07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

earlier. Stefan and Bonnie had been washing something pitch-black out of her hair. They both were
smudged with black as well: Stefan had a big swath across one cheekbone, and Bonnie had faint gray
streaks below her eyes.
Crying. Bonnie had been crying. She was still crying, in little sobs that she was trying to
suppress. And now that Elena looked harder she could see that Stefan’s eyelids were swollen and that
he had been crying too.
Elena’s lips were numb. She fell back onto the grass, looking up at Sage, who was
wiping his eyes furtively. Her throat ached, not just inside, where sobbing and gasping might make it
hurt, but outside, too. She had a picture of herself slashing at her own neck with a knife.
Through her numb lips, she whispered, “Am I a vampire?”
“Pas encore,” Sage said unsteadily. “Not yet. But Stefan and I, we both had to give you
massive amounts of blood. You must be very careful in the next days. You are right on the brink.”
That explained how she felt. Probably Damon was hoping that she would become one,
wicked boy. Instinctively, she held out her hand to Stefan. Maybe she could help him.
“We just won’t do anything for a little while,” she said. “You don’t have to be sad.” But
she herself still felt very wrong. She hadn’t felt this wrong since she’d seen Stefan in prison and had
thought that he would die at any moment.
No…it was worse…because with Stefan there had been hope and Elena had the feeling
that now hope was gone. Everything was gone. She was hollow: a girl who looked solid, but whose
insides were missing.
“I’m dying,” she whispered. “I know it…Are you all going to say good-bye now?”
And with that Sage—Sage!—choked up and began to sob. Stefan, still looking so oddly
mussed, with those traces of soot on his face and arms and his hair and clothes soaking wet, said,
“Elena, you’re not going to die. Not unless you choose to.”
She had never seen Stefan look like this before. Not even in prison. His flame, his inner
fire that he showed to almost no one but Elena, had gone out.
“Sage saved us,” he said, slowly carefully, as if it cost him great effort to speak. “The
ash that was falling—you and Bonnie would have died if you’d had to breathe any more of it. But
Sage put a door back to the Gatehouse right in front of us. I could barely see it; my eyes were so full
of ashfall, and it’s only getting worse on that moon.”
“Ashfall,” Elena whispered. There was something at the bottom of her mind, but once
again her memory failed her. It was almost as if she’d been Influenced to not remember. But that was
ridiculous.
“Why were ashes falling?” she asked, realizing that her voice was husky, hoarse—as if
she’d cheered too long at a football game.
“You used Wings of Destruction,” Stefan said steadily, looking at her with his swollen
eyes. “You saved our lives. But you killed the Tree—and the star ball disintegrated.”
Wings of Destruction. She must have lost her temper. And she’d killed a world. She was
a murderer.
And now the star ball was lost. Fell’s Church. Oh, God. What would Damon say to her?
Elena had done everything—everything wrong. Bonnie was sobbing now, her face turned away.
“I’m sorry,” Elena said, knowing how inadequate this was. For the first time she looked
around miserably. “Damon?” she whispered. “He won’t speak to me? Because of what I did?”
Sage and Stefan looked at each other.
Ice went down Elena’s spine.