Unmasked (The Vampire Diaries 13)

When Stefan turned toward the church, Elena nudged him away. “Let’s look in the mausoleums,” she said.

The grim mausoleums made of granite and iron scattered around the old churchyard. Each housed the bones of a family of original settlers of Fell’s Church. They were dark and forbidding now, overgrown with ivy, their flagstone paths pitted by time. One had the Gilbert name, Elena’s father’s family, but she didn’t know much about the people whose bones laid there, except that one had been a young soldier killed in the Civil War.

Elena and Stefan slipped into an easy routine, working their way clockwise from one mausoleum to the next around the churchyard. Elena would stand lookout while Stefan forced each narrow door.

There was no sign of Damon in the Gilbert mausoleum, only three gray stone coffins and a dusty vase, which must have once been used for flowers. The space inside was claustrophobically narrow, its air stale, and Elena was glad to back out again after one quick look.

Surely if Damon were living here, he would have chosen her family’s mausoleum, as some sort of elaborate tease. Elena stumbled as they moved on to the next small tomb, and Stefan steadied her. “Careful,” he said. “The ground’s uneven.”

Elena cast a glance across to the newer part of the graveyard. “I’m more worried about someone catching us vandalizing graves than I am about tripping,” she said.

Stefan cocked his head, sending Power out around the graveyard. “There’s no one here,” he said. He looked drawn and tired. He probably hadn’t fed recently enough to be able to Influence anyone into forgetting about them if they were caught breaking into the tombs.

Elena stood by the next mausoleum and looked up at the ruins of the church as she listened to the grating noise of Stefan forcing the tomb’s door. At least she had the rest of the vervain in her pocket. If Katherine came out of the catacombs, she wouldn’t be able to Influence Elena.

“There,” Stefan said with satisfaction. Elena stopped staring at the church and jostled her way in beside him.

It was as gray and dusty as the others had been, but the tops of the two tombs inside had been swept clean. On one sat a pile of neatly folded dark clothing. Elena rifled through it: all black, all designer, all clearly expensive. Some of them she had seen Damon wearing. The other tomb held a folded blanket and a thin leather bound book.

Elena picked up the book. It was in Italian, and seemed to be a book of verse. “Stefan, what—” she began. A loud groan of rusted metal interrupted her, and, before she could move, the door to the tomb slammed shut. A huge thud followed, something terribly heavy slamming into the outside of the mausoleum. The small building shook, and Elena screamed, a high, thin noise.

Then there was silence. With the door closed, it was pitch-black inside the tomb. For a moment, Elena could hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart. From the other side of the tomb, Stefan swore.

“Stefan?” Elena asked, her voice rising.

Starting toward Stefan and the tomb’s door, she banged her elbow hard against something in the dark. “Ouch,” she said, and rubbed at it, tears prickling at the back of her eyes.

“Keep still,” Stefan said. She didn’t even hear him coming toward her, but suddenly he was touching her gently, running his hands over her arm.

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” he told her. “You’ll have a bruise, though.”

“Are we stuck in here?” Elena’s voice wavered, despite herself. She was suddenly, terrifyingly aware of the dead all around her. The tomb she stood beside was full of moldering bones.

There was a short pause, and then Stefan spoke, sounding grimmer than before. “Damon’s shut us in. I tried the door, but I can’t force it. There must be something jammed up against it, holding it closed.”

“Oh.”

For the first time, Elena noticed how cold it was inside the mausoleum, the cold of a stone place that never felt the sun. She shivered.

“We’ll find a way out of here,” Stefan said, his voice lightening. “Or someone will come.” Suddenly, his hands were around her waist and he lifted her gently. In a second, she was sitting on the cold top of the tomb, and Stefan was beside her, wrapping his jacket around her shoulders.

For a while, they sat in silence. Stefan was reassuringly solid beside her and, after a while, Elena let herself lean slightly against him.

Who would come for them? It was rare that someone came into this part of the cemetery, even rarer after dark, and night was coming. Elena felt a clutch of panic in her chest, and her breath got shorter. She didn’t want to stay here.

“Stefan,” she said. She turned her head toward his.

“What is it, Elena?”

“There is a way for you to get us out of here.” She brushed her hair away from her neck, dipping her head in a clear invitation.

Stefan’s breath caught and he shifted away, his slight warmth disappearing from her side. When he spoke again, he sounded choked. “I can’t.”

“You can. If you’re going to save us, you need the strength my blood will give you.”

“Elena.” Stefan sounded panicked, and she automatically reached for his hand in the dark to reassure him. “I haven’t fed from a human being for a long time. I tried once, not long ago”—The man under the bridge, Elena’s mind supplied—“and I couldn’t control myself. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Elena told him, hanging onto his cold hand. “I trust you.” He still hesitated, and she added, “It’s the only way out of here, Stefan.”