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"Little Red Riding Hood? Really?" Caroline wrinkles her nose at the demure red dress Elena had picked out with her mother earlier in the month. "That's so overdone."
"I thought you and Matt were going as a doctor and a nurse?" Bonnie chimes in from where she lies sprawled on Elena's bed.
Elena takes the gorgeous velvet crimson cloak that had inspired her choice from her closet and spins around the room with it. "That was before I got this," she explains, running her hand over the fine material. "It was my grandmother's, once upon a time, and if there were ever a sign I was meant to go as Little Red, that's it. So: we're going as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf." She brings it over to them to show it off.
Clearly unable to stop herself, Caroline reaches out to stroke the cloak. Elena can see the moment that the softness of the fabric and the richness of its jewel-like color seduces her.
"Well, it is vintage, so I guess I can't blame you. But we're sixteen now. Too old for babydoll dresses. At least make it Sexy Little Red Riding Hood." She demonstrates with a provocative shimmy when she says it, and they both laugh.
Bonnie traces a finger over the cloak, still in Elena's arms. "He's going to eat your heart out when he sees you in this," she says.
Elena frowns. There's something vague about Bonnie's misty expression, about the way her fingers run lightly over the velvet, over and over, as though she were petting a cat (or a wolf).
"The phrase is eat his heart out," Caroline corrects. "Matt's going to eat his heart out."
Bonnie blinks up at them and drops the cloak. Laughs at herself, a weird strain in her voice. "Yeah, that's totally what I meant."
It's an odd moment, but it gets pushed to the back of Elena's mind quickly enough once they all agree to pile into the costume store for some last minute alterations to their costumes.
Elena's on her way out the door when her mother stops her with a touch to her elbow.
"You've forgotten the finishing touch," she says, producing a gorgeously wrought brass brooch and pinning it to the place where Elena's cloak fastens at her throat. "There. Aren't you a picture."
"Oh, it's beautiful!" She lifts the brooch to her nose and gives it a delicate sniff. "What's that smell? Something herbal?"
Her mother smiles warmly at her and smooths her hand over her shoulder. "It was a gift from your father. A family heirloom, I think. Be careful not to lose it."
"Of course."
"Now, do you have everything? Cell phone? Pepper spray? A ride home?"
Elena pats at her cloak pockets. "Yes, yes, and yes."
Miranda Gilbert nods. "Great. Remember: home before one."
She kisses her mother on the cheek. "I won't disappoint you."
The bonfire out at the ruins of old Fell's Church is freezing, even before the sun goes down, especially in the skimpy red and white checkered dress with the frilly ruffles under the skirt that barely covers her ass which Caroline had absolutely insisted on. Elena thanks God that she at least wore sensible shoes, despite Care's dire protests, and that she has the cloak to wrap around herself (very dramatically) as she searches for her friends.
She does have to admit that this place makes a dramatic venue for a Halloween party. The burnt out stone structure that used to serve as the area's main house of worship before Mystic Falls was incorporated into a township brings to mind old castles and practically every ghost and vampire story that she can ever remember hearing as a child. There's even a graveyard around the back, away from where she and her classmates have set up this illicit party that the Historical Society would undoubtedly have fits about if they knew it was happening so close to the old church's site. It's close to the Falls, too, which probably makes it just a little bit colder than it would be otherwise.
Caroline, masquerading as Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, as she keeps correcting everyone, looks absolutely smashing but miserable in a gauzy white ankle length dress, that showcases her cleavage to perfection, along with the acres of goosebumps covering her arms and chest. Her sleek black braided wig, interwoven with little gold beads, glistens like a raven's wing in the firelight. She's even painted her eyelids indigo and applied some dramatically sweeping eyeliner to complete her look.
Matt spots her with Caroline and comes over with Tyler bearing beers for both of them. He's hasn't gone the whole nine yards with his costume, the way she had, but instead limited his look to a silicone wolf's snout and plastic vampire fangs. It doesn't matter. The way his eyes light up when he sees her makes butterflies dance in her stomach, and she can't resist giving him a happy kiss hello—
Only to have to hide her face in his neck when she takes in what Tyler's wearing—or rather, not wearing. The gladiator costume he dons is really more like a speedo with a cloak and helmet, and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. She'd had no idea Tyler was so ripped.
"Looks like we match," Tyler smirks at Caroline, who bats at him.
"Don't say that so loud!" she hisses. "I don't want anyone to think you're my date!"
They're already a couple of beers in when Bonnie finally arrives, dressed in a cute black dress Elena remembers from homecoming last year, paired with fun striped tights and a black pointed hat.
"A witch, Bonnie?" she laughs. "Isn't this a little on the nose?"
Bonnie shrugs and takes a swig out of Elena's solo cup. "My Grams told me I had no respect for our heritage—and then she laughed and said she liked my spirit. She's still trying to convince me that we're psychic or something—or maybe actually witches—she changes her story depending on how many glasses of wine she's had."
Usually, when Bonnie talks about her supposed wiccan heritage, she does so with a certain tone of fond incredulity, but tonight Elena notices something different about Bonnie's tone. Almost as though she's trying to talk herself up to her usual level of amused dismissal.
She tucks it away, to ask her about it later, and soon forgets about the moment altogether.
The first couple of hours of the party pass by in a blur. Halloween falling on a Friday night means the whole school is out in the woods tonight, and no one intends on stopping the fun until hours after curfew. Elena loses track of how many drinks she has, impossible as it is to tell with how she passes her cup back and forth with Bonnie or puts them down and forgets about them so she can lure Matt into dancing with her. Not even Vicky giving her a characteristically sour look before slinking off to join her group of stoner friends can ruin her mood. Caroline flits back and forth between their group and a keg encircled by upperclassmen boys, and the edge of the fire where a few of the other cheerleaders are keeping warm, dragging Bonnie with her when she goes. Elena spots Tyler, doing a keg stand, and then another. At some point his cloak catches fire and everyone whoops when he throws the whole thing into the flames and shotguns another beer.
Things start to go pear shaped just as the sun begins to set.
Matt has to take Vicky home after his sister gets so cross-faded that she almost stumbles into the fire.
"I'm sorry, babe, I have to take care of her. There's no one else," Matt says as he loads his sister into his truck. He passes her Vicky's lighter and pipe as he fights to get her buckled.
Elena nods. "No, I get that. I want you to take care of her."
Matt kisses her goodbye. "I'll make this up to you. I promise."
It's only after he's left that she realizes she's still holding Vicky's stuff. Annoyed, she stuffs everything into her cloak and hopes she can get rid of the pipe before her mother finds it.
She wanders back to the party just in time to catch Caroline slapping the senior boy she'd been crushing on for the past few weeks square across the face. She storms over to Elena and Bonnie, her face going red from the effort not to cry in front of everyone. "Could we get out of here for a little while?" she asks, voice trembling. "Maybe just take a walk until I get myself under control again?"
"Sure," Bonnie says, setting her cup down and tucking Caroline under her arm.
"What are friends for, if they can't help you out of trouble?" Elena agrees, linking her arm through Caroline's.
Arm in arm, the three of them march out into the woods.
Twenty minutes later, twilight has descended swift and sharp over the familiar woods. The waterfalls are a distant rush, and the stereos from the bonfire are barely audible. They keep the river, just barely in sight through the thinning line of trees, to their left, the slope of the mountainside to their right, so they don't get lost.
It's freezing away from the fire. She pulls her cloak up, over her head, to try to stay as bundled in it as possible. Right now, she really wishes Caroline hadn't talked her out of the longer dress. At least her legs wouldn't be turning to icicles then.
They come upon what almost looks like an old tomb built into the side of the mountain, barred shut with a rusty grate, just as the light fails.
Something about it beckons her, and she can't help flipping on her phone flashlight for a better look. She pushes the grate away from the door without too much trouble, gritting her teeth against the metallic screech of its drag against the rough stone floor.
"Well, that's creepy," Caroline remarks as they draw nearer and get their first good look at it. Behind the grate is a small room hewn from the stone of the mountain itself, and within it, there's some sort of altar strewn with bones gone yellow and dry with age, and a single, fat candle, the old fashioned kind made from animal fat instead of beeswax. Shelves hammered into the wall still bear jars filmed over with mold and fermentation, probably sealed shut forever, interspersed with the burnt-down stumps of a variety of malformed candles. The worst part are the claw marks set into the stone—five, long gouges, about the right size apart for a human hand, stark against the stone.
"What do you think this was?" Elena asks. "I've never noticed it before." She steps into the room and touches one of the bones. It's hollow and light—like that of a bird.
Caroline follows her in and peers over her shoulder. "Do you think we, like, discovered this?" There's an aura of excitement in the question. Caroline would love that—being credited with an archaeological find. And it's clear that no one's been in here for ages.
"Guys…" Bonnie calls from the doorway. "I think I recognize this place."
Elena glances up at her. "From where?"
She could swear that she hears Bonnie respond, My dreams, but the silence stretches, and Caroline doesn't say anything, so Elena thinks she must have misheard her, until finally Bonnie says, "Remember how my Grams keeps saying we're descended from the Salem witches?"
"Don't you think she's pulling your leg?" Caroline asks without looking up from the bottles on the shelf.
"Yeah, well, the thing is she does have this book. This really, really old book she calls a grimoire, written by my ancestress Verity Bennett. I've looked her up, she really did live in Salem, and she really did move to this area in 1692. Fled here, according to Grams. I wasn't supposed to, but I've been reading through it, and I read a description of a place like this, where she used to come to practice her art." Bonnie swallows. "She wrote that she stopped coming here after she supposedly bound the spirit of some terrible beast to the netherworld, because the memory of that night was too terrible to relive."
"Oooh, spooky," Caroline says, an impish smile curling her mouth.
Bonnie twists the ends of her hair, and glances all around them before she speaks again, this time in a hush. "Look, there was a whole bunch of weird stuff in there—stuff I wish I hadn't read, because if even some of it is true, then my ancestress was seriously around the bend, but I remember really clearly the part about the curse, because it made all the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up."
"A curse?" Elena echoes. Something about that tugs at the edges of her mind. "What sort of curse?"
"All it said was that she bound the spirit of this immortal, bloodthirsty creature to the plane of the netherworld, to stop him rampaging through the countryside. The monster ate her sister before Verity was able to stop it, and she was only able to do that so long as she left a loophole in place. Something about how Nature needs a Balance or a reversal for every spell." Bonnie looks meaningfully at the contents of the altar. "She wrote that if a virgin lights her blackflame candle, made from the fat of her own murdered sister's body, on Samhain night—Halloween night— then the beast will rise again to roam the world of the living."
Elena and Caroline had been leaning forward, drawn in by the spell Bonnie weaves around them while she spins this tale, but at the mention of virgins lighting candles, Caroline snickers.
"A virgin lighting a candle to break a curse? That's ridiculous."
"It is not!"
"Then prove it—light the candle."
Slowly, Bonnie shakes her head. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Nothing's going to happen. I'd light it myself, if I still had my v-card."
"I don't even have a lighter on me." She looks over her shoulder, back toward the party. "I think we should go back."
"I have a lighter," Elena says, suddenly remembering the contents of her pockets. She pulls it out and flicks the flame.
"There we have it," Caroline says, as though that solves everything. "Look at it this way, Bonnie: a virgin lights the candle, nothing happens, and then you can stop worrying about whether or not you're secretly a witch, because we'll have proof that your Grams is just too deep into her research. And besides. It'll be a great story to tell when we get back to the party. We can embellish and say there really was a ghost, if you want."
Caroline makes it all sound like a great idea. Face Bonnie's fears together, prove she has nothing to worry about with this witch thing that's clearly beginning to really bother her, and then head back to the party with a cool story. All of it sounds great, except for the way Elena's stomach churns when she thinks about going through with lighting the candle.
"How do you know it's not real?" she asks, quietly voicing the suspicion that's been whispering at her since the curse had been mentioned. She's never really believed Bonnie's Grams, not with anything more than a good-natured willingness to listen and play along. But now, standing in this bizarre, creepy room out in the middle of the darkening woods, looking at the tension written into Bonnie's face, the way she holds herself, as though she's restraining the urge to bolt, none of it feels so far-fetched.
Especially because, even with all of these doubts tumbling through her head, there's a part of her that wants to light the candle. That feels compelled to do so.
Caroline turns around to frown at her. "You can't be serious. You too?" She eyes her shrewdly. "You're just hoping I don't ask you to light the candle, so you don't have to admit you totally did it with Matt and never told either of us about it!"
"I did not!"
"Okay, then I dare you to light the candle!"
Her fingers twitch against the lighter. "You just said you didn't believe in any of this."
"C'mon, guys! I'm just trying to create a fun memory for the three of us. If either of you were really scared you'd already have run back to the party." She pauses. "Since when do you ever back down from a dare, Elena?"
She won't be able to explain why she does it later, other than to rephrase it the only way she knows how: that she doesn't know what possessed her to do it.
Elena sets her shoulders back. "You know what? You're right. I've never backed down in my life." She snaps the lighter open and sets the candle ablaze before Bonnie can knock the lighter from her hand.
For a moment, the candle flame flares bright white. Disappointment mixed oddly with relief bubbles through her. For a moment.
She's looking right at it in the instant when the flame flickers, and bleeds to black.
It's not a natural black, but the black of a maw, of the grave, of eternity. She realizes it is not light that it casts, but pure, unending absence. She cannot look away.
A wind picks up in the cavern, gusting rotting leaves against their legs and rattling the jars on the shelf and on the floor. At once, all three of their phone flashlights wink out, leaving them in darkness save for the strange emanation of the blackflame candle. Through all of this, the candle burns on steady, as though unaffected by the natural world around it.
Elena's heart pounds in her chest. The scent of the candle— burning, melting, rotting—stings her nose and makes her stomach roil. Terror howls in her veins, chased by a feeling so overwhelming that it takes her a moment to recognize it as regret.
She wants to say I'm sorry. Wants to run. Fear closes her throat and roots her feet to the ground. It must do the same for her friends, because neither of them make a move to escape the room either.
"If you're trying to scare us, Bonnie, you're succeeding," Caroline calls out into the dark.
"I told you all not to light the candle! I'm not doing any of this!"
The wind shrieks in their ears.
One by one, the jars behind them shatter and break. She's thankful for her raised hood protecting her face from the shards of glass. Caroline is not so lucky. A stray piece cuts her cheek open, and blood seeps from the wound. She screams, and scrabbles at the cut.
The candle goes out.
In the dark, the iron gate at the mouth of the room rattles, as though someone were stepping inside.
Elena clutches each of her friends tightly by the arms, bracing herself for whatever has just joined them.
A shadow hovers in the doorway, watching them with an eerie stillness that shoots alarm straight to her reptile brain. Predator! her mind screams, and, beneath that, so small and quiet with fear that she can barely make it out, Not human!
Bonnie squeezes her arm, and all of the candles behind them burst aflame at once, illuminating the figure in the doorway.
It's just a man.
A tall, beautiful blond man, with sharp cheekbones and full lips and gently curling hair tumbling down to his shoulders, who stands in the doorway watching the three of them with starved interest. He's dressed like some kind of pirate or Romantic Poet or something, in a billowing white shirt that ties at the neck and with ruffles at the sleeves, black trousers molded to muscular thighs, and knee high boots. A Halloween costume, she reassures herself.
That is, until he speaks.
"Pray, what year is it?" The words fall on them in a soft, English, bewildering mist.
Caroline recovers first. "2008. Are you lost? The highway's only about twenty minutes the other way."
Something in his gaze sharpens when he takes in Caroline's cheek, still dripping blood down her chin and onto the collar of her white dress.
Her trepidation returns full strength at the sight of the keen, primal hunger in this man's gaze. Elena wants to warn her friends, but some visceral instinct to remain silent stops her. Viscous relief that the hood of her cloak hides her face from this stranger oozes through her. She's too afraid to feel ashamed.
"I think not," he tells them slowly as he looks around their surroundings. "I think I've come to the appointed place at the ordained time." He takes a step forward, and joins them in the cramped room.
As one, they all shrink back behind the table.
"Three sweet maids gathered here by moonlight," the man muses. "For what purpose, I wonder?"
"We're only passing by," Bonnie quickly tells him. "We're supposed to be at a party. Our friends will be missing us by now."
The man smiles indulgently. "Ah, by chance then. A pity. I had thought perhaps you belonged to one of my faithful orders, and had come here with my revivification in mind. It would have made this so much the simpler."
Slowly, he takes another step closer.
"Whatever it is you're looking for, we don't have it," Bonnie tells him.
"There, I think, you are wrong. For I am looking for one maid in particular, and one alone, and I am certain-sure that she is standing in this room. You see, I have been a wanderer in a strange land, it would appear for nearly sixteen score years, though it seemed much longer than that to me while I drifted through the empty twilit foglands of that abyss. There were neither people nor animals in that land, neither sea nor sky, sun nor moon. Only a terrible absence, and the dim fog, and a whispering in my ear, ever present, of what I must do if ever I were freed."
As he speaks, a heavy pall of dread creeps over Elena. His tale is absurd, impossible. He must be some passerby, who overheard Bonnie's story and just wants to give them a Halloween scare. Someone taking advantage of three girls freaked out in the woods. She tells herself fiercely that this must be true, that there is no need for her racing heart or the tightness in her chest that makes it hard to breathe, for the unnatural depth of her reaction to him, which ripples through her whole body, chanting, run run run— except that she thinks she sees something in his face that she cannot explain—a reddening of the eyes, a darkening of the veins beneath. A lengthening of his teeth.
Her rational mind would deny it, but the certainty that this unnerving man and the monster Bonnie had warned them of are one and the same steals over her.
The truth of it sinks into her, a leech on her sanity as reality bends.
The man—the monster—pays her internal anguish no mind as he summarizes, "So: Which of you is the one who lit the blackflame candle? Tell me true, and I will allow the other two to leave unharmed."
Elena's stomach performs a terrifying swoop. The lighter burns against her fingers, and her mouth feels so dry it's as though she hasn't had a sip of water in days. Cold sweat streams from her brow, her underarms.
She has to put her body's fear aside. Must muster her courage.
He said he'd let the other two go. She can do this, for them.
"It was me," Bonnie declares, before Elena can confess. And this is so like her, to leap to her friends' defense after they had so recklessly put her in this position. After they had ignored her warnings not to light the candle at all.
A delighted smile creeps over the man's face. He moves, then, faster than Elena can detect, faster than she can open her mouth to insist that it was her, and snatches Bonnie up into his arms.
"How lovely," he murmurs, gazing down into Bonnie's face. He inhales deeply at the skin of her throat, ignoring the way Bonnie twists in his arms, trying to pry herself free. "A witch. I'm rather fond of witches."
He doesn't give Caroline or her even an ounce of his attention, instead whispering something into Bonnie's ear that makes Bonnie's eyes go wide. Whatever it is, she nods along, as though in a trance.
Caroline takes advantage of his distraction and hauls Elena by the arm around the table, and toward the exit from the little room.
"Let's get help," she mouths as she draws her cellphone out of her pocket, already punching in 911.
There's no time for that though.
Elena struggles out of Caroline's deathgrip just in time to watch in transfixed horror as the man's face really does shift into something out of a nightmare.
"This won't hurt too much," he promises Bonnie, just before he buries his glistening fangs in her throat. Blood spurts from the wound, drips down Bonnie's collarbone. And Bonnie screams.
All of the fear that had so battened her down into silence and inaction drains out of her at the sight. She leaps forward and whips her pepper spray from her pocket before she can even process what she's doing.
At the same time, the monster pulls himself off of Bonnie and spits her blood onto the floor. With a snarl of outrage, he shoves her hard onto the ground. "You're not the one, you lying husk."
He spins to face Elena and Caroline, and catches his first full sight of Elena's face beneath her hood.
He freezes, bloodied mouth parted, and stares at her with dumbstruck amazement. The expression lasts for less than a heartbeat, barely long enough for Elena to vaguely register it.
She aims the pepper spray and blasts him full in the face.
Instantly, the monster flinches back and hacks into his hands. Elena covers her face with her cloak and grabs Bonnie, hauling her from the room, Caroline following them hot on their heels.
By the time they burst out of the witch's lair, the sun has fully set and darkness has spread over the forest. The slim sickle moon casts almost no light over the ground to help them.
They race back toward the sound of the party as though hell itself is chasing them.
It is.
The cold night air burns in Elena's lungs as she surges forward. Low hanging branches whip at her bare arms and face, drawing bloody welts up to the surface as she crashes through the underbrush. Her cloak streams behind her.
She can hardly see her friends in the dark—they're no more than shades in the darkness as they sprint back toward the safety of the crowd.
Out of the corner of her eye, Elena sees a woman slip between the trees. Despite the darkness of the night, something illuminates her bright as moonlight, enough for Elena to make out each detail of her dark, curling, braided hair; of her richly embroidered ground-sweeping gown, which disturbs no leaves as she passes. The woman pauses, and turns to look Elena directly in the eye. The woman looks back at Elena with exactly her own face.
A root catches Elena's foot, and she stumbles blindly. It's so dark that she cannot see where the forest floor sheers off into the river valley. She miscalculates when she tries to catch her balance, only to list down the side of the hilly ravine.
She tumbles and she tumbles and she tumbles, landing in a thicket with bloody hands and knees. A searing pain in her forehead tells her that she's probably hit her head on a rock going down. When she sits up, her cloak twists suffocatingly around her throat, and she claws at it to get the weight off of her so she can breathe. The brass brooch slides under her palm as she resettles the material around her in an attempt to shelter herself from the wind as she braces herself to stand, praying that she hadn't sprained anything.
All at once, she realizes that the night has gone silent. Where before she had heard night animals skittering in the underbrush as she fled, had heard crickets chirping and the rustling of birds roosting overhead, all of that has paused, now, as though the forest itself is holding its breath. Watching. Even the wind has gone quiet.
In the blink of an eye, a dark figure appears in front of her, crouched down to eye level so as to peer under her hood. The monster reaches out and lays his hand upon Elena's bare ankle.
She hisses under his touch. It feels like ice, even through the numbness that has sunk into her limbs.
"What is your name?" the monster asks, with an odd intensity. She cannot see him, but she knows that if she could, he would be staring deeply into her eyes.
Her pulse drums in her throat. She thinks she might actually faint from the oppressive mind-blanking terror of being alone with this creature that looks like a man but is not is not is not.
Don't let him know how frightened you really are, something deep inside of her whispers. Never show him your weak points. Your soft throat.
Summoning every scrap of steel left in her, she glares at him and snaps, "Why? So you can write it in your creepy murder diary?"
It's too dark to tell for certain, but Elena thinks she might detect a smile twitching at the edges of the monster's mouth. "Perhaps I have been remiss in my manners. Allow me to introduce myself." His fingers trail up her bare shin, over the ridge of bone, summoning sharp goosebumps in the wake of his touch. "Please call me Klaus."
Elena scrambles out from under his hand. She pats herself down, looking for her pepper spray again, hoping it has enough juice in it to help her get out one more time. Not letting herself think about how the thing only subdued this Klaus for a few minutes before he apparently completely recovered.
"Looking for your little contraption?" he asks her, holding it up in front of her face so she can see it in the moonlight. Casually, he tosses it far off into the brush. "A daring maneuver. I find I quite like that in a woman." He appraises her in the dark. "I did not expect to find one of your kind here."
"What do you mean?" she asks, trying to keep him talking, as she casts about her for a branch, a rock—anything else close to hand she could use as a weapon. She knows that this eerily civil conversation is merely a veneer, to lull her into acquiescence so he can attack her at his leisure, the way he had tried to do to Bonnie.
"A Petrova doppelganger," he tells her, as though it should mean something to her.
Doppelganger. She's heard the word before, but she can't recall its meaning. Something about death, or bad luck, or maybe gloomy German poetry. She can't make any sense of the description in relation to herself.
"I don't know what that means."
"Ah! Then I shall so enjoy educating you."
Her hand closes around a heavy rock. She raises it to bash against Klaus's head, only for him to snatch up her wrist and pluck the stone from her with terrifying speed.
"Not so fast, my dear," he scolds her, even as he wraps her fingers in his own and draws her close to him. "Now, tell me your name, lovely girl."
She shoves at him but his embrace is as implacable as iron.
It occurs to her that he can probably see her with the ease of a night time predator. He'd probably been watching her efforts to save herself with cruel amusement.
Here she is, trapped in this monster's hold. No weapon at hand, no friends, no idea how to break free. All of her sublimated fear returns to her in full force, writhing under her skin like a snake.
"Are you going to bite me?"
"In a moment." His fingers quest under her velvet cloak, to skate over the bare skin of her arms, to rest possessively against the curve of her waist. He nuzzles at her throat. "Tell me your name."
"What do you want with me?" she whispers.
She feels him smile against her skin.
"My quest is clear. All those years, trapped in that other realm, I knew that should I ever escape, I must find the maid who lit the blackflame candle and claim her life for my own. You are that maid, and your life is forfeit." He caresses her waist. "I find myself oh, so very pleased."
The finality in his words strike her like a rain of bullets. Her head throbs viciously, and her whole body aches from her fall. She is so very cold. Hopeless tears burn in her eyes. She's not sure how she's going to escape this.
If she's going to die, she wants to die as herself, not some anonymous girl.
She twists her face to look up into Klaus's.
"It's Elena."
"Elena." He breathes her name like a wicked prayer.
It's as though in giving him her name, she allows the last bit of rope keeping her fixated on surviving this snap.
She prepares herself for a fatal bite that never comes.
Instead, Klaus delicately cups her face in his freezing hands, so that she must fall into the snare of his eyes.
This is how I die, she thinks, as she peers through the dark into the face that even now she cannot help but find so very beautiful.
And he is. Whoever had fashioned this monster had taken care to create an irresistible face, something that would quietly lure anyone in to his deadly embrace.
"I can feel your blood leaping in your veins. Hear how your heart flies. There is no need for fear, my dearest girl." He strokes his fingers down, from the top of her cheekbone, to the curve of her jaw. "I know ways to ensure you never feel even a whisper of pain."
His words have the unnerving trick of calming her even as he talks of killing her. Devouring her.
No, no.
She shakes her head. "I don't understand—"
"You will," he promises. His hands wrap around her shoulders and urge her back, to lie against the cold forest floor, with only her cloak between her and the leaf-strewn earth. The monster climbs over her, covering her body with his own. His fingers continue stroking her hair back, even as he insinuates a knee between her legs. "It's fate, that you were the one to light the candle. That you will be the one to restore me. Even were it another who had lit the flame, I would never have let you go once I had seen your face." His touch is so soft on her face, almost reverent. He pulls back to admire her, spread out beneath him, her crimson cloak fanned out beneath her. "Red is your color, my dear."
He's going to eat your heart out when he sees you in this.
"It's mine, too," he tells her, oblivious to the tears that gather in her eyes and trickle down her cheeks.
She doesn't even blink them away. All of her being is bent on him, on the overwhelming force of his presence.
Klaus's hands roam over her body, burning her with the ice of his touch. Possessing her. His mouth brushes against her throat, and she can feel the graze of those deadly fangs. In a minute he'll tear her throat out and feast on her flesh.
"I don't want to die," she whispers.
Klaus pulls back to stare down into her face. "Whoever said a thing about dying?"
She looks up at him, tries to make his face out in the moonlight. Tries to see the fangs and blood-red eyes she glimpsed earlier. All this time, the thoughts at the back of her mind have been circling on those details like vultures over a carcass, picking at the way he had bitten into Bonnie's throat with lascivious, carnal delight, until all the flesh has been stripped from the bones of the memory.
"You're a vampire," she says with dreadful certainty. That, and what he has already told her about claiming her life, should be explanation enough.
"I am."
"You told me you were going to claim my life. To bite me. Of course you're going to kill me." As he had done all those centuries ago to make Bonnie's ancestress imprison him. As he had tried to do to Bonnie tonight.
"There are other sorts of deaths. Other ways to be consumed." He leans forward, letting himself go heavy on her, intimately pressing the whole lengths of their bodies together in a way that makes her mind go absolutely blank. "I've already told you that you intrigue me. That I find myself captivated by your spirit and your face. Why must this be your end? Give yourself to me instead." He reaches down, ghosting his hands from her knee up the length of her thigh.
Elena tries to draw back, but he will have none of it, pressing himself closer for each bit of space she tries to throw up between them, until she is pinned impossibly tight between his body and the ground, with hardly any space to breathe at all.
"Open yourself to me," he coaxes her all the while with soft words and softer caresses. "Consent to be my own, and I shall bring you the riches from the furthest corners of the earth to set at your feet, pearls and firebright jewels and spices and precious silks. I'll show you wonders you've never even heard of, never even dreamed of—mountain tops where human feet have never stepped, lush gardens filled with colors and fragrances lost to time and memory. Each gleaming star I'll fix upon your brow, and I shall set you as a queen beside me."
Klaus's words weave a kind of net around her, a strange hypnotic maze of suggestion and knife-keen desire that entangles and confuses her. She's not sure, with the weight of him making it so hard to breathe and her head pounding like a hammer against an anvil, with the cold seeping into her whole body through her cloak and through his sapping, unearthly touch, how to escape. If she wants to escape. She can hardly think, let alone remember—
His mouth catches at hers, then, his lips soft yet persuasive as he draws her further under his power.
Hesitantly, she kisses him back.
"Say yes to me," he murmurs into her mouth. His hand finds the hem of her dress. Bunches the fabric and pushes it up, over her hip. "Sweet girl, say yes, and I shall forever set myself as your shield against the howling winds and flesh-stripping fires of this world."
She had been afraid. Terrified. She knows she had been. Thinks she had been. Hadn't she?
It's too hard to cling to that now. Too hard to keep struggling, when he's no longer talking about her death, but about something else entirely. The future he paints shimmers with a hazy vividness like a dream, impossible to grasp onto when she thinks on it too straight on, only visible through sidelong glances. She's not even sure what he's saying to her anymore. She feels drained, drugged by his slow, deep kisses and his lingering touches that make her whole body flare with heat and a strange, desperate longing. Nothing is real.
He lays his hand over her sex, his touch insidiously gentle. Draws himself up so that he may look down upon, down on her, and, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight like an animal's, like a demon's, commands her, "Submit yourself to me."
That same deep-seated vanity that had urged her to give her name at the last sparks hot and indignant at his words. Saves her from succumbing to him completely.
Reason knifes through her like the first breath of air after surfacing from black, drowning waters.
Elena bucks under him, suddenly aware of how insane this is. The way her legs have somehow ended up wrapped around Klaus's hips, the way his hand traces irregular patterns over her clit through the thin, wet fabric of her underwear, the way that for the past several minutes she has inexplicably let him.
"Wait—stop—I don't want—"
"I beg to differ, dearest." Those deft fingers push aside the meager cotton barrier of her underwear and sink into her. He crooks a finger and hits a bundle of nerves inside of her she hadn't even known existed before this.
Helplessly, she groans and arches her back, her legs instinctually tightening around him despite her wishes.
"You're positively soaked for me already," he croons into her ear. His voice, low, churning, fevered, sends shivers racing up her spine.
And fear. A very healthy dose of fear.
There's something not natural about this.
No matter how he touches her, he can't dissolve the swell of panic that builds in her body as her reason returns to her.
When she continues to struggle in earnest against him, Klaus pulls back. She senses more than sees him tilt his head as he regards her. With the moon not yet risen, it's very dark out in the deepening twilight.
"You're resisting the compulsion," he remarks. She can practically hear the way his eyes narrow in the way he says it. He leans in and takes a long whiff of her body, his nose trailing up from her waist until he pauses at her throat. His hand grasps the brooch her mother had given her. "What is this vervain doing around your throat?" he snarls, the words distorted by fangs into an animal growl.
He tears it off of her and tangles one hand in her hair, yanking her head back again.
She looks up into the shadowed face of the monster, the demon—the vampire.
She doesn't really understand anything about what's just happened—why he has attempted to coax her, to seduce her— only that he wants to consume her, to bury himself inside her and devour her completely.
Sometimes, when you're in an impossible situation, you pray for miracles to happen.
And sometimes, they do.
Klaus bursts into flame atop her out of the clear blue.
Howling, he rears back, dropping her brooch onto the ground as he claps at his body.
For a moment, Elena is too stunned to move. But then she hears a voice screaming her name—she hears Bonnie, shouting for her, calling her home. A lifeline in this madness.
The sound of her friend's voice catapults her into action. Her heart in her throat, Elena snatches up the fallen brooch that had apparently warded Klaus off, at least to some extent, and dashes over to where she can just barely make out Bonnie's silhouette in the moonlight.
Bonnie snags hold of her and the two of them race hand in hand back to the party, crashing into the circle of their friends and the safety of the bonfire with wild eyes and heaving chests.
She feels like she should be screaming, but if she starts to scream now, then she'll never stop.
They must look like hell. Bonnie's lost her hat and torn her tights at the knee, not to mention there's blood dried on her neck, and Elena's cloak must be ruined with river dirt and grass stains from her fall (and from everything that happened afterwards).
No one even notices. Their friends still laugh and drink and kiss and warm their hands by the fire.
Out of the corner of her eye, Elena notices a girl standing on the edge of the bonfire, watching her. When Elena turns to catch a fuller glimpse of her, it's again her own face that stares back at her, deep black eyes framed by long curling hair tied back in braids, her body draped in a medieval green velvet gown, the sleeves trailing like banners behind her. She watches her with an unreadable, arresting expression that pricks at Elena's heart. She stands so close to the fire that the flames should burn her, but she makes no indication that she feels their smoldering heat.
The memory of seeing another vision of herself in the woods just before her fall ghosts through her thoughts.
Elena blinks, and just like that, the vision in front of her disappears.
I'm going mad.
Blindly, she collapses at the foot of the church's old stone steps, her legs too shaky to hold her anymore. Bonnie follows her, but doesn't sit with her.
"What's going on? Is any of this real?"
"I saw him too," she says.
Him. Not the vision of herself in the old-timey gown, now or back in the woods.
"That—it all had to be some kind of hallucination—something in our drinks—"
"It was real," Bonnie says, as grim as can be.
Elena shakes her head. Scrubs her hands through her hair. Focuses on the bigger issue. "No. Vampires aren't real. That's insane." She had seen his teeth. Had felt the graze of his fangs. His cold, cold hands, his liquid allure that drew from her depths of dark desires she hadn't even known existed. Had seen him catch aflame.
Intuition licks at her. She glances up sharply at Bonnie, who peers out into the woods with a million yard stare. "How did you set him on fire?"
Bonnie starts and looks down at her. "I saw the two of you together and I just—I pictured it happening. One minute I was imagining he would just combust and the next moment he did." She sits down next to Elena and hugs her knees. "I really am a witch."
They sit in heavy silence.
Finally, Elena brings herself to ask, "What did he say to you, before he bit you?"
Bonnie picks at the threads of her ripped tights. "Weird stuff. Suggestive stuff." She laughs, the sound high and strained. "It sounded pretty good at the time."
Yes, she can understand that.
All around them, their classmates laugh and love and live in a simpler world than the one she and her friends have so precipitously stumbled into.
Elena's thoughts crawl to a stand-still.
"Where's Caroline?"
Bonnie sits up a little straighter and scans the party. "We got split up. When I saw that monster with you, I figured she must have made it back here."
"Vampire."
"What?"
"He's not just a monster. He's a vampire."
"Well, hell."
Elena stands up and helps Bonnie to her feet. Together, they hurry through the crowd, pushing through and ignoring the disgruntled looks they receive as they search for Caroline, calling her name in increasingly frantic volume.
"She's not here. Do you think she got lost?" Bonnie asks after their third turn through the area.
Elena can hear the real question that neither of them dare voice, hanging in the air between them.
"We're going to have to look for her."
Bonnie grabs her arm. "He's still out there."
After all of the revelations of this night, Elena doesn't even bother to ask her how she knows with such certainty.
Elena pulls Bonnie back toward the ruins of the church. "What exactly did your ancestress's grimoire say about the monster? Anything about what would happen once he was released? Anything that could help us?"
"There was something—a warning. That if the beast ever were to be released, that he would have to claim the life of the one who'd set him free before dawn—that if he ever got free, and the virgin who lit the candle was unable to evade him, it would be better to die by any other's hand than to let him take her."
Elena nods, trying to keep her mind focused on strategy if only to fend off death's chill fingers. "He said something similar to me when he had me pinned. That he had to claim my life." Some nameless suspicion takes hold of her, slowly yet indelibly, the way that the tide rises before a storm. "Did it specify what was meant by the word 'claimed'?"
"That sounds kind of obvious—he's going to try to kill you."
Except, something much stranger had been offered to her. Nearly forced upon her.
"What about vampires? Did the grimoire say anything about those?"
"A lot of weird stuff—but it's not like I read through the whole thing—I thought it was all metaphors or something—"
"But could it mean something else? Claiming a life?"
Bonnie stares at her hard. "What did he say to you?"
She's just about to give voice to the hunch coming together in her mind when she spots Klaus, standing like a wraith at the edge of the gathering where the firelight bleeds into wooded shadow.
Slumped unconscious in his arms, blood pouring from her torn open throat and streaming onto her white dress, is Caroline.
Elena meets Klaus's eyes across the scant distance that separates them.
"Your dear companion is mere minutes away from bleeding to death," he calls to her. "Come to me now, and I shall save her."
Bonnie must sense Elena's thoughts, because she grabs hold of her arm before she can surrender herself. "Don't."
Elena turns to face her friend. "There's no other choice. I can't let Caroline die for me."
"Think, Elena. You can't trust him to let Caroline live just because you do what he wants. He's not even human."
"Your chance is slipping away," he calls over to them. "Once your friend is dead, I shan't furnish you with any more offers of good faith. I'll simply descend upon you."
There's something wrong about all of this. "So why doesn't he?" she wonders, under her breath. "Why try to bargain with me at all?"
She watches the way he strains forward, only to shrink back every time his body breaks the edge of the light. It's as though he stands at the edge of a threshold. Something about vampires and invitations tickles at the edges of her memory, along with a rush of other superstition her parents had whispered to her at bedtime, spooky stories that may just save her life tonight.
"The church!" Bonnie whispers urgently. "It's consecrated ground."
"Is that a thing? Vampires can't walk across consecrated ground?" She strains to recall everything her parents ever told her.
"I don't know," Bonnie says slowly. "Or maybe it's a ghost thing."
"Very clever," Klaus calls, startling them both with the sharpness of his hearing. "I am at present with one foot in the realm of the living and one in the realm of death. Little better than a shade, it's true. Though, do not think that these barriers will keep me out forever."
"It's part of the curse," Bonnie surmises. Her fingers tighten around Elena's arm. "He can't do a thing unless he gets you, Elena. He's bluffing."
"Am I? I'm over a thousand years old. I have survived witches and hunters and necromancers aplenty, seduced queens and emperors and even a few comely peasants, consorted with demons and primordial gods, traveled realms you'll never see and conquered lands you've never even heard of. The overcoming of some long dead cleric's blessing and pouring of water are but a trifle compared to deeds such as those. I shall get what I want, one way or another. Mark me." Klaus yanks at Caroline's hair, until she groans in his arms. "Your friend is going cold to the touch. Your time is nearly up."
Elena's thoughts race. She takes a step closer, dragging Bonnie along with her. "Hand Caroline over to Bonnie, across the barrier where you can't reach her, and I'll surrender myself as soon as I know she'll survive."
Klaus's eyes gleam. He offers her a sharp-toothed smile. "She'll survive."
"Swear it."
"Elena!" Bonnie hisses. "Are you insane? He's going to kill you."
"I know what I'm doing," she says, without taking her eyes off of Klaus. It's all clear to her, in this moment.
"Whatever he said, it was a lie. You can't trust him."
"I don't."
"Then why are you doing this?"
Because she can't let Caroline die. Not for her. She can't let anyone die, not when she has the ability to protect them. There's a strength in that conviction she hadn't known she possessed until that night. A strength in her love, sacrificial though it is.
She wishes she had learned this about herself under different circumstances.
"Right now, I need you to trust me," she tells Bonnie, in lieu of really answering her.
Bonnie's hand finally falls from her arm. "Don't you dare die on me."
Elena turns away before Bonnie can read something in her face that she'd rather she didn't. Carefully, she edges her way over toward the boundary between the consecrated church grounds and the deeper shadows where Klaus lurks.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spots the woman with her face again, staring unwaveringly at her through the flickering uncertain light. Watching her as she prepares to hand herself over to Klaus.
The woman shakes her head, once. A warning.
Do not go.
Elena ignores her, and steps over the threshold.
Klaus tosses Caroline over the edge as though she were a pile of rags. Her friend's body hits the ground before Bonnie can catch her.
There's just enough time to glimpse the way Bonnie's face blanches when she touches Caroline, to hear the beginning of a scream, before Klaus snaps her up and spirits her away, deep into the woods.
They come to a lurching stop and Elena fights her way out of his arms.
"Is she dead?" she asks as she falls against a tree.
"Does it matter?"
Panic swells in her breast. This isn't how this is supposed to go. Giving herself up was supposed to save her friends. She can't breathe. She can't breathe.
In the distance, she can hear the roar of the river. That, at last, breaks through her jangling nerves, gives her enough strength to draw upon, if only for a few minutes more.
He's a liar, she tells herself. She can still do this. Even now, Caroline must be on her way to the hospital.
(She repeats it to herself until it sounds convincing. Until it sounds true.)
(She buries the memory of Caroline's eyes, wide open and terribly, terribly blank.)
"You promised me she would be okay."
"Did you believe me? How charming."
The tree cover blocks out any trace of the moon. It's too dark for her to do more than stumble blindly, following the comforting sound of the river. It can't be very far. These woods are not that deep.
"Whither goes my fair maid?"
"It's too dark here. I don't like it."
She can feel him watching her as she picks her way through the woods. She ignores the feeling, ignores the curdling dread of the moment his curiosity fizzles and he grows bored of watching her muddle her way in the dark.
Nonetheless, she still experiences a jolt when he catches hold of her arm. "Pretty thing, tarry a while," he whispers in her ear as he presses her up against the trunk of an enormous tree.
"I'm afraid," she tells him, as honestly as she is able.
"And yet you have no reason to be. Have I not already assured you that I have no intention of killing you this night?"
"My friend's read the grimoire that described your imprisonment. It said you had to claim the life of the one who lit the candle. The one who freed you."
His hands stroke over her body and linger on her hips. They are large enough to encircle the breadth of them as he pulls her roughly into his body. "You are misinterpreting the text. If I killed you, all I would be doing is claiming your death. It is your life I aim to possess." He presses a cold kiss upon her brow. "It was meant to force me into an impossible decision, I think. The witch who cast it possessed the rare gift of foresight, and she must have known that it would be you, a daughter of the Petrova line, who would free me. She would have assumed that to choose your life over your death would be an impossible task for me. One that might take me til dawn to decide, when it will be too late. Indeed, there was a time when that would have been so. I hunted your death for centuries. It would have been no small thing to release it." He draws her arms around him. Works the cloak from off her shoulders, his breath hitching when he touches the brooch. This time, she notices how his fingers sizzle when he touches it. "Yet I have been so long from the mortal coil," he tells her. "Have spent so many years wandering without a star to set my path—and your face is the star on which I have always hung my destiny. Your fateful face and your lush body and your bright life lure me with a siren's song more potent than fresh blood, more abiding than fire and more seductive than the call of the moon. I do not think the witch foresaw that, or else she would never have devised this as the method by which I might break her curse." He presses his mouth against her pulse. Kisses her there. "It is no hardship at all to choose your life over your death, Elena mine. No burden to sip at your vitality and your sweet life's blood and in so doing anchor myself to this plane. To unlife. Not when I know the alternative."
His words have the same peculiar magic as they had earlier, in the clearing after her fall. Her body yearns to surrender to his soft, sinister caresses. She has to struggle to concentrate, to keep her head clear lest she drown in him.
"But what does that mean, to claim my life?" she asks. "What does that mean, if you're not planning to bite me?"
He smirks against her throat. Lifts his head to kiss her. "I never said I did not plan to bite you."
"Klaus—"
"I intend to bind you to me. As my bride and my consort. To claim you through rite of blood, in the way of my kind."
Elena swallows, cognizant of the way he watches her throat bob. She's not sure which she hates worse: the idea of being bound to this monster in the way he describes, or the sharp twist of hungry desire his words evoke. "I'm just sixteen. I'm too young for that."
"Then you ought not to've lit the blackflame candle. And sixteen does not sound too young to be a bride. I've known many a younger."
"Maybe two centuries ago."
"Alas, the decision is out of my hands. I must act before the dawn."
"What would I have to do?"
"Accept my suit."
"That's it?"
"To accept you must submit to me."
"What if I don't want to?"
"Then it's a pity you traded yourself for your friend. You cannot believe I will let you go without satisfaction."
Klaus's urgent persuasions from the clearing return to her in kaleidoscopic force.
Just thinking about what she plans is enough to make her dizzy.
"Then at least grant me a favor."
"Name it," he tells her instantly. "Do you desire a necklace of rubies for your collar? A silver mirror ensorcelled to show you your beloveds? The still beating hearts of your enemies, warm with their blood? If it is within my power, I shall grant it."
"Take me down to the water, where the trees are not so thick." Tentatively, she reaches out to touch his face—just the barest, shyest graze of her fingertips against his cheek. "If we're going to do this, I want to be able to see your face."
Klaus kisses her again, deeply, as though drinking from her lips. Partakes so deeply from her mouth that she forgets to breathe, until her head swims and her knees buckle and it is all she can do to cling to him lest she faint.
"This I can arrange," he tells her, pulling back finally, saving her from losing herself in him again without even realizes he does so.
Klaus leads her by the hand through the woods, carefully helping her navigate over roots and rocks and fallen tree branches, until they break out of the treeline and onto a patch of knee-high grass overlooking the plummeting edge of the river bank.
The sickle moon shines down on them, casting a thin silver light that Elena can just barely see by. She looks up into Klaus's shadowed face, as beautiful and unearthly and terrifying as she remembers. In his eyes, she can see all of his unearthly desire and needle-focus laid open. It's too much for her. It would be too much for any mortal girl.
Klaus reaches for her, but she dodges back before he can touch her again. Before he can weave his glamour on her again. His eyes narrow at her, and he takes a step to pursue her, but she forestalls him.
"Aren't you going to get down on one knee to propose?"
The question amuses him. What might be a smirk plays at the corner of his mouth.
He sinks down to one knee in the manner of a king kneeling to accept a crown. Power and divine right emanate from him in every movement, every breath. Watching him now is like feeling the pressure suddenly drop before a devastating storm.
Her heart gallops in her chest. Adrenaline spikes through her veins.
"My lady," Klaus begins.
Before he can open his mouth to speak another word, Elena turns and hurls herself into the churning river below.
Vampires can't cross running water.
It's one of the things her mother taught her, one of the truisms she'd mistaken for scary bedtime stories but which had really contained a portion of wisdom that might just save her life.
Vampires can't come inside a home unless they are invited in nor step foot on holy ground. The sun will burn them to ashes in moments and a stake through the heart will stop them dead. They can hypnotize you or walk your dreams, but a charm of the right herbs or a bottle of holy water will prevent them from controlling you. They are strong and they are swift, but if you can make it across a stream or better yet a river, you will be safe.
She depends on that now, as the black and the cold close over her head.
Freezing water shoots up her nose, rams down her throat in icy torrents that scald her lungs. Towering stands of slimy sea grass whisper over her skin, closing around her like a cocoon. She fights her way to the surface, beating against a deadly undertow that sucks her down into the depths. Twice her head breaks the surface, and she gasps for a burning breath of air before getting dragged back under again. The current shoots her irresistibly downstream, so much faster and harder than she had guessed it would when she came up with this desperate plan, the force of it like a battering ram against her body. Every stroke she makes feels harder than the last. Every gasp hurts like hell.
She's been afraid so many times tonight, has faced down death so directly and persistently, that she would have thought that this fear would stop feeling so sharp, so overwhelming, but it hasn't, not at all. The panic rears up again, animal and desperate.
She's going to drown. She's going to drown. She's going to drown.
It would be better to die by any other's hand than to let him take her.
Better to drown by her own hand than to let Klaus have her. To let him roam free, and endure a lifetime as his creature.
Beneath the water, an unnatural calm sweeps over her. And in the quiet still inside of herself, she finds the last scrap of her defiance.
Resolve trumpets through her. It's as though just the recollection of her own agency in this is enough to give her a last burst of energy. A final surge of spirit. Of life. She's going to survive this. Elena digs deep for any tiny kernel of remaining strength and claws her way back toward the surface. Takes a wheezing breath of fiery air and strains for the bank. If she can just make it across, pull herself out, she'll have made it.
She's almost to the edge. She can see a branch overhanging the water, and if she can reach it, she can pull herself out.
Something snags the laces on her shoe. It's enough to kill her momentum as she spins in the water and tries to yank herself free.
The water rushes over her.
Pulls her under again.
This time, she doesn't resurface.
"Where might you be wandering all alone at such a late hour?" calls a voice from the edge of the river.
She turns to face the man who'd spoken to her. She cannot see him too well in the darkness, only that he is tall and handsome under the moon. His smile seems kind.
"I'm lost," she admits. She's been drifting along the edge of this river, weaving through the high marshy grasses and picking her way over wet rocks and muddy trails at random. There's somewhere she's supposed to be, but she can't for the life of her remember where.
"Then allow me to assist you." The man very gallantly holds out his hand to her, to help her up from the side of the river bank, and, hesitantly, she takes hold. He lifts her up as though she weighs nothing at all. The warmth of his palm against hers sends a little shock through her. She ducks her head to hide the blush that she feels certain must stain her cheeks.
"I'm supposed to be somewhere," she mumbles.
"With me."
She frowns up into his face. "Do I know you?"
"You are my beloved."
Oh. Oh. She thinks of that little zap of attraction she'd felt when he'd taken her by the hand and she no longer feels quite so ashamed by it.
Her lover—because what else could he be?—leads her away from the water, and she lets him, glad to leave the river behind. Something about its rushing currents unsettles her.
"I think I fell in," she says, mostly to herself. "I remember…" Nothing. It's all a blank.
"You'd be soaked to the bone if you did," he tells her.
He has a point.
Around them, the wind whistles through the dead leaves still clinging to tree limbs. The sound of creaking branches and the rustle of animals scurrying through the underbrush filling the silence. It's a strange night. The air around her is warm, nearly balmy, yet she is so very cold. The only thing that drives it back is her lover's hand around her own. It's almost embarrassing, how she longs to burrow into the warmth of him. To take some of it for her own. Yet they are lovers. He said so, and she can feel by her body's response to him that it must be true. Everything is foggy, yet, in her heart, she does know him.
They walk for a long time.
Out here, away from the city lights, the stars shine very brightly, casting everything in a cool misty glow that softens every edge.
The further from the river they roam, the more her worries ebb away.
Soon, all she can think of is him. The feel of his arm around her waist, warm and sheltering. The sheer beauty of him. The adoring way he looks down at her and smiles so gently and so kindly when their eyes meet.
She is so lucky.
In a clearing under a spreading sycamore tree, he lays her down in soft grass and kisses her on the mouth. Heat suffuses her body everywhere he touches her. She cannot get enough. Eagerly, she wraps her arms around his neck and draws him closer.
His hand slides up her leg and pets the soft skin on the inside of her thigh. Her whole body quivers in anticipation of his touch where she needs him the most. Eagerly, she shifts beneath him, spreading her thighs wider and wrapping them around his hips. His mouth moves from her lips and down to the column of her throat, stopping to mouth worshipfully at the swell of her breasts, which spill over the low collar of her dress.
"Please," she groans, twisting beneath him.
His fingers play along her sex, nothing but cotton separating her from his touch. A teasing pressure that gives no relief.
"Please what?" her lover murmurs in her ear.
"Please. I need—I need—"
He withdraws from between her thighs and props himself up on one elbow to look down at her. One hand trails lazily over her cheekbone. "You crave satisfaction."
"Yes."
"From me."
"Yes!"
He rolls back on top of her. Slowly, he hooks his fingers in the waistband of her panties and tugs them down her legs. Dimly, she's aware of her lover unbuttoning his fly, but she's distracted by the way he buries his mouth against her throat and kisses her there. It's not until she feels the hard length of him burning against her center that she even realizes how far they've come so very fast. A thrill shoots through her. She's never done this with any boy before, she's sure of it. Her whole body trembles with nervous anticipation. With need. She wants this.
"Pretty thing," her lover murmurs. "Lovely girl. Tell me you desire me." He shifts his hips against hers as he speaks, until they are so close that all she would have to do is breathe and they would be joined.
"Yes," she says. "Yes, I want you."
"Tell me you adore me."
"I adore you."
He presses forward and sinks into her, then. There's a pinch as he fills her body, the discomfort of her muscles shifting in a way they never have before.
A wild despair cracks open inside of her. Tears strain at her eyes, and a low, keening cry, like a wounded animal, catches in her throat.
"Shhh, shhh," he hushes her, his mouth at her ear, as he braces himself against the earth and continues to slowly rock into her. "I have you now. You are so very good, my lovely, lovely girl."
At the sound of his voice, so soft, so reassuring, her inexplicable and unexpected anguish dissipates as though it had never happened.
She shifts, and her body flexes, and the feeling of her lover hot and full inside of her changes into something new, something delicious. Liquid desire surges through her as she rocks and arches against him, chasing the rippling pleasure she's just gotten her first taste of.
His hands feel like they are everywhere. Stroking her, mapping her, driving her insane with the suggestion that he will let her come, only to pull away at the last moment, forcing her body to strain toward an ever higher and ever more frightening peak.
At first she bites her lip, her nails digging harsh crescents into his nape where his golden hair curls against his neck, but soon she's crying out, unable to keep the wellspring of her pleasure inside of her any longer.
Her vocalizations do nothing but spur her lover on. He's been so careful, so in control, seeking her pleasure first, but she can tell that his restraint is running thin from the way he clenches his jaw, from the intensity in his gaze as he stares down upon her.
His name is on the tip of her tongue, but she can't recall it—can't recall anything except the feeling of him moving inside of her, changing her, possessing her—
Her body clenches while she stares up into his eyes and he groans, the first true loss of control he's shown, and it is this unguarded moment that shoots her into shuddering orgasm.
She clings to him through the aftershocks, exhilarated by the way her lover reacts to her pleasure, by the way he buries his face in her shoulder and melts into her, as though she has stripped him of his strength. He keeps moving within her all the while, urging her back into the rising tide of desire and languid satisfaction. Shocks her by sinking his teeth into her throat when he comes. The needle sharp pierce of his fangs somehow gets confused with the feeling of his cock buried within her, somehow tricks her body into perceiving the intrusion as a pleasure so deep it trips her into a second, perverse climax. Helplessly, her body tightens around his as ecstasy suffuses her veins, sinks into every tissue and muscle.
"Mine," her lover snarls against her throat. As he drinks down her blood even while filling her with his jism. There's an exchange happening, somehow fundamental. Ancient.
"Yes," she breathes. Her hands thread into his hair, pressing him closer to her vulnerable flesh. "Yes, I'm yours."
She can feel his sharp-toothed smile scrape against her throat.
Still inside of her, her lover pulls away from her neck, only to bite into his wrist and press it against her lips.
She opens her mouth without hesitation and drinks from him.
After, he lifts her to her feet and leads her back toward the river.
The closer she comes, the more dread starts to curdle in her belly.
Something feels wrong.
The sky is beginning to lighten, turning it a dark, bitter gray. Only the brightest of the stars are still visible.
It's as they approach the rocky shore at one of the slower bends in the river that she first sees it.
A girl, with long dark hair, clad in a flimsy red and white checkered dress, has washed ashore. There's an unsettling blue cast to her skin. From the muddy marks on the grass around her, it looks like she's been dragged from the river and left there.
Something about the sight of that girl freezes her to her marrow.
As she approaches, inexorable realization creeps upon her. "I drowned."
Her lover drops down next to the body and strokes the hair back from her face.
"Nearly," he says. "Had I not pulled you from the river, you certainly would have."
It's then that she notices the shallow breaths coming from the body on the grass.
"I don't understand. That's me."
"As I said, you nearly died. 'Twas a close enough thing that your spirit left your body. Had it been any night other than Samhain, when spirits may walk the realm of the living as they please, then you would have passed to the next world without my being able to stop you. No doubt that was your plan." He stands and grasps her hand. "But as it is Samhain night, for just a little while longer yet, I have this rare chance to restore your spirit to your flesh, the way that you have in turn restored me." He leads her forward, and despite the trepidation hammering through her, she cannot resist drawing nearer to what she now recognizes to be her own body. The place she had been searching for when he had found her wandering and drew her away.
"Why didn't you lead me here earlier?"
Her lover scrutinizes her expression for a long moment before responding. "Because you would never have given yourself to me if you had been in possession of yourself."
Before she can respond, he brings her hand down over her body's faintly beating heart.
The sun rises over the trees and burns against Elena's closed eyelids.
She blinks awake, disoriented by the view of the open, pale sky above her, by the sound of birds twittering from the branches above.
She sits up slowly, shivering, her arms and legs numb and covered in gooseflesh. Takes stock of herself. Her blood feels sluggish in her veins. She's covered in mud and smells like the river. There's an unfamiliar ache between her legs, not to mention a fierce throbbing at her temple and bruises and scabs on her hands and knees, various welts on her arms and legs. Her whole body feels battered, limp with exhaustion. She doesn't remember how she got here.
The wind gusts, carrying with it a frigid dawn blast that Elena cannot help but to shudder against.
Abrupt warmth settles over her—what she realizes is her heavy velvet cloak, lost, somehow—
She glances up into a pair of merry blue eyes, eyes that she remembers gazing down upon her as she moaned and writhed beneath them—
Memory flickers through her the way the air shimmers above asphalt on a hot day. A mirage, there and then gone.
Elena scrambles as far out of the monster's—out of Klaus's—reach as she can. There's dried blood staining his mouth and chin. His hair is mussed, his clothes rumpled. She doesn't want to connect the dots.
"It's sunrise. You're supposed to be dead," she gasps.
Klaus squats down so that they are on eye-level, watching as she continues to crawl away from him with the patient amusement of a cat watching a mouse. "That should have been my unhappy end, had you not linked your fate with mine."
Terrible foreboding boils within her. Ruthlessly, she squashes it down.
"I don't understand—"
"We exchanged blood. You gifted me your virtue. When I made my claim on you, you accepted. Our lives are inextricably bound from this day forward."
The memory of their tryst—of the way she had come screaming and thrashing when his teeth had sunk into her flesh and his cock had pistoned within her, of how right and fulfilling his possession of her had felt in that moment—knifes through her afresh, followed by a hot wave of shame and denial.
A second memory returns to her—of finding her body washed up on the shore of the river bank.
"That wasn't even my actual body," she splutters, as though she could vanquish him by pointing out that they hadn't really had sex. Just ghost sex.
That thought is enough to intensify the pounding in her head ten-fold.
Klaus beams at her. "Deeds done in spirit are thrice as binding as those done in flesh." He tells her this with the air of an oft-recited truism.
Shakily, Elena stands.
Klaus rises with her.
"You're a monster. You were imprisoned for eating people."
"I shan't eat you."
"You attacked Caroline."
"I never said I wouldn't eat your friends."
Again, she prays that Caroline is alright. She doesn't know if she can live with what she's done if she's not.
"You look ridiculous, by the way," she announces.
"I expect I shall need someone to teach me the finer details of the twenty-first century. It may as well be you. It would greatly aid me in depopulating the countryside if I first knew the local customs."
The fact that he's apparently now joking with her is something she's not prepared to deal with yet.
She zeroes in on an earlier statement from him instead.
"What does that even mean? Bound together?"
"As I explained I intended to do last night, I've taken you for my bride."
He says it all so nonchalantly.
Matt crosses her mind for the first time since they kissed goodbye.
The fierce certainty that she can never let Klaus find out about him flashes through her.
"I don't want to be your bride," she finally tells him.
He smiles at her then, that slow hot curl at the corner of his mouth that has become familiar to her, that sends an instant bolt of longing twisting through her. Quick as a viper he lashes out and catches her around the waist, drawing her against his warm body. Just the feel of him against her is enough to almost wipe out all of her misgivings.
There's a very small part, buried deep, that knows this isn't right.
Tenderly, Klaus traces his finger over a sore spot at her pulse—the place he had bitten her when he had marked her as his own. She melts into his touch. Opens her mouth and enthusiastically kisses him back, even as she quails under the power that this alien and awful creature has somehow ensnared her with. Even as she tastes her own blood on his lips.
"Oh, Elena mine," he breathes. "How could you imagine, having caught you, that I would ever let you go?"