by L. J. Smith
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 st
ill there. “Meredith?”
“I’m thinking. Does this solution have anything to do with coincidence?”
“Nope.” Bonnie relaxed and smiled slightly, grimly. Meredith had it now. “Not a thing to do with coincidence. It’s more a case of history repeating itself. Deliberately repeating itself, if you see what I mean.”
“Yes,” Meredith said. She sounded as if she were recovering from a shock, and no wonder. “You know, I think you just may be right. But there’s still the matter of persuading—this person—to actually help us.”
“You think that may be a problem?”
“I think it could. Sometimes people get very rattled—about a test. Sometimes they even kind of lose their minds.”
Bonnie’s heart sank. This was something that hadn’t occurred to her. What if he couldn’t tell them? What if he were that far gone?
“All we can do is try,” she said, making her voice as optimistic as possible. “Tomorrow we’ll have to try.”
“All right. I’ll pick you up at noon. Good night, Bonnie.”
“Night, Meredith.” Bonnie added, “I’m sorry.”
“No, I think it may be for the best. So that history doesn’t continue to repeat itself forever. Good-bye.”
Bonnie pressed the disconnect button on the handset, clicking it off. Then she just sat for a few minutes, her finger on the button, staring at the wall. Finally she replaced the handset in its cradle and picked up her diary again. She put a period on the last sentence and added a new one.
We are going to see Meredith’s grandfather tomorrow.
“I’m an idiot,” Stefan said in Meredith’s car the next day. They were going to West Virginia, to the institution where Meredith’s grandfather was a patient. It was going to be a fairly long drive.
“We’re all idiots. Except Bonnie,” Matt said. Even in the midst of her anxiety Bonnie felt a warm glow at that.
But Meredith was shaking her head, eyes on the road. “Stefan, you couldn’t have realized, so stop beating up on yourself. You didn’t know that Klaus attacked Caroline’s party on the anniversary of the attack on my grandfather. And it didn’t occur to Matt or me that Klaus could have been in America for so long because we never saw Klaus or heard him speak. We were thinking of people he could have attacked in Europe. Really, Bonnie was the only one who could have put it all together, because she had all the information.”
Bonnie stuck out her tongue. Meredith caught it in the rearview mirror and arched an eyebrow. “Just don’t want you getting too cocky,” she said.
“I won’t; modesty is one of my most charming qualities,” Bonnie replied.
Matt snorted, but then he said, “I still think it was pretty smart,” which started the glow all over again.
The institution was a terrible place. Bonnie tried as hard as she could to conceal her horror and disgust, but she knew Meredith could sense it. Meredith’s shoulders were stiff with defensive pride as she walked down the halls in front of them. Bonnie, who had known her for so many years, could see the humiliation underneath that pride. Meredith’s parents considered her grandfather’s condition such a blot that they never allowed him to be mentioned to outsiders. It had been a shadow over the entire family.
And now Meredith was showing that secret to strangers for the first time. Bonnie felt a rush of love and admiration for her friend. It was so like Meredith to do it without fuss, with dignity, letting nobody see what it cost her. But the institution was still terrible.
It wasn’t filthy or filled with raving maniacs or anything like that. The patients looked clean and well cared for. But there was something about the sterile hospital smells and the halls crowded with motionless wheelchairs and blank eyes that made Bonnie want to run.
It was like a building full of zombies. Bonnie saw one old woman, her pink scalp showing through thin white hair, slumped with her head on the table next to a naked plastic doll. When Bonnie reached out desperately, she found Matt’s hand already reaching for hers. They followed Meredith that way, holding on so hard it hurt.
“This is his room.”
Inside was another zombie, this one with white hair that still showed an occasional fleck of black like Meredith’s. His face was a mass of wrinkles and lines, the eyes rheumy and rimmed with scarlet. They stared vacantly.
“Granddad,” Meredith said, kneeling in front of his wheelchair. “Granddad, it’s me, Meredith. I’ve come to visit you. I’ve got something important to ask you.”
The old eyes never flickered.
“Sometimes he knows us,” Meredith said quietly, without emotion. “But mostly these days he doesn’t.”
The old man just went on staring.
Stefan dropped to his heels. “Let me try,” he said. Looking into the wrinkled face he began to speak, softly, soothingly, as he had to Vickie.
But the filmy dark eyes didn’t so much as blink. They just went on staring aimlessly. The only movement was a slight, continuous tremor in the knotted hands on the arms of the wheelchair.
And no matter what Meredith or Stefan did, that was all the response they could elicit.
Eventually Bonnie tried, using her psychic powers. She could sense something in the old man, some spark of life trapped in the imprisoning flesh. But she couldn’t reach it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting back and pushing hair out of her eyes. “It’s no use. I can’t do anything.”
“Maybe we can come another time,” Matt said, but Bonnie knew it wasn’t true. Stefan was leaving tomorrow; there would never be another time. And it had seemed like such a good idea…. The glow that had warmed her earlier was ashes now, and her heart felt like a lump of lead. She turned away to see Stefan already starting out of the room.
Matt put a hand under her elbow to help her up and guide her out. And after standing for a minute with her head bent in discouragement, Bonnie let him. It was hard to summon up enough energy to put one foot in front of the other. She glanced back dully to see whether Meredith was following—
And screamed. Meredith was standing in the center of the room, facing the door, discouragement written on her face. But behind her, the figure in the wheelchair had stirred at last. In a silent explosion of movement, it had reared above her, the rheumy old eyes open wide and the mouth open wider. Meredith’s grandfather looked as if he had been caught in the act of leaping—arms flung out, mouth forming a silent howl. Bonnie’s screams rang from the rafters.
Everything happened at once then. Stefan came charging back in, Meredith spun around, Matt grabbed for her. But the old figure didn’t leap. He stood towering above all of them, staring over their heads, seeming to see something none of them could. Sounds were coming from his mouth at last, sounds that formed one ululating word.
“Vampire! Vampüüre!”
Attendants were in the room, crowding Bonnie and the others away, restraining the old man. Their shouts added to the pandemonium.
“Vampire! Vampire!” Meredith’s grandfather caterwauled, as if warning the town. Bonnie felt panicked—was he looking at Stefan? Was it an accusation?
“Please, you’ll have to leave now. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go,” a nurse was saying. They were being whisked out. Meredith fought as she was forced out into the hall.
“Granddaddy—!”
“Vampire!” that unearthly voice wailed on.
And then: “White ash wood! Vampire! White ash wood—”
The door slammed shut.
Meredith gasped, fighting tears. Bonnie had her nails dug into Matt’s arm. Stefan turned to them, green eyes wide with shock.
“I said, you’ll have to leave now,” the harassed nurse was repeating impatiently. The four of them ignored her. They were all looking at each other, stunned confusion giving way to realization in their faces.
“Tyler said there was only one kind of wood that could hurt him—” Matt began.
“White ash wood,” said Stefan.
“We’ll have to find out where he’s hiding,”
Stefan said on the way home. He was driving, since Meredith had dropped the keys at the car door. “That’s the first thing. If we rush this, we could warn him off.”
His green eyes were shining with a queer mixture of triumph and grim determination, and he spoke in a clipped and rapid voice. They were all on the ragged edge, Bonnie thought, as if they’d been gulping uppers all night. Their nerves were frayed so thin that anything could happen.
She had a sense, too, of impending cataclysm. As if everything were coming to a head, all the events since Meredith’s birthday party gathering to a conclusion.
Tonight, she thought. Tonight it all happens. It seemed strangely appropriate that it should be the eve of the solstice.
“The eve of what?” Matt said.
She hadn’t even realized she’d spoken aloud. “The eve of the solstice,” she said. “That’s what today is. The day before the summer solstice.”
“Don’t tell me. Druids, right?”
“They celebrated it,” Bonnie confirmed. “It’s a day for magic, for marking the change of the seasons. And …” She hesitated. “Well, it’s like all other feast days, like Halloween or the winter solstice. A day when the line between the visible world and the invisible world is thin. When you can see ghosts, they used to say. When things happen.”
“Things,” Stefan said, turning onto the main highway that headed back toward Fell’s Church, “are going to happen.”
None of them realized how soon.
Mrs. Flowers was in the back garden. They had driven straight to the boardinghouse to look for her. She was pruning rosebushes, and the smell of summer surrounded her.
She frowned and blinked when they all crowded around her and asked her in a rush where to find a white ash tree.
“Slow down, slow down now,” she said, peering at them from under the brim of her straw hat. “What is it you want? White ash? There’s one just down beyond those oak trees in back. Now, wait a minute—” she added as they all scrambled off again.
Stefan ringed a branch of the tree with a jack-knife Matt produced from his pocket. I wonder when he started carrying that? Bonnie thought. She also wondered what Mrs. Flowers thought of them as they came back, the two boys carrying the leafy six-foot bough between them on their shoulders.