by L. J. Smith
“So, what do the scientists do in there?” he asked, his voice casual, his eyes tracing over her lips. Let her think he was asking just as an excuse to keep talking to her.
“Scientific research,” Anneli said brightly, tilting her head and looking up at Damon through her long golden lashes. “Health-care stuff. Longevity is one of the things my group is working on. Some rats will live longer on a specially restricted diet, did you know that?”
“Fascinating.” He carefully brushed a long golden curl back behind her ear, letting his hand linger. “I’m sure you’re invaluable to your team. What do you do?”
“Um, I file,” she said. “I take notes at the meetings and send reports to the administrators. I answer the phones.”
“Interesting.” Damon edged a little closer to her. Anneli’s heart sped up and her lips parted unconsciously. She smelled sweet, and he regretted for a moment that he couldn’t just feed on her. He was terribly hungry. “What sort of notes and reports?”
Anneli looked startled. “I don’t read the reports,” she said. “I just send them. And I don’t really have to remember what people say in the meeting. I know stenography.”
“I bet you do more than that,” Damon said, his lips curling in a half smile. “Don’t be modest.” He was tempted to lay a touch of Power on his words, but who knew what the Guardians would take amiss? It wouldn’t be worth it anyway; little Anneli didn’t seem to know much.
“Well,” she said, a frown creasing her smooth forehead. “I send blood samples to the lab. I have to make sure to label them correctly.”
“Samples for what?” Damon asked.
Anneli blinked her big blue eyes at him. “Research.”
I could have chosen a better informant, Damon thought with irritation, shooting Anneli his most blindingly bright smile. He’d chosen her because she seemed the easiest to influence without using his Power, and that apparently meant she was also the silliest woman in sight. He sent Anneli on her way, waving when she turned to shoot him an eager smile over her shoulder.
She didn’t have the answers he needed. But what she did have, Damon thought with a smile, was a key card that gave her access to the building. He’d managed to slide it from her bag while they were picking up the files. With luck, Anneli wouldn’t notice it was missing until tomorrow morning.
He would come back tonight and discover the secrets hidden here. Touching the key card hidden in the breast pocket of his jacket, Damon smiled.
Finally, he was on the verge of learning the secrets behind the strange vampires. The hunted would become the hunter, just like Stefan had said.
But for now he had some time to kill, and the vampires who pursued him hadn’t caught up yet. Maybe he could meet someone in this city, some sweet Vittoria, and slake his hunger. Yes, Damon decided, casting one last glance at the bland office building, that was a good plan. He would come back tonight.
“Zander!” Bonnie objected, laughing, “I’m not tired at all. Let’s go out! I want to go dancing and see everybody.”
“Nope,” Zander said, holding her suitcase in one hand and barring the door with the other as Bonnie tried to turn around and head out of their building. “Now that I’ve got you in my clutches, I want you home tonight. You have no idea how lonely I’ve been in our apartment, all by myself.” He was grinning, but his beautiful blue eyes were serious, and Bonnie’s heart gave a funny little thump.
“I missed you, too,” she said, and Zander leaned down to kiss her, his mouth warm and soft against hers.
Actually, if Zander wants me all to himself tonight, I don’t really have a problem with that, Bonnie decided, letting herself fall into the kiss. “I guess I can wait till tomorrow to see the others,” she told him dreamily.
Zander snorted and wrapped his free arm firmly around her shoulders. “Good luck with that,” he said, and swung their apartment’s door open.
“Surprise!” several voices shouted. Bonnie squealed with delight and ran to throw her arms around Meredith.
“I missed you!” Bonnie shouted, and Meredith laughed, her arms tightening around her friend.
“Me, too,” Meredith said. She looked tired, Bonnie noticed, dark circles under her eyes that didn’t belong there, but she was smiling brightly. Alaric came up behind them and took Meredith’s hand in his.
“She’s been pining away since you’ve been gone,” he remarked to Bonnie. “Once things settle down, you two need some serious girl time.”
The Pack was scattered around the room, bouncing off the walls as usual: Shay and Jared enthusiastically making out in a corner of the kitchen, Camden and Marcus knocking back shots, Tristan and Spencer insulting each other, all of them wrestling, drinking, eating, making noise. Bonnie beamed at them all equally, feeling benevolent. They could be loud and wild tonight and she wouldn’t care. She was just glad to be home.
“How was Chicago?” Elena asked. She kissed Bonnie on the cheek and handed her a glass of wine. “Did you get a chance to go to the Art Institute?”
“No,” Bonnie said, taking a sip. “We didn’t get to see a lot of the city; we were mostly working on witch stuff.” She was about to elaborate on this, how they’d spent their days in meditation and herb study, their evenings in spell work, when she realized that Elena wasn’t listening. Her friend’s eyes were looking past her, over Bonnie’s shoulder, and Bonnie turned to see what Elena was looking at.
Stefan was on the opposite side of the room, looking at Elena, his face so miserable that Bonnie’s heart ached in sympathy.
Bonnie found herself holding her breath, waiting for something—she wasn’t sure what—to happen. But after a second, Stefan looked away, and the moment was broken. “Well!” said Elena overbrightly, her attention switching back to Bonnie. “I’d love to go to the Art Institute! They have some amazing eighteenth-century paintings.”
“Okay,” Bonnie said tentatively. She elbowed Zander and tried to communicate what the hell is going on with them with a subtle eyebrow raise, but Zander only shrugged.
Bonnie turned and saw Matt for the first time—she hadn’t noticed him arrive. He looked terrible, his eyes red and puffy as if he hadn’t slept for days.
“Matt!” she exclaimed, and hugged him quickly. “Where’s Jasmine?”
Matt flinched. “We—uh, we broke up,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Oh, Matt.” She laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “What happened?” But Matt was already turning away, heading toward the kitchen.
Confused, Bonnie looked to Zander again for an explanation, but he had moved away to break up a wrestling match between Enrique and Marcus. Grabbing hold of Meredith’s wrist, Bonnie dragged her to the side of the room.
“What’s going on with Elena and Stefan?” she hissed as soon as they were in a private corner. “And what happened with Matt and Jasmine?” She frowned, thinking of the strained looks behind her friends’ smiles, even the slightly frantic quality of the werewolves’ play. “Actually, what’s wrong with everybody?”
Meredith bit her lip.
“Tell me,” Bonnie insisted.
“I will, I swear,” Meredith said in a rush. “But tonight, can’t we just be happy you’re back?”
“Show us a magic trick, Bonnie!” Enrique shouted, successfully distracted from his wrestling match.
Bonnie rolled her eyes at him, then pointed a finger at Meredith. “Tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll tell me everything.” Meredith nodded, and Bonnie walked to the center of the room, her head high. If they wanted her to have fun for one night before they told her about whatever awful things were going on, she would.
“Witch trick! Witch trick!” several of the werewolves were chanting, led by Enrique, and Bonnie smiled. Finally, she could show her friends—show Zander—what the last few weeks had been all about.
Centering herself the way she had learned in Chicago, her fingers resting against the falcon at her throat, she reached down, down, through the concrete and brick of her building t
o the earth beneath. Once she was planted as firmly as a tree, she stretched her consciousness out, and decisively grabbed on to the energy of everyone else in the room.
A shock jolted through her when she linked to Zander, and through him to the other werewolves. Their energy was rawer than she was used to, a tough, muscular power that made her quiver, feeling hyperalert. She could hear Zander’s heart beating steadily next to her, could smell the sharp scent of alcohol from everyone’s drinks and a sweet sticky scent coming off the cookies Elena had just brought into the room. Was this the way werewolves felt all the time?
She was more cautious linking to Stefan—his energy was powerful and dark and acutely aware. It had a colder undercurrent that made her shiver, cool and still, while the werewolves were full of life and warmth. Meredith’s energy was strangely similar to Stefan’s—vampires and hunters, two sides of the same coin, Bonnie thought, almost overwhelmed—while Alaric’s felt more familiar, like that of the witches she’d worked with in Chicago. Elena’s energy glowed golden and warmed Bonnie from the inside, as if her bones were gently simmering.
There was, Bonnie thought, a lot of Power here to draw on. She pulled it through herself carefully, taming the energy, and then focused it on Enrique, who was still leading the chant. Then she shoved.
With a startled yelp, Enrique hit the ceiling, a little harder than Bonnie had intended, and she held him there, the others’ Power streaming through her.
After a moment of shocked silence, everyone, even Enrique, began to laugh.
Let’s meet north of campus. 20 min?
Stefan read the text message from Jack and headed for the door. He and the lead hunter needed to talk. Jack was going to have to take Elena’s Guardian instincts more seriously; they both were. Besides, it was getting late, and the party was breaking up anyway.
He sensed Elena behind him a moment before she touched his arm. “Stefan? Can I talk to you?” She looked pale and strained, her jewel-blue eyes enormous in her face.
“Yes, of course,” Stefan said, his heart turning over. He’d wanted to pull her aside all evening. It had been torturous watching her, not knowing what she was thinking or how she felt about him right now. “Give me just one moment, and we’ll walk home.” He quickly texted Jack back I can’t tonight. Sorry, and turned off his phone.
This was more important.
He and Elena went downstairs and out into the street together, then silently turned toward home. The night was warm and clear, stars glowing brightly overhead. The silence felt companionable, without the tension that had been hanging between him and Elena lately. After a while, Stefan’s shoulders lowered, some of his anxiety leaving him. They were Elena and Stefan, and they loved each other, no matter what. He knew that. He took her hand, and she held on tightly.
“I wanted to apologize,” Elena said carefully, still looking straight ahead. “Even though I don’t agree with what you’re doing, I know you’re only trying to protect me.” He admired her profile for a moment, her small nose and pointed chin, the soft swell of her lips. She looked so delicate, her skin pale and smooth in the moonlight, but he needed to remember that she wasn’t.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said, and she turned to look up into his face. “I know you’re not helpless. You’ve always been strong, even before you found your Power.” He remembered that high school girl, so determined and clever and unhappy, her brave spirit holding both him and Damon spellbound, despite all their years of experience, all the women they had known. After the first shock of the similarity, it wasn’t her resemblance to Katherine that had attracted them, not at all.
They had reached the door of their building. Stefan spoke hurriedly, eager to get out all the things he needed to say to her, somehow feeling that they needed to clear the air before they went inside. The next time they went home, he wanted to do it cleanly, without the strain and tension that had been hovering over them like a dark cloud.
“I’ve been so stubborn,” Stefan said. “I know I have. I haven’t been listening. Sometimes the only thing I can see is danger to you. I keep thinking, if I can just get rid of everything that threatens you, then we can be free. We can start our lives together, the lives that are going to last forever.” He swallowed, suddenly finding himself very near to tears. “If I lost you, I couldn’t survive it,” he finished softly.
“Oh, Stefan.” Elena stroked his cheek, then ran her fingers gently through his hair. “There will always be another danger. This is our life together. We can’t waste it.”
“I know,” Stefan said, raising his hand to take hers. “And I should have listened to you about Trinity. I can’t—I couldn’t believe that she was still in there. But I believe in you. You’re a Guardian and”—he had to force the words out, because so much of him was still screaming protect Elena, save her—“maybe you can sense something I don’t.” He sighed. “I trust you, Elena. If you want to try to save Trinity, I will help you.”
It seemed so simple, suddenly. No matter what happened tomorrow—and he didn’t know what would happen, because Trinity was dangerous and Solomon was still after Elena, none of those facts had changed—they were united again. “I love you,” he told her. “More every day. We’ll be together for a thousand years, longer, and I’m going to keep loving you for all of them.”
Elena kissed him in answer, warm and insistent, and he pulled her even closer. They went upstairs to their apartment hand in hand, exchanging kisses the whole way.
“I have something for you,” Stefan said when they were finally inside. His slow heart sped a little as he dug in his pocket for the key and put it in her hand. “It’s to your house in Fell’s Church,” he explained, in answer to her inquiring look. “I bought it for you, from your Aunt Judith. When this is over, when Solomon is finally dead, we’re going to go everywhere. I’ll show you all the places I’ve been, and we’ll find new parts of the world together. But we’ll always have somewhere to come home to. We’ll have a home together—your home.”
Elena’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I was feeling so … I wasn’t ready to let go of it. I want that, a home we can come back to together.”
Elena is my home, he thought and told her so, running his fingers over the soft skin of her cheeks, her forehead, her lips, her throat, as if he could memorize her by touch. She murmured softly back to him, her breath warm, her eyes bright with life. Stefan kissed her neck, feeling her blood beating through her veins, as steady and constant as the tides.
Elena cocked her head invitingly to one side, and he gently slid his canines beneath her skin. The first mouthful of Elena’s rich, warm blood brought them even closer together, two pieces of a perfect whole. Home, he thought again.
Elena is my home.
#TVD11StelenaForever
“So,” Bonnie said playfully, “I couldn’t help noticing a little tension between you and Stefan last night, and then this morning you’re so chipper. Everything work out all right?” She waggled her eyebrows at Elena as she stirred her coffee, her spoon clinking gently against the side of the cup.
Elena could feel her cheeks heating up, which was ridiculous: She and Stefan had been living together for years. “That is a lot of pastry,” she said, deflecting Bonnie’s attention. “What did you do, buy out the bakery?”
They were back at Bonnie’s place for breakfast, just the two of them, and Bonnie and Zander’s kitchen table was heaped high with croissants, Danish, muffins, and doughnuts, as well as a big glass bowl of cut fruit and a pot of coffee.
“I know, right?” Bonnie said. “It’s all Zander. It’s either his way of showing how happy he is I’m home, or of making sure I get too big to get out the door again. I’ve never figured out if throwing all this food at me is a wolf thing or a guy thing or just a Zander thing. He’s a nurturer, I guess.” She stirred her coffee again and then frowned sternly at Elena. “But you’re not off the hook yet. Are you and Stefan fighting?”
“I don’t think it’s a
guy thing,” Elena sidetracked. “Stefan doesn’t eat and barely remembers that I do. If I didn’t go to the store, there’d be nothing but blood bags and bottled water in our fridge.” Bonnie shot her a look, and Elena sighed. “We’re not fighting anymore. But we’ve still got to convince everyone else not to kill Trinity.”
“I still don’t understand about that. Why does everybody think Solomon is in Trinity’s body?” Bonnie asked.
Elena explained. She hadn’t seen Solomon—or the guy they had thought was Solomon—die, but she remembered everything Stefan and Meredith had told her, how he’d examined all of them, his intense concentration on Trinity as she’d jittered and bled. How they’d thought that Solomon was dead, but then Trinity had escaped them and turned into a powerful vampire with Solomon’s yellow gaze. How the “Solomon” they’d fought wasn’t originally Solomon at all, but a man named Gabriel Dalton.
Bonnie listened intently, picking at an apple turnover and asking an occasional question. When Elena finished, she shook her head, puzzled. “It doesn’t sound like body-swapping to me,” she said stubbornly.
“I forgot you were the expert on this,” Elena said, with just a touch of sarcasm, and Bonnie made a face at her.
“Listen,” Bonnie said. “All I’ve been doing this last month is working with people’s energies. Everybody’s got a very distinct flavor that’s all their own.”
“Like their auras,” Elena said, nodding in understanding. Everyone’s aura was different. “But I still haven’t been able to see Solomon’s aura.”
“Auras, energies. Potato, potahto,” Bonnie said. “Just because you couldn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Somehow, Solomon can shield it from you.” She put down her fork and leaned forward, fixing Elena earnestly with her wide brown eyes. “My point is, if Solomon swapped bodies with Trinity, everyone would have known right away, before Solomon—or Gabriel, or whoever—died. They’d be able to tell that it wasn’t the same person.” Elena started to object, and Bonnie held up her hand. “Think about it,” she said. “Nobody ever thought Katherine was you for more than a few minutes, even though you looked so much alike. Different energy. Similar shells, but different inside. If the people who knew her thought it was still Trinity in there—and they hunted with her, they must know her really well—then it was Trinity.”
