by L. J. Smith
Steeling herself, she swung her legs over the edge of the tomb, took hold of an iron rung, and began to climb down into the vault beneath the church.
Elena climbed down into darkness, the iron rungs cold in her hands. By the time her feet hit the stone floor at the bottom of the ladder, she was in total blackness. Pulling the flashlight from her back pocket, she flicked it on and ran the beam of light over her surroundings.
The opening of the crypt was just as Elena remembered it. Smooth stone walls held heavy carved candelabras, some with the remains of candles still in them. Near Elena was an ornate wrought-iron gate. Pushing the gate open, Elena walked forward with a slow, steady tread, trying to calm her hammering heart.
The last time she had been here, she’d been a vampire, and she’d had Damon and Stefan both with her, as well as her human friends. More important, that time she hadn’t known what she was getting into. Only that she had been led down here, and that something terrible lurked, just out of sight.
Now Elena knew exactly what was down here.
Her steady footsteps echoed against the stone floor, their sounds only emphasizing how silent it was. Elena could easily believe that no one else had been down here for more than a hundred years. No one else alive, anyway.
Beyond the gate, the beam of the flashlight caught on pale, familiar marble features. A tomb, the twin of the one up in the church. The stone lid here had been broken in two also, and the pieces flung across the crypt. Fragile human bones were splintered and strewn sticklike across the floor. One crunched beneath Elena’s feet as she approached, making her wince guiltily.
She had hoped that, since Katherine hadn’t appeared in Fell’s Church, hadn’t sent disturbing dreams to torment Elena, it meant she wasn’t so filled with rage in this time. But the violence with which the tomb had been desecrated seemed to prove that Katherine was as furious and destructive as she had ever been.
Elena turned the thin wavering beam of the flashlight to the wall beyond the Fells’ tomb. There, as she’d known there would be, lay a gaping hole in the stone wall, as if the stones had been ripped away. From it, a long black tunnel led deep into the earth beyond.
Elena licked her lips nervously. Resting her hands on the cold moist dirt at the edge of the tunnel, she peered into it. “Katherine?” she said questioningly. Her voice came out softer and shakier than she had meant it to, and she cleared her throat and called again. “Katherine!”
Straining her eyes to see into the darkness, Elena waited.
Nothing. No sound of footfalls, nothing white coming swiftly toward her. No sense of something huge and dangerous rushing at her.
“Katherine!” she called again. “I have secrets to tell you!” That might bring her if anything would; Katherine von Swartzchild, first love of Damon and Stefan, the one who had made them vampires and turned them against each other was nothing if not curious and eager for information. That was why she had followed Stefan and Damon here, why she had spied on Elena.
Elena waited, watching and listening. Still nothing. She felt her shoulders sag. Without Katherine, she didn’t have a plan at all.
How long should she wait? Elena pictured herself sitting against the wall, surrounded by the Fell’s broken bones, waiting for Katherine, growing colder and colder as the light of the flashlight dimmed. Elena shuddered. No, she wouldn’t stay here.
She turned to go, and the beam of the flashlight landed on Katherine, standing only a few feet behind her. Elena jumped backward with a strained yelp, her light skittering wildly across the crypt.
Katherine looked so much like Elena that it knocked Elena breathless, even now. Her golden hair was perhaps a shade lighter and a few inches longer, her eyes a slightly different blue. Her figure was thinner and more fragile than Elena’s: Girls of her time and class had been expected to sit and embroider, not run and play.
But the delicate curve of Katherine’s brow, her long golden lashes, her pale skin, the shape of her features—they were all as familiar to Elena as looking in a mirror. Unlike Elena, who was dressed in jeans and a sweater, Katherine wore a long, gauzy white dress. It would have made her look innocent, if it weren’t for the brownish-red streaks across the front, as if Katherine had absent-mindedly wiped bloody hands on it.
“Hello, pretty little girl, my sweet reflection,” Katherine said, almost crooning.
Elena swallowed nervously. “I need your help.”
Katherine came closer, touching Elena’s hair, running cold fingers across her face. “You’re a nasty, greedy girl,” she said sharply. “You want both my boys.”
“You wanted them, too,” Elena snapped, not bothering to deny it. Katherine smiled, her teeth disturbingly sharp.
“Of course I did,” she said. “But they’re mine. They’ve always been mine. You should have left them alone.”
“I am going to leave them alone from now on,” Elena said. “I promise. I just want them to be brothers. I want them to be happy. You did too once.”
Katherine had, Elena knew, let both brothers drink her blood, promised them each eternal life with the secret idea that they would love each other, that the three of them could be a happy family, together forever. When they had rejected the idea of sharing her, she faked her own death, sure their mutual grief would bring them together.
She’d been a fool. Damon and Stefan had loathed each other already, distanced by their competition for their father’s love, by their roles as the good and bad sons. Jealousy over Katherine had only heightened their dislike, and their anger and grief at her death had ripened it into hatred.
Katherine had expected Stefan and Damon to turn to each other, but instead they had turned on each other, swords in hand. Each murdered at his brother’s hand, they’d died with Katherine’s blood in their systems, and risen again, vampires, cursed forever.
“They don’t want to be happy.” Katherine’s eyes widened with remembered hurt, and for a moment, Elena saw the fragile, naïve girl who had destroyed Damon and Stefan with a mistaken idea of romance. “I gave them a gift. I gave them life forever, and they didn’t care. I told them to take care of each other, in my memory, but they wouldn’t listen. They threw everything I’d given them away.”
“But maybe it’s not too late,” Elena said. “Maybe if they knew you were alive, they could forgive each other.”
Katherine’s eyes narrowed angrily, her lips curling into a sulky pout. “I don’t want them to forgive each other,” she said in a childish voice. Then she began to smile, an unpleasant, hungry smile. “You, on the other hand …” She stroked Elena’s cheeks. Her hands were terribly cold, and they smelled of the earth around them. Elena shivered. “We look so much alike,” Katherine said musingly. “I should make you like me. We could travel together. It would be such fun. Everyone would think we were sisters.”
There was something wistful in Katherine’s eyes as her hand shifted to run through Elena’s hair, pulling a little at the long strands. Maybe family was what Katherine needed. She’d lost her father when she’d lost the Salvatores and fled Italy. Would knowing she had other family make a difference to Katherine?
“We are sisters,” she said, and Katherine’s hand pulled away.
“I don’t know what you mean, little one,” Katherine said. “You’re no sister of mine.”
Elena swallowed, feeling the dry click of her throat. “We really are. My mother—your mother—was an immortal. A Celestial Guardian. She left you to keep you safe. And when, hundreds of years later, she tried to keep me safe, the other Guardians killed her.”
Katherine’s mouth tightened into an angry line. “That doesn’t make any sense. My mother died when I was a baby.”
“No, it’s true,” Elena said simply. There was nothing but hostility in Katherine’s face, but Elena pushed on. “I ask you, as your own flesh and blood, to help me. You wanted to be the one to bring Stefan and Damon together, and you still can be. They need you, Katherine. Five hundred years, and they’ve never stopped lo
ving you. It’s torn them apart.”
Katherine’s face was blank and cold. “They deserve to suffer.” She squeezed her fists tightly, slamming her arms down at her sides. “They’ll suffer if I kill you. Or if I take you with me.”
“No.” Elena took Katherine’s cold, muddy arm, her heart pounding. “They’ve suffered all along. You can save them this time. You’re the only one who can.”
Hissing, Katherine pulled away. With a rattling noise, the crypt began to shake around them. Despite herself, Elena shrieked as the lid to the tomb fell to the floor with a crash, Honoria Fell’s face cracking. Another tremor had Elena stumbling and grabbing onto the stone wall to keep from falling.
“Stop it!” she demanded, glaring at Katherine. The other girl stood stock-still, her pale face tilted up as if she could see through the dirt and stone to the ruined church above. From high above, Elena heard a heavy thud, and Katherine’s lips curled in a joyless smile.
Elena ran. Her heart pounding, she shoved through the half-open gate and down the long dark corridor, her flashlight swinging wildly. She didn’t look back, but her nerves were on edge, listening for a footstep, waiting for Katherine’s inhumanly strong hands to clamp down upon her shoulders and drag Elena back.
Katherine could kill her, could turn Elena into a vampire if she wanted to, and there was nothing Elena would be able to do about it. Why had Elena tried to reason with her?
Grabbing hold of the iron rungs set in the wall, Elena began to pull herself up as fast as she could, her breath coming fast and anxious. The crypt had stopped shaking, for now, but her hands, sweaty with nerves, still slipped as she climbed. Partway up, she lost her grip on the flashlight and it fell, crashing into the stones below and going out, leaving Elena in darkness. Far above was the faintly lit rectangle of the tomb in the church, and Elena kept climbing toward it as fast as she could, holding tightly onto the rungs.
At last Elena reached the top and scrambled out through the Fells’ tomb, gulping deep breaths of the cold fresh air. Once she was standing on the floor of the old church, she dared to glance down into the crypt below.
There was nothing there, no white-clad figure following her. But that proved nothing. Katherine could take many forms, and she was much, much faster than Elena. Elena’s best chance, she thought, would be to cross Wickery Bridge and head home as quickly as she could. Katherine was powerful enough that she had trouble crossing running water.
The sun had set and night had fallen while Elena was down in the crypt. Terrific, she thought, a cemetery after dark without a flashlight and a vampire on my heels. This was a truly genius idea, Elena Gilbert.
She stumbled over what seemed to be every tombstone in the long grass of the older part of the graveyard, once falling hard enough to skin the palms of her hands. Elena scrambled up and hurried on, finding her way by the light of the half-moon above her.
Once she reached the road outside the cemetery, the tight ball of anxiety in Elena’s chest relaxed a little. Not much farther until she could cross the bridge and then head back home. She’d have to go back to her own house. Aunt Judith had called someone to fix the window and insisted on moving back home. At least it was closer than Meredith’s, but Elena didn’t know how to keep them safe from Damon. Perhaps now that he was focusing on her friends, he would leave Elena’s family alone.
Just before the bridge, a white-clad figure barred Elena’s path. Katherine’s pale gold hair whipped around her in the wind.
Elena glanced back over her shoulder. There was no point in running. Katherine was a thousand times faster than Elena, and the only thing that would hinder her—running water—was on the other side of her.
For a moment, Elena thought of begging for mercy. But she knew Katherine well enough to know that wouldn’t do any good. Whatever Katherine decided to do, she would do.
Might as well go out fighting. Elena tossed her head back and marched straight up to Katherine. “What do you want?” she asked.
Katherine’s cold blue eyes regarded Elena for a long moment. Finally, she spoke. “You think that I can save them? I’ll do as you ask, little mirror. I will let Damon and Stefan know that I still live.”
“Oh.” Maybe Elena’s pleading had done some good after all. “Thank you.”
Katherine frowned at her crossly. For a moment, her voice sounded young, a hurt child’s, but her eyes seemed terribly old. “There’s no happy ending in this for either of us. I hope you know that,” she said. “I’ve lived this once already. I know what it’s like to love them both, and to lose them.”
Heavy clouds loomed overhead, and the air seemed ominously electric, on the verge of a storm. Outside the Haunted House appeared a devilishly masked mannequin, its black clothing flapping in the wind and giving an appropriately nightmarish ambiance to this Halloween night.
Stefan and Elena stopped outside the Haunted House. Stefan’s face was drawn tight, and Elena felt sick and anxious. Pulling up the hood of her Red Riding Hood costume, she carefully covered her distinctive golden hair.
“This is the night Damon said he was going to turn Meredith and Matt and Caroline into vampires,” she whispered to Stefan. “He has to be here. They’re all here, and there’s so much confusion, it will be easy for him.”
Stefan nodded grimly. Looking up at him, Elena couldn’t help the little clench her heart gave. He looked so good in his tuxedo and cape, elegant and completely natural. A debonair vampire costume, what else? And people thought Stefan didn’t have a sense of humor.
She hadn’t been completely honest with him. For her plan to work, for the brothers to forgive each other, Katherine’s revelation that they hadn’t caused her death had to come as a surprise. So she had told him only that they needed to protect her friends from Damon.
“We’ll mingle with the crowd and keep an eye out for him,” she said as they approached the Haunted House entrance. “If you hang out in the Torture Room, that might be a good place. It shouldn’t be too crowded; it’s off the main path and it’s mostly dummies, not people in costume. It’s the kind of place Damon would be likely to take someone if he wanted to be alone.”
Despite Elena’s defection from the Haunted House committee—which Meredith had only reluctantly forgiven her for—and Bonnie’s missing most of the all-important planning stage, Meredith and the rest of her decorating committee had done an amazing job on the Haunted House. It looked nightmarishly creepy, the entrance enthusiastically draped in spider webs and handprints made with fake blood.
Now everything was in chaos as the seniors rushed to get the last pieces in place before the paying public was allowed in. Elena and Stefan ducked through the crowd and made their way along the twisting route of the tour.
Outside the Torture Chamber, Elena squeezed Stefan’s hand. “This is it,” she said. “Good luck.”
“I will protect them if I can, Elena,” Stefan told her, and slipped through the doorway to hide inside among the torture implements.
Elena went on, glancing in at the different sets as she passed. The Alien Encounter Room was already dark, lit only with phosphorescent paint, and zombies milled around the Living Dead Room, adjusting one another’s makeup.
The Druid Room was near the back of the warehouse, and Elena frowned. If she’d had time to really participate in the committee, maybe she could have made it more central, so that it would be more difficult for Damon to feed from—and kill—Mr. Tanner.
Love is powerful, Mylea had said, but should Elena have paid more attention to logistics and less to changing Damon’s heart? She should have made it impossible for Damon to kill Mr. Tanner instead of hoping she could make him not want to.
She swallowed hard. This was the right way to go. If she couldn’t change the relationship between the brothers, surely it was only a matter of time before Damon killed again. She could only hope that Katherine would pull through, for all their sakes. If it didn’t work, maybe there was never any hope for Elena’s mission.
And the
re Mr. Tanner was, upright and indignant, arguing with white-robed Bonnie in front of a cardboard Stonehenge. “But you’ve got to wear the blood,” she was saying pleadingly. “It’s part of the scene; you’re a sacrifice.”
“Wearing these ridiculous robes is bad enough,” Mr. Tanner told her. “No one informed me I was going to have to smear syrup all over myself.”
“It doesn’t really get on you,” Bonnie argued, but Elena had heard enough for now. She remembered this argument. She’d joined in the first time, trying to convince Mr. Tanner to cooperate, and then Stefan had finally compelled him. But Meredith, a witch in a tight black dress, was already approaching, and Elena realized she had faith that Meredith’s logic and persistence would be just as effective as Stefan’s Power had been.
Both Bonnie and Meredith were focused on Mr. Tanner, not even noticing Elena, and she hesitated, watching them. Meredith was talking softly and reasonably to Mr. Tanner while Bonnie looked harried but amused, a smile lurking at the edges of her mouth.
Elena’s heart ached with how much she loved them. Memories came rushing back to her: Meredith telling ghost stories at their junior high sleepovers, Bonnie’s face bright over her ninth birthday cake, the focused frown Meredith wore as she studied, the shine of Bonnie’s eyes on her wedding day. Damon wanted to change them, destroy their lives, make them unaging killers. She had to stop him.
It was almost time for the Haunted House to open. Time to look for Damon.
The Haunted House was like a maze this time, Elena realized. The warehouse was bigger than the school gym had been, and Meredith had filled the space with many more horrors than they’d been able to fit in the school gym the first time this Halloween had happened, when Elena had been in charge. Elena cut through the Séance Room and the Deaths from History Room, where she spotted Caroline, a nubile Egyptian priestess in a linen shift that left very little to the imagination, talking to Tyler in his werewolf costume. One potential victim, she thought, and looked for the others. She would have to keep them all safe.