Elena smiled, and he felt the blaze of her love arc to meet him. "Stefan." Her head was high, proud as any queen's.
Stefan turned to Klaus, who had stopped speaking and was glaring mutely.
"This," Stefan said distinctly, "is Elena. Not whatever empty shell she's left behind in the ground. This is Elena, and nothing you do can ever touch her."
He held out his hand, and Elena took it and stepped to him. When they touched, he felt a jolt, and then felt her Powers flowing into him, sustaining him. They stood together, side by side, facing the blond man. Stefan had never felt as fiercely victorious in his life, or as strong.
Klaus stared at them for perhaps twenty seconds and then went berserk.
His face twisted in loathing. Stefan could feel waves of malignant Power battering against him and Elena, and he used all his strength to resist it. The maelstrom of dark fury was trying to tear them apart, howling through the room, destroying everything in its path. Candles snuffed out and flew into the air as if caught in a tornado. The dream was breaking up around them, shattering.
Stefan clung to Elena's other hand. The wind blew her hair, whipping it around her face.
"Stefan!" She was shouting, trying to make herself heard. Then he heard her voice in his mind. "Stefan, listen to me! There is one thing you can do to stop him. You need a victim, Stefan—find one of his victims. Only a victim will know—"
The noise level was unbearable, as if the very fabric of space and time was tearing. Stefan felt Elena's hands ripped from his. With a cry of desperation, he reached out for her again, but he could feel nothing. He was already drained by the effort of fighting Klaus, and he couldn't hold on to consciousness. The darkness took him spinning down with it.
Bonnie had seen everything.
It was strange, but once she stepped aside to let Stefan go to Elena, she seemed to lose physical presence in the dream. It was as if she were no longer a player but the stage the action was being played upon. She could watch, but she couldn't do anything else.
In the end, she'd been afraid. She wasn't strong enough to hold the dream together, and the whole thing finally exploded, throwing her out of the trance, back into Stefan's room.
He was lying on the floor and he looked dead. So white, so still. But when Bonnie tugged at him, trying to get him on the bed, his chest heaved and she heard him suck in a gasping breath.
"Stefan? Are you okay?"
He looked wildly around the room as if trying to find something. "Elena!" he said, and then he stopped, memory clearly returning.
His face twisted. For one dreadful instant Bonnie thought he was going to cry, but he only shut his eyes and dropped his head into his hands.
"Stefan?"
"I lost her. I couldn't hold on."
"I know." Bonnie watched him a moment, then, gathering her courage, knelt in front of him, touching his shoulders. "I'm sorry."
His head lifted abruptly, his green eyes dry but so dilated they looked black. His nostrils were flared, his lips drawn back from his teeth.
"Klaus!" He spat the name as if it were a curse. "Did you see him?"
"Yes," Bonnie said, pulling back. She gulped, her stomach churning. "He's crazy, isn't he, Stefan?"
"Yes." Stefan got up. "And he must be stopped."
"But how?" Since seeing Klaus, Bonnie was more frightened than ever, more frightened and less confident. "What could stop him, Stefan? I've never felt anything like that Power."
"But didn't you—?" Stefan turned to her quickly. "Bonnie, didn't you hear what Elena said at the end?"
"No. What do you mean? I couldn't hear anything; there was a slight hurricane going on at the time."
"Bonnie…" Stefan's eyes went distant with speculation and he spoke as if to himself. "That means that he probably didn't hear it either. So he doesn't know, and he won't try to stop us."
"From what? Stefan, what are you talking about?"
"From finding a victim. Listen, Bonnie, Elena told me that if we can find a surviving victim of Klaus's, we can find a way to stop him."
Bonnie was in completely over her head. "But… why?"
"Because vampires and their donors—their prey—share minds briefly while the blood is being exchanged. Sometimes the donor can learn things about the vampire that way. Not always, but occasionally. That's what must have happened, and Elena knows it."
"That's all very well and good—except for one small thing," Bonnie said tartly. "Will you please tell me who on earth could have survived an attack by Klaus?"
She expected Stefan to be deflated, but he wasn't. "A vampire," he said simply. "A human Klaus made into a vampire would qualify as a victim. As long as they've exchanged blood, they've touched minds."
"Oh. Oh. So… if we can find a vampire he's made… but where?"
"Maybe in Europe." Stefan began to pace around the room, his eyes narrowed. "Klaus has a long history, and some of his vampires are bound to be there. I may have to go and look for one."
Bonnie was utterly dismayed. "But Stefan, you can't leave us. You can't!"
Stefan stopped where he was, across the room, and stood very still. Then at last, he turned to face her. "I don't want to," he said quietly. "And we'll try to think of another solution first—maybe we can get hold of Tyler again. I'll wait a week, until next Saturday. But I may have to leave, Bonnie. You know that as well as I do."
There was a long, long silence between them.
Bonnie fought the heat in her eyes, determined to be grown up and mature. She wasn't a baby and she would prove that now, once and for all. She caught Stefan's gaze and slowly nodded.
June 19, Friday, 11:45 p.m.
Dear Diary,
Oh, God, what are we going to do?
This has been the longest week of my life. Today was the last day of school and tomorrow Stefan is leaving. He's going to Europe to search for a vampire who got changed by Klaus. He says he doesn't want to leave us unprotected. But he's going to go.
We can't find Tyler. His car disappeared from the cemetery, but he hasn't turned up at school. He's missed every final this week. Not that the rest of us are doing much better. I wish Robert E. Lee was like the schools that have all their finals before graduation. I don't know whether I'm writing English or Swahili these days.
I hate Klaus. From what I saw he's as crazy as Katherine—and even crueler. What he did to Vickie—but I can't even talk about that or I'll start crying again. He was just playing with us at Caroline's party, like a cat with a mouse. And to do it on Meredith's birthday, too—although I suppose he couldn't have known that. He seems to know a lot, though. He doesn't talk like a foreigner, not like Stefan did when he first came to America, and he knows all about American things, even songs from the fifties. Maybe he's been over here for a while…
Bonnie stopped writing. She thought desperately. All this time, they had been thinking of victims in Europe, of vampires. But from the way Klaus talked, he had obviously been in America a long time. He didn't sound foreign at all. And he'd chosen to attack the girls on Meredith's birthday…
Bonnie got up, reached for the telephone, and called Meredith's number. A sleepy male voice answered.
"Mr. Sulez, this is Bonnie. Can I speak to Meredith?"
"Bonnie! Don't you know what time it is?"