"Stop," Andres 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 Andres'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 Andres.
"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." Andres 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," Andres 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.
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 Andres 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. Andres 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.
Andres 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.
Andres 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."
Andres 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.