Every night, she heard Damon’s soft footfalls pacing through the apartment, living room to kitchen to hall, hesitating sometimes outside her bedroom but never coming in, even when she yearned for his comfort. Guarding her as he wandered, and also pacing out the slow beats of his own sorrow, unable to settle. The thought of Damon falling like Stefan had, his handsome face suddenly blank and still, made Elena’s heart pound frantically. “Please, Damon,” she begged.

His eyes softening, Damon sighed and brushed a finger gently over her knuckles, then pulled his hand back quickly, his jaw tightening. “I won’t do anything foolish. Remember, I’m good at taking care of myself.”

Elena started to nod gratefully, then paused as she thought through what he’d said. He hadn’t promised to stay out of danger, not really. “You can’t kill anyone,” she reminded him stubbornly. “The Guardians told you, if you kill anyone, I’ll die. So there’s not much point in looking for revenge.”

Damon smiled without humor, his features sharp. “Vampires aren’t human,” he said. “I can kill Jack, and I will.”

Elena let go of his hand. Damon would never stop hunting Jack.

Damon would die on this hunt, she was sure of it. And then Elena would truly have nothing.

Chapter 3

Damon paced across Elena’s living room, glaring at the afternoon sunlight stretching through the windows and across the floor. When he’d woken from his restless sleep an hour earlier, the apartment had already been empty.

Brushing his fingers across his chest absently, he let Elena’s emotions thrum through the bond between them. Nothing had changed; he still felt the same sharp, angry grief that had brought him back to Dalcrest, that had let him know his brother was dead. But nothing new. Wherever Elena had gone, she wasn’t in danger.

He ached to be out hunting Jack, to find him and tear him apart. Rage burned under his skin—how dare anyone touch his little brother. Even when he and Stefan had hated each other, no one else had been allowed to hurt him.

But for now, Damon was keeping a low profile, guarding Elena, waiting for the right time.

Meredith had tried laying down the law to him after Stefan’s funeral. “As far as Jack knows, you’re still in Europe,” she’d said. “We need to keep it that way. You might be the best weapon we’ve got.”

Every line of the gray-eyed hunter’s body had been tense with irritation at having to ask Damon for something; and under other circumstances, this would have amused him. Meredith had no right to tell him what to do, and he had no reason to do what she asked.

But then Elena, with a desperate pleading look in her eyes, had said, “Please, Damon. I can’t lose you, too.” And Damon had agreed to do whatever she wanted.

He sighed and sat down on the couch, glancing around. He was beginning to loathe this room, pretty as it was, with its heavy antique furniture and art on the walls. It was decorated to Stefan’s taste: dark, traditional, cozy. Stefan’s taste, Stefan’s possessions, Stefan’s Elena.

On the table beside the couch lay a thick notebook bound in brown leather: Jack’s journal, the record of the series of experiments he had done to create his new race of vampires. Damon had found it when he’d infiltrated Jack’s company in Switzerland.

Near the end was a list of vampires Jack had destroyed—and a list of those he still planned to hunt down. Damon picked up the journal and turned to the long column of names. Many were vampires Damon had known over the years, their names scratched through. Near the bottom of the page, three names, not yet crossed out: Katherine von Swartzchild. Damon Salvatore. Stefan Salvatore.

Damon traced the names lightly with his finger, remembering how Katherine’s face had paled as her life ebbed away. He felt again the sudden spike of anguished horror from Elena that had told him Stefan was dead. At least Damon had stolen the book before Jack had the opportunity to cross out their names.

Clenching his jaw, he flipped forward through its pages again. If he couldn’t just go out and hunt Jack down—yet—he could still look for clues on how to defeat him.

But there was nothing new written here. He’d gone through it dozens of times. After a few minutes, he groaned softly and closed his eyes, bringing a hand up to rub his temples.

There was plenty about the weaknesses of Jack’s creations, true. But the journal was a record of how Jack had overcome those flaws. Sunlight, fire, decapitation, stake to the heart: As far as Damon could tell, there was no way to kill these manmade vampires.

It was hopeless. Maybe Damon should give up, do what Elena wanted and hide.

No. His eyes snapped open and he gritted his teeth. He was Damon Salvatore. No mad scientist was going to defeat him.

He snapped the book closed. Any true danger to these manufactured vampires would have to be something Jack hadn’t thought of.

Almost unwillingly, Damon let his gaze travel to the heavy mahogany cabinet against the wall. Stefan’s talismans sat on top of it, a collection of objects from his long life. Coins, a stone cup, a watch. An apricot hair ribbon of Elena’s, acquired before Stefan had even really known her, before Damon had known her at all. What would have been different, Damon wondered, if he had been the one to meet Elena first?

Damon stood and went slowly over to the cabinet, where he touched the things lightly: iron box, golden coins, ivory dagger, silken ribbon.

Damon didn’t hang on to things the way Stefan had. He never saw the point of keeping objects he’d outgrown, dragging his past around the world with him.

Stefan had carried their past for him, he realized. The thought gave him a hollow feeling in his chest. With Stefan and Katherine both dead, there was no one left now who remembered Damon when he had been alive.

He drew one finger along the blade of the ivory-handled dagger and pulled his hand back with a hiss. Stefan had kept it sharp, although it had probably been centuries since he’d used it.

Their father had carried this dagger for years, Damon remembered, hanging in a sheath at his belt. A beautiful object, its fine glossy hilt curving above a well-cut, and useful, blade. He had given it to Stefan for his fifteenth birthday.

“Every gentleman should wear one,” Giuseppe Salvatore had said, grasping his younger son’s shoulder affectionately. “Not for aggression or fighting in the streets like a peasant—” Damon had felt his father’s sidelong gaze light upon him, and hadn’t that been as pointed as the dagger itself? “—but in case you need it. This blade is forged of the finest steel. It’s served me well.”

Stefan’s green eyes had shone as he looked up at their father. “Thank you, Father,” he’d said. “I’ll treasure it.”

Lounging elegantly beside them, left out of the moment between his father and little brother, Damon had touched his own quite beautiful bone-handled dagger, and his mouth had suddenly filled with bitterness.

He blinked the memory away. He’d wasted a lot of time resenting Stefan, his sweet-faced tagalong of a baby brother.

He was wasting time now. Damon’s slow heart thumped hard, the hollow ache in his chest increasing. His earnest, loving, irritating little brother was gone. Murdered. And Damon was cowering in the shadows? His face twisted in disgust. He could imagine what their father would have said about that.

In one smooth motion, he scooped up the dagger and headed for the door. He would keep his promise to Elena; he would be careful. But he wasn’t going to hide, not anymore. Damon was a Salvatore—the last of the Salvatores, now—and that meant he wasn’t afraid of anything.

It was time to take control of the fight. And the first thing he needed to do was to figure out where Jack might be hiding.

The river lapped gently against the small stones on its bank, sunlight glinting off its ripples. Elena instinctively moved deeper into the shade of one of the moss-covered trees by the riverside.

The rectangle of earth that marked Stefan’s grave still stood out clearly. There hadn’t been time yet for the soil to harden, for the grass to grow over it and erase where they’d blanketed Stefan with dirt.

It hadn’t been long at all since Stefan had been alive.

A wave of anguish washed over Elena, and she dropped to her knees by the graveside. Reaching out, she placed a gentle hand on the recently turned earth.

She wanted to say something, to tell him how much she missed him, but when she opened her mouth, all that came out was his name. “Stefan,” she said miserably, her voice catching in her throat. “Oh, Stefan.”

Just a couple of weeks ago, they’d been together. Not long before that, he had surprised her with the key to her old home—he’d bought the house that she’d grown up in from her Aunt Judith. “We’re going to go everywhere,” he’d told her, his hands strong and steady around hers. “But we’ll always have this to come home to.”

It turned out always lasted less than a week after that. They hadn’t even had time to visit the house together. Elena dug her fingers deep into the dirt, trying not to think about Stefan’s body six feet below.

“Elena?”

Bonnie came forward from the trees. Elena pulled her hands away from Stefan’s grave. It seemed too intimate a gesture to let anyone see it, even Bonnie. “Thank you for coming,” she said quietly, rising to her feet.

“Of course.” Bonnie’s brown eyes were huge and anxious. She stepped forward and pulled Elena into a hug. “How are you doing? We’ve been—Zander and I wanted to know if there was any way we could help you.”

“Actually, I think there is,” Elena told her. She took Bonnie’s hand in her own and led her over to Stefan’s grave.

“I keep expecting him to show up,” Bonnie admitted, her eyes fixed on the grave. “It’s hard to believe he’s gone, y’know?”

No, Elena didn’t know. From the moment she woke up in the morning until she finally tossed and turned her way into a restless sleep, she couldn’t forget that Stefan was gone. His absence even followed her into her dreams. She didn’t say that, though, just moved a little closer to Bonnie, as if she could shelter in her friend’s warmth.

“Remember how you talked to me after I died?” Elena asked, squeezing Bonnie’s hand in hers.

Tearing her eyes away from the ground, Bonnie looked back up at Elena. “Oh, Elena, I don’t think—”

“You managed to bring Stefan to see me,” Elena went on doggedly, holding tight to her friend’s arm.

Bonnie tried to pull away. “But you weren’t supposed to be dead! Klaus had you in some kind of halfway place—you were a prisoner, not dead-dead.” She hesitated, and then asked in a low voice, “And do you remember how the Guardians said vampires just… end?”

“It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it?” Elena said quickly. “Guardians don’t know everything, we’ve proved that before. If you could help me to see him, Bonnie…” She was holding on to Bonnie too tightly, she realized, and forced her hands to relax. “Please,” she added quietly.

Bonnie chewed her lip. Elena could feel the moment when she gave in, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t want you to be hurt any more than you already are,” Bonnie said quietly.

“We have to try,” Elena insisted.

Bonnie hesitated, then finally nodded. “Okay.” She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and stepped toward the river, pulling Elena along with her. “When I did it for Stefan, I went into a trance and made contact with you, then brought him in. But I think maybe we’ll have to try something different.”

Their feet crunched over the rocky sand as Bonnie pulled Elena with her to the very edge of the river. Water lapped against their sneakers, soaking through the fabric and chilling Elena’s toes.

“I want you to let me use your Power,” Bonnie said, squeezing Elena’s hand. “It’ll help me search for Stefan. When I communicated with you, you came to me first, so I knew how to find you. I imagine he’ll be hard to find.”

“Of course,” Elena said.

She held tightly to Bonnie’s hand and tried to channel her own Power into her friend. Taking a deep, slow breath, Elena forced herself to relax until, out of the corners of her eyes, she began to see her own golden aura. It was dulled with gray patches of grief, but still stretched wide around her, entwining with the rose-pink of Bonnie’s aura.

Bonnie took a deep breath of her own and fixed her eyes on the patterns of the sunlight reflecting off the water. “Just as good as a candle for focusing,” she said absently. Elena watched as Bonnie’s small face became intent, her pupils as wide as a cat’s. Elena closed her own eyes.

Darkness. But ahead of her, a glimmer of rose and gold. Bonnie’s aura entwined with her own, leading her on. Bonnie’s small figure, very straight and determined, walked swiftly into the distance.