"Come on, Bonnie," Meredith said. "Not far now." Meredith was striding cheerfully along at the front of the group, looking as cool and comfortable as if she was taking a little stroll down one of the paths on campus. Bonnie scowled at her back: sometimes Meredith being in such good shape was utterly infuriating.
Defiantly, Bonnie stopped for a minute and drank some water from her canteen as the others waited for her.
"So, once we find this magic white ash tree, what's the plan?" Zander asked, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other as he waited.
Shay wouldn't have had to stop to rest, Bonnie thought sourly. Then Zander nudged her companionably with his elbow as he took out his own canteen, and she felt a little better.
"Well, we can't chop down the tree," Alaric said seriously. "It's got a lot of spiritual significance and gives protection to this area as well as being the only weapon that might be effective against Klaus. But it's a pretty big tree, reportedly, so we should be able to take several branches without doing too much damage."
"I brought an axe," Meredith said enthusiastically as they started walking again. "We'll make as many stakes as we can, and distribute them to everyone." She glanced at Zander. "Everyone who's not going to be a wolf when we fight Klaus, anyway."
"Hard to hold a stake with paws," Zander agreed.
"We should gather leaves, too," Bonnie said. "I've been looking through spell books, and I think we could use the ash leaves to make potions and tinctures that might help us get some protection from Klaus. Like the effect vervain has on a regular vampire's Powers."
"Good thinking," Zander said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. Bonnie leaned against him, letting him take some of her weight. Her feet hurt.
"We're going to need all the help we can get," Meredith said, and she and Bonnie exchanged a glance. Of the four of them on this mountainside, they were the only ones who had fought Klaus the first time, and the only ones who knew how much trouble they were really in.
"I wish Damon were working with us," Bonnie said fretfully. "He'd give us much better odds in a fight." She had always felt a special bond with Damon, ever since the days when she'd had a crazy, embarrassing crush on him. When they had traveled through the Dark Dimension together, they had looked out for each other. And Damon had sacrificed himself for her, pushing her out of the way and taking the fatal blow from the tree on that Nether World moon. The locks of hair Bonnie and Elena had left with his body had helped to remind Damon who he was when he was resurrected. It ached that he had turned his back on her now.
Meredith frowned. "I've tried to talk to Elena about Damon, but she won't tell me what's going on with him. And Stefan just says Damon needs time and that he'll come around."
"Damon would do anything for Elena, wouldn't he? If she just asked him," Bonnie said, biting her lip. Damon had been obsessed with Elena for so long; it was weird and disturbing to have Elena in danger and Damon nowhere to be found.
Meredith just shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I've never understood him."
"Almost there," Alaric said encouragingly. "It should be right up ahead." Bonnie could hear the rushing of a stream.
Zander stopped. "Do you smell that?" he said, sniffing the air. "Something's burning."
Just around the next bend in the path, a long finger of black smoke spread across the sky. Bonnie and Meredith exchanged alarmed glances and broke into a jog, Bonnie forgetting all about her aching feet. Alaric and Zander sped up, too, and as they rounded the corner, they were all running.
Alaric stopped first, his face devastated. "That's it," he said. "That's the white ash tree."
It was engulfed in roaring flames and already charred black. As they watched, a branch fell heavily to the ground, shooting up sparks as it landed, and crumbled into soot. Alaric stripped off his shirt, soaking it with his water bottle as he ran forward, toward the flames.
Bonnie rushed after him. She had the impression of two figures ducking away down the path and Zander and Meredith running after them, but she couldn't focus on that now: she had to try to save the tree. As she got nearer, the heat was incredible, almost like a wall forcing her away. Gritting her teeth, she stamped at the small flames springing up in the grass around the burning tree. Smoke stung her eyes and seeped into her mouth, so that she coughed and wheezed.
Her arm burned painfully and she brushed away the hot ash that had fallen on her. Closer to the trunk, Alaric beat at the flames with his wet shirt and then stumbled backward, choking, his face streaked black. They weren't having any effect on the fire at all.
Bonnie grabbed his arm and pulled him farther back, her heart dropping. "It's too late," she said.
When she turned around, she saw Zander and Meredith shepherding two people back up the path toward them. Zander had a firm grip on a beefy dark-haired guy as Meredith held her stave across the throat of a girl. She looked familiar, Bonnie thought dazedly. After a moment, the sense of familiarity sharpened into certainty, and then Bonnie was flooded with outrage.
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?