The Dark Reunion (18 page)

“Precisely. This is my territory. Unreality.”
Klaus grinned, his staring psychotic grin again. “Where your wildest nightmares come true, free of charge. For instance,” he said, looking at Stefan, “how’d you like to see what your sweetheart really looks like right now? Without her makeup?”

Elena made a soft sound, almost a moan. Stefan held her tighter.

“It’s been how long since she died? About six months? Do you know what happens to a body once it’s been in the ground six months?” Klaus licked his lips again, like a dog.

Now Stefan understood. Elena shivered, head bent, and tried to move away from him, but he locked his arms around her.

“It’s all right,” he said to her softly. And to Klaus: “You’re forgetting yourself. I’m not a human who jumps at shadows and the sight of blood. I know about death, Klaus. It doesn’t frighten me.”

“No, but does it thrill you?” Klaus’s voice dropped, low, intoxicating. “Isn’t it exciting, the stench, the rot, the fluids of decomposing flesh? Isn’t it
a kick?”

“Stefan, let me go.
Please.”
Elena was shaking,
pushing at him with her hands, all the time keeping her head twisted away so he couldn’t see her face. Her voice sounded close to tears.
“Please.”

“The only Power you have here is the power of illusion,” Stefan said to Klaus. He held Elena to him, cheek pressed to her hair. He could feel the changes in the body he embraced. The hair under his cheek seemed to coarsen and Elena’s form to shrink on itself.

“In certain soils the skin can tan like leather,” Klaus assured him, bright eyed, grinning.

“Stefan, I don’t want you to look at me—”

Eyes on Klaus, Stefan gently pushed the coarsened white hair away and stroked the side of Elena’s face, ignoring the roughness against his fingertips.

“But of course most of the time it just decomposes. What a way to go. You lose everything, skin, flesh, muscles, internal organs—all back into the ground….”

The body in Stefan’s arms was dwindling. He shut his eyes and held tighter, hatred for Klaus burning inside him. An illusion, it was all an illusion….

“Stefan …” It was a dry whisper, faint as
the scratch of paper blown down a sidewalk. It hung on the air a minute and then vanished, and Stefan found himself holding a pile of bones.

“And finally it ends up like that, in over two hundred separate, easy-to-assemble pieces. Comes with its own handy-dandy carrying case….” On the far side of the circle of light there was a creaking sound. The white coffin there was opening by itself, the lid lifting. “Why don’t you do the honors, Salvatore? Go put Elena where she belongs.”

Stefan had dropped to his knees, shaking, looking at the slender white bones in his hands. It was all an illusion—Klaus was merely controlling Bonnie’s trance and showing Stefan what he wanted Stefan to see. He hadn’t really hurt Elena, but the hot, protective fury inside Stefan wouldn’t recognize that. Carefully, Stefan laid the fragile bones on the ground and touched them once, gently. Then he looked up at Klaus, lips curled with contempt.

“That
is not Elena,” he said.

“Of course it is. I’d recognize her anywhere.” Klaus spread his hands and declaimed,
“‘knew a woman, lovely in her bones…’”

“No.” Sweat was beading on Stefan’s forehead. He shut out Klaus’s voice and concentrated, fists clenched, muscles cracking with effort. It was like pushing a boulder uphill, fighting Klaus’s influence. But where they lay, the delicate bones began trembling, and a faint golden light shone around them.

“‘A rag and a bone and a hank of hair… the fool he called them his lady fair…’”

The light was shimmering, dancing, linking the bones together. Warm and golden it folded about them, clothing them as they rose in the air. What stood there now was a featureless form of soft radiance. Sweat ran into Stefan’s eyes and he felt as if his lungs would burst.

“‘Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover….’”

Elena’s hair, long and silky gold, arranged itself over glowing shoulders. Elena’s features, blurred at first and then clearly focused, formed on the face. Lovingly, Stefan reconstructed every detail. Thick lashes, small nose, parted lips like rose petals. White light swirled around the figure, creating a thin gown.

“‘And the crack in the teacup opens a lane to the land of the dead….’”

“No.” Dizziness swept over Stefan as he felt the last surge of Power sigh out of him. A breath lifted the figure’s breast and eyes blue as lapis lazuli opened.

Elena smiled, and he felt the blaze of her love arc to meet him. “Stefan.” Her head was high, proud as any queen’s.

Stefan turned to Klaus, who had stopped speaking and was glaring mutely.

“This,” Stefan said distinctly, “is Elena. Not whatever empty shell she’s left behind in the ground. This is Elena, and nothing you do can ever touch her.”

He held out his hand, and Elena took it and stepped to him. When they touched, he felt a jolt, and then felt her Powers flowing into him, sustaining him. They stood together, side by side, facing the blond man. Stefan had never felt as fiercely victorious in his life, or as strong.

Klaus stared at them for perhaps twenty seconds and then went berserk.

His face twisted in loathing. Stefan could feel waves of malignant Power battering against him and Elena, and he used all his strength to resist it. The maelstrom of dark fury was trying
to tear them apart, howling through the room, destroying everything in its path. Candles snuffed out and flew into the air as if caught in a tornado. The dream was breaking up around them, shattering.

Stefan clung to Elena’s other hand. The wind blew her hair, whipping it around her face.

“Stefan!” She was shouting, trying to make herself heard. Then he heard her voice in his mind.
“Stefan, listen to me! There is one thing you can do to stop him. You need a victim, Stefan—find one of his victims. Only a victim will know—”

The noise level was unbearable, as if the very fabric of space and time was tearing. Stefan felt Elena’s hands ripped from his. With a cry of desperation, he reached out for her again, but he could feel nothing. He was already drained by the effort of fighting Klaus, and he couldn’t hold on to consciousness. The darkness took him spinning down with it.

Bonnie had seen everything.

It was strange, but once she stepped aside to let Stefan go to Elena, she seemed to lose physical presence in the dream. It was as if she were
no longer a player but the stage the action was being played upon. She could watch, but she couldn’t do anything else.

In the end, she’d been afraid. She wasn’t strong enough to hold the dream together, and the whole thing finally exploded, throwing her out of the trance, back into Stefan’s room.

He was lying on the floor and he looked dead. So white, so still. But when Bonnie tugged at him, trying to get him on the bed, his chest heaved and she heard him suck in a gasping breath.

“Stefan? Are you okay?”

He looked wildly around the room as if trying to find something. “Elena!” he said, and then he stopped, memory clearly returning.

His face twisted. For one dreadful instant Bonnie thought he was going to cry, but he only shut his eyes and dropped his head into his hands.

“I lost her. I couldn’t hold on.”

“I know.” Bonnie watched him a moment, then, gathering her courage, knelt in front of him, touching his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

His head lifted abruptly, his green eyes dry
but so dilated they looked black. His nostrils were flared, his lips drawn back from his teeth.

“Klaus!” He spat the name as if it were a curse. “Did you see him?”

“Yes,” Bonnie said, pulling back. She gulped, her stomach churning. “He’s crazy, isn’t he, Stefan?”

“Yes.” Stefan got up. “And he must be stopped.”

“But how?” Since seeing Klaus, Bonnie was more frightened than ever, more frightened and less confident. “What could stop him, Stefan? I’ve never felt anything like that Power.”

“But didn’t you—?” Stefan turned to her quickly. “Bonnie, didn’t you hear what Elena said at the end?”

“No. What do you mean? I couldn’t hear anything; there was a slight hurricane going on at the time.”

“Bonnie …” Stefan’s eyes went distant with speculation and he spoke as if to himself. “That means that
he
probably didn’t hear it either. So he doesn’t know, and he won’t try to stop us.”

“From what? Stefan, what are you talking about?”

“From finding a victim. Listen, Bonnie, Elena told me that if we can find a surviving victim of Klaus’s, we can find a way to stop him.”

Bonnie was in completely over her head. “But … why?”

“Because vampires and their donors—their prey—share minds briefly while the blood is being exchanged. Sometimes the donor can learn things about the vampire that way. Not always, but occasionally. That’s what must have happened, and Elena knows it.”

“That’s all very well and good—except for one small thing,” Bonnie said tartly. “Will you please tell me who on
earth
could have survived an attack by Klaus?”

She expected Stefan to be deflated, but he wasn’t. “A vampire,” he said simply. “A human Klaus made into a vampire would qualify as a victim. As long as they’ve exchanged blood, they’ve touched minds.”

“Oh.
Oh.
So … if we can find a vampire he’s made … but
where?”

“Maybe in Europe.” Stefan began to pace around the room, his eyes narrowed. “Klaus has a long history, and some of his vampires are
bound to be there. I may have to go and look for one.”

Bonnie was utterly dismayed. “But Stefan, you can’t leave
us.
You can’t!”

Stefan stopped where he was, across the room, and stood very still. Then at last, he turned to face her. “I don’t want to,” he said quietly. “And we’ll try to think of another solution first—maybe we can get hold of Tyler again. I’ll wait a week, until next Saturday. But I may have to leave, Bonnie. You know that as well as I do.”

There was a long, long silence between them. Bonnie fought the heat in her eyes, determined to be grown up and mature. She wasn’t a baby and she would prove that now, once and for all. She caught Stefan’s gaze and slowly nodded.

13

June 19, Friday, 11:45 p.m.

Dear Diary
,

Oh, God, what are we going to do?

This has been the longest week of my life. Today was the last day of school and tomorrow Stefan is leaving. He’s going to Europe to search for a vampire who got changed by Klaus. He says he doesn’t want to leave us unprotected. But he’s going to go.

We can’t find Tyler. His car disappeared from the cemetery, but he hasn’t turned up at school. He’s missed every final this week. Not that the rest of us are doing much better. I wish Robert E. Lee was like the schools that have all their finals before graduation. I don’t know whether I’m writing English or Swahili these days.

I hate Klaus. From what I saw he’s as crazy as Katherine—and even crueler. What he did to Vickie—but I can’t even talk about that or I’ll start crying
again. He was just playing with us at Caroline’s party, like a cat with a mouse. And to do it on Meredith’s birthday, too—although I suppose he couldn’t have known that. He seems to know a lot, though. He doesn’t talk like a foreigner, not like Stefan did when he first came to America, and he knows all about American things, even songs from the fifties. Maybe he’s been over here for a while …

Bonnie stopped writing. She thought desperately. All this time, they had been thinking of victims in Europe, of vampires. But from the way Klaus talked, he had obviously been in America a long time. He didn’t sound foreign at all. And he’d chosen to attack the girls on Meredith’s birthday …

Bonnie got up, reached for the telephone, and called Meredith’s number. A sleepy male voice answered.

“Mr. Sulez, this is Bonnie. Can I speak to Meredith?”

“Bonnie! Don’t you know what time it is?”

“Yes.” Bonnie thought quickly. “But it’s about—about a final we had today. Please, I have to talk with her.”

There was a long pause, then a heavy sigh. “Just a minute.”

Bonnie tapped her fingers impatiently as she waited. At last there was the click of another phone being picked up.

“Bonnie?” came Meredith’s voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I mean—” Bonnie was excruciatingly conscious of the open line, of the fact that Meredith’s father hadn’t hung up. He might be listening. “It’s about—that German problem we’ve been working on.
You
remember. The one we couldn’t figure out for the final. You know how we’ve been looking for the one person who can help us solve it? Well, I think I know who it is.”

“You
do?”
Bonnie could sense Meredith scrambling for the right words. “Well—who is it? Does it involve any long-distance calls?”

“No,” Bonnie said, “it doesn’t. It hits a lot closer to home, Meredith. A lot. In fact, you could say it’s right in your own backyard, hanging on your family tree.”

The line was silent so long Bonnie wondered if Meredith was still there. “Meredith?”