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She’d been a fool. Damon and Stefan had loathed each other already, distanced by their competition for their father’s love, by their roles as the good and bad sons. Jealousy over Katherine had only heightened their dislike, and their anger and grief at her death had ripened it into hatred.
Katherine had expected Stefan and Damon to turn to each other, but instead they had turned on each other, swords in hand. Each murdered at his brother’s hand, they’d died with Katherine’s blood in their systems, and risen again, vampires, cursed forever.
“They don’t want to be happy.” Katherine’s eyes widened with remembered hurt, and for a moment, Elena saw the fragile, naïve girl who had destroyed Damon and Stefan with a mistaken idea of romance. “I gave them a gift. I gave them life forever, and they didn’t care. I told them to take care of each other, in my memory, but they wouldn’t listen. They threw everything I’d given them away.”
“But maybe it’s not too late,” Elena said. “Maybe if they knew you were alive, they could forgive each other.”
Katherine’s eyes narrowed angrily, her lips curling into a sulky pout. “I don’t want them to forgive each other,” she said in a childish voice. Then she began to smile, an unpleasant, hungry smile. “You, on the other hand …” She stroked Elena’s cheeks. Her hands were terribly cold, and they smelled of the earth around them. Elena shivered. “We look so much alike,” Katherine said musingly. “I should make you like me. We could travel together. It would be such fun. Everyone would think we were sisters.”
There was something wistful in Katherine’s eyes as her hand shifted to run through Elena’s hair, pulling a little at the long strands. Maybe family was what Katherine needed. She’d lost her father when she’d lost the Salvatores and fled Italy. Would knowing she had other family make a difference to Katherine?
“We are sisters,” she said, and Katherine’s hand pulled away.
“I don’t know what you mean, little one,” Katherine said. “You’re no sister of mine.”
Elena swallowed, feeling the dry click of her throat. “We really are. My mother—your mother—was an immortal. A Celestial Guardian. She left you to keep you safe. And when, hundreds of years later, she tried to keep me safe, the other Guardians killed her.”
Katherine’s mouth tightened into an angry line. “That doesn’t make any sense. My mother died when I was a baby.”
“No, it’s true,” Elena said simply. There was nothing but hostility in Katherine’s face, but Elena pushed on. “I ask you, as your own flesh and blood, to help me. You wanted to be the one to bring Stefan and Damon together, and you still can be. They need you, Katherine. Five hundred years, and they’ve never stopped lo
ving you. It’s torn them apart.”
Katherine’s face was blank and cold. “They deserve to suffer.” She squeezed her fists tightly, slamming her arms down at her sides. “They’ll suffer if I kill you. Or if I take you with me.”
“No.” Elena took Katherine’s cold, muddy arm, her heart pounding. “They’ve suffered all along. You can save them this time. You’re the only one who can.”
Hissing, Katherine pulled away. With a rattling noise, the crypt began to shake around them. Despite herself, Elena shrieked as the lid to the tomb fell to the floor with a crash, Honoria Fell’s face cracking. Another tremor had Elena stumbling and grabbing onto the stone wall to keep from falling.
“Stop it!” she demanded, glaring at Katherine. The other girl stood stock-still, her pale face tilted up as if she could see through the dirt and stone to the ruined church above. From high above, Elena heard a heavy thud, and Katherine’s lips curled in a joyless smile.
Elena ran. Her heart pounding, she shoved through the half-open gate and down the long dark corridor, her flashlight swinging wildly. She didn’t look back, but her nerves were on edge, listening for a footstep, waiting for Katherine’s inhumanly strong hands to clamp down upon her shoulders and drag Elena back.
Katherine could kill her, could turn Elena into a vampire if she wanted to, and there was nothing Elena would be able to do about it. Why had Elena tried to reason with her?
Grabbing hold of the iron rungs set in the wall, Elena began to pull herself up as fast as she could, her breath coming fast and anxious. The crypt had stopped shaking, for now, but her hands, sweaty with nerves, still slipped as she climbed. Partway up, she lost her grip on the flashlight and it fell, crashing into the stones below and going out, leaving Elena in darkness. Far above was the faintly lit rectangle of the tomb in the church, and Elena kept climbing toward it as fast as she could, holding tightly onto the rungs.
At last Elena reached the top and scrambled out through the Fells’ tomb, gulping deep breaths of the cold fresh air. Once she was standing on the floor of the old church, she dared to glance down into the crypt below.
There was nothing there, no white-clad figure following her. But that proved nothing. Katherine could take many forms, and she was much, much faster than Elena. Elena’s best chance, she thought, would be to cross Wickery Bridge and head home as quickly as she could. Katherine was powerful enough that she had trouble crossing running water.
The sun had set and night had fallen while Elena was down in the crypt. Terrific, she thought, a cemetery after dark without a flashlight and a vampire on my heels. This was a truly genius idea, Elena Gilbert.
She stumbled over what seemed to be every tombstone in the long grass of the older part of the graveyard, once falling hard enough to skin the palms of her hands. Elena scrambled up and hurried on, finding her way by the light of the half-moon above her.
Once she reached the road outside the cemetery, the tight ball of anxiety in Elena’s chest relaxed a little. Not much farther until she could cross the bridge and then head back home. She’d have to go back to her own house. Aunt Judith had called someone to fix the window and insisted on moving back home. At least it was closer than Meredith’s, but Elena didn’t know how to keep them safe from Damon. Perhaps now that he was focusing on her friends, he would leave Elena’s family alone.
Just before the bridge, a white-clad figure barred Elena’s path. Katherine’s pale gold hair whipped around her in the wind.
Elena glanced back over her shoulder. There was no point in running. Katherine was a thousand times faster than Elena, and the only thing that would hinder her—running water—was on the other side of her.
For a moment, Elena thought of begging for mercy. But she knew Katherine well enough to know that wouldn’t do any good. Whatever Katherine decided to do, she would do.
Might as well go out fighting. Elena tossed her head back and marched straight up to Katherine. “What do you want?” she asked.
Katherine’s cold blue eyes regarded Elena for a long moment. Finally, she spoke. “You think that I can save them? I’ll do as you ask, little mirror. I will let Damon and Stefan know that I still live.”
“Oh.” Maybe Elena’s pleading had done some good after all. “Thank you.”
