Page 12 (1/2)

Stefan heard a voice whisper, soft with pain, "Oh, no"

A voice that he’d never thought to hear again, that he would never forget Ripples of chills poured over his skin, and he could feel a shaking start inside hi instantly, hisdown because it couldn’t cope with soemotions at once

His eyes were blurred and could only discern a wash of radiance like a thousand candles But it didn’t matter He could feel her there The same presence he had sensed the very first day he’d coht that shone into his consciousness Full of cool beauty and searing passion and vibrant life De else

Elena It was really Elena

Her presence pervaded hiry senses were fixed on that wash of lu her

Then she stepped out

She moved slowly, hesitantly As if she could barely ht in the same paralysis

Elena

He saw her every feature as if for the first ti about her face and shoulders like a halo The fair, flawless skin The slender, supple body just now canted away from him, one hand raised in protest

"Stefan," the whisper ca his name But there was such pain in it that he wanted to run to her, hold her, proht "Stefan, please I can’t"

He could see her eyes now The dark blue of lapis lazuli, flecked in this light with gold Wide with pain and ith unshed tears It shredded his guts

"You don’t want to see me?" His voice was dry as dust

"I don’t want you to seehappen And he’ll find us He’ll coh Stefan He could scarcely concentrate on her words, and it didn’t h That "Oh, Stefan" told hi he cared about

Heup to reach for hers He saw the protesting shake of her head, saw that her lips were parted with her quickening breath Up close, her skin had an inner glow, like a flah translucent candle wax Droplets of wetness were caught on her eyelashes like dia her head, kept protesting, she did not ers touched it, pressing against her cool fingertips as if they were on opposite sides of a pane of glass

He couldn’t think His heart was threatening to co ether He didn’t notice the strange surroundings, didn’t care who

Slowly, so slowly, he closed his hand around hers, intertwining their fingers, the way they were meant to be His other hand lifted to her face

Her eyes closed at the touch, her cheek leaning into it He felt the ht in his throat Dream tears But they were real, she was real Elena

Sweetness pierced him A pleasure so sharp it was a pain, just to stroke the tears away from her face with his thumb

All the frustrated tenderness of the last six months, all the e, ca both of the her

An angel in his ar of flame and air She shivered in his embrace; then, eyes still shut, put up her lips

There was nothing cool about the kiss It struck sparks fro around it He felt his control unraveling, the control he’d worked so hard to preserve since he’d lost her Everything inside hiates opened He could feel his own tears as he held her to hi to fuse the could ever separate the the kiss Elena’s slender ar to hied anywhere else He could taste the salt of her tears on his lips and it drenched hiuely, that there was so about But the first electric touch of her cool skin had driven reason from his mind They were in the center of a ind of fire; the universe could explode or cru as he could keep her safe

But Elena was tre

Not just fro him dizzy and drunk with pleasure From fear He could feel it in her mind and he wanted to protect her, to shield her and to cherish her and to kill anything that dared frighten her With so like a snarl he raised his face to look around

"What is it?" he said, hearing the predator’s rasp in his own voice "Anything that tries to hurt you-"

"Askelse and I’ll do it," Stefan said The killer would have to shred him nerve from nerve, muscle from muscle, cell from cell to make him leave her

"Stefan, it’s only a drea "We can’t really touch, we can’t be together It’s not allowed"

Stefan didn’t care It didn’t seeoing to give up Elena, not for anyone No force in heaven or hell could , sport Surprise!" said a new voice, a voice Stefan had never heard He recognized it instinctively, though, as the voice of a killer A hunter a hunters And when he turned, he remembered what Vickie, poor Vickie, had said

He looks like the devil

If the devil was handsome and blond

He wore a threadbare raincoat, as Vickie had described Dirty and tattered He looked like any street person fro city, except that he was so tall and his eyes were so clear and penetrating Electric blue, like razor-frosted sky His hair was alht up as if blown by a blast of chilly wind His wide smile made Stefan feel sick

"Salvatore, I presu a bow "And of course the beautiful Elena The beautiful dead Elena Coether"

He looked young, older than Stefan, but still young He wasn’t

"Stefan, leave now," Elena whispered "He can’t hurthappen that will follow you out of the dream"

Stefan’s arm stayed locked around her

"Bravo!" thearound as if to encourage an invisible audience He staggered slightly, and if he’d been huht he was drunk

"Stefan, please," Elena whispered

"It would be rude to leave before we’ve even been properly introduced," the blond man said Hands in coat pockets, he strode a step or two closer "Don’t you want to knoho I aation but in defeat, and dropped it to Stefan’s shoulder He cupped a hand around her hair, wanting to shield every part of her fro at the blond ?" said Stefan, uniaze turned drea pretty white throats when your ancestors were building the Colosseuht in the Trojan War I’inals In my earliest memories I carried a bronze ax"

Slowly, Stefan nodded

He’d heard of the Old Ones They hispered about a vampires, but no one Stefan had ever known had actually ed by the exchange of blood But soinals, the ones who hadn’t been made They here the line of continuity stopped No one kne they’d gotten to be vaendary

"I helped bring the Roman Empire down," the blond man continued dreamily "They called us barbarians-they just didn’t understand! War, Salvatore! There’s nothing like it Europe was exciting then I decided to stick around the countryside and enjoy e, you know, people never really seemed comfortable around me They used to run or hold up crosses" He shook his head "But one woman came and asked my help She was a maid in a baron’s household, and her little , she said She wantedabout it And so" The s wider and i"

Stefan had turned his body to hold Elena away from the blond man, and now, for a moment, he turned his head away too He should have known, should have guessed And so it all came back to him Vickie’s death, and Sue’s, were ultimately to be laid at his door He had started the chain of events that ended here

"Katherine," he said, lifting his head to look at the ed Katherine"

"To save her life," the blonda lesson "Which your little sweetheart here took"

A na that Katherine had told it to him, just as she must have described this man to him once He could hear Katherine’s words in his ht and I saw the htened His nae say he was evil

"Klaus," the blond"That hat she called me, anyway She came back to me after two little Italian boys jilted her She’d done everything for theiven therateful and threw her out Very strange"

"What was even stranger was that she never got over you, Salvatore You especially She was always drawing unflattering comparisons between us I tried to beat some sense into her, but it never really worked Maybe I should have just killed her otten used to having her around She never was the brightest But she was good to look at, and she kne to have fun I showed her that, how to enjoy the killing Eventually her brain turned a little, but so what? It wasn’t her brains I was keeping her for"

There was no longer any vestige of love for Katherine in Stefan’s heart, but he found he could still hate the man who had made her what she was in the end

"Me? Me, sport?" Klaus pointed to his own chest in unbelief "You ht now, or rather your little girlfriend did Right now, she’s dust Worhtly beyond her plane, isn’t that what the mystics say, Elena? Why don’t you vibrate down here with the rest of us?"

"If only I could," whispered Elena, lifting her head and looking at hiot your friends Sue was such a sweet girl, I hear" He licked his lips "And Vickie was delectable Delicate but full bodied, with a nice bouquet More like a nineteen-year-old than seventeen"

Stefan lunged one step forward, but Elena caught him "Stefan, don’t! This is his territory, and his er than ours He controls it"

"Precisely This ispsychotic grin again "Where your wildest nighte For instance," he said, looking at Stefan, "how’d you like to see what your sweetheart really looks like right now? Without her makeup?"

Elena hter