"Oh, God, you scared me," Bonnie said.
"I thought I told you not to come here," Elena answered.
This time her hair was loose, flowing over her shoulders and down her back, the pale golden white of a flame. She was wearing a thin white dress that glowed softly in the candlelight. She looked like a candle herself, luminous, radiant. Her feet were bare.
"I came here to…" Bonnie floundered, some concept teasing around the edges of her mind. This was her dream, her trance. She had to remember. "I came here to let you see Stefan," she said.
Elena's eyes widened, her lips parting. Bonnie recognized the look of yearning, of almost irresistible longing. Not fifteen minutes ago she'd seen it on Stefan's face.
"Oh," Elena whispered. She swallowed, her eyes clouding. "Oh, Bonnie… but I can't."
"Why not?"
Tears were shining in Elena's eyes now, and her lips were trembling. "What if things start to change? What if he comes, and…" She put a hand to her mouth and Bonnie remembered the last dream, with teeth falling like rain. Bonnie met Elena's eyes with understanding horror.
"Don't you see? I couldn't stand it if something like that happened," Elena whispered. "If he saw me like that… And I can't control things here; I'm not strong enough. Bonnie, please don't let him through. Tell him how sorry I am. Tell him—" She shut her eyes, tears spilling.
"All right." Bonnie felt as if she might cry too, but Elena was right. She reached for Stefan's mind to explain to him, to help him bear the disappointment. But the instant she touched it she knew she'd made a mistake.
"Stefan, no! Elena says—" It didn't matter. His mind was stronger than hers, and the instant she'd made contact he had taken over. He'd sensed the gist of her conversation with Elena, but he wasn't going to take no for an answer. Helplessly, Bonnie felt herself being overridden, felt his mind come closer, closer to the circle of light formed by the candelabras. She felt his presence there, felt it taking shape. She turned and saw him, dark hair, tense face, green eyes fierce as a falcon's. And then, knowing there was nothing more she could do, she stepped back to allow them to be alone.
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 him. He turned toward the voice, his attention fixing instantly, his mind almost shutting down because it couldn't cope with so many sudden driving emotions 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 come to Fell's Church, a golden white light that shone into his consciousness. Full of cool beauty and searing passion and vibrant life. Demanding that he move toward it, that he forget everything else.
Elena. It was really Elena.
Her presence pervaded him, filling him to his fingertips. All his hungry senses were fixed on that wash of luminance, searching for her. Needing her.
Then she stepped out.
She moved slowly, hesitantly. As if she could barely make herself do it. Stefan was caught in the same paralysis.
Elena.
He saw her every feature as if for the first time. The pale gold hair floating 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 came, and it was her voice. Her voice saying his name. But there was such pain in it that he wanted to run to her, hold her, promise her that everything would be all right. "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 wet with 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 see me. Oh, Stefan, he can make anything happen. And he'll find us. He'll come here…"
Relief and aching joy flooded through Stefan. He could scarcely concentrate on her words, and it didn't matter. The way she said his name was enough. That "Oh, Stefan" told him everything he cared about.
He moved toward her quietly, his own hand coming up 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 flame shining through translucent candle wax. Droplets of wetness were caught on her eyelashes like diamonds.
Although she kept shaking her head, kept protesting, she did not move her hand away. Not even when his outspread fingers touched it, pressing against her cool fingertips as if they were on opposite sides of a pane of glass.
And at this distance her eyes could not evade his. They were looking at each other, looking and not turning aside. Until at last she stopped whispering "Stefan, no" and only whispered his name.
He couldn't think. His heart was threatening to come through his chest. Nothing mattered except that she was here, that they were here together. He didn't notice the strange surroundings, didn't care who might be watching.
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 moisture on his fingers and a laugh caught 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 emotion he'd kept locked in his heart that long, came cascading out, submerging him. Drowning both of them. It took such a little movement and then he was holding her.
An angel in his arms, cool and thrilling with life and beauty. A being 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 from Stefan's nerves, melting and dissolving everything around it. He felt his control unraveling, the control he'd worked so hard to preserve since he'd lost her. Everything inside him was being jarred loose, all knots untied, all floodgates opened. He could feel his own tears as he held her to him, trying to fuse them into one flesh, one body. So that nothing could ever separate them again.
They were both crying without breaking the kiss. Elena's slender arms were around his neck now, every inch of her fitting to him as if she had never belonged anywhere else. He could taste the salt of her tears on his lips and it drenched him with sweetness.
He knew, vaguely, that there was something else he should be thinking about. But the first electric touch of her cool skin had driven reason from his mind. They were in the center of a whirlwind of fire; the universe could explode or crumble or burn to ashes for all he cared, as long as he could keep her safe.
But Elena was trembling.
Not just from emotion, from the intensity that was making 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 something 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—"
"Nothing can hurt me." She still clung to him, but she leaned back to look into his face. "I'm afraid for you, Stefan, for what he might do to you. And for what he might make you see…" Her voice quavered. "Oh, Stefan, go now, before he comes. He can find you through me. Please, please, go…"
"Ask me anything else 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 dream," Elena said desperately, new tears falling. "We can't really touch, we can't be together. It's not allowed."
Stefan didn't care. It didn't seem like a dream. It felt real. And even in a dream he was not going to give up Elena, not for anyone. No force in heaven or hell could make him…
"Wrong, 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 among 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 from any big city, except that he was so tall and his eyes were so clear and penetrating. Electric blue, like razor-frosted sky. His hair was almost white, standing straight up as if blown by a blast of chilly wind. His wide smile made Stefan feel sick.
"Salvatore, I presume," he said, scraping a bow. "And of course the beautiful Elena. The beautiful dead Elena. Come to join her, Stefan? You two were just meant to be together."