Dark Reunion

Bonnie drew on her powers, putting everything she had into it, throwing her need and her call out into the void.

And felt… nothing.

Nothing disturbed the summer night except the crackling sound of flames. Klaus turned back to Bonnie and Stefan, and grinned.

Then Bonnie saw the mist creeping along the ground.

No—it couldn't be mist. It must be smoke from the fire. But it didn't behave like either. It was swirling, rising in the air like a tiny whirlwind or dust devil. It was gathering into a shape roughly the size of a man.

There was another one a little distance away. Then Bonnie saw a third. The same thing was happening all over.

Mist was flowing out of the ground, between the trees. Pools of it, each separate and distinct. Bonnie, staring mutely, could see through each patch, could see the flames, the oak trees, the bricks of the chimney. Klaus had stopped smiling, stopped moving, and was watching too.

Bonnie turned to Stefan, unable to even frame the question.

'Unquiet spirits,' he whispered huskily, his green eyes intent. 'The solstice.'

And then Bonnie understood.

They were coming. From across the river, where the old cemetery lay. From the woods, where countless makeshift graves had been dug to dump bodies in before they rotted. The unquiet spirits, the soldiers who had fought here and died during the Civil War. A supernatural host answering the call for help.

They were forming all around. There were hundreds of them.

Bonnie could actually see faces now. The misty outlines were filling in with pale hues like so many runny watercolors. She saw a flash of blue, a glimmer of gray. Both Union and Confederate troops. Bonnie glimpsed a pistol thrust into a belt, the glint of an ornamented sword. Chevrons on a sleeve. A bushy dark beard; a long, well- tended white one. A small figure, child size, with dark holes for eyes and a drum hanging at thigh level.

'Oh, my God,' she whispered. 'Oh, God.' It wasn't swearing. It was something like a prayer.

Not that she wasn't frightened of them, because she was. It was every nightmare she'd ever had about the cemetery come true. Like her first dream about Elena, when things came crawling out of the black pits in the earth; only these things weren't crawling, they were flying, skimming and floating until they swirled into human form. Everything that Bonnie had ever felt about the old graveyard—that it was alive and full of watching eyes, that there was some Power lurking behind its waiting stillness—was proving true. The earth of Fell's Church was giving up its bloody memories. The spirits of those who'd died here were walking again.

And Bonnie could feel their anger. It frightened her, but another emotion was waking up inside her, making her catch her breath and clench tighter on Stefan's hand. Because the misty army had a leader.

One figure was floating in front of the others, closest to the place where Klaus stood. It had no shape or definition as yet, but it glowed and scintillated with the pale golden light of a candle flame. Then, before Bonnie's eyes, it seemed to take on substance from the air, shining brighter and brighter every minute with an unearthly light. It was brighter than the circle of fire. It was so bright that Klaus leaned back from it and Bonnie blinked, but when she turned at a low sound, she saw Stefan staring straight into it, fearlessly, with wide-open eyes. And smiling, so faintly, as if glad to have this be the last thing he saw.

Then Bonnie was sure.

Klaus dropped the stake. He had turned away from Bonnie and Stefan to face the being of light that hung in the clearing like an avenging angel. Golden hair streaming back in an invisible wind, Elena looked down on him.

'She came,' Bonnie whispered.

'You asked her to,' Stefan murmured. His voice trailed off into a labored breath, but he was still smiling. His eyes were serene.

'Stand away from them,' Elena said, her voice coming simultaneously to Bonnie's ears and her mind. It was like the chiming of dozens of bells, distant and close up at once. 'It's over now, Klaus.'

But Klaus rallied quickly. Bonnie saw his shoulders swell with a breath, noticed for the first time the hole in the back of the tan raincoat where the white ash stake had pierced him. It was stained dull red, and new blood was flowing now as Klaus flung out his arms.

'You think I'm afraid of you?' he shouted. He spun around, laughing at all the pallid forms. 'You think I'm afraid of any of you? You're dead! Dust on the wind! You can't touch me!'

'You're wrong,' Elena said in her wind-chime voice.

'I'm one of the Old Ones! An Original! Do you know what that means?' Klaus turned again, addressing all of them, his unnaturally blue eyes seeming to catch some of the red glow of the fire. 'I've never died. Every one of you has died, you gallery of spooks! But not me. Death can't touch me. I am invincible!'

The last word came in a shout so loud it echoed among the trees. Invincible… invincible… invincible. Bonnie heard it fading into the hungry sound of the fire.

Elena waited until the last echo had died. Then she said, very simply, 'Not quite.' She turned to look at the misty shapes around her. 'He wants to spill more blood here.'

A new voice spoke up, a hollow voice that ran like a trickle of cold water down Bonnie's spine. 'There's been enough killing, I say.' It was a Union soldier with a double row of buttons on his jacket.

'More than enough,' said another voice, like the boom of a faraway drum. A Confederate holding a bayonet.

'It's time somebody stopped it'—an old man in home-dyed butternut cloth.

'We can't let it go on'—the drummer boy with the black holes for eyes.

'No more blood spilled!' Several voices took it up at once. 'No more killing!' The cry passed from one to another, until the swell of sound was louder than the roar of the fire. 'No more blood!'

'You can't touch me! You can't kill me!'

'Let's take 'im, boys!'

Bonnie never knew who gave that last command. But he was obeyed by all, Confederate and Union soldiers alike. They were rising, flowing, dissolving into mist again, a dark mist with a hundred hands. It bore down on Klaus like an ocean wave, dashing itself on him and engulfing him. Each hand took hold, and although Klaus was fighting and thrashing with arms and legs, they were too many for him. In seconds he was obscured by them, surrounded, swallowed by the dark mist. It rose, whirling like a tornado from which screams could be heard only faintly.

'You can't kill me! I'm immortal!'

The tornado swept away into the darkness beyond Bonnie's sight. Following it was a trail of ghosts like a comet's tail, shooting off into the night sky.

'Where are they taking him?' Bonnie didn't mean to say it aloud; she just blurted it out before she thought. But Elena heard.

'Where he won't do any harm,' she said, and the look on her face stopped Bonnie from asking any other questions.

There was a squealing, bleating sound from the other side of the clearing. Bonnie turned and saw Tyler, in his terrible part-human, part-animal shape, on his feet. There was no need for Caroline's club. He was staring at Elena and the few remaining ghostly figures and gibbering.

'Don't let them take me! Don't let them take me too!'

Before Elena could speak, he had spun around. He regarded the fire, which was higher than his own head, for an instant, then plunged right through it, crashing into the forest beyond. Through a parting of the flames, Bonnie saw him drop to the ground, beating out flames on himself, then rise and run again. Then the fire flared up and she couldn't see anything more.

But she'd remembered something: Meredith—and Matt. Meredith was lying propped up, her head in Caroline's lap, watching. Matt was still on his back. Hurt, but not so badly hurt as Stefan.

'Elena,' Bonnie said, catching the bright figure's attention, and then she simply looked at him.

The brightness came closer. Stefan didn't blink. He looked into the heart of the light and smiled. 'He's been stopped now. Thanks to you.'

'It was Bonnie who called us. And she couldn't have done it at the right place and the right time without you and the others.'