Destiny Rising (22 page)

She waved a hand and one of the beams from the hayloft came free, and she slammed it toward Klaus, knocking him backward as Stefan scrambled up.

There was a thin squeal, barely audible over the now louder crackle of the flames, and Elena wheeled to see Bonnie in the grasp of one of Klaus’s vampires, kicking furiously at him as she struggled. His hand was clamped over her mouth to prevent her from casting any spells.

With a pulse of fury, Elena shoved a jagged board through the vampire’s chest and watched him fall lifeless to the ground.

Klaus was on his feet again now. Stefan had been tackled by another of Klaus’s descendants, and nearer to her, Damon struggled with a huge, red-haired, brutal-looking vampire.
A Viking,
thought Elena. Klaus was calling lightning all around him, and the air was thick with dark, choking smoke.

No,
Elena thought, and walked toward Klaus, pushing the fire ahead of her. She had to keep it away from her friends, keep it tight around Klaus himself.

The flames were all around her now. Looking back, though, she could see the air was clearer where her friends fought, and it looked like they might be winning. As she watched, Meredith pressed her stave against her brother’s heart, and he said something to her. They were too far away and the flames were too loud for Elena to hear his words, but Meredith’s face twisted into the saddest smile as she rammed the stave through his heart.

Elena coughed and coughed again. It was hard to catch her breath amid all this smoke, and her eyes were stinging. She used her mind to shove the flames closer to Klaus. It was so tiring, though, this new Power of hers, and she was so dizzy. She could feel the Power draining out of her now that it was no longer focused on Damon, and she tried to cling to it. Elena hacked and wheezed again. Klaus was glaring at her, reaching for her, and his filthy hands, splattered with ash and mud and blood, brushed her arm.

She gathered the last of her energy and poured her strength into her new Power, forcing the flames higher between her friends and Klaus’s vampires, forcing them apart, forcing her friends backward, away from the end of the stable where she faced Klaus. Around Klaus and Elena, the fire roared.

“Elena! Elena!” She could hear their voices shouting, and she caught sight of Stefan’s agonized face just before the walls collapsed on top of her and Klaus, bringing them down.

Chapter 36

S
tefan clenched his fists together, the bite of his nails against his palms helping to stave off the fog of misery that was enfolding him. Elena wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t believe that.

Full dark had fallen, and firefighters had finally put out the blaze that had consumed the old stables. They were carefully working through the debris, dragging out body after body.

Outside the protective barriers, screened by a stand of trees, Stefan and the others waited. Meredith and Bonnie clung to each other, Bonnie in tears. Andrés was seated, dazed and silent, on the ground, his eyes fixed on the slow movements of the firefighters.

Stefan remembered the look on Elena’s face as the fiery wall had come down upon her. She had seemed so resigned, so peaceful as she looked back at him one last time, the flames she had put between them rising faster. The wall had fallen so fast—how could she possibly have escaped?

A hand landed on his shoulder, and Stefan looked up to see Damon frowning past him at the remains of the stable. “She’s not in there, you know,” Damon said. “Elena’s got the luck of the devil. She’d never get trapped in there.”

Stefan leaned into his brother’s hand, just a little. He was tired and grief-stricken, and there was a comfort in Damon’s familiarity. “She died twice before her high-school graduation,” he told Damon bitterly. “I don’t know if I’d call that lucky. And both times, it was our fault.”

Damon sighed. “She came back, though,” he said gently. “Not everyone gets to do that. Hardly anyone, really.” His lips twitched into a half smile. “Me, of course.”

Stefan twisted away, his eyes burning. “Don’t joke,” he said in a furious, low mutter. “How can—even you—how can you joke about this now? Do you care at all?” But he shouldn’t have been surprised. Damon had spent the last few weeks showing—violently, capriciously—how little he cared, for any of them.

Damon looked at him, his dark eyes steady. “I care,” he said. “You know I do. Even when I don’t want to. But I know she’s not dead. If you don’t trust Elena’s luck, think of Klaus. It would take more than a fire to kill him.”

“Fire kills vampires,” Stefan said stubbornly. “Even old ones.”

“He played with lightning,” Damon said, and shuddered. “I don’t think there’s much that could kill Klaus.”

The firefighters had stopped their investigation, every inch of burned wood and earth turned over, and were covering the bodies with dark canvases.

I’ll check it out,
Damon told Stefan silently, and transformed into a crow, flapping through the night to land in a tree near the corpses.

A few moments later, he was back, becoming himself again before his feet had even hit the ground so that he stumbled a few paces, less polished and poised than usual. Stefan was vaguely aware of everyone, all their allies, gathering around, but his eyes were fixed beseechingly on Damon. He opened his mouth, but the question he needed to ask wouldn’t come.
Is Elena there?
he thought desperately.
Is she?

If Elena was gone, if she had sacrificed herself to save them, Stefan would be dead by morning. There was nothing for him without her.

“Elena’s not there,” Damon said shortly. “Neither is Klaus. It’s all Klaus’s descendants.”

Bonnie gave one short, broken sob of relief and Meredith squeezed her hand hard, knuckles whitening.

“Klaus must have her,” Stefan said, the world swimming back into focus now that he had a purpose. “We have to find them before we’re too late.”

His eyes met Damon’s, leaf-green and black holding, for once, exactly the same expression: fear and hope in equal measure. Damon nodded. Stefan’s fingers relaxed where they still clutched Damon’s shirt and he pulled his brother to him in a brief embrace, trying to send him all the love and gratitude he would never be able to put into words. Damon was back. And if anyone could help Stefan save Elena, it was Damon.

“Is there anything you can do?” Stefan asked Andrés. He could hear the pleading note in his own voice.

All around them, the others looked tense, waiting for the answer. Bonnie was tending to Shay’s shoulder, bandaging a nasty vampire bite, and her deft fingers stiffened with anxiety until Shay gave a quiet grunt.

“I hope I can,” said Andrés. “I’ll try.” He knelt and laid his palms flat against the ground beneath the trees. Watching him, Stefan felt the cracklings of Power in the air. Andrés held very still, brown eyes narrowed and focused. New blades of grass poked through the earth, curling around his fingers.

“This isn’t as effective as Elena’s tracking Power,” he explained, “but sometimes I can sense people. If she’s touching the Earth, I will know where she is.”

Andrés sat there for what seemed like a long time, his face peaceful and alert. As he sank his fingers deeper into the ground, digging the tips into the soil at the base of a white birch tree, the tree unfurled new leaves.

“Faster,” Damon ordered, his voice low and dangerous, but Andrés did not respond with even a twitch. It was as if he had sunk so deeply into himself—or into his communion with the soil, Stefan wasn’t sure which—that he couldn’t hear them anymore.

Stefan’s pulse was pounding faster than he could remember since before he’d become a vampire. He clenched and unclenched his fists, keeping himself from shaking Andrés. The Guardian was doing the best he could, and distracting him would not make him work faster. But Elena, oh, Elena.

Farther away, he could hear Matt searching the woods, calling, “Chloe! Chloe!” The young vampire had made it out of the stables; Stefan was sure he had seen her, blackened with ash but otherwise unhurt. Now, however, she was nowhere to be found. Stefan’s heart ached in sympathy. The girl Matt loved was missing, too.

“Strange,” Andrés said. It was the first word he had spoken in a while, and Stefan’s attention immediately snapped back to him. Andrés tilted his head back to look up at Damon and Stefan, his forehead crinkling in confusion. “Elena’s alive,” he said. “I’m sure she’s alive, but it feels like she’s underground.”

Stefan sagged in relief: alive. He looked at Damon for confirmation. “The tunnels?” he asked, and Damon nodded. Klaus must have taken her to the tunnels that crisscrossed the ground underneath the campus, the ones the Vitale Society had used.

Meredith, sitting nearby with Alaric, jumped to her feet. “Where’s the closest entrance?” she asked.

Stefan tried to picture the maze of passages Matt had sketched for him before their battle against the Vitale vampires. There were many blank areas and half-drawn entrances on his mental map, because Matt had only traveled a little way in what seemed to be a vast, twisting labyrinth underlying the campus and maybe the town. But, of what he knew . . .

“The vampires’ safe house,” Stefan said decisively.

Chapter 37

E
lena’s shoulder banged against something hard, and she made a small sound of protest. All she wanted to do was sleep, but someone wouldn’t let her rest. Her legs hurt.

Her head jolted against something, and Elena’s perspective shifted. Someone was pulling her along by her legs, she realized, the rest of her body sliding along on the ground. Her hair caught, jerking her head before it came loose, and she groaned again. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

“Back with me, little one?” Klaus said, sounding disconcertingly jovial. He was the one dragging her, Elena realized, and although it was dark, he clearly had sensed when she awoke. He laughed, his dark, disturbing chuckle making her cringe. “I can’t kill you with my teeth, or with my dagger, but an ordinary knife will work, won’t it? I could tie you up and drop you in the lake to drown. What do you think?”

Elena’s mouth was dry, and it took a couple of tries to get any sound out. “I think,” she said at last, thickly, “that Stefan is going to save me.”

Klaus laughed again. “Your precious Stefan won’t be able to find you,” he said. “No one can save you now.”

They hadn’t been to the safe house since they had left with Chloe, the night of Klaus’s resurrection. When they arrived, the faint scent of vervain still lingered in the basement, and Stefan’s skin itched in reaction. Meredith pried up a trapdoor in the floor, and Stefan lowered himself in first, the others following.

Everyone but Matt had come, weapons in hand, carrying flashlights and lanterns, tense and ready to fight. Matt had stayed behind to search for Chloe. Bonnie, Alaric, and Meredith stuck close together, their faces pale and strained. Shay, Zander, and the other werewolves stayed together, too, alert to every noise or scent in the darkness. And Damon, Stefan, and Andrés formed the vanguard, each one of them straining for some sign of Elena.

They seemed to walk for miles, through underground passages that narrowed as they went, changing from concrete passages to dusty tunnels carved from dirt. Andrés stopped frequently and touched the floor and walls, listening with his hands before picking a direction.

“Did you come this way when you smoked the tunnels?” Stefan asked Meredith as they waited impatiently during one of these stops, and she shook her head, wide-eyed.

“We’re a lot deeper underground than I knew the tunnels went,” she said. “I had no idea the Vitale Society had anything this elaborate.”

“I wonder if it was the Vitale Society, actually,” Bonnie interjected suddenly. “They used these tunnels, but I keep getting a sense that there’s something older here. Something creepy.”

Silently, Alaric raised his flashlight higher, illuminating a series of runes carved deep into the rock above them. “I can’t read them,” he said, “but these must predate Dalcrest by centuries.”

The darkness that pressed in from all sides, now that Stefan focused on it, seemed to breathe with ageless secrets. It was as if there was something huge and sleeping, just out of sight, wrapped in itself and waiting to awaken. His chest ached with anxiety.
Elena . . .

The steady thump of Klaus’s footsteps stopped, but Elena was still sliding forward. With a shock, she realized that he was pulling her to him and she flailed desperately, trying to jerk herself away.

She was so tired, though. She’d used more of her Power than she ever had before, and she felt drained and helpless. Elena could do no more than struggle weakly as Klaus picked her up, gathering her in his arms as gently as if she was a baby.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely.

She felt Klaus’s hand stroking her hair back, and she shuddered with repulsion at the gentle touch in the dark. She struggled weakly, but his Power was holding her in place.

“I could have let the fire kill you,” he whispered, his voice intimate and almost tender, “but what’s poetic in that? My bite may not hurt you, but I want a taste of the girl that fascinates vampires so much. I’ve never tasted a Guardian before. Is your blood especially sweet?”

He pressed his mouth against her neck and Elena cringed. She couldn’t fight anymore. His fangs pushed into her, rough and demanding, and it felt as if her throat was being split open. She tried to scream, but only a whimper came out.

He can’t kill me this way,
she reminded herself desperately. And yet it felt as if her life was draining away.

Andrés was standing perfectly still, one hand pressed against the rock.

“What is it?” Stefan said sharply.

Andrés opened his eyes. His face was desolate. “I’ve lost her,” he said. “She was so close but now . . . she’s not touching the Earth anymore. I don’t know where she is.”

“Elena! Elena!” Stefan shouted as he ran, bursting past the rest of the group. She couldn’t be gone. Behind him, he could hear the pounding of Damon’s boots close on his tail.

Ahead of the flashlights, they rounded the corner into complete darkness. Stefan funneled Power to his eyes so that he could see.

Just ahead of them, Klaus raised his head, blood streaming from his mouth and dripping down his chin. In his arms, Elena lay limply, her silken, golden hair tangled and dirty, hanging down over Klaus’s arm. Stefan snarled and rushed forward.

Klaus licked at his lips, his pink tongue slow, and then he shuddered, a smile on his face. Slowly, still smiling, he collapsed to the ground, Elena landing with a thud in front of him. Stefan’s heart plummeted even as he leaped toward her. Elena lay in the center of the path. She was motionless and very pale, her head turned to one side, eyes closed.

Blood was everywhere, staining her once-white top a deep, rich red. Her throat was covered with gore.

And beyond her, as limp as a discarded toy, lay Klaus. Although there was no mark on him other than a thin streak of blood at the corner of his mouth, Stefan had no doubt that he was dead. No one living looked like that, as if everything that had been part of him was gone, leaving a wax dummy in his place. Especially not the lightning-handler Klaus, who had shimmered with golden, filthy rage. He looked like a badly preserved corpse.

Elena, though . . .

To Stefan’s wonder, Elena stirred, her eyelashes fluttering.

Stefan gathered her into his arms. She was so pale, but her heartbeat was steady. Above him, Damon hovered, his mouth twisted with anxiety.

“She’ll live,” Damon muttered, partly to himself, partly to Stefan.

Stefan opened his mouth to agree, but all that came out was a broken sob. He began to kiss Elena, peppering her cheeks and mouth and forehead and hands with light kisses.

“Stefan,” she murmured weakly, and smiled. “My Stefan.”

“What happened?” Bonnie asked as the others rounded the bend and ran forward. Only Andrés stood still just past the bend in the tunnel, staring at Elena, his face full of wonder.

“She’s the One,” he breathed.

“The One what?” Elena asked, still smiling dazedly. She raised her hand and stroked Stefan’s cheek.

Andrés seemed to be having trouble speaking. He swallowed, licked his lips, and swallowed again, looking a little lost. “There’s a legend,” he said finally, hesitantly. “A Guardian legend. It says that one day a sworn Guardian, one born of a Principal Guardian, will come to Earth. Her blood, the blood of Guardians carried through generations, will be anathema to the Oldest creatures of darkness.”

“What does that mean?” Stefan asked sharply.

Andrés lifted his flashlight, lighting up Klaus’s pathetic, diminished corpse. “It means,” he said, his voice full of wonder, “that Elena’s blood has killed Klaus. It would kill any of the Old Ones, the handful of vampires and demons that have walked the Earth since the dawn of human civilization . . . maybe before. It means,” he said, “that Elena is a very valuable weapon.”

“Hang on,” Damon said. “That can’t be right. I’ve drunk Elena’s blood. Stefan’s drunk Elena’s blood.”

Andrés shrugged. “Perhaps its qualities are only fatal to the Old Ones. That’s all the legend tells of.”

“And her blood is special,” Stefan said, his voice rough. He and Damon exchanged quick, embarrassed glances. Elena’s blood was rich and heady, countless times more potent than any other blood Stefan had ever tasted. He had thought the difference was because of the love they shared.

“But . . .” Bonnie said, frowning. “Your parents weren’t Guardians, were they?” she asked Elena. Elena shook her head, but her eyes were clouding over and her eyelids drooping. She needed rest, and proper medical care.

“We can talk about this later,” Stefan said abruptly, and stood, lifting Elena carefully and gently into his arms. “She needs to get out of here.”

“Well, whether she’s the One or not,” Meredith said, looking at the dead monster at her feet, “Elena killed Klaus.” They all straightened unconsciously, smiling. They had nothing left to fear.