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  Moonsong

  ( The Vampire Diaries: The Hunter - 2 )

  L. J. Smith

  CREATED BY

  L. J. Smith

  The

  Vampire

  Diaries

  THE HUNTERS

  VOL. 2

  MOONSONG

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Works

  Credits

  Copyright

  Back Ads

  About the Publisher

  1

  Dear Diary,

  I’m so scared.

  My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry, and my hands are shaking. I’ve faced so much and survived: vampires, werewolves, phantoms. Things I never imagined were real. And now I’m terrified.

  Why?

  Simply because I’m leaving home.

  And I know that it’s completely, insanely ridiculous. I’m barely leaving home, really. I’m going to college, only a few hours’ drive from this darling house where I’ve lived since I was a baby.

  No, I’m not going to start crying again. I’ll be sharing a room with Bonnie and Meredith, my two best friends in the whole world. In the same dorm, only a couple of floors away will be my beloved Stefan. My other best friend, Matt, will be just a short walk across campus. Even Damon will be in an apartment in the town nearby.

  Honestly, I couldn’t stick any closer to home unless I never moved out of this house at all. I’m being such a wimp. But it seems like I just got my home back—my family, my life—after being exiled for so long, and now I suddenly have to leave again.

  I suppose I’m scared partly because these last few weeks of summer have been wonderful. We packed all the enjoyment we would have been having these past few months—if it hadn’t been for fighting the kitsune, traveling to the Dark Dimension, battling the jealousy phantom, and all the other Extremely Not Fun things we’ve done—

  into three glorious weeks. We had picnics and sleepovers and went swimming and shopping. We took a trip to the county fair, where Matt won Bonnie a stuffed tiger and turned bright red when she squealed and leaped into his arms. Stefan even kissed me on the top of the Ferris wheel, just like any normal guy might kiss his girlfriend on a beautiful summer night.

  We were so happy. So normal in a way I thought we could never be again.

  That’s what’s frightening me, I guess. I’m scared that these few weeks have been a bright golden interlude and that now that things are changing, we’ll be heading back into darkness and horror. It’s like that poem we read in English class last fall says: Nothing gold can stay. Not for me.

  Even Damon…

  The clatter of feet in the hal way downstairs distracted her, and Elena Gilbert’s pen slowed. She glanced up at the last couple of boxes scattered around her room. Stefan and Damon must be here to pick her up.

  But she wanted to finish her thought, to express the last worry that had been nagging at her during these perfect weeks. She turned back to her diary, writing faster so that she could get her thoughts down before she had to leave.

  Damon has changed. Ever since we defeated the jealousy phantom, he’s been … kinder. Not just to me, not just to Bonnie, who he’s always had a soft spot for, but even to Matt and Meredith. He can still be intensely irritating and unpredictable—he wouldn’t be Damon without that—but he hasn’t had that cruel edge to him. Not like he used to.

  He and Stefan seem to have come to an

  understanding. They know I love them both, and yet they haven’t let jealousy come between them.

  They’re close, acting like true brothers in a way I haven’t seen before. There’s this delicate balance between the three of us that’s lasted through the end of the summer. And I worry that any misstep on my part will bring it crashing down and that like their first love, Katherine, I’ll tear the brothers apart. And then we’ll lose Damon forever.

  Aunt Judith cal ed up, sounding impatient, “Elena!”

  “Coming!” Elena replied. She quickly scribbled a few more sentences in her diary.

  Still, it’s possible that this new life will be wonderful. Maybe I’ll find everything I’ve been looking for. I can’t hold on to high school, or to my life here at home, forever. And who knows? Maybe this time the gold will stay.

  “Elena! Your ride is waiting!”

  Aunt Judith was definitely getting stressed out now.

  She’d wanted to drive Elena up to school herself. But Elena knew she wouldn’t be able to say good-bye to her family without crying, so she’d asked Stefan and Damon to drive her up instead. It would be less embarrassing to get emotional here at home than to weep al over Dalcrest’s campus. Since Elena had decided to go up with the Salvatore brothers, Aunt Judith had been working herself up about every little detail, anxious that Elena’s col ege career wouldn’t start off perfectly without her there to supervise. It was al because Aunt Judith loved her, Elena knew.

  Elena slammed the blue-velvet-covered journal shut and dropped it into an open box. She climbed to her feet and headed for the door, but before she opened it, she turned to look at her room one last time.

  It was so empty, with her favorite posters missing from the wal s and half the books gone from her bookcase. Only a few clothes remained in her dresser and closet. The furniture was al stil in place. But now that the room was stripped of most of her possessions, it felt more like an impersonal hotel room than the cozy haven of her childhood.

  So much had happened here. Elena could remember cuddling up with her father on the window seat to read together when she was a little girl. She and Bonnie and Meredith—and Caroline, who had been her good friend, too, once—had spent at least a hundred nights here tel ing secrets, studying, dressing for dances, and just hanging out. Stefan had kissed her here, early in the morning, and disappeared quickly when Aunt Judith came to wake her.

  Elena remembered Damon’s cruel, triumphant smile as she invited him in that first time, what felt like a mil ion years ago. And, not so long ago, her joy when he had appeared here one dark night, after they al thought he was dead.

  There was a quiet knock at the door, and it swung open.

  Stefan stood in the doorway, watching her.

  “About ready?” he said. “Your aunt is a little worried.

  She thinks you’re not going to have time to unpack before orientation if we don’t get going.”

  Elena stood and went over to wrap her arms around him. He smel ed clean and woodsy, and she nestled her head against his shoulder. “I’m coming,” she said. “It’s just hard to say good-bye, you know? Eve
rything’s changing.” Stefan turned toward her and caught her mouth softly in a kiss. “I know,” he said when the kiss ended, and ran his finger gently along the curve of her bottom lip. “I’l take these boxes down and give you one more minute. Aunt Judith wil feel better if she sees the truck getting packed up.”

  “Okay. I’l be right down.”

  Stefan left the room with the boxes, and Elena sighed, looking around again. The blue flowered curtains her mother had made for her when Elena was nine stil hung over the windows. Elena remembered her mother hugging her, her eyes a little teary, when her baby girl told her she was too big for Winnie the Pooh curtains.

  Elena’s own eyes fil ed with tears, and she tucked her hair behind her ears, mirroring the gesture her mother had used when she was thinking hard. Elena was so young when her parents died. Maybe if they’d lived, she and her mother would be friends now, would know each other as equals, not just as mother and daughter.

  Her parents had gone to Dalcrest Col ege, too. That’s where they’d met, in fact. Downstairs on top of the piano sat a picture of them in their graduation robes on the sun-fil ed lawn in front of the Dalcrest library, laughing, impossibly young.

  Maybe going to Dalcrest would bring Elena closer to them. Maybe she’d learn more about the people they’d been, not just the mom and dad she’d known when she was little, and find her lost family among the neoclassical buildings and the sweeping green lawns of the col ege.

  She wasn’t leaving, not real y. She was moving forward.

  Elena set her jaw firmly and headed out of her room, clicking off the light as she went.

  Downstairs, Aunt Judith, her husband, Robert, and Elena’s five-year-old sister, Margaret, were gathered in the hal , waiting, watching Elena as she came down the stairs.

  Aunt Judith was fussing, of course. She couldn’t keep stil ; her hands were twisting together, smoothing her hair, or fiddling with her earrings. “Elena,” she said, “are you sure you’ve packed everything you need? There’s so much to remember.” She frowned.

  Her aunt’s obvious anxiety made it easier for Elena to smile reassuringly and hug her. Aunt Judith held her tight, relaxing for a moment, and sniffed. “I’m going to miss you, sweetheart.”

  “I’l miss you, too,” Elena said, and squeezed Aunt Judith closer, feeling her own lips tremble. She gave a shaky laugh. “But I’l be back. If I forgot anything, or if I get homesick, I’l run right back for a weekend. I don’t have to wait for Thanksgiving.”

  Next to them, Robert shifted from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. Elena let go of Aunt Judith and turned to him.

  “Now, I know col ege students have a lot of expenses,” he said. “And we don’t want you to have to worry about money, so you’ve got an account at the student store, but…” He opened his wal et and handed Elena a fistful of bil s. “Just in case.”

  “Oh,” said Elena, touched and a little flustered. “Thank you so much, Robert, but you real y don’t have to.” He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “We want you to have everything you need,” he said firmly. Elena smiled at him grateful y, folded the money, and put it in her pocket.

  Next to Robert, Margaret glared down obstinately at her shoes. Elena knelt before her and took her little sister’s hands. “Margaret?” she prompted.

  Large blue eyes stared into her own. Margaret frowned and shook her head, her mouth a tight line.

  “I’m going to miss you so much, Meggie,” Elena said, pul ing her close, her eyes fil ing with tears again. Her little sister’s dandelion-soft hair brushed against Elena’s cheek.

  “But I’l be back for Thanksgiving, and maybe you can come visit me on campus. I’d love to show off my little sister to al my new friends.”

  Margaret swal owed. “I don’t want you to go,” she said in a smal miserable voice. “You’re always leaving.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Elena said helplessly, cuddling her sister closer. “I always come back, don’t I?” Elena shivered. Once again, she wondered how much Margaret remembered of what had really happened in Fel ’s Church over the last year. The Guardians had promised to change everyone’s memories of those dark months when vampires, werewolves, and kitsune had nearly destroyed the town—and when Elena herself had died and risen again—but there seemed to be exceptions.

  Caleb Smal wood remembered, and sometimes Margaret’s innocent face looked strangely knowing.

  “Elena,” Aunt Judith said again, her voice thick and weepy, “you’d better get going.”

  Elena hugged her sister one more time before letting her go. “Okay,” she said, standing and picking up her bag.

  “I’l cal you tonight and let you know how I’m settling in.” Aunt Judith nodded, and Elena gave her another quick kiss before wiping her eyes and opening the front door.

  Outside, the sunlight was so bright she had to blink.

  Damon and Stefan were leaning against the truck Stefan had rented, her stuff packed into the back. As she stepped forward, they both glanced up and, at the same time, smiled at her.

  Oh. They were so beautiful, the two of them, that seeing them could stil leave her shaken after al this time. Stefan, her love Stefan, his leaf-green eyes shining at the sight of her, was gorgeous with his classical profile and that sweet little kissable curve to his bottom lip.

  And Damon—al luminescent pale skin, black velvety eyes, and silken hair—was graceful and deadly al at once.

  Damon’s bril iant smile made something inside her stretch and purr like a panther recognizing its mate.

  Both pairs of eyes watched her lovingly, possessively.

  The Salvatore brothers were hers now. What was she going to do about it? The thought made her frown and made her shoulders hunch nervously. Then she consciously smoothed the wrinkles in her forehead away, relaxed, and smiled back at them. What would come, would come.

  “Time to go,” she said, and tilted her face up toward the sun.

  2

  Meredith held the tire gauge firmly against the valve of her left back tire while she checked it. The pressure was fine.

  The pressure on al four tires was fine. The antifreeze, oil, and transmission fluids were al topped off, the car battery was new, and the jack and spare tire were in perfect shape. She should have known. Her parents weren’t the kind to stay home from work to see her off to col ege. They knew she didn’t need coddling, but they’d show their love by making sure al the preparations were made, that she was safe and perfectly ready for anything that might happen. Of course, they wouldn’t tell her that they had checked everything, either; they’d want her to continue protecting herself.

  There wasn’t anything she had to do now except leave.

  Which was the one thing she didn’t want to do.

  “Come with me,” she said without looking up, despising the faint quaver she heard in her own voice. “Just for a couple of weeks.”

  “You know I can’t,” Alaric said as he brushed his hand lightly over her back. “I wouldn’t want to leave if I came with you. It’l be better this way. You’l get to enjoy the first weeks of col ege like al the other new students, without anyone holding you back. Then I’l come up and visit soon.” Meredith turned to face him and found Alaric gazing back at her. His mouth tensed, just the tiniest tightening, and she could see that parting again, after only a few weeks together, was just as hard for him as it was for her.

  She leaned in and kissed him softly.

  “Better than if I’d gone to Harvard,” she murmured.

  “Much closer.”

  As the summer had ended, she and Matt had realized they couldn’t leave their friends and head off to out-of-state col eges as they’d planned. They’d al been through so much together, and they wanted to stay together, to protect one another, more than they wanted to go anywhere else.

  Their home had been nearly destroyed more than once, and only Elena’s blackmail of the Celestial Court had restored it and saved their families. They couldn’t leave.

  N
ot while they were the only ones standing against the darkness out there, the darkness that would be drawn forever to the Power of the magical ley lines that crossed the area around Fel ’s Church. Dalcrest was close enough that they’d be able to come back if danger threatened again.

  They needed to protect their home.

  So Stefan had gone down to the administrative offices at Dalcrest and used his vampire mojo. Suddenly Matt had the footbal scholarship to Dalcrest he’d turned down in favor of Kent State back in the spring, and Meredith was not only expected as an incoming freshman but was housed in a triple in the best dorm on campus with Bonnie and Elena. The supernatural had worked for them, for a change.

  Stil , she’d had to give up a couple of dreams to get here. Harvard. Alaric by her side.

  Meredith shook her head. Those dreams were incompatible, anyway. Alaric couldn’t have come to Harvard with her. Alaric was staying here in Fel ’s Church to research the origins of al the supernatural things that had happened over the town’s history. Luckily, Duke was letting him count this toward his dissertation on the paranormal.

  And he’d be able to monitor the town for danger at the same time. They’d have to be apart for now, no matter where Meredith chose to go, but at least Dalcrest was a manageable drive away.

  Alaric’s skin had a soft tan, and a scattering of golden freckles crossed his cheekbones. Their faces were so close she could feel the warmth of his breath.

  “What’re you thinking?” His voice was a low murmur.

  “Your freckles,” she said. “They’re gorgeous.” Then she took a breath and pul ed away. “I love you,” Meredith said, and then rushed on before a wave of longing could overwhelm her, “I have to go.” She picked up one of the suitcases sitting by the car and swung it into the trunk.

  “I love you, too,” Alaric said, and caught her hand and held it tightly for a moment, looking into her eyes. Then he let go and put the last suitcase into the trunk and slammed the lid.

  Meredith kissed him, quick and hard, and hurried herself into the driver’s seat. Once she was safely seated, belted in, the engine running, she let herself look at him again.

  “Bye,” she said through the open window. “I’l cal you tonight. Every night.”