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  Meredith’s vampire-hunter friend Samantha, fierce and funny, until the Vitale vampires had killed her. Matt’s sweet roommate Christopher, murdered on the campus quad.

  The girl Damon had left in the woods, dazed and frightened, blood streaming from the bites on her neck.

  Inside herself, Elena felt something unfurl, not swinging open like a door or spreading like Powerful wings, but gently blossoming, like a flower.

  She opened her eyes slowly, and saw Andrés close beside her. A glow of pure green light surrounded him, and Elena’s chest tightened. The light was so beautiful, and without knowing exactly how she knew it, she knew the light was good in the simplest, most definite sense.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, awed. Andrés opened his eyes and smiled back at her.

  “Something?” he said, an undercurrent of excitement running through his voice.

  Elena nodded. “I can see light around you,” she said.

  Andrés almost bounced with happiness. “This is wonderful,” he told her. “I’ve heard of this. You must be seeing my aura.”

  “Aura?” Elena said skeptically. “Is that really going to help us fight evil?” It seemed like a flaky, New Agey power.

  Andrés grinned. “It will help you sense if someone is good or evil right from the start,” he said. “And with practice, I’ve heard you can use it to track and seek out your enemies.”

  “I guess I can see how that might be useful,” she agreed. “Not as useful as blasting away evil things with my hands like you can, but it’s a start.”

  Andrés stared at her for a moment and then began to laugh. “Maybe you’ll get to the blasting part soon,” he said.

  Unable to stop herself, Elena laughed, too, and leaned against him helplessly, giggling. She was so relieved, so simply, fiercely glad. She had found a Power without having to wait for a Principle Guardian to give her a task. And now that she had accessed one, she thought that she could feel more Power curled up inside her, more flowers waiting to open.

  This was just the beginning.

  By the central gates to the campus, Meredith paced, her sneakers making tracks in the dust at the edge of the road. In the past, she’d always been able to school herself into calm, but since she’d moved from training as a vampire hunter to actually using her skills to fight vampires, she’d gotten more and more restless. She always wanted to be moving, wanted to be doing something—especially now when she knew monsters haunted the campus. She knew that with Samantha gone—a part of her still choked at the memory—she was one of the only protectors left. Her skin was tingling and tight with the sense of something evil, something wrong, just out of sight.

  She couldn’t wait to see Alaric.

  As if that thought had conjured him up, there was Alaric’s little gray Honda turning down the road toward campus at last. Meredith waved to him as he parked, and started to run toward the car, aware that she was grinning like an idiot but not caring.

  “Hey,” she said, coming up to him as Alaric stretched and got out of the car, and then she kissed him hard. She knew they needed to strategize and plan—that with luck, Alaric had found something in his research that could help them fight Klaus. But for now, she just treasured the feeling of Alaric solid and real in her arms, his lips soft on hers, the smell of him that was made up of leather and soap and something sort of herbal and just essential Alaric.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said, resting his forehead against hers for a moment after they finally broke the kiss. “Talking on the phone isn’t the same.”

  “Me too,” Meredith said, and she had, so much. “I love your freckles,” she told him inconsequentially, and brushed her lips across the golden spots on his cheek.

  They headed into the campus, holding hands as they walked. Meredith pointed out sites of interest: the library, the cafeteria, the student center, her dorm. The few people they passed hurried by in groups, heads down, not making eye contact.

  When they came to the gym, Meredith hesitated before stopping in front of it. “This is where I train. It’s hard . . . I used to come here with Samantha,” she told Alaric. “She was so competitive and smart. She pushed me, in a really good way.” She leaned against Alaric for a moment, and felt him drop a kiss on the top of her head.

  They walked on, but Meredith couldn’t stop thinking about Samantha. Before Samantha, Meredith had never met anyone else from a family of hereditary vampire hunters. Her parents had left the hunter community behind. Because Samantha’s parents had been killed when she was young, she hadn’t really known any other hunters either.

  They had taught each other so much. Meredith loved Elena and Bonnie—they were her best friends, her sisters—but no friend had ever understood as much about Meredith as Samantha had.

  And then Ethan and the Vitale vampires had killed her. Meredith had been the one to find Samantha’s body. She had been ripped apart so violently that her room had been soaked in blood.

  Meredith felt her face twist, and her voice came out thick and fierce. “Sometimes I feel like it’s never going to stop,” she told Alaric. “There’s always more monsters. And now Klaus is back, even though we killed him. He should be gone.”

  “I know,” Alaric said. “I wish I could make things better. Klaus destroyed your family, and you defeated him. You’re right, this should have ended then.” They paused by a bench underneath a clump of trees, and he sat, pulling Meredith down beside him. Taking her hand, he looked into her eyes, his face filled with love and concern. “Tell me the truth, Meredith,” he said. “Klaus destroyed your family. How are you feeling?”

  Meredith caught her breath, because that fact was exactly what she had been avoiding ever since Klaus stepped out of the fire.

  Klaus had attacked Meredith’s grandfather and driven him into madness. He had kidnapped her twin brother, Cristian, and made him into a vampire. And he had made Meredith herself into a living half vampire, something every hunting family had a right to loathe.

  And then the Guardians had changed everything, making a reality out of what would have happened if Klaus had never come to Fell’s Church. Cristian was a human now—Meredith didn’t remember ever meeting him, but he had grown up with her in this reality—and in army boot camp in Georgia. Their grandfather was happy and sane, living in a retirement village down in Florida. And Meredith didn’t need blood, didn’t have sharp kitten teeth. But she and her friends still remembered the way things used to be. No one else in her family remembered, but she did.

  “I’m terrified,” Meredith confessed. She twisted her hand around, playing with Alaric’s fingers. “There’s nothing Klaus wouldn’t do, and knowing that he’s out there somewhere, waiting, planning something, is . . . I don’t know what to do with that.”

  She clenched her jaw and looked up, meeting Alaric’s eyes. “He has to die,” she said softly. “He can’t start over, not now.”

  Alaric nodded. “Okay,” he said, shifting from sympathetic to businesslike. “I have some good news, I think.” He unzipped the black messenger bag he’d been carrying over his shoulder and pulled out his notebook, flipping over a few pages until he found the information he wanted. “We know that white ash wood is the only wood deadly to Klaus, right?” he asked.

  “That’s what they say,” Meredith told him. “Last time, we made Stefan a weapon of white ash, but it didn’t turn out to be that useful.” She remembered Klaus tearing the white ash spear out of Stefan’s hand, breaking it, and using it to stab at Stefan himself. Stefan’s screams as a thousand deadly splinters had torn into him had been . . . unforgettable. He had almost died.

  Damon had wounded Klaus with the spear of white ash after that, but in the end, Klaus had managed to pull the bloody wood out of his own back and had stood triumphant, still powerful, still able to bring Stefan and Damon to their knees.

  And this time, we don’t even have Damon, Meredith thought bleakly. She’d given up on asking Elena and Stefan where Damon was. He’d always been unpredictable. />
  “Well,” said Alaric with a little smile, “there’s an Appalachian folk legend I found in my research that says a white ash tree planted at the full moon under certain conditions is more powerful against vampires than any other wood. A white ash with that kind of magic in its origins ought to pack a real punch against Klaus.”

  “Sure, but how are we going to find something like that?” Meredith asked, and then she cocked an eyebrow. “Oh. You already know where one is, don’t you?”

  Alaric’s smile grew wider. After a second, Meredith wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “You’re my hero,” she said.

  Alaric blushed, the pink rising from his neck to his forehead, but he looked pleased. “You’re the hero,” he said. “But with luck, we’ll have a real weapon against Klaus.”

  “Road trip,” Meredith said. “But not until we’ve made sure the campus is as safe as we can get it. Klaus is lying low and we don’t have any leads on where he is, so we have to focus on the newly made vampires for now.” She smiled ruefully at Alaric, scuffing her sneakers below the bench. “It’s important to face the immediate threat first. But this is good.”

  Alaric pressed her hand between both of his. “Whatever you need, I’ll help,” he said earnestly. “I’ll stay here as long as I’m useful. As long as you want me.”

  Despite the seriousness of their problems, despite the gory mess that was her past and the almost definite horror of her future, Meredith had to laugh. “As long as I want you?” she said, flirting, glancing up at him through her lashes, basking in Alaric’s smile. “Oh, you’re never getting away from me now.”

  Chapter 12

  Chloe stalked silently through the forest, every move precise. She tilted her head alertly, her eyes tracking some near-invisible movement in the undergrowth.

  Matt followed her, messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He was trying to walk quietly, too, but sticks and leaves crackled under his feet, and he winced.

  Stopping, Chloe blinked for a moment, sniffed the air, and then stretched her hands out toward the bushes to their left. “Come on,” she murmured, almost too low for Matt to hear.

  There was a rustling, and slowly a rabbit nosed its way out from between the leaves, staring up at Chloe with wide, dark eyes, its ears quivering. With a quick swoop, Chloe snatched it up. There was a shrill squeak, and then the little animal was still and docile in her arms.

  Chloe’s face was buried in the rabbit’s light brown fur, and Matt watched with a sort of detached approval as she swallowed. A drop of blood made a long, sticky track down the animal’s side before dripping to the forest floor.

  Waking from its doze, the rabbit spasmed once, kicking out with its hind legs, and then lay still. Chloe wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and laid the rabbit onto the ground, looking down at it mournfully.

  “I didn’t mean to kill it,” she said, her voice low and sad. She pushed back her short ringlets of hair and looked up at Matt beseechingly. “I’m sorry. I know how gross and weird this is.”

  Matt opened his messenger bag and pulled out a bottle of water to hand to her. “You don’t have to apologize,” he said. Yeah, watching her feed on animals was sort of weird and gross, but less so now than the first time he’d seen it. And it was a hundred percent worth it: Chloe hadn’t relapsed at all, seemed content with drinking animal blood instead of hunting humans. That was all that mattered.

  Chloe rinsed out her mouth, spitting pink-tinged water into the bushes, then took a drink. “Thanks,” she said shakily. “It’s been hard, I guess. Sometimes I dream about blood. Real human blood. But the things I did, in those days with Ethan, I can’t really forgive myself for. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. And Ethan—why did I ever trust him?” Her Cupid’s-bow mouth trembled.

  “Hey.” Matt caught her arm and shook it lightly. “Ethan had us all fooled. If Stefan hadn’t saved me, I’d be in the same situation you are.”

  “Yeah.” Chloe leaned against him. “I guess you’re saving me, too.”

  Matt tangled his fingers with hers. “I wasn’t ready to lose you.”

  Chloe tipped her face up to his, her eyes widening. Matt brushed his mouth against her cheek and then her mouth, just a light brush of lips at first, and then more deeply. Matt closed his eyes, feeling the softness of her lips against his. He felt like he was falling. Each day he spent with Chloe, helping her turn toward the light, seeing her strength, he loved her just a little more.

  Meredith stretched and groaned quietly to herself. The room was dark, except for the light of her laptop screen. Elena and Bonnie were fast asleep in their beds, and Meredith glanced longingly at her own bed. Nights of patrolling and days spent at the gym meant that she had been collapsing gratefully into deep dreamless sleep as soon as she lay down lately.

  But unlike many of the classes on campus, her English section was still meeting, and Meredith had a paper due. She’d been a straight-A student in high school, and her pride wouldn’t let her miss the deadline on a paper or do a shoddy job, no matter how tired she was. Forcing herself back into student mode, Meredith yawned and typed: From their first encounter Anna and Vronsky’s relationship is clearly doomed to end in mutual destruction.

  Student mode or not, she was still a hunter, still an exquisitely balanced weapon, still a Sulez, and she snapped to attention as soon as Bonnie’s voice rose from her bed on the other side of the room.

  “He doesn’t like to be alone,” Bonnie said abruptly. Her usually expressive voice had that flat, almost metallic quality that signaled one of her visions.

  “Bonnie?” Meredith said tentatively. Bonnie didn’t answer, and Meredith turned on her desk light to illuminate the rest of the room, careful not to shine it directly in Bonnie’s face.

  Bonnie’s eyes were shut, although Meredith could see them moving beneath their lids as if she were trying to wake, or trying to see something in her dreams. Her face was strained, and Meredith made a soothing sound in her throat as she crept across the room and shook Elena gently by the shoulder.

  Elena gave a half-asleep mmph rolling over, and muttered, “What? What?” in irritation before she blinked all the way awake.

  “Shh,” Meredith told her, and said gently to Bonnie, “Who doesn’t like to be alone, Bon?”

  “Klaus,” Bonnie answered in that same deadened voice, and Elena’s eyes widened in comprehension. Elena sat up, her golden hair tousled with sleep, and reached for a notebook and pen on her desk. Meredith sat down on Bonnie’s bed and waited, staring at the smaller girl’s sleeping face beside her.

  “Klaus wants his old friends,” Bonnie told them. “He’s calling for one now.” Still sleeping, she raised one thin, white arm out above her and crooked her finger, beckoning into the darkness. “There’s so much blood,” she added in that flat voice, as her hand flopped back down by her side. The skin on Meredith’s arms pebbled into goose bumps.

  Elena scribbled something in her notebook and held it up: in big letters she’d written ASK HER WHO. They’d found in the past that it was better for just one person to question Bonnie when she was seeing visions, to keep her from getting confused and snapping out of her trance.

  “Who is Klaus calling for?” Meredith asked, keeping her voice calm. Her heart was pounding hard at the idea, and she pressed one hand against her chest as if to calm it. Anyone Klaus considered a friend was definitely dangerous.

  Bonnie’s mouth opened to answer, but she hesitated. “He calls them to join his fight,” she said after a moment, her voice hollow. “The fire’s so bright, there’s no way to tell who’s coming. It’s just Klaus. Klaus and blood and flames in the darkness.”

  “What is Klaus planning?” Meredith asked. Bonnie didn’t answer, but her eyelids fluttered, her lashes looking thick and dark against the paleness of her cheeks. She was breathing more heavily now.

  “Should we try to wake her up?” Meredith wondered. Elena shook her head and wrote on the pad again. ASK HER WHERE KLAUS IS.

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nbsp; “Can you tell where Klaus is right now?” Meredith asked.

  Restlessly, Bonnie moved her head back and forth against the pillow. “Fire,” she said. “Darkness and flames. Blood and fire. He wants them all to join his fight.” A thick chuckle forced its way out of her mouth, although her expression did not change. “If Klaus has his way, everything will end in blood and fire.”

  “Can we stop him?” Meredith asked. Bonnie said nothing, but grew more restless. Her hands and feet started to drum against the mattress, lightly and then more heavily, a rapid patter. “Bonnie!” Meredith said, and leaped to her feet.

  With a great gasp, Bonnie’s body stilled. Her eyes flew open.

  Meredith grabbed the smaller girl’s shoulders. A second later, Elena was beside them on the bed, reaching out and taking hold of Bonnie’s arm.

  Bonnie’s brown eyes were wide and blank for a moment, and then she frowned and Meredith could see the real Bonnie flooding back in.

  “Ow!” Bonnie complained. “What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night!” She pulled away from them. “Cut it out,” she said indignantly, rubbing at her arm where Elena had grabbed her.

  “You had a vision,” Elena said, shifting back to give her some room. “Can you remember anything?”

  “Ugh.” Bonnie made a face. “I should have known. My mouth always tastes funny when I come out of one of those. I hate that.” She looked at Elena and Meredith. “I don’t remember anything. What’d I say?” she asked tentatively. “Was it bad?”

  “Oh, blood and fire and darkness,” Meredith said dryly. “The usual sort of thing.”

  “I wrote it down,” Elena said, and handed Bonnie her notebook.

  Bonnie read Elena’s notes and paled. “Klaus is calling someone to come to him?” she asked. “Oh, no. More monsters. We can’t—there’s no way this is good for us.”

  “Any guesses about who he might be calling?” Elena wondered.