4 страница. The next thing Bonnie knew, Elena had slumped over

 

The next thing Bonnie knew, Elena had slumped over. The wings were gone. The dark scrabbling things were gone, too. Elena had sent them away, using tremendous amounts of energy to overwhelm them with White Power.

 

“She’ll fall,” Bonnie whispered, looking at Stefan. “She’s been using magic so strong—”

 

Just then, as Stefan started to turn to Elena, several things happened very fast, as if the room was caught in the flashes of a strobe light.

 

Flash. The window shade rolled back up, rattling furiously.

 

Flash. The lamp went back on, revealing it was in Stefan’s hands. He must have been trying to fix it.

 

Flash. The door to Stefan’s room opened slowly, creaking, as if to make up for slamming shut before.

 

Flash. Caroline was now on the floor, on all fours, groveling, breathing hard. Elena had won….

 

Elena fell.

 

Only inhumanly fast reflexes could have caught her, especially from across the room. But Stefan had tossed the lamp to Meredith and was across the distance faster than Bonnie’s eyes could follow. Then he was holding Elena, encircling her protectively.

 

“Oh,hell,” said Caroline. Black trails of mascara ran down her face, making her look like something not quite human. She looked at Stefan with unconcealed hatred. He looked back soberly—no,sternly.

 

“Don’t call on Hell,” he said in a very low voice. “Not here. Not now. Because Hell might hear and call back.”

 

“As if it already hadn’t,” Caroline said, and in that moment, she was pitiful—broken and pathetic. As if she had started something she didn’t know how to stop.

 

“Caroline, what are you saying?” Stefan knelt. “Are you saying that you’ve already—made some bargain—?”

 

“Ouch,” Bonnie said, suddenly and involuntarily, shattering the ominous mood in Stefan’s room. One of Caroline’s broken nails had left a trail of blood on the floor. Caroline had knelt in it, too, making things pretty messy. Bonnie felt a sympathetic throb of pain in her own fingers until Caroline waved her bloody hand at Stefan. Then Bonnie’s sympathy turned to nausea.

 

“Want a lick?” she said. Her voice and face had changed entirely, and she wasn’t even trying to hide it. “Oh, come on, Stefan,” she went on mockingly, “youdo drink human blood these days, don’t you? Human or—whatever she is, whatever she’s become. You two fly like bats together now, do you?”

 

“Caroline,” Bonnie whispered, “didn’t yousee them? Her wings—”

 

“Just like a bat—or another vampire already. Stefan’s made her—”

 

“I saw them too,” Matt said flatly, behind Bonnie. “They weren’t bat wings.”

 

“Doesn’t anybody have eyes?” Meredith said from where she stood by the lamp. “Look here.” She bent. When she stood again she was holding a long white feather. It shone in the light.

 

“Maybe she’s a white crow, then,” Caroline said. “That would be appropriate. And I can’t believe how you’re all—all—fawning on her as if she were some sort of princess. Always everybody’s little darling, aren’t you, Elena?”

 

“Stop it,” Stefan said.

 

“Everybody’s, that’s the key word,” Caroline spat.

 

“Stop it.”

 

“The way you were kissing people one after another.” She gave a theatrical shudder. “Everyone seems to have forgotten, but that was more like—”

 

“Stop, Caroline.”

 

“Thereal Elena.” Caroline’s voice had become pretend-prissy, but she couldn’t keep the venom out, Bonnie thought. “Because anyone who knows you knows what youreally were before Stefanblessed us with hisirresistible presence. You were—”

 

“Caroline, stop right there—”

 

“A slut! That’s all! Just a cheap, anybody’sslut!”

 

 

There was a sort of universal gasp. Stefan went white, his compressed lips showing in a tight line. Bonnie felt as if she were choking on words, on explanations, on recriminations about Caroline’s own behavior. Elena may have had as many boyfriends as the stars in the sky, but in the end she had given all that up—because she fell in love—not that Caroline would know anything aboutthat.

 

“Don’t have anything to say now?” Caroline was taunting. “Can’t find any cute answer? Bat got your tongue?” She began to laugh, but it was forced, glassy laughter, and then words were spilling out of her almost as if uncontrollably, all words that weren’t supposed to be spoken in public. Bonnie had said most of them at one time or another, buthere, andnow, they formed a stream of venomous power. Caroline’s words were building up to some kind of crescendo—something was going to happen—this kind of force couldn’t be contained—

 

Reverberations, Bonnie thought as the sound waves began building up….

 

Glass,her intuition told her.Get away from glass.

 

Stefan just had time to whirl to Meredith and shout,“Get rid of the lamp.”

 

And Meredith, who was not only quick on the uptake but also a baseball pitcher with a 1.75 ERA, snatched it up and threw it at—no, through—

 

—an explosion as the porcelain lamp shattered—

 

—the open window.

 

There was a similar shattering in the bathroom. The mirror had exploded behind the closed door.

 

Then Caroline slapped Elena across the face.

 

It left a bloody smear, which Elena patted tentatively. It also left a white handprint, turning to red. Elena’s expression was one to wring tears from a stone.

 

And then Stefan did what Bonnie considered the most astonishing thing of all. He very gently put Elena down on the floor, kissed her upturned face, and turned to Caroline.

 

He put his hands on her shoulders, not shaking, only holding her still, forcing her to look at him.

 

“Caroline,” he said, “stop it.Come back. For the sake of your old friends who care for you, come back. For the sake of the family that loves you, come back. For the sake of your own immortal soul,come back. Come back to us!”

 

Caroline just eyed him belligerently.

 

Stefan half turned aside, toward Meredith, grimacing. “I’m not really cut out to do this,” he said wryly. “It’s not any vampire’s forte.”

 

Then he turned toward Elena, his voice tender. “Love, can you help? Can you help your old friend again?”

 

Already Elena was trying to help, trying to get to Stefan. She had pulled herself up very shakily, first by the rocking chair and then by Bonnie, who tried to help her under the burden of gravity. Elena was as wobbly as a newborn giraffe in roller skates, and Bonnie—almost half a head shorter—was finding her hard to handle.

 

Stefan made a motion as if to help, but Matt was already there, steadying Elena on the other side.

 

Then Stefan had Caroline turned around, and he was holding her, not letting her dart away, forcing her to face Elena fully.

 

Elena, while being held at the waist so that her hands were free, made some curious motions, seeming to draw designs more and more quickly in the air in front of Caroline’s face, at the same time clasping and unclasping her hands with the fingers in different positions. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Caroline’s eyes followed the movements of Elena’s hands as if compelled, but it was clear from her snarling that she hated it.

 

Magic, Bonnie thought, fascinated. White Magic. She’s calling on angels, just as surely as Caroline was calling demons. But is she strong enough to pull Caroline out of the darkness?

 

And at last, as if to complete the ceremony, Elena leaned forward and kissed Caroline chastely on the lips.

 

All hell broke loose. Caroline somehow squirmed out of Stefan’s grip and tried to claw Elena’s face with her nails. Objects in the room went sailing through the air, propelled by no human force. Matt tried to grab Caroline’s arm and got a punch in the stomach that doubled him over, followed by a chop to the back of the neck.

 

Stefan let go of Caroline to scoop up Elena and get her and Bonnie out of harm’s way. He seemed to assume that Meredith could take care of herself—and he was right. Caroline swung at Meredith, but Meredith was ready. She grabbed Caroline’s fist and helped her in the direction of the swing. Caroline landed on the bed, twisted, and then rushed Meredith again, this time getting a grip on her hair. Meredith pulled free, leaving a tuft of hair in Caroline’s fingers. Then Meredith got under Caroline’s guard and hit her squarely on the jaw. Caroline collapsed.

 

Bonnie cheered and refused to feel guilty about it. Then, for the first time, as Caroline lay still, Bonnie noticed that Caroline’s fingernails were all there again—long, strong, curved, and perfect, not one of them chipped or broken.

 

Elena’s Power? It must be. What else could have done it? With just a few motions and a kiss, Elena had healed Caroline’s hand.

 

Meredith was massaging her own hand. “I never realized ithurt so much to knock people out,” she said. “They never show it in movies. Is it the same for guys?”

 

Matt flushed. “I…uh, I’ve never actually…”

 

“It’s the same for everyone, even vampires,” Stefan said briefly. “Are you all right, Meredith? I mean, Elena could…”

 

“No, I’m fine. And Bonnie and I have a job to do.” She nodded at Bonnie, who nodded weakly back. “Caroline’s our responsibility, and we should have realized why shereally had to come back this last time.She doesn’t have a car. I’ll bet she used that downstairs telephone and tried to get somebody to pick her up, but couldn’t, and then she came upstairs again. So now we have to take her home. Stefan, I’m sorry. It hasn’t been much of a visit.”

 

Stefan looked grim. “It’s probably as much as Elena could take, anyway,” he said. “More than I thought she could take, honestly.”

 

Matt said, “Well, I’m the one with the car, and Caroline is my responsibility, too,” he said. “I may not be a girl, but I’m a human.”

 

“Maybe we could come back tomorrow?” Bonnie said.

 

“Yes, I suppose that would be best,” Stefan said. “I almost hate to let her go at all,” he added, staring at the unconscious Caroline, his face shadowed. “I’m afraid for her. Very much afraid.”

 

Bonnie pounced on this. “Why?”

 

“I think—well, it may be too early to say, but she seems to be almost possessed by something—but I have no idea what. I think I have to do some serious research.”

 

And there it was again, the ice water dripping down Bonnie’s back. The feeling of how close the frigid ocean of fear was, ready to topple down on her and take her on a swift trip to the bottom.

 

Stefan added, “But what’s certain is that she was behaving strangely—even for Caroline. And I don’t know whatyou heard when she was cursing, but I heard another voice behind it, prompting her.” He turned to Bonnie. “Did you?”

 

Bonnie was thinking back. Had there been something—just a whisper—and just a beat before Caroline’s voice came? Less than a beat, and just the faintest of sibilant whispers?

 

“And what happened here may have made it worse. She called on Hell at a moment when this room was saturated with Power. And Fell’s Church itself is at the crossing of so many ley lines, it isn’t funny. With all that going on—well, I just wish we had a good parapsychologist around.”

 

Bonnie knew they were all thinking of Alaric.

 

“I’ll try to get him to come,” Meredith said. “But usually he’s off in Tibet or Timbuktu doing research these days. It’ll take a while even to get a message to him.”

 

“Thank you.” Stefan looked relieved.

 

“Like I said, she’s our responsibility,” Meredith said quietly.

 

“We’re sorry to have brought her,” Bonnie said loudly, rather hoping that something inside Caroline could hear her.

 

They said their good-byes separately to Elena, not sure of what might happen. But she simply smiled at each of them and touched their hands.

 

By good luck or by the grace of something far beyond their understanding, Caroline woke up. She even seemed mostly rational, if a little fuzzy, when the car reached her driveway. Matt helped her out of the car and walked her to the door on his arm, where Caroline’s mother answered the doorbell. She was a mousy, timid, tired-looking woman who did not seem surprised to be receiving her daughter in this state on a late summer afternoon.

 

Matt dropped the girls off at Bonnie’s house, where they spent a night in worried speculation. Bonnie fell asleep with the sound of Caroline’s curses echoing in her head.

 

Dear Diary,

 

Something is going to happen tonight.

 

I can’t talk or write, and I don’t remember how to type on a keyboard very well, but I can send thoughts to Stefan and he can write them down. We don’t have any secrets from each other.

 

So this is my diary now. And…

 

This morning I woke up again. I woke up again! It was still summer outside, and everything was green. The daffodils in the garden are all in bloom. And I had visitors. I didn’t know exactly who they were, but three of them are strong, clear colors. I kissed them so I won’t forget them again.

 

The fourth one was different. I could only see a shattered color, laced with black. I had to use strong words of White Power to keep that one from bringing dark things into Stefan’s room.

 

I’m getting sleepy. I want to be with Stefan and feel him holding me. I love Stefan. I would give up anything to stay with him. He asks me, Even flying? Even flying, to be with him and keep him safe. Even anything, to keep him safe. Even my life.

 

Now I want to go to him.

 

Elena

 

(And Stefan is sorry about writing in Elena’s new diary, but he has to say some things, because someday maybe she will want to read them, to remember. I’ve written down her thoughts in sentences, but they don’t come that way. They come as thought-fragments, I guess. Vampires are used to translating people’s everyday thoughts into coherent sentences, but Elena’s thoughts need more translation than most. Usually she thinks in bright pictures, with a scattered word or two.

 

The “fourth one” that she talks about is Caroline Forbes. Elena has known Caroline almost since babyhood, I think. What bewilders me is that today Caroline attacked her in almost every way imaginable, and yet when I search Elena’s mind I can’t find any feelings of anger or even any pain. It’s almost frightening to scan a mind like that.

 

The question I’d really like to answer is: What happened to Caroline during the short time she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler? And did she do what she did today of her own free will? Does some remnant of Klaus’s hatred still linger like miasma, tainting the air? Or do we have another enemy in Fell’s Church?

 

And most importantly, what do we do about it?

 

Stefan, who is being pulled from the compu

 

 

The clock’s old-fashioned hands showed threeA.M. when Meredith was suddenly roused from a fitful sleep.

 

And then she bit her lip, stifling a scream. A face was bending over hers, upside down. The last thing she remembered was lying on her back in a sleeping bag, talking about Alaric with Bonnie.

 

Now Bonnie was bending over her, but with her face inverted and her eyes shut. She was kneeling at the head of Meredith’s pillow and her upside-down nose almost touched Meredith’s. Add to that an odd pallor in Bonnie’s cheeks and rapid warm breath that tickled Meredith’s forehead, and anyone—anyone, Meredith insisted to herself—would be entitled to a half-scream.

 

She waited for Bonnie to speak, staring in the gloom at those eerily closed eyes.

 

But instead, Bonnie sat up, stood, walked backward flawlessly to Meredith’s desk, where Meredith’s mobile lay charging, and picked it up. She must have turned it on for a video recording for she opened her mouth and began to gesture and speak.

 

It was terrifying. The sounds that came out of Bonnie’s mouth were all too identifiable: backward speech. The tangled, guttural or high-pitched noises all carried the cadence that horror movies had made so popular. But to be able to speak that way on purpose…it wasn’t possible for a normal human or a normal human mind. Meredith had an eerie sense of something trying to stretch its mind toward them, trying to reach them through unimaginable dimensions.

 

Maybe it lives backward, Meredith thought, trying to distract herself as the frightening sounds went on. Maybe it thinks we do. Maybe we just don’t—intersect….

 

Meredith didn’t think she could stand much more. She was beginning to imagine that she heard words, even phrases in the backward sounds, and none of them were pleasant. Please let it stop—now.

 

A wailing and mumbling…

 

Bonnie’s mouth shut with a clash of teeth. The sounds stopped instantly. And then, like a video being rolled back in slow motion, she walked backward to her sleeping bag, knelt, and back-crawled into it, lying down with her head on the pillow—all without opening her eyes to look where she was going.

 

It was one of the scariest things Meredith had ever seen or heard, and Meredith had seen and heard a fair amount of scary things.

 

And Meredith could no more have left that recording until morning than she could have flown—without assistance.

 

She got up, tiptoed to the desk, and took the mobile phone to the other room. There she attached it to her computer, where she could run the backward message forward.

 

When she’d listened to the message in reverse once or twice she decided that Bonnie must never hear it. It would frighten her out of her senses, and there would be no more contact with the paranormal for Elena’s friends.

 

Therewere animal sounds in there, mixed up with the twisted, backward voice…that wasn’t Bonnie’s voice in any way. It wasn’t any normal person’s voice. It almost sounded worse going forward than backward—which maybe meant that whatever being had spoken the words normally spoke the other way.

 

Meredith could make out human voices over the groaning and distorted laughter and the animal noises straight from the veldt. Though they made the hairs on her body stand up and tingle, she tried to put together the words in between the nonsense. Putting them together she got:

 

“Aaahhh…waggge…n…ing wuh illllilll…be…sud-ud-ud…den…ANDshhhh…ohhh…ging.YOOOOU …hand-and-nd…Iiii…mmmust…BEtherefore…herrr…aaahhh waggge…ning…Wewone…BEtherefor-or-or-or-r”—(was there a “herrr” next, or was it just part of the growling?)—“LADE…errrrrrrrrrrr…ahhn.Thaaass …FORRRRR…oththth…ERRR…handandnd…ssssssssss…t-t-todo….”

 

Meredith, working with pad and pen, eventually got these words on paper:

 

Awakening will be sudden and shocking.

 

You and I must be there for her Awakening. We won’t be there for (her?) later on. That’s for other hands to do.

 

Meredith put the pen very precisely beside the deciphered message on the pad.

 

And after that Meredith went and lay hunched in her sleeping bag watching the unmoving Bonnie like a cat at a mouse hole, until, finally, blessed tiredness took her into the dark.

 

“I saidwhat?” Bonnie was honestly bewildered the next morning, squeezing grapefruit juice and pouring cereal, like a model host, even if it was Meredith who was scrambling eggs at the stove.

 

“I’ve told you three times now. The words are not going to change, I promise.”

 

“Well,” Bonnie said, suddenly switching sides, “it’s clear that the Awakening is going to happen to Elena. Because, for one thing, you and I have to be there for it, and for another thing, she’s the one who needs towake up.”

 

“Exactly,” said Meredith.

 

“She needs to remember who she really was.”

 

“Precisely,” said Meredith.

 

“And we’ve got to help her remember!”

 

“No!”said Meredith, taking out her anger on the eggs with a plastic spatula. “No, Bonnie, that’s not what you said, and I don’t think wecould do it anyway. We can teach her little things, maybe, the way Stefan has. How to tie her shoes. How to brush her hair. But from what you said, the Awakening is going to be shocking and sudden—and you didn’t say anything about us doing it. You only said that we have to be there for her, because after that, somehow wewon’t be there.”

 

Bonnie contemplated that in gloomy silence. “Won’t be there?” she said finally. “Like, won’t be with Elena? Or won’t be there, like…won’t be anywhere?”

 

Meredith eyed a breakfast that she suddenly didn’t want to eat. “I don’t know.”

 

“Stefan said we could come over again today,” Bonnie urged.

 

“Stefan would be polite while he was being staked to death.”

 

“I know,” Bonnie said suddenly. “Let’s call Matt. We can go see Caroline…if shewill see us, I mean. We can see if she’s any different today. Then we can wait until it’s afternoon, andthen we can call Stefan and ask if we can come over again to see Elena.”

 

At Caroline’s house, her mother said she was sick today and was going to stay in bed. The three of them—Matt, Meredith, and Bonnie—went back to Meredith’s house without her, but Bonnie kept chewing her lip, looking back occasionally toward Caroline’s street. Caroline’s mother had looked sick herself, with shadows under her eyes. And the thunderstorm feeling, the feeling of pressure, had been squashing Caroline’s house almost flat.

 

At Meredith’s, Matt tinkered with his car, which perpetually needed work, while Bonnie and Meredith went through Meredith’s wardrobe for clothes that Elena could wear. They would be big, but that was better than Bonnie’s, which would be much too small.

 

At fourP.M. they called Stefan. Yes, they were welcome. They went downstairs and picked up Matt.

 

At the boardinghouse, Elena didn’t repeat the kissing ritual of the previous day—to Matt’s obvious disappointment. But she was delighted with the new clothes, although not for any reason that the old Elena would have been. Floating three feet off the floor, she kept holding them to her face and taking deep, happy sniffs, and then beaming at Meredith, although when Bonnie picked up a T-shirt, she couldn’t smell anything but the fabric softener they’d used. Not even Meredith’s Beach cologne.

 

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said helplessly as Elena went into a sudden sneezing fit, cuddling a sky-blue top in her arms as if it were a kitten. But his face was tender, and Meredith, while looking slightly embarrassed, reassured him that it was nice to be so appreciated.

 

“She can tell where they come from,” Stefan explained. “She won’t wear anything that’s come from a sweatshop.”

 

“I only buy from places listed on the Sweatshop-Free Clothing website,” Meredith said simply. “Bonnie and I have something to tell you,” she added. While she recounted Bonnie’s late-night prophecy, Bonnie took Elena into the bathroom and helped her change into the shorts, which fit, and the sky-blue top, which almost fit, being just a little long.

 

The color set off Elena’s tangled but still glorious hair perfectly, but when Bonnie tried to get her to look in the hand mirror that she had brought—the old mirror’s shards had all been cleared away—Elena seemed as confused as a puppy held up to see its own reflection. Bonnie kept holding the mirror in front of her face, and Elena kept popping out on one side or another from behind it, like a baby playing peek-a-boo. Bonnie had to be satisfied with a good brushing out of the tangles in that golden mass, which Stefan clearly didn’t know how to handle. When Elena’s hair was finally silky and smooth, Bonnie proudly took her out to be shown off.

 

And was promptly sorry. The other three were in deep, and it looked like grim, conversation. Reluctantly, Bonnie let go of Elena who immediately flew—literally—into Stefan’s lap, and joined them herself.

 

“Of course we understand,” Meredith was saying. “Even before Caroline went off her rocker, what other choice was there, ultimately? But—”

 

“What ‘what other choice is there’?” Bonnie said, as she sat down on Stefan’s bed beside him. “What are you guys talking about?”

 

There was a long pause, and then Meredith got up to put an arm around Bonnie. “We were talking about why Stefan and Elena need to leave Fell’s Church—need to go far away.”

 

At first Bonnie didn’t react—she knew she should be feeling something, but she was too deep in shock to access what it was. When words came to her, the only thing she could hear herself saying stupidly was, “Goaway?Why?”

 

“You saw why—here, yesterday,” Meredith said, her dark eyes filled with pain, her face for once showing the uncontrollable anguish she must be feeling. But for the moment, no anguish meant anything to Bonnie but her own.

 

And it was coming now, like an avalanche burying her in red-hot snow. In ice that burned. Somehow she struggled out of it long enough to say, “Caroline won’t do anything. She signed a vow. She knows that to break it—especially when—when you-know-who signed it, too…”

 

Meredith must have told Stefan about the crow, because he sighed and shook his head, gently fending off Elena, who was trying to look up into his face. Clearly she sensed the unhappiness in the group, but just as clearly she couldn’t really understand what was causing it.

 

“The last person I want around Caroline is my brother.” Stefan pushed his dark hair out of his eyes irritably, as if he had been reminded of how much they looked alike. “And I don’t think Meredith’s threat about the sorority sisters is going to work, either. She’s too far gone into the darkness.”

 

Bonnie shivered inside. She didn’t like the thoughts that those words summoned up:into the darkness.

 

“But…” Matt began, and Bonnie realized that he felt the same way she did—stunned and sick, as if they were getting off some cheap carnival ride.

 

“Listen,” Stefan said, “there’s another reason why we can’t stay here.”

 

“What other reason?” Matt said slowly. Bonnie was too upset to speak. She had thought about this, somewhere deep in her unconscious. But she’d pushed the thoughts away every time they came.

 

“Bonnie understands it already, I think.” Stefan looked at her. She looked back with eyes that were misting over with tears.

 

“Fell’s Church,” Stefan explained gently and sadly, “was built at a meeting of the ley lines. The lines of raw Power in the ground, remember? I don’t know if it was deliberate. Does anybody know if the Smallwoods had anything to do with the location?”

 

No one did. There was nothing in Honoria Fell’s old diary about the werewolf family having a choice in the founding of the town.

 

“Well, if it was an accident, it was a pretty unlucky one. The town—I should say, the town cemetery—was built directly over a place where a lot of ley lines cross. That’s what made it a beacon for supernatural creatures, bad or—or not quite so bad.” He looked embarrassed, and Bonnie realized that he was talking about himself. “I was drawn here. So were other vampires, as you know. And with every person who had the Power who came here, the beacon became stronger. Brighter. More attractive to other people with the Power. It’s a vicious cycle.”