And then she was crouching next to Stefan, and, for a moment at least, nothing else mattered. He was shaking slightly, just the faintest tremors, and she stroked his hand, careful of the wound on his forearm. Raised red ridges ran around his wrists below the rope, spots of blood on their surface. “Vervain on the ropes,” he muttered. “I’m okay, just hurry.” And then, “Elena?” Below the pain in his voice, a dawning note of joy.
She hoped he could read al the love she felt in her eyes as she met his gaze. “I’m here, Stefan. I’m so sorry.” She took out the knife Meredith had given her and began to saw at the ropes that held him, careful not to cut him, trying not to pul the ropes any tighter. He winced in pain, and then the ropes around his wrists snapped. “Your poor arm,” she said, and felt in her pockets for something to staunch the blood, final y just pul ing off her jacket and holding it against the cut. Stefan took the jacket from her. “You’l have to cut through the rest of the ropes, too,” he said, his voice strained. “I can’t touch them because of the vervain.” She nodded and went to work on the ropes holding his legs. “I love you,” she told him, concentrating on her work, not looking up. “I love you so much. I hurt you, and I never wanted to. Never, Stefan. Please believe me.” She finished cutting through the ropes around his knees and ankles and chanced a glance up at Stefan’s face. Tears, she realized, were running down her own face, and she wiped them away.
The thud of another body hitting the floor and a screech of rage came from behind them. But Stefan’s eyes held hers unwaveringly. “Elena, I…” he sighed. “I love you more than anything in the world,” he said simply. “You know that.
No conditions.”
She took a long, shuddering breath and wiped the tears away again. She had to be able to see, had to keep her hands from shaking. The ropes around his torso were looped and twisted together. She pul ed at them, finding where there was enough give to start cutting, and Stefan hissed in pain.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said hurriedly, and began to slice through the rope as rapidly as she dared. “Stefan,” she began again, “the kiss with Damon—wel , I can’t lie and say I don’t feel anything for him—but the kiss wasn’t anything I’d planned on. I didn’t even mean to be with him that night, it just happened. And when you saw us, that kiss, he’d just saved my life…” She was stumbling over her words now, and she let them trail off. “I don’t have any real excuses, Stefan,” she said flatly. “I just want you to forgive me. I don’t think I can live without you.”
The last of the ropes parted, and she eased them from around him before she looked up, frightened and hopeful.
Stefan was gazing at her, his sculpted lips turning up in a half smile. “Elena,” he said and pul ed her to him in a brief, tender kiss. Then he pushed her to the wal . “Stay out of this, please,” he said, and limped toward the fight, stil weak from the vervain, but reaching to pul a vampire away from Meredith and sinking his own fangs into its neck.
Not that she needed his help. Meredith was amazing.
When had she gotten so good? Elena had seen her fight before, of course, and she’d been strong and quick, but now the tal girl was as graceful as a dancer and as deadly as an assassin.
She was fighting three vampires, who circled her angrily. Spinning and kicking, moving almost as fast as the monsters she was fighting, despite the fact that their speed was supernatural, she knocked one off his feet, sending him flying, and, in a smooth fol ow-up blow, bashed another in the face, leaving the vampire staggering backward with his hands up, half blinded.
There were bodies littered across the floor, evidence of Meredith’s skil and Damon’s vicious rage. As Elena watched, Stefan tossed down the drained body of the vampire he had been fighting and looked around. Only Ethan and the three vampires surrounding Meredith remained on their feet.
Damon had Ethan on the run, backing nervously away as Damon stalked toward him, peppering him with sharp open-handed blows. “… my brother,” she heard Damon muttering. “Insolent pup. You think you know anything, child, you think you want power?” With a sudden, violent movement, he grabbed Ethan’s arm and jerked. Elena could hear the bone snap.
Stefan passed Elena, heading toward Meredith again, and paused for a moment. “Ethan was laying a trap for Damon,” he told her dryly. “I don’t know why I was worried.
Clearly, he didn’t know what he was trying to catch.” Elena nodded again, suppressing a grin. The idea of any brand-new vampire getting the better of Damon, with al his experience and cunning, seemed ridiculous.
Then the tide of the battle suddenly turned.
One of the vampires Meredith was fighting dodged her blow and, half bent over, flung itself at her, knocking the slender girl into the air. There was an endless moment where Meredith looked like she was flying, arms akimbo, and then she slammed headfirst into the heavy altarlike table at the front of the room.
The table wobbled and fel over with a heavy thud.
Meredith lay stil , her eyes closed, unconscious. Elena ran to her and knelt down, cradling her head in her lap.
The three vampires Meredith had been fighting were worse for the wear. One had blood steadily streaming down his face, another was limping, and the last was doubled over as if something had been injured inside her, but they could stil move fast. In an instant, they had surrounded Stefan.
As Damon growled and turned, shifting his stance to help his brother, Ethan saw his chance and launched himself at Damon. Faster than Elena’s eye could fol ow, his teeth were gouging at Damon’s throat, bright spurts of blood flying up. He had a knife in one hand and was trying to cut at Damon at the same time as he bit.
With a cry of pain and shock, Damon clawed at Ethan, trying to fling him away. Elena picked up her knife again and rushed toward them.
But two of the remaining vampires were on Damon in a split second, pul ing his arms back. One caught Damon’s midnight dark hair in his hand, yanking the older vampire’s head back to expose his throat more ful y to Ethan’s teeth.
Off balance, Damon staggered backward and for a moment caught Elena’s eye, his face soft with dismay.
Terrified, Elena grabbed at the back of one of the vampires, and it threw her to the floor without even looking at her. Stefan, meanwhile, was caught in a struggle with another vampire, desperate to get to his brother. Damon was a better and a more experienced warrior than any of the vampires attacking him. But if they pushed their momentary advantage, used their superior numbers, they might bring him down before he could recover.
She clutched her knife tighter and jumped to her feet again, knowing in her heart that she’d be too late to save
