Matt cursed himself. “While I was in the front seat, why didn’t I just floor it—?” He stared hungrily through branches, trying to make out the accelerator, the ignition. “Are the keys still there?”
“Matt, we ended up half in a ditch. And besides, if it would have done any good, I’d have told you to floor it.”
“That branch would’ve taken your head off!”
“Yes,” Meredith said simply.
“It would have killed you!”
“If it would have gotten you two out, I’d have suggested it. But you were trapped looking sideways; I could see straight ahead. They were already here; the trees. In every direction.”
“That…isn’t…possible!” Matt pounded the seat in front of him to emphasize each word.
“Is this possible?”
The roof creaked again.
“Both of you — stop fighting!” Bonnie said, and her voice broke on a sob.
There was an explosion like a gunshot and the car sank suddenly back and left.
Bonnie started. “What was that?”
Silence.
“…a tire blowing,” Matt said at last. He didn’t trust his own voice. He looked at Meredith.
So did Bonnie. “Meredith — the branches are filling up the front seat. I can hardly see the moonlight. It’s getting dark.”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do?”
Matt could see the tremendous tension and frustration in Meredith’s face, as if everything she said should come out through gritted teeth. But Meredith’s voice was quiet.
“I don’t know.”
With Stefan still shuddering, Elena curled herself like a cat over the bed. She smiled at him, a smile drugged with pleasure and love. He thought of grasping her by the arms, pulling her down, and starting all over again.
That was how insane she’d made him. Because he knew — all too well, from experience — the danger they were flirting with. Much more of this and Elena would be the first spirit-vampire, as she’d been the first vampire- spirit he’d known.
But look at her! He slipped out from beneath her as he sometimes did and just gazed, feeling his heart pound just at the sight of her. Her hair, true gold, fell like silk down to the bed and pooled there. Her body, in the light of the one small lamp in the room, seemed to be outlined in gold. She truly seemed to float and move and sleep in a golden haze. It was terrifying. For a vampire, it was as if he’d brought a living sun into his bed.
He found himself suppressing a yawn. She did that to him, too, like an unwitting Delilah taking Samson’s strength away. Hyper-charged as he might be by her blood, he was also delightfully sleepy. He would spend a warm night in — or below — her arms.
In Matt’s car it only got darker as the trees continued to cut out the moonlight. For a while they tried yelling for help. That did no good, and besides, as Meredith pointed out, they needed to conserve the oxygen in the car. So they sat still again.
Finally, Meredith reached into her jeans pocket and produced a set of keys with a tiny key chain flashlight. Its light was blue. She pressed it and they all leaned forward. Such a tiny thing to mean so much, Matt thought.
There was pressure against the front seats now.
“Bonnie?” Meredith said. “No one will hear us out here yelling. If anyone could hear us, they would have heard the tire and thought it was a gunshot.”
Bonnie shook her head as if she didn’t want to listen. She was still picking pine needles out of her skin.
She’s right. We’re miles away from anybody, Matt thought.
“There is something very bad here,” Bonnie said. She said it quietly, but as if every word was being forced out one by one, like pebbles thrown into a pond.
Matt suddenly felt grayer. “How…bad?”
“It’s so bad that it’s…I’ve never felt anything like this before. Not when Elena got killed, not from Klaus, not from anything. I’ve never felt anything as bad as this. It’s so bad, and it’s so strong. I didn’t think anything could be so strong. It’s pushing on me, and I’m afraid —” Meredith cut her off. “Bonnie, I know we can both only think of one way out of this—”
“There’s no way out of this!”
“—I know you’re afraid—”
“Who is there to call? I could do it…if there were someone to call. I can stare at your little flashlight and try to pretend it’s a flame and do it—”
“Trancing?” Matt looked at Meredith sharply. “She’s not supposed to do that anymore.”
“Klaus is dead.”
“But—”
“There’s nobody to hear me!” Bonnie shrieked and then she broke down into huge sobs at last. “Elena and Stefan are too far away, and they’re probably asleep by now! And there isn’t anyone else!”
The three of them were being pushed together now, as branches pressed the seats back onto them. Matt and Meredith were close enough to look at each other right over Bonnie’s head.
“Uh,” Matt said, startled. “Um…are we sure?”
“No,” Meredith said. She sounded both grim and hopeful. “Remember this morning? We are not at all sure. In fact I’m sure he’s still around somewhere.”
Now Matt felt sick, and Meredith and Bonnie looked ill in the already strange-looking blue light. “And — right before this happened, we were talking about how a lot of stuff—”
“—basically everything that happened to change Elena—”
“—was all his fault.”
“In the woods.”
“With an open window.”
Bonnie sobbed on.
Matt and Meredith, however, had made a silent agreement by eye contact. Meredith said, very gently, “Bonnie, what you said you would do; well, you’re going to have to do it. Try to get through to Stefan, or waken Elena or — or apologize to…Damon. Probably the last, I’m afraid. But he’s never seemed to want us all dead, and he must know that it won’t help him with Elena if he kills her friends.”
Matt grunted, skeptical. “He may not want us all dead, but he may wait until some of us are dead to save the others. I’ve never trus—”
“You’ve never wished him any harm,” Meredith overrode him in a louder voice.
Matt blinked at her and then shut up. He felt like an idiot.
“So, here, the flashlight’s on,” Meredith said, and even in this crisis, her voice was steady, rhythmic, hypnotic. The pathetic little light was so precious, too. It was all they had to keep the darkness from becoming absolute.
But when the darkness became absolute, Matt thought, it would be because all light, all air, everything from the outside had been shut out, pushed out of the way by the pressure of the trees. And by then the pressure would have broken their skeletons.
“Bonnie?” Meredith’s voice was the voice of every big sister who ever had come to her younger sibling’s rescue. That gentle. That controlled. “Can you try to pretend it’s a candle flame…a candle flame…a candle flame… and then try to trance?”
“I’m in trance already.” Bonnie’s voice was somehow distant — far away and almost echoing.
“Then ask for help,” Meredith said softly.
Bonnie was whispering, over and over, clearly oblivious to the world around her: “Please, come help us. Damon, if you can hear me, please accept our apologies and come. You gave us a terrible scare, and I’m sure we deserved it, but please, please help. It hurts, Damon. It hurts so bad I could scream. But instead I’m putting all that energy into Calling you. Please, please, please help…”
For five, ten, fifteen minutes she kept it up, as the branches grew, enclosing them with their sweet, resinous scent. She kept it up far longer than Matt had ever thought she could endure.
