Destiny Rising Page 12

  The tall girl with the long auburn hair had once been as close to her as Meredith and Elena were: Caroline. They’d celebrated each other’s birthdays, gotten dressed for high school dances together, spent the night at each other’s houses.

  But then Caroline had changed. She’d betrayed them all, and the last time Bonnie had seen her, Caroline had been pregnant with werewolf twins and infected by the kitsune demons, vicious and insane.

  Bonnie started forward, a hot ball of anger in her stomach. How dare Caroline turn up now, after all that had happened, and still be working against them?

  Then the beefy guy yanked away from Zander, who wrenched him back onto the path. Bonnie saw his face for the first time. She stopped, the hot anger turning to ice. She could remember those thick features twisting grotesquely into a snarling, feral snout. He’d been a killer. He’d leered at her, called her names, and wanted to eat her.

  Tyler Smallwood. The werewolf who had killed Sue Carson and run away from Fell’s Church, leaving Caroline pregnant. The werewolf who had helped Klaus.

  “Stop! Meredith, stop,” Caroline begged. Meredith could see one side of Caroline’s face from where she held her, and tears were running down it, cutting clean tracks through the soot from the fire.

  What was left of the trunk of the tree crashed to the ground, sending up more sparks and thick black smoke, and Meredith felt Caroline start at the sound. Slowly, Meredith released her grip on Caroline, pulling the stave away from her throat so she could look Caroline in the eye. Caroline took a deep, sobbing breath and turned to face Meredith fully. Her cat-shaped green eyes were wide with terror.

  Meredith glared at her. “How could you help him, Caroline?” she asked fiercely. “Don’t you remember how Klaus kidnapped you?”

  Caroline shook her head. “You’re crazy,” she said, and Meredith was amazed that bedraggled, tearful Caroline could still sound so disdainful. “I’m not helping anyone.”

  “So you just decided to burn down a tree today?” Meredith asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “I . . . guess,” Caroline said, frowning. She crossed her arms defensively across her chest. “I think it was an accident.”

  There was something wrong here, Meredith realized. Caroline didn’t look guilty or defiant. Freaked out, absolutely, but it seemed like she was being honest. Meredith sighed. It would be nice to get her hands on someone responsible for the destruction of their only weapon, but she was beginning to suspect Caroline wasn’t that person.

  Beside them, Zander growled, tussling with Tyler.

  “Let him go, Zander,” Meredith said. “I need you to tell me if Caroline’s telling the truth.”

  Zander snarled again, kneeing Tyler in the chest and knocking him onto the ground. Meredith stared at him. She’d never seen the easygoing Zander like this: his white teeth bared in fury. He even looked bigger, and somehow more feral, his hair disordered as if it was trying to stand on end.

  Zander had once told her, Meredith remembered, that those who had been turned into werewolves didn’t smell right to him, not like Original werewolves.

  From behind her, closer to the fire, Bonnie spoke, her voice rough from the smoke. “Zander,” she said. “Zander, let him go.”

  Zander heard Bonnie as he hadn’t seemed to hear Meredith, reluctantly releasing Tyler and standing up. He was tense, though, poised to attack again as Tyler slowly climbed to his feet, brushing dirt from himself. They watched each other carefully.

  “All right,” Zander said. He backed away from Tyler slowly, his lips still pulled back in a snarl, and looked at Caroline. Zander got close to her, close enough to sniff at her neck. “Tell me what you’re doing here,” he said.

  Caroline pulled away indignantly, but Meredith took her arm and forced her back toward Zander. “Why are you here, Caroline?” she asked sternly.

  The auburn-haired girl glared at them. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she said. “We’re just camping. The fire was an accident.”

  “So Klaus didn’t send you here?” Bonnie asked skeptically. “You’ve never been the camping type, Caroline.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Klaus,” Caroline said steadily.

  “What about you, Tyler?” Meredith asked. “Did your old master send you here?”

  Tyler shook his head hurriedly. “I don’t want anything to do with that guy,” he said.

  “Well, Zander?” Meredith asked quietly.

  “They’re telling the truth, as far as they know it,” Zander said. “But there’s something wrong. They smell . . . off.”

  “Klaus compelled them,” Meredith said flatly. “They only know what Klaus told them was true. And Klaus must have told them to go camping here. We can’t hold them responsible for burning down the tree. It’s not their fault.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Caroline said. “No one compelled us to do anything.” But her voice sounded nervous and unsure, and Tyler wrapped his arm around her protectively.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Tyler assured her. “Even if we’d meant to burn down that tree, it’s just a tree. Why would Klaus even care?”

  Meredith let her stave rest loosely against her leg. She wasn’t going to fight anyone here. The Tyler she’d known back in the worst days in Fell’s Church might have deserved killing, but judging by the way he was trying to shield Caroline, that wasn’t who he was now. “It was a pretty important tree,” she said quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said. Caroline had never been good at apologies, Meredith remembered. “You’ve got no reason to believe me, to believe us, but I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt you, not even kill a tree. If the memories I have of Fell’s Church are real, we used to be friends. Real friends,” she said, looking from Meredith to Bonnie, “and I ruined it all.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Bonnie said bluntly. “But it’s in the past now.” Caroline gave her a crooked half smile, and, after a moment, Bonnie smiled back awkwardly.

  “What do you remember? About Fell’s Church?” Meredith asked them.

  Tyler visibly swallowed and pulled Caroline closer to him. “The monsters and everything, that’s the truth?” he asked, his voice shaking.

  Bonnie nodded. Meredith knew she couldn’t even bear to put all that history into words.

  A drop of blood rolled down Tyler’s forehead from a scrape Zander must have inflicted, and he wiped it away with the hand that wasn’t holding on to Caroline. “One day I woke up, and I remembered normal life, but I also remembered this crazy story where I was a werewolf and did, uh . . .” His cheeks flushed. “Bad things.”

  “The bad things happened, but then everything changed,” Meredith told him. “Most people don’t remember, but everything you think you know is true.” It would be too complicated to explain to them how Elena had saved Fell’s Church by blackmailing the Guardians into changing the events of the last year. For almost everyone, their senior year had been completely normal: no vampires, no werewolves, no kitsune. But a handful of people, all with supernatural Powers or Influences of one kind or another, could remember both timelines.

  “Do you remember Klaus?” Alaric asked. “Did you see him at all after you left Fell’s Church? Maybe in your dreams?”

  Meredith glanced at him approvingly. Klaus could dream-travel; they knew that. Maybe Tyler or Caroline would have some residual memory that could help them, even if they couldn’t remember being Influenced.

  But Tyler shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since Fell’s Church,” he said.

  “Not since you kidnapped Caroline to help bring Stefan to him, you mean?” Bonnie said tartly. “How did you two end up together again, anyway?”

  Tyler was blushing miserably and Caroline took his hand, folding his meaty fingers in her long, elegant ones. “I was still expecting Tyler’s babies. Both sets of memories were sure about that. So when we found each other we decided that the best thing we could do was try to raise our family.” She shrugged. “All that stuff
—Klaus and everything—it just seems like a dream now. We’ve been staying with my grandmother, and she’s been helping to take care of the twins.” And that—picking the version of events that was most convenient for her and sticking to it—was just like Caroline, Meredith realized. She’d never had any imagination.

  “You know, Tyler,” Bonnie said, “you should get in touch with your cousin Caleb. He was looking for you in Fell’s Church, and he seemed really worried.”

  That was one way of putting it, Meredith supposed. Caleb had stalked them, put glamours on them, and cast spells to sow discord between Elena and the others, all because he suspected them of being behind Tyler’s disappearance and his own dual memories.

  Caroline put her hand on Tyler’s shoulder, and Meredith noticed something. “You cut your nails off,” she said. Caroline had always had long, perfectly polished nails, ever since they had stopped making mud pies and started talking about boys.

  “Oh,” Caroline said, glancing at her hands. “Yeah, I had to cut them short so they wouldn’t scratch the twins. They like to suck on my fingers.” She added hesitantly, “Do you want to see pictures?”

  Bonnie nodded curiously, and Meredith joined her to look at Caroline’s cell-phone pictures of two tiny babies. “Brianna and Luke,” she told them. “See how blue their eyes are?”

  That was when Meredith decided she might as well forgive Caroline and Tyler. If Caroline had changed enough that she cared more for her babies than her looks, and Tyler wasn’t trying to throw his weight around, they were probably no threat. True, they had ruined everything by destroying the white ash, but they hadn’t done it maliciously.

  They exchanged a few more words, and then parted ways. Caroline and Tyler headed back down the trail, Caroline’s long hair swinging against her tanned shoulders. It was strange, Meredith thought as she watched them. Caroline had been such a close friend, and then such a despised enemy, and now she felt nothing for her.

  “That was the only lead I’d found in any of the references about defeating Klaus,” Alaric said mournfully, looking at the heap of ash and scorched pieces of the blessed ash tree.

  “Could we gather up the ashes and use them for something?” Bonnie asked hopefully. “Maybe make a salve and put it on a regular stake?”

  Alaric shook his head. “It wouldn’t work,” he told her. “Everything I’ve read makes it clear that it’s got to be undamaged wood.”

  “We’ll find something else,” Meredith said, gritting her teeth. “There has to be something he’s susceptible to. But at least one good thing that came out of this.”

  “What?” Bonnie asked. “I hope you’re not talking about Caroline, because a few pictures aren’t going to erase everything that she’s done. And those babies are clearly going to look more like Tyler than like her.”

  “Well,” Meredith pointed out, “remember how we told you that when you were having your vision in our room, you said Klaus was calling an old friend to help him?” She waved a hand toward the retreating figures down the path. “If it was Tyler, he’s not a threat after all. We’re not facing a second enemy.”

  “Yeah,” Bonnie said thoughtfully, and wrapped her arms around herself. “If the vision was talking about Tyler.”

  Chapter 17

  Meredith moodily picked at the mud in the grooves of her hiking boots, flicking the little pieces of dirt onto the floor of the car.

  Beside her, Alaric was driving them back to campus. There was a thoughtful crease between his eyebrows, and Meredith knew he was turning over possibilities, trying to approach the Klaus problem from every angle he could think of. She felt a wave of affection for him wash over her, and she reached over to squeeze his knee. Alaric glanced at her and smiled.

  Turning to look into the backseat, she saw Bonnie fast asleep, her head on Zander’s shoulder. Zander had cuddled her close, his cheek resting against her hair.

  But as Meredith watched, Bonnie’s peaceful face grew agitated, her mouth pinching together and her eyebrows drawing down into a worried frown. She twisted in her seat, pulling her legs up under her and burying her face in Zander’s chest.

  “No,” she said, the word muffled against Zander.

  Zander grinned and tightened his arm around her. “She’s dreaming,” he told Meredith. “It’s so cute how she talks in her sleep.”

  “Alaric, pull over,” Meredith said sharply. Alaric pulled the car onto the side of the road, and Meredith quickly rummaged through the glove compartment. Thank goodness Alaric carried paper and pens in the car.

  “What is it?” Zander asked, alarmed. Pressed against him, Bonnie shook her head hard, her curls spreading across his chest, and murmured small noises of distress.

  “She’s not just dreaming, she’s having a vision,” Meredith told him. “Bonnie,” she said, keeping her voice low and soothing, “Bonnie, what’s happening?”

  Bonnie moaned and thrashed, her body arching away from Zander. Eyes widening, Zander grabbed at her, trying to hold her still.

  “Bonnie,” Meredith said again. “It’s okay. Tell me what you’re seeing.”

  Bonnie sucked in a breath, and then her wide brown eyes flew open and she began to scream. Alaric jerked in surprise, banging his elbow on the steering wheel.

  The scream went on and on, filling the car with noise.

  “Bonnie, stop it!” Zander was pulling Bonnie to his chest, trying to calm her and to keep her from falling off the seat as she struggled.

  Finally, she grew still, and the screams died off into whimpers. Then she looked around at the others. “What’s going on?” she said thickly.

  “You were having a vision, Bonnie,” Meredith said. “Everything’s okay.”

  Bonnie shook her head. “No,” she whispered, her voice cracked and strained from screaming. “It wasn’t a vision.”

  “What do you mean?” Alaric asked.

  “It was a dream.” Bonnie was visibly calmer, and Zander gingerly released her from the tight hold he had on her arms and took her hand instead.

  “Just a dream?” Meredith said doubtfully.

  Bonnie shook her head again, slowly. “Not exactly,” she said. “Do you remember the dreams I had when Klaus was holding Elena prisoner? After . . .” She hesitated. “After Elena died. The dreams she sent me? That Klaus invaded? I think Klaus was sending me this dream.”

  Meredith exchanged a look with Alaric. “If he can get inside her mind like this, how are we going to protect her?” she asked quietly, and he shook his head.

  “What happened in the dream?” Zander asked, stroking Bonnie’s arm.

  “It was . . . it was like a military camp or something,” Bonnie said, frowning, clearly trying to remember. “There were trees everywhere. Klaus had a whole group of people around him. He was standing in front of them, telling them how strong they were and that they were ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Meredith asked quickly.

  Bonnie grimaced. “He didn’t say exactly, but nothing good, I’m sure,” she said. “I couldn’t see how many people there were or make out what they looked like exactly. But it seemed like there were a lot of them. It was all sort of clouded and vague, but I could see Klaus as clearly as anything.”

  “He’s gathering an army,” Meredith said, her heart sinking. They had no ash tree, no weapon against Klaus. And he wasn’t alone.

  “There’s more,” Bonnie said. She hunched her shoulders, curling into herself protectively, pressing closer to Zander. She looked miserable and frightened, her face sickly white and her eyes rimmed with red. “After he finished his speech, he looked right at me, and I knew he’d brought me there. He reached out like he was going to take my hand and just brushed it with his fingers.” She reached her own hand out in front of her and stared at it, her lips trembling. “His hand was so cold. And he said, ‘I’m coming, little one. I’m coming for you.’”

  Chapter 18

  Stefan pushed Elena behind him as he launched himself at a vampire, ripping into its thro
at with his elongated fangs. Beside him, Spencer, in wolf form, cannoned into another of the Vitale vampires and knocked her sprawling, only to be thrown violently into a row of bookshelves as the vampire regained her footing. The shelves wobbled and collapsed on top of the werewolf, blocking him from Elena’s sight.

  Elena gripped the stake in her hand firmly and gritted her teeth. She could sense evil all around her, pulling her to hurry, to do something about it. She didn’t have the supernatural strength of Stefan or the werewolf, or of the vampires they were fighting against, but if she was quick and lucky, maybe she could take one or two of them out.

  They hadn’t really expected to find any vampires in the library at all. If they had, they would have been better prepared, weapons in hand, and would have brought more members of the Pack with them. They had been doing a quick after-hours sweep of the library, making sure the Vitale Society’s meeting room was still chained up. And here, just a floor above the entrance to that room, they’d found what must be—Elena glanced around, calculating—all the remaining vampires of the Vitale Society, except for Chloe, still safely hidden with Matt.

  Eight vampires. Until now, they’d been tracking down one vampire at a time, finding them alone midhunt. They’d had no idea the vampires were still allied, because it seemed like they had scattered. If they had known they were still working together, Elena and the others would have been more careful, or somehow managed to track them more closely.

  Spencer was up again now, and snarling as he tore at the side of one of the vampires, who struggled frantically against him. Stefan was stronger than these younger vampires, and two bodies already lay at his feet, but they were still outnumbered. Two grabbed Stefan by the arm and swung him around so that another could pin him by the shoulder, stake held high.