“If we’re going to hunt him, hunter, we need eyes on the inside,” Damon told her. “So, yes, I want you to spy. Where he’s hiding, how many of… you there are, what he’s planning. How to kill him. You said once that I might be the best weapon we had, but I think you are.”
Meredith’s face was still streaked with blood and tears, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Her eyes, no longer full of shame, were speculative as she thought through the nuances of Damon’s idea. She’d always been practical, this hunter, Damon thought, and was surprised by a flare of affection. Meredith wasn’t his friend, but he did respect her, which was more than he could say for most humans—or vampires.
The corners of the hunter’s mouth went up in a smile—a small one, but a real one. “A secret weapon? That I can do.”
A weapon, Damon thought. He finally had a weapon against Jack. No, not a weapon, he corrected himself, as Meredith looked up at him and smiled in grim determination. An ally.
Elena knew she was dreaming. She’d had this dream before.
The apartment stretched out before her, shadowed and deserted. “Stefan?” she called uneasily. Her voice sounded small in her own ears.
As she walked down the endless hall in search of Stefan, the lights snapped off behind her, one after the other, leaving pools of darkness. At the end of the hall, the bedroom door was closed. A tendril of worry curled inside her. There was something wrong, something about Stefan, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was.
“Stefan?” She already knew what would be behind the door—a dark, empty room, the bedroom curtains billowing in the breeze from the open windows. No Stefan. No one anywhere, just loneliness and silence. Full of dread, she slowly lifted one hand to twist the knob.
This time, though, everything changed.
Instead of her familiar bedroom, the door opened to reveal a room she had never seen before.
Inside, a fire burned in a large stone fireplace, throwing flickering shadows across the log walls. It was warm and cozy, but the woman sitting on the couch looked as cold as ice.
She was wearing a long white dress, and her dark hair hung past her shoulders. Her blue eyes were looking straight at Elena. Elena’s heart pounded in terror, and yet, there was something that wouldn’t let her leave. But the woman didn’t move. Blue eyes gazed straight through Elena and off into the distance.
Of course, Elena realized, she wasn’t really there. This was a dream, and the woman couldn’t see her.
No longer afraid to stare, she looked the woman over. She was young, maybe in her twenties, and beautiful in an unusual way. Skin so pale Elena could see the blue veins running underneath, and oddly tilted, large, light blue eyes. The woman’s hair spilled in an inky cloud over her shoulders. Her eyebrows arched dramatically dark against that pale skin. Her lips were red.
Snow White, Elena thought, remembering the fairy tale she had read to her little sister Margaret not too long ago. The Queen said, I wish I had a child with skin as white as this cold snow, and hair as black as this ebony needle, and lips as red as my hot blood.
As soon as she thought the word “blood,” there was an uncomfortable itch at the back of Elena’s mind.
Elena focused her Power, intent on seeing the woman’s aura. As her Guardian vision slotted into place, she had to grab at the doorframe, holding on so hard that the edges of the door cut into her hand.
The woman’s aura was the bright red of fresh blood, and it spread far, half-filling the room. Elena had never seen an aura so large and vivid, and it reeked of Power and violence. Vampire. A real one, not one of Jack’s creations.
Just then, those pale, tilted eyes shifted and met Elena’s. And the woman’s bloodred lips curled into a smile.
Elena sat up with a jolt, gasping in surprise. She was lying in her own big—too big, too empty—bed. Her mattress was soft, her pillows plumped up under her head. Words were completely clear in her mind, as if she had just spoken them. Get up now. Without stopping to think, she climbed out of bed and padded across the floor to the window.
The moon was full and sailing high over the apartment buildings on the other side of the street. Beyond them, Elena could see the bloodred path of an aura hanging in the air, leading farther into town.
Siobhan. It must be. Already, she could feel the insistent pull of her Guardian Powers. She had to find Siobhan and kill her, before anyone else died. No time to waste. If she lost the trail of Siobhan’s aura, it might take weeks before she found it again. Weeks when the vampire could be murdering innocent people. Hurrying, Elena slipped her feet into sandals and ran out the door of her apartment.