Stefan pushed Elena behind him as he launched himself at a vampire, ripping into its throat with his elongated fangs. Beside him, Spencer, in wolf form, cannoned into another of the Vitale vampires and knocked her sprawling, only to be thrown violently into a row of bookshelves as the vampire regained her footing. The shelves wobbled and collapsed on top of the werewolf, blocking him from Elena's sight.
Elena gripped the stake in her hand firmly and gritted her teeth. She could sense evil all around her, pulling her to hurry, to do something about it. She didn't have the supernatural strength of Stefan or the werewolf, or of the vampires they were fighting against, but if she was quick and lucky, maybe she could take one or two of them out.
They hadn't really expected to find any vampires in the library at all. If they had, they would have been better prepared, weapons in hand, and would have brought more members of the Pack with them. They had been doing a quick after-hours sweep of the library, making sure the Vitale Society's meeting room was still chained up. And here, just a floor above the entrance to that room, they'd found what must be - Elena glanced around, calculating - all the remaining vampires of the Vitale Society, except for Chloe, still safely hidden with Matt.
Eight vampires. Until now, they'd been tracking down one vampire at a time, finding them alone midhunt. They'd had no idea the vampires were still allied, because it seemed like they had scattered. If they had known they were still working together, Elena and the others would have been more careful, or somehow managed to track them more closely.
Spencer was up again now, and snarling as he tore at the side of one of the vampires, who struggled frantically against him. Stefan was stronger than these younger vampires, and two bodies already lay at his feet, but they were still outnumbered. Two grabbed Stefan by the arm and swung him around so that another could pin him by the shoulder, stake held high.
"No!" Elena shouted, panic ripping through her. She charged toward the vampires holding Stefan, but a hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she turned to see a tall, dark-haired guy she was pretty sure had been in her chemistry class, back at the beginning of the year.
"No interfering, now," he said mockingly. "I think we can keep each other company." Elena struggled, but she couldn't move her arm, and he fisted his other hand in her hair, pulling her head back slowly to expose her neck.
Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Stefan fling one of the vampires off him, only to be pinned again. He was still fighting, though, not staked yet. The vampire holding her smiled, his canines descending, bigger and sharper, as she strained against him.
This can't be how it ends, she thought, dazed. I won't die like this. Elena wrested one of her hands free just as she heard a sudden clattering on the stairs, the sound of feet and bodies in motion. Another set of shelves fell, books skidding across the floor. The vampire holding her looked up and then released her, falling backward as a great splotch of blood bloomed on his chest.
Behind him, stave extended, was Meredith.
"Thanks," Elena said, her mouth dry with fear.
"Anytime," Meredith said, grinning savagely. "Just remind me to cut off his head later." Then she was gone, spinning through the room, stave raised. A huge, white wolf - Zander, of course - had joined Spencer on the other side of the room, and they were fighting side by side, snarling and tearing at their enemies' flesh. Alaric rushed past Elena, stake raised, and behind him stood Bonnie, her hands extended in front of her, chanting a spell of protection.
Alaric staked one of the vampires holding Stefan, and Stefan was able to take care of the others who had been restraining him. In a few minutes, the fight was over.
"You arrived just in the nick of time," Stefan said. "Thank you."
"It was Zander. He heard the fight when we drove past the library," Meredith said, looking up from where she and Alaric were dragging vampire bodies across the floor to pile neatly in the corner. "We'll have to burn these bodies, but it looks like this is the end of Ethan's vampires. Other than Chloe, of course."
"Thank goodness," Bonnie said. She'd pulled an assortment of herbs from her bag and was tracing patterns, casting charms of distraction and misdirection, in the hopes that no one would come near the bodies until they could dispose of them. "But we've got something bigger to deal with."
"Klaus," said Elena, her shoulders slumping.
"We couldn't get the wood. And Bonnie had a vision," Meredith said.
"A dream, not a vision," Bonnie interrupted sharply.
"Sorry, a dream," Meredith corrected herself. "She thinks Klaus was reaching out to her, threatening her, and from what he said, it sounds like he's ready to attack."
"I don't understand why he'd warn us, though," Zander said. He and Spencer were both human-form again, and as he spoke, Zander wrapped a bandage around Spencer's shoulder where he'd been hit by the row of shelves.
Meredith and Elena exchanged a look. "Klaus likes to taunt his victims," Meredith said. "It's all a game to him."
"Then maybe we should try to turn the tables on him," Elena suggested. Stefan nodded, guessing what she was planning, and gave her a subtle half smile. He'd been encouraging her to explore her new Powers more thoroughly. "I can try again to sense him," she told the others. "If we can find where he and his allies are hiding, maybe we can find out what he's doing, who he's working with, catch him off guard."
"Can you do it now?" Alaric asked, watching her with professional interest.
Elena nodded. Relaxing her body, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. At first, she felt nothing special. Slowly, she became aware that the sense of evil that had been overwhelming when she was surrounded by the fight wasn't gone. There was still an insistent, low-key tugging, a feeling that something was wrong and that she had to fix it. That sense filled her, and she opened her eyes again.
Tendrils of black-and-rust-red aura hung smokelike in the air before her. Elena raised a hand toward them, but the colors swirled around her fingers without substance, the same way that Stefan's aura had. Her powers must be getting stronger: what had been just a feeling was now solid, a trail of black and red leading up the stairs and out of the library. She could picture it going farther, over the quad and across the athletic fields behind the campus. Elena followed the wisps of color, and the others followed her.
"The woods again," Bonnie said from behind Elena, but Elena barely heard her. The colors weren't leading her into the woods; they were stretching across the field and around an equipment shed. The pounding in Elena's head, the feeling of something being wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong intensified.
"Klaus is hiding back here somewhere?" Zander said, sounding confused. "Isn't it kind of exposed?"
No, Elena thought, not Klaus. And suddenly, she realized what a huge mistake she'd made. The trail, the feeling of wrong she got, was familiar. Damon. She was leading everyone right to him.
There was a split second between when Elena realized this and when the whole group rounded the corner of the equipment shed. Her steps faltered, but it was too late to change their direction.
Damon was feeding, another fair-haired girl pulled tightly against his chest, his mouth open against her neck, his eyes tightly shut. Blood ran down both their necks, making a gory, wet patch on Damon's black shirt.
There was a moment when everyone, even Meredith, froze. Without consciously thinking about it, Elena moved, throwing herself between the others and Damon.
"No," she said, directing her words at Meredith. Meredith was the one who mattered here, the one who wouldn't hesitate to kill Damon. "You can't," she told her. She glanced quickly at Damon, who opened his eyes briefly and gave her an irritated look, the look of a cat interrupted at its food dish. Then he closed his eyes again, working his fangs deeper into the girl's throat. Bonnie gave a soft, horrified moan.
"What the hell, Elena?" Meredith shouted. "He's killing her!" Balanced on the balls of her feet, she dodged to the side, stave raised, and Elena shifted quickly to stay between her and Damon. Someone was slipping past Elena on the other side, and she half turned to try to stop them, but it was Stefan, who pushed Damon away from his prey. Damon snarled but didn't try to grab her again. Stefan watched his brother tensely as he supported the girl and passed her carefully to Alaric.
"Meredith, please," Elena said, her voice thin and desperate to her own ears. "Please stop. There's something wrong with him. But it's Damon, he's saved us before. He's fought on our side in so many battles. You can't kill him. We have to figure out what's going on."
Stefan had hold of Damon by the arms now, but his brother shrugged him off with an irritated twitch of his shoulders. As Elena looked over at them, Damon straightened up and settled his clothing into place, shooting Elena a brilliant, unfriendly smile. There was still blood streaking his mouth and chin. "I don't need you to protect me, Elena," he said. "I've taken care of myself for a long time now."
"Please, Meredith," Elena said again, ignoring his words, and stretched out her hands to her friend pleadingly.
"Oh, yes," Damon said mockingly, turning his sharp smile on Meredith. "Please, Meredith. Are you sure about who your allies are here, hunter?"
Meredith had lowered her stave a couple of inches, but her eyes were flat and hard as she glared at Elena. "You and Stefan jumped in to protect him awfully quickly," she said coldly. "How long has this been going on?"
Elena flinched. "I've known for a few days that Damon was hunting again," she said. "The girls were all right at the end, though." She knew how weak that protest was. Worse, she wasn't sure she quite believed it - Damon had abandoned the girl she and Stefan found in the woods; she could have died. What else had he done?
But she couldn't let Meredith kill him.
"I'll take responsibility for him," she said quickly. "Stefan and I. We'll make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else. Please, Meredith." Stefan nodded, his hand tight again around his brother's arm, as if he was restraining a disobedient child. Damon sneered at them both.
Meredith hissed through her teeth with frustration. "What about you?" she said, jerking her chin at Damon. "Do you have anything more to say for yourself?"
Damon tilted his chin and gave her a cool, arrogant smile, but said nothing. Elena's heart sank: Damon had clearly decided to be as irritating as possible. After a moment, Meredith jabbed the stave at Elena, stopping well short of touching her.
"Don't forget," she said. "This is your problem. Your responsibility, Elena. If he kills anyone, he'll be dead the next day. And we're not done talking about this."
Elena felt Stefan, pulling Damon with him, move up behind her, a strong, supportive figure at her shoulder. "We understand," he said solemnly.
Meredith glared at them all, shaking her head, and then turned and walked off without a word. Alaric and Bonnie followed her, supporting Damon's victim between them, her choking sobs the only sound Elena could hear. Zander and Spencer gave Elena and the Salvatore brothers long, thoughtful looks before following the others. Elena trembled inwardly: the Pack could be a dangerous enemy, if it decided Elena wasn't on the right side.
As soon as her friends had rounded the bend in the path and were out of sight, Elena whirled angrily to face Damon. But Stefan, still clutching Damon by one arm, spoke before she could.
"You idiot," he said coldly, punctuating his words with a little shake of Damon's arm. "What were you thinking, Damon? You want to undo all the good you've done?" With each question, he shook his brother a little more.
Damon shoved Stefan's hand away, the mocking smile he'd worn dropping off his face. "I was thinking that I'm a vampire, little brother," he said. "Clearly a lesson you still have to learn." He wiped the blood from his mouth.
"Damon - " Elena said in exasperation, but Damon was already turning away. Quicker than her eyes could see, he was gone. A moment later, from a tree on the other side of the athletic field a large crow flew up, letting out a raucous caw.
"We might not be able to save Damon," Stefan said in a troubled voice, taking her hand. "Not this time."
Elena nodded. "I know," she said. "But we have to try." Her eyes followed the bird, just a dot in the sky now, as it flew above the campus. Regardless of what she had promised Meredith, she didn't know if she could stop Damon from doing anything he wanted. But she and Stefan wouldn't let Damon die. Somehow, at some point, saving him had become more important than anything else.