The blood- and oil-drizzled herbs smoked and sputtered, letting out a hissing noise as they slowly began to burn. Bonnie fixed her eyes on the smoke, watching the patterns as it curled before the bright candle flames. She slowed her breathing and let her eyes slip out of focus, a deep calm coming over her.
Riding a surge of Power, Bonnie pushed outward, letting her mind expand. The red trickle of blood from the vial. Blood pounding through veins, drunk by vampires, passing from one vampire to another in an exchange of blood. Jack’s hands holding a syringe.
She could feel her eyes rolling back into her head and her mouth filled with a metallic, bitter taste. In the distance, Jasmine gasped and Matt shushed her quickly.
Then it was like Bonnie was speeding through the night sky above Dalcrest, the wind rushing through her hair. She hovered over the campus, feeling the pull toward Pruitt House, her old dorm, where she knew the captive vampire was locked in the basement. No, she thought firmly. Someone else. Further back.
There was an immediate jerk at her consciousness, but weak and in more than one direction, scattered. The other vampires Jack made, she realized. There were a lot of them, more than she’d supposed.
No, she thought again, more firmly. Further back. Older.
For a moment, she thought it was hopeless. Her consciousness hovered uncertainly, and then started to slide backward. She could see herself from above, her red head tilted back, the black smoke rising from the mixture of herbs and blood toward the ceiling. She was falling back into her body. No! she shrieked silently, trying to pull away.
There was a sudden tug somewhere in her center, and Bonnie was rising again, flying faster, feeling light and buoyant. She zoomed over the campus, past Pruitt House, past the playing fields, and felt herself slow as she reached the stretch of woods on the other side of campus.
There was something—someone—down there. The blood was yanking her toward it. The sensation was stronger than what she had gotten from the vampires in the woods and somehow felt older and darker than the pull toward Damon’s captive.
Down, down, closer and closer. The image was becoming clearer: a shadowy figure in a small room. Some kind of little house deep in the woods behind the campus. Through the window she glimpsed the bell tower of the Dalcrest chapel.
Satisfied, Bonnie let her concentration slip. Immediately, she was rushing backward through blackness, feeling like she was falling, and then her vision cleared. Through the smoke of the burning herbs, thin and wavery now, the candles sputtered. Her friends were all watching her.
Bonnie cleared her throat, her mouth dry. “I know where the vampire is,” she said. “And it’s close.”
As they walked through the woods, Elena sent her Power questing out around her, trying to find some trace of the vampire Bonnie said was nearby. Nothing. Beside her, Bonnie moved confidently straight ahead, seemingly sure of their direction. The others followed, Alaric muttering a charm of protection, Jasmine holding a stake and Matt a long hunter’s stave. The sun was rising over the trees and the birds sang loudly, waking up around them.
Matt cleared his throat. “I really think we should have waited for Damon before coming out here.” He sounded nervous, and Elena didn’t blame him. But they knew where the vampire who’d provided the blood for Jack was, and Elena couldn’t just sit back and let this chance slip away. It had been hard enough to wait for daylight. They weren’t total idiots—they weren’t going to go after a traditional vampire at night.
Every moment before sunrise, though, Elena had felt anxious and jittery, ready to burst out of her skin. If she had been just a few minutes earlier at the drive-in, she could have caught Siobhan, could have saved the lives of that young couple in the car.
If she’d seen through Jack’s facade just a few minutes earlier, maybe she could have saved Stefan.
“We can’t wait for Damon to get back,” she said, determined. “This might be our only chance to track it down and find out about Jack.”
Matt’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, but then he gave her a small smile and pressed forward. Jasmine’s face was set, and Bonnie’s small chin jutted forward defiantly. Alaric nodded at Elena.
We can do this, Elena thought. We have to.
The woods opened up into a clearing with a small house at the center, and they stopped at the edge, still sheltered by the trees.
“That’s it,” Bonnie said.
Hansel and Gretel, Elena thought. It looked just like the witch’s cottage, gabled and ornamented with a swooping roof. Scrollwork edging hung off the porch and windows. The cottage was precious and nestled deep in the woods. Elena wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. There was something about this little house.