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  Klaus struck him almost languidly with one hand and Stefan felt himself flying through the air. With a loud crack, he slammed into a tree and slid to the ground, gasping for breath.

  “Oh, Salvatore,” Klaus said chidingly, towering above Stefan. “I do hate you. But I don’t want to kill you, not anymore.”

  From where he lay on the ground, Stefan managed to raise his head and grunt inquiringly. What, then?

  “Better to kill Elena and let you live, I think,” the older vampire said, his white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. “I’ll kill her right in front of you, and make sure the image of her death haunts you forever, anywhere you go.” His smile widened. “That’ll be your fate.”

  Klaus turned deliberately and sauntered out of the clearing, purposely not using his vampiric speed. Just before passing out of Stefan’s sight, he looked back and gave a little two-fingered salute. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” he said. “You and your lady love.”

  Stefan let his head flop back down onto the forest floor. His spine was still cracked from where Klaus had thrown him into the tree. He had failed. Klaus was convinced that there was some way to kill Elena, and he wasn’t going to give up until he found it.

  As soon as he could, Stefan would return to Elena and the others, give them their best chance of fighting Klaus. But a cold, dark misery was blossoming inside him and, just for the moment, Stefan let himself sink into that darkness.

  Chapter 28

  Bonnie was padding across campus in bare feet, her ice-cream-cone pajama bottoms flapping around her ankles. Oh, great, she thought dismally. I forgot to get dressed again.

  “Are you ready for the test?” Meredith said brightly next to her. Bonnie stopped and stared at her suspiciously.

  “What test?” she asked. “We don’t have any classes together, do we?”

  “Oh, Bonnie,” Meredith said, sighing. “Don’t you even read your email? There was some kind of mix-up, it turns out, and we all have to pass a big high-school Spanish exam we missed, or we won’t really have graduated.”

  Bonnie stared at her, frozen in horror. “But I took French,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” Meredith said. “That’s why you should have been studying all this time. Come on, we’re going to be late.” She broke into a swift-footed run, and Bonnie stumbled after her, tripping over the laces of her Converse high-tops.

  Wait a second, she thought. Wasn’t I barefoot a minute ago?

  “Hang on, Meredith,” she said, drawing to a halt to catch her breath. “I think this is a dream.” Meredith ran on, though, straight and sure down the path, her long, dark hair flying out in the wind as she left Bonnie behind.

  Definitely a dream, Bonnie thought. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve had this dream before. “I hate this dream,” she muttered.

  She tried to remember the conscious-dreaming techniques she’d been talking about with Alaric. This is a dream, she told herself fiercely. Nothing is real and I can change whatever I want. Glancing down at herself, she made her sneakers tie themselves and changed her pajamas into skinny blue jeans and a black top. “Better,” she said. “Okay, forget the exam. I think I want . . .” Possibilities were flying through her mind, but then she forgot them all, because suddenly in front of her was Zander. Wonderful, darling Zander, who she missed with all her heart. And Shay.

  “I hate my subconscious so much,” Bonnie mumbled to herself.

  Zander was gazing down at Shay with a small smile, giving her that adoring look that was supposed to be reserved for Bonnie alone. As Bonnie watched, he ran his hand gently over Shay’s cheek, tipping her face toward him. Change it! Bonnie inwardly screamed at herself as Shay’s and Zander’s lips met in a soft, lingering kiss.

  Before she could focus, though, everything went black for one second, and she felt a powerful, painful yank as she was torn from the dream. When her eyes opened, she was somewhere new, a breeze ruffling her curls. And watching her, standing alarmingly close, his face alight with laughter, was Klaus.

  “Hello, little redbird,” he said. “Isn’t that what Damon used to call you?”

  “How do you know that?” Bonnie said suspiciously. “And where am I, anyway?” The wind rose, blowing strands of hair across her face, and she shoved them back.

  “I’ve been having a good rummage around in your mind, redbird,” Klaus said. “I can’t get to everything yet, but I can pick up bits and pieces.” He smiled widely and engagingly. He’d be quite handsome, really, Bonnie thought wildly, if he weren’t so obviously insane. Klaus went on. “That’s why I picked this place to have our chat.”

  Bonnie’s head cleared a little, and she looked around. They were outdoors, on a tiny platform sheltered by an arched cupola. In every direction, a blue expanse spread out, and far below, a touch of green. Oh, jeez. They were somewhere really high.

  Bonnie hated heights. Forcing herself to look away from the long drop on every side, she stayed still, in the middle of the platform, as far as possible from the sides, and glared up at Klaus. “Oh, yeah?” she said. It wasn’t the best line, but it was the best she could manage under the circumstances.

  Klaus smiled cheerfully. “One of the pieces I came across was your memory of the orientation tour of campus. They offered to take you up in the bell tower, didn’t they? But you said”—and suddenly an eerie echo of Bonnie’s voice rose up all around them, joking, but with a touch of actual fear—“‘No way, Jose, if I go up that high I’ll have screaming nightmares for a week!’” As the memory of Bonnie’s voice died away, Klaus grinned. “And so I thought this might be a good place for our heart-to-heart.”

  Bonnie remembered the incident on the tour vividly. The bell tower, the highest spot on campus, was a popular place, but Bonnie couldn’t look at it without her stomach clenching up. Zander and his friends liked to party on the rooftops of buildings, but rooftops tended to be a lot bigger than the bell tower, and there Bonnie could stay away from the edges. Plus, at those parties, she’d had big, reassuring, protective Zander with her, which made all the difference.

  Still, she wasn’t going to let Klaus see he was getting to her. Crossing her arms defiantly, she carefully looked only at Klaus. “I was kidding on the tour,” she lied. “I just didn’t want to climb all those stairs.”

  “Interesting,” Klaus said, his smile widening, and then he raised his hands. He didn’t touch Bonnie, but she found herself suddenly skidding back away from him, as if he was pushing her very hard. Her back collided at last with the railing at the edge of the platform, and she let out a helpless little whoof of air.

  “Don’t lie to me, redbird,” Klaus said softly, walking toward her. “I can smell your fear.”

  Bonnie clenched her teeth and said nothing. She did not look behind her.

  “Tell me Elena’s secret, little bird,” Klaus said, his voice still soft and coaxing. “You’re her witch, so you must know. Why couldn’t I kill her in the battle? Did you do something?”

  “No idea. Maybe your knife was dull,” Bonnie quipped.

  She squeaked involuntarily as her feet suddenly left the ground. She was—oh, God—dangling in midair like a puppet suspended by invisible strings. Then those strings yanked her backward, her ankles banging painfully against the top of the railing as she was swept powerlessly out to hang in empty space. Bonnie caught one terrifying glimpse of the campus far below her before she slammed her eyes shut. Don’t let me fall, she prayed. Please, please. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  “You know, they say that if you die in your dreams, you really die in your bed,” Klaus said softly, sounding like he was right next to her. “And I can tell you from personal experience that the saying’s quite true.” He let out a low, sickeningly excited laugh. “If I drop you, they’ll be picking pieces of you out of your bedroom walls for weeks,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to come to that. Just tell me the truth and I’ll let you down gently. I promise.”

  Bonnie clenched her eyes and her jaw shut
tighter. Even if she were willing to betray Elena—which she wasn’t, she never would, no matter what, she told herself firmly—she didn’t believe Klaus would keep his promise. She remembered dazedly how Vickie Bennett had died, though, at Klaus’s hands. She’d been torn to shreds, her blood spattered like a kid had swung around a can of red paint in her pink room. Maybe Klaus had killed Vickie in her dreams.

  Klaus chuckled, and the air around Bonnie shifted again.

  “What’s going on?” a confused, frightened, and oh-so-familiar voice asked. Bonnie’s eyes snapped open.

  Next to her in midair dangled Zander. All the color was bleached out of his face, so that his wide, terrified eyes looked even more impossibly blue than usual. He was grasping at empty air with both hands, struggling to find something to hold on to.

  “Bonnie?” he croaked. “Please, what’s going on?”

  “Your girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, is refusing to tell me something I want to know,” Klaus told him. Klaus was seated on the railing of the bell tower, his own legs dangling off the side. He smiled at Zander. “I thought if I brought you in, you might provide some incentive for her.”

  Zander looked at Bonnie pleadingly. “Please tell him, Bonnie,” he begged. “I need this to stop. Let me down.”

  Bonnie gulped, panicking. “Zander,” she said. “Zander, oh, no. Don’t hurt him.”

  “Whatever happens to Zander now is your fault, redbird,” Klaus reminded her.

  And then something clicked together. Hang on, a voice said inside Bonnie’s head. The voice, cool and cynical, sounded sort of like Meredith. Zander’s not scared of heights. He loves them.

  “Stop it,” she said to Klaus. “That’s not Zander. That’s just something you made up. If you’re finding stuff inside my head, you’re doing a terrible job. Zander’s nothing like that.”

  Klaus gave a sharp growl of irritation, and the Zander he’d created went limp in the air beside her, his head flopping to one side. He looked disturbingly dead like that, and even though Bonnie knew it wasn’t real, she had to look away.

  She’d known all along this was a dream, of course. But she’d forgotten the central thing about controlling dreams: they weren’t real.

  “This is a dream,” she murmured to herself. “Nothing is real and I can change whatever I want.” She looked at the false Zander and blipped him back out of existence.

  “Clever, aren’t you?” Klaus commented, and then, as easily as opening his hand, he let her fall.

  Bonnie sucked in one frightened breath, and then remembered to make a floor under her feet. She stumbled as she landed, her ankle turning under her, but she wasn’t hurt.

  “It’s not over yet, redbird,” Klaus said, climbing down from the railing and walking toward her across the air as if it were solid, his dirty raincoat flapping in the breeze. He was still chuckling, and there was something about the sound that frightened Bonnie. Without even thinking about it, she flexed her mind and threw him as far as she could.

  Klaus’s body flew backward, as floppy as a rag doll, and Bonnie had just a second to see his startled expression turn to rage before he was only a falling black speck on the horizon. As Bonnie watched, the speck stopped falling, turned, and rose, coming back toward her. It moved alarmingly fast, and soon she could make out the outline of some great predatory bird, a hawk perhaps, swooping toward her.

  Time to wake up, she thought. “It’s just a dream,” she said. Nothing happened. Klaus was getting closer, much closer.

  “It’s only a dream,” she repeated, “and I can wake up anytime I want. I want to wake up now.”

  And then she really did wake, warm under her comforter in her own cozy bed.

  After one gasp of pure relief, Bonnie began to cry—great, ugly, choking sobs. She reached onto her desk, feeling for her cell phone. The images of Zander, his face intent, kissing Shay, hanging powerlessly in the air, stuck with her. They hadn’t been the real Zander; Bonnie knew that intellectually. But she needed to hear his voice anyway. Just as she was about to push the button to dial, she hesitated.

  It wasn’t fair to call him, was it? She was the one who had said they should take some time apart, so Zander could think about what would be right for him, not just as a person, but as the Alpha of a Pack. It wouldn’t be fair to call him to make herself feel better, just because Klaus had used his image in Bonnie’s dream.

  She turned the phone off and shoved it back onto the desk, sobbing harder.

  “Bonnie?” The bed dipped as Meredith crossed the space from her own bed and sat on the edge of Bonnie’s. “Are you okay?”

  In the morning, Bonnie would tell Meredith and the others everything. It was important that they know that Klaus had gotten into her dreams again, and that the techniques Alaric had researched had let Bonnie fight him off this time. But she couldn’t talk about it right now, not in the dark.

  “Bad dream,” she said instead. “Stay here for a minute, okay?”

  “Okay,” Meredith said, and Bonnie felt her friend’s thin, strong arm wrap around her shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Bonnie,” Meredith said, patting her on the back.

  “I don’t think so,” Bonnie said, and buried her head on Meredith’s shoulder and wept.

  Chapter 29

  Meredith stuffed her econ notes into her bag as she walked across the quad. For the first time in a while, it felt almost like a normal college campus: groups of students sitting on the grass, couples holding hands and strolling the paths. A jogger brushed by Meredith as he passed, and she stepped aside. With the death of the last of the Vitale vampires, the attacks on campus had pretty much stopped, and the fear that had kept everyone inside was receding. They didn’t realize that a much more dire enemy was now lurking in the shadows.

  Klaus’s army must be hunting, but they were keeping a much lower profile. Which was good, of course, but it meant that Meredith’s class, after three cancelled sessions, had started again. And they had a lot of material to make up before midterms.

  Meredith would have to find a way to fit in studying, working out, and patrolling, and she was also determined not to miss any time with Alaric while he was at Dalcrest. An irrepressible smile broke out on Meredith’s face just at the thought of him: Alaric’s freckles, Alaric’s sharp mind, Alaric’s kisses. She was supposed to be meeting him for dinner in town in just a few minutes, she realized, glancing at her watch.

  When she looked up again, she saw Cristian, sitting quietly on a bench a little farther down the path, raising his eyes to meet hers.

  Meredith reached inside her bag for the small knife that she carried with her. She couldn’t carry her stave to class, and she really hadn’t expected trouble in the middle of campus in broad daylight. She could have kicked herself: she’d been an idiot and let her guard down.

  Cristian got to his feet and came toward her, hands held up unthreateningly. “Meredith?” he said quietly. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

  Meredith gripped her knife tighter, keeping it concealed inside her bag. There were too many people around for him to attack without endangering innocent bystanders. “It didn’t seem that way in the woods,” she reminded him. “Don’t pretend you’re not working for Klaus.”

  Cristian shrugged. “I fought you,” he said, “but I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” Meredith flashed back to facing off against Cristian in the battle with Klaus’s vampires. They’d been so evenly matched that it had been clear they’d trained with the same parents: each blow he’d thrown she’d blocked automatically; each time she’d struck at him, he’d seemed to anticipate it. “Think about it,” Cristian said. “Klaus turned me just a couple of weeks ago, but I remember everything from before. We used to spar all the time, but I’m a vampire and a hunter now. I should be much stronger and faster than you. If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have.”

  It was true. Meredith hesitated, and Cristian moved to the side of the path, sitting down on the bench again. After a moment, Meredith joined him. She didn’t let g
o of the knife, but she couldn’t help her curiosity about Cristian—her brother, her twin. He was taller than she was, and broader, but his hair was exactly the same shade of brown. He had her mother’s mouth, with a subtle dimple on its left, and his nose was shaped like her father’s.

  When she met Cristian’s eyes at last, his gaze was sad. “You really don’t remember me, do you?” he asked.

  “No,” Meredith said. “What do you remember?” she asked.

  In the reality she knew, Klaus had stolen Cristian away when he was a baby, raised him as his own. But in the Guardian-altered world, her twin brother would have grown up with her until he was sent away to boarding school for high school. Most of the supernatural-touched people in this world—Tyler, for instance—had a dual set of memories, two different sequences of events overlaying each other. Now that Klaus had made Cristian a vampire once more, would he remember both childhoods?

  But Cristian was shaking his head. “I remember growing up with you, Meredith,” he said. “You’re my twin. We—” He laughed a sad little disbelieving laugh, just a puff of breath, really, and shook his head. “Remember how Dad made us learn Morse code? Just in case, he said? And we used to tap out messages on the wall between our bedrooms when we were supposed to be sleeping?” He looked at her hopefully, but Meredith shook her head.

  “Dad made me learn Morse code,” she said, “but I didn’t have anyone to tap messages to.”

  “Klaus told me that in your reality, he took me away from home and made me a vampire when we were really little. But it’s still weird for me that you don’t remember me at all. We are—we were close,” Cristian told her. “We used to, um, go to the beach every summer when I was home from school. Up until last summer, when I enlisted. We used to find little creatures and keep them in the tide pools, like our own tiny aquariums.” His gray eyes, rimmed with heavy black lashes, were wide and sad. They were similar to Meredith’s own eyes, perhaps a shade lighter, but right now they reminded her more forcibly of her mother’s. With a jolt, she realized that the army must have told her parents Cristian was missing by now.