by L. J. Smith
“If your little pet is going to drag us all over the countryside, you’re taking me out for a drink later,” Damon told Katherine in an undertone, flashing a false, bright smile as he climbed the winding tower stairs.
“Oh, don’t be a grouch, Damon,” Katherine said sweetly. “You have to admit it’s lovely here.”
“I don’t have to admit anything,” Damon said, but he felt the edges of his mouth tugging up in a more honest smile.
For days, Roberto had been begging to explore the white medieval tower they could see from the windows of their palazzo, in the rolling green hills outside of town. Tonight, Katherine had finally agreed to take him, like an indulgent parent giving in to a petulant child. For lack of any better options, Damon had consented to come, too.
Roberto ran eagerly ahead of them; Damon could hear his feet clattering on the stairs above their heads. The top of the first stairway opened into a large square room with a worn wooden floor, empty except for a huge fireplace at one end, but by the time Damon and Katherine stepped inside, Roberto was already climbing the next set of stairs.
“Avanti!” He called back in Italian, urging them on.
“Modern Italian doesn’t sound right to me.” Damon sighed, a little wistfully. “Back in my homeland, and the children here speak garbled trash.”
“Things change,” Katherine said with a shrug. “Like we said last night, even we do. I was born in the Hapsburg Empire, and it doesn’t even exist anymore. You and I, we just adapt and keep going.” She slid him a sidelong look as they entered the next stairway, and her voice dripped with false sympathy. “Are you having a midlife crisis, Damon? Do you want me to hold your hand?”
Damon sneered halfheartedly at her. “As if I actually care about the decline of the Italian language,” he said. “It’s only that … this was home once, and now it’s just another place.” What was curious, and a little alarming, he admitted to himself, was that the thought of home now brought to mind a small town in Virginia and the faces of a bunch of American children. Principally, of course, a face much like the one laughing back at him as Katherine sprang ahead up the stairway.
At the top of the tower, the starlit countryside stretched out before them. The surrounding area was full of vineyards, and the smell of growing grapes and warm earth rose up all around. The sun had set more than an hour ago, but the air was clear, and Damon could see the lights of the town in the valley below them. The moon was full and large, hanging low in the sky—a harvest moon.
“It’s so beautiful here. I love places like this.” Roberto took Katherine’s hand. “Was it like this, did you live somewhere like this, when you were alive?” His voice was full of longing, as if he was about to burst into an ode to Katherine and how he wished he could have known her always. Damon almost snorted when Katherine’s eyes softened in response. It looked like Katherine was still finding little Roberto charming, which meant the boy would be traveling with them for a while longer.
Katherine was just beginning to answer when Damon stiffened and held up a hand to quiet her. There had been something … it came again. A small sound, the brush of a quick light step.
“Someone’s coming up the stairs,” he said.
Katherine cocked her head questioningly, and Roberto frowned, listening.
And then feet pounded on the stairs, all attempts at quietness abandoned. Alarmingly fast, before even Damon could move, a pack of people burst through the doorway and were upon them.
One caught Damon by the arm and threw him hard, so that he landed sprawling at the edge of the tower roof. He rolled quickly to his feet. Not people, then. Too fast, too strong. Something else.
The leader, a tall woman, bared her teeth, and Damon realized. Vampires. How had he not sensed them?
The tall vampire who’d led the charge held Katherine’s arms pinned behind her and was angling to bite at her throat. Damon leaped toward them, throwing the attacker back while Katherine turned to quickly tear out her throat. A gout of blood sprayed across the white stone of the tower. Damon recovered quickly, back on the offensive, but there were too many of them, and they were already pressing closer, undeterred by the first vampire’s death.
Instinctively, Damon and Katherine moved back to back, uniting against the threat, and Katherine pulled Roberto behind them, shielding the young vampire. Damon could feel her breath speeding up, and then she snarled, her hands bunching into claws. She was a good ally to have at his side.
There were so many of them, though, at least fifteen. Where had they come from, and what did they want?
Then several attacked Damon at once, snarling, coming from all three sides. The one in front of him, a dark-haired man, punched him in the face and moved back before he could respond, then punched and dodged again as the others worried him with teeth and nails from either direction. They were trying to get him away from Katherine and Roberto, Damon realized, trying to separate them so their opponents could use their greater numbers to overwhelm them.
Quick as a striking snake, Damon snapped the neck of one of the vampires attacking him from the side. He bared his teeth in a wild, joyous smile, then charged forward to grab hold of the dark-haired vampire in front of him, propelling him backward to the edge of the tower and sending him over in a flurry of flailing limbs. Not that the fall would kill him, but it would get him out of the picture, at least for now.
As Damon turned back from the edge of the tower, though, his heart sank. There were still far too many of them. And these weren’t weak, newly made vampires either—they were strong and fast.
Katherine was holding her own, her face drawn into a snarl as she grappled with one of the attackers, ignoring another that was clawing ineffectively at her back.
But Roberto was in trouble, cornered on the far side of the tower.
Another vampire clutched at Damon before he could move toward the boy, and they tussled for a moment. His opponent swung him around, and Damon barely managed to dodge the stake a second vampire was aiming at his chest. Angry, he tore the stake from the second vampire’s hand and stabbed it into the vampire’s throat.
Shoving past them, he headed toward Roberto, who was struggling frantically, his face pale. The boy had probably never been in a fight before, not even when he was human, Damon thought in annoyance. But then Katherine screamed, and Damon turned to snap her attacker’s neck.
“Katherine! Help!” A desperate gasp.
Katherine and Damon both looked toward the other side of the roof just in time to see Roberto’s terrified face. A fierce-looking girl, younger even than Roberto when she was made, grabbed hold of his head as he fell and pulled. With a terrible ripping sound, Roberto’s head was torn away from his body.
Katherine gave a strangled cry.
A few feet from them one of the wounded vampires struggled to her feet, her torn throat already healed.
“That’s it; we’re leaving,” Damon said sharply. Taking a firm hold of Katherine’s arm, he dragged her the few steps to the edge of the tower. Before any of the vampires following them could catch them, he leaped out into the darkness, taking Katherine with him.
They landed in a crackle of grape vines and the smell of dry earth. Catlike, Damon was on his feet in an instant. The vampire he’d thrown over earlier didn’t seem to be anywhere around, he noted thankfully. He was probably already back up on top of the tower.
“What’s going on?” Katherine asked, her voice harsh, her blue eyes narrowed with fury. “Why—who hates us? Who would want to kill us now? Klaus is dead. There’s no one—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Damon said tightly, cutting her off. He could hear steps on the tower stairs. Their leap into the night had bought them a few minutes at best, and their attackers weren’t going to give up so easily. “Come on,” he said, taking Katherine’s hand and pulling her roughly after him.
Damon and Katherine ran through the vineyards, plants crunching beneath their feet. They hadn’t fed yet tonight and had used up too
much Power in the fight to shift shape and fly, as Damon would have preferred. The most important thing was to get away.
At last, deep in the woods outside the little town where they’d been staying, they stopped to listen.
“I think we’ve lost them,” Katherine said.
“For now.” Damon frowned. “This wasn’t a random attack. They must have been tracking us.”
Katherine nodded. “Is there anything at the palazzo you can’t stand to lose?” she asked.
Damon thought briefly of his favorite jacket, of a bracelet he had bought with the vague intention of sending it to Elena, of sweet Vittoria and her warm, fresh blood. “Nothing that can’t be replaced.” Hesitantly, he touched Katherine’s arm. “I am sorry about Roberto,” he said.
Katherine’s jaw tightened, and Damon thought he caught the shine of tears in her eyes, but her voice was level. “It happens,” she said. “But he was awfully young. I would have liked to have taken him somewhere he’d never seen before.”
Damon glanced up at the moon, which hung high in the sky overhead. It wasn’t late yet; the trains would still be running. If they made it to the station, they could be across the border before dawn. “I think it’s time we left Italy,” Damon said softly.
Elena drove slowly down one of Dalcrest campus’s side streets, looking for a parking place. There was an antiquarian bookstore around the corner, and she knew they had a collection of the medieval poetry Stefan liked. It would be nice to give him a little welcome-home present, she thought, smiling in anticipation.
Suddenly and without warning, her throat constricted and a bolt of panic shot through her. Damon. Somewhere, Damon was in trouble.
She involuntarily jerked the wheel aside and just managed to avoid sideswiping a parked car. His emotions ran through her, much stronger than usual, overwhelming her senses. Anger, and a sharp sense of fear, rage, a sort of adrenaline-fueled exhilaration. Was he fighting? What was going on? Panicked tears rose in her eyes—her own, she thought, not Damon’s—and she blinked them back.
She needed to go home. She had to get to Stefan, let him know something was wrong. Taking a deep breath and trying to calm down, Elena took a sharp right and headed back toward the highway.
The road was clear ahead of her. Pushing Damon’s emotions away, she risked fumbling in her purse for her phone. It was evening right now in Italy, where Damon had been the last time she had heard from him. But he could be anywhere, really. He traveled from country to country the way most people crossed streets.
Just as her hand closed around the phone, another flash of emotion from Damon broke through—fury, followed by a feeling of cold calculation. Whatever was happening to Damon, he was plotting a way to get through it. It made her feel a little better. If Damon was good at anything, it was surviving.
Elena quickly punched Damon’s number into the phone, but it went straight to voice mail.
“It’s me,” she said to the electronic silence, the full distance between her and Damon stretching into infinity. “I felt something from you all of a sudden, something bad. Are you okay? Please call me.”
As she ended the call, she pushed down hard on the gas pedal, the tires squealing as the car jumped forward. Stefan would know what to do. Suddenly she was desperate to get home to him, to his comforting arms and his always-practical mind.
She pushed her foot down on the gas again, and this time, the pedal sank unresistingly to the floor of the car. Jerking, the car sped faster, much faster than Elena had expected.
Instinctively, she hit the brake, but nothing happened. Trees and telephone poles whipped past in a blur of green and brown.
Tightening her grip on the wheel until her hands ached, Elena slammed down on the brake again. The car didn’t slow, but the wheel began to vibrate in her hands, small tremors at first, becoming faster and faster. Her heart raced, and a tiny panicked whine came from Elena’s throat.
The car was beginning to drift across the highway, and another car swerved around her, honking loudly. She yanked on the wheel, trying to get back into her own lane, but it only spun uselessly under her hands.
“Come on, come on,” Elena whimpered, pleading with the car, or the universe. “Please, no.”
This is it, she thought with a blank feeling of wonder. After everything that had happened, after all she’d survived, she was going to die here, in an out-of-control car on a bright, sunny afternoon.
Something huge and dark rose up in front of her. I’m sorry, Stefan, she thought, and then everything went black.
“Elena? Elena?” A faint, unfamiliar voice was calling to her through the darkness. Elena twitched with irritation. She didn’t want to talk to anyone; she wanted to sleep. Her head hurt and her chest ached terribly. Was she sick?
“Elena!” A pounding noise, somebody banging near her head.
With a huge effort, Elena managed to drag open her eyes. Everything was blurry and white, too close, and she pushed at the whiteness, trying to shove it away. It shifted under her hands with a rustling of fabric, and slowly the world came back into focus.
The white stuff was an air bag, she realized, and it filled the space in front of her. I must have hit something, Elena thought dazedly, and raised her hand to the pain in her head. Her fingers came away bright red, wet with blood. There was an aching, bruised feeling in her chest, and she scrabbled at her seat belt, smearing the blood across her shirt.
A wave of panic washed over her. She could have died.
“Elena!” the voice snapped at her again, and she jumped.
A guy a few years older than she was, with short dark hair and heavy brows, stood just outside her window, rattling her door handle. “Elena!” he said sharply. “Hurry! You have to get out of the car.”
The intensity in his voice had Elena reaching automatically for the door handle, but then she drew back her hand. “Who are you?” she said warily through the glass. “How do you know my name?”
“There’s no time to explain. Please just trust me. I’m on your side.” His hazel eyes were steady, pleading with her. “You have to get out of the car.”
Something in his voice made her hurry to unfasten her seat belt and open the car door. But before she could say anything, he locked onto her arm and dragged her down the side of the road, away from her car.
“What are you doing?” Elena exclaimed, trying to dig in her heels and pull away. “Let go of me!” It was broad daylight. “Help!” she screamed, her voice shrill in her own ears, but no help came. She glanced around wildly, but there were no other cars in sight. The guy’s hand was like an iron band around her wrist, yanking her on.
She was drawing her breath in to scream for help again—surely there must be someone within earshot—when her captor came to a halt and let go of her.
“Okay,” he said, resting his hands on his knees and taking in great gulps of air. “This ought to be far enough.”
“What the hell do you think—” Elena began hotly.
And that was when her car exploded.
It went up in a great orange ball of flame and an ear-crunching boom, just like in the movies. A heavy cloud of oily black smoke rose from the flames.
Elena’s body felt numb. Her stomach rolled with nausea as she blinked in shock at the dark smoke, the hungry flames.
She’d felt so safe as a Guardian. She didn’t have to worry about getting old, or getting sick, or dying at the hands of vampires, or demons, or werewolves, or any other kind of supernatural being. All she’d had to worry about, Elena had thought, were very human causes of death—a knife, a gun, strangulation.
A car exploding in the street, with her inside.
Her mother had died in a car accident, even though she had been a Guardian, even though she’d been hundreds of years old at least, and Elena wondered why she had never really considered the same thing happening to her. She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to tear her gaze away from the burning car.
The dark-haired guy was standing n
ext to her, watching the fire with a mildly intrigued expression, as if it were a TV show or science experiment. He was only about Elena’s own height but had well-muscled arms and shoulders, like an athlete. “I’m Jack,” he said, seeming to feel Elena’s gaze on him. She automatically gathered her Power and used it to see his aura, which seemed warm and brown, sincere.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” she said, and flushed, because the words sounded stupid to her own ears. “I mean, I read an article about movie clichés, and a lot of it was about how cars almost never explode. Certainly not just from running into a tree.” As she spoke, she felt her heart steady. If they could talk logically about the why and the how, maybe she wouldn’t have to think about the what. The fact that she could have been gone forever, never see Stefan or Damon again.
“It was a telephone pole,” Jack said drily, and then the corners of his mouth turned up in a sudden and unexpected smile. It changed his whole face. He looked friendly and open, and Elena knew her earlier instinct to trust him had been the right one.
She tried to take a step and stumbled, feeling suddenly sick. Jack hurried forward to steady her, concern etched on his face.
“We need to get you home,” he said, his hand under her arm, supporting her. “And you’re right. This doesn’t just happen.” They both turned to look back at the steadily burning car.
“I don’t understand,” she mumbled. She felt like she might laugh, or scream. Possibly she had a concussion, because nothing seemed to be making any sense.
Jack wiped his hand across his face in a quick, nervous gesture. “Elena,” he said, “this was no accident.”
“I should have been there to protect you,” Stefan said wretchedly, wrapping his arms around Elena and burying his face in her hair. “I’m so sorry.” While he had been relaxing in the apartment, Elena had almost died. And he wouldn’t have even known until the police came to their door.
