by L. J. Smith
“Who said I had a prophecy?” Bonnie turned around at last, brown eyes wide.
“Well, you—I mean, if you didn’t, then what are we talking about?”
“It’s not a real prophecy or even a prediction. I didn’t even trance—unless these Algebra word problems bored me into one.”
“Well, what’s wrong, then?”
“It’s just a feeling. A stupid, stupid, stupid feeling I can’t shake. I’m scared, is all. I keep thinking ‘something awful is going to happen tonight’ over and over.” Bonnie put her head back on her desk.
“Something awful . . . but that’s almost exactly—”
“I know!” Bonnie cried irritably. “We read Elena’s diaries together, remember? It’s how she started the very first of her . . . her vampire diaries! She wrote: ‘Something awful is going to happen today!’—and it did!”
Meredith was surprised into sitting up straight. She found herself looking at her own reflection in the shadowed window, dark eyes, dark hair and serious expression all taken in at once. Then, abruptly, she jumped up on the bed and reached for something that lay hidden by the top ruffle of the curtains. It was lying on the curtain rod.
She brought out her fighting stave: a deadly spear made of ironwood, with tips that were embellished with tiny spikes of different sorts. It was lethal to vampires, werewolves, and humans, among many other nasty creatures. It had belonged, once, to her great-grandmother.
Bonnie was watching her wide-eyed.
“Elena’s going to be safe tonight,” Meredith said grimly. “She’ll be with Stefan. And she’ll keep an eye on him, so he’ll be all right. That Damon will be fine goes without saying. Which leaves us with you and me and Matt—and Caroline, I guess.”
“She crossed it out,” Bonnie muttered, looking harassed.
“What? Caroline—?”
“No! Elena crossed it out, in her diary! She crossed it out after she wrote it.”
Meredith was silent a moment. Then: “She got cold feet. Just the way you’ve got now. You need to believe in yourself, Bonnie. And if that crossed-out line wasn’t a true prophecy, then I’ve never heard one. She met a crow right outside her front door.”
* * *
Caroline Forbes frowned at the fingernail she was currently painting a deep iridescent duo-chrome green; the second coat of two. She liked green; it matched her eyes. She also liked her nails long. Of course that meant mastering the art of texting with the tips, and of using the fleshy pad of her pinkies to work on touch screens. That was fine; it was the price of beauty.
But just now she was feeling uncomfortable. Irritable.
And very, very pregnant.
She supposed she should be grateful it was just twins. She shifted position on her padded chair again. After all, most gray wolves had around five pups at once, and werewolf mothers commonly gave birth to triplets.
Caroline ducked her head just thinking about it, letting auburn hair for a moment blessedly cover her eyes.
There was no mirror in this room other than the makeup mirror on the vanity before her. Caroline shut the blinds regularly at sunset so that no darkened window could throw back her distorted reflection at her.
And it still wasn’t enough! All Caroline had to do was look down at her ungainly stomach to be reminded that her fit, sinewy body was a thing of the past.
Worst of all, nobody seemed able to tell her when her new, gourd-shaped form would finally release its burden. Her father was influential enough to have gotten her a werewolf obstetrician, but the woman was an idiot. She could only shake her head and give speeches about how not knowing the exact date of conception versus the exact date of conversion to wolvenkind made the birthdate so uncertain.
Caroline glanced around the dorm room with tears of self-pity prickling in her eyes. However, looking around only made the tears spill. She knew that all the pretty, expensive, softly harmonious things in the room had been bought by her parents—but they’d been actually set in order by Elena and Elena’s entourage.
For that matter, she supposed she was one of Elena’s entourage now. She couldn’t help feeling some gratitude.
The fact that she was also one of three freshmen to get a dorm room to herself was, she knew, due entirely to Stefan and his ability to Influence the humans who ran Dalcrest.
Now why could vampires do that and change shape if they were powerful enough and werewolves could only change shape? And why did vampires get a choice in their shape-changing, while werewolves were stuck with the lupine thing?
Caroline sighed as she painted the last fingernail luscious green. Thinking about her wolf-shape made delicate frissons run up and down her spine. She wasn’t ungainly in that form; it was impossible to tell that she was pregnant.
Maybe she would . . .
But, no. Not here—this small room would only frustrate the wolf in her. It wanted to run, to sniff the night air, to hunt and cavort under the starry night. It wanted to leap through an open window and race for the woods nearby, where Caroline had heard from her obstetrician that other creatures like her congregated of an evening. They would appreciate her beauty immediately, she felt sure.
It would be supremely unfair to force such an untamed animal to pace the narrow boundaries of the indoors.
Besides, her nail polish needed a clear top coat to make it smooth. A nuisance, but that was the price one paid for iridescent green glitter.
* * *
Matt Honeycutt glanced up at the hundred dollar bill he had framed and hung on his side of the dorm room. It was in memory of his Uncle Joe, who had given him a lot of advice—some of it good, and some pretty darn funny.
It helped him, right now, to stick to his studying, and to put aside regrets about that football scholarship at Kent State. He was here at Dalcrest to get a good education, even if it did sound as if everyone around him and in particular the guy directly above him was having a party.
For a moment Matt considered standing on his desk and thumping on the ceiling with his shoe, but he didn’t want to be unfriendly. He tried to shut his ears to the racket instead.
Unfortunately, the hundred dollar bill and the distraction of the noise made him think about something else, something that he wanted desperately to keep out of his mind.
Elena.
That same hundred had figured largely in their first date, which had been in early autumn like this. It had become something of a talisman for them.
But now Elena was with Stefan.
Well, at least she wasn’t with Damon. A little more than a month ago, Matt had been very unsure about her intentions. He couldn’t help the sharp breath he took, at the very thought of Damon. Damn! Just when you think that a guy is good and dead and ought to stay that way; couldn’t happen to a nastier fellow, he’s suddenly back alive and more arrogant than ever.
But of course Stefan had been devastated by his older brother’s death. And sorry, Mutt, a voice in Matt’s head seemed to say, but Elena was the same way, and Bonnie, too. That was why Damon wasn’t still resting in peace.
All right, stop thinking about that, he told himself. No point in getting worked up over a fanged loser like Damon. Elena had made it perfectly clear that it was Stefan she loved, and Stefan was Matt’s best friend.
Matt sighed and re-opened his trigonometry textbook, which had fallen closed. He tried to make sense of the same equation he’d been reading over for twenty minutes, but he couldn’t shut out the booming around him of bass notes, like drums in his head.
He wondered vaguely when his roommate would show up. The guy was going to be pretty seriously behind in classes if he didn’t turn up soon. Matt hoped he wouldn’t want to party all night when he did arrive.
* * *
Elena Gilbert stuck to the shadows. She was sneaking into Stefan’s dormitory, Gibson Hall, where—unbelievably—girls were not allowed after 9:00 P.M.
It was more than twenty minutes after that already, so she couldn’t even hope for Plan A, which had been to
swim upstream against the flow of other girls coming out and eventually make a sharp right turn at the top of the second staircase landing.
That meant it was time for Plan B, which was to be a boy and simply strut her way in. Elena pulled a dark blue wool cap from the double pocket in the front of her navy hoodie. She coiled her hair—it was getting a little too long now, she noticed—wrapping it tightly into a bun with one hand while holding the cap in front with the other. Eventually, somehow, the hair ended up inside the cap, and on the top of her head rather than the back. It wasn’t really cold enough to justify the cap; the trees hadn’t yet begun to change color. Elena pulled her hood up over her head far enough to put her face in shadow.
The hoodie was generous in cut, so as to conceal the curve of her hips. In addition, she was wearing baggy Levis and scuffed gray high-top Nikes.
A decent disguise, or so her mirror had indicated. Or course, nothing would have been easier than asking Stefan to come to her room tonight. He could Influence anyone who saw him to let him by. But where was the thrill in that?
Just now Elena’s heart was racing, her mind was pounding, and she felt shaky with adrenaline. This might be a decent disguise, but was it actually going to work? What would happen if she got caught? It would all depend on the nature of the guy who caught her, and Elena had practical reasons to be wary of relying on some strange guy’s good nature.
Her ruminations made Elena huddle farther back into her hood and concentrate on walking like a short tough guy. A short human tough guy, she amended silently, since both Stefan and Damon walked like jungle cats on the prowl: silent, stealthy and graceful. Non-vampire guys with attitude were more or less a mixture of swagger and stagger.
Elena clenched her fists, set her face in a ferocious scowl, thrust her chin out and . . . got into Gibson Hall and all the way up the first flight of stairs before disaster struck.
Two freshmen who were arguing about something, doing a very much more realistic job of beetle-browed scowling than she could ever hope to, stopped talking suddenly as she passed. Elena increased her swagger and her pace, hastened up the stairway, but it was no good. She could feel them following her. If her ears hadn’t been so muffled by hair and cap and hood she might have heard them. But it was the feeling of where they were looking that really infuriated her. It was a bit she was trying very hard not to sway, and which seemed to have a mind of its own at the moment.
Elena put her hand out to make certain and noted that the balustrade trembled under their heavy steps. She made it to the first landing and then stopped to confront the pair who had just reached the top of the staircase.
One of them examined her lecherously, not at all put off by the shapeless clothing. “Hey, babe, where’re you going?” he asked, leering. “You got a special friend to see after curfew?”
Elena gazed at him coldly. “My personal life is none of your business.”
The lecher didn’t look at all put out. “Hey, baby cakes, we can make you forget all about your friend, can’t we?” He elbowed the second guy, who was burly and much more taciturn.
“Yeah,” Burly said shortly.
The lecherous one kept coming toward Elena, smirking all the while. “C’mon, babe, let’s be friends. Let’s be close friends. What do you say to getting closer?”
Elena shrugged. “If you really want it . . .”
“I do, I do,” he said enthusiastically. “Now, just come over to my room, okay? Or do you want some help?”
As he reached out to grab her by the shoulder, Elena grasped the palm of his extended hand with her fingers. She then twisted his hand inward and back under his armpit. His palm ended up facing outward, and he yelped as the bones of his forearm were rotated against his elbow.
Instantly Elena applied pressure, turning the lecher’s arm in a direction it was never meant to go. He gasped, in too much pain even to yell again. His eyes bulged at her.
Elena knew that with enough pressure she could break the radius and ulna, tearing tendons and muscle. Or she could dislocate the lecher’s elbow. But Meredith had been very specific about controlling opponents without permanently damaging them, if possible. Elena settled for sweeping the guy’s feet from under him while he was off balance and his mind was fixed solely on how his elbow joint was going to snap.
He fell and didn’t get up again, but lay cradling his sore arm and whimpering.
The taciturn guy was already rushing toward Elena, and he was much taller and heavier than she was.
Perfect, she thought.
She dropped easily into a position with her right leg in front of her, slightly bent at the knee and relaxed. As Burly reached her, spreading out both arms to crush her in a bear hug, she gripped the neck of his T-shirt on the right side with her left hand and grabbed his left wrist with her right hand.
The rest happened so fast it was a blur. Elena broke the burly guy’s balance by pushing him right and to the front. She then moved so that her right foot blocked his right ankle, at the same time bending her left leg slightly.
Burly tried to get his balance back by coming forward. Elena used his own energy to trip him over the back of her blocking ankle by straightening her right leg and pulling with her left hand while driving with her right.
Cool! He tumbled over just as Meredith had done when she had made Elena practice this move over and over during the last three weeks. He crashed quite heavily into the wall and after that seemed to lose all interest in the proceedings.
Elena was so far into the zone that when a third figure came flying at her very fast, she almost assisted him clean over her shoulder. She managed to stop herself in time, which was good because it was Stefan.
He had obviously come to rescue her—in fact, he’d undoubtedly been tracking her aura all the way from her own room in Soto Hall. Now, however, he seemed to see a glint in her eye as she relaxed back into the depths of her hoodie.
“Good work,” he murmured, managing to look properly awed, and then he clearly took in her disguise, and added, “Um . . . damn! Is that—that’s Elena in there, right?” He made a show of peering into her hood, apparently not noticing the fact that he was simultaneously holding her hand and urging her up the next staircase. Of course, he could see in midnight darkness like a cat, and the slight shadow of her hood offered not the slightest protection from his visual acuity.
“It had better be,” Elena mused, “since you seem to be taking me to your bedroom. In quite a hurry, I might mention. I hope you’re not doing that with random girls in disguise—or with random short boys, either.”
Stefan gave her a longsuffering look. “Of course not,” he breathed. “They’re never random; they all look a lot like you.”
Elena snorted and murmured in a sing-song voice, “I know someone who’s not getting anything tonigh-hight.”
“It was a joke; a joke!” Stefan said hastily. After a moment’s thought, he added, “Actually . . . um . . . I got a glimpse of your face when you were taking care of those bad guys. Um, it was just a quick glimpse—but I know you so well . . .” He was clearly trying to cover all his bases.
Elena couldn’t help it; she smothered a chuckle into her sleeve. “So how much of the fight did you see?” she whispered.
Stefan gave her a sideways glance. “A fair bit. Well, all of it really. Mostly all—but maybe there was more at the beginning that I wasn’t there for. . . .”
“You came to rescue me when I first noticed that they were behind me,” Elena translated, resigned.
“Yes and no. Mostly yes. But you really were magnificent back there. Meredith’s a fine teacher.”
“That’s true.” Elena cheered up suddenly. “You know, she taught me a whole different set of pressure points for . . .” She clicked her teeth together meaningfully. “Your kind.”
“Oh. Right. Yes, Damon’s showed me pretty much the entire spectrum.”
“He did? Damon? That’s weird; I’m surprised he would take the . . .” Elena’s voice trailed off.
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
Elena felt anger rushing up inside her like steam. Damon had been beating Stefan up, hunting him, and humiliating him for centuries. “Remind me to remind him of a few pressure points the next time I see him.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Really. And he’s stopped ever since he, er, came back. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s genuinely grateful.”
“He should be; it took enough work,” Elena murmured absently. They had reached Stefan’s floor and stopped on the landing and she noticed they were getting some odd glances. “Stefan? I think we should stop holding hands now.”
Stefan took a quick look around, and then shrugged, squeezing their interlaced fingers. “Let them think what they want,” he said, and for the first time that night she glimpsed his sweet, wickedly handsome smile. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Elena twisted her wrist, slipping her hand free. “Yes,” she said in a voice that she knew no one other than her demon lover could hear. “But what about guys who really have to sneak around just because this place has such old-fashioned regulations? They may end up getting in trouble or—or even rusticated if we act like we’re totally flaunting the rules.”
Rustication meant losing your room and maybe also the right to continue classes. Of course, having a female in your room after 9:00 P.M. would lead to the exact same thing, which was why Elena had felt that sneaking in would be an adventure in the first place. Now she suddenly and heartily wished she hadn’t done it.
Stefan was still reacting to her last statement, wincing. “Of course you’re right. I’m an idiot.”
“Wrong,” Elena barely whispered, “I’m the idiot.”
“You? You always champion the underdog.”
“No, it’s just that I got a little taste of alienation when I was . . .” Elena clicked her teeth again, very gently. “Your kind. It taught me things I needed to learn—but not enough, obviously,” she finished under her breath.
They drew abreast of the odd-glancers. Elena set her face in its most pugnacious frown and walked with her most boyish lack of grace. It wasn’t going to be enough, she realized with a sinking feeling. The glancers had become starers and Elena was under serious scrutiny.