They only stopped as Bonnie had leaped on top of a thick root overlooking the soil.
Because Damon had brought Bonnie to this place, Bonnie was suddenly in deadly danger without knowing it.
Because Damon hadn’t told her otherwise, all Bonnie saw was harmless sparkling sand—and a trunk to be climbed.
Because Damon hadn’t simply ordered her to keep still, all Bonnie saw was a chance to get the star ball and save her town before time ran out.
And now, since no one was near enough to reach Bonnie and physically stop her, she launched herself off the root with a laughing wave.
Too late, Damon had cried, No, you little fool! Also too late was Elena’s lightning-quick grab for Bonnie’s ankle.
Damon had no time to think. He could only act—or else see laughing Bonnie killed in too many ways for him to review at the moment.
It was then that he counted his final, fatal error, which was still a source of utter bewilderment to him. Because without a moment’s consideration he had leaped out onto the pale, sparkling circle and caught Bonnie’s descending body before she could land. He had then flung her as hard as he could away from the Tree.
He’d gathered himself for a desperate leap outside the circle again, but instead he felt the descending branch knock him flat. It was moving much faster than he could, and it was sharp. Damon had felt it slam into his chest and punch through his ribs, breaking them, before it staked him neatly just to the left of his heart, and went on to smash through the ribs in the back of his body.
As if it were not satisfied with this, fibers of woody threads began to swarm along the lines of his circulatory system, faster and faster with every passing second. The tree was destroying his internal organs with its hair-thin creepers. It was headed for his brain.
It hurt. It . . . hurt . . . so . . .
Wait.
Like a drop of water falling on his face, something brought Damon’s present consciousness into his dream.
Nurse alert.
* * *
Stefan was finishing with the dorm rooms. It was a good thing that he’d plucked the information as to where the fighting stave was from Meredith’s head, because she’d hidden it quite cleverly, resting it on top of a curtain rod in the room she and Bonnie shared. From below, it was completely concealed by the little top-ruffle of the off-white curtains Bonnie’s mother had given them to cover their blinds.
He was glad, too, that he’d double-checked Bonnie for memories of pictures taken. Bonnie had a secret cache of Damon photos on her laptop. Mostly they were taken when his back was turned, but few of them included Elena and a couple featured Stefan as well.
“Sorry, Bonnie,” he said as he deleted them all, permanently, tearing apart the atoms which bound the photos and the links to them together. “But since he’s a shocking flirt, I’m sure he’ll keep on paying attention to you.”
Meredith’s laptop and desktop were clean. Stefan searched for Bonnie’s flowered diary, but he couldn’t find it and Bonnie herself hadn’t known what had happened to it. Finally he was forced to give up simply because time was running out. Maybe the diary was in her parents’ house back in Fell’s Church.
He knocked on Caroline Forbes’s door. It was several minutes between her call: “I’m coming,” and the moment when the door opened.
“Stefan! But—Bonnie just called and said that Elena had woken up. What are you doing here?”
“Just gathering a few things for her,” Stefan lied. He gently enfolded Caroline in coils of Influence, adding to her entranced mind the notion that that her body felt well and strong.
Caroline looked as if she had swallowed a watermelon. Her faded-bronze arms and legs were still thin, but hard with muscle, her face was very little changed, but her stomach was massively swollen. This made it even more absurd for her to have accused
Matt of being the father; impregnating her less than two months ago.
Oh, well, Stefan thought. The Celestial Council had fixed that so it never happened, either. Caroline was officially the cast-off girlfriend of the conspicuously absent Tyler Smallwood.
And sometime soon—no one quite knew how long it took werewolf babies to be born when the mother had been a human at the time of their conception—Caroline would have twins.
“Caroline,” Stefan said, “do you know where Bonnie keeps her diary—a blank book with little flowers on it? She thought she’d brought it with her, but I can’t find it.”
“What? No.” Caroline frowned as Stefan slipped by her—he’d been inside before when Meredith, Elena and Bonnie and Matt had decorated the room for Caroline as a surprise. “Why would Elena want Bonnie’s diary? The purple one you’re holding is her latest.”
“I know,” Stefan said. He gently lay another loop of Influence around Caroline, making her anxious to help him. “Can you tell me, please, if you or Bonnie or Meredith or Elena have photos of me anywhere?”
“Photos of you? What are you talking about?”