Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

Bonnie screamed, too. She couldn’t help it, although her scream sounded too faint and too breathless, like an echo, not the coloratura job that Caroline had done. Thank God that at least Caroline wasn’t screaming any longer. Bonnie was able to stop the new scream building in her own throat, even though her shaking was worse than ever. Meredith had an arm around her tightly, but then, as the darkness and the silence went on and Bonnie’s shaking only continued, Meredith got up and heartlessly passed her to Matt, who seemed astonished and embarrassed, but tried awkwardly to hold her.

“It’s not as dark once your eyes get used to it,” he said. His voice was creaky, as if he needed a drink of water. But it was the best thing that he could have said, because of all things in the world to fear, Bonnie was most afraid of the dark. There were things in it, things that only she saw. She managed, despite the terrible shaking, to stand with his support — and then she gasped, and heard Matt gasp, too.

Elena was glowing. Not only that, but the glow extended out behind her and far to either side of her in a pair of what were beautifully defined, and undeniably there …wings.

“She h-has wings,” Bonnie whispered, the stutter caused by her shaking rather than by awe or fear. Matt was clinging to her now, like a child; he obviously couldn’t answer.

The wings moved with Elena’s breathing. She was sitting on thin air, steady now, one hand held out with her fingers all spread in a gesture of denial.

Elena spoke. It wasn’t any language that Bonnie had heard before; she doubted it was any language people on Earth used. The words were sharp, thin-edged, like the splintering of myriad shards of crystal that had fallen from somewhere very high and very far away.

The shape of the words almost made sense in Bonnie’s head as her own psychic abilities were sparked by Elena’s tremendous Power. It was a Power that stood tall against the darkness and now was sweeping it aside…making the things in the dark scamper away before it, their claws scritching in all directions. Ice-sharp words followed them all the way, dismissive now….

And Elena…Elena was as heartbreakingly beautiful as when she’d been a vampire, and seemed almost as pale as one.

But Caroline was shouting, too. She was using powerful words of Black Magic, and to Bonnie it was as if the shadows of all sorts of dark and horrible things were coming from her mouth: lizards and snakes and many-legged spiders.

It was a duel, a face-off of magic. Only how had Caroline learned so much dark magic? She wasn’t even a witch by lineage, like Bonnie.

Outside Stefan’s room, surrounding it, was a strange sound, almost like a helicopter.Whip whip whip whip whip… It terrified Bonnie.

But she had to do something. She was Celtic by heritage and psychic because she couldn’t avoid it, and she had to help Elena. Slowly, as if making her way against gale-force winds, Bonnie stumbled to put her hand on Elena’s hand, to offer Elena her power.

When Elena clasped hands with her, Bonnie realized that Meredith was on her other side. The light grew. The scrabbling lizard things ran from it, screaming and tearing at each other to get away.

The next thing Bonnie knew, Elena had slumped over. The wings were gone. The dark scrabbling things were gone, too. Elena had sent them away, using tremendous amounts of energy to overwhelm them with White Power.

“She’ll fall,” Bonnie whispered, looking at Stefan. “She’s been using magic so strong—” Just then, as Stefan started to turn to Elena, several things happened very fast, as if the room was caught in the flashes of a strobe light.

Flash. The window shade rolled back up, rattling furiously.

Flash. The lamp went back on, revealing it was in Stefan’s hands. He must have been trying to fix it.

Flash. The door to Stefan’s room opened slowly, creaking, as if to make up for slamming shut before.

Flash. Caroline was now on the floor, on all fours, groveling, breathing hard. Elena had won….

Elena fell.

Only inhumanly fast reflexes could have caught her, especially from across the room. But Stefan had tossed the lamp to Meredith and was across the distance faster than Bonnie’s eyes could follow. Then he was holding Elena, encircling her protectively.

“Oh,hell,” said Caroline. Black trails of mascara ran down her face, making her look like something not quite human. She looked at Stefan with unconcealed hatred. He looked back soberly — no,sternly.

“Don’t call on Hell,” he said in a very low voice. “Not here. Not now. Because Hell might hear and call back.”

“As if it already hadn’t,” Caroline said, and in that moment, she was pitiful — broken and pathetic. As if she had started something she didn’t know how to stop.

“Caroline, what are you saying?” Stefan knelt. “Are you saying that you’ve already — made some bargain—?”

“Ouch,” Bonnie said, suddenly and involuntarily, shattering the ominous mood in Stefan’s room. One of Caroline’s broken nails had left a trail of blood on the floor. Caroline had knelt in it, too, making things pretty messy. Bonnie felt a sympathetic throb of pain in her own fingers until Caroline waved her bloody hand at Stefan. Then Bonnie’s sympathy turned to nausea.

“Want a lick?” she said. Her voice and face had changed entirely, and she wasn’t even trying to hide it. “Oh, come on, Stefan,” she went on mockingly, “you do drink human blood these days, don’t you? Human or — whatever she is, whatever she’s become. You two fly like bats together now, do you?”

“Caroline,” Bonnie whispered, “didn’t you see them? Her wings—”

“Just like a bat — or another vampire already. Stefan’s made her—”

“I saw them too,” Matt said flatly, behind Bonnie. “They weren’t bat wings.”

“Doesn’t anybody have eyes?” Meredith said from where she stood by the lamp. “Look here.” She bent. When she stood again she was holding a long white feather. It shone in the light.

“Maybe she’s a white crow, then,” Caroline said. “That would be appropriate. And I can’t believe how you’re all — all — fawning on her as if she were some sort of princess. Always everybody’s little darling, aren’t you, Elena?”

“Stop it,” Stefan said.

“Everybody’s, that’s the key word,” Caroline spat.

“Stop it.”

“The way you were kissing people one after another.” She gave a theatrical shudder. “Everyone seems to have forgotten, but that was more like—”

“Stop, Caroline.”

“The real Elena.” Caroline’s voice had become pretend-prissy, but she couldn’t keep the venom out, Bonnie thought. “Because anyone who knows you knows what youreally were before Stefan blessed us with his irresistible presence. You were—”

“Caroline, stop right there—”

“A slut! That’s all! Just a cheap, anybody’s slut!”

There was a sort of universal gasp. Stefan went white, his compressed lips showing in a tight line. Bonnie felt as if she were choking on words, on explanations, on recriminations about Caroline’s own behavior. Elena may have had as many boyfriends as the stars in the sky, but in the end she had given all that up — because she fell in love — not that Caroline would know anything about that.

“Don’t have anything to say now?” Caroline was taunting. “Can’t find any cute answer? Bat got your tongue?” She began to laugh, but it was forced, glassy laughter, and then words were spilling out of her almost as if uncontrollably, all words that weren’t supposed to be spoken in public. Bonnie had said most of them at one time or another, but here, and now, they formed a stream of venomous power. Caroline’s words were building up to some kind of crescendo — something was going to happen — this kind of force couldn’t be contained. Reverberations, Bonnie thought as the sound waves began building up….