Unmasked (The Vampire Diaries 13)

“If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you,” Bonnie said stubbornly. “At least I can watch your back.”

Elena squeezed her friend’s hand. “Please, Bonnie,” she begged again. “I can’t do what I have to do if I’m worrying about you. I promise I’ll be okay.”

She knew she had no way of guaranteeing that, but Bonnie’s shoulders slumped in acceptance. “Be careful, Elena,” she said. “Call me as soon as you get home.”

“Okay.” Elena watched as Bonnie picked up the duffle bags with their depleted jars of herbs and left the church, casting worried glances back at Elena over her shoulder.

Once Bonnie’s small, upright figure was out of sight, Elena took a deep breath. There was an icy breeze coming from the opening in the tomb, and it smelled like earth and cold stone that never saw the light.

Steeling herself, she swung her legs over the edge of the tomb, took hold of an iron rung, and began to climb down into the vault beneath the church.

Elena climbed down into darkness, the iron rungs cold in her hands. By the time her feet hit the stone floor at the bottom of the ladder, she was in total blackness. Pulling the flashlight from her back pocket, she flicked it on and ran the beam of light over her surroundings.

The opening of the crypt was just as Elena remembered it. Smooth stone walls held heavy carved candelabras, some with the remains of candles still in them. Near Elena was an ornate wrought-iron gate. Pushing the gate open, Elena walked forward with a slow, steady tread, trying to calm her hammering heart.

The last time she had been here, she’d been a vampire, and she’d had Damon and Stefan both with her, as well as her human friends. More important, that time she hadn’t known what she was getting into. Only that she had been led down here, and that something terrible lurked, just out of sight.

Now Elena knew exactly what was down here.

Her steady footsteps echoed against the stone floor, their sounds only emphasizing how silent it was. Elena could easily believe that no one else had been down here for more than a hundred years. No one else alive, anyway.

Beyond the gate, the beam of the flashlight caught on pale, familiar marble features. A tomb, the twin of the one up in the church. The stone lid here had been broken in two also, and the pieces flung across the crypt. Fragile human bones were splintered and strewn sticklike across the floor. One crunched beneath Elena’s feet as she approached, making her wince guiltily.

She had hoped that, since Katherine hadn’t appeared in Fell’s Church, hadn’t sent disturbing dreams to torment Elena, it meant she wasn’t so filled with rage in this time. But the violence with which the tomb had been desecrated seemed to prove that Katherine was as furious and destructive as she had ever been.

Elena turned the thin wavering beam of the flashlight to the wall beyond the Fells’ tomb. There, as she’d known there would be, lay a gaping hole in the stone wall, as if the stones had been ripped away. From it, a long black tunnel led deep into the earth beyond.

Elena licked her lips nervously. Resting her hands on the cold moist dirt at the edge of the tunnel, she peered into it. “Katherine?” she said questioningly. Her voice came out softer and shakier than she had meant it to, and she cleared her throat and called again. “Katherine!”

Straining her eyes to see into the darkness, Elena waited.

Nothing. No sound of footfalls, nothing white coming swiftly toward her. No sense of something huge and dangerous rushing at her.

“Katherine!” she called again. “I have secrets to tell you!” That might bring her if anything would; Katherine von Swartzchild, first love of Damon and Stefan, the one who had made them vampires and turned them against each other was nothing if not curious and eager for information. That was why she had followed Stefan and Damon here, why she had spied on Elena.

Elena waited, watching and listening. Still nothing. She felt her shoulders sag. Without Katherine, she didn’t have a plan at all.

How long should she wait? Elena pictured herself sitting against the wall, surrounded by the Fell’s broken bones, waiting for Katherine, growing colder and colder as the light of the flashlight dimmed. Elena shuddered. No, she wouldn’t stay here.

She turned to go, and the beam of the flashlight landed on Katherine, standing only a few feet behind her. Elena jumped backward with a strained yelp, her light skittering wildly across the crypt.

Katherine looked so much like Elena that it knocked Elena breathless, even now. Her golden hair was perhaps a shade lighter and a few inches longer, her eyes a slightly different blue. Her figure was thinner and more fragile than Elena’s: Girls of her time and class had been expected to sit and embroider, not run and play.

But the delicate curve of Katherine’s brow, her long golden lashes, her pale skin, the shape of her features—they were all as familiar to Elena as looking in a mirror. Unlike Elena, who was dressed in jeans and a sweater, Katherine wore a long, gauzy white dress. It would have made her look innocent, if it weren’t for the brownish-red streaks across the front, as if Katherine had absent-mindedly wiped bloody hands on it.

“Hello, pretty little girl, my sweet reflection,” Katherine said, almost crooning.

Elena swallowed nervously. “I need your help.”

Katherine came closer, touching Elena’s hair, running cold fingers across her face. “You’re a nasty, greedy girl,” she said sharply. “You want both my boys.”

“You wanted them, too,” Elena snapped, not bothering to deny it. Katherine smiled, her teeth disturbingly sharp.

“Of course I did,” she said. “But they’re mine. They’ve always been mine. You should have left them alone.”

“I am going to leave them alone from now on,” Elena said. “I promise. I just want them to be brothers. I want them to be happy. You did too once.”

Katherine had, Elena knew, let both brothers drink her blood, promised them each eternal life with the secret idea that they would love each other, that the three of them could be a happy family, together forever. When they had rejected the idea of sharing her, she faked her own death, sure their mutual grief would bring them together.