"You with us, Matt?" Meredith asked, apparently reading Bonnie's mind.
Matt sighed and kneaded at the back of his neck with one hand as if his muscles were strained and stiff. "Yeah, I'm with you. " He paused and took a breath. "Except . . . " He trailed off and then started again. "Except maybe some of them we can help, right? Stefan could teach them how to be vampires who don't hurt people. Even Damon changed, didn't he? And Chloe . . . " His cheeks were flushed with emotion. "None of them deserved this. They didn't know what they were getting into. "
"No," Meredith answered, touching Matt's elbow lightly with one hand. "They didn't. "
Bonnie'd known that Matt was friends with the sweet-faced junior Chloe, but she was beginning to understand that he'd felt much more than that. How terrible to know that Meredith might have to thrust a stave through the chest of someone he was falling in love with, and how much worse to know that it was the right thing to do.
Zander had a soft expression in his eyes, and Bonnie realized he was thinking the same thing. He took her hand, his long strong fingers wrapping around hers, and Bonnie snuggled a little closer to him.
But as they rounded a dark bend in the tunnel, Zander suddenly let go of Bonnie and stepped protectively in front of her as Meredith raised her stave. Bonnie, a beat behind the others, didn't see the two figures entwined against the wall until they were already breaking apart. No, not entwined like lovers, she realized, but a vampire clinging to its victim. Matt stiffened, staring at them, and let out a soft involuntary sound of surprise. There was a sudden snarl and a flash of white teeth in the darkness as the vampire, a girl no taller than Bonnie herself, pushed her victim violently away. He fell to the ground at her feet.
> Bonnie stepped around Zander, keeping a careful eye on the vampire, who was now huddled against the wall. She flinched involuntarily at the vampire's stare, the feral, fierce look in the dark eyes fixing on her, but kept going until she could kneel down next to the victim and reach to check his pulse. It was steady, but he was bleeding pretty badly, and she took off her jacket and pressed it against his throat to staunch the blood. Her hands were shaking and she concentrated on stilling them, on doing what needed to be done. Beneath the young man's eyelids, she could see his eyes moving rapidly back and forth, as if he was caught in a bad dream, but he stayed unconscious.
The girl - the vampire, Bonnie reminded herself - was watching Meredith now, her body tensed to fight or run away. She cringed back as Meredith stepped closer, blocking her in. Meredith raised her stave higher, aiming it at the middle of the girl's chest.
"Wait," the girl said hoarsely, holding out her hands. She looked past Meredith and seemed to see Matt for the first time. "Matt," she said. "Help me. Please. " She was staring hard at him, visibly concentrating, and Bonnie realized with a start that the vampire was trying to use Power to make Matt do what she wanted. It wasn't working, though - she must not be strong enough yet - and after a moment her eyes rolled back and she sagged against the wall.
"Beth, we want to give you a chance," Matt said to the vampire. "Do you know what happened to Ethan?"
The girl shook her head emphatically, her long hair flying around her. Her eyes were flicking back and forth between Meredith and the tunnel behind her, and she edged sideways. Meredith followed her, moving closer, the stave pressed against the vampire's chest.
"We can't just kill her," Matt said to Meredith, a slightly desperate note in his voice. "Not if there's another option. " Meredith snorted in disbelief and angled even closer to the vampire - Beth, Matt had called her - who bared her teeth in a silent snarl.
"Hang on a second," Zander said, and stepped over Beth's victim's unconscious body, brushing past Bonnie. Before Bonnie really understood what was happening, Zander had pulled Beth away from Meredith and pressed her against the wall of the tunnel.
"Hey!" Meredith said indignantly, and then frowned in confusion. Zander was gazing intently into Beth's eyes, his face serious and calm. She was staring back at him, her restless eyes still now, her breathing hard.
"Do you know where Ethan is?" Zander asked in a low, calm voice, and it felt to Bonnie as if something, some invisible blast of Power, flew between them.
In a second, Beth's wary face emptied of all expression. "He's hiding in the safe house at the end of the tunnels," she said. Her voice sounded half-asleep, disconnected from her thoughts.
"Are there other vampires with him?" Zander asked, his eyes steady on hers.
"Yes," Beth said. "Everyone's staying there until the equinox, when all Ethan's hopes will be fulfilled. "
Two days, Bonnie thought. The others had told her that Ethan had planned to resurrect Klaus, the Original vampire. She shivered at the thought. Klaus had been scary, one of the scariest things she'd ever seen. But could they really do it? Ethan hadn't gotten Stefan's and Damon's blood, and he couldn't do the resurrection spell without it. Could he?
"Ask her what their defenses are like," Meredith said, getting with the program.
"Is he well defended?" Zander asked.
Beth's head jerked into a stiff nod, as if an invisible puppeteer had pulled her strings. "No one can get to him," she said in that same sleepy monotone. "He's hidden, and every one of us would give our lives to protect him. "
Meredith nodded, clearly weighing the words of her next question, but Matt broke in. "Can we save her?" he asked, and the pain in his voice made Bonnie flinch. "Maybe if she wasn't so hungry . . . "
Zander focused in even more strongly on Beth, and Bonnie again felt a wave of Power emanating from him. "Do you want to hurt people, Beth?" he asked quietly.
Beth chuckled, a rich, dark sound, although her face stayed blandly expressionless. That laugh was the first emotion she had shown since Zander had somehow charmed her into blankness and truth. "I don't want to hurt - I want to kill," she said, with a hard amusement in her tone. "I've never felt so alive. "
Zander stepped back with a quick animal grace. At the same moment Meredith smoothly shot forward, shoving her stave through Beth's heart.
After the tearing noise of wood through flesh, Beth fell without a sound. Matt's gasp broke the silence, a startled, pained little noise. At Bonnie's knees, Beth's victim stirred, his head turning from one side to the other. Bonnie automatically patted him soothingly with the hand that wasn't keeping pressure on his neck wounds. "It's okay," she said quietly.
Meredith turned to Matt defiantly. "I had to," she said.
Matt bowed his head, his shoulders sagging. "I know," he answered. "Believe me, I know. It's just . . . " He shifted from one foot to the other. "She was a nice girl, before this happened to her. "
"I'm sorry," Meredith said quietly, and Matt nodded, still looking at the ground. Then Meredith turned to Zander. "What was that?" she asked. "How did you get her to talk?"