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.”
“Eventually, some of them are going to see Elena,” Meredith said. “Remember, these are people like Stefan, Bonnie, but not people with his moral sense. When they see her…”
Bonnie almost burst into tears at the thought. She seemed to see a flurry of white feathers, each tumbling in slow motion to the ground.
“But — she wasn’t this way when she first woke up,” Matt said slowly and stubbornly. “She talked. She was rational. She didn’t float.”
“Talking or not talking, walking or floating, she has the Power,” Stefan said. “Enough to drive ordinary vampires crazy. Crazy enough to hurt her to get it. And she doesn’t kill — or wound. At least, I can’t imagine her doing that. What I’m hoping,” he said, and his face darkened, “is that I can take her somewhere where she’ll be… protected.”
“But you can’t take her,” Bonnie said, and she could hear the wail in her own voice without being able to control it. “Didn’t Meredith tell you what I said? She’s going to wake up. And Meredith and I need to be with her for that.”
Because we won’t be with her later.Suddenly it made sense. And while it wasn’t quite as bad as thinking that they would be not-anywhere-at-all, it was more than bad enough.
“I wasn’t thinking of taking her until she can at least walk properly,” Stefan said, and he surprised Bonnie with a quick arm around her shoulders. It felt like Meredith’s hug, sibling-ish, but stronger and briefer. “And you don’t know how glad I am that she’s going to wake up. Or that you’ll be there to support her.”
“But…” But the ghoulies are still going to come to Fell’s Church? Bonnie thought. And we won’t have you to protect us?
She glanced up and saw that Meredith knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “I would say,” Meredith said, in her most careful, measured tones, “that Stefan and Elena have been through enough for the town’s sake.”
Well. There was no arguing with that. And there was no arguing with Stefan, either, it seemed. His mind was made up.
They talked until after dark anyway, discussing different options and scenarios, pondering over Bonnie’s prediction. They didn’t get anything decided, but at least they had thrashed out some possible plans. Bonnie insisted that there be some means of communication with Stefan, and she was just about to demand some of his blood and hair for the summoning spell when he gently pointed out that he did have a mobile phone now.
At last it was time to leave. The humans were starving, and Bonnie guessed that Stefan probably was, too. He looked unusually white as he sat with Elena on his lap.
When they said good-bye at the top of the stairs, Bonnie had to keep reminding herself that Stefan had promised that Elena would be there for her and Meredith to support. He would never take her away without telling them.
It wasn’t areal good-bye.
So why did it feel so much like one?
When Matt, Meredith, and Bonnie were all on their way, Stefan was left with Elena, now decently attired by Bonnie in her “Night Gown.” The darkness outside was comforting to his sore eyes — not sore from daylight, but from telling good friends the sad news. Worse than the sore eyes was the slightly breathless feeling of a vampire who hasn’t fed. But he’d remedy that soon, he told himself. Once Elena was asleep, he’d slip out into the woods and find a white-tailed deer. No one could stalk like a vampire; no one could compete with Stefan at hunting. And even if it took several deer to assuage the hunger inside him, not one of them would be permanently injured.
But Elena had other plans. She wasn’t sleepy, and she was never bored being alone with him. As soon as the sounds of their visitors’ car were decently out of hearing, she did what she always did in this mood. She floated to him and tipped her face up, eyes closed, lips just slightly pursed. Then she waited.
Stefan hurried to the one unshuttered window, pulled the shade down against unwanted peeping crows, and returned. Elena was in exactly the same position, blushing slightly, eyes still shut. Stefan sometimes thought that she would wait forever that way, if she wanted a kiss.
“I’m really taking advantage of you, love,” he said, and sighed. He leaned over and kissed her gently, chastely.
Elena made a noise of disappointment that sounded exactly like apurruping kitten, ending on a note of inquiry. She bumped his chin with her nose.
“Lovely love,” Stefan said, stroking her hair. “Bonnie got all the knots out without pulling?” But he was leaning into her warmth now, helpless. A distant ache in his upper jaw was already beginning.
Elena bumped again, demanding. He kissed her for slightly longer. Logically, he knew she was a grown-up. She was older and vastly more experienced than she had been nine months ago, when they’d lost themselves in adoration kissing. But guilt was never far from his thoughts, and he couldn’t help but worry about having her competent consent.
This time the purrup was one of exasperation. Elena had had enough. All at once, she gave her weight to him, forcing him to suddenly support a warm, substantial bundle of femininity in his arms, and at the same time, her. Please? chiming clear as a finger swirling on a crystal glass.
It was one of the first words she had learned to think to him when she’d woken up mute and weightless. And, angel or no, she knew exactly what it did to him — inside.
Please?
“Oh, little love,” he groaned. “Little lovely love…”
Please?
He kissed her.
There was a long time of silence, while he felt his heart beat faster and faster. Elena, his Elena, who had once given her very life for him, was warm and drowsily heavy in his arms. She was his alone, and they belonged just like this, and he never wanted anything to change from this moment. Even the quickly growing ache in his upper jaw was something to be enjoyed. The pain of it changed to pleasure with Elena’s warm mouth under his, her lips forming little butterfly kisses, teasing him.
He sometimes thought she was most awake when she seemed half-asleep like this. She was always the instigator, but he followed helplessly wherever she wanted him to go. The one time he had refused, had stopped in mid-kiss, she had broken off speaking to him with her mind and floated to a corner, where she then sat among the dust and spiderwebs…and wept. Nothing he could do would console her, although he knelt on the hard wooden floorboards and begged and coaxed and almost wept himself — until he took her back into his arms.
He had promised himself never to make that mistake again. But still, his guilt nagged at him, although it was growing more and more distant — and more confused as Elena changed the pressure of her lips suddenly and the
