"Trancing?" Matt looked at Meredith sharply. "She's not supposed to do that anymore."
"Klaus is dead."
"But - "
"There's nobody to hear me!" Bonnie shrieked and then she broke down into huge sobs at last. "Elena and Stefan are too far away, and they're probably asleep by now! And there isn't anyone else!"
The three of them were being pushed together now, as branches pressed the seats back onto them. Matt and Meredith were close enough to look at each other right over Bonnie's head.
"Uh," Matt said, startled. "Um...are we sure?"
"No," Meredith said. She sounded both grim and hopeful. "Remember this morning? We are not at all sure. In factI'm sure he's still around somewhere."
Now Matt felt sick, and Meredith and Bonnie looked ill in the already strange-looking blue light. "And - right before this happened, we were talking about how a lot of stuff - "
" - basically everything that happened to change Elena - "
" - was all his fault."
"In the woods."
"With an open window."
Bonnie sobbed on.
Matt and Meredith, however, had made a silent agreement by eye contact. Meredith said, very gently, "Bonnie, what you said you would do; well, you're going to have to do it. Try to get through to Stefan, or waken Elena or - or apologize to...Damon. Probably the last, I'm afraid. But he's never seemed to want us all dead, and he must know that it won't help him with Elena if he kills her friends."
Matt grunted, skeptical. "He may not want us all dead, but he may wait until some of us are dead to save the others. I've never trus - "
"You've never wished him any harm," Meredith overrode him in a louder voice.
Matt blinked at her and then shut up. He felt like an idiot.
"So, here, the flashlight's on," Meredith said, and even in this crisis, her voice was steady, rhythmic, hypnotic. The pathetic little light was so precious, too. It was all they had to keep the darkness from becoming absolute.
But when the darkness became absolute, Matt thought, it would be because all light, all air, everything from the outside had been shut out, pushed out of the way by the pressure of the trees. And by then the pressure would have broken their skeletons.
"Bonnie?" Meredith's voice was the voice of every big sister who ever had come to her younger sibling's rescue. That gentle. That controlled. "Can you try to pretend it's a candle flame...a candle flame...a candle flame...and then try to trance?"
"I'm in trance already." Bonnie's voice was somehow distant - far away and almost echoing.
"Then ask for help," Meredith said softly.
Bonnie was whispering, over and over, clearly oblivious to the world around her: "Please, come help us. Damon, if you can hear me, please accept our apologies and come. You gave us a terrible scare, and I'm sure we deserved it, but please, please help. It hurts, Damon. It hurts so bad I could scream. But instead I'm putting all that energy into Calling you. Please, please, please help..."
For five, ten, fifteen minutes she kept it up, as the branches grew, enclosing them with their sweet, resinous scent. She kept it up far longer than Matt had ever thought she could endure.
Then the light went out. After that there was no sound but the whisper of the pines.
You had to admire the technique.
Damon was once again lounging in midair, even higher this time than when he'd entered Caroline's third-story window. He still had no idea of the names of trees, but that didn't stop him. This branch was like having a box seat over the drama unfolding below. He was starting to get a little bored, since nothing new was happening on the ground. He'd abandoned Damaris earlier this evening whenshe had gotten boring, talking about marriage and other subjects he wished to avoid. Like her current husband. Bo-ring. He'd left without really checking to see if she'd become a vampire - he tended to think so, and wouldn't that be a surprise when hubby got home? His lips trembled on the edge of a smile.
Below him, the play had almost reached its cl**ax.
And you really had to admire the technique. Pack hunting. He had no idea what sort of nasty little creatures were manipulating the trees, but like wolves or lionesses, they seemed to have gotten it down to an art. Working together to capture prey that was too quick and too heavily armored for one of them alone to manage. In this case, a car.
The fine art of cooperation. Pity vampires were so solitary, he thought. If we could cooperate, we'd own the world.
He blinked sleepily and then flashed a dazzling smile at nothing at all. Of course, if we could do that - say, take a city and divvy up the inhabitants - we'd finish it off by divvying up one another. Tooth and nail and Power would be wielded like the blade of a sword, until there was nothing left but shreds of quivering flesh and gutters running with blood.
Nice imagery, though, he thought, and let his eyelids droop to appreciate it. Artistic. Blood in scarlet pools, magically still liquid enough to run down white marble steps of - oh, say, the Kallimarmaron in Athens. An entire city gone quiet, purged of noisy, chaotic, hypocritical humans, with only their necessary bits left behind: a few arteries to pump the sweet red stuff out in quantity. The vampire version of the land of milk and honey.
He opened his eyes again in annoyance. Now things were getting loud down there. Humans yelling. Why? What was the point? The rabbit always squeals in the jaws of the fox, but when has another rabbit ever rushed up to save it?
There, a new proverb,and proof that humans are as stupid as rabbits, he thought, but his mood was ruined. His mind slid away from the fact, but it wasn't just the noise below that was disturbing him. Milk and honey, that had been...a mistake. Thinking about that had been a blunder. Elena's skin had been like milk that night a week ago, warm-white, not cool, even in the moonlight. Her bright hair in shadow had been like spilled honey. Elena wouldn't be happy to see the results of this night's pack hunting. She would cry tears like crystal dewdrops, and they would smell like salt.