Bonnie looked up as Elena reached them. Her eyes were filled with tears. "Oh, Elena, he's dead."
With a chill of horror, Elena stared down at the little bundle at Bonnie's feet. It was the Pekingese, lying very stiffly on his side, eyes open. "Oh, Bonnie," she said.
"He was old," said Bonnie, "but I never expected him to go this quickly. Just a little while ago, he was barking."
"I think we'd better go inside," said Meredith, and Elena looked up at her and nodded. Tonight was not a night to be out in the dark. It was not a night to invite things inside, either. She knew that now, although she still didn't understand what had happened.
It was when they got back in the living room that she found her diary was missing.
Stefan lifted his head from the velvet-soft neck of the doe. The woods were filled with night noises, and he couldn't be sure which had disturbed him.
With the Power of his mind distracted, the deer roused from its trance. He felt muscles quiver as she tried to get her feet under her.
Go, then, he thought, sitting back and releasing her entirely. With a twist and a heave, she was up and running.
He'd had enough. Fastidious, he licked at the corners of his mouth, feeling his canine teeth retract and blunt, oversensitive as always after a prolonged feed. It was hard to know what enough was anymore. There had been no spells of dizziness since the one beside the church, but he lived in fear of their return.
He lived in one specific fear: that he would come to his senses one day, his mind reeling with confusion, to find Elena's graceful body limp in his arms, her slim throat marked with two red wounds, her heart stilled forever. That was what he had to look forward to.
The blood lust, with all its myriad terrors and pleasures, was a mystery to him even now. Although he had lived with it every day for centuries, he still did not understand it. As a living human, he would no doubt have been disgusted, sickened, by the thought of drinking the rich warm stuff directly from a breathing body. That is, if someone had proposed such a thing to him in so many words.
But no words had been used that night, the night Katherine had changed him.
Even after all these years, the memory was clear. He had been asleep when she appeared in his chamber, moving as softly as a vision or a ghost. He had been asleep, alone...
She was wearing a fine linen shift when she came to him.
It was the night before the day she had named, the day when she would announce her choice. And she came to him.
A white hand parted the curtains around his bed, and Stefan woke from sleep, sitting up in alarm. When he saw her, pale golden hair gleaming about her shoulders, blue eyes lost in shadow, he was struck silent with amazement.
And with love. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. He trembled and tried to speak, but she put two cool fingers over his lips.
"Hush," she whispered, and the bed sank under new weight as she got in.
His face flamed, his heart was thundering with embarrassment and with excitement. There had never been a woman in his bed before. And this was Katherine, Katherine whose beauty seemed to come from heaven, Katherine whom he loved more than his own soul.
And because he loved her, he made a great effort. As she slipped under the sheets, drawing so near to him that he could feel the cool freshness of night air in her thin shift, he managed to speak.
"Katherine," he whispered. "We-I can wait. Until we are married in the church. I will have my father arrange it next week. It-it will not be long..."
"Hush," she whispered again, and he felt that coolness on his skin. He couldn't help himself; he put his arms around her, holding her to him.
"What we do now has nothing to do with that," she said, and reached out her slim fingers to stroke his throat.
He understood. And felt a flash of fear, which disappeared as her fingers went on stroking. He wanted this, wanted anything that would let him be with Katherine.
"Lie back, my love," she whispered. My love. The words sang through him as he lay back on the pillow, tilting his chin back so that his throat was exposed. His fear was gone, replaced by a happiness so great that he thought it would shatter him.
He felt the soft brush of her hair on his chest, and tried to calm his breathing. He felt her breath on his throat, and then her lips. And then her teeth.
There was a stinging pain, but he held himself still and made no sound, thinking only of Katherine, of how he wished to give to her. And almost at once the pain eased, and he felt the blood being drawn from his body. It was not terrible, as he had feared. It was a feeling of giving, of nurturing.
Then it was as if their minds were merging, becoming one. He could feel Katherine's joy in drinking from him, her delight in taking the warm blood that gave her life. And he knew she could feel his delight in giving. But reality was receding, the boundaries between dreams and waking becoming blurred. He could not think clearly; he could not think at all. He could onlyfeel , and his feelings were spiraling up and up, carrying him higher and higher, breaking his last ties with earth.
Sometime later, without knowing how he had gotten there, he found himself in her arms. She was cradling him like a mother holding an infant child, guiding his mouth to rest on the bare flesh just above the low neck of her night shift. There was a tiny wound there, a cut showing dark against the pale skin. He felt no fear or hesitation, and when she stroked his hair encouragingly, he began to suck.
Cold and precise, Stefan brushed dirt off his knees. The human world was asleep, lost in stupor, but his own senses were knife-keen. He should have been sated, but he was hungry again; the memory had wakened his appetite. Nostrils flaring wide to catch the musky scent of fox, he began to hunt.