Destiny Rising (23 page)

Chapter 38

“
C
hloe?” Matt called cautiously, sticking his head into one of the empty sheds that surrounded the burned-out stables. The sky was starting to lighten in the east, signifying the end of a long night. There were still a few firefighters and EMTs near the blocked-off stables, turning over the ashes, so he had to be quiet. He took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Chloe had to be somewhere, he reminded himself. He had seen her after the fight, weary but not seriously hurt. She had probably just retreated, overwhelmed by all the blood and by the adrenaline from the fight. She would turn up soon.

The shed was silent and dark. Matt raised his flashlight and shone it around the empty walls of the tiny space: nowhere here for anyone to hide. As he was about to move on, a faint scratching noise caught his attention. Not completely empty, then.

Focusing the flashlight on the ground, he caught a glimpse of bright eyes and a long tail before a mouse zipped out of sight again. Nothing else.

“Chloe!” he hissed, heading for the old barn, the last outbuilding he hadn’t yet searched.

Three werewolves, the most battered and bloody of the Pack after the battle, had stayed behind after the rest had left to hunt for Klaus and Elena. But they were gone now. They’d offered to help Matt search for Chloe, but he’d waved them off: at that point, he’d still been sure that he’d find her any minute.

“I’ll be fine,” Matt had told Spencer. “Go take care of your injuries. I’ll find her. It’s probably stupid to be so worried.”

Spencer had always struck Matt as being more about hair gel than brains, but he’d pinned him with a surprisingly shrewd look. “Listen, man,” he’d drawled in his preppy, rich-surfer-boy accent, still managing to sound sort of laid-back despite the pain in his voice. “I’m wishing you the best here, I am, but vampires . . .”

“I know,” Matt had said, wincing. He did know; he could have written the book on reasons not to date vampires, but that was when he’d been thinking of Elena, not himself, and before he had met Chloe. Now it was different. “I’ll find her,” he had said, absurdly touched by Spencer’s concern. “Thanks, though. Really.”

He’d felt wistful while he watched Spencer and his friends walk off, like he would be the last person left in the world once the werewolves were out of sight.

Where could Chloe be? They had been shoulder-to-shoulder coming out of the stable after half the roof fell in. Chloe had been shaking, her pupils dilated and her hands streaked with blood, but she had been with him.

And then, sometime during the rise of panic as they realized that Elena had been under the fiery roof when it collapsed, Chloe was just gone.

Thinking of Elena in Klaus’s grasp gave him a pang of guilt. This was Elena, his friend and the girl who’d been the sun he orbited around for so long. He wanted to be searching for her with the rest of them. But he needed to find Chloe, too.

The barn was rickety, one of its broad double doors hanging crookedly by a single hinge. Matt approached it with caution—he wouldn’t do Chloe any good if he was caught and pinned under a falling barn door.

The half-broken door wobbled and creaked, but did not fall as he edged his way through the gap between it and the side of the barn, shining his flashlight inside. Dust rose in the beam of light, specks floating thickly in midair.

Inside, something shifted, and Matt walked forward, sweeping the flashlight back and forth. Far in the back, he saw something white.

As he came closer, Matt realized that it was Chloe’s face staring into the flashlight’s beam, wild with panic. After such a long search, it took Matt a moment to process what was going on: his first reaction was a simple swell of relief—thank God he’d found Chloe at last. Then he realized that Chloe was streaked with blood and that, quiet in her arms, lay Tristan.

Chloe blinked at Matt blankly for a moment, and then her face filled with dismayed realization. She pushed Tristan away from her, horrified. The werewolf let out a weak cry of distress as he hit the floor with a thump, then lay still.

“Oh, no,” Chloe said, dropping to her knees beside him. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean to.”

Matt ran toward her. “Is he alive?” he asked.

Chloe had tried so hard, and he’d been there every step of the way, helped her as much as he could. Life was unfair enough. But now Chloe’s head was bent over Tristan and she was patting her hand urgently over his body, trying to wake him.

Matt got down on the other side of Tristan and tried to check the werewolf’s injuries. God, the poor guy was bleeding everywhere. He must have smelled like a banquet to Chloe.

“I’m so sorry, Tristan,” Chloe whispered. “Please wake up.”

“Tristan, can you hear me?” Matt asked, checking his pulse. The werewolf’s heart was beating slowly and steadily, and he was breathing well. The Pack was tough. But the werewolf’s eyes were unfocused, and he didn’t respond when Matt called his name again, shaking him gently.

“I think I might have, um, calmed him down,” Chloe said, stricken. “Like the rabbits.”

“We should get him some help,” Matt said brusquely, not looking at her.

She didn’t answer. Matt looked up and saw the horror and guilt on her face, tears running over her rounded cheeks, making tracks through the blood around her mouth. She’d joked to him once that she was an ugly crier, and now she scrubbed at her running nose with the back of her sleeve. In the semidarkness, her eyes seemed like black pits of misery.

“Come on,” he said, more gently. “This isn’t the end of the world. We’ll start over. You shouldn’t have been in a battle right now. It was too hard on you to be around all that action. All that blood.” Despite himself, his voice stumbled a little over the word
blood
. Matt gulped unhappily and went on, working to make his voice confident. “Everyone slips up when they’re breaking an addiction. We’ll get back to the boathouse, away from everyone. It’s going to be fine.” He sounded desperate, even to himself.

Chloe shook her head. “Matt . . .” she began.

“It was a mistake,” Matt told her firmly. “Tristan’s going to be all right. So will you.”

Chloe shook her head again, harder this time, the ringlets Matt had always found so adorable flying around her head. “I’m not,” she said miserably. “I’m not going to be all right. I love you, Matt, I do.” Her voice broke in a sob, and then she took a deep breath and began again. “I love you, but I can’t live like this. Stefan was right; I’m not really living at all now. I’m not strong enough. It’s not getting better for me.”

“You are strong enough,” Matt argued. “I’ll help you.” Dawn was breaking outside, and he could see the ash and blood streaked on Chloe’s tear-blotched skin now, the deep circles beneath her eyes.

“I’m so glad I got to stay with you for a while,” she said. “You took such good care of me.” She leaned forward, across Tristan’s unconscious body, and kissed him. Her lips were soft and tasted of copper and salt. Her hand found his, and she pressed something small and hard into his palm.

Pulling back from the kiss at last, she said, her voice thin, “I hope someday you’ll find someone who deserves you, Matt,” and got to her feet.

“Don’t . . .” Matt said, panicking, and reached out for her. “I need you, Chloe.”

Chloe looked down at him, her face calm and sure now. She even smiled a little. “This is the right thing,” she told him.

In a few steps, she’d crossed the barn and was slipping out through the gap between the doors. The sunrise was well underway now, and her body was dark against the pink-and-golden light.

Then there was a burst of fire, and Chloe crumpled into a heap of ash.

Matt looked down at the small hard object she had pressed into his palm. It was a little pin in the shape of a
V
, made of blue stone. He had one, too: the Vitale badge Ethan had given all of them, back when he and Chloe and the other pledges were all human, all innocent. The lapis lazuli charm that defended Chloe from the daylight.

He closed his fist tightly around it, ignoring the pain as its sharp edges pressed into his palm, and gave a dry, heaving sob.

He would have to get up in a minute. Tristan needed his help. But for a moment, Matt bent his head and let the tears come.

Chapter 39

S
tefan and Elena couldn’t stop touching each other. Little touches, hands entwining, a light kiss, or a stroke to the cheek.

“You’re alive,” Stefan said to her, his eyes wide. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Never,” said Elena, reaching up from her bed to tug him closer until he was sitting on the bed, his side against hers. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Klaus was dead. And Elena had
survived.
The sheer amazement of it had her buzzing with joy.

But Stefan stroked her hair back from her face, and the look in his eyes—loving, but somehow still laced with concern—made her effervescence flatten.

“What is it?” she asked, suddenly apprehensive.

Stefan shook his head. “The task isn’t gone,” he said. “The Guardians still might take you away.”

Elena had been avoiding that thought with everything she had, but at Stefan’s words, she stilled and let the knowledge flood over her: the Guardians still expected her to kill Damon. And the punishment for not doing so would be leaving Earth. Losing Stefan.

“I will love you whatever happens,” Stefan said. His brows were drawn tight, and Elena knew the terrors that warred in him: the fear of losing Elena after all, and the fear of losing Damon. “Whatever you decide, Elena, I trust you.” He raised his head, and his gaze was steady and true, his eyes shining.

Elena reached up and ran her fingers over Stefan’s forehead, trying to erase the lines of his frown. “I think . . .” she said slowly, “I think I can see a way that we can save both me and Damon. I hope.”

Just then, Andrés tapped gently on the half-open door to Elena’s room and she greeted him with a smile.

“How are you feeling?” he asked seriously. “I can come back later if you’re resting.”

“No, don’t,” she said, patting the chair by her bedside. “I want you to fill me in on everything that’s going on.”

“If you want to talk Guardian business, I could leave you two here, maybe get Elena something to eat,” Stefan said. “I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

Stefan kissed Elena once more and she tried to pour all the love and reassurance she felt into their embrace. When he finally pulled back, the lines of his face were softer, more relaxed. Whatever Elena was planning, his gaze assured her, he would be with her. As he left, Andrés took the chair by her bed. “Stefan’s been looking after you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Elena said, stretching luxuriously, and trying to turn off her serious thoughts for a moment. She’d almost died—she had the right to be babied and indulged for one day, surely. “He tried to make me something called a hot milk posset earlier today. Supposedly, I am at a delicate stage in my recovery.” She started to laugh, but the laugh abruptly cut off when she caught the look in Andrés’s eyes. “What’s the matter?” she said in a different, sharper tone, sitting up. “What’s happened?”

Andrés waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing has happened,” he said. “Only, perhaps we should talk after you’ve had more time to recover. What I have to say is not bad news, I don’t think, but it is . . .” He hesitated. “Surprising,” he concluded at last.

“Now you have to tell me,” Elena said. “Or I’ll worry myself into a coma.” Seeing the flicker of concern on Andrés’s face, she hurriedly added: “I’m joking.”

“All right, then,” Andrés said. “You know how we found you in the tunnels, correct?”

Elena nodded. “Klaus was dead,” she said. “You said that there was a legend that the blood of a Guardian born of a Principal Guardian would kill Old Ones.” She shook her head. “That’s the first thing I don’t understand. How could I have that kind of family history without knowing it?”

“I’m having trouble understanding, too,” Andrés said. “Celestial Guardians don’t have children, not that I’d ever heard. They’re not”—he frowned—“people, not exactly. That is what I’ve believed, at least. I think we both have a lot to learn.” He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a small leather-bound book. “I have brought you something that I hope will illuminate some of your questions,” he told her. “I began to read it, and then I realized that it was intended for your eyes, not mine. The police finally let me return to James’s house, and I found this there. I believe this is what he called you about, when he said he had found a way to kill Klaus, and that he hid it before Klaus killed him. It must have been sent to him after your parents died.”

“My parents? What is it?” Elena asked, reaching out and taking the book. It felt oddly comfortable in her hand, as if it naturally belonged to her.

Andrés hesitated for a long moment before he answered. “I think it’s better that you find that out for yourself,” he said at last. He stood and touched Elena on the shoulder briefly. “I’ll let myself out.”

Elena nodded and watched him go. Andrés shot her a small smile as he closed the door behind him. Then, wonderingly, she turned her attention to the book. It was quite plain, without any patterns or words embossed on the outside, and was covered in a very soft pale-brown leather. Opening it, she saw that it was a journal, handwritten in a large, looping, dashing script, as if the writer had been in a hurry to get a million thoughts and feelings out onto the page.

I will not let them have Elena,
she read, the words halfway down the first page, and gasped. Glancing down the page, names popped up at her: Thomas, her father, Margaret, her sister. Was this her mother’s journal? Her chest felt tight suddenly, and she had to blink hard. Her beautiful, poised mother, the one who had been so clever with her hands and with her heart, who Elena had loved and admired so much—finding this was almost like hearing her speak once more.

After a moment, she composed herself and began to read again.

Elena turned twelve yesterday. I was getting down the birthday candles from the cabinet when the eternity mark on my palm began to itch and burn. It had almost faded into invisibility after so many years, but when I looked at my hand, it was suddenly as clear as the day I was first initiated into my duties.

I knew my sisters were calling for me, reminding me of what they think I owe them.

But I will not let them have Elena.

Not now, and maybe not ever.

I will not repeat the mistakes I have made, so disastrously, in the past.

Thomas understands. Despite what he agreed to when we were young, when Elena was just the idea of a child to him instead of her own funny, determined, sharp-witted self, he knows that we can’t just let her go. And Margaret, sweet baby Margaret, the Guardians will want her, too, eventually, because of who I used to be.

The Powers my darling girls will have are almost unimaginable.

And so the Celestial Guardians, once my sisters and brothers, want to get their hands on them as early as possible, want to bring them up to be weapons instead of children, clear-eyed warriors with no trace of humanity about them.

Once, I would have let them. I stepped away from Katherine when she was only an infant, pretended that I had died, so that she could fulfill the destiny I believed was inevitable and right for her.

Elena stopped reading. Her mother had once had another child? The name must be a coincidence, though: the Katherine she knew, Damon’s and Stefan’s Katherine, was hundreds of years older than her. And about as far from being a Guardian as possible.

There were plenty of Guardians who looked rather like Elena, though. She reviewed in her mind’s eye the faces that she’d seen in the Celestial Court: businesslike, blue-eyed blondes, crisp and cool. Could one of them have been her elder sister? Still, though, she couldn’t shake off her unease: Katherine, her mirror image. She read on.

But Katherine was a sickly child, and the Guardians turned their backs on her, rejected the great power she could have been. She would not come into her Power for years, and they did not think she would survive long enough to see that day. A human child who probably wouldn’t live to grow up wasn’t worth their time, they thought.

My heart ached for her. I had abandoned my daughter for nothing. From a careful distance, I watched her grow: pretty and lively despite her illnesses, brave even in the shadow of the pain she suffered, adored by her father, loved by the household. She did not need the mother she had never known. Perhaps this was better, I thought. She could live a happy, human life, even if it was a short one.

Then, disaster struck. A servant, thinking it would save her, offered Katherine up to a vampire to be transformed. My sweet daughter, a creature of joy and light, was dragged unceremoniously into the darkness. And the creature who performed the deed was one of the worst of his kind: Klaus, an Old One. If Katherine had come into her Power, if the Guardians had made her one of them, Katherine’s blood would have killed him. But without that protection, it merely bound them together, tying him to her with a fascination neither of them understood.

My darling girl was lost, all her charm and intelligence subverted into what, before long, seemed to be merely a vicious, broken doll, Klaus’s plaything. I don’t know if the real Katherine is still there underneath that shadowed life she must live now.

Elena gasped, a harsh sound to her own ears in the room’s silence. There was no denying the truth now. Katherine’s illness, Klaus’s cruel gift, all the details Stefan had told her were here. Katherine, who had hated her and tried to kill her, who had loved Stefan and Damon centuries before Elena herself did, who had destroyed Stefan and Damon, was her
half sister.

Part of her wanted to slam the book shut, to shove it to the back of her closet and never, never think about it again. But she couldn’t stop herself from reading on.

I wandered for many years, mourning my daughter, turning my back on the Guardians who had once been my family. But, after centuries of loneliness, I met my sweet, honest, blindingly intelligent Thomas, and fell deeply, hopelessly, madly in love. We were so happy for a while.

And then the Guardians found us.

They came to us and told us that the Old Ones were gaining in Power. They were too strong, too cruel. They would destroy humanity if they could, would enslave the world in darkness and evil.

The Guardians begged me to have another child. Only an Earthly Guardian with the blood of a Principal Guardian could kill an Old One so that the Old One could never be resurrected. My peculiar situation—a Principal Guardian who had abandoned her post to live a human life, who had fallen in love—made me their only chance.

Thomas knew everything about my past. He trusted me to make the right choice, and I chose to say yes, under certain conditions. I would bear a child who could destroy the Old Ones, but she would not be taken from me. She would not be raised as a weapon but as a human girl. And, when she was old enough, she would be given a free choice: to come into her Power or not.

And they agreed. Elena’s blood, Margaret’s blood, was so precious that they would agree to anything.

But now they want to break that agreement. They want to take my darling Elena now, even though she is only twelve years old.

I will save Elena and Margaret, as I couldn’t save Katherine. I will.

Elena is fiercely protective already of her friends and of her younger sister. I think she will choose to become a Guardian when she’s given the choice, will decide to protect the larger world in the best way that she can. But it must be her decision, not theirs. Margaret is too young for me to tell yet whether she will have the makings of a Guardian. Perhaps she will choose another path. But no matter what I think they’ll want in the end, they must have time to grow up before they have to make that decision.

I am afraid. The Guardians are ruthless, and they will not be pleased when I refuse to turn Elena over to them.

If anything should happen to me, and to Thomas, before the girls are grown, I have made arrangements to shield my daughters from the Guardians. Judith, my closest friend, will pretend to be my sister and raise Elena and Margaret to adulthood. I have already cast certain charms: as long as the girls are in her custody, the Guardians will not be able to locate them.

I would die, happily, to protect their innocence. The Guardians will never find them, not until they are grown women and can choose for themselves.

I cannot see the future. I do not know what will happen to any of my daughters any more than any parent does, but I have done my best to protect Elena and Margaret, as I was not wise enough to protect Katherine. I pray that this will be enough. And I pray that someday, somehow, Katherine, too, will find her way back into the light. That all three of my girls will be safe from harm.

Tears ran down Elena’s cheeks. She felt as if a burden she’d been carrying for weeks had suddenly flown off her shoulders. Her parents
hadn’t
planned to turn her over to the Guardians, hadn’t had a child just to discard her. Her mother had loved her as much as Elena had always thought.

She had to think carefully now. Eyes narrowing, she shoved her pillows against the wall and sat up. Margaret was safe with Aunt Judith for the moment, and that was good. She couldn’t consider all the ramifications of
Katherine
being her sister, not now.

But the fact that she, Elena, was special to the Guardians,
precious
to them, that her blood had unique Powers the Guardians were desperate to have on their side? The confirmation in her mother’s journal might be the last piece she needed to put her plan to save Damon in motion.