slipped away immediately. Her hands were deft and quick, her manner calm. It made him feel weirdly proud, that a girl this capable, this self-assured, wanted him.

Jasmine gently moved the kid’s arm a bit to help the blood flow. Matt frowned, and took a step forward. Something wasn’t right—

With a sudden burst of movement, the vampire’s eyes shot open as he flung his arm around Jasmine’s neck and yanked her down onto the floor with him. Jasmine screamed shrilly. The vampire wrapped his hand in her curly hair and yanked back her head. Throwing his body half over her, he sank his fangs into her throat, giving a soft sound of pleasure.

“No!” Matt shouted, and charged toward them, his fists clenched.

Damon, moving so fast he seemed like a blur, got there first, yanking the kid away from Jasmine with a snarl of fury. He slammed the young vampire to the ground and snapped his neck again. A trickle of blood ran from the kid’s mouth and dripped startlingly red against the dull gray of the concrete floor.

Lifting Jasmine into his arms, Damon dashed out of the cage and slammed the door behind them. She was limp, her head back against Damon’s shoulder, eyes closed. Her usually honey-tan skin was gray and drained.

“She’s all right,” Damon told them, lowering Jasmine to the floor. Matt reached out and helped, taking Jasmine’s weight in his arms. She was sobbing, he realized, her cheeks wet with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He knelt down and lowered her head into his lap, her long hair spilling across his thighs. Then he turned to Damon. “All right?” he said furiously. “How could you leave her in there with him?”

“His recovery time is getting faster,” Damon said, almost to himself. “I didn’t know.”

I brought her into this, Matt thought, and cupped her cheek gently, feeling sick with guilt. “I shouldn’t have let her go in there,” he said, his voice choked.

Jasmine wiped away the tears, her hands shaking. “I’m okay,” she said, her voice rough, and tried to sit up.

“Stop!” Matt said, pulling her closer, trying to hold her tight. “You’re bleeding.”

“There are bandages in my bag,” Jasmine said, laying her head back in his lap. Her voice shook, and Matt could see her gritting her teeth, forcing herself to be calm. “Put pressure on it.”

Elena was already in motion, deftly pressing a cotton pad against Jasmine’s neck and wrapping gauze around it. “The bleeding’s almost stopped,” she said. “It’s not as bad as it looked.”

Now that he knew Jasmine would be okay, Matt felt like he was going to throw up. Everyone he had ever fallen in love with had died, even Elena, and he had just gone ahead and let Jasmine into his mess of a life.

“We’re going,” he said to her soothingly. “I’ll get you home.” He tried to pick her up again, but Jasmine twisted out of his arms.

“Wait,” she said, determined. “I want… I could use the blood of a natural vampire, for comparison.”

“Jasmine, you don’t have to…” Matt began, his heart aching.

She gave Damon a shaky smile. “Put out your arm for me? Please?”

Damon extended one arm, and Jasmine used a fresh hypodermic to draw a vial of blood. She worked efficiently, but, as she capped the vial, her hands shook and she dropped it, spilling more blood across the concrete floor. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, her hands fumbling in her bag, a flush stealing across her pale cheeks.

“My fault,” Damon murmured, holding out his arm and smiling reassuringly. “I’m so clumsy sometimes.”

Matt blinked. Damon Salvatore, gentle and kind with Matt’s girlfriend? Bothering to put someone other than Elena at ease?

Matt ran a hand down Jasmine’s back, reassuring himself that she was solid and real and not hurt. He was heavily aware of the unconscious vampire, his face turned toward them, soon to awake again.

“You’re not safe,” he murmured, almost to himself, and felt Damon’s eyes on him. “None of us are safe, not while Jack and his vampires are after us.”

Part of Matt wanted to rush Jasmine away. If none of them were safe here, wasn’t the solution to get away? Jack didn’t want Jasmine, didn’t want Matt. He was after Damon.

But Matt knew that Elena, whose dark blue eyes were fixed intently on Damon’s face, would never agree to leave him. And he could tell just by looking at Jasmine, capable and strong once more, that she wouldn’t either.

“Not until we figure out a way to kill them,” Damon agreed. He nodded to Jasmine. “That’s where you come in.”

Something in Matt hardened. The only thing that mattered was protecting Jasmine.

“You have to keep experimenting on him,” he told Damon, looking at the young face of the vampire in the cage, slack in unconsciousness. “If we want this to end, we’ll have to finish them.”

Chapter 11

“More coffee, hon?” The waitress refilled Bonnie and Elena’s cups before moving on to the next table. The little diner halfway between their apartments was busy, bright, and cheerful, as it always was on a Sunday morning. They hadn’t been here in a while, but Bonnie thought bright and cheerful was exactly what Elena needed right now.

“Sounds like Jasmine’s tougher than I thought,” Bonnie said, swiping cream cheese across her bagel. Elena had been filling her in on the latest in the quest to discover the truth about the synthetic vampires. “Has Meredith found out anything from the hunters down in Atlanta?”

Elena sighed, resting her chin on her fist as she stared into her coffee. “She hasn’t returned any of my calls. I got a text saying she was okay, but that’s it.”

“Yeah, same. She’s probably busy,” Bonnie offered. Meredith was pretty good at looking after herself. Right now, Bonnie was more concerned about Elena.

Elena had been distant lately, caught up with Damon and with her new Guardian task. Bonnie was glad that she had something to focus on. Elena was still pale and solemn, but she didn’t seem as stunned with grief as she’d been right after Stefan’s death.

Bonnie ripped open a sugar packet and poured it into her coffee. Mostly to get the sad, distracted expression off Elena’s face, she asked, “How’s the search for Siobhan? Any luck?”

Elena scowled. “I haven’t had any leads on her since I lost her aura at that drive-in. I keep dreaming about her, but I can’t find her.”

Munching her bagel, Bonnie listened to Elena describe the dreams—a dark-haired woman in a cabin, a bloodred aura, nothing much happening, but a sense of dread overhanging everything—and tried to offer helpful suggestions. “Maybe she’s up in the hills? There’s a lot of hunting cabins up there.”

Elena leaned back in the booth, her shoulders slumping. “I thought of that. I tried walking through the hills, but I didn’t feel anything. My Guardian Powers are supposed to lead me to her, I guess I have to trust that they will when the time is right.”

The waitress slapped the check on their table as she walked by. Bonnie was reaching for it when Elena sat up straighter and frowned at her. “Anyway,” she said briskly, “we’ve talked about my problems, but what’s going on with you? You seem stressed.”

“I do?” Bonnie asked reluctantly. She’d been trying to act normal, to make Elena feel better. Elena nodded, and Bonnie rested her temple in her hand. “I guess… Zander’s been strange lately. He’s always on the phone with the rest of the Pack, but he never tells me what they’re talking about. It’s like he’s got secrets with them that he doesn’t want me knowing. He’s never been like that before. And then with how weird he was about the Pack not helping defend us all against Jack.” She glanced up at Elena, who nodded in confirmation. “I can’t help wondering—”

As she talked, she thought about how Zander had stayed out late the night before, long past when she had gone to bed, with no explanation, and she could hear her own voice getting higher and softer, like a little girl’s, “—wondering if Zander maybe doesn’t like me so much anymore.”

Elena laughed. “Listen, Bonnie, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Zander’s crazy about you. Seriously. You two are perfect together.” Her smile faded, and Bonnie knew she was thinking about Stefan.

“Maybe,” Bonnie said doubtfully, poking her finger through the puddle of coffee left in her saucer. She couldn’t really put what she was worrying about into words, and certainly she couldn’t explain to Elena, who had not just Stefan but even Damon eternally, endlessly, death-will-not-part-us in love with her. But people did fall out of love, all the time. There was something in Zander’s eyes when he looked at her—something sad, and faraway. It wasn’t the way he used to look at her. “I’ll see him later today, at least. We’re going to have lunch and catch a movie.”

“See?” Elena told her. “Talk to him, and you’ll work it out.”

“Maybe,” Bonnie said again. They paid the check and walked out into the bright glare of the sunny parking lot.

Elena hugged Bonnie hard before she got into her car. “It’ll be okay,” she said reassuringly.

Bonnie smiled and raised a hand in farewell as Elena pulled away. Just as she turned to head to her own car, her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a text from Zander.

Sorry, can’t make it for lunch. Catch up with you later. XO

Glaring down at the phone, Bonnie felt her cheeks getting hot. Six years together, and he wouldn’t even tell her why he couldn’t meet her? He just blew her off?

It was so frustrating. The sunlight dimmed, and she wondered if she was the one doing it. She could feel her Power gathering within her, ready for her to call on nature, work her will. She could ball this Power up and fire it off at Zander, find out once and for all what was going on with him.

Better yet, she could force her Power inside him, make Zander do what she wanted, make him be the sweet, easygoing, loving guy she was used to. She felt energy rising, swirling dark and expectant inside her.

Her heart was pounding like crazy. Bonnie stopped and pressed her hand against her chest, breathing deeply, until the dark energy started to dissipate. What was she thinking? She couldn’t use her Power on Zander. It would be using him, abusing him, and if she did that, then she was the one who would kill the love between them.

Stuffing her phone back into her pocket, Bonnie marched over toward her car. She just had to have faith. Whatever was going on, Zander would tell her in his own time.

Meredith crawled through a dark tunnel, the stone cold beneath her hands and knees. Her new vampire vision lit up the rough surface of the tunnel better than a flashlight would have.

She wasn’t entirely sure where she was. They’d started out three days ago, she and Jack and his team of synthetic vampires, chasing a band of ordinary vampires through the hills and valleys outside a small town in the Appalachians. But they must have covered hundreds of miles since then. These vampires were wily and experienced, and they’d managed to evade their pursuers for a long time.

But now she and the others had tracked them down at last. Desperate, the vampires had taken refuge from the daylight in a system of caves that honeycombed the hills. It was the perfect time for Jack’s synthetic vampires to move in for the kill.

Ahead of her, a boot scraped softly against rock. Meredith’s body flooded with adrenaline. She was so close, she could feel it. This hunt was almost over.

She could see the end of the tunnel now, her sharp night vision illuminating where it opened out into the cave ahead. Her hand slipped on a stone, and Meredith froze, listening. Another sound: a tiny shuffling noise, her prey flattening himself to one side of the tunnel exit. She could hear a slow heartbeat, smell the cold scent of a vampire—so unlike the scent of humans.

Her new senses were an advantage here, not a distraction. She was using the meditation techniques they all practiced every night, breathing deep and counting slowly to focus her mind and shield her presence. The vampire at the other end of the tunnel stood out like a beacon to Meredith, but if she were doing everything right, and she managed to keep quiet, he would have no idea she was coming.

Pushing off with her legs, Meredith burst from the tunnel like a rocket. With a quick sidesweep of her leg, she took the vampire, an older man with scraggly blond hair, to the ground before he could even react. His mouth dropped open in surprise as he hit the cave floor. She could see so well, see the frown that creased his forehead and the tension in his muscles as he pushed himself back up. He wasn’t used to fighting someone stronger than he was, she could tell.

In a second he was charging at Meredith. He slammed into her hard, his cool breath coming in fast little puffs. There was a swift stinging pain in her side, and her eyes filled with tears as she saw the shard of rock he’d used to cut her clutched in his hand. Blinking the tears away, she swung at him, slamming him back against the wall of the cave. His eyes widened, and she knew he had seen the long cut on her side heal itself already.

He stumbled, surprised, and then came at her with renewed, desperate vigor. She kicked at him, but he managed to trap her leg between his thighs, and they both fell, their legs tangled together.

Meredith’s head hit the rocks hard, but she immediately started kicking and punching at the vampire above her. Jack chose to hunt the oldest, strongest vampires he could find, the ones who were the real competition for his creations. If this one managed to get away, it would be hard to find him again. He might escape entirely, the way Damon had.

Not that she cared about Jack’s plan, Meredith reminded herself fiercely. But no matter what had happened to her, she was still a hunter, and she would hunt. Vampires were still the enemy. From her prone position, she slammed a heel into the back of the vampire’s knee, and he staggered.

Adam, another of Jack’s team, burst through the tunnel entrance. Charging forward, he drove a stake through the older vampire’s chest. With one long gasp, the vampire fell like a stone.

Meredith lay still for a moment and caught her breath. “Thanks.” She shoved the body off of her and onto the floor. Climbing to her feet, she wiped the older vampire’s lukewarm blood off her arms.

Adam, who was young and cute and blond, with a tiny spray of freckles across his cheeks, ducked his head and grinned at her, swiping a hand across the blood smeared on his chin.

“Want a hand getting him out?” he asked.

Together, they pulled the older vampire’s corpse through the cave. Once outside, they dropped it on top of the pile of bodies the others had brought out. Meredith counted quickly and found all four there. That was it, the whole group they’d been chasing. She felt a bitter satisfaction: She might be wrong, might be different now, but she could still kill monsters, still make the world safer.

“Go us,” Adam said, pumping his fist, and Meredith found herself smiling at him.

For a minute, it felt like they were what Meredith had always wanted: a real team. There were five of them, not including Jack, all young, fast, and strong. Meredith could have liked them, would have liked them, if they were true hunters.

But that wasn’t quite what this was.

She was a spy, she reminded herself. She wasn’t really one of them. She would never be one of them, she promised herself, not even if she never found the cure.

“Good work, everybody,” Jack said, as he looked over the heap of bodies.

Adam and the others gazed at him in adoration, their eyes wide and shining, and Meredith felt ill. Even if she found a cure for what Jack had done to them all, the others were already lost. They loved Jack. They loved what they’d become. Sadie picked up a blood bag and sipped from it, faked a kick at Conrad, her leg moving so fast it blurred, and they both laughed.

The hunt over, Adam picked up a can of gasoline and began to pour it over the bodies. They’d burn them to make sure they were dead and to keep curious humans from stumbling across a pile of corpses. Sadie and Conrad, hand in hand, wandered a little farther into the woods. Meredith was heading over to offer Adam her help when she saw Jack lead Nick farther downhill, holding tightly to his arm as if Nick might try to get away.

There was something furtive about them, and Meredith changed course to follow. She walked quietly, keeping her shield up as Jack had taught her. Breathe. Count. Hide your aura. They didn’t glance back at her, but she was careful to keep in the shelter of the trees anyway. Her mouth dry and her heart pounding, she squeezed her hands anxiously into fists. Surely, now that she’d been changed, her palms shouldn’t sweat.

When they were far enough away from the caves that even a vampire shouldn’t have been able to eavesdrop, Jack and Nick stopped and began to talk, their voices low and their heads together. Edging to the other side of a nearby oak tree, her hands on its rough bark, Meredith stopped, too, and held her breath, listening hard.

She couldn’t hear what they were saying at first—their voices were too low. She gritted her teeth, frustrated. Did she dare risk getting closer?

But then Jack’s voice rose, furious. “What do you mean, you haven’t found her?” he said. His face reddened, and with a quick, violent movement, he shoved Nick against a tree. Lanky Nick ducked back, twisting his body away from his leader.

“I t-tried,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’m not giving up.”

“She’s got to be near here,” Jack said, his tone dark. He leaned into Nick’s face, spitting the words at him. “Try harder.”

Letting go of Nick, Jack turned away. Then, efficiently and viciously, he snatched a tree branch from the ground beside them and, in one smooth, quick movement, jammed it through Nick’s chest. Nick screamed, an agonized wail of pain, and lurched away, clawing at the branch.

Meredith couldn’t hold back her gasp of horror. It’ll heal, she reminded herself, clapping her hand over her mouth.

Too late. Jack swung around, looking up the hill. “Meredith?” he called.

No. Her body tensed to run, but he knew she was there.

Meredith took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, and stepped out from behind the tree. “Hi,” she said, careful to keep her face cheerful and her voice light and unconcerned. “Um, we need your lighter. To burn the bodies.”

Behind Jack, Nick strained to pull the branch from his chest, giving a painful-sounding groan as it slowly slid out. “Nick?” Meredith asked, trying to sound confused. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Nick breathed, his eyes glassy. He wiped the sweat and tears from his face. The wound in his chest was already closing, but his shirt was stained with blood, and his voice hitched as if he was barely holding back a sob.

“Nick and I had a disagreement. I overreacted,” Jack said slowly. He was looking at Meredith with a speculative expression, and her stomach turned over nervously.

Digging in his pocket, he walked toward her. His eyes were fixed on her, curiously blank, and Meredith steeled herself, trying not to flinch backward.

When he was a few steps away, he stopped and held out a small silver object. His lighter. “Here you go.” When Meredith looked up at him, he smiled.

She forced her body to relax, and smiled back at him. Maybe he had bought her excuse. She would have to be more careful now, though, in case he was suspicious. That had been too close.

And who was the “she” Jack had been searching for? Meredith’s heart sped up, and she took a steadying breath, willing her pulse back to normal.

Jack had a secret. No matter what it took, she would find out what it was.

Chapter 12

Matt cleared his throat and looked up at the clock on the wall of the ER waiting room, shuffling his feet with impatience.

The air seemed suffused with a combination of boredom and despair. People sat huddled together, pressing ice or bandages to themselves, or filling out paperwork with exhausted expressions on their faces. In the chair closest to Matt, a tired-looking older man held a cup of coffee with both hands as he leaned forward tensely, his gaze fixed on the door of one of the examination rooms. Matt looked away, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed by the naked fear in the man’s eyes.

Still, that man would be helped here. They all would. That’s what Jasmine did—she helped people. In that way, she’d always been one of them. They fought monsters to protect the innocent, and Jasmine fixed the innocent.

It was such an unequivocally good thing to do—no shades of gray, no occasionally evil vampire allies, no icy Guardians—that Matt’s heart swelled with love for her. Jasmine, with her sweet, soft lips and her shining intelligent eyes, was good all the way through. And she loved him, too, despite everything he had seen and done.

Matt leaned back against the vending machine, looking at the elevators. Soon she’d be here. His heart fluttered in his chest at the thought that any minute now, those elevator doors would open and he’d see Jasmine.

His phone vibrated, and he took it out to see a text from Jasmine:

Come up to room 413. There’s something I want to show you.

Matt rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, found room 413, and tapped lightly on the closed door. It immediately jerked open, and Jasmine smiled up at him, almost bouncing with excitement.

“Come on in,” she urged, tugging him by the arm. She yanked him inside and closed the door behind them, then leaned against it, grinning.

“What’s going on?” Matt asked, looking around. This was obviously some sort of lab, full of shiny white-and-chrome equipment, none of which gave him the faintest clue to its purpose.

“Look at this,” Jasmine said. Leading the way across the room, she hopped up on a stool in front of one of the machines. She turned on a screen and began adjusting dials, her fingers moving competently over the controls. Two complicated-looking graphs showed up on the screen, one above the other.

“I have no idea what you’re showing me,” Matt said, staring at the screen.

“I ran an analysis of the two samples of blood I took,” Jasmine told him. “This is basically a genetic breakdown of Damon’s blood—” she pointed at the upper graph “—and this is the manmade vampire’s blood.” She indicated the lower graph. “They’re ridiculously similar. Much more similar than either is to normal human blood.”

“I still don’t know what that means,” Matt said apologetically.

“Long story short?” Jasmine arched an eyebrow, a pleased little smile on her lips. “Jack may have made his vampires in a lab, but he didn’t do it without help. There are all kinds of chemical and genetic modifications going on here,” she said, pointing to one edge of the lower graph. “But the basic structure of the blood shows that Jack didn’t start with just ordinary human blood. He used real vampire blood. That’s not in the lab notes Damon stole from him, but it’s definitely true. There was a first step he didn’t document in that notebook.”

“Wow.” Matt ran his eyes across the screen as Jasmine explained her conclusions in more detail. They still meant nothing to him, but he believed she knew what she was talking about. “It’s amazing that you figured this out.” He hesitated. “Is it going to help us kill them?”

Jasmine’s face fell. “I don’t know,” she said. “The mutated strands must be what keep them from being vulnerable to the things vampires usually die from. But I can’t—I’m not a geneticist.”

Seeing the disappointment in her eyes, Matt felt like a jerk. “This is great, though,” he said hastily. “The more we know about what Jack’s doing, the better.”

He was glad to see Jasmine’s lips tilt up again into a smile. And it was true. He had to believe that every bit of information they could scrape up about Jack and his vampires would bring them closer to killing him.

Raccoon, Damon thought, scraping his tongue against his teeth, is even more disgusting than rabbit. That was a fact he could happily have gone without ever knowing. He sighed and leaned back against a birch tree, looking up through branches at the stars, so clear and distant. The night forest was quiet around him.

He should just discreetly find a girl who would let him feed on her, as he had in his travels, but somehow he couldn’t with Elena around. Even though he hadn’t tasted her blood since after the fight with Jack, it didn’t seem right to find another companion. Hence the unpleasantly furry entrées.

How had Stefan managed it, decade after decade, resigning himself to the blood of deer and doves and other woodland rabble? Damon bit his lip and then consciously relaxed, lounging against the tree, pushing the thought away. He wasn’t going to think about Stefan.

Instead, he reached for his connection with Elena. It was better to think of her, of her soft skin and shining eyes, of her proud spirit and sharp, fierce mind, than to poke again and again at the painful scars left by Stefan’s loss.

Her grief was still there, haunting the bond between them. It would never leave her, he supposed, never leave either of them completely. But there was something else there, he thought, something gentler and warmer creeping into her emotions. He thought—hoped—that perhaps it was the way she felt about him.

Licking his lips, Damon let the blood flowing inside him—disgusting, but full of the energy of life—warm him and quicken his Power. Elena thought Siobhan might be in one of the hunting cabins up here in the hills. So Damon was looking.

It probably wasn’t what the Guardians wanted, as they’d assigned Elena the task of finding and killing the old vampire, but who cared what they wanted? Dead was dead, and he didn’t like the idea of Elena following auras by herself, finding corpses in the night. She was strong, he knew, but she was still so young.

And he was ready to take someone down. His experiments in killing the synthetic vampires were at a standstill. Nothing worked, and his prisoner had taken to staring silently at Damon with dull, resentful eyes instead of fighting back. Restlessly, Damon touched his tongue to his sharp canines. He needed to do something.

He pushed his Power outward, searching, categorizing what he found. There was life all around him. Small animals scurried in the undergrowth, an owl swooped overhead. He felt the quick nervous mind of a deer a few yards away and, farther on, a family of black bears searching for food. Humans down in the town below, sleeping or indoors. One walking a dog at the edge of the forest.

Nothing other. No vampire consciousness stirring. If Siobhan was in a cabin in the woods, it wasn’t one of the ones up here in the hills past the edge of town.

Damon looked up at the stars again and thought about whether he should call another animal to him before he went home. He hadn’t tried bear yet; maybe it would be less vile. All that fur seemed like it would be a pain to bite through, though, which might be even worse than the raccoon.

Or maybe he should head down into town, find a game of pool or a fight, make a few humans uncomfortable with a brush of his Power.

He had taken one undecided step toward the woods’ edge when something stopped him short. Tensed, he held his breath and listened.

There was the lightest crackle, as if someone were carefully stepping across dry leaves. Suddenly, with a tingling shock of awareness, wrongness crept up on him, the faint chemical wrongness that was now all around.

Jack’s vampires. Now that Jack knew Damon was in Dalcrest, they had been tracking him. The little vampire outside his and Elena’s home hadn’t been there by coincidence. He had been scouting, and only the fact that Damon had captured him had stopped more from coming there. And now they’d found him here, in the forest. If they were able to track him, they would pursue Damon the same way their kind had chased him and Katherine across Europe. Only now he was alone.

Pushing away a flare of panic, Damon stepped backward so that the birch tree was at his back once more. They wouldn’t be able to come at him from behind. He stretched his Power, feeling for the shape of their minds. Even using his Power to its fullest extent, he could barely sense them. It was lucky he had just fed, or he might not have sensed them coming at all. There was more than one—maybe as many as eight or nine, the feel of them quiet but, once he’d found them, distinct from one another.

Jack wasn’t among them, he thought, nor was Meredith. He knew the feel of those two minds now, and these felt like strangers. Just how many minions had the mad scientist created?

They were coming closer, almost close enough for him to see them. He peered into the darkness, watching for movement. There was a crackle of dry leaves somewhere to his right, but he couldn’t spot them, couldn’t find exactly where they were coming from. Growling low in his throat with frustration, Damon took one step to the right, glaring off into the tangle of trees.

The first vampire slammed into him from the left, unexpected, knocking him sideways. She was a young blond girl, no taller than Bonnie and probably a few years younger. She took advantage of his surprise, going straight for Damon’s throat, her white teeth flashing in the starlight.

Damon caught his balance and grabbed a fistful of her thick hair, yanking her head back and away from his throat. With a quick motion, he managed to snap her neck. She fell limply at his feet, her face empty and innocent. It wouldn’t keep her down for long, but she’d be out of the fight for the moment.

“Come on then, children,” he said to the dark shapes he knew were just out of his field of vision, taunting them. “Are you monsters or cowards?” He hesitated and stared out into the darkness, feeling with his Power. Could he feel something now? The faintest shine of a rust-red aura in the night? “Dilly, dilly, ducks, come and be killed,” he shouted wildly, an old nursery song popping into his head as he strained to pinpoint just what it was he was on the verge of sensing.

There. There and there. All around. They were dropping their shields now, he realized; he could feel them coming from all sides, pressing in eagerly. They weren’t intimidated by how quickly he’d put down the little blonde. She’d only been an experiment, like poking a snake with a stick to see how fast it moved. A sense of grim satisfaction rose from them.

They weren’t afraid of him, and, deep inside, this shook Damon. He’d fought monsters stronger than he was, demons and ancient vampires. But they’d always been cautious, a little wary, respecting him even if they didn’t think he was a true threat.

But he didn’t know how to kill these vampires, didn’t even know how to hurt them properly, not for long. And they knew it.

There were too many of them, and he was alone. So Damon did the only thing he could. Between one blink and another, he pulled his Power fiercely around him, feeling his body violently compact. It was almost too much to manage with only animal blood in his veins, but he was determined. There was no way he was going to be ripped apart in the woods with the taste of raccoon still in his mouth.

Just before Jack’s vampires burst through the trees at him, Damon leaped into the air, completing the transition as he jumped. In crow form, he flapped his way above the forest.

They had gotten too close to him that time, he realized, tilting his wings to catch the night breeze. And they would never stop coming after him, now that they’d found him again.

He needed to figure out how to kill them for good.

Chapter 13

“I wish Damon was here for this,” Elena said, staring at her own reflection in the dark window.

There are a lot of people I wish were here for this, Bonnie thought. Alaric had invited everyone to his apartment, saying he had new information to share. But “everyone” felt like a lot fewer people now than it ever had.

Bonnie pulled two more chairs into place around the table. Doing this made it so clear to her how many people they were missing. They only needed six chairs, maybe five: Bonnie, Elena, Alaric, Matt, and Jasmine. And Damon, if he showed up. Stefan was gone. Meredith was away, and Bonnie hadn’t heard from her for quite a while.

Zander and his Pack should have been here, but he was still acting distant, and Bonnie hadn’t seen the rest of the Pack for days. She’d texted Zander to come to Elena’s, but she hadn’t been surprised when he’d given an evasive reply. She didn’t know when he’d be home, where he was.

Six chairs. And it looked like the sixth one would be empty.

“Can’t you just do your whole soul-bond thing and call Damon here?” Bonnie asked.

Elena finally turned around and looked at her, shrugging. “He tunes me out most of the time unless it feels like something’s wrong.”

“Really?” Bonnie asked, distracted from her angst. She’d always figured that the bond between Elena and Damon made them perfectly attuned to each other at all times, an open connection of love and longing. Which was totally romantic. And just slightly creepy.

“I tune him out, too,” Elena said. “We’d drive each other crazy otherwise.” She looked a little wistful as she said it.

Alaric came in from the kitchen and handed them each a cup of coffee. “You won’t believe how much I’ve found,” he said.

Before Bonnie or Elena could say anything, they heard feet clomping up the stairs outside, and Alaric hurried over to open the door. Matt and Jasmine came in, hand in hand. Bonnie’s heart gave a twinge of longing. Where was Zander?

“Sorry we’re a little late,” Matt said, “but we have some interesting news for you.”

Jasmine tipped her head up as Alaric kissed her on the cheek in greeting. “Have you heard anything from Meredith lately?”

“I just talked to her. She’s with the hunters, tracking Jack. No leads yet. She’ll let us know right away if they find him.” Alaric smiled, still looking excited about his news, but he seemed tired, too. Bonnie wondered if he was having trouble sleeping without Meredith. Zander had been coming to bed later and later, and she found herself tossing and turning until he came. She wasn’t used to sleeping alone.

“Where’s Zander?” Jasmine asked, as Alaric herded them all toward the table.

“He couldn’t come,” Bonnie said, keeping her voice light. Jasmine just nodded, but there must have been something in Bonnie’s tone, because Matt glanced up at her sharply.

“So I’ve been doing some digging into Jack’s background,” Alaric said, handing around photocopies of a newspaper article. The article was in English, but from a Swiss paper, dated five years before. The headline read WOMAN’S DEATH RULED ANIMAL ATTACK.

“You think this is Jack killing someone?” Matt asked thoughtfully. “Look at how they describe it. Her throat was torn open, she was almost completely drained of blood. Definitely a vampire.”

Alaric shook his head. “Based on the journal Damon found, Jack’s only been a vampire for three years,” he told them. “But look—at the end.” He tapped the last line of the article with one finger. Lucia di Russo is survived by two sisters and her fiancé, Henrik Goetsch.

“Okay…” Bonnie said. “Is this supposed to mean something? Because I don’t get it.”

“Henrik is Jack,” Alaric said, grinning. “Once I managed to ferret out his real name through missing persons reports, I was able to find out why he turned from scientist to vampire.”

“Pretty impressive detective work,” Matt said.

“So was Jack—Henrik—experimenting on this woman? His own fiancée?” Elena asked, looking horrified.

“I don’t think so,” Alaric said. “We don’t have any record of him having interest in vampires before Lucia was killed. I think this is when he discovered they were real.”

“And instead of being horrified, he decided he wanted to be one,” Bonnie remarked, feeling a little sick.

“I wonder…” Jasmine said eagerly. Her shining eyes flew to Matt’s. “We know he started it all with real vampire blood.”

Matt explained that Jasmine had used the lab equipment at the hospital to analyze the blood she had drawn from Damon’s captive. It was clear that Jack hadn’t, after all, just transformed humans into synthetic vampires with drugs and surgery as they’d thought. There had been a real vampire’s blood in the mix.

“What if it wasn’t just any vampire?” Jasmine asked eagerly. “What if it was his fiancée’s killer?”

“We don’t have any proof of that,” Elena said, leaning forward intently, her golden hair swinging forward around her face. “But whoever it was, he would have needed some kind of relationship with the vampire he got the blood from. Whether he forced them to give him the blood, or if they did it willingly…”

Alaric was nodding. “That vampire would know something about him.”

Matt shifted in his seat and let out a frustrated huff of breath. “But that doesn’t really do us any good, does it? If Jack’s going around trying to kill all the regular vampires, probably the first thing he did was kill this one. Even if he didn’t, we don’t know who the vampire was, and I don’t see how we’re going to find out.”

Elena raised her head and fixed Bonnie with a shining gaze. “Bonnie can do it.”

“I can?” Bonnie asked, thrown off balance.

“Sure!” Elena said. “If we still have the blood, you can do a locator spell. It’ll be easy for you, you’re so powerful now.”

Bonnie bit her lip, worried. “But the blood we have doesn’t even belong to the vampire we want to find,” she said. “It would be like trying to use your own blood to find your grandparents.” Her mind was busy, though. It might work. Blood was powerful stuff—even human blood had a lot of magic in it. It was life, vitality, and connection. If she could follow those connections…

“I’d need some of the synthetic vampire blood,” she said dubiously.

“I have that,” Jasmine told her. She dug into her purse and pulled out a small stoppered vial. “I thought we might need it.”

Bonnie met Elena’s eyes and knew the other girl could see the ideas sparking in her mind.

“Okay, then,” Elena said, grinning at her. “Tell me how we can help.”

Under Bonnie’s direction, they cleared the table and dimmed the lights. “Candles,” Bonnie told them decisively. “Red ones, if you have them.” Alaric was able to dig up one red candle and three white ones, which they grouped at the center of the table.

Bonnie headed into Alaric and Meredith’s kitchen and puttered around, opening drawers and cabinets, until she found a marble mortar and pestle. She’d left some herbs here, a small stockpile for emergencies, and she dug around in the cabinet under the sink to find them. Ground mastic and juniper berries would help with divination, she thought, and there was some sandalwood oil that couldn’t do any harm. Poke root was good for finding lost objects—maybe it was good for looking for vampires, too.

She dumped the herbs into the mortar and poured a little sandalwood oil over them, then mashed everything together with the pestle. Carrying it back out to the living room, she plunked it down on the table in front of the candles.

Elena handed her a book of matches and Bonnie carefully lit the candles, then reached to take the vial of blood from Jasmine. The blood had coagulated a bit. When she tipped it over above the pile of herbs, it trickled out, leaving a thick film inside the vial.

“Don’t use it all,” Elena breathed, hanging over Bonnie’s shoulder. “What if we need to do it again?”

“I don’t want to make the herbs too wet, anyway,” Bonnie told her, capping the vial. “They need to burn.” She handed the vial, a third of its contents gone, back to Jasmine, and reached for another match.

The blood- and oil-drizzled herbs smoked and sputtered, letting out a hissing noise as they slowly began to burn. Bonnie fixed her eyes on the smoke, watching the patterns as it curled before the bright candle flames. She slowed her breathing and let her eyes slip out of focus, a deep calm coming over her.

Riding a surge of Power, Bonnie pushed outward, letting her mind expand. The red trickle of blood from the vial. Blood pounding through veins, drunk by vampires, passing from one vampire to another in an exchange of blood. Jack’s hands holding a syringe.

She could feel her eyes rolling back into her head and her mouth filled with a metallic, bitter taste. In the distance, Jasmine gasped and Matt shushed her quickly.

Then it was like Bonnie was speeding through the night sky above Dalcrest, the wind rushing through her hair. She hovered over the campus, feeling the pull toward Pruitt House, her old dorm, where she knew the captive vampire was locked in the basement. No, she thought firmly. Someone else. Further back.

There was an immediate jerk at her consciousness, but weak and in more than one direction, scattered. The other vampires Jack made, she realized. There were a lot of them, more than she’d supposed.

No, she thought again, more firmly. Further back. Older.

For a moment, she thought it was hopeless. Her consciousness hovered uncertainly, and then started to slide backward. She could see herself from above, her red head tilted back, the black smoke rising from the mixture of herbs and blood toward the ceiling. She was falling back into her body. No! she shrieked silently, trying to pull away.

There was a sudden tug somewhere in her center, and Bonnie was rising again, flying faster, feeling light and buoyant. She zoomed over the campus, past Pruitt House, past the playing fields, and felt herself slow as she reached the stretch of woods on the other side of campus.

There was something—someone—down there. The blood was yanking her toward it. The sensation was stronger than what she had gotten from the vampires in the woods and somehow felt older and darker than the pull toward Damon’s captive.

Down, down, closer and closer. The image was becoming clearer: a shadowy figure in a small room. Some kind of little house deep in the woods behind the campus. Through the window she glimpsed the bell tower of the Dalcrest chapel.

Satisfied, Bonnie let her concentration slip. Immediately, she was rushing backward through blackness, feeling like she was falling, and then her vision cleared. Through the smoke of the burning herbs, thin and wavery now, the candles sputtered. Her friends were all watching her.

Bonnie cleared her throat, her mouth dry. “I know where the vampire is,” she said. “And it’s close.”

Chapter 14

As they walked through the woods, Elena sent her Power questing out around her, trying to find some trace of the vampire Bonnie said was nearby. Nothing. Beside her, Bonnie moved confidently straight ahead, seemingly sure of their direction. The others followed, Alaric muttering a charm of protection, Jasmine holding a stake and Matt a long hunter’s stave. The sun was rising over the trees and the birds sang loudly, waking up around them.

Matt cleared his throat. “I really think we should have waited for Damon before coming out here.” He sounded nervous, and Elena didn’t blame him. But they knew where the vampire who’d provided the blood for Jack was, and Elena couldn’t just sit back and let this chance slip away. It had been hard enough to wait for daylight. They weren’t total idiots—they weren’t going to go after a traditional vampire at night.

Every moment before sunrise, though, Elena had felt anxious and jittery, ready to burst out of her skin. If she had been just a few minutes earlier at the drive-in, she could have caught Siobhan, could have saved the lives of that young couple in the car.

If she’d seen through Jack’s facade just a few minutes earlier, maybe she could have saved Stefan.

“We can’t wait for Damon to get back,” she said, determined. “This might be our only chance to track it down and find out about Jack.”

Matt’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, but then he gave her a small smile and pressed forward. Jasmine’s face was set, and Bonnie’s small chin jutted forward defiantly. Alaric nodded at Elena.

We can do this, Elena thought. We have to.

The woods opened up into a clearing with a small house at the center, and they stopped at the edge, still sheltered by the trees.

“That’s it,” Bonnie said.

Hansel and Gretel, Elena thought. It looked just like the witch’s cottage, gabled and ornamented with a swooping roof. Scrollwork edging hung off the porch and windows. The cottage was precious and nestled deep in the woods. Elena wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. There was something about this little house.

“Are we ready?” she asked, staring at the house. Its windows flashed, reflecting sunlight back at her. Did something move behind them? She tried to focus her Power to see if she could sense an aura there, but felt nothing.

“Maybe we should try talking to the vampire first,” Matt blurted out. They all looked at him, and he blushed. “He—or she—hasn’t attacked us. We want information, not a fight. And we know not every vampire is just going to try to kill you right away. Damon wouldn’t. Stefan and Chloe wouldn’t have.” Jasmine’s hand slipped into his, Elena noted. So Matt had told her about poor Chloe, his college girlfriend who had become a vampire and then died.

“You’re right,” Bonnie said. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to hold a vampire anyway, without Damon’s help.” She glanced at Alaric. “If we can put a strong enough protection spell over all of us.”

As they spoke, Elena’s discomfort was growing, vague twitchiness escalating to apprehension. She began to breathe faster, her heart banging against her chest. She focused on the first floor windows. They seemed ominous, like hooded unfriendly eyes gazing out at her across the porch.

“There’s something wrong,” she said suddenly. She was sure of it.

She had to get in there right now. Something inside her was opening up, and she felt hypersensitive to everything around her: the breeze through the trees, the chirp of the birds, the fresh morning smell of pines and maples. Most of all, the tiny house where nothing moved.

It was her Guardian Powers. Behind those blank windows, some innocent human was in trouble.

“What’s going on?” Bonnie asked her, but Elena was already striding out into the clearing, abandoning any attempt at stealth. She barely noticed the others hurrying after her.

The porch steps creaked under her feet. Up close, the gingerbread cottage was grimy and out of repair, the scrollwork trim cracked. Elena hesitated for a second, clutching her stake. She tried again to find an aura inside the house, but her perception remained frustratingly blank. The sense that something terrible was happening only grew stronger.

“We have to get in there right now,” she said urgently. She slammed her shoulder against the door once and then again, grunting in frustration when the latch held. “Help me.”

Matt, stave in hand, took a running leap and kicked the door open. It hit the wall behind it with a crash, bouncing back toward them, and Elena shouldered it aside as she rushed into the cottage.

At first, the room seemed empty. The sun shone peacefully through the windows, falling on an empty sofa, a patterned rug. But the smell of blood hung in the air, heavy and overwhelming.

Elena turned—and froze in horror.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure what she saw. There was just a pattern of reds and flesh tones against the white wall.

As Elena’s vision cleared, the abstract bloodred shapes resolved to a hanging figure. A young girl, maybe fourteen years old, chained to the wall. She had been torn open, bright blood everywhere. Dark, glazed eyes stared unseeingly from a bloody face. Her hair was a honey shade of brown. Elena’s heart twisted with pity. She must have been a pretty girl, once.

Elena reached out and ran a hand lightly across the girl’s brow, as gently as if the girl could feel it. As if gentleness would do any good now, Elena thought bitterly, and bit her own lip hard to keep from crying. The girl was still warm, but her blood was sticky, drying. Once again, Elena was too late.

“Let me see.” Jasmine pushed in next to Elena, her strong, sure hands running over the girl’s body. Pulling off the ropes, she got her down from the wall and started CPR, but Elena knew it was useless. After a few minutes, Jasmine stopped and kneeled back away from the body. “He ripped her apart,” she said, her voice low with shock. “This wasn’t just for food. Whatever happened… he wanted to hurt her.”

Matt frowned. “Forget about talking to him. We’d better go back to planning an attack.”

Elena looked around the room. Blue curtains. Log walls, wooden floor. A stone fireplace at one side of the room, cold now but blackened with the smoke of an earlier fire. It was so familiar. Not Hansel and Gretel, but Snow White.

“Not him,” she told them, her voice a harsh whisper. “The vampire’s a her. Jack’s original vampire is Siobhan. My Guardian task.”

It was late afternoon when Damon landed on the sill of Elena’s bedroom window. He balanced carefully on the slightly too-small ledge, his talons digging into the wood, and tapped hard with his beak on the window. Elena was in there, he could feel her, and he was too tired to wait.

The Power animal blood gave him didn’t last as long as he’d hoped, not as long as a real meal. He could have flown for longer on human blood, but now his wings were aching and he felt dizzy and sick. He hadn’t wanted to change back while he was out, in case another attack came. He wasn’t confident he would have the Power to turn into a crow again.

Elena’s quick steps crossed the room, and she yanked the window open. “Damon,” she said.

He fluttered through the window, brushing her face with his longest wing feather as he passed, and landed on the wide soft bed before letting himself transform back into his real shape. Stretching out on Elena’s smooth white sheets, he rested his head on her pillow.

Elena’s face softened with surprise. “You’re as pale as a ghost,” she said. “Where have you been?”

Damon sighed. “The fake vampires found me. I didn’t want to come back here until I was sure I’d gotten rid of them.” Elena inhaled sharply, but Damon, closing his eyes, didn’t elaborate. He wasn’t sure if the false vampires had been tracking him, or if there were just a lot of them around, but whenever he’d been tempted to land, he had felt that strange metallic wrongness. Damon relaxed into the bed, rolling his shoulders back; he was terribly tired.

“Are you all right?” The mattress shifted as Elena sat down on the bed next to him. After a moment, her hand stroked softly over Damon’s arm. “You need blood,” Elena said firmly, and Damon opened his eyes to peer at her.

This still felt like something he shouldn’t be allowed to do, not with Stefan dead. But Elena scooted closer and lay down beside him, pushing her silky blond hair back to expose the long creamy line of her throat. Damon didn’t have it in him to resist her offer. Pulling her closer, he molded his body around Elena’s. He could feel his canines lengthening, aching with anticipation, and he kissed her neck gently before he laid the tips of his teeth against it. His canines were so sensitive that he shuddered with pleasure as they touched her.

Elena made a soft, encouraging sound, and Damon bit down. For a moment, her skin was taut against his teeth, and then they plunged through, blood bursting rich and hot into his mouth.

With the blood came a rush of emotions: love, worry, guilt. Relief at being able to do something for Damon. Under everything, that same constant pounding grief for Stefan.

She was sensing Damon’s emotions in return, he knew. He stroked her arm, sending her all the reassurance he could: He was fine, more than fine when he was with her like this. Sometimes he thought all he needed was this, was Elena and his connection to her. He let himself rest against her, felt his lips curve into a smile against the skin of her neck. Elena Elena Elena.

And then, unbidden, Meredith’s face swam up behind his eyes, and Elena twitched beneath his lips. He was usually better at shielding his thoughts than that; he’d had centuries of practice. He’d gotten distracted too easily.

Private, Damon thought fiercely, half-hissing as he arched away, his teeth almost leaving her throat. He could feel Elena’s confusion echoing through her blood and their bond. There was a sudden coldness between them, where there had been only tenderness mere moments ago. She began to pull away, and he tugged her back, close and warm against him, his arm around her.

He had promised Meredith, and now that he’d given his word, Damon couldn’t bring himself to break it. Once a gentleman, always a gentleman, he supposed.

He ran his fingers comfortingly through Elena’s silky hair in a silent apology, and worked his canines gently in and out of her throat, encouraging the flow of blood. Letting his mouth fill, he reached for his connection with Elena again. But she was holding back now. There was a strange hollow ache inside him, more than hunger.

As she pulled away from him at last, leaving him sated and warm with new blood, Elena wiped one hand across her neck. Damon’s gaze followed her hand as it carelessly smeared a single drop of blood toward her shoulder. When their eyes met again, Damon felt an unexpected pang.

She knew he was hiding something.

Chapter 15

Bonnie came down the hall of her apartment building slowly, dragging her feet. She was sure the apartment would be empty and that she’d be having dinner alone again. She’d given up on expecting Zander to be there.

As she turned the corner toward her own door, she stopped in surprise. There was someone kneeling in the hall outside her apartment, crouching to push something under the door. Bonnie’s heart thumped hard, adrenaline zinging through her body, and then she realized who it was.

“Hey, Shay,” she said, coming closer. “What’s up?”

Shay, Zander’s second-in-command, looked up, her hands half-crumpling the edge of the envelope she had been slipping through the gap beneath their door. “Oh,” she said. “Bonnie. I was just leaving Zander a note.” Her fingers scrabbled quickly, pulling the envelope back out from beneath the door. Standing, she stuffed the envelope into her pocket.

“Oh.” Zander’s not home. Just as I expected. “I can give it to him.” Bonnie reached out, but Shay stepped back, away from her.

“Never mind,” Shay said. “I’ll tell him when I see him.”

“But—” Bonnie gave up. Shay was already turning, her blond bob swinging, and walking away down the hall. She gave Bonnie a wave over her shoulder, not looking back.

“See you later, Bonnie.”

“Or not,” Bonnie muttered under her breath, unlocking the door. She tossed her keys on the hall table and kicked off her shoes before wandering toward the kitchen. The apartment felt quiet and still. She would have known right away that Zander once again wasn’t home, even if she hadn’t run into Shay.

In the dim kitchen, she drank a glass of water, and then absently arranged the flower-shaped magnets on the refrigerator door: red, blue, yellow, orange, red. The largest one held a note against the door.

B: I’ll be back late. Z

She glared at the note, and with a frustrated sweep of her hand, shoved the magnets so that they made a skittering noise against the smooth white surface of the fridge. Zander’s note fell to the floor. The note told her nothing. It was almost worse than if he hadn’t left her any message at all.

And Bonnie wanted to talk to him, she needed someone levelheaded and laid-back—she needed Zander—to help her figure out what she should do.

When she had used the vampire blood to find Siobhan, it had pulled her along like a whirlwind. Back in high school, when Elena had been trapped by Klaus between life and death, Bonnie had used blood to summon Stefan and Damon back to Fell’s Church. Ethan had brought Klaus back to life, and Klaus had brought Katherine, with blood.

Bonnie knew blood was dangerous and full of Power. She wanted her magic to be full of light and energy, something that pulled on the growing, striving parts of nature. Good magic, not the shadowy ambiguous Power you found with blood and violence.

Still, though…

It was scary. It was a really scary idea, one that made Bonnie a little sick just thinking about it. But she couldn’t get it out of her head. Blood magic might be what Elena needed. If she could reach Stefan, talk to him one more time, it might give Elena peace, help to ease the grief she carried.

Bonnie crossed to the sink and ran herself another glass of cold tap water. Gulping it down, she stared at the wall and tried to clear her mind. It would be worth it, she told herself. Blood wasn’t evil, after all, and she didn’t want to use it for an evil purpose. This was important.

Setting the glass down in the bottom of the sink with a firm thump, Bonnie made up her mind. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Elena.

“Listen,” she said when her friend picked up. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you have anything with Stefan’s blood still on it?”

After she got off the phone with Bonnie, Elena eased the bedroom door open and peeked in. Damon was asleep on the bed, his long black lashes heavy against his luminous pale skin. With his eyes closed and his cheeks still slightly flushed from drinking her blood, he looked surprisingly young.

Walking as quietly as she could, Elena crept through the room and to her closet. Damon shifted but didn’t wake as she opened the closet door. He must be exhausted; his reflexes were usually as quick as a cat’s. Elena was glad he didn’t wake. She didn’t want him to see this.

Remember how Ethan brought back Klaus? Bonnie had asked.

Blood. It was all about blood. Feeling oddly breathless, Elena peered past hanging clothes, a pile of shoes, until she saw a crumpled paper grocery bag shoved back into the corner. Her chest tight with sorrow, she picked it up and tiptoed out of the room, clutching the bag against her.

She put the bag gently down in the passenger seat of her car and tried not to look at it until she got to Bonnie’s.

When she arrived, she hesitated in the doorway, surprised. Bonnie had used a marker to draw a huge black pentacle across the kitchen table, with strange sigils carefully marked inside. Black candles were placed at each point of the pentacle. A brass bowl full of what looked like herbs and roots sat at its center. Bonnie stood beside the table, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other, her small face drawn with worry.

“That isn’t going to come off,” Elena said, numbly. “You’ve ruined that table.” For a moment, the old wooden kitchen table felt terribly important.

“I don’t care,” Bonnie told her. “Did you find something?”

Elena handed her the bag. “I couldn’t—” she licked her lips nervously. “I couldn’t bear to throw out Stefan’s shirt, or wash it. So I just stuffed it in the back of our closet.”

“Oh.” Bonnie looked down at the bag and then hesitantly opened it and pulled out the black shirt. Elena remembered Stefan wearing the shirt that last night, how soft it had been against her cheek the last time he held her in his arms.

Bonnie’s nose wrinkled, and a slight rotting smell wafted across the table. Elena flinched. That smell was Stefan’s blood. It had been long enough now that it was festering.

“You really think you can use the blood to bring him back, the way Ethan brought Klaus back?” she asked, her voice sounding thin and stretched to her own ears.

Bonnie bit her lip. “I don’t think so,” she confessed. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high. Ethan had to use the bloodlines of all the vampires Klaus had made—that’s why he needed Stefan and Damon, because they were what was left of Katherine’s line. But Stefan never made any vampires at all. I do think we can do something, though. Maybe we can bring him back, at least for a little while. Or contact him, if he’s out there somewhere.”

“Long enough to say good-bye,” Elena said softly. Tears were forming in her eyes. “I’d like that.”

“I’ll do everything I can.” Bonnie put the shirt down on the table and reached out to squeeze Elena’s hand. “Is it okay if I cut this shirt? Just to get a piece with some blood on it.” Elena nodded, and Bonnie let go of her hand and picked up the shirt again, along with a pair of silver scissors to snip at it.

Taking a glass of water from the counter, she dunked the cloth into it, and they watched as the water gradually turned a cloudy reddish-brown. Tiny flakes of dried blood floated to the bottom of the glass.

“Now I need some of your blood,” Bonnie said, picking up a black-handled knife from where it lay beside the glass. Elena arched an eyebrow questioningly but held out her arm. The blade stung as Bonnie drew it quickly across Elena’s arm. Bonnie held the glass so that a few drops of Elena’s blood fell into the water and mixed with Stefan’s. They both watched as the bright red of the fresh blood spiraled through the browner liquid.

“Okay, don’t freak out, but I’m going to put some of this on you,” Bonnie said. Elena nodded. Bonnie dipped her finger in the liquid, and Elena squeezed her eyes shut as Bonnie lifted her finger to Elena’s face. The water was cold, and Elena shivered as Bonnie’s finger traced lightly over her cheekbones, marking what felt like angular symbols on her forehead and below her eyes.

“We want to call him to you,” Bonnie told her, and Elena opened her eyes again to see Bonnie tracing circles and runes on her own cheeks with the thin mixture of blood and water. When she had finished, she placed the glass on the table and lit the five black candles. Their flickering light highlighted the wet brownish streaks on her cheeks, making her look like some kind of pagan priestess. “Give me some Power.”

Elena took a deep breath and tried to let her Power expand. Blinking, she could see her own golden aura entwine with the rose-pink of Bonnie’s. Then Bonnie began to chant in a language Elena didn’t recognize, something Germanic-sounding, and picked up the candle at the peak of the pentacle. Shielding the flame with one hand, she dipped the candle and ignited the mixture of herbs inside the brass bowl.

There must have been some kind of accelerant in with the herbs and roots, Elena thought, because flames shot up immediately, blue and green at their base.

“Koma!” Bonnie said firmly. Her voice rose. “Hitta heima! Koma hyrggr! Leita Stefan Salvatore!” The flames burned higher, and with her last words, she upended the glass over them, dumping out the mixture of blood and water. The flames sizzled and went out, sending up a plume of black smoke.

The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to grow darker. A chill crept up Elena’s spine. There was a breathless feeling all around them, as if someone stood just outside their field of vision, waiting to speak.

Stefan? Elena strained her eyes, watching the shadows. Bonnie slipped a cold hand into hers, and they waited. Elena’s heart was pounding, and she held her breath.

He was coming closer, she was sure of it. She could feel him, that indefinable, comforting feeling that Stefan was somewhere nearby. It was like coming into a room and knowing he was around the corner, just out of sight. Elena’s mouth was dry with anticipation.

Slowly, the feeling faded. After a moment, the room grew brighter again. Somehow, it seemed emptier. Elena took a deep, rough breath, her hands shaking. It hadn’t worked, she realized. Whatever had hovered at the edges of the room had departed. Elena swallowed hard. It hadn’t worked. Nothing was going to work, she realized, coldness spreading through her. Stefan was gone. Forever.

Bonnie looked at Elena, her eyes wet, and took a great gasp of air, letting go of Elena’s hand. “I’m sorry, Elena,” she said.

Elena sagged against the edge of the table and closed her eyes. She shouldn’t have hoped, she knew. But, just for a minute, Stefan had seemed so close. Her eyes burned with tears, and one slid from beneath her lids and trickled down her cheek.

Immediately, she felt Bonnie’s arms twine around her neck. “I’m so sorry,” Bonnie whispered, her voice shaking.

“I know,” Elena said, bending to rest her face against the smaller girl’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m just—” Her voice broke with a miserable half-laugh. “I’m so tired of crying all the time.”

Bonnie sighed, and hugged her tighter. “I know,” she said, her voice thick with tears of her own.

Chapter 16

Meredith watched carefully as two of Jack’s vampires sparred. After a series of hunts, they were back in the warehouse where she’d first found Jack and joined his team.

“Again,” she said, and they lunged at each other. Jack had asked her to help make them better fighters, and she hoped it meant he was starting to trust her, to depend on her. She was conscious of Jack shadowing her as she walked around the fighters. Even when she wasn’t looking at Jack, she was hyperaware of him, a prickling at the back of her neck letting her know that his dark eyes were fixed on her.

Soon, maybe, he’d be ready to tell her his secrets.

Broad-chested, stocky Conrad went in with his fists as she’d expected, telegraphing his moves so obviously that anyone could have seen them from about a hundred miles away. Nick, lanky and alert, blocked each blow easily and repeatedly.

“Stop,” Meredith said. She’d seen enough. Sliding between them, she put a hand on each side of Conrad’s face. “You’re looking where you’re planning to strike. Keep your eyes on Nick’s, and he won’t be able to guess your next move so easily. Trust your peripheral vision.”

Nick smirked at Conrad, and she stepped back so she could talk to both of them. “Neither of you is using your feet at all. You’re more agile now, you need to trust that.” She showed them how to do a roundhouse kick and watched as they tried it out, nodding approvingly when Conrad landed a solid blow, sending Nick stumbling backward, and Nick returned a solid kick. “Good.”

She told them to continue sparring and watched with satisfaction as Conrad slipped a punch past Nick’s blocking—they were learning fast.

Maybe tomorrow the whole group could work with weapons. She’d noticed that Sadie liked to work with a stake or an axe, but she’d have more reach with a stave or machete.

Conrad slammed into Nick, knocking him to the floor. “Nice, Conrad!” Meredith cheered. “You took him off guard there.”

“Meredith, walk with me,” Jack said from behind her. “The rest of you, keep sparring.”

His face was blank, giving nothing away, and Meredith felt a trickle of unease. She followed Jack across the warehouse floor, wondering what he wanted. Was there something wrong with what she was teaching the others?

But when he’d led her to the other side of the warehouse—far enough, Meredith noted, that they had some privacy—Jack grinned. “You’re a natural. I knew you would be.”

Laying a heavy hand on Meredith’s shoulder, he looked steadily into her eyes. “You’re ready,” he told her. “I want you to lead this group of vampires when I leave them. You’ll be my lieutenant, my right hand.”

“When you leave them?” Meredith asked. “Where are you going?” She was careful to keep the panic out of her voice. If Jack left, what good would being with the other vampires do? How could she learn his weaknesses, find the cure for what he’d done to her?

Squeezing her shoulder, Jack smiled. “I’m going to go on with my research, of course. This—you five—are my youngest group. Once the others are ready to hunt under your leadership, I’ll go back to the lab. If we’re going to eliminate the older vampires, we’ll need larger numbers.”

Meredith nodded. It made sense, she supposed. Tracking and killing the toughest vampires was a difficult job. And, usually, a worthwhile one. If it hadn’t been for Stefan’s death, and for the fact that Jack’s people were just as dangerous to humans as any other vampire, she might have supported them. In a lot of ways, they were hunters, like she had been. Like she was.

Jack let go of her shoulder and tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “So, if you’re going to be my second-in-command here, you need to prove that I can trust you, Meredith.”

Meredith nodded again. This was what she had been waiting for.

Jack looked at her searchingly. “Do you know where Damon Salvatore is? I know that Stefan was your friend.”

This is a test. Meredith was sure of it. Jack knew that Damon wasn’t in Europe.

But nothing she’d ever said to Jack would make him think she cared for Damon. She tried to think back over any conversations they’d had about the Salvatore brothers, back when she’d thought Jack was a human, and a hunter. Stefan had mattered to her. But, even if she’d fought side by side with Damon, he’d never been her friend.

“I think Elena and Bonnie would have hidden him with the Pack,” she said, her voice steady. It would have been a smart move if it was true, and if Damon would ever agree to be hidden. “They’re strong and hard to kill, and they hate vampires. But they’d protect Damon; they’ve fought beside him before.”

Jack nodded thoughtfully, rocking back on his heels. “That’s a problem,” he said. “Any ideas?”

“About getting past the Pack?” Meredith thought. If she really wanted to help him, what would she suggest?

Go after Bonnie. She shuddered at the idea. It would work, probably. Zander and the Pack would trade Damon for Bonnie in a heartbeat. But she wasn’t going to make that suggestion, not even to win Jack’s trust.

“Most of them can change no matter what the moon’s like,” she said instead. “But some of them need the full moon, and all of them are weaker when there’s no moon at all. That’ll be the best time to attack them.” It was true, which made it the best kind of lie, and the moon was waxing now. If Jack wanted to go against the Pack for Damon, he’d have to wait. “I’d lure them out with a false attack and, once the Pack is engaged in battle, go after Damon with another group. They’ll protect each other rather than fight for Damon.”

“Interesting,” Jack said. “That may be useful.” He rubbed a hand across his cheek, his ring rasping against his stubble. Giving her a brief nod, he began to turn away.

“Wait,” Meredith said, her heart thumping. “I wanted to ask you something.” She focused on slowing her breathing and pulse through meditation, the same way Jack had taught them to shield their true natures from others. She couldn’t let Jack guess how important this was to her.

“What’s our end game here?” she asked first. “We kill vampires—regular vampires. Is that all there is to it?”

Jack smiled. “We’re going to kill all of them. And then we won’t have any competition.”

“I like the sound of that.” Another lie that’s true. The hunter in Meredith beamed approval at the idea of killing all the vampires. “But what happens then? When all the vampires are dead?”

Jack’s smile widened, and one of his eyelids dropped in a slow wink. “One step at a time, my dear.”

Across the warehouse, there was a scuffle and a shout as Nick got Conrad in a headlock, swinging him around.

“Is there a cure?” Meredith asked, her eyes fixed on the fighters. She kept her voice level, but Jack smirked.

“Do you miss the little human hunter you used to be?” he asked. “You’re better now, Meredith, and you know it.”

“I like to know everything,” Meredith said stolidly, not letting out a flicker of emotion.

Jack shrugged. “No cure,” he said. “This is who we are. Forever.”

He might be lying. Meredith swallowed hard. “Is it true that we’re invulnerable?” she asked, trying to sound calm and businesslike. “There’s no way to kill us? If I’m going to be in charge, I need to know our weaknesses.”

She glanced at Jack casually, trying to gauge his reaction. He looked thoughtful, his lips pursing, but not suspicious, she thought.

“Come on,” he said, suddenly, as though he’d made up his mind. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled, almost yanking her off her feet and through the warehouse door. She had to race after him, across the gravel parking lot and through the thin scattering of trees and waste ground beyond, and then across the highway.

“Where are we going?” Meredith gasped. Jack kept running, his hand like a vise around her wrist, tugging her onward. The sound of rushing water filled her ears, and they finally halted on a bridge, the river flowing down below.

“The others won’t hear us here,” Jack told her, his voice low. “No one else can know.” His eyes were steady on hers, searching, his hand still around her wrist. Meredith could feel her pulse pounding beneath his fingers. She nodded, her face earnest. You can trust me.

Whatever Jack saw in her, he seemed satisfied. “Look,” he said, twisting sideways and bending his head so that the base of his skull was exposed to her. “See the scar there?”

Meredith could see it, a thin white line, maybe half an inch long.

“You’ve got one, too,” Jack said. “We all do. It’s where the injections were administered.” He shrugged, almost bashfully. “We’re almost unkillable, but we do have an Achilles’ heel. Nothing’s perfect.”

“So…” Meredith put a hand up to feel the same place on the back of her own head.

“If we are stabbed in that exact spot, we die,” Jack said flatly. “That’s the only real danger to us I know of.”

Meredith clamped down on the hot flare of excitement rising inside her. She couldn’t let Jack sense how she felt. But this was it. This was how they’d avenge Stefan, how they’d take on the latest threat. She had to let Damon know as soon as she could.

“I’ll be careful,” she said.

Jack ran a cold finger down the back of her arm, and Meredith shivered. “I know you will,” he told her, his eyes intent on hers. His fingers suddenly encircled her wrist, and Meredith barely kept herself from flinching away. She needed him to trust her, to keep trusting her. Instead, she smiled, thinking of the worshipful way Sadie and the others looked at Jack, and trying to keep the same look on her own face.

“Let’s go back and see how the sparring’s going, shall we?” he asked. “I don’t trust Nick not to slack off if we leave them alone too long.” Meredith nodded, and they turned toward the warehouse.

But Jack hung back for a moment, his hand strong around Meredith’s wrist. “You’re getting stronger and stronger,” he told her. “If you stay loyal—if you trust me, the future will belong to us.”

Meredith nodded again stiffly, the smile fixed on her face. Jack was watching her with something close to affection in his eyes, and she felt suddenly, dizzyingly sick.

This had all gone on too long, her time here with Jack and his vampires. She was disgusted by the blood and the killing and by pretending to have turned against her husband and friends and given up on her own humanity. Now it was finally going to end. Meredith couldn’t wait to betray him.

Chapter 17

The kid banged his fist against the bars of his cage, froth forming at the corners of his mouth, his eyes wild. His long black bangs flopped into his eyes and he shook them aside. “You can’t keep me here forever,” he snarled, his voice low and savage. “Locked up like this. Better to be dead.”

“Today’s your lucky day, then.” Starvation didn’t seem to be killing the kid, Damon thought, but he didn’t look good. His already skinny face was gaunt, his cheeks hollow and his bones sharp.

The young manmade vampire swiped suddenly at Damon through the bars, hands twisted into claws, and Damon dodged out of the way. Hunger didn’t seem to be making the kid any slower or weaker.

But now they knew how to kill him. Damon felt like he was fizzing with excitement. When he looked at the kid, he didn’t see just another vampire. He saw the synthetic vampires who had hunted him through Europe, who had killed Katherine. He saw Stefan’s murderer.

Nothing Damon had done, none of the staking and burning and starving had helped defuse his fury.

But now, finally, he was going to get to kill him. And, after him, the rest of them. Damon realized his mouth was watering in anticipation.

He could hear the others on the basement stairs. When Meredith had called Damon to tell him about the fake vampires’ vulnerable spot, he had told Elena, and of course she had called the others to join them. They’d try it out on the kid, and then they’d kill Jack.

Damon’s heart filled with fierce happiness. Finally, Stefan would be avenged.

They filed in: Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith, their arms linked, followed closely by Jasmine and Matt, hand in hand.

“He’s looking a little skinny, Damon,” Meredith commented lightly. She was clearly buzzing with excitement, too—and why not? What she’d been working for, spying on Jack for, was finally happening.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he replied, and watched the kid’s eyes widen as he looked back and forth between them, picking up on something different from Damon’s usual taunting. Did the young synthetic vampire know Jack’s secret? Damon thought probably not, and he shot the kid a private, vicious smile.

He turned his attention back to Meredith. “How did you happen to discover how to kill them, anyway?” He knew, of course, but he wondered what Meredith had told the others.

“One of the hunters down in Atlanta accidentally hit the right spot in a fight,” she answered smoothly. “Even Jack’s luck had to run out sometime.”

“I hope it works,” Bonnie said. “But even more, I’m just glad you’re home, Meredith.” She squeezed Meredith’s arm, her small face glowing with affection.

The others joined in, exclaiming about how they’d missed Meredith, and Damon took the opportunity to murmur, too low for any human to hear, “How’d you get away?”

Meredith glanced at him over Bonnie’s head with a wry smile. “I’m supposed to be looking for you,” she murmured back. “Killing you is pretty high on Jack’s list.”

Wonderful. Damon had been hoping Jack had other things on his mind.

The young vampire was watching them, frowning in confusion. He could hear them, and he could tell Meredith was like him, of course he could. No doubt he was wondering if she’d really turned against Jack. It seemed like Jack’s vampires were, on the whole, insanely loyal.

All the more reason to kill this one, so he never got a chance to report back to Jack.

“Stake,” Damon demanded, and Matt slipped one into his hand.

Before the young vampire had a chance to react, Damon had unlocked the cage and had one arm tightly around his neck, yanking his head forward to show the base of his skull. “Scar,” Damon said, seeing the thin white line, and shoved the stake straight into it.

The point of the stake went all the way through the kid’s neck, the sharp tip sticking out just below his chin in front. He gagged and choked, clawing at it, then fell to his knees, one arm still awkwardly pulled up by the handcuff connecting his wrist to the bars.

Damon stepped back and watched blood pool down the young vampire’s neck and chest, puddling on the floor beneath him. The kid knocked the stake free at last, but slid limply farther down the bars, supported only by the one thin arm chained to them.

He let out a harsh, blood-choked breath, and his body stiffened, his eyes rolling back into his head.

Then he lay still. He wasn’t breathing. Damon listened, and heard nothing: no heartbeat, no struggle to breathe.

“We did it,” Meredith said softly. Her eyes were wide and shining with excitement.

“Wow,” Matt said. “That was, um… surprisingly easy.”

With a sudden jerk, the vampire spasmed on the floor, his eyes flying open. Then he leaped to his feet, his handcuff rattling. The gash in his neck was healing, new pink skin stretching across it. He growled and swiped at Damon through the bars. Damon, caught off balance, stumbled and almost fell. The vampire’s sharp nails cut into his leg, and Damon shook him off, swearing.

It didn’t work. Damon could feel Elena’s leaden misery filling him, mixing with his own red-hot rage.

“I’m sorry,” he said, desperately, and reached for her hand.

Then the back of his neck began to prickle uncomfortably. Something wrong, getting closer.

Jack’s voice, as cold as ice, came suddenly from behind them. “Meredith, I expected so much more from you.”

Damon whipped around.

Jack was at the end of the row of dusty cages, flanked by a crowd of his vampires. A long hunting knife gleamed in his hand.

“It was a trap,” Meredith said flatly.

“Of course it was a trap,” Jack said, his lips curling into a sneer. “It was a test, too, and you failed.”

With that, Jack and his vampires charged.

Two of them, a stocky guy and a blond-haired girl, slammed into Damon, one on each side, the girl driving her arm against his throat while the guy swept a leg against Damon’s, trying to knock him off balance.

The move felt like one of Meredith’s to him. She’d been teaching them. Wonderful, Damon thought, grabbing the guy’s leg and flinging him backward onto the hard concrete floor. The last thing they needed was a crowd of vampire hunter–trained vampires. He managed to snap the girl’s neck, giving himself some breathing room, but he knew she wouldn’t stay down for long.

Snarling, Damon looked around for Elena and saw that she was safe for the moment. She was in a corner at one end of the long row of storage cages, her hands extended. The air shimmered slightly around her. She must be making some sort of Guardian force field around herself, because no vampire was coming near her. As he watched, the shimmer around her expanded, encompassing the rest of their group for a moment, but then it shrank back. She was trying to protect them all, but it didn’t look like she could work up the Power.

Matt had Jasmine and Bonnie backed into a corner behind him and was swinging a stave at the lanky vampire coming toward them, driving it into him again and again. The vampire flinched under the blows, but kept coming toward them, his wounds healing faster than Matt could inflict them.

Bonnie was fumbling in her purse, no doubt looking for a weapon. Matt was no coward, but the vampire was just toying with him—one quick move, and the human would fall. Before Damon could spring forward to save the girls, Meredith was there, slamming the other vampire against the wall and efficiently breaking his neck.

There was the rattle of metal behind him, and suddenly someone landed on Damon’s back, thin strong arms twining around his throat. He automatically slammed his back against the wall, forcing a grunt of pain from his assailant. A sharp edge of metal—handcuffs, Damon realized—on his opponent’s wrist pressed against Damon’s throat. Someone had let the kid loose from his cage.

The young vampire was furious and half-mad with hunger. He clung on tight and bit down, working his sharp fangs savagely into Damon’s neck.

Damon slammed backward into the wall again, trying to get rid of him. The kid’s desperation gave him strength, though, and he held on tighter.

Distracted by the young vampire, Damon almost missed Bonnie’s fierce gesture, her hands shooting up into the air. There was a burst of blinding white light and suddenly Damon was flying backward.

His elbow scraped painfully along the floor as the force of Bonnie’s explosion shoved him along, but at least it had knocked the kid off his back. They landed side by side, and glared at each other, both flat on the ground and gasping with effort. The kid’s mouth was sloppy with blood.

All the vampires were on the ground, Damon realized. Jack was the fastest back on his feet, and he dragged Meredith up with him, his long knife pressed tightly against her throat. A thin line of blood dripped down Meredith’s neck, soaking the edge of her dark blue T-shirt.

Everyone froze. Damon could hear the young vampire panting beside him, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off Meredith, not even to snap the kid’s neck.

“Go ahead,” Meredith said bitterly. “Cut my head off. See if that’ll kill me.”

Jack smiled. “Oh, I know how to kill you,” he said softly. “But that would be giving you what you want.” His eyes flicked to Damon. “Immortality’s quite the curse, isn’t it, Salvatore?”

Faster than even Damon’s eyes could follow, Jack stabbed the knife viciously down, cutting through Meredith’s stomach. Then, he let go and let her fall. Meredith dropped to her knees, her hands desperately trying to hold the gaping wound together. Bonnie screamed, and Matt shouted, “Meredith!” sounding horrified. Damon only winced—that looked painful.

As they watched, the wound began to heal. In just a few seconds, Meredith’s flesh was whole again beneath the rip in her shirt. Elena gasped, and Jasmine whimpered.

Jack’s smile spread wider. “I thought you must have been lying to them. What do you think they’ll say, now that they know you’re one of mine?”

Bonnie began to chant in Latin, her voice hard and furious. A moment later, Elena joined her. She raised her hands above her head, seeming to draw on their energy, and a shimmer appeared above her.

Jack eyed them, and then grinned at Damon. “I’ll see you soon, Salvatore.” He snapped his fingers, and in a moment, his vampires were with him.

Damon pulled himself to his feet, ready to continue the fight, but Jack and his team were already gone. Damon could hear their footfalls, faint and far away.

Meredith, her face ghost-pale, climbed slowly to her feet. Her wound was already closing. She looked at her friends, who were staring back at her. Eyes wet, she looked from one human to another, taking in their horror. Damon could hear her heart pounding and her shaky, panicked breaths.

“I—I…” Meredith grasped the edges of her cut shirt and pulled them together, as if to hide the evidence of what she was. But she’d been revealed. There was no way to hide it now.

Chapter 18

“You knew about Meredith, didn’t you?” Elena asked Damon. After the first shock of discovery wore off, she had tried to get Meredith to come home with them. Her friend had seemed so lost. But Meredith had slid away, saying she had to go home and talk to Alaric. She hadn’t held eye contact with Elena, either, her eyes flitting down, her face averted. Meredith was ashamed, Elena realized.

Now, Elena and Damon were alone in Elena’s apartment, side by side on the couch. She felt exhausted; she just wanted to lay her head on Damon’s shoulder and close her eyes.

Damon looked at Elena, assessing, and then nodded warily. “She didn’t want me to tell anyone.”

Elena paused. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

Damon arched an eyebrow curiously. Clearly, thanks hadn’t been what he was expecting.

“Remember when I became a vampire?” Elena asked.

“Believe me, princess, that’s not something I would forget.”

“Me neither.” Elena shivered. It had been a bad time for her. Fell’s Church was falling apart around them and everyone had thought—had needed to think—that Elena was dead. She had been lonely and frightened and almost out of her mind at the changes she was experiencing. “You took care of me,” she told Damon. “Without you, I wouldn’t have survived. I’m glad Meredith had you to turn to.”

Damon tilted his head, staring at her, his midnight-black eyes unreadable. “I know you want to think I’m a good person, Elena,” he said slowly. “But I didn’t help Meredith through the change, and I didn’t protect her. She wouldn’t have thanked me if I had.”

Without really meaning to, Elena leaned closer to Damon. “You would have helped her if she’d wanted you to,” she said, sure that this was true.

The corner of Damon’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. “For your sake, Elena,” he said softly. “Anything I do for any of them, for anyone, it’s for you. Always. You know that.”

She did know that. Deep inside, Elena was certain that she was the only one who connected Damon to anyone else, now that Stefan was gone.

The bond between them throbbed, sweet, sharp emotion spilling through it, and Damon leaned even closer to her. His lips were only millimeters away from hers. She could feel his cool breath. He moved closer still, his perfect lips parting.

Elena almost leaned in and took what Damon was offering. She wanted him, she did, and she could feel the love he would give her. But there was something cold and hard inside her, like a ball of ice in the center of her chest. If she did this, it would be moving on. It would be letting go of Stefan.

Elena pulled back. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. Stefan…”

With one swift, smooth movement, Damon was standing, turned away from her so that she couldn’t see his face. “Of course,” he said quietly. “He’ll always be between us, won’t he? Even if we live forever.”

Through their bond, Elena felt a sharp stinging pain. It brought tears to her eyes, but it only lasted for a few seconds before Damon muffled it, blocking the link between them to no more than a buzz. He still wouldn’t look at her.

Suddenly chilled, Elena folded her arms around herself. It was possible that they would live forever, wasn’t it? Un-aging, unchanging, forever young. Without Stefan.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. Damon nodded once, stiffly, and walked away, across the living room and through the door to the kitchen. A moment later, she heard the apartment door close quietly behind him.

What did I do? She pressed her hands against her chest, feeling a hollow, desperate ache inside. She couldn’t tell if the emotion belonged to her or to Damon.

Evening had come while Meredith sat on her and Alaric’s bed, waiting for Alaric to come home from teaching his class at Dalcrest. Dread pooled inside her. Half of her—more than half of her—just wanted to run, to get away before she saw him. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists so tight that her nails bit into her palms.

She had been waiting for hours. By the time she heard the front door open and close, the bedroom was almost totally dark, lit only by the streetlights shining in from outside.

Of course, Meredith could see perfectly well.

“Alaric,” she said in a small voice, unsure if he could hear her from the hall. He called back and then came to the bedroom.

“Hey,” he said softly. “When did you get home?” Even if she hadn’t been able to see the smile on his face, she would have heard it in his voice. “How come it’s so dark in here?” He reached toward the light switch, and Meredith stiffened.

“Leave it off, okay?”

“What’s wrong?” Alaric came closer and brushed a concerned hand featherlight across her cheek. Meredith pulled him down beside her on the bed and buried her head in his shoulder. She could hear his heart beating, as steady as the sea.

“What is it?” Alaric asked, pulling her against him. His body was warm and solid, and he petted her hair with one hand, trying to calm her down. Meredith realized she was shaking against Alaric, pushing her face against his shoulder. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” he asked again, sounding almost frantic now.

Meredith told him everything she could think of: how Jack had changed her, how long she’d been hiding it from him. That she’d lied, that she hadn’t been down in Atlanta with the hunters at all, but with Jack, being a vampire.

“I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t trust myself.” Around you, she didn’t add.

Alaric was silent for a moment, and tears began to fall from Meredith’s eyes. She pressed her face against his shoulder again, shaking. His shirt was warm with his body heat, and she pushed closer, treasuring the last moments of contact. He’d leave her. He’d have to. How could Alaric love her, if she was a monster?

But then his arms went around her and held her tightly.

“We’ll get through this,” he promised. His lips brushed the side of her head, and she gave a choked sob, soaking Alaric’s shoulder with tears and snot. “There’ll be a cure. Maybe. And even if not, we love each other. We can handle this.”

Alaric’s voice was strained, but he wasn’t flinching away from her. And there weren’t any lies between them, not now. She closed her eyes and sobbed into his shoulder.

She could still smell his blood, salty and metallic, as rich and mysterious as the ocean. But Alaric didn’t smell like food anymore. Instead, he smelled like home.

Chapter 19

Matt hesitated in the hallway, Jasmine’s hand firmly in his, staring at the plain wooden door to Meredith and Alaric’s apartment. His mouth felt dry, and he wasn’t breathing quite right.

It was ridiculous, he knew. He wasn’t afraid of Meredith just because she was suddenly a vampire. He’d been friends with Stefan for years, and he had a cordial relationship with Damon, although they weren’t exactly friends. He’d even been in love with a vampire, poor Chloe, when he was a freshman in college.

Maybe his history with Chloe was the trouble. He knew how hard it was for a vampire to resist feeding, to stay a person instead of a killer. Chloe hadn’t been able to, and in the end she’d chosen to die instead. Becoming a vampire, fighting against those new, violent instincts, could tear a good person apart.

Matt wasn’t going to let that happen to Meredith. None of them were.

Jasmine leaned against him, warm and quietly reassuring. “Can’t stand out here all day,” she said, and Matt lifted his hand and knocked.

Alaric opened the door and smiled at them, looking so normal that Matt’s heart gave a ridiculous hopeful hop. Maybe everything’s okay.

But, as the door swung wider, he saw Meredith, slumped at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, and his heart sank again. Meredith was definitely not okay. She looked broken. Like she’d been fighting on, out of pride, pretending everything was fine, fiercely determined that none of them would know what had happened to her. And now that they knew, all that fight had gone.

Damon lounged in a chair on the other side of the table from Meredith, while Elena and Bonnie leaned against the counter behind him, their faces troubled. Out of the corner of his eye, Matt registered Zander coming in from the other room, moving with an easy, animal grace. But Matt’s attention was fixed on Meredith. He couldn’t believe she was a vampire. And they hadn’t known.

“I can hear your heart thumping, Matt,” Meredith said, not raising her head. “You’re scared of me.”

It was the flat bitterness in her tone that got Matt moving toward her; she was one of his dearest friends, he couldn’t let her sound like that, feel that way. She looked up at him, her gray eyes wide and wet, and warmth flooded him.

“I’m not scared,” he said, reaching out for her. She flinched away for a second and then leaned into his hand, her body as warm and solid as it had always been. “Meredith, it doesn’t matter.” She gave a tear-choked snort at that, and he reconsidered, squeezing her shoulders. “Okay, of course it matters, but you haven’t changed. You’re still the same girl who shared your lunch with me in kindergarten.”

He could remember her so clearly at age five, tall and solemn, dark hair pulled into pigtails. On their first day, Matt had forgotten the lunch his mom had carefully packed for him, and he burst into tears in the cafeteria. Meredith had been there, calm and compassionate, giving him half of her peanut butter sandwich, a handful of grapes, breaking her cookie neatly in two. Matt had tagged along after her for the rest of that whole long confusing first day, confident that Meredith would look after him.

“I trust you, Mer,” he went on. “Jack did something terrible to you—really awful, and God, I’m so sorry about that. But I’m not scared. Because I know that you’re still the girl who was the only person I could talk to when Elena went to France that summer in high school and I worried she was going to break up with me. You’re still the same girl who was the total champion of our fifth grade soccer team.” His eyes were stinging, and he swiped a hand across them. “I know that girl, Meredith, and I know she’s good all the way through. I’d never be scared of you.”

Meredith gave a choked-off laugh and bit her lip. “I know—I know all those things about the past, Matt. But what if I can’t help myself? I hear your blood pumping through your veins, louder than the words you’re saying. You smell like food.”

“They’ve always smelled like dinner to me, but I manage to restrain myself,” Damon told her, with a narrow smile. “Mostly. And you’re much more moral than I am, hunter.”

“One more thing I know about you is that you’re too tough to give in to anything like that,” Matt said. “I’ve got faith in you. We all do.”

“And we are going to help you,” Bonnie said, folding her arms. Her small chin was stuck out stubbornly. “Alaric and I are going to figure out a cure.”

Damon was the one who laughed that time. “The only cure for being a vampire is a sharp stake, little redbird,” he said gently.

“With my magic and Alaric’s research skills…” Bonnie’s shoulders rose in a tiny, hopeful shrug. “Maybe? Maybe we can do this?”

“I’ll help,” Jasmine said quickly. “He used science to make his vampires. Maybe science can cure them.”

Meredith’s eyes were brighter now, not quite so defeated, and Matt fumbled in his pocket. “I brought you something,” he told her, his fingers fastening around a thin chain as he pulled it out of his pocket. It was a cheap silver-toned bracelet with a heart frame charm.

“Is that from prom?” Elena asked, surprised.

The bracelets had been favors at their junior prom. Matt and Elena had gone together, and each seat at the table—which they’d shared with Bonnie and Meredith and their dates—had one in front of it, the frame ready to hold a tiny copy of the owner’s prom picture. Matt had kept his; he was the sentimental type. And he’d dug it up last night and scraped out the photo of his and Elena’s smiling faces, back before everything began. He spent some time in Photoshop, shrinking down another old picture to fit.

“It’s us,” Meredith said softly, looking down at the tiny picture. It was from the first day of college: Matt, Meredith, Bonnie, and Elena smiling up from the heart-shaped frame, arms around each other’s necks. And Stefan beside Elena, with them but somehow separate, his classically handsome face solemn. Meredith touched his face lightly with one finger, and Matt sighed. He missed Stefan. They all did.

“I thought if you had it, it would remind you of how much we love you. You’re one of us, whether you’re a vampire or a human. We’ll be here to help you remember who you are.” Matt licked his lips nervously.

“We believe in you.” Elena leaned forward to wrap an arm around Meredith’s shoulder. “And we love you.”

Bonnie nodded, reaching to pat Meredith’s back.

Meredith’s lips tightened as if she was trying not to cry, and then she blinked and looked up at Matt. “Thank you,” she said simply, and wrapped the bracelet around her wrist.

“Let me,” Alaric said, bending to work the catch.

“Touching,” Damon said dryly. “We all know the hunter’s as tough as nails, she’ll be all right.” His voice was flat, but his eyes lingered on Meredith with something that, to Matt’s surprise, looked almost like sympathy. “The important thing now is, what are we going to do about her maker? We know where Jack’s headquarters are, but we’ve got no idea how to kill him. And now he’s onto Meredith, so she can’t spy on him anymore.”

“Sorry,” Meredith said.

Damon’s shoulders rose in a languid shrug. “You tried. But what’s the next step?”

“The next step is me,” Elena said decisively. Her dark blue eyes were shining. “If we can’t beat Jack by fighting him, we have to figure out his weakness. Since infiltrating his camp didn’t work out, we have to find Siobhan.”

“But you’ve looked for her,” Bonnie objected.

Elena shook her head. “Not hard enough. I’ve been trying to pick up traces of her aura, and I’m beginning to think she’s left town. If Damon and I drive around the area, maybe I’ll be able to find something to lead us in the right direction.” She looked toward Zander, who had been hanging back, watching them all quietly. “While we’re doing that, can the Pack patrol Dalcrest and look out for vampires? Protect everybody?”

Zander nodded. “We’ll do what we can.”

Inwardly, Matt sighed a little. The Pack would patrol. Elena and Damon would hunt for Siobhan. Alaric, Bonnie, and Jasmine would search for a cure for Meredith’s vampirism. It would have been nice if Matt, for once, was able to really help.

But then Meredith looked up at him and smiled—a tiny, crooked smile, but a real one. “Thank you, Matt,” she said again, running her fingers over the bracelet. A spark flared in Matt’s chest. Maybe this time, it would all be okay in the end. Maybe.

Elena waited for everyone else to leave. When the others had gone, Damon pushed himself away from the table and looked at Elena expectantly. “Shall we hit the road?” he asked. “Start the hunt for Siobhan?”

“You go on without me,” she said. “I’ll meet you back at home, and we can get started.” He nodded once and strode off without looking back, as sleek and graceful as a panther.

Still Elena lingered, standing uncertainly by the counter as Alaric began to collect glasses and take them to the sink.

“What’s up?” Meredith asked finally, tipping her head back from where she was sitting to look up at Elena, her long dark hair spilling across her shoulders. “You’re hovering.”

“Walk me to the door,” Elena said quietly. She didn’t want Alaric to overhear what she was going to say. Let it be Meredith’s choice first.

Meredith arched one elegant eyebrow curiously and, for a moment, looked just like her old self. She got up and followed Elena.

Elena remembered her transition as a vampire. All the sensations tugging at you, the ever-present hunger. But it must be harder for Meredith, because being a vampire, the one thing she’d been raised to hunt and kill, would be the worst thing Meredith could imagine. The look of devastation on Meredith’s face, the way she pulled in on herself as if expecting a blow, hurt Elena to see.

And yet…

It wasn’t all bad, was it? Elena didn’t like to think about the fact that, except for Damon, her friends were getting older and she… wasn’t. They would become middle-aged, maybe have kids, get old. They would die.

But not Elena. And not Meredith. Not anymore. Wasn’t that something to be thankful for?

“Here,” Elena said softly. She felt in her purse and drew out a half-full water bottle. It felt the same as any other bottle of water in her hand, but the liquid inside shimmered, a tiny touch of gold to it. Meredith’s eyes widened.

“Is that…?” she asked hesitantly, and Elena nodded.

“It’s from the Fountain of Eternal Life and Youth,” she said. “I thought…” She felt weirdly uncomfortable. “For Alaric. Just in case. It’s hard, when one of you ages and the other doesn’t. I know, for me and Stefan…”

Elena hesitated again. It had been the right choice for her at the time. She hadn’t wanted to grow old while Stefan, by her side, stayed young and healthy, year after year.

When she had drunk the water, in a room filled with candlelight and sweet-smelling flowers, she had been filled with joy. She had chosen Stefan, and that was the moment of her promise—more than that, her sacred vow: They would be together, for eternity.

But now she was alone. Forever.

Elena’s breath hitched. She shook off the feeling. It wouldn’t be like that for Meredith and Alaric.

But Meredith stepped back, tucking her hands behind her back as if she was afraid to touch the bottle. Her lips were parting to speak, but then Alaric came down the hall. Elena could see from his face that he had overheard, after all.

“Thank you,” he said, and took the bottle from Elena’s hand. “Just in case.”

Elena hugged them both, briefly, and left them alone. She hoped she’d made the right decision. But Elena couldn’t make the choice for them.

It wasn’t the same, Elena knew that now. Not aging, not changing. The idea of living forever without Stefan hurt her, a deep sore ache that never left her for a moment. If she’d known that she’d be without him, she wouldn’t have drunk the waters. She would have chosen to live a normal life, to grow old, to grow up, to die.

But things would be different for Meredith and Alaric. And if Elena and Damon could find out Siobhan’s secrets, if they could somehow find a cure for this artificial vampirism that infected Meredith, they would never have to make that choice. Meredith and Alaric would both be human again and could grow old together. She knew that was what Meredith would choose, if she had the chance.

Elena straightened her shoulders and walked more swiftly down the hall, the heels of her boots clicking determinedly. She didn’t want to leave Meredith’s side, not when she was suffering. But if Elena’s mission was successful, then perhaps Meredith’s suffering could end.