The Return: Nightfall Chapter 17

In the first days after shed come back from the afterlife, Stefan had always put her to bed early, do sure she was warm, and and so everyowed her to work on his computer with her, writing a diary of sorts, with her thoughts on what had happened that day, always adding his impressions. photoflashaneously she called up the file desperately, and desperately scrolled to the end.And there it was.My dearest Elena,I k cutting you would run across here so hotshotr or later. I hope it was sooner.Darling, I commit that youre able to take disturbance of yourself now, and Ive neer chew the fatn a stronger or more independent girl.And that soakeds its clip. Time for me to go. I disregardt perch some(prenominal) long-life with protrude cut intoing you into a vampire again some issue we both contend cant happen. ravish for break away me. Please for watch me. Oh, love, I dont wishing to go, salvage I rich person to.If you strike help, Ive gotten Damon to give his word to pro tect you. He would neer hurt you, and whatever mischief is spill on in Fells church wont dare touch you with him around.My darling, my angel, Ill always love you.StefanP.S. To help you go on with your real life, Ive leftfield money to pay Mrs. Flowers for the room for the next year. Also, Ive left you $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills downstairs the second floorboard from the wall, across from the bed. Use it to framing a new future, with whomever you choose.Again, if you need any amour, Damon will help you. Trust his assessment if youre in need of advice. Oh, lovely little love, how can I go? Even for your avow sake?Elena finished the letter.And then she fitting sit tear down there.After all her hunting, shed found the answer.And she didnt know what to do now but scream.If you need help go to Damon. Trust Damons judgment.It couldnt be a more blatant ad for Damon if Damon had written it himself.And Stefan was gone. And his clothes were gone. And his boots were gone.Hed lef t her. tie a new life.And that was how seemly and Meredith found her, alarmed by an hour-long bounce-back of their telephone calls. It was the first time they hadnt been able to get through to Stefan since hed arrived, at their request, to slay a monster. except that monster was now dead, and ElenaElena was sitting in front of Stefans closet.He even took his shoes, she give tongue to emotionlessly, softly. He took everything. that he paid for the room for a year. And yesterday morning he bought me a Jaguar.Elena Dont you see? Elena cried. Thisis my Awakening. Bonnie predicted that it would be sharp and sudden and that I would need both of you. And plane?He wasnt mentioned by name, Bonnie verbalize gloomily. besides I think well need his help, Meredith said grimly.When Stefan and I were first together beforeI became a vampire I always knew, Elena whispered, that there would come a time when he would try to leave me for my own good. Suddenly she frivol away the floor with h er fist, hard tolerable to hurt herself. I knew, but I thought I would be there to talk him let out of it Hes so noble so self-sacrificing And now hesgone .You really dont electric charge, Meredith said quietly, observation her, whether you stay human or become a vampire.Youre skilful Idont cable railcare I dont care closely anything, as long as I can be with him. When I was still half a spirit, I knew that nothing could Change me. Now Im human and as susceptible as any other human to the Change but it doesnt matter.Maybe thats the Awakening, Meredith said, still quietly.Oh, maybe him not suming her breakfast is an awakening Bonnie, said, exasperated. Shed been staring into a flame for more than thirty minutes, toilsome to get psychically in touch with Stefan. Either he wont or he cant, she said, not eyesight Merediths violently shaking head until after the words were out.What do you mean cant? Elena demanded, popping back off the floor from where she was slumped.I do nt know Elena, youre bother meIs he in danger? Think, Bonnie Is he breathing out to be hurt because of me?Bonnie looked at Meredith, who was telegraphing no with every inch of her pretty system. Then she looked at Elena, who was demanding the truth. She shut her eyes. Im not sure, she said.She opened her eyes slowly, wait for Elena to explode. only Elena did nothing of the kind. She merely shut her own eyes slowly, her lips hardening.A long time ago, I swore Id have him, even if it killed us both, she said quietly. If he thinks he can just walk away from me, for my own good or for any other reasonhes wrong. Ill go to Damon first, since Stefan seems to need it so much. And then Im going after him. Someone will give me a direction to start in. He left me twenty gigabyte dollars. Ill use that to follow him. And if the car breaks down, Ill walk and when I cant walk anymore, Ill crawl. nevertheless Iwill find him.Not alone, you wont, Meredith said, in her soft, reassuring way. W ere with you, Elena.And then, if hes done this of his own light will, hes going to get the bitch-slapping of hislife .Whatever you demand, Elena, Meredith said, still soothingly. Lets just find him first. exclusively for one and one for all Bonnie exclaimed. Well get him back and well experience him sorry or we wont, she added hastily as Meredith again began shaking her head. Elena, dont Dont cry, she added, the instant before Elena burst into tears.So Damon was the one to say hed take care of Elena, and Damon should have been the one last to see Stefan this morning, monotonous said, when he had been fetched from his signboard and the situation was explained to him.Yes, Elena said with quiet certainty. But Matt, youre wrong if you think Damon would do anything to keep Stefan away from me. Damons not what you all think. He really was trying to save Bonnie that night. And he truly felt hurt when you all hated him.This is what is called turn out of motive, I think, Meredith rema rked.No. Its character evidence evidence that Damondoes have feelings, that he can care for human beings, Elena countered. And he would never hurt Stefan, because well, because of me. He knows how I would feel.Well, why wont he answer me, then? Bonnie said querulously.Maybe because the last time he apothegm us all together, we were glaring at him as if we hated him, said Meredith, who was always fair.Tell him I beg his pardon, Elena said. Tell him that I lack to talk with him.I feel deal a communications satellite, Bonnie complained, but she clearly put all her heart and strength into severally call. At last, she looked completely wrung out and exhausted.And, at last, even Elena had to admit it was no good.Maybe hell come to his senses and start callingyou , Bonnie said. Maybe tomorrow.Were going to stay with you tonight, Meredith said. Bonnie, I called your sister and told her youd be with me. Now Im going to call my soda pop and tell him Ill be with you. Matt, youre not inv ited Thanks, Matt said dryly. Do I get to walk home, too?No, you can take my car home, Elena said. But please bring it back here early tomorrow. I dont want throng to start asking about it.That night, the three girls prepared to mold themselves comfortable, schoolgirl fashion, in Mrs. Flowers spare sheets and blankets (no wonder she washed so many sheets directly she must have known somehow, Elena thought), with the furniture pushed to the walls and the three makeshift dormancy bags on the floor. Their heads were together and their bodies radiated out like the spokes of a wheel.Elena thought, So this is the Awakening.Its the acknowledgment that, after all, I can be left alone again. And, oh, Im acceptable to have Meredith and Bonnie sticking with me. It means more than I can tell them.She had gone automatically to the computer, to write a little in her diary. But after the first few words shed found herself flagrant again, and had been secretly glad when Meredith took her by the shoulders and more or less agonistic her to drink hot milk with vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and when Bonnie had helped her into her pile of sleeping blankets and then held her hand until she went to sleep.Matt had stayed late, and the sun was setting as he host home. It was a race against darkness, he thought suddenly, refusing to be distracted by the Jaguars expensive new-car smell. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was pondering. He hadnt cute to say anything to the girls, but there was something about Stefans farewell note that bothered him. The only thing was, he had to make sure it wasnt just his hurt pride speaking.Why hadnt Stefan ever mentionedthem ? Elenas friends from the past, her friends in the here and now. Youd think hed at least give the girls a mention, even if hed forgotten Matt in the pain of leaving Elena permanently.What else? There definitely was something else, but Matt couldnt bring it to mind. All he got was a vague, wavering image about hei ghts school last year and yeah, Ms. Hilden, the English teacher.Even as Matt was daydreaming about this, he was taking care with his driving. There was no way to avoid the Old Wood entirely on the long, single-lane road that led from the boardinghouse to Fells Church proper. But he was feel ahead, keeping alert.He motto the travel shoetree even as he came around the corner and hit the brakes in time to come to a screeching stop, with the car at an almost ninety-degree pitch to the road.And then he had to think.His first instinctive reaction was call Stefan. He can just lift the tree just off the ground. But he remembered fast enough that that thought was knocked away by a unbelief. Call the girls?He couldnt make himself do it. It wasnt just a question of masculine dignity it was the solid reality of the mature tree in front of him. Even if they all worked together, they couldnt move that thing. It was too astronomic, too heavy.And it had fallen from the Old Wood so that it lay directly across the road, as if it wanted to separate the boardinghouse from the rest of the town.Cautiously, Matt rolled down the drivers side window. He peered into the Old Wood to try to see the trees roots, or, he admitted to himself, any kind of movement. There was none.He couldnt see the roots, but this tree looked far too healthy to have just fallen all over on a sunny summer afternoon. No wind, no rain, no lightning, no beavers. No lumberjacks, he thought grimly.Well, the ditch on the right side was shallow, at least, and the trees crown didnt quite reach it. It might be possible Movement.Not in the forest, but on the tree right in front of him. Something was stirring the trees upper branches, something more than wind.When he saw it, he still couldnt believe it. That was check of the problem. The other part was that he was driving Elenas car, not his old jalopy. So while he was deucedly groping for a way to shut the window, with his eyes glued to thething detaching i tself from the tree, he was groping in all the wrong places.And the final thing was entirely that the beast was fast. Much too fast to be real.The next thing Matt knew, he was fighting it off at the window.Matt didnt know what Elena had shown Bonnie at the picnic. But if this wasnt a malach, then what the hell was it? Matt had lived around woods his entire life, and hed never seen any insect remotely like this one before.Because it was an insect. Its skin looked bark-like, but that was just camouflage. As it banged against the half-raised car window as he beat it off with both reach he could hear and feel its chitinous exterior. It was as long as his arm, and it seemed to fly by whipping its tentacles in a circle which should be impossible, but here it was stuck halfway inside the window.It was built more like a leech or a squid than like any insect. Its long, snakelike tentacles looked almost like vines, but they were thicker than a finger and had rangy suckers on them and i nside the suckers was something sharp. Teeth. One of the vines got around his neck, and he could feel the sucking and the pain all at once.The vine had whipped around his throat three or four times, and it was tightening. He had to use one hand to reach up and rip it away. That meant only one hand available to flail at the headless thing which suddenly showed it had a mouth, if no eyes. Like everything else about the beast, the mouth was radially symmetrical it was round, with its teething arranged in a circle. But deep inside that circle, Matt saw to his horror as the bug drew his arm in, was a pair of pincers big enough to cut off a finger.God no. He clutch his hand into a fist, desperately trying to batter it from the inside.The burst of adrenaline he had after seeingthat allowed him to pull the whipping vine from around his throat, the suckers coming excuse last. But now his arm had been swallowed up past the elbow. Matt made himself strike at the insects body, hitting it as if it were a shark, which was the other thing it reminded him of.He had to get his arm out. He found himself blindly jimmy the bottom of the round mouth open and merely snapping off a chunk of exoskeleton that landed in his lap. Meanwhile the tentacles were still whirling around, thumping against the car, looking for a way in. At some point it was going to realize that all it had to do was fold those thrashing vine-like things and it could squeeze its body through.Something sharp grazed his knuckles. The pincers His arm was almost completely engulfed. Even as Matt was focused entirely on how to get out, some part of him wondered wheres its stomach? This beast isntpossible .He had to get his arm freenow . He was going to lose his hand, as sure as if hed put it in the garbage disposal and turned it on.Hed already undone his seat belt. Now with one violent heave, he threw his body to the right, toward the passenger seat. He could feel the teeth raking his arm as he dragged it pas t them. He could see the long, bally(a) furrows it left in his arm. But that didnt matter. All that mattered was getting his armout .At that turn his other hand found the button that controlled the window. He mashed it upward, dragging his radiocarpal joint and hand out of the bugs mouth just as the window unsympathetic on it.What he expected was a crackling of chiton and drab blood gushing out, maybe eating through the floor of Elenas new car, like that scuttling thing inAlien .Instead the bug vaporized. It simplyturned vaporous and then turned into tiny particles of light that disappeared even as he stared at them.He was left with one arm with long bloody scratches on it, swelling sores on his throat, and scraped knuckles on the other hand. But he didnt waste time counting his injuries. He had to make it out of there the branches were stirring again and he didnt want to wait to see whether it was wind.There was only one way. The ditch.He put the car in drive and floored it. He headed for the ditch, hoping that it wasnt too deep, hoping that the tree wouldnt somehow muddied the tires.There was a sharp plunge that made his teeth hit together, catching his lip between them. And then there was the crunch of leaves and branches under the car, and for a secondment all movement stopped, but Matt unbroken his foot pressed as hard as he could on the accelerator, and suddenly he was free, and being thrown around as the car careened in the ditch. He managed to get control of it and swerved back onto the road just in time to make a sharp left turn where it curved abruptly and the ditch ran out.He was hyperventilating. He took curves at well fifty miles an hour, with half his attention on the Old Wood until suddenly, blessedly, a solitary red light stared at him like a pharos in the dusk.The intersection with Mallory. He had to force himself to screech to another rubber-burning stop. A hard right turn and he was sailing away from the woods. Hed have to loop around a dozen neighborhoods to get home, but at least hed stay clear of any large groves of trees.It was a big loop, and now that the danger was over, Matt was starting to feel the pain of his delve arm. By the time he was pulling the Jaguar up to his house, he was also feeling dizzy. He sat under a street lamp and then let the car coast into the darkness beyond. He didnt want anyone to see him so rattled.Should he call the girlsnow ? Warn them not to go out tonight, that the woods were dangerous? But they already knew that. Meredith would never let Elena go to the Old Wood, not now that Elena was human. And Bonnie would kick up a huge noisy fuss if anyone even mentioned going out in the dark after all, Elena had shown her thosethings that were out there, hadnt she?Malach.An ugly word for a genuinely hideous creature.What they really needed was for some official people to go out and clear the tree away. But not at night. Nobody else was likely to be using that lonely road tonight , and send people out there well, it was like handing them over to the malach on a platter. He would call the police about it first thing tomorrow. Theyd get the right people out there to move that thing.It was dark, and later than hed imagined. He probably should call the girls, after all. He just wished his head would clear. His scratches itched and burned. He was finding it hard to think. Maybe if he just took a moment to breatheHe leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. And then the dark closed in.