"No!" Elena shouted, panic ripping through her. She charged toward the vampires holding Stefan, but a hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she turned to see a tall, dark-haired guy she was pretty sure had been in her chemistry class, back at the beginning of the year.
"No interfering, now," he said mockingly. "I think we can keep each other company." Elena struggled, but she couldn't move her arm, and he fisted his other hand in her hair, pulling her head back slowly to expose her neck.
Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Stefan fling one of the vampires off him, only to be pinned again. He was still fighting, though, not staked yet. The vampire holding her smiled, his canines descending, bigger and sharper, as she strained against him.
This can't be how it ends, she thought, dazed. I won't die like this. Elena wrested one of her hands free just as she heard a sudden clattering on the stairs, the sound of feet and bodies in motion. Another set of shelves fell, books skidding across the floor. The vampire holding her looked up and then released her, falling backward as a great splotch of blood bloomed on his chest.
Behind him, stave extended, was Meredith.
"Thanks," Elena said, her mouth dry with fear.
"Anytime," Meredith said, grinning savagely. "Just remind me to cut off his head later." Then she was gone, spinning through the room, stave raised. A huge, white wolf - Zander, of course - had joined Spencer on the other side of the room, and they were fighting side by side, snarling and tearing at their enemies' flesh. Alaric rushed past Elena, stake raised, and behind him stood Bonnie, her hands extended in front of her, chanting a spell of protection.
Alaric staked one of the vampires holding Stefan, and Stefan was able to take care of the others who had been restraining him. In a few minutes, the fight was over.
"You arrived just in the nick of time," Stefan said. "Thank you."
"It was Zander. He heard the fight when we drove past the library," Meredith said, looking up from where she and Alaric were dragging vampire bodies across the floor to pile neatly in the corner. "We'll have to burn these bodies, but it looks like this is the end of Ethan's vampires. Other than Chloe, of course."
"Thank goodness," Bonnie said. She'd pulled an assortment of herbs from her bag and was tracing patterns, casting charms of distraction and misdirection, in the hopes that no one would come near the bodies until they could dispose of them. "But we've got something bigger to deal with."
"Klaus," said Elena, her shoulders slumping.
"We couldn't get the wood. And Bonnie had a vision," Meredith said.
"A dream, not a vision," Bonnie interrupted sharply.
"Sorry, a dream," Meredith corrected herself. "She thinks Klaus was reaching out to her, threatening her, and from what he said, it sounds like he's ready to attack."
"I don't understand why he'd warn us, though," Zander said. He and Spencer were both human-form again, and as he spoke, Zander wrapped a bandage around Spencer's shoulder where he'd been hit by the row of shelves.
Meredith and Elena exchanged a look. "Klaus likes to taunt his victims," Meredith said. "It's all a game to him."
"Then maybe we should try to turn the tables on him," Elena suggested. Stefan nodded, guessing what she was planning, and gave her a subtle half smile. He'd been encouraging her to explore her new Powers more thoroughly. "I can try again to sense him," she told the others. "If we can find where he and his allies are hiding, maybe we can find out what he's doing, who he's working with, catch him off guard."
"Can you do it now?" Alaric asked, watching her with professional interest.
Elena nodded. Relaxing her body, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. At first, she felt nothing special. Slowly, she became aware that the sense of evil that had been overwhelming when she was surrounded by the fight wasn't gone. There was still an insistent, low-key tugging, a feeling that something was wrong and that she had to fix it. That sense filled her, and she opened her eyes again.
Tendrils of black-and-rust-red aura hung smokelike in the air before her. Elena raised a hand toward them, but the colors swirled around her fingers without substance, the same way that Stefan's aura had. Her powers must be getting stronger: what had been just a feeling was now solid, a trail of black and red leading up the stairs and out of the library. She could picture it going farther, over the quad and across the athletic fields behind the campus. Elena followed the wisps of color, and the others followed her.
"The woods again," Bonnie said from behind Elena, but Elena barely heard her. The colors weren't leading her into the woods; they were stretching across the field and around an equipment shed. The pounding in Elena's head, the feeling of something being wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong intensified.
"Klaus is hiding back here somewhere?" Zander said, sounding confused. "Isn't it kind of exposed?"
No, Elena thought, not Klaus. And suddenly, she realized what a huge mistake she'd made. The trail, the feeling of wrong she got, was familiar. Damon. She was leading everyone right to him.
There was a split second between when Elena realized this and when the whole group rounded the corner of the equipment shed. Her steps faltered, but it was too late to change their direction.
Damon was feeding, another fair-haired girl pulled tightly against his chest, his mouth open against her neck, his eyes tightly shut. Blood ran down both their necks, making a gory, wet patch on Damon's black shirt.
There was a moment when everyone, even Meredith, froze. Without consciously thinking about it, Elena moved, throwing herself between the others and Damon.