The Awakening

Elena pounded down the narrow path, stumbling on rocks and clumps of grass root. Bonnie was sobbing for breath behind her, and Meredith, calm and cynical Meredith, was panting wildly. There was a sudden thrashing and a shriek in an oak tree above them, and Elena found that she could run faster.

"There’s something behind us," cried Bonnie shrilly. "Oh, God, what’s happening?" 

"Get to the bridge," gasped Elena through the fire in her lungs. She didn’t know why, but she felt they had to make it there. "Don’t stop, Bonnie! Don’t look behind you!" She grabbed the other girl’s sleeve and pulled her around.

"I can’t make it," Bonnie sobbed, clutching her side, her pace faltering.

"Yes, you can," snarled Elena, grabbing Bonnie’s sleeve again and forcing her to keep moving. "Come on.Come on!" 

She saw the silver gleam of water before them. And there was the clearing between the oak trees, and the bridge just beyond. Elena’s legs were wobbling and her breath was whistling in her throat, but she wouldn’t let herself lag behind. Now she could see the wooden planks of the footbridge. The bridge was twenty feet away from them, ten feet away, five.

"We made it," panted Meredith, feet thundering on the wood.

"Don’t stop! Get to the other side!" 

The bridge creaked as they ran staggering across it, their steps echoing across the water. When she jumped onto packed dirt on the far shore, Elena let go of Bonnie’s sleeve at last, and allowed her legs to stumble to a halt.

Meredith was bent over, hands on thighs, deep-breathing. Bonnie was crying.

"What was it? Oh, what was it?" she said. "Is it still coming?" 

"I thought you were the expert," Meredith said unsteadily. "For God’s sake, Elena, let’s get out of here." 

"No, it’s all right now," Elena whispered. There were tears in her own eyes and she was shaking all over, but the hot breath at the back of her neck had gone. The river stretched between her and it, the waters a dark tumult. "It can’t follow us here," she said.

Meredith stared at her, then at the other shore with its clustered oak trees, then at Bonnie. She wet her lips and laughed shortly. "Sure. It can’t follow us. But let’s go home anyway, all right? Unless you feel like spending the night out here." 

Some unnameable feeling shuddered through Elena. "Not tonight, thanks," she said. She put an arm around Bonnie, who was still sniffling. "It’s okay, Bonnie. We’re safe now. Come on."

Meredith was looking across the river again. "You know, I don’t see a thing back there," she said, her voice calmer. "Maybe there wasn’t anything behind us at all; maybe we just panicked and scared ourselves. With a little help from the druid priestess here." 

Elena said nothing as they started walking, keeping very close together on the dirt path. But she wondered. She wondered very much.

Chapter Five

The full moon was directly overhead when Stefan came back to the boarding house. He was giddy, almost reeling, both from fatigue and from the glut of blood he’d taken. It had been a long time since he’d let himself feed so heavily. But the burst of wild Power by the graveyard had caught him up in its frenzy, shattering his already weakened control. He still wasn’t sure where the Power had come from. He had been watching the human girls from his place in the shadows when it had exploded from behind him, sending the girls fleeing. He had been caught between the fear that they would run into the river and the desire to probe this Power and find its source. In the end, he had followedher , unable to chance her getting hurt.

Something black had winged toward the woods as the humans reached the sanctuary of the bridge, but even Stefan’s night senses could not make out what it was. He had watched while she and the other two started in the direction of town. Then he had turned back to the graveyard.

It was empty now, purged of whatever had been there. On the ground lay a thin strip of silk that to ordinary eyes would have been gray in the dark. But he saw its true color, and as he crushed it between his fingers, bringing it slowly up to touch his lips, he could smell the scent of her hair.

Memory engulfed him. It was bad enough when she was out of sight, when the cool glow of her mind only teased at the edges of his consciousness. But to be in the same room with her at the school, to feel her presence behind him, to smell the heady fragrance of her skin all around him, was almost more than he could bear.

He had heard every soft breath she took, felt her warmth radiating against his back, sensed each throb of her sweet pulse. And eventually, to his horror, he had found himself giving in to it. His tongue had brushed back and forth over his canine teeth, enjoying the pleasure-pain that was building there, encouraging it. He’d breathed her smell into his nostrils deliberately, and let the visions come to him, imagining it all. How soft her neck would be, and how his lips would meet it with equal softness at first, planting tiny kisses here, and here, until he reached the yielding hollow of her throat. How he would nuzzle there, in the place where her heart beat so strongly against the delicate skin. And how at last his lips would part, would draw back from aching teeth now sharp as little daggers, and- 

No . He’d brought himself out of the trance with a jerk, his own pulse beating raggedly, his body shaking. The class had been dismissed, movement was all around him, and he could only hope no one had been observing him too closely.

When she had spoken to him, he had been unable to believe that he had to face her while his veins burned and his whole upper jaw ached. He’d been afraid for a moment that his control would break, that he would seize her shoulders and take her in front of all of them. He had no idea how he’d gotten away, only that some time later he was channeling his energy into hard exercise, dimly aware that he must not use the Powers. It didn’t matter; even without them he was in every way superior to the mortal boys who competed with him on the football field.