Page 11 (2/2)

Oh, thiswas silly Maybe she wouldn’t say the words but when the clock started to toll out the hour, she heard herself speaking

"Co out the chair "Come in, come in"

The candle went out

Elena started in the sudden darkness She’d felt the wind, a cold gust that had blown out the candle It came from the French doors behind her, and she turned quickly, one hand still on the chair She would have sworn those doors were shut

Soh Elena, sweeping away her self-consciousness and any trace of aht on herself? Her heart contracted and she felt as if she had been plunged, without warning, into her htmare It was not only dark but utterly silent; there was nothing to see and nothing to hear, and she was falling

"Allow ht fla instant she thought it was Tyler, rehter in the ruined church on the hill But as the candle on the table sprang to life, she saw the pale, long-fingered hand that held it Not Tyler’s beefy red fist She thought for an instant it was Stefan’s, and then her eyes lifted to the face

"You!" she said, astounded "What do you think you’re doing here?" She looked fro the side lawn "Do you always just walk into other people’s houses uninvited?"

"But you asked me to come in" His voice was as she remembered it, quiet, ironical and amused She reracefully sat down in the chair she had drawn out

She snatched her hand off the back "I wasn’t invitingyou ," she said helplessly, caught between indignation and e around outside Bonnie’s house?"

He sht, his black hair shone almost like liquid, too soft and fine for human hair His face was very pale, but at the saht her own and held them

" ’Helen, thy beauty is to ently, over a perfumed sea’ "

"I think you’d better leave now" She didn’t want his to her,in her stomach "You shouldn’t be here Please" She reached for the candle,off the dizziness that threatened to overco extraordinary He caught her reaching hand, not roughly but gently, and held it in his cool slender fingers Then he turned her hand over, bent his dark head, and kissed her palm

"Don’t" whispered Elena, stunned

"Come with me," he said, and looked up into her eyes

"Please don’t" she whispered again, the world swi about? Come with hi, supporting her She leaned against hiers on the first button of the shirt at her throat, "Please, no"

"It’s all right You’ll see" He pulled the shirt away from her neck, his other hand behind her head

"No" Suddenly, strength returned to her, and she jerked away froainst the chair "I told you to leave, and I meant it Get out-now!"

For an instant, pure fury surged in his eyes, a dark wave of menace Then they went calm and cold and he sain instantly

"I’ll leave," he said "For the o out the French doors without speaking When they had shut behind hiet her breath

The silence but it shouldn’t be silent She turned toward the grandfather clock in bewilderment and saw that it had stopped But before she could examine it closely, she heard Meredith’s and Bonnie’s raised voices

She hurried out into the hall, feeling the unaccusto her shirt back up and buttoning it The back door was open, and she could see two figures outside, stooping over so?"

Bonnie looked up as Elena reached them Her eyes were filled with tears "Oh, Elena, he’s dead"

With a chill of horror, Elena stared down at the little bundle at Bonnie’s feet It was the Pekingese, lying very stiffly on his side, eyes open "Oh, Bonnie," she said

"He was old," said Bonnie, "but I never expected hi"

"I think we’d better go inside," said Meredith, and Elena looked up at her and nodded Tonight was not a night to be out in the dark It was not a night to invite things inside, either She knew that now, although she still didn’t understand what had happened

It hen they got back in the living roo

Stefan lifted his head from the velvet-soft neck of the doe The woods were filled with night noises, and he couldn’t be sure which had disturbed him

With the Power of his mind distracted, the deer roused froet her feet under her

Go, then, he thought, sitting back and releasing her entirely With a twist and a heave, she was up and running

He’d had enough Fastidious, he licked at the corners of hishis canine teeth retract and blunt, oversensitive as always after a prolonged feed It was hard to knohat enough was anymore There had been no spells of dizziness since the one beside the church, but he lived in fear of their return

He lived in one specific fear: that he would co with confusion, to find Elena’s graceful body limp in his arms, her slim throat marked with two red wounds, her heart stilled forever That hat he had to look forward to

The blood lust, with all its myriad terrors and pleasures, was a h he had lived with it every day for centuries, he still did not understand it As a living huusted, sickened, by the thought of drinking the rich war body That is, if so to hiht, the night Katherine had changed him

Even after all these years, the memory was clear He had been asleep when she appeared in his chahost He had been asleep, alone

She earing a fine linen shift when she caht before the day she had named, the day when she would announce her choice And she came to him

A white hand parted the curtains around his bed, and Stefan woke froolden hair glea about her shoulders, blue eyes lost in shadow, he was struck silent with a more beautiful in his life He treers over his lips

"Hush," she whispered, and the bed sank under neeight as she got in

His face fla with embarrassment and with excitement There had never been a woman in his bed before And this was Katherine, Katherine whose beauty seemed to come from heaven, Katherine whom he loved more than his own soul

And because he loved her, heso near to hiht air in her thin shift, he ed to speak

"Katherine," he whispered "We-I can wait Until we are e it next week It-it will not be long"

"Hush," she whispered again, and he felt that coolness on his skin He couldn’t help hi her to hi to do with that," she said, and reached out her sliers to stroke his throat

He understood And felt a flash of fear, which disappeared as her fingers went on stroking He wanted this, wanted anything that would let him be with Katherine

"Lie back, h hi his chin back so that his throat was exposed His fear was gone, replaced by a happiness so great that he thought it would shatter him

He felt the soft brush of her hair on his chest, and tried to cal He felt her breath on his throat, and then her lips And then her teeth

There was a stinging pain, but he held hi only of Katherine, of hoished to give to her And al drawn from his body It was not terrible, as he had feared It was a feeling of giving, of nurturing

Then it was as if theirone He could feel Katherine’s joy in drinking froave her life And he knew she could feel his delight in giving But reality was receding, the boundaries between drea blurred He could not think clearly; he could not think at all He could onlyfeel , and his feelings were spiraling up and up, carrying hi his last ties with earth

Sootten there, he found hi an infant child, guiding his mouth to rest on the bare flesh just above the low neck of her night shift There was a tiny wound there, a cut showing dark against the pale skin He felt no fear or hesitation, and when she stroked his hair encouragingly, he began to suck

Cold and precise, Stefan brushed dirt off his knees The human world was asleep, lost in stupor, but his own senses were knife-keen He should have been sated, but he was hungry again; thewide to catch the an to hunt