Authors: L. J. Smith
“Apparently they’re not considering the
other
ways some of us can get distracted,” Shay said acidly. Her eyes were cold on Bonnie’s, but Bonnie hadn’t been through hell and back in the last year to let any bossy and self-important werewolf girl push her around.
Bonnie was just opening her mouth to tell Shay that she’d better lose the attitude when Zander, seeming to sense her reaction, grabbed hold of Bonnie’s hand.
“Listen, Shay, I really need to get some rest,” he said quickly. “We’ll catch up later, okay? Call me or one of the other guys and we’ll get together.” Bonnie had a brief impression of Shay looking startled, and then Zander hurried Shay right out of the room and shut the door behind her.
“So . . . friend from back home?” Bonnie asked after a moment. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned her before.”
“Um,” Zander said. His gorgeous long lashes brushed his cheeks as he looked down, away from Bonnie, and she might have been distracted by how sweet that made him look. Except that Zander also looked distinctly
guilty
.
Bonnie suddenly felt her stomach sink. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked. Zander shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, his cheeks flushing, and Bonnie’s stomach plummeted even further. “No more secrets, remember?”
Zander sighed. “I just think this is going to sound like a bigger deal than it is,” he said.
“Zander,”
Bonnie said.
“The High Wolf Council wanted Shay and me to be together,” Zander confessed. He glanced up at her tentatively through his lashes. “They, um, I guess thought we’d be like mates? Get married, maybe, and have werewolf children together when we finished school. They thought we’d make a good team.”
Bonnie blinked. Her brain felt numb, she realized. Zander and Shay had thought about getting
married
?
“But we couldn’t get along,” Zander said hurriedly. “I swear, Bonnie, we just never clicked. We fought, like, all the time. So we broke up.”
“Uh,” Bonnie said. She was so blindsided by this, it felt like a huge effort to even put words together. “So the High Wolf Council controls who you marry?” she asked finally, picking the most general of the questions swarming her mind.
“They
try
,” Zander said, looking at her anxiously. “They can’t . . . they can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. And they wouldn’t want to. They’re fair.” His sky-blue eyes, that heavenly tropical blue, caught hers, and he smiled tentatively, his hands warm on her shoulders. “You’re the one I love, Bonnie,” he said. “Believe me.”
“I do believe you,” Bonnie said, because she
did
; it was shining out of Zander’s eyes. And she loved him, too. Zander flinched a little as she hugged him, and Bonnie loosened her arms, mindful of his bruises. “It’s okay,” she said softly.
But even as she turned her face up to Zander’s kiss, Bonnie couldn’t help the word that resounded in her mind, making her twitch with anxiety.
Uh-oh.
Stefan and Elena curled together on his bed, her head on his shoulder. Stefan let himself relax under her touch, feeling the softness of her hair against his cheek. It had been a seemingly endless day. But Elena was safe, for now. Just for this moment, she was in Stefan’s arms and nothing would hurt her. He tightened his hold on her.
“Is Chloe going to be all right?” Elena asked.
Stefan bit back an incredulous little laugh and the corners of Elena’s lips turned up in response. “What?” she said.
“You’re worried about Chloe,” Stefan said. “Klaus has promised to kill you, and you want to hear if Chloe, who you barely knew when she was human, is going to be all right.” He should have known, though. Elena had a core of steel running through her. And nothing was more important to her than protecting her friends, her town, the world.
Maybe,
Stefan thought,
she’s always been a Guardian.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about what Klaus said,” Elena told him, and Stefan felt her body shudder against his. “I’m afraid. But I can’t stop caring about everyone else, either. Matt needs Chloe, so she matters to me, too. I worry that there might not be a lot of time left. We should all be with the people we love.” She kissed Stefan, just a light brush of her lips on his. When she spoke again, her voice trembled. “We just found each other again, Stefan. I don’t want to miss anything. All I want to do is hold on to you.”
Stefan kissed her, more deeply this time.
I love you,
he told her silently.
I will protect you with my life
.
Elena broke the kiss and smiled at him, her eyes full of tears. “I know,” she said. “I love you, too, Stefan, so much.” She pulled her hair back and tilted her head invitingly, exposing her long slender throat. Stefan hesitated—it had been so long, not since before they broke up and came back together—but she drew his mouth down to her throat.
The rush of Elena’s blood—so intoxicating, so full of vitality that it was like champagne and sweet nectar at the same time—made Stefan light-headed, flooding him with warmth. There were no barriers between them, no walls, and he felt a great wonder at the steadfast tenderness that he found in Elena.
They fell asleep wrapped around each other. Darkness threatened them on all sides, but for this night, they would be together, be each other’s light.
“
A
headless body found in the woods near Dalcrest College last week has now been identified as Dalcrest senior Ethan Crane,” announced the pretty newscaster on the TV morning show, her forehead crinkling seriously. “Police have not yet released a statement on whether Crane was the victim of a murder or a freak accident, but judging from the difference in wounds, Crane’s death appears unrelated to the most recent animal attacks in the woods.”
As the newscaster went on to another story, Meredith flipped off the TV, hissing in irritation.
“They must think everyone who watches the news is a moron,” she muttered. “How could someone lose their head in a freak accident in the woods?”
Even though the student lounge was empty except for the five of them—Elena, Bonnie, Meredith, Stefan, and Zander—Elena lowered her voice and glanced around before answering. “They don’t want people to panic any more than they are already.”
The empty lounge was a sign of how frightened everyone already was, Elena thought. The first couple of weeks of school, the lounge had been packed in the evenings, guys and girls hanging out to watch TV or flirt or even study.
Now, though, everyone was wary, sticking to their rooms in case one of the friendly faces on campus was masking a killer. Elena was constantly on edge, too. She and her friends checked and rechecked their weapons, tried to anticipate what Klaus might do. And yet he’d done nothing, as far as they could tell.
“My psychology class was canceled this week,” Bonnie told the others. “And there’s hardly anyone left in my English section. A lot of people have left.” She hesitated, her wide brown eyes flicking between Elena and Zander. “My father wants me to come home and see if we can get the tuition refunded. He says I could come back next year if they get to the bottom of all the attacks and disappearances,” she confessed.
“You’re not going home, are you?” Elena asked her. Bonnie’s dad had always been superprotective of Bonnie and her older sisters, so Elena wasn’t surprised by this news.
“Of course I’m not going,” Bonnie said stoutly. “You guys need me here.” She snuggled closer to Zander and tipped her head back against his chest to smile up at him. He smiled back, wide and warmly, and Elena found herself smiling, too. Zander was such a guy’s guy, not really Elena’s type at all, but it was wonderful to see Bonnie with someone who liked her so much that pure contentment just shone out of him whenever they were together.
Stefan cleared his throat to get their attention. “I don’t know where Klaus is feeding, but I don’t think the bodies that have been found in the woods are people he killed. The news reports are saying they look like animal attacks, and, uh”—he looked down at his feet, his face slightly embarrassed—“I compelled a police officer to find out what the police have seen. The kills are really sloppy; they look like an animal actually
is
attacking people, so it’s not just a cover story as far as the police are concerned.”
“So you think it’s the new vampires who are killing people, not one as experienced as Klaus,” Elena said. Stefan met her eyes and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was:
not Damon, either
. A great wave of relief broke over her.
If Damon crossed that line, if he started killing again, she didn’t know what they would do. She couldn’t imagine that they’d betray him, turn him over to the others, or hunt him down. So much had changed between Stefan and Damon. Elena knew Stefan would protect his brother now, choose him over anyone else except perhaps Elena herself.
But it hadn’t come to that yet. It never would, Elena told herself fiercely. Damon might have lost control once, but no lasting harm had been done. The girl was fine. And it was the new vampires, the ones Ethan had turned, who were killing.
Meredith was watching her, her gray eyes sympathetic. “People are still dying, even if the killer is not Klaus,” she said gently. With a start, Elena realized that she’d given away her relief that it wasn’t Damon. Luckily, Meredith had misinterpreted Elena’s reaction. “We can’t guess what game Klaus is playing or what his plans are until he reveals himself,” Meredith went on. A lock of dark hair fell over her cheek and she tucked it back behind her ear. “But we can target the Vitale vampires. Gassing the tunnels didn’t work, and we can’t make more gas unless we can get a lot more vervain than we have now. We should be patrolling regularly to keep the students safer.”
She dug into her backpack and pulled out a campus map, carefully annotated in red ink, and traced an area on the map with one finger. “I’ve marked their hunting grounds here, and I think we can focus our patrols on the woods and on the playing fields on the edge of campus. We need to organize and make sure we’ve got nightly patrols that have enough strong fighters in them to take down a group of young vampires.”
“What about during the day?” Bonnie asked, frowning and reaching for the map. “They’ve all got lapis lazuli, don’t they? So they could be out hunting anytime.”
Stefan stirred restlessly next to Elena on the couch. “Even though the sunlight doesn’t kill them, they’ll be laying low during the day,” he explained. “Sunlight bothers vampires even with the lapis lazuli. Night is a vampire’s natural habitat, and they won’t leave it unless they’re forced to.”
Elena looked at him in surprise, but said nothing. Stefan lived in the day with her, slept at night. Did it hurt him, too? Had he changed so much, just to be with Elena?
“So nighttime patrols ought to be enough, at least for now,” Meredith said.
Zander examined the map closely, his white-blond head close to Bonnie’s red one. “I can organize the guys to take some of the patrols,” he offered. Stefan nodded to Zander in acknowledgment. Meredith turned to Elena, her gray eyes sharp. “What about Damon?” she asked. “We could really use him.”
Elena hesitated. Beside her, Stefan cleared his throat. “My brother isn’t available right now,” he said, his voice expressionless. “But I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Meredith’s lips tightened. Elena could imagine what was going through her friend’s head: Damon, irritating but always
there
, had finally, over the past summer and fall, proven himself as a worthwhile ally, only to disappear when the campus was falling into chaos around them?
If that was what Meredith was thinking, she didn’t say anything, just narrowed her eyes and let out a long sigh, then asked, “What about you, Bonnie? Are there any spells that will help the patrols?”
“There are a few protection spells I already know that could be useful,” Bonnie said thoughtfully. “I’m going to call Mrs. Flowers and see what else she recommends.”
Elena smiled across at her friend. With the discovery of her talent for witchcraft, Bonnie had found a new confidence. Bonnie looked up and caught her eye, then smiled back.
“We’ll beat them, won’t we, Elena?” she said softly. “And Klaus, too, when he shows up again.”
“We did before, after all,” Elena said lightly. Bonnie’s expression sobered, and Meredith picked up the map again, turning it over thoughtfully in her hands. Next to Elena, Stefan reached to take her hand in his. They all knew just what it had taken to beat Klaus the first time they had faced him: Damon and Stefan united, and an army of the dead of Fell’s Church, rising up from the land where they had fallen in battle. Not something they could duplicate. And even then, they had barely survived.
“We’re stronger now,” Bonnie said uncertainly. “Right?”
Elena forced herself to smile. “Of course we are,” she said. Meredith’s hand took hold of Elena’s, and Elena felt comforted and strengthened by Stefan, her love, on one side, and Meredith, her friend, on the other. Bonnie raised her head proudly, her small face defiant, and Zander straightened beside her.
“We’re invincible when we’re together,” Elena told them, and looking around at their resolute faces, she almost believed it.
E
lena was pulling on her sturdiest boots—perfect for a night of tromping through the woods—when her phone rang.
“Hello?” she said, glancing at the clock. In less than five minutes, she was supposed to be meeting Stefan and three of Zander’s Packmates to patrol the campus. She tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder and hurriedly finished lacing up the boots.
“Elena.” James’s voice came through the phone, sounding exuberant. “I have good news. Andrés has arrived.”
Elena stiffened, her fingers fumbling on her bootlaces. “Oh,” she said faintly. The human Guardian was
here
at Dalcrest? She swallowed and spoke more firmly. “Does he want to meet with me right now?” she asked. “I’m on my way somewhere, but I could . . .”
“No, no,” James broke in. “He’s exhausted. But if you come here around nine tomorrow morning, he’d be delighted to talk to you.” He dropped his voice, as if not wanting to be overheard. “Andrés is extraordinary, Elena,” he said happily. “I can’t wait for you two to meet.”
Pulling her hair back into a tight, businesslike ponytail, Elena thanked James and got off the phone as quickly as she could.
Extraordinary,
she thought apprehensively. That could mean a lot of different things. The Celestial Guardians she had met had been extraordinary, and they had taken away her parents and Power, crippling her. Still, James clearly thought Andrés was good.
She tried to push her thoughts about the Earthly Guardian away as she jogged across campus to join the others. There was no point in worrying about him now; she’d meet him soon enough.
Stefan and the werewolves were waiting for her on the outskirts of the woods. Tristan and Spencer had already changed into their wolf forms and were restlessly sniffing the air, ears cocked for any sound of trouble. Shaggy-haired Jared, in human form, stood with Stefan, his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“There you are,” Stefan said as Elena came up to them, and pulled her close to him in a brief embrace. “Ready?”
They set off into the woods, Tristan and Spencer pacing on each side of them, their heads and tails up, and their eyes alert. There had been too many attacks on and near the campus, and Elena knew the Pack felt that they were failing in their responsibility to keep the Dalcrest students safe. She and her friends felt the same way: they were the only ones who really knew what supernatural horrors were out there, and so were the only ones who could keep other people safe.
Bonnie, Meredith, Zander, and two more of his Packmates were patrolling the playing fields, trying to keep another section of the campus safe. Elena would have liked to have Matt’s quiet, stubborn strength beside her, but he was still sequestered away with Chloe. Stefan had been checking on them daily, and said Chloe was making progress, but that she was still not ready to be near anyone else.
It was a clear, starry night, and everything seemed peaceful so far.
“Sorry I was late,” Elena told Stefan, linking her arm through his. “James called just as I was leaving. He said Andrés is here. I’m going to meet him tomorrow.”
Stefan opened his mouth to say something when the wolves stopped, their ears cocked, and stared into the distance. Stefan’s head swung up, too. “Check it out,” he told them, and Spencer and Tristan were gone, racing into the forest. Stefan and Jared stood still, alertly tracking their progress, until a howl came in the distance.
“False alarm,” Jared translated, and Stefan relaxed. “An old scent.”
The two wolves came trotting back through the woods, their tails arched high over their backs. Despite being very different as humans, Tristan and Spencer made similar wolves, sleek and gray and not as large as Zander was in wolf form. Only the black tips of Spencer’s ears made it possible to tell them apart.
Watching them come back, Jared hunched his shoulders and shoved his long bangs out of his eyes. “I need to learn to change without the moon,” he said irritably. “I feel blind trying to scout as a human.”
“How does that work, anyway?” Elena asked curiously. “Why can some of you change without the moon, but not all of you?”
“Practice,” Jared said glumly, letting his hair flop back over his face. “It’s hard, and it takes a long time to learn, and I haven’t managed to do it yet. We can learn how to stop ourselves from changing when the moon’s full, too, but that’s even harder, and they say it hurts. Nobody does that unless it’s really necessary.”
Spencer sniffed the breeze again and gave a short bark. Jared laughed, not bothering to translate. Stefan turned to follow their gaze, and Elena wondered what Stefan and the wolves—even Jared—could sense in the night that she couldn’t. She was the only true human here, she realized, and so the blindest of them all.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Stefan asked as they started walking again. “To meet Andrés?”
Elena shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I should do this by myself.” If she was going to become something new, she had to be strong enough to face it alone.
They patrolled the woods throughout the night without finding any vampires or any bodies. As dawn began to break over the horizon, Elena could see the two wolves plodding along next to her in the dim light, their heads hanging low. She was so sleepy, she held on to Stefan’s arm for support and just focused on moving one foot in front of the other. Then Spencer’s and Tristan’s heads snapped up and they began to run, lean muscles stretching under their gray fur.
“Did they smell vampires?” Elena asked Jared, alarmed, but he shook his head.
“It’s just the others,” he said, and then he was running, too, faster than Elena could go.
As she and Stefan came over the next small hill, Elena could see the edge of the woods and the campus stretching out ahead of her again. She’d been so tired that she hadn’t realized they’d looped back around. Halfway down the hill, Spencer and Tristan were greeting the great white wolf that was Zander and another gray wolf, their tails wagging, as Jared hurried toward them. Bonnie, Meredith, and another human-form member of Zander’s Pack watched. Bonnie said something and waved them off. The werewolves, human and wolf, turned as one and ran back into the woods, Zander in the lead.
“What’s that about?” Elena asked, as she and Stefan came up to Bonnie and Meredith.
“Oh, since patrol’s over, they have to go change back and do Pack stuff,” Bonnie said casually. “I told Zander we’d be fine. Did you find anything?”
Elena shook her head. “Everything was quiet.”
“For us, too,” Meredith said, swinging her stave jauntily as they turned and began to head back toward their dorm. “Maybe the new vampires have made it through the blood-craze of changing and they’ll lay low for a while.”
“I hope so,” Stefan said. “Maybe we can find them before someone else dies.”
Bonnie shivered. “I know it’s stupid,” she said, “but I almost wish Klaus would do whatever he’s going to do. I’m on edge all the time. It’s like he’s watching me from the shadows.”
Elena knew what Bonnie meant. Klaus was coming after them all. She knew it: she could still feel the ghostly sensation of his cold lips on hers like a promise.
We’ve defeated Klaus before,
she tried to tell herself. But a new conviction nagged at her. It was as if something inside her knew, beyond all arguing, that the life she’d lived was coming to an end.
“I’m sorry,” she said impulsively to Bonnie. “Klaus wants to punish me, and so we’re all in danger. This is my fault, and I don’t even have any Power now to protect you all.”
Bonnie stared at her. “If it weren’t for you, Klaus would have destroyed us all long ago,” she said dryly.
Stefan nodded. “No one thinks this is your fault,” he said.
Elena blinked. “I guess you’re right,” she said uncertainly.
Bonnie rolled her eyes. “And we’re not total wimps, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she said.
“If you want to be ready to fight Klaus, maybe you should start developing your Guardian Powers,” Meredith told her.
Warm sunlight was beginning to spread over the campus, and Elena instinctively slowed and straightened, tipping her face back to the sun. Meredith was right, she realized. If she wanted to help keep her friends safe, to keep the campus safe, she needed to be stronger. She needed to be a Guardian.
After only a few hours of sleep, Elena staggered across the quad, clutching a cup of coffee. She was heading for James’s house just off campus, and trying to remember the little she knew about Andrés. He was twenty years old, James had told her, and had been taken from his family by the Guardians when he was twelve.
What would that do to a person? Elena wondered. The Guardians she had met, the ones of the Celestial Court, had taken their duties seriously. Surely Andrés would be well versed in all the Powers and responsibilities of Guardianship, everything Elena herself didn’t know, and would have been adequately cared for, at least physically.
But how would it affect a human child to be raised by creatures as cold and emotionless as the Guardians? Her skin crawled at the idea.
By the time she got to James’s door, Elena was anticipating a cold-eyed, unemotional greeting from an Earthly Guardian who would teach her exactly as much as
he
thought Elena should know.
Well, he would have to learn that he couldn’t push her around. The Celestial Court full of Guardians at the peak of their Power hadn’t been able to make Elena obey them, and there was only one of Andrés. Elena rang James’s doorbell with determination.
James’s face was serious, but not apprehensive, when he opened the door. He looked wide-eyed and solemn, as if, Elena thought, he was witnessing something momentous he didn’t fully understand.
“My dear, I’m glad you could come,” he said, ushering her in with little beckoning waves of his hand and taking her empty coffee cup. “Andrés is in the backyard.” He escorted her through his small, extremely neat house, and showed her out the back door.
The door closed behind her and, with a start of surprise, Elena realized James had sent her out alone.
The yard was lit in gold and green by sunlight filtering through the leaves of a large beech tree. On the grass beneath the tree sat a young, dark-haired man who raised his head to look at Elena. As she met his eyes, the nervousness drained out of her and she felt a great peace settle on her. Without even meaning to, she found herself smiling.
Andrés rose unhurriedly and came to her. “Hello, Elena,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her.
At first, Elena tensed in surprise at the hug, but then a calming warmth seemed to flow through her, and she laughed. Andrés let go of her and laughed, too, a pure note of joy.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His English was fluent, but he had a slight South American accent. “But I’ve never met another human Guardian before, and I just . . . felt like I knew you.”
Elena nodded, hot tears pricking at her eyes. She could feel a connection between them, humming with energy and joy, and she realized with happy surprise that it wasn’t just emotions sent to her by Andrés. They were coming from her as well, her own happiness rushing toward him. “It’s like I’m seeing family for the first time in ages,” she told him. They couldn’t seem to stop smiling at each other. Andrés took her hand and tugged her gently over to the tree, and they sat down beneath it together.
“I had a Guide, of course,” he said. “My beloved Javier, who raised me. But he passed away last year”—Andrés suddenly looked ineffably sad, his brown eyes liquid—“and since then I have been alone.” He brightened again. “But now you are here, and I can help you as Javier helped me.”
“Javier was a Guardian?” Elena asked, surprised. Andrés had loved Javier, clearly, and
love
was not something she associated with the Guardians.
Andrés gave a mock shudder. “God forbid,” he said. “The Guardians wish the world well, but they are cold, yes? Imagine one of them in charge of a growing child. No, Javier was a Guide. A good man, a wise man, but fully human. A priest, actually, and a teacher.”
“Oh.” Elena thought for a while, carefully plucking a blade of grass and pulling it to pieces, looking down at her hands. “I thought that the Guardians themselves raised the human children they took. I don’t—my parents didn’t want to let me go. I guess I would have had a Guide if I had gone with them when I was little.”
Andrés nodded, his face solemn. “James has told me of your situation,” he said. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents, and I wish I could offer some kind of explanation. But since you don’t have a Guide assigned to you, I hope I can help you with what I know.”
“Yes,” Elena said. “Thank you. I mean, I really do appreciate it. Do you—” She hesitated, ripping another blade of grass apart. There was something she had wondered. It wasn’t something she could imagine asking a stranger, but that curious, happy connection between them made her relax enough to turn to Andrés. “Do you think it would have been better if my parents had let them take me? Are you
glad
the Guardians took you away from your family?”
Andrés leaned his head back against the tree and sighed. “No,” he admitted. “I never stopped missing my parents. I wish they had tried to keep me with them. But they saw me as a child who belonged to the Guardians, not to them. They’re lost to me now.” He turned to look at her. “But I did come to love Javier, and I was glad to have someone with me when I went through the transformation.”
“Transformation?” Elena asked, sitting up straight and hearing her own voice go high and panicky. “What do you mean,
transformation
?”
Andrés smiled at her reassuringly, and despite herself, Elena instinctively relaxed a bit at the warmth in his eyes.
“It will be all right,” he said quietly, and part of Elena believed him. Andrés sat up, too, wrapping his arms around his knees. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. When your first task as a Guardian comes up, a Principal Guardian will come and explain to you what you must do. Your Powers will start developing when you have a task. Until you’ve finished your task, you won’t be able to think of anything else. You’ll feel this overwhelming
need
to complete it. The Principal Guardian returns when the task is done and releases you from your compulsion.” He shrugged, looking self-conscious. “I’ve only had a few tasks, but when they ended, I couldn’t wait for the next one. And the Powers I’ve developed for a task, I’ve kept over time.”