"What thehell was it, anyway?" he exploded, kicking the front seat viciously. "The thing I swerved for on the road?"
Meredith's dark head lifted slowly. "I don't know; I was about to roll up the window. I only got a glimpse."
"It just appeared right in the middle of the road."
"A wolf?"
"It wasn't there and then itwas there."
"Wolves aren't that color. It was red," Bonnie said flatly, lifting her head from Meredith's shoulder.
"Red?" Meredith shook her head. "It was much too big to be a fox."
"Itwas red, I think," Matt said.
"Wolves aren't red...what about werewolves? Does Tyler Smallwood have any relatives with red hair?"
"It wasn't a wolf," Bonnie said. "It was...backward."
"Backward?"
"Its head was on the wrong side. Or maybe it had heads on both ends."
"Bonnie, you arereally scaring me," Meredith said.
Matt wouldn't say it, but she was really scaring him, too. Because his glimpse of the animal had seemed to show him the same kind of deformed shape that Bonnie was describing.
"Maybe we just saw it at a weird angle," he said, while Meredith said, "It may just have been some animal scared out by - "
"By what?"
Meredith looked up at the top of the car. Matt followed her gaze. Very slowly, and with a groan of metal, the roof dented. And again. As if something very heavy was leaning on it.
Matt cursed himself. "While I was in the front seat, why didn't I just floor it - ?" He stared hungrily through branches, trying to make out the accelerator, the ignition. "Are the keys still there?"
"Matt, we ended up half in a ditch. And besides, if it would have done any good, I'd have told you to floor it."
"That branch would've taken your head off!"
"Yes," Meredith said simply.
"It would havekilled you!"
"If it would have gotten you two out, I'd have suggested it. But you were trapped looking sideways; I couldsee straight ahead. They were already here; the trees. In every direction."
"That...isn't...possible!" Matt pounded the seat in front of him to emphasize each word.
"Isthis possible?"
The roof creaked again.
"Both of you - stop fighting!" Bonnie said, and her voice broke on a sob.
There was an explosion like a gunshot and the car sank suddenly back and left.
Bonnie started. "What was that?"
Silence.
"...a tire blowing," Matt said at last. He didn't trust his own voice. He looked at Meredith.
So did Bonnie. "Meredith - the branches are filling up the front seat. I can hardly see the moonlight. It's getting dark."
"I know."
"What are we going todo ?"
Matt could see the tremendous tension and frustration in Meredith's face, as if everything she said should come out through gritted teeth. But Meredith's voice was quiet.
"I don't know."
With Stefan still shuddering, Elena curled herself like a cat over the bed. She smiled at him, a smile drugged with pleasure and love. He thought of grasping her by the arms, pulling her down, and starting all over again.
That was how insane she'd made him. Because he knew - all too well, from experience - the danger they were flirting with. Much more of this and Elena would be the first spirit-vampire, as she'd been the first vampire-spirit he'd known.
But look at her! He slipped out from beneath her as he sometimes did and just gazed, feeling his heart pound just at the sight of her. Her hair, true gold, fell like silk down to the bed and pooled there. Her body, in the light of the one small lamp in the room, seemed to be outlined in gold. She truly seemed to float and move and sleep in a golden haze. It was terrifying. For a vampire, it was as if he'd brought a living sun into his bed.
He found himself suppressing a yawn. She did that to him, too, like an unwitting Delilah taking Samson's strength away. Hyper-charged as he might be by her blood, he was also delightfully sleepy. He would spend a warm night in - or below - her arms.
In Matt's car it only got darker as the trees continued to cut out the moonlight. For a while they tried yelling for help. That did no good, and besides, as Meredith pointed out, they needed to conserve the oxygen in the car. So they sat still again.
Finally, Meredith reached into her jeans pocket and produced a set of keys with a tiny keychain flashlight. Its light was blue. She pressed it and they all leaned forward. Such a tiny thing to mean so much, Matt thought.
There was pressure against the front seats now.
"Bonnie?" Meredith said. "No one will hear us out here yelling. If anyone could hear us, they would have heard the tire and thought it was a gunshot."
Bonnie shook her head as if she didn't want to listen. She was still picking pine needles out of her skin.
She's right. We're miles away from anybody, Matt thought.
"There is something very bad here," Bonnie said. She said it quietly, but as if every word was being forced out one by one, like pebbles thrown into a pond.
Matt suddenly felt grayer. "How...bad?"
"It's so bad that it's...I'venever felt anything like this before. Not when Elena got killed, not from Klaus, not fromanything . I'venever feltanything as bad as this. It'sso bad, and it's sostrong . I didn't think anything could be so strong. It'spushing on me, and I'mafraid - "
Meredith cut her off. "Bonnie, I know we can both only think of one way out of this - "
"There'sno way out of this!"
" - I know you're afraid - "
"Who is there to call? I could do it...if there were someone to call. I can stare at your little flashlight and try to pretend it's a flame and do it - "