The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation: Unmasked

by L. J. Smith

  She gathered her breath and shouted, into the wind. “Damon!”

  Nothing. A memory of doing this once before had her turning on the spot, looking over her own shoulder, only to see no one there.

  “Damon!” she shouted again. “I know you’re there!”

  Icy wind blew straight into Elena’s face, making her flinch. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring across the graveyard at a grove of beech trees, their leaves bright yellow and red against the grayness of the sky. Something dark moved in the shadows between their trunks.

  Elena blinked. The blackness was coming closer, its shape resolving into a black-clad figure. Golden leaves blew around him, parting as he stepped forward to the edge of the grove, and his pale features became clearer.

  Damon, of course.

  He stayed where he was, watching Elena calmly as she hurried toward him. She almost slipped in the grass, catching herself against a tombstone, and heat rose in her cheeks. She didn’t want to seem vulnerable in front of Damon. Whatever game he was playing, she would need all the advantages she could get.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped when she reached him, slightly out of breath.

  Damon flashed her a bright, insincere smile. “I came when you called, Princess,” he said. “I could ask you the same thing. Everything’s wonderful.” He hissed the words, his lips curling into a cruel smile, the same words he’d primed Matt and Caroline and probably Meredith with, and her anger flared up, hot inside her. Elena’s hand flew out and she slapped Damon hard across the face.

  Her hand stung with the force of the blow, and Damon’s cheek reddened, but he was still smiling. “Don’t push me too hard, Elena,” he said softly. “I’ve been kinder than you deserve.”

  “You’ve been feeding on my friends,” she said, her voice shaking.

  Damon’s eyes glittered, so black she couldn’t tell the iris from the pupil. “Not just feeding on them, Elena. I’ve got big plans.”

  Elena went cold inside. “What do you mean?”

  Damon’s smile disappeared. “The way I fell for you so quickly … It made me realize how lonely I must be.”

  Elena’s heart thumped hard. Damon didn’t do vulnerable, didn’t admit to having emotions. Could this be a good thing?

  But Damon went on, lightly. “And so, I decided what I needed were some protégés.”

  “You can’t do that,” Elena said. Damon had never turned anyone into a vampire, never, to her knowledge, even offered to turn anyone except Elena herself. He wasn’t looking for companionship; this was pure spite.

  “Oh, I can,” Damon said. “I think Halloween will be an appropriate day to do it, don’t you? It’s a very American holiday, of course, but I’ve always liked costumes. Ghosts and ghasts and all sorts of ghoulies.”

  “Damon,” Elena said. “Don’t.”

  She could hear the pleading tone in her own voice, and so could Damon. His smile reappeared, flashing sharp and bright and quickly disappearing again.

  “They’ll thank me,” he said softly, “when they realize they’ll be young and beautiful forever.” His eyes ran over her, pausing on the bite mark Stefan had left low on her throat. When he spoke again, his voice was laced with bitterness. “I’d invite you to join us, Elena, but you’ll have Stefan for that.”

  Elena stepped closer. “I’m not with Stefan,” she said, her words tumbling over one another. “I was never with Stefan, Damon. We kissed once, that’s it, and that was a mistake. The only reason he fed on me was so that we could get out of the tomb you locked us into.”

  Damon’s mouth tightened. He looked as disturbingly handsome as ever, but there was something bitter and distrustful in his face. “I’ll see you on Halloween, Elena,” he said, and then he was gone.

  Elena stood alone in the cemetery, surrounded by strangers’ graves.

  She swallowed once, hard, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes for a moment.

  Damon wanted to change Matt, Meredith, and Caroline—and who knew who else—into vampires on Halloween. Elena had to stop him. And she needed to stop him from killing Mr. Tanner that same night. She didn’t know how she was going to do it alone.

  Stefan was clever and strong. If he drank her blood, he’d have more Power, maybe enough to stop Damon.

  But no. Elena discarded the idea as swiftly as it had come to her. Stefan had been so angry at Damon when he realized Damon had stolen his treasures. All the conflict, all the resentment that had lain between the brothers since the days of Katherine, 500 years before, had simmered behind Stefan’s green eyes, ready to boil over. If she brought him up against Damon now, Stefan might lose his head and attack. And then there was a good chance that Damon might kill him.

  But thinking of the brothers’ shared past had given Elena an idea. Straightening her sweater and squaring her shoulders, she turned and began walking back toward school, leaves crunching beneath her feet.

  She needed magic.

  Despite all that had happened since she left the cafeteria, Elena was only a few minutes late for history class. Murmuring an apology to the teacher, she ignored the curious gazes of her classmates. Pulling a sheet of loose-leaf paper out of her backpack, she bent her head over her desk and wrote a note.

  SOS. I need your help. Meet me at your house after school. TELL NO ONE!!!

  Folding the note and passing it to a girl to her right, Elena jerked her head toward Bonnie’s front-row seat, and the girl obediently passed it forward. Elena watched as Bonnie glanced up to make sure Mr. Tanner’s eyes were elsewhere, unfolded the note, read it, and then scribbled a reply.

  When it came back to Elena, Bonnie’s rounded handwriting read,

  Can’t! We have to go to the warehouse to plan the Haunted House, remember? Meredith would kill us!!!

  Mr. Tanner’s attention was fixed on a boy answering a question on the other side of the room, and Elena took the chance to grimace appealingly at Bonnie, trying to express urgency in her face. Bonnie, twisted around in her seat, shook her head.

  Elena quickly wrote another note and passed it back up to Bonnie.

  You have to meet me. I have so much to tell you.

  Bonnie, you’re a witch.

  “Are you serious about all this?” Bonnie asked. “I’m not going to be mad if you were kidding, Elena.” She hefted one of the bags Mrs. Flowers had given them over her shoulder and stepped carefully over a broken gravestone.

  Elena had told Bonnie everything. About Stefan and Damon, about coming here from a possible future. About how Bonnie would grow into one of the most powerful witches Elena had ever met. How much Elena needed her help.

  Telling Bonnie was the only thing she could think of to do. Matt and Meredith had been hurt too much by their association with the supernatural to bring them into this. Stefan would have been the worst person imaginable to pit against Damon right now.

  But Bonnie? In the future, Bonnie was happy. And she was amazingly full of Power. If only they could tap into that Power now, use Bonnie’s magic even though she was completely untrained, Bonnie could be a true asset.

  It hadn’t been easy. At first, Bonnie had shaken her head, her large brown eyes wide, and backed away from Elena nervously. The step from saying she was psychic and could read palms to being told she was a budding witch had almost been too much for her. Even now, she was sneaking dubious, worried glances out of the corner of her eye at Elena. But she was here. She wasn’t running away.

  Mrs. Flowers had been a surprisingly huge help. She had stood in the doorway of her big old house, listening silently as Elena stumbled through an explanation that really explained nothing. It boiled down to the fact that they knew Mrs. Flowers was a witch, and that they needed help opening something.

  “And protecting ourselves,” Elena had tossed in, almost as an afterthought.

  Mrs. Flowers sharp eyes examined first Elena, then Bonnie. After a while, she had simply turned and walked away.

  “Uh,” Bonnie
had said, peering down the dark hall after the old woman. “Are we supposed to follow her?”

  Despite everything, Elena could feel a smile curling at the edges of her lips. “It’s just the way she is. She’ll come back.”

  They’d waited what felt like forever at Mrs. Flowers’s door, long enough that Bonnie began casting dubious looks at Elena again and Elena began to worry about what she would do if Stefan came home and saw them there.

  But Mrs. Flowers had returned eventually, carrying two duffle bags, and spoke for the first time since Elena had asked her for help. “You’ll find things labeled in there, dear. And good luck getting back where you belong.”

  “Thank you—” Elena began to say, but the heavy doors were already swinging shut, leaving Elena and Bonnie on the doorstep. She frowned, confused. How had Mrs. Flowers known this wasn’t where Elena belonged?

  “Pretty weird,” Bonnie had said, shaking her head. But she had actually seemed slightly less freaked out after that, as if she found it comforting that Elena wasn’t the only possibly crazy person around.

  Now they crossed the older part of the graveyard, staggering a little under the weight of the duffle bags Mrs. Flowers had given them. Bonnie hesitated in the empty hole that had once been the doorway of the ruined church.

  “Are we allowed in here?” she asked. “Is it safe?”

  “Probably not,” Elena told her, “but we have to go in. Please, Bonnie.”

  Most of the roof had fallen in and late afternoon sunlight streamed through the holes above them, illuminating piles of rubble. Three walls still stood, but the fourth was knee-high, and Elena could see the far end of the graveyard through it. The uprooted tree, its branches brushing the walls of the small mausoleum Damon had trapped her and Stefan in, still lay there in ruins.

  At the side of the church was the tomb of Thomas and Honoria Fell, a large stone box, heavy marble figures carved on its lid. Elena walked over to gaze down on the founders of Fell’s Church, lying with hands folded across their chests, their eyes closed. Elena brushed her fingers across Honoria’s cold marble cheek, taking comfort from the face of the lady who had guarded Fell’s Church for so long. Her ghost hadn’t appeared this time. Did that mean she trusted Elena to handle the situation? Or was something preventing her from coming?

  “Okay,” Elena said, all business, as she swung around to face Bonnie. “We have to get the tomb open.”

  Bonnie’s eyes rounded. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “That’s what you want to open? Elena, it’s got to weigh about a thousand pounds. We can’t open that with herbs and candles. You need a bulldozer or something.”

  “We can,” Elena said steadily. “You have the Power, Bonnie.”

  “Even if we could”—Bonnie’s voice wobbled—“what would be the point? Elena, there are dead people in that thing.”

  “No,” Elena said, her eyes fixed thoughtfully on the gray stone box. “It’s not really a grave. It’s a passageway.”

  They rummaged through the duffle bags. “Here,” Elena said, pulling out two little red silk bags, each on a long loop of cord. “Mrs. Flowers gave us sachets for protection. Put it around your neck.” The tiny bag was round and fat with herbs, fitting comfortably in the palm of Elena’s hand.

  “What’s in them?” At Elena’s shrug, Bonnie sniffed the sachet before stringing it around her neck. “Smells good, anyway.”

  There were small jars of herbs, labeled in Mrs. Flowers’ crabbed, almost illegible handwriting. “It says these are cowslips,” Elena said, making out the label on a jar of small dried yellow flowers, several blossoms on each stem. “According to the label, they’re good for unlocking.”

  Bonnie leaned against her and looked down at the jar in Elena’s hand. “Okay. So what do we do with them?”

  Elena stared at her. What would Bonnie, my Bonnie, do? She tried to think.

  “Well, when you’re doing a spell that uses herbs, you usually scatter them around what you’re working on,” she said. “Or you burn them.”

  “Right. Well, I’d rather not set the church on fire, so let’s try scattering them,” Bonnie said dryly.

  As well as the cowslips, there were jars of prickly dried evergreen needles and dried berries labeled JUNIPER—FOR SPELLCASTING and an herb Elena recognized as rosemary, the label of which claimed it was used for luck and power. Mrs. Flowers had given them several small jars of each, so there was more than enough to strew thoroughly over the lid of the tomb and in a circle around it.

  Help us, Elena thought fervently as she sprinkled rosemary over Honoria Fell’s grave. If this works, we’ll be protecting Fell’s Church. Just like you wanted.

  “Now what?” Bonnie asked, when they’d scattered all the herbs. “There are candles in the other bag, and matches. And a flashlight. And, yikes, a knife.”

  There were twelve candles, four each of black, white, and red. Mrs. Flowers hadn’t included any kind of note to tell them what the colors meant or what exactly to do with them, so Elena, hoping she was doing the right thing, decided to put them in a circle, colors alternating, around the tomb, outside the circle of herbs.

  “And what do we do next?” Bonnie asked, watching as Elena lit the last candle.

  “I’m not sure,” Elena told her, dripping a pool of candle wax on the floor and carefully sticking the candle upright in it. “Usually, you say something, maybe just saying what you want to happen, and it looks like you’re concentrating.”

  Bonnie’s eyebrows shot up. “So the next step is that I say ‘open’ and think really hard? Elena, I’m not sure this is going to work.”

  “Try it,” Elena said hopefully.

  Bonnie frowned at the tomb. The flames of the candles danced, reflected in her eyes. “Open,” she said firmly.

  Nothing happened.

  “Open. I command you to open.” Bonnie said, more doubtfully, and closed her eyes, scrunching her forehead in concentration. Still, nothing changed.

  Bonnie’s eyes opened and she huffed in frustration. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Wait.” Elena thought of the knife, still in the bag. “Sometimes, you use blood. You say it’s important, that it’s one of the strongest ingredients you can use in a spell. Because it’s vitality, it’s life in its most basic form.” She hurried toward the bag and felt inside. The knife was more like a small dagger, its blade pure silver and its handle some kind of bone.

  Bonnie hesitated, biting her lip, and then nodded. She came to stand beside Elena, her eyes fixed on the knife.

  “I’ll go first, okay?” Elena said. She made a short, shallow cut on the inside of her own arm, hissing a little at the stinging pain. Turning her arm, she let the blood drip across Honoria and Thomas Fell’s effigies. Splotches of her blood stained their lips, the lids of their closed eyes. Blood dripped on Honoria’s neck and trickled down, making it look as if she’d been a vampire’s feast.

  Please, Elena thought, breathing hard. Please let us in. She wasn’t sure who she was begging: Honoria Fell; the mysterious Powers that filled the universe; the Celestial Guardians; or Katherine, down below the church. Whoever was listening, she supposed. Whoever would help her.

  Bonnie, white-faced but resolute, held out her own arm, and Elena ran the blade quickly across it, watching the blood spill out and over Bonnie’s porcelain-white skin. More blood spattered over Honoria and Thomas’s stone torsos and their folded hands.

  “Draw on your Power, Bonnie,” Elena said softly. “It’s there. I’ve seen it. Pull it out of the earth under your feet and the plants growing all around us. Take it from the dead; they’re right here with us.”

  Bonnie’s face tightened with concentration, her fine bones becoming more defined beneath her skin. The candle flames flickered, all at once, as if a wind had passed through the ruined church.

  Elena wasn’t a Guardian here, and she didn’t have those Powers anymore. But she could remember what it had felt like when she and Bonnie worked together, their auras combining, feeding he
r Power into Bonnie’s. She tried to find that feeling, pushing out, trying to let Bonnie take whatever might help her. Her hand found Bonnie’s smaller one, and Bonnie twined their fingers together and squeezed hard.

  All at once, the candles all went out. With a huge, grating cracking noise, the top of the stone tomb split in half, one side falling heavily to the flagstones of the floor.

  Elena peered down. As she had expected, there was no grave beneath the stone. Instead of bones, she was looking down into the dark opening of a vault. In the stone wall below her were driven iron rungs, like a ladder.

  “Wow.” Bonnie said next to her. She was pale, but her eyes were shining with excitement. “I can’t believe that worked. I can’t …” She closed her mouth, then cleared her throat and lifted her chin bravely. “What now?”

  “Now you go home,” Elena said. She looked nervously out the broken wall of the church. It was still daylight, but the sun was sinking low. She pulled the flashlight out of the bag and tucked it into her back pocket. “I’m sorry, Bonnie, and thank you, thank you so much. But the next part I have to do by myself. And I’m not sure if it’s safe for you up here. Please go home before it gets dark.”

  “If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you,” Bonnie said stubbornly. “At least I can watch your back.”

  Elena squeezed her friend’s hand. “Please, Bonnie,” she begged again. “I can’t do what I have to do if I’m worrying about you. I promise I’ll be okay.”

  She knew she had no way of guaranteeing that, but Bonnie’s shoulders slumped in acceptance. “Be careful, Elena,” she said. “Call me as soon as you get home.”

  “Okay.” Elena watched as Bonnie picked up the duffle bags with their depleted jars of herbs and left the church, casting worried glances back at Elena over her shoulder.

  Once Bonnie’s small, upright figure was out of sight, Elena took a deep breath. There was an icy breeze coming from the opening in the tomb, and it smelled like earth and cold stone that never saw the light.