Destiny Rising (Page 41)

Zander, Shay, and the four other Pack werewolves who could shift without the full moon at its peak had changed, and they flanked Stefan and Meredith. Moving quietly, they paced ahead with their tails held out straight behind them and their ears pricked forward, lips pulling back in silent snarls. Zander and Shay, leading the Pack on each side, moved in tandem, each one’s step perfectly in time with the other’s. The five remaining werewolves, who would not be able to change until the moon rose, walked behind them, as alert and focused as their lupine family. Matt and Chloe came next, halfway between the warriors and the others.

They shouldered their way through the last grove of trees, placing their feet carefully to avoid making noise. Bonnie and Alaric mouthed quiet spells, muffling their approach.

But when they came at last into the open, they found Klaus, dressed now in the shabby raincoat Meredith remembered with a stab of terror from their encounters in Fell’s Church, his face alight with terrifying good humor, laughing. There was a huge group of vampires there, easily outnumbering their own forces, and every eye was already fixed upon them.

In that frozen moment, Meredith could see all the vampires in sharp definition. Her brain snagged on a face and stopped in confusion. Elena. But Elena was behind her, and Meredith had never seen Elena’s face hold so much malice. Then she realized: the paler gold of the hair, the lighter blue of the eyes, the slightly mad glee in the pretty face. This wasn’t Elena. It was Katherine, somehow reborn.

And then, just behind Katherine, Meredith saw another face she knew, and her heart froze. It couldn’t be Cristian. Her brother was human now; the Guardians made sure of that. Didn’t they?

But there was Cristian, his face familiar only from the pictures at home, and he smiled at her intimately across the clearing, his vampire canines visible. For a fraction of second, Meredith’s hands loosened on her stave and she swayed on her feet. But then she tightened her grip again and took a fighting stance. She’d thought her family was safe, that Cristian had been returned to them. Everything was crumbling again at this very moment, but she still had a battle to fight.

Chapter 20

People were rushing past Elena on all sides, buffeting and banging against her, so she flattened herself against a tree. The noise was overwhelming – shouts and groans and bodies slamming together.

Klaus’s army was too big, but her friends were holding their own. Stefan, his face a mask of fury, was grappling with a slim, fair-haired girl. When Elena caught a glimpse of the girl’s face, her heart seemed to stop for a second. Katherine.

Elena had seen Katherine die, seen lines of fire crack her face open as she screamed. How could she be here? Katherine raised a hand and scratched at Stefan’s face, her fingers bent into claws, and he twisted her arm viciously, snarling and knocking her to the ground, where they were lost to Elena’s view.

Meredith was sparring with a handsome, dark-haired guy whose face was vaguely familiar to Elena. They were evenly matched, each blocking the other’s blows with deadly speed and efficiency. Meredith looked tense and serious, without the gleeful expression she often had in battle.

Matt and Chloe had squared off against a female vampire, Chloe shielding Matt with her body and yanking the vampire’s head back, trying to turn her so that Matt could stake her through the heart. The vampire snarled and twisted in Chloe’s hands.

A wild howl came from one side of the clearing, making the hair on the back of Elena’s neck stand up on end, and her eyes shot to the horizon: the sun was hanging low and a full moon had just risen. The rest of the werewolves had changed as they fought, and now the vampires who had been battling them in human form fell back as the Pack leaped eagerly upon them. Zander and Shay, who was easily identifiable by the reddish tint of her fur, pulled a vampire down together, their heavy bodies pinning him as they tore at his flesh.

Bonnie and Alaric were chanting in Latin, their voices steady but strained. Beside Elena, she could hear Andres muttering softly in Spanish. She glanced at him, and his aura was so clear she could see it without even trying: a circle the color of beech leaves in spring was spreading out from him, touching on their allies in the fight. She realized that like Bonnie and Alaric, Andres was using all the Power he could call on to protect her friends.

They were fighting hard, but there were so many of the vampires, at least twenty. Both men and women of different races and ethnicities, but all young, all beautiful. All with a certain mad savagery in their expression that echoed Klaus’s. Their faces were wild with hate and with anticipation. They wanted to fight, Elena could tell, wanted to kill. One, a golden-haired boy who looked younger than Elena herself, high-school age maybe, wrestled a werewolf to the ground laughing, his face smeared with blood.

Katherine is here. The words repeated in Elena’s brain as if they had significance beyond the fact that Klaus had resurrected her oldest enemy. Katherine was here . . . and Ethan had used the blood of the vampires Klaus had made to resurrect him.

Klaus had been calling upon old friends. With a sickening twist, Elena wondered: Could these all be vampires Klaus had turned, all gathered together like some kind of vicious tribe, some kind of family? And had Klaus used their blood to resurrect Katherine, to raise his most beloved child as he had been raised?

Through the brutally battling crowd, Klaus was coming toward her, his face gleeful. He was so handsome, she thought irrelevantly, and so terrifying. His ice-blue eyes were wide, and his golden skin glowed in the moonlight. His allies – his children – moved out of his way so that his path was effortless. Something shone in his hand. With a chill, Elena realized that he held an unsheathed dagger.

Elena couldn’t move. She felt as if she were in a dream as Klaus came closer and closer, smiling and gliding easily through the crowd, until he was so close she could smell the coppery scent of blood on him. He took her arm rather gently, and his smile grew wider. He held her effortlessly still with his Power, and as she slid her eyes to the side, she saw Andres, his mouth open in horror, and realized Klaus was holding him still as well. Stefan, too, was fighting against Klaus’s Power, desperate to reach Elena before it was too late.