Destiny Rising Page 19

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, and she did feel sorry. “I don’t remember ever going to the beach as a kid. I think my parents—our parents—lost their taste for family vacations after you were gone.”

  Cristian sighed and put his head in his hands. “I wish you had gotten a chance to meet me when I was human,” he said. “One minute I’m lying in the barracks surrounded by a bunch of other guys, wondering what ever possessed me to enlist right out of high school anyway, and the next this vampire takes me and tells me all this crazy stuff about how I’ve always been his, how he’s putting things right.” He gave another sad huff of laughter. “All my training, and the first vampire I meet takes me out immediately. Dad’s going to be so mad.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Meredith told him, and winced as she realized that, yeah, their dad would be kind of mad. More sad, of course, and sickened, but he would definitely feel that Cristian should have put up a better fight.

  Cristian cocked a cynical eyebrow at her and they both laughed. It was weird, Meredith realized: for a moment there, sharing the feeling of exactly what it meant to be ’Nando Sulez’s child, she really had felt like Cristian was her brother.

  “I wish I had come to meet you when you were still human,” she told him. “I just thought there would be more time.”

  Would she have been a different person if she’d grown up with a brother? she wondered. Klaus’s attacks on her family had changed her parents: the ones in this reality, who hadn’t lost a child, were less guarded, more open with their affections. If she had grown up with those parents and with Cristian next to her, someone to compete with, someone to help bear the weight of her parents’ expectations, someone who knew all the secrets of their family, what would she be like? She’d felt less alone in the brief time she’d known Samantha: another hunter like her, her age. A brother would have changed everything, Meredith thought wistfully.

  “I’m not interested in Klaus’s endgame,” Cristian told her. “I’m a vampire now, and that’s tough for me to deal with. It’s hard to fight the way I feel when I’m near Klaus. But I’m still your brother. I’m still a Sulez. I don’t want to lose that. Maybe we could spend some time together? You could get to know me now.” He looked at her sadly.

  Meredith swallowed. “Okay,” she said, and let her fingers loosen on the hilt of her knife. “Let’s try it.”

  Dear Diary,

  I have to prepare. If the Guardians won’t change my task, my Powers will be concentrated on finding and destroying Damon, not Klaus. I need to be able to defeat Klaus on my own, by discovering my Power for myself.

  For an hour today, Andrés and I tried to unlock more of my Power.

  It was a complete failure.

  Andrés had decided that learning to move things with my mind could be useful, so he folded pieces of paper all over James’s house and encouraged me to imagine protecting my friends from evil by flinging them around. It was sickening to imagine Stefan or Bonnie or Meredith at Klaus’s mercy, and I wanted to save them. I knew that if I could swing a stake at the right time, I might change things in a fight. But I couldn’t even stir a page.

  I’m going to be as ready as I can be, though. If I can’t use my Guardian Powers to defeat Klaus, I’ll fight him face-to-face. If I can’t be killed by the supernatural, I have a huge advantage. Meredith and Stefan have been teaching me how to fight, how to use weapons.

  Klaus is so much worse than Damon could ever be: when I think back, I can remember so many times that Damon saved innocents instead of killing them—Bonnie, the humans of the Dark Dimension, half our high school. Me. I owe him my life. Time after time, even when he’s wavered, he’s turned away from the easy darkness and come down on the right side, the side that saved the helpless. I know he’s strayed again—

  Elena paused. She couldn’t bear to think of it: Damon killing again. But she took a deep breath and faced the truth.

  —but maybe it is our fault, mine and Stefan’s, for not showing him we care. It was just that once I got Stefan back, all I could think of was clutching him to me so tight that he’d never slip away again. Damon needs us, though he’ll never admit it, but we’ll fight through the darkness that shrouds him. We will save him. If I can just remind the Guardians of all Damon’s done for us in the past, they’ll see that he isn’t evil. They can be rational, even if they are cold and distant.

  I used to hate the idea of being a Guardian, of becoming less human. But now I know that it’s a gift, a sacred trust to protect the world. As a Guardian, I can stop some of the deaths, some of the suffering. Once I fully come into my Power, I can use it to defeat the right target. I can still be the one to kill Klaus.

  “I called Alaric and told him I’d meet him in an hour,” Meredith said. “I had to talk to you guys first.” She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea with such careful, precise movements that Elena was sure Meredith was keeping a firm control on herself to avoid slipping into hysteria.

  It was the same reason, Elena knew, that Meredith had called just the three of them to meet her at the coffeehouse: Elena, Bonnie, and Matt, Meredith’s oldest friends, the tight group that had withstood so much together. Meredith loved Alaric and trusted him with all her heart, just as Elena did Stefan, but sometimes you wanted your best friends with you.

  “Cristian says he wants to be my family,” Meredith said. “He isn’t interested in fighting on Klaus’s side. But how can I believe him? I asked Zander what he could sense about Cristian, but he wasn’t sure. He says that sometimes, if the person has a lot going on emotionally, his Power doesn’t work on them.” She glanced at Bonnie sympathetically. “Zander misses you,” she said, and Bonnie stared down at her lap.

  “I know,” she said softly. “But I can’t be the person he needs.” Elena squeezed her hand beneath the table.

  Matt rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe Cristian is telling the truth,” he offered. “Chloe left Ethan and stopped drinking blood. There are good vampires—we know that. Look at Stefan.”

  “Where is Chloe, anyway?” Bonnie asked. “You’ve been spending all your time with her.”

  “Stefan took her hunting in the woods,” Matt told her. “She’s afraid to go by herself since Klaus attacked her, but Stefan says if she’s going to survive, she can’t hide forever. And I have a game later, so Stefan can keep her company, help her stave off the blood lust.”

  “At least it sounds like Cristian wants to try,” Elena told Meredith. “I’m scared I’ve lost Damon. He was so violent. It was like he wanted me to give up on him.” She hadn’t told Meredith and the others that Damon had confessed so casually to killing someone, but she’d told them about the brutal, frightening scene at the billiards hall.

  Meredith stared down at the surface of her tea for a moment, then raised her eyes to meet Elena’s. “Maybe you should,” she said quietly.

  Elena shook her head in immediate denial, but Meredith pushed on. “You know what he’s capable of, Elena,” she said. “If he really wants to be bad again, he’s strong enough and clever enough to be really bad. The Guardians might be right. Maybe he’s even a bigger threat than Klaus.”

  Elena clenched her fists. “I can’t, Meredith,” she said, her voice cracking. “I can’t. And I can’t let anyone else, either. It’s Damon.” Her eyes met Meredith’s. “Cristian’s your family—that’s why you can’t kill him without giving him a chance. Well, Damon’s become my family, too.”

  Bonnie looked back and forth between them, wide-eyed. “What can we do?” she asked.

  “Listen,” Matt said suddenly. “Meredith was a hunter when she met Stefan and Damon, even though the rest of us didn’t know it. She hated vampires, right?” They all nodded. “So”—he turned to Meredith—“how did you get past it?”

  Meredith blinked. “Well,” she said slowly, “I knew Stefan wasn’t a killer. He loved Elena so much, and he tried to protect people. Damon . . .” She hesitated. “For a long time, I thought I probably would have to kill Damon. It
was my duty. But he changed. He fought on the right side.”

  She looked back down at the table, her face grim. “Duty is important, Elena,” she said. “A hunter or a Guardian, we are the ones responsible for saving innocent people from evil. You can’t ignore that.” Elena’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Exactly,” Matt said. “So, what if Damon changes again? If we could get him to act differently—well, if you guys could, anyway; he won’t ever listen to me—then we could show the Guardians he’s not a threat.”

  “There’s a reason the Guardians aren’t worried about Stefan,” Bonnie added.

  “Maybe,” Elena said. She felt her shoulders drooping and automatically stiffened her spine. She wasn’t going to give up, no matter how hopeless the idea of getting Damon to change his behavior seemed. “Maybe I can get him back on track. It didn’t work the first time, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try another approach,” she said, willing a little more positivity into her voice. She would just have to keep going, think of a way to get Damon on the side of good again.

  “Or we could try locking him up until he changes,” Matt suggested half jokingly. “Maybe Bonnie and Alaric can come up with some kind of calming spell. We’ll figure something out.”

  “That’s the ticket,” Meredith said. Elena looked up at her and Meredith gave her a small, rueful smile. “Maybe Damon will change in time to save himself,” Meredith said. “And maybe Cristian is telling the truth. If we’re lucky enough, neither of them will have to die.” She reached across the table and squeezed Elena’s hand. “We’ll try,” she said, and Elena nodded, squeezing back.

  “At least we have each other,” Elena said, looking around to meet Bonnie’s and Matt’s sympathetic gazes. “No matter what happens, it’ll never be the worst thing, not as long as you guys are by my side.”

  Chapter 30

  Unlike his brother, who had gone so far as to join the Robert E. Lee High School football team in Fell’s Church, Damon did not enjoy playing football. He had never liked team sports, even when he was young and alive. The feeling of being an anonymous part of an a group, just one cog in a great machine designed to get a ball from one end of a field to another, felt like an affront to his dignity. It didn’t help that Matt—Mutt, Damon now had to remind himself to say—loved the sport. He was the star here on the Dalcrest field; Damon had to give him some credit for that.

  But now, some five hundred years after he had stopped breathing, he certainly didn’t bother to waste his time watching humans try to get a ball from one side of a field to another.

  The crowd, on the other hand . . . he’d found that he liked the crowd at a football game.

  Full of energy, they all focused on the same thing and their blood pounded under their skin, flushing their cheeks. He liked the smells of the stadium: sweat and beer and hot dogs and enthusiasm. He liked the cheerleaders’ colorful uniforms and the possibility of a fight breaking out in the stands as passions ran high. He liked the brightness of the lights on the fields during a night game, and the darkness in the corners of the stands. He liked . . .

  Damon lost his train of thought as his eyes caught on a girl with pale gold hair, her back to him, sitting alone in the bleachers. Every line of that figure was etched in his memory forever: he’d watched her with passion and devotion, and finally with hatred. Unlike everyone else, he’d never confused her for Elena.

  “Katherine,” he breathed, cutting through the crowd toward her.

  No human would have heard him in the crowd, but Katherine turned her head and smiled, such a sweet smile that Damon’s first instinct to attack her was swept away by a rush of memory. The shy little German girl who had come to his father’s palazzo, so many years ago, back when Damon was a human and Katherine was almost as innocent as one, had smiled at him like that.

  So instead of fighting, he slipped onto the seat beside Katherine and just looked at her, keeping his face neutral.

  “Damon!” Katherine said, the smile taking on a tinge of malice. “I’ve missed you!”

  “Considering that the last time we saw each other you tore my throat out, I can’t say the same,” Damon told her dryly.

  Katherine made a little face of wry regret. “Oh, you never could let bygones be bygones,” she said, pouting. “Come, I’ll apologize. It’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? We live, we die, we suffer, we heal. And here we are.” She laid a hand on his arm, watching him with sharp, bright eyes.

  Damon pointedly moved her hand away. “What are you doing here, Katherine?” he asked.

  “I can’t visit my favorite pair of brothers?” Katherine said, mock-hurt. “You never forget your first love, you know.”

  Damon met her eyes, keeping his own face carefully blank. “I know,” he said, and Katherine froze, seeming uncertain for the first time.

  “I . . .” she said, and then her hesitation was gone and she smiled again. “Of course, I owe Klaus something as well,” she said carelessly. “After all, he brought me back to life, and thank goodness for that. Death was terrible.” She quirked an eyebrow at Damon. “I hear you’d know all about that.”

  Damon did, and yes, death had been terrible, and for him at least, those first moments coming back had been worse. But he pushed that aside. “How do you intend to repay Klaus?” he asked, keeping his tone light and almost idle. “Tell me what’s going on in that scheming little head of yours, Fraulein.”

  Katherine’s laugh was still as silvery and bubbly as the mountain stream Damon had compared it to in a sonnet, back when he was young. Back when he was an idiot, he thought fiercely. “A lady has to have her secrets,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I told Stefan, my darling Damon. I’m not angry with your Elena anymore. She’s safe from me.”

  “I don’t really care, to be honest,” Damon said coolly, but he felt a tight knot of worry loosen inside his chest.

  “Of course you don’t, dear heart,” Katherine said comfortingly, and when she put her hand on Damon’s arm this time, he let it stay. “Now,” she said, patting him. “Shall we have a little fun?” She tilted her head toward the football field, toward the cheerleaders shaking their pompoms on the sidelines. Damon felt a soft pulse of Power go out of her, and as he watched, the girl on the far end of the line dropped her pompoms and her smile. With a dreamy, distant expression on her face, she began to move, her body tracing out what Damon recognized as the slow and stately steps of a bassadanza, a dance he hadn’t seen for hundreds of years.

  “Remember?” Katherine said softly beside him. They had danced this together, Damon couldn’t forget, in the great hall of his father’s house, the night that he had come home from university in disgrace and first laid eyes on her. He took control of another cheerleader, moved her into the still-familiar steps of the male partner in the dance. Step forward on the ball of one foot, step forward on the other, incline your body toward your partner, feet together, hand to the side, and the lady follows you. He could almost hear the music, coming down the centuries.

  The crowd around them stirred uneasily, their attention distracted from the players on the field. The formality of the dance and the blank distance on the faces of the cheerleaders were confusing them. A vague sense of something not quite right permeated the stadium.

  Letting out another low, silvery laugh, Katherine kept the beat with her hand as all the cheerleaders paired off, moving in time, the elegance of their steps at odds with their bright, short costumes. On the field, the football players played on, oblivious.

  Katherine smiled at Damon, her eyes gleaming with what looked almost like affection. “We could have fun together, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to hunt alone.”

  Damon considered this. He didn’t trust her; he’d have to be a fool to trust her after all that Katherine had done. But, still . . . “Perhaps it won’t be so bad having you back after all,” he told her. “Perhaps.”

  Chapter 31

  Cell phone clamped to her ear, Elena hit the button to repl
ay the message. James couldn’t possibly have said what she’d thought she’d heard.

  But the message was exactly the same. “Elena, my dear,” James said, a thread of excitement running through his voice. “I think I’ve got it. I think there’s a way we can kill Klaus.” He paused, as if he was thinking hard, and when he spoke again, his voice was more cautious. “We have to plan carefully, though. Come to my house as soon as you get this and we’ll talk. This method . . . it’ll take some preparation.” The message ended, and Elena frowned at her phone in exasperation. Honestly, it was just like James to be cryptic rather than leave some useful information.

  But, if he really had found something . . . A bubble of joyous excitement rose in Elena’s chest. The knowledge that Klaus was out there, and that her Guardian Powers were focused on Damon instead, had been like a heavy weight on her shoulders. She didn’t know when, but she had the constant nagging feeling that disaster could come at any moment. If James had a new idea, perhaps there would be an end in sight.

  As she hurried across the sun-drenched campus toward James’s house, Elena quickly texted Stefan to meet her there. He’d taken command of their anti-Klaus army, making the decisions and organizing the patrols while she tried to expand her Guardian Powers, and she wanted him there if James had found a solution.

  She hadn’t heard back from Stefan yet when she reached James’s front door. He was probably in class; he’d told her that his philosophy seminar had started up again, now that it had been more than a week since the body of a student had appeared on campus. Oh, well, they could fill him in as soon as he arrived.