Destiny Rising (21 page)

Chapter 34

E
lena trailed out of her freshman English section near the end of the crowd, still stuffing her notebook into her bag. Zipping it closed, she looked up to see Andrés waiting patiently in the hall directly outside her classroom.

“Hey,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Stefan and I think it’s not a great idea for you to be on your own right now,” he said, falling into step beside her. “He and Meredith both have class, so I’ll walk you wherever you’re going.”

“I have Powers of my own, you know,” Elena said, a little haughtily. “Even if they
’
re not really fighting ones yet, I’m not a damsel in distress.”

Andrés nodded, a slow, solemn dip of his head. “Forgive me,” he said formally. “I don’t think any of us should be alone now. James’s death proves that.”

“I’m sorry,” Elena said. “I know it’s been hard for you, especially since you were living at James’s house.”

Andrés nodded. “It has,” he said, and then made a visible effort to be more cheerful, throwing back his shoulders and pasting on a smile. “But I must take advantage of the chance that allows me more time with my charming and beautiful friend.”

“Oh, in that case,” Elena said, following his lead, and took Andrés’s proffered arm. As they moved down the hall, she examined him carefully out of the corner of her eye. Despite his courtliness, Andrés looked haggard and worn, the lines at the corners of his eyes more pronounced. He looked older than twenty now.

James’s death had hit them all hard. It felt more real, somehow, than Chad’s death. It had happened in James’s house, not on a battlefield, and so proved that death could come for them anywhere. When Elena had looked in the mirror the last few mornings, the face gazing back at her was grimmer, her eyes rimmed with gray circles.

Still, they had to keep going, for one another. Whistling in the dark, people called it, when you kept your own spirits up by finding any happiness you could.

Squeezing Andrés’s arm affectionately, Elena asked, “How are you settling into Matt’s room?” The police had sealed James’s house, so Matt had offered up his own empty room to their visitor. Matt himself was back to camping out in the half-burned boathouse with Chloe.

“Ah,” Andrés said, his face relaxing into a smile as they stepped onto the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. “The dormitory life is very strange to me. There is always something happening.”

Elena was laughing at Andrés’s tale of a drunken freshman wandering into his room at three in the morning, and Andrés’s own polite and befuddled attempts to steer the intruder back to his own dormitory, when the elevator jerked violently to a stop.

“What’s happening?” Elena said warily.

“Maybe it’s an electrical problem,” Andrés said, but his voice was doubtful.

Elena pushed the button for the ground floor again, and the elevator gave a deep groan and then began to shake. They both gasped and steadied themselves, hands against the walls.

“I’ll try the emergency button,” Elena said. She pushed it, but nothing happened.

“Weird,” she said, and flinched at the uncertain note in her own voice. “It seems disconnected, too.” She hesitated. “Do you have a weapon?” she asked. Andrés shook his head, his face pale.

The elevator rattled again, and then the lights went out, leaving them in the dark. Elena found Andrés’s warm hand and clutched it.

“Is this . . . do you think this could just be a coincidence?” she whispered. Andrés squeezed her hand reassuringly.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice troubled. “Can you see anything?”

Of course not,
Elena was about to say. The elevator was pitch-black. She couldn’t even see Andrés despite the fact that he was holding her protectively close to him. Then she realized what he meant, and closed her eyes for a moment to reach deep inside herself, calling on her Power.

When she opened her eyes again, she could see the warm, living green of Andrés’s aura, lighting up the darkness. But at the edges of her consciousness was something else.

There was an even thicker blackness moving closer. It hurt to look at it as it seemed to breathe through the cracks in the elevator doors, as amorphous as fog. Elena instinctively shut her eyes and turned her head away, burying it in Andrés’s shoulder.

“Elena!” he said, alarmed. “What is it?”

For a long time nothing happened. There was a moment when she relaxed despite herself—
nothing’s here,
she thought, caught in a wave of relief,
nothing’s here.

“It’s okay,” she said, with half an embarrassed laugh behind her words. “I just—”

Then a tile from the elevator roof was kicked in, and the blackness was all around her. Flinching, Elena looked up, straining to see something.

“Hello, my pretty one.” Klaus
’
s voice came from above. “You’ve been waiting for me, haven’t you?” His voice was as casual as if he’d just come by to chat.

“Hello, Klaus,” Elena said, trying to keep her voice steady. She pressed herself against Andrés. She felt like she was falling.

“I know what you are,” Klaus said smugly, his voice a singsong. A loud bang came against the side of the elevator, and Elena and Andrés both jumped, sucking in their breath. “I know what your secret is.”
Bang.
“I can’t kill you with anything magic.”
Bang.
“And I can’t kill you with my vampires.”
Bang.
He was banging his big black boots against the side of the elevator, Elena realized. He must be sitting on the edge of the service access hatch in the roof, his legs dangling down. His boots banged once more and then Klaus said gaily, “But you know what? If I cut the cable here at the top of the elevator, you won’t survive.”

Elena cringed. She rode in elevators every day and it had never before occurred to her how vulnerable they were. Her English class was on the ninth floor. They were dangling above a long, long drop, and the cables were the only thing keeping them from falling straight through to the basement.

Andrés sucked in a quiet breath next to her, and Elena saw the life-green aura around him begin to grow. He was trying to form a protective shield to shelter them with, she realized, as he had done in the battle against Klaus and his vampires.

“Stop that,” Klaus snapped from above them, and a bolt of blackness flew from him and hit Andrés’s growing shield of green, which snapped and deflated like a popped balloon. Andrés cried out in pain.

Elena wrapped her arms around Andrés protectively, but she could feel him tensing to try again. His breath sounded rough and panicky. “My power comes from the earth, Elena,” he whispered. “Dangling so far above it, I’m not sure if I can help. But I will try.”

Above them in the darkness, Klaus laughed jeeringly. “Might be too late there, boy,” he said, and a strange scraping noise came once and then again, a screech of metal on metal.

“He’s cutting through the cable,” Andrés breathed in her ear. There was a faint green light around him again as he tried to expand his aura, but it wasn’t going to grow fast enough to protect them, Elena knew.

This is it,
Elena thought, and took Andrés’s hand. She had never been afraid of falling before, but now she was terrified.

Then a thud came from above, and another, and a series of shuffling, thumping noises, and suddenly a body plummeted past them and landed heavily on the floor. Two bodies, Elena realized, thrashing and growling at their feet. She tried to concentrate, breathing hard, and after a moment, saw Klaus’s aura again, darker than dark, and clashing with it, bloodred and sulky gray and flaring blue all tangled together.

“Damon,” she whispered.

Shadowed, the barely-visible Damon managed to push off Klaus and scramble to his feet. “Elena,” he gasped, and then a surge of Power from Klaus slammed him against the wall. He let out a pained grunt. Elena reached forward and tried to pull him toward her, but he was crushed tightly, his body jammed against the wall. Klaus chuckled darkly.

There was a flash of green.

Suddenly, all at once, Damon came loose. He fell back from the wall into Elena, and she staggered, holding him up in the second it took for him to regain his balance.

“Get her out of here!” Andrés shouted. “I can’t hold it!”

Klaus, face twisted with rage, was trapped by the glowing green barrier of Andrés’s protective aura, the eerie green lighting his face. As Elena stared openmouthed, Klaus forced a hand through the green. Damon grabbed her in his arms and leaped straight up into the elevator shaft.

Elena barely had time to take a breath before Damon was kicking his way through a door at the top of the shaft, and she found herself slumped on the tiles outside the elevator door on the top floor of the building. There were no classrooms here, just offices, and the hall was quiet.

Damon lay beside her, still clutching her, and panting harshly. Blood was trickling from his nose and he unwrapped one of his arms from around her to wipe at it with his sleeve.

“We have to go back,” she told him, as soon as she could speak.

Damon stared at her. “Are you kidding me?” he gasped. “We barely got away as it is.”

Elena shook her head stubbornly. “We can’t abandon Andrés,” she said.

Damon’s stare sharpened to a glare. “Your friend from the elevator made his choice,” he said coldly. “He wanted me to save you. Do you think he’ll thank me if I drop right back down there instead of getting you out of here?”

A crash came from inside the elevator shaft, rattling the building. Elena pulled herself to her feet, steadying herself against the walls. She felt fragile, but determined, as if she was made of glass and steel.

“We’re both going back,” she said. “I don
’
t care what Andrés would choose. I’m not leaving here without him. Take me down.”

Damon clenched his jaw and glared harder. Elena simply stood and waited, immovable.

Finally, Damon swore to himself and climbed to his feet. “Let the record show,” he said, grabbing her by the arms again and pulling her close to him, “that I tried to save you, and that you are the most infuriatingly stubborn person I’ve ever known.”

“I missed you, too, Damon,” Elena said, closing her eyes and pressing her face against his chest.

On the way up the shaft, Elena realized, Damon must have wrapped her in some stray edge of his Power, because the trip had been smooth and almost momentary. On the way down, apparently he wasn’t bothering to protect her. Her hair flew upward and the skin on her face stung with the passing wind.
He’s got me,
she told herself, but her body screamed that she was plummeting.

They landed on the top of the elevator amid a plume of dust, and Elena choked and coughed for several minutes, wiping at the tears on her face.

“We have to get in there,” she said frantically, feeling around in the dark, as soon as she could speak again. The elevator must have collapsed when it hit the bottom of the shaft. Instead of a neat box of metal, she could feel the sharp edges and long, broken pieces of shattered beams and the remains of walls. “Andrés could still be alive,” she told Damon. She knelt and began to feel along what had been the elevator’s top. The space Klaus and Damon had come through must still be here somewhere.

Damon grabbed her hands. “No,” he said. “You say you can see auras now? Use your Power. There’s no one in there.”

He was right. As soon as Elena really looked, she could see that there was no trace of Andrés’s green or that terrible chilling blackness that Klaus carried with him.

“Do you think they’re dead?” she whispered.

Damon let out a short, bitter laugh. “Hardly,” he said. “It would take more than a fall down an elevator shaft to kill Klaus. And if your human pal with the shield was dead in there, I’d be able to smell his blood.” He shook his head. “No, Klaus escaped again. And he took your Andrés with him.”

“We have to save him,” Elena said, and, when Damon didn’t reply immediately, she yanked on his leather jacket, pulling him closer so she could stare demandingly into his unfathomable black eyes. Damon was going to help her whether he wanted to or not. She wasn’t letting him get away again. “We have to save Andrés.”

Chapter 35

E
lena moved fast. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t think about what might be happening to Andrés, or that they might be too late. She had to stay cool, stay focused. She pulled out her phone and called the others, filling them in on the situation and telling them to prepare for a fight and meet her in a clearing in the woods just on the edge of campus.

“We’re taking the battle to Klaus,” she told Damon, shoving her phone briskly back into her bag. “This time, we’re going to win.”

They stopped by Elena’s room to drop off her schoolbag and, by the time they reached the clearing, the others had already gathered. Bonnie and Alaric were looking through a spell book together, while Stefan, Meredith, Zander, and Shay talked tactics on the other side of the clearing. Zander’s eyes, Elena noticed, glanced in Bonnie’s direction, but she was focused on her book. Everyone else was busily sharpening stakes or organizing weapons.

Silence fell over the clearing when Elena entered with Damon. Meredith’s hand tightened on her stave, and Matt drew Chloe a little closer to him, protectively.

Elena was looking at Stefan, who stepped forward, his mouth grim.

“Damon saved me from Klaus,” she announced, loud enough so everyone could hear. “He’s fighting for us now.”

Stefan and Damon stared at each other from opposite sides of the clearing. After a moment, Stefan nodded awkwardly. “Thank you,” he said.

Damon shrugged. “I tried to stay away,” he said, “but I guess you can’t manage without me.” Stefan’s mouth tugged up into a reluctant half smile, and then the brothers turned away from each other, Damon wandering over toward Bonnie and Alaric while Stefan came to Elena.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked her, running his hands lightly over her shoulders as if to reassure himself that she wasn’t obviously injured.

“I’m fine,” Elena answered, and kissed him. Stefan pulled her closer and she leaned into his embrace, taking comfort in the strength of his arms around her. “Andrés held Klaus off, Stefan. He was so brave, and he told Damon to get me away. They saved me
.
” She swallowed back a sob.
“We can’t let Klaus kill him.”

“We won’t,” Stefan promised, his mouth against her hair. “We’ll get there in time.”

Elena sniffed back her tears. “You can’t know that.”

“We’ll do our best,” Stefan told her. “It will have to be good enough.”

The sun was low in the sky, and afternoon sunlight spread across the grass between the trees. Elena spent the next few minutes sharpening stakes. They didn’t have wood from the blessed tree, but ordinary white ash would at least hurt Klaus. And any wood would kill his vampire descendants.

“All right,” Stefan said at last, calling everyone together. “I think we’re as ready as we’re going to be.” Elena looked around at the gathered group: Meredith and Alaric, hand in hand, looking strong and ready for anything. Bonnie, her cheeks flushed and her curls going in every direction, but sticking her chin out defiantly. Matt and Chloe, pale but determined. Zander, still human-form for now, shooting wistful, confused glances at Bonnie, flanked by Shay and the other werewolves, an empty space among them.

Damon stood alone on the other side of the circle, watching Elena. When Stefan cleared his throat, preparing to speak, Damon shifted his eyes to watch his brother instead. He looked, Elena thought, resigned. Not happy, but not angry anymore.

Stefan smiled softly at Elena beside him and looked around at rest of the group. “We’ll find Andrés,” he said. “Today we’re going to rescue him, and we’re going to kill Klaus and his vampires. We’re a team now, all of us. No one—none of us here, and no one else on this campus or in this town—will be safe as long as Klaus and his followers are alive. We’ve already seen what they are capable of. They killed James, who was kind and knowledgeable. They killed Chad, who was smart and loyal.” The werewolves shifted angrily, and Stefan went on. “They’ve attacked innocent people across this campus and across this town in the last few weeks, and before that, the vampires in Klaus’s army slaughtered the innocent all over the world. We have to do what we can. We’re the only ones who can fend off the darkness, because we’re the only ones here who know the truth.” His eyes caught on Damon’s and they held each other’s gaze for a long moment until Damon finally glanced away, fiddling with the cuff of his jacket. “It’s time for us to take a stand,” Stefan said.

There was a murmur of agreement, and everyone was turning to one another, picking up their weapons and gathering themselves, ready to fight. Elena grabbed Stefan in a tight, hard hug, her heart bursting with love. He tried so hard to take care of everyone.

“Are you ready, Elena?” Stefan asked her, and she let him go and nodded, wiping a hand quickly across her eyes.

Breathing deeply, she reached deep inside herself, thinking protection, thinking evil, trying to trigger her Power in the way Andrés had taught her.

When she opened her eyes, she felt a strong, almost undeniable pull, jerking her toward Damon. Unable to stop herself, she stepped forward before she felt Stefan’s hand on her arm, restraining her.

“No,” he breathed. “You must find Klaus.”

Elena nodded, avoiding Damon’s startled eyes. The pull to Damon was intense: she tried to ignore it, but she knew it was her Guardian task calling to her. Closing her eyes again, she breathed and concentrated on Klaus. Images flew in rapid succession across her mind: his cold, brutal kiss, his laughter as he kicked his feet at the top of the elevator, the way he had thrown Chad’s poor wrecked body across the clearing.

This time, when she opened her eyes, the dark tug inside her was leading out of the clearing, away from Damon, and she felt like she could almost taste the thick, black, noxious fog of Klaus’s aura.

Elena headed where her Power led her, and her friends followed, walking close together. As they went, Zander and Shay and the other werewolves who could change without the moon transformed, loping along beside the humans with their ears cocked for any sounds of attack, their mouths open to catch the scents the wind carried.

They skirted around the edge of campus, sticking to the trees and trying to stay out of sight. Elena expected her Power to lead them farther into the woods, toward where they had fought Klaus before, but instead it tugged her back onto the campus.

At the back of the campus lay the old stables. As they approached, the miasma of darkness seemed to be pulling her along toward the building, and an equal darkness was gathering overhead. Black clouds were hovering over the stables, low and threatening. Zander cocked his ears forward, his tail stiffening, and one of the human-form werewolves—Marcus, Elena thought—tilted his head as if he were listening.

“Zander says that’s not a natural storm brewing,” Marcus said apprehensively.

“No,” Elena said. “Klaus can handle lightning.” The werewolves stared at her in alarm for a moment, their shaggy heads going up, ears erect, then refocused their attention on the door to the stables, looking even warier than before.

“He knows we’re coming,” Stefan said tensely. “That’s what the storm clouds are showing. He’s ready for us. Bonnie, Alaric, to the sides. Stay clear of the fighting, but keep casting as many spells as you can. Damon, Meredith, Chloe, I want you with me in the first wave. Zander, whatever you think best for the Pack. Matt and Elena, take weapons but hang back.”

Elena nodded. Part of her wanted to rebel against being kept in the rear while her friends were in battle, but it made sense. She and Matt were strong, but not as strong as vampires or werewolves, and not as well able to protect themselves and others as the magic-users. If she was supposed to kill Damon, she assumed some magic fighting Powers would show up eventually, but she didn’t know how handy aura-reading and tracking would be now that they’d found Klaus.

As they reached the door, there was a beat of hesitation.

“For God’s sake,” Damon said scornfully. “They already know we’re out here.” Slamming one elegant Italian-made boot into the center of the stable doors, he kicked them wide open.

It was only because of the speed of his vampiric reflexes that Damon survived at all. As soon as the doors opened, a heavy pointed beam that had been carefully rigged on top of them slammed down. Damon was able to twitch automatically aside just enough so that the blow caught him in the shoulder, propelling him backward and out the door, rather than through the chest. Clutching his shoulder, he folded over and fell into the dirt.

Automatically, Elena ran forward, only half-aware of Matt keeping pace beside her. The others, the fighters, were streaming through the doors: Meredith with her stave swinging, Stefan’s face twisted with fury, werewolves leaping into the fray.

With Matt’s help, Elena pulled Damon out of the way and felt at his chest, checking his injury. The beam had pierced his shoulder, leaving a gaping wound that both Elena’s fists could have fit inside. The ground below him was already black and swampy with blood.

“It looks pretty bad,” Matt said.

“Won’t kill me,” Damon gasped, clutching at the wound with one hand as if he could pull its edges back together. “Get back to the fight, you idiots.”

“It could kill you if anyone passes by with a stake,” Elena snapped. “You can’t defend yourself like this.” The pull of her Power toward Damon was making her itch again.
He’s defenseless,
something inside her said.
Finish him.

She felt a presence behind her and turned hurriedly as Stefan, back out of the fight, knelt in the bloody mud beside his brother, running his eyes over him clinically. They exchanged a long glance, and Elena knew they were communicating silently.

“Here,” Stefan said. He bit neatly at his own wrist and held it to his brother’s mouth. Damon eyed him, then drank deeply, his throat working.

“Thanks,” he said at last. “Save me some vampires. I’ll be there in a second.” He lay back, breathing deeply. Elena could see that the wound was already knitting itself together, new flesh and muscle raw beneath the torn skin.

Stefan whirled and ran back to the stable, Matt behind him. Elena bent over Damon in the mud and waited until he pushed himself wearily up on his elbows, then to his feet.

“Ugh,” he said. “I’m not at my best now, princess. But they’ve ruined my jacket, and that gives me a reason to fight.” He shot her a pale echo of his usual brilliant smile.

“Well, since you’ve come all this way,” Elena answered, keeping her voice light with difficulty. She resisted the urge to support him toward the stables, and by the time they reached the doors, he was walking strongly.

Inside, it looked like hell. Damon swore and slipped past her, throwing himself into the battle.

Her friends were fighting hard; she could see that at a glance. Meredith was engaged in a near-dance of thrust and parry with an olive-skinned, quick-footed vampire who could only be her twin brother. Bonnie and Alaric stood at opposite corners of the stable, their arms raised above their heads, chanting loudly, raising some sort of protective spell over their allies. Andrés was here, too, she saw, tied and slung carelessly beside one wall, but he was pressing his bound hands into the earth and raising a green swell of protective Power as well.

Werewolves wove throughout the crowd, fighting together, human-form and wolf-form, as a Pack. Damon, Stefan, and even Chloe grappled with vampires, while Matt quickly staked Chloe’s opponent from behind.

Suddenly, Elena’s mind cleared. She’d been hanging back as Stefan had ordered, used to being the fragile one, less of a fighter than the others. But she couldn’t be killed by the supernatural now.

Clutching her stake tightly, Elena threw herself into the battle, exhilarated. Her Power tugged at her, and she looked to see Damon wrestling with one of Klaus’s vampires, his teeth bared and bloody. Her Power urged her to attack him, and she clamped down on her emotions.
Not Damon,
she told herself sternly.

A dark-skinned vampire swung her around by the shoulder, his face gleeful, and tried to sink his fangs into her neck. With a stroke of luck and speed, Elena shoved the stake into his chest.

At her first push, it didn’t go deep enough to reach the vampire’s heart. For a second, both Elena and the vampire stared down at the stake halfway into his chest, and then Elena gathered her strength and slammed it home. The vampire crumpled to the ground, looking pale and somehow smaller. Elena, savagely triumphant, looked around for her next opponent.

But there were so many vampires. And, in the center of everything, his face alight with glee, was Klaus. A few feet away from him, Stefan staked his opponent and charged toward Klaus, fangs bared.

Klaus raised his hands above his head to an opening in the ruined roof and, with a crash of thunder, lightning struck. Klaus laughed and aimed it toward Stefan, but Bonnie, fast as lightning herself, threw up her hands and shouted in Latin. The bolt changed direction in midair, hitting one of the old stalls and blowing its door off. The stall began to burn merrily. Klaus shouted, a high screech of rage, and shoved his hands up, blasting Stefan off his feet.

Elena screamed and tried to run to Stefan, but there was too much in the way, too many struggling fighters. Why couldn’t she release more of her Powers? She could feel them there, beneath those locked doors in her mind, and she knew she’d be stronger if she could just reach them.

Her Power itched at her, and Elena involuntarily glanced away from where Stefan had fallen, to see Damon rip the throat out of his opponent.

In a flash, Elena understood. “Damon!” she called, and he was instantly at her side, wiping blood from his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fight me,” Elena said, and he stared at her, bewildered. “Fight me!” she said again. “That is how I unlock my Power.”

Damon frowned. Then he nodded, and hit her in the arm. It wasn’t a hard hit, certainly not by Damon’s standards, but it hurt and jolted her backward.

Something inside Elena broke wide open, and Power rushed into her. Suddenly, she knew how to do this. She was full of Power now, ready to unleash, and it was all focused on Damon.
Not him,
she told her Power again.
Not Damon.
With what felt like a huge physical effort, she tore her attention away from him, back toward Klaus and Stefan.