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something Matt had said before they left was ringing in her mind.To try at
least. She had to try.
Still, in those next few horrible minutes all she could do was look.
So far, Stefan and Klaus had been trading blows with such violence and
accuracy that it had been like a beautiful, lethal dance. But it had been an
equal, or almost equal, match. Stefan had been holding his own.
Now she saw Stefan bearing down with his white ash lance, pressing Klaus to
his knees, forcing him backward, farther and farther back, like a limbo dancer
seeing how low he could go. And Bonnie could see Klaus's face now, mouth
slightly open, staring up at Stefan with what looked like astonishment and
fear.
Then everything changed.
At the very bottom of his descent, when Klaus had bent back as far as he
could go, when it seemed that he must be about to collapse or break, something
happened.
Klaus smiled.
And then he started pushing back.
Bonnie saw Stefan's muscles knot, saw his arms go rigid, trying to resist.
But Klaus, still grinning madly, eyes wide open, just kept coming. He unfolded
like some terrible jack-in-the-box, only slowly.Slowly.Inexorably. His grin
getting wider until it looked as if it would split his face. Like the Cheshire
cat.
A cat, thought Bonnie.
Cat with a mouse.
Now Stefan was the one grunting and straining, teeth clenched, trying to hold
Klaus off. But Klaus and his stick bore down, forcing Stefan backward, forcing
him to the ground.
Grinning all the time.
Until Stefan was lying on his back, his own stick pressing into his throat
with the weight of Klaus's lance across it. Klaus looked down at him and
beamed. "I'm tired of playing, little boy," he said, and he straightened and
threw his own stick down. "Now it's dying time."
He took Stefan's staff away from him as easily as if he were taking it from a
child. Picked it up with a flick of his wrist and broke it over his knee,
showing how strong he was, how strong he had always been. How cruelly he had
been playing with Stefan.
One of the halves of the white ash stick he tossed over his shoulder across
the clearing. The other he jabbed at Stefan.Using not the pointed end but the
splintered one, broken into a dozen tiny points. He jabbed down with a force
that seemed almost casual, but Stefan screamed. He did it again and again,
eliciting a scream each time.
Bonnie cried out, soundlessly.
She had never heard Stefan scream before. She didn't need to be told what
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kind of pain must have caused it. She didn't need to be told that white ash
might be the only wood deadly to Klaus, but that any wood was deadly to
Stefan.That Stefan was, if not dying now, about to die. That Klaus, with his
hand now raised, was going to finish it with one more plunging blow. Klaus's
face was tilted to the moon in a grin of obscene pleasure, showing that this
was what he liked, where he got his thrills.From killing.
And Bonnie couldn't move, couldn't even cry. The world swam around her. It
had all been a mistake, she wasn't competent; she was a baby after all. She
didn't want to see that final thrust, but she couldn't look away. And all this
couldn't be happening, but it was. It was.
Klaus flourished the splintered stake and with a smile of pure ecstasy
started to bring it down.
And a spear shot across the clearing and struck him in the middle of the
back, landing and quivering like a giant arrow, like half a giant arrow. It
made Klaus's arms fling out, dropping the stake; it shocked the ecstatic grin
right off his face. Hestood, arms extended, for a second, and then turned, the
white ash stick in his back wobbling slightly.
Bonnie'seyes were too dazzled by waves of gray dots to see, but she heard the
voice clearly as it rang out, cold and arrogant and filled with absolute
conviction. Just five words, but they changed everything.
"Get away from my brother."
Fifteen
Klausscreamed, a scream that reminded Bonnie of ancient predators, of
thesabertooth cat and the bull mammoth. Blood frothed out of his mouth along
with the scream, turning that handsome face into a twisted mask of fury.
His hands scrabbled at his back, trying to get a grip on the white ash stake
and pull it out. But it was buried too deep. The throw had been a good one.
"Damon," Bonnie whispered.
He was standing at the edge of the clearing, framed by oak trees. As she
watched, he took a step toward Klaus, and then another; lithe stalking steps
filled with deadly purpose.
And he was angry. Bonnie would have run from the look on his face if her
muscles hadn't been frozen. She had never seen such menace so barely held in
check.
"Get& away& from my brother," he said, almost breathing it, with his eyes
never leaving Klaus's as he took another step.
Klaus screamed again, but his hands stopped their frantic scrabbling."You
idiot! We don't have to fight! I told you that at the house! We can ignore
each other!"
Damon's voice was no louder than before. "Get away from my brother." Bonnie
could feel it inside him, a swell of Power like a tsunami. He continued, so
softly that Bonnie had to strain to hear him, "Before I tear your heart out."
Bonnie could move after all. She stepped backward.
"I told you!" screamed Klaus, frothing. Damon didn't acknowledge the words in
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any way. His whole being seemed focused on Klaus's throat, on his chest, on
the beating heart inside that he was going to tear out.
Klaus picked up the unbroken lance and rushed him.
In spite of all the blood, the blond man seemed to have plenty of strength
left. The rush was sudden, violent, and almost inescapable. Bonnie saw him
thrust the lance at Damon and shut her eyes involuntarily, and then opened
them an instant later as she heard the flurry of wings.
Klaus had plunged right through the spot where Damon had been, and a black
crow was soaring upward while a single feather floated down. As Bonnie stared,
Klaus's rush took him into the darkness beyond the clearing and he
disappeared.
Dead silence fell in the wood.
Bonnie'sparalysis broke slowly, and she first stepped, and then ran to where [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]