Matt! Don't break the lines!" he shouted again. "You can get out, but step over the lines careful y!"
Elena glanced down. An elaborate pattern of lines in different colors was chalked beneath their feet, and she, Bonnie, Matt, and the phantom were al together in a smal circle in the innermost center of this pattern. Bonnie was the first one to clearly realize what Alaric was saying. "Come on," she muttered, yanking at Elena's and Matt's arms. Then she picked her way, daintily but quickly, across the floor, away from the phantom and toward their friends. Matt fol owed her. He had to pause on one foot in a smal section and reach with his other foot, and there was a moment when he wobbled, one sneaker almost blurring a blue line of chalk. But he caught his balance and continued on.
It took Elena, stil mostly focused on the desperately grappling figures of Damon and Stefan, a few seconds longer to realize she needed to move as wel . She was almost too late. As she poised herself to take that first step out of the inner circle, the phantom turned its glassy eyes upon her.
Elena fled, jumping quickly out of the circle and just barely managing to stop herself from skidding across the diagram. The phantom took a swipe at her, but its hand stopped before crossing above a chalk line, and it growled in frustration.
Alaric shakily pushed his tousled hair out of his eyes. "I wasn't sure whether that would hold her," he admitted, "but it seems like it's working. Now, careful y, Elena, watching where you step, make your way over here." Matt and Bonnie had already reached the wal of the garage, at a distance from where Stefan and Damon were locked in battle, and Meredith had wrapped her arms around them, her dark head buried in Matt's shoulder, Bonnie nestled against her side, her eyes as round as a frightened kitten's. Elena looked down at the complicated pattern drawn on the floor and started moving careful y between the lines, heading not for her other friends but for the two struggling vampires.
"Elena! No! This way!" cal ed Alaric, but Elena ignored him. She had to get to Damon and Stefan.
"Please," she said, half sobbing, as she reached them,
"Damon, Stefan, you have to stop. The phantom's doing this to you. You don't real y want to hurt each other. It's not you. Please."
Neither of them paid any attention to her. She wasn't even sure whether they could hear her. They were almost motionless now, their muscles straining in each other's grip as each tried to simultaneously attack and fend off the other. Slowly, as Elena watched, Damon began to overcome Stefan, gradual y pushing his arms aside, leaning in toward his throat, white teeth flashing.
"Damon! No!" Elena screamed. She stretched out to grab his arm, to pul him off Stefan. Without even looking at her, he casual y, viciously shoved her aside, sending her flying.
She landed hard on her back and slid across the floor, and it hurt, the impact jolting her teeth together, banging her head against the cement, white shocks of pain flaring behind her eyes. As she started to get up again, she saw with dismay Damon push through the last of Stefan's defenses and sink his fangs into his younger brother's neck.
"No!" she screamed again. "Damon, no!"
"Elena, be careful," Alaric shouted. "You're in the diagram. Please, whatever you do, don't break any more lines."
Elena looked around. Her landing had sent her skidding through several of the chalk marks, which were now smeared al around her, smudges of color. She stiffened in terror and suppressed a whimper. Was it loose now? Had she set it free?
Steeling herself, she turned toward the innermost circle. The phantom was feeling around itself with its long arms, patting up and down against some invisible wal bordering the circle that kept it contained. As Elena watched, its mouth thinned with effort and it brought its hands together in one spot and pushed.
The air in the room rippled.
But the phantom did not manage to break through the circle, and after a moment it stopped pushing and hissed in disappointment.
Then its eyes fel on Elena, and it smiled again.
"Oh, Elena," it said, its voice soft with false compassion.
"The pretty girl, the one everyone wants, the one the boys al fight over. It's so very hard being you." The voice twisted, its tone changing to bitter mockery. "But they're not real y thinking of you, are they? The two you want, you're not the girl for them. You know why they are attracted to you. Katherine. Always Katherine. They want you because you look like her, but you're not her. The girl they loved so long ago was soft and sweet and gentle. An innocent, a victim, a foil for their fantasies. You're nothing like her. They'l find that out, you know. Once your mortal form changes - and it wil . They'l be the same forever, but you're changing and getting older every day; in a few years you'l look much older than they do - then they'l realize you're not the one they love at al . You're not Katherine, and you never wil be."
Elena's eyes stung. "Katherine was a monster," she spat out through her teeth.
"She became a monster. She started out as a sweet young girl," the phantom corrected her. "Damon and Stefan destroyed her. Like they'l destroy you. You'l never lead a normal life. You're not like Meredith or Bonnie or Celia. They'l have chances at normalcy when they're ready, despite the way you've dragged them into your battles. But you, you'l never be normal. And you know who's to blame for that, don't you?"
Elena, without thinking, looked at Damon and Stefan, just as Stefan managed to shove Damon away from him. Damon staggered backward, toward the group of humans huddling by the wal of the garage. Blood was running from his mouth and streaming down Stefan's neck from a terrible gash.