Dark Reunion

'I know,' Damon said. He was holding Stefan's hand, looking completely unembarrassed about it, and it seemed quite logical and sensible. Bonnie could feel him sending Power into Stefan, could also feel that it wasn't enough.

'Would blood help him?'

'Not much. A little, maybe.'

'Anything that helps at all we've got to try.'

Stefan whispered, 'No.'

Bonnie was surprised. She'd thought he was unconscious. But his eyes were open now, open and alert and smoldering green. They were the only alive thing about him.

'Don't be stupid,' Damon said, his voice hardening. He was gripping Stefan's hand until his knuckles whitened. 'You're badly hurt.'

'I won't break my promise.' That immovable stubbornness was in Stefan's voice, in his pale face. And when Damon opened his mouth again, undoubtedly to say that Stefan would break it and like it or Damon would break his neck, Stefan added, 'Especially when it won't do any good.'

There was a silence while Bonnie fought with the raw truth of this. Where they were now, in this terrible place beyond all ordinary things, pretense or false reassurance seemed wrong.

Only the truth would do. And Stefan was telling the truth.

He was still looking at his brother, who was looking back, all that fierce, furious attention focused on Stefan as it had been focused on Klaus earlier. As if somehow that would help.

'I'm not badly hurt, I'm dead,' Stefan said brutally, his eyes locked on Damon's. Their last and greatest struggle of wills, Bonnie thought. 'And you need to get Bonnie and the others out of here.'

'We won't leave you,' Bonnie intervened. That was the truth; she could say that.

'You have to!' Stefan didn't glance aside, didn't look away from his brother. 'Damon, you know I'm right. Klaus will be here any minute. Don't throw your life away. Don't throw their lives away.'

'I don't give a damn about their lives,' Damon hissed. The truth also, Bonnie thought, curiously unoffended. There was only one life Damon cared about here, and it wasn't his own.

'Yes, you do!' Stefan flared back. He was hanging on to Damon's hand with just as fierce a grip, as if this was a contest and he could force Damon to concede that way. 'Elena had a last request; well, this is mine. You have Power, Damon. I want you to use it to help them.'

'Stefan…' Bonnie whispered helplessly.

'Promise me,' Stefan said to Damon, and then a spasm of pain twisted his face.

For uncountable seconds Damon simply looked down at him. Then he said, 'I promise,' quick and sharp as the stroke of a dagger. He let go of Stefan's hand and stood, turning to Bonnie. 'Come on.'

'We can't leave him…'

'Yes, we can.' There was nothing young about Damon's face now. Nothing vulnerable. 'You and your human friends are leaving here, permanently. I am coming back.'

Bonnie shook her head. She knew, dimly, that Damon wasn't betraying Stefan, that it was some case of Damon putting Stefan's ideals above Stefan's life, but it was all too abstruse and incomprehensible to her. She didn't understand it and she didn't want to. All she knew was that Stefan couldn't be left lying there.

'You're coming now,' Damon said, reaching for her, the steely ring back in his voice. Bonnie prepared herself for a fight, and then something happened that made all their debating meaningless. There was a crack like a giant whip and a flash like daylight, and Bonnie was blinded. When she could see through the afterimage, her eyes flew to the flames that were licking up from a newly blackened hole at the base of a tree.

Klaus had returned. With lightning.

Bonnie's eye darted to him next, as the only other thing moving in the clearing. He was waving the bloody white ash stake he'd pulled out of his own back like a gory trophy.

Lightning rod, thought Bonnie illogically, and then there was another crash.

It stabbed down from an empty sky, in huge blue-white forks that lit everything like the sun at noon. Bonnie watched as one tree and then another was hit, each one closer than the last. Flames licked up like hungry red goblins among the leaves.

Two trees on either side of Bonnie exploded, with cracks so loud that she felt rather than heard it, a piercing pain in her eardrums. Damon, whose eyes were more sensitive, threw up a hand to protect them.

Then he shouted 'Klaus!' and sprang toward the blond man. He wasn't stalking now; this was the deadly race of attack. The burst of killing speed of the hunting cat or the wolf.

Lightning caught him in midspring.

Bonnie screamed as she saw it, jumping to her feet. There was a blue flash of superheated gases and a smell of burning, and then Damon was down, lying motionless on his face. Bonnie could see tiny wisps of smoke rise from him, just as they did from the trees.

Speechless with horror, she looked at Klaus.

He was swaggering through the clearing, holding his bloody stick like a golf club. He bent down over Damon as he passed, and smiled. Bonnie wanted to scream again, but she didn't have the breath. There didn't seem to be any air left to breathe.

'I'll deal with you later,' Klaus told the unconscious Damon. Then his face tipped up toward Bonnie.

'You,' he said, 'I'm going to deal with right now.'

It was an instant before she realized he was looking at Stefan, and not her. Those electric blue eyes were fixed on Stefan's face. They moved to Stefan's bloody middle.

'I'm going to eat you now, Salvatore.'

Bonnie was all alone. The only one left standing. And she was afraid.

But she knew what she had to do.

She let her knees collapse again, dropping to the ground beside Stefan.

And this is how it ends, she thought. You kneel beside your knight and then you face the enemy.

She looked at Klaus and moved so that she was shielding Stefan. He seemed to notice her for the first time, and frowned as if he'd found a spider in his salad. Firelight flickered orange-red on his face.

'Get out of the way.'

'No.'

And this is how the ending starts. Like this, so simply, with one word, and you're going to die on a summer night. A summer night when the moon and stars are shining and bonfires burn like the flames the Druids used to summon the dead.

'Bonnie, go,' Stefan said painfully. 'Get out while you can.'

'No,' Bonnie said. I'm sorry, Elena, she thought. I can't save him. This is all I can do.

'Get out of the way,' Klaus said through his teeth.

'No.' She could wait and let Stefan die this way, instead of with Klaus's teeth in his throat. It might not seem like much of a difference, but it was the most she could offer.

'Bonnie…' Stefan whispered.

'Don't you know who I am, girl? I've walked with the devil. If you move, I'll let you die quickly.'

Bonnie's voice had given out. She shook her head.

Klaus threw back his own head and laughed. A little more blood trickled out, too. 'All right,' he said. 'Have it your own way. Both of you go together.'

Summer night, Bonnie thought. The solstice eve. When the line between worlds is so thin.

'Say good night, sweetheart.'

No time to trance, no time for anything. Nothing except one desperate appeal.

'Elena!' Bonnie screamed. 'Elena! Elena!'

Klaus recoiled.

For an instant, it seemed as if the name alone had the power to alarm him. Or as if he expected something to respond to Bonnie's cry. He stood, listening.