"Hi, Meredith."
Meredith looked around quickly. "Oh—Tyler," she said. "You scared me. I thought you were—never mind."
"Yeah?" Tyler's lips skinned back in an unsettling grin. "Well, I'm sorry you're disappointed. But it's me, just me and nobody else."
"What are you doing here, Tyler? No good parties?"
"I could ask you the same question." Tyler's eyes dropped to the headstone and the tassel and his face darkened. "But I guess I already know the answer. You're here for her. Elena Gilbert, A Light in Darkness," he read sarcastically.
"That's right," Meredith said evenly. " 'Elena' means light, you know. And she was certainly surrounded by darkness. It almost beat her, but she won in the end."
"Maybe," Tyler said, and worked his jaw meditatively, squinting. "But you know, Meredith, it's a funny thing about darkness. There's always more of it waiting in the wings."
"Like tonight," Meredith said, looking up at the sky. It was clear and dotted with faint stars. "It's very dark tonight, Tyler. But sooner or later the sun will come up."
"Yeah, but the moon comes up first." Tyler chuckled suddenly, as if at some joke only he could see. "Hey, Meredith, you ever see the Smallwood family plot? Well, come on and I'll show you. It's not far."
Just like he showed Elena, Meredith thought. In a way she was enjoying this verbal fencing, but she never lost sight of what she had come here for. Her cold fingers dipped into her jacket pocket and found the tiny sprig of vervain there. "That's all right, Tyler. I think I'd prefer to stay here."
"You sure about that? A cemetery's a dangerous place to be alone."
Unquiet spirits, Meredith thought. She looked right at him. "I know."
He was grinning again, displaying teeth like tombstones. "Anyway, you can see it from here if you have good eyes. Look that way, toward the old graveyard. Now, do you see something sort of shining red in the middle?"
"No." There was a pale luminosity over the trees in the east. Meredith kept her eyes on it.
"Aw, come on, Meredith. You're not trying. Once the moon's up you'll see it better."
"Tyler, I can't waste any more time here. I'm going."
"No, you're not," he said. And then, as her fingers tightened on the vervain, encompassing it in her fist, he added in a wheedling voice, "I mean, you're not going until I tell you the story of that headstone, are you? It's a great story. See, the headstone is made of red marble, the only one of its kind in the whole graveyard. And that ball on top—see it?—that must weigh about a ton. But it moves. It turns whenever a Smallwood is going to die. My grandfather didn't believe that; he put a scratch on it right down the front. He used to come out and check it every month or so. Then one day he came and found the scratch in the rear. The ball had turned completely backward. He did everything he could to turn it around, but he couldn't. It was too heavy. And that night, in bed, he died. They buried him under it."
"He probably had a heart attack from overexertion," Meredith said caustically, but her palms were tingling.
"You're funny, aren't you? Always so cool. Always so together. Takes a lot to make you scream, doesn't it?"
"I'm leaving, Tyler. I've had enough."
He let her walk a few paces, then said, "You screamed that night at Caroline's, though, didn't you?"
Meredith turned back. "How do you know that?"
Tyler rolled his eyes. "Give me credit for a little intelligence, okay? I know a lot, Meredith. For instance, I know what's in your pocket."
Meredith's fingers stilled. "What do you mean?"
"Vervain, Meredith. Verbena officinalis. I've got a friend who's into these things." Tyler was focused now, his smile growing, watching her face as if it were his favorite TV show. Like a cat tired of playing with a mouse, he was moving in. "And I know what it's for, too." He cast an exaggerated glance around and put a finger to his lips. "Shh. Vampires," he whispered. Then he threw back his head and laughed loudly.
Meredith backed away a step.
"You think that's going to help you, don't you? But I'm going to tell you a secret."
Meredith's eyes measured the distance between herself and the path. She kept her face calm, but a violent shaking was beginning inside her. She didn't know if she was going to be able to pull this off.
"You're not going anywhere, babe," Tyler said, and a large hand clasped Meredith's wrist. It was hot and damp where she could feel it below her jacket cuff. "You're going to stay right here for your surprise." His body was hunched now, his head thrust forward, and there was an exultant leer on his lips.
"Let me go, Tyler. You're hurting me!" Panic flashed down all Meredith's nerves at the feel of Tyler's flesh against hers. But the hand only gripped harder, grinding tendon against bone in her wrist.
"This is a secret, baby, that nobody else knows," Tyler said, pulling her close, his breath hot in her face. "You came here all decked out against vampires. But I'm not a vampire."
Meredith's heart was pounding. "Let go!"
"First I want you to look over there. You can see the headstone now," he said, turning her so that she couldn't help but look. And he was right; she could see it, like a red monument with a shining globe on top. Or—not a globe. That marble ball looked like… it looked like…
"Now look east. What do you see there, Meredith?" Tyler went on, his voice hoarse with excitement.
It was the full moon. It had risen while he'd been talking to her, and now it hung above the hills, perfectly round and enormously distended, a huge and swollen red ball.
And that was what the headstone looked like. Like a full moon dripping with blood.
"You came here protected against vampires, Meredith," Tyler said from behind her, even more hoarsely. "But the Smallwoods aren't vampires at all. We're something else."
And then he growled.
No human throat could have made the sound. It wasn't an imitation of an animal; it was real. A vicious guttural snarl that went up and up, snapping Meredith's head around to look at him, to stare in disbelief. What she was seeing was so horrible her mind couldn't accept it…
Meredith screamed.
"I told you it was a surprise. How do you like it?" Tyler said. His voice was thick with saliva, and his red tongue lolled among the rows of long canine teeth. His face wasn't a face anymore. It jutted out grotesquely into a muzzle, and his eyes were yellow, with slitlike pupils. His reddish-sandy hair had grown over his cheeks and down the back of his neck. A pelt. "You can scream all you want up here and nobody's going to hear you," he added.
Every muscle in Meredith's body was rigid, trying to get away from him. It was a visceral reaction, one she couldn't have helped if she wanted to. His breath was so hot, and it smelled feral, like an animal. The nails he was digging into her wrist were stumpy blackened claws. She didn't have the strength to scream again.
"There's other things besides vampires with a taste for blood," Tyler said in his new slurping voice. "And I want to taste yours. But first we're going to have some fun."
Although he still stood on two feet, his body was humped and strangely distorted. Meredith's struggles were feeble as he forced her to the ground. She was a strong girl, but he was far stronger, his muscles bunching under his shirt as he pinned her.
"You've always been too good for me, haven't you? Well, now you're going to find out what you've been missing."
I can't breathe, Meredith thought wildly. His arm was across her throat, blocking her air. Gray waves rolled through her brain. If she passed out now…
"You're going to wish you died as fast as Sue." Tyler's face floated above her, red as the moon, with that long tongue lolling. His other hand held her arms above her head. "You ever hear the story of Little Red Riding Hood?"
The gray was turning into blackness, speckled with little lights. Like stars, Meredith thought. I'm falling in the stars…
"Tyler, take your hands off her! Let go of her, now!" Matt's voice shouted.