Destiny Rising Read online

  “Did they smell vampires?” Elena asked Jared, alarmed, but he shook his head.

  “It’s just the others,” he said, and then he was running, too, faster than Elena could go.

  As she and Stefan came over the next small hill, Elena could see the edge of the woods and the campus stretching out ahead of her again. She’d been so tired that she hadn’t realized they’d looped back around. Halfway down the hill, Spencer and Tristan were greeting the great white wolf that was Zander and another gray wolf, their tails wagging, as Jared hurried toward them. Bonnie, Meredith, and another human-form member of Zander’s Pack watched. Bonnie said something and waved them off. The werewolves, human and wolf, turned as one and ran back into the woods, Zander in the lead.

  “What’s that about?” Elena asked, as she and Stefan came up to Bonnie and Meredith.

  “Oh, since patrol’s over, they have to go change back and do Pack stuff,” Bonnie said casually. “I told Zander we’d be fine. Did you find anything?”

  Elena shook her head. “Everything was quiet.”

  “For us, too,” Meredith said, swinging her stave jauntily as they turned and began to head back toward their dorm. “Maybe the new vampires have made it through the blood-craze of changing and they’ll lay low for a while.”

  “I hope so,” Stefan said. “Maybe we can find them before someone else dies.”

  Bonnie shivered. “I know it’s stupid,” she said, “but I almost wish Klaus would do whatever he’s going to do. I’m on edge all the time. It’s like he’s watching me from the shadows.”

  Elena knew what Bonnie meant. Klaus was coming after them all. She knew it: she could still feel the ghostly sensation of his cold lips on hers like a promise. We’ve defeated Klaus before, she tried to tell herself. But a new conviction nagged at her. It was as if something inside her knew, beyond all arguing, that the life she’d lived was coming to an end.

  “I’m sorry,” she said impulsively to Bonnie. “Klaus wants to punish me, and so we’re all in danger. This is my fault, and I don’t even have any Power now to protect you all.”

  Bonnie stared at her. “If it weren’t for you, Klaus would have destroyed us all long ago,” she said dryly.

  Stefan nodded. “No one thinks this is your fault,” he said.

  Elena blinked. “I guess you’re right,” she said uncertainly.

  Bonnie rolled her eyes. “And we’re not total wimps, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she said.

  “If you want to be ready to fight Klaus, maybe you should start developing your Guardian Powers,” Meredith told her.

  Warm sunlight was beginning to spread over the campus, and Elena instinctively slowed and straightened, tipping her face back to the sun. Meredith was right, she realized. If she wanted to help keep her friends safe, to keep the campus safe, she needed to be stronger. She needed to be a Guardian.

  After only a few hours of sleep, Elena staggered across the quad, clutching a cup of coffee. She was heading for James’s house just off campus, and trying to remember the little she knew about Andrés. He was twenty years old, James had told her, and had been taken from his family by the Guardians when he was twelve.

  What would that do to a person? Elena wondered. The Guardians she had met, the ones of the Celestial Court, had taken their duties seriously. Surely Andrés would be well versed in all the Powers and responsibilities of Guardianship, everything Elena herself didn’t know, and would have been adequately cared for, at least physically.

  But how would it affect a human child to be raised by creatures as cold and emotionless as the Guardians? Her skin crawled at the idea.

  By the time she got to James’s door, Elena was anticipating a cold-eyed, unemotional greeting from an Earthly Guardian who would teach her exactly as much as he thought Elena should know.

  Well, he would have to learn that he couldn’t push her around. The Celestial Court full of Guardians at the peak of their Power hadn’t been able to make Elena obey them, and there was only one of Andrés. Elena rang James’s doorbell with determination.

  James’s face was serious, but not apprehensive, when he opened the door. He looked wide-eyed and solemn, as if, Elena thought, he was witnessing something momentous he didn’t fully understand.

  “My dear, I’m glad you could come,” he said, ushering her in with little beckoning waves of his hand and taking her empty coffee cup. “Andrés is in the backyard.” He escorted her through his small, extremely neat house, and showed her out the back door.

  The door closed behind her and, with a start of surprise, Elena realized James had sent her out alone.

  The yard was lit in gold and green by sunlight filtering through the leaves of a large beech tree. On the grass beneath the tree sat a young, dark-haired man who raised his head to look at Elena. As she met his eyes, the nervousness drained out of her and she felt a great peace settle on her. Without even meaning to, she found herself smiling.

  Andrés rose unhurriedly and came to her. “Hello, Elena,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her.

  At first, Elena tensed in surprise at the hug, but then a calming warmth seemed to flow through her, and she laughed. Andrés let go of her and laughed, too, a pure note of joy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His English was fluent, but he had a slight South American accent. “But I’ve never met another human Guardian before, and I just . . . felt like I knew you.”

  Elena nodded, hot tears pricking at her eyes. She could feel a connection between them, humming with energy and joy, and she realized with happy surprise that it wasn’t just emotions sent to her by Andrés. They were coming from her as well, her own happiness rushing toward him. “It’s like I’m seeing family for the first time in ages,” she told him. They couldn’t seem to stop smiling at each other. Andrés took her hand and tugged her gently over to the tree, and they sat down beneath it together.

  “I had a Guide, of course,” he said. “My beloved Javier, who raised me. But he passed away last year”—Andrés suddenly looked ineffably sad, his brown eyes liquid—“and since then I have been alone.” He brightened again. “But now you are here, and I can help you as Javier helped me.”

  “Javier was a Guardian?” Elena asked, surprised. Andrés had loved Javier, clearly, and love was not something she associated with the Guardians.

  Andrés gave a mock shudder. “God forbid,” he said. “The Guardians wish the world well, but they are cold, yes? Imagine one of them in charge of a growing child. No, Javier was a Guide. A good man, a wise man, but fully human. A priest, actually, and a teacher.”

  “Oh.” Elena thought for a while, carefully plucking a blade of grass and pulling it to pieces, looking down at her hands. “I thought that the Guardians themselves raised the human children they took. I don’t—my parents didn’t want to let me go. I guess I would have had a Guide if I had gone with them when I was little.”

  Andrés nodded, his face solemn. “James has told me of your situation,” he said. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents, and I wish I could offer some kind of explanation. But since you don’t have a Guide assigned to you, I hope I can help you with what I know.”

  “Yes,” Elena said. “Thank you. I mean, I really do appreciate it. Do you—” She hesitated, ripping another blade of grass apart. There was something she had wondered. It wasn’t something she could imagine asking a stranger, but that curious, happy connection between them made her relax enough to turn to Andrés. “Do you think it would have been better if my parents had let them take me? Are you glad the Guardians took you away from your family?”

  Andrés leaned his head back against the tree and sighed. “No,” he admitted. “I never stopped missing my parents. I wish they had tried to keep me with them. But they saw me as a child who belonged to the Guardians, not to them. They’re lost to me now.” He turned to look at her. “But I did come to love Javier, and I was glad to have someone with me when I went through the transformation.”

  “Transfor
mation?” Elena asked, sitting up straight and hearing her own voice go high and panicky. “What do you mean, transformation?”

  Andrés smiled at her reassuringly, and despite herself, Elena instinctively relaxed a bit at the warmth in his eyes.

  “It will be all right,” he said quietly, and part of Elena believed him. Andrés sat up, too, wrapping his arms around his knees. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. When your first task as a Guardian comes up, a Principal Guardian will come and explain to you what you must do. Your Powers will start developing when you have a task. Until you’ve finished your task, you won’t be able to think of anything else. You’ll feel this overwhelming need to complete it. The Principal Guardian returns when the task is done and releases you from your compulsion.” He shrugged, looking self-conscious. “I’ve only had a few tasks, but when they ended, I couldn’t wait for the next one. And the Powers I’ve developed for a task, I’ve kept over time.”

  “Is that the transformation you’re talking about?” Elena said dubiously. “Developing Powers?” She wanted the Power to defeat Klaus, but she didn’t like the idea of changing, of something making her change.

  Andrés smiled. “Working as a Guardian makes you stronger,” he told her. “It makes you wiser and more powerful. You’ll still be you, though,” he said.

  Elena swallowed. This was the crux of her plan. With Klaus out there, Powers would be more than useful, but she needed to access them now rather than waiting around until a Principal Guardian decided to appear.

  “Is there any way to wake up these Powers before I have a task?” she asked. Andrés was opening his mouth to ask her why, a puzzled frown forming on his face, and she pushed forward with her explanation. “There’s a monster here,” she said. “A very old, very cruel vampire, and he wants to kill me and my friends. And probably a lot of other people. The more we have to fight him with, the better.”

  Andrés nodded, his expressive face earnest. “My Powers aren’t very warlike, but they may be useful, and I will help you however I can. No two Guardians have the same Powers. There’s got to be some way to find yours, though, and to turn them on.”

  A glow of excitement shone through Elena. If she could access the Powers the Guardians gave her by herself, she wouldn’t be their tool; she’d be a weapon. Her own weapon. “Maybe you could tell me about the first time you accessed yours?” she prompted.

  “Okay.” Andrés sat up straighter and let his knees fall so that he was sitting cross-legged on the grass. “The first thing you have to understand,” he said, “is that Costa Rica is very different from here.” He waved an arm around, indicating the little yard and house, the rows of houses beside and behind them, the sunshiny but chilly autumn skies. “Costa Rica has a great deal of unspoiled land, land that is protected by our country’s laws for the animals and plants. The people of Costa Rica have a phrase we use a lot: pura vida—it means pure life, and when we say that—at least when I say it—we’re talking about our connection to the natural world.”

  “I’m sure it’s beautiful there,” Elena said.

  Andrés chuckled. “Of course it is,” he said. “And you’re wondering why I’m talking about ecology when I should be talking about Power. Watch.”

  Closing his eyes, he seemed to gather his strength, then placed both his hands flat, palms down, against the ground.

  A gentle rustling noise began, so quiet at first that Elena barely noticed it, but soon grew louder. She glanced up at Andrés’s face, which was closed off and intent, still listening to something she couldn’t hear.

  As she watched, the grass where his hands rested grew longer, the blades poking up between his fingers and rising higher to frame his hands. Andrés’s mouth opened a tiny bit and he breathed harder. From above them came a creaking and Elena looked up to find new leaves unfurling from the beech tree’s branches, their fresh spring green strange among the yellow-tinted autumn leaves already there. There was a soft thump behind her, and Elena turned to realize that a small pebble had rolled closer to them. Looking around, she saw a ring of pebbles and small stones, all gently sliding toward them.

  Andrés’s hair rose lightly, individual strands crackling with energy. He looked powerful and benevolent.

  “So,” he said, opening his eyes. Some of the intensity in his posture faded. The sounds of the quickly growing plants and the movement of the pebbles stopped. There was still a sense of expectant energy in the air around them. “I can tap into the power of the natural world and channel it to defend against the supernatural. If I need to, I can make boulders fling themselves through the air, or tree roots drag my enemies down to the ground. My strength feeds nature, and nature increases my strength. It’s more effective in Costa Rica, because there are so many more uncultivated places and therefore so much more wild energy than there is here.”

  “It looks like your talents are pretty strong even here,” Elena said, picking up a smooth, white pebble from the ground and turning it over curiously in her fingers.

  Andrés grinned and ducked his head modestly. “Anyway,” he said, “my first task came to me when I was seventeen. Javier had been teaching me for about five years, and I was dying to prove myself. A creature was killing young married women in the town where we lived, and a Principal Guardian—who was quite terrifying in her way, very powerful and focused—came to me and told me my job was to track and kill it.”

  “How did you find it?” Elena asked.

  Andrés shrugged. “The beast was easy to find. Once I had my assignment, something in me drew me toward it. It turned out to be a demon in the shape of a black dog. A pure demon, not a half creature like a vampire or a werewolf. It was attracted by guilt, especially the guilt of adultery. Javier had taught me the principles of accessing my Power, but the first time I actually did it, I felt like I was sucking the whole world into myself. I was able to call a wind and blast the black dog away.” He smiled again shyly at Elena.

  “Maybe if I try to tap into nature the same way, it’ll help unlock whatever my Powers are,” Elena said.

  Andrés knelt directly in front of Elena. “Close your eyes,” he said, and Elena did as she was told. “Now,” Andrés continued, and Elena felt him gently touch her cheek, “take deep breaths and concentrate on your connection to the earth here. Your talents won’t be the same as mine, but they’ll be rooted in this land, the place where you began, just as mine are.”

  Elena breathed deeply and slowly, concentrating on the ground beneath her, the warmth of the sunlight on her shoulders and the tickle of the grass against her legs. It felt comfortable, but she didn’t sense any mystical connection between herself and the world around her. She gritted her teeth and tried harder.

  “Stop,” Andrés said soothingly. “You’re too tense.” His hand left her cheek and she felt him sit beside her, his thigh touching hers, and take her hand. “Let’s try it this way. I’ll channel some of my connection with the earth into you. At the same time, I want you to visualize sinking deeper into yourself. All the doors that are usually shut inside you will open and let your Power flow through.”

  Elena wasn’t quite sure how to “visualize sinking deeper into herself,” but she took another slow breath and tried to imagine it, consciously making herself relax. She pictured herself walking along a passageway of closed doors, the doors flying open as she passed them. Her hand felt pleasantly warm and tingled slightly where it touched Andrés’s hand.

  But when she had possessed the Power of Wings, before the Guardians had taken them, she had felt a lot more than this, hadn’t she? There had been the feeling of amazing potential inside her, of these tightly furled, powerful things that were part of her, and that she could release when the time was right.

  She wasn’t feeling anything special now. The doors flying open were only in her imagination, nothing more. Elena opened her eyes. “I don’t think this is working,” she told Andrés.

  “No, I don’t think so either,” he said regretfully, opening his eyes to look
at her. “I am sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Elena said. “I know you’re trying to help me.”

  “Yes.” Andrés tightened his hold on her hand and looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t think that relaxation and visualization are really your strengths,” he said. “Let’s try something else. Instead, we will work with your protective instincts.”

  This sounded more likely.

  “Close your eyes again,” Andrés went on, and Elena obeyed. “I want you to think about evil,” he said. “Think about the evil you have seen in your adventures, the evil that you—that both of us—must fight.”

  Elena opened her mind to her memories. She remembered Katherine’s pretty, half-mad face twisting as she screamed with rage and tore at Damon’s bleeding chest. The dogs of Fell’s Church, vacant-eyed and snarling, turning on their owners. Tyler Smallwood’s teeth lengthening into fangs and the glee in his eyes as he tried to attack Bonnie. Klaus gathering the lightning in his hands and throwing it at her friends, his face alight with vicious glee.

  Images spun through her mind faster and faster. The kitsune, Misao and Shinichi, cruel and careless, laughing as they turned the children of Fell’s Church into savage killers. The phantom that set Stefan and Damon tearing at each other’s throats, mad with jealous fury, their mouths full of blood. Ethan, foolish Ethan, raising the cup of blood above his head, calling Klaus back to life.

  Golden, terrifying Klaus stepping out of the fire.

  And then different faces, other scenes, flooded her mind. Bonnie giggling in her ice-cream-cone pajamas. Meredith, her slim body graceful in a perfect swan dive. Matt holding her in his arms at their junior prom. Stefan, his eyes soft, taking Elena in his arms.

  Elena’s lab partner. The girls in her dorm. Strange faces from the cafeteria, others she’d glimpsed only in class. All the people Elena needed to protect, her friends and innocent strangers.