Jack blinked. And then he began to struggle, his head banging back against the wall and his arms coming up to grasp at Elena. Her hold on him must be slipping.

Damon ran forward and tackled him away, ripping his hands off of Elena. They fell to the ground together and rolled, Jack tearing at Damon with hands and teeth. He was as strong as ever.

It hadn’t worked, Damon realized, filling with heavy dread, as he felt blood run down his side. It hadn’t worked. Damon slammed Jack’s head against the concrete floor and snarled with rage and frustration.

Damon gasped and lost his focus on Jack, who kicked him away. A stake drove through his ribs from behind. They hadn’t hit the heart, though, he realized dazedly, or he’d already be dead. He tried to sit up as he heard Jack get to his feet, his footsteps quickly moving away.

Siobhan stood over Damon, her bloodred lips curled in a smile. “I wouldn’t give you a real poison, you fool,” she said coldly. “I love him. No one will kill him but me.”

From behind her came a growl of fury. Siobhan gasped, her face distorting with pain, and arched backward, her blue eyes wide and startled. Fresh red blood spread across the front of her stained white nightgown. Pulling the stake from his own back, Damon realized the tip of another stake was protruding from Siobhan’s chest.

This one, though, hadn’t missed the heart. Siobhan, her eyes suddenly blank, fell, her black hair spreading out around her. Behind her, with the face of an avenging angel, stood Elena.

Climbing to his feet, Damon caught Elena and pulled her against him. Her heart was beating hard, he could feel it pounding against him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Elena shook her head. “No,” she said, sounding dazed. “Are you all right? She staked you.”

Jack was nowhere to be seen—he must have escaped when Siobhan staked Damon. But Damon managed to arrange his face into a smile. “It takes more than a stake to take me down, princess.” His back was aching horribly, and he could feel blood running down between his shoulder blades, soaking his shirt.

Scuffling footsteps came from behind them, and Damon wheeled around to see the others coming back, supporting Matt, who leaned heavily on Alaric. Jasmine was trying to check his vitals as she hurried beside them.

“The vampires are starting to wake up,” Meredith said sharply. “We have to go. Did the poison work?”

Damon held Elena closer. “No.” He could feel her shock and despair resonating through the bond, echoing his own. This had been their only chance. Siobhan had lied—and they had lost their chance to take vengeance for Stefan.

Jack was gone. They were no closer to finding a way to kill him, and their one lead had turned out to be worse than useless.

They had failed.

Chapter 29

Bonnie clutched Matt’s hand, trying to hold him steady as Jasmine steered the car around a curve. Fresh blood was staining the bandage on his neck, and Bonnie’s stomach turned over. His neck had looked like a piece of raw meat.

“He’s bleeding again,” she told Jasmine, her voice thin.

Jasmine’s eyes flicked up to the rear view mirror. “Put pressure on it. We’re almost there.”

Bonnie took a cloth from the seat beside her and pushed it firmly against Matt’s neck. He gave a small pained grunt, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. “Sorry, so sorry. Is this right?”

“You’re doing great,” Jasmine told her.

Matt shifted, blinking his eyes open. “M’okay,” he muttered.

“Sure you are, cowboy,” Jasmine told him. “Just take it easy.” At the sound of her voice, Matt’s face relaxed, and his eyes fluttered shut again.

Jasmine pulled the car into a spot near the front door of Elena and Damon’s apartment building, and Meredith came around to the car to help Matt.

“Get the IV drip and the cooler of blood bags from the trunk, okay?” Jasmine asked Bonnie before she and Meredith hurried, supporting Matt, toward the front door, which Elena was already holding open.

Matt was in good hands, Bonnie thought, swinging open the trunk. Jasmine wasn’t a fighter or magical, but she was scarily efficient. The pole for the IV was in a couple of different pieces—light, made of hollow aluminum, but awkward to carry—and Bonnie had to gather them together a couple of times before she got them tucked securely under one arm and was able to pick up the cooler with the blood bags and the tubing with the other. Everyone else had disappeared into Elena and Damon’s apartment building by the time Bonnie slammed the trunk and headed inside.

Her steps faltered for a moment. When had she started thinking of it as Elena and Damon’s building, not Elena and Stefan’s? Sorrow shot through her, and she suddenly missed Stefan so much.

And now the man—no, the vampire—who’d killed him had gotten away. Bonnie swallowed back her tears, clutching the IV pole. They’d saved Matt. He was hurt, but they’d gotten him out of there. That was the most important thing.

Upstairs, Matt was lying on the couch, and Jasmine immediately got to work setting up the drip. “He lost a lot of blood, but that’s the worst of his injuries,” she said. “He’s going to be fine.” There were dried tear tracks on her cheeks, but her fingers were sure as they moved across the medical equipment.

“We’re back to square one, aren’t we?” Elena asked dismally from her chair near the couch. “Jack and his vampires can’t be killed, and he’ll keep coming after us.”

“He wants Damon dead,” Meredith said flatly, “and he wants me back at his side.”

Alaric put his arm around her, and she leaned against him, her dark head on his shoulder. “Maybe we should cut our losses and stop hunting him,” he said hesitantly. “It might be better to concentrate on keeping away from Jack if we don’t have a chance of killing him.”

“I agree,” Jasmine said, pausing with an IV needle in her hand. “We need to lay low. Matt could have been killed. Any of us could have.”

“We’re not giving up.” Meredith said, her jaw set. Elena nodded.

There was an uneasy silence. Jasmine was glaring down at her hands as she neatly set up the IV and began to rebandage Matt’s wounds. Matt moaned softly, and Bonnie saw him flinch, his eyes still firmly closed, but his lashes fluttering. He looked so vulnerable. She was used to thinking of Matt as tough, despite the fact that he was the most human of them.

Bonnie’s mouth was dry with nerves suddenly, and she cleared her throat. “I think they’re right,” she said. “We don’t have anything. Like Elena said, we’re back where we started. And we’re the only ones in danger from him here. We don’t need to protect anyone else.”

Elena and Meredith both stared at her, shocked. The three of them had always joked about their “velociraptor sisterhood,” that they always had one another’s backs. Bonnie felt a wriggle of guilt, deep inside. But if there was no way forward, maybe it was time to think about retreating.

“Just because we’re back to the beginning doesn’t mean we quit playing,” Elena said sharply. She looked to Damon for support.

But Damon was staring into space. “I’m not sure we have nothing.” His dark eyes narrowed as he spoke to Elena. “Think of what Siobhan told us. She knew Jack would always make himself a back door, in case he needed to get rid of the vampires. Doesn’t that sound right?”

Elena’s face brightened, her irritation turning thoughtful. “You think Siobhan was telling the truth about the poison?”

Damon arched an eyebrow at her. “The best lies always have some basis in reality.”

“So you think there really is a poison somewhere that’ll kill them?” Bonnie asked. “Like an antidote to whatever Jack does that makes them immortal?” There was a general stirring in the room as everyone sat up straighter.

“But Siobhan’s dead,” Elena said. “Even if she knew about a real poison, we can’t get the information out of her now.”

“I’ll go back to Jack’s laboratory in Zurich,” Damon said slowly. “That’s where I found his journal, it’s where everything started. If there’s a poison, he might keep it there.”

“I’m going with you,” Elena said immediately. She was leaning forward now, beginning to smile, her eyes locked on Damon’s as he met her smile with one of his own. They might have been the only two people in the room.

A small motion over by the couch caught Bonnie’s eye. Jasmine was holding Matt’s hand between both of her own, and she bent her head to kiss his knuckles. His eyes were open now, and they were gazing at each other with such a wealth of tenderness that Bonnie had to look away.

Alaric’s arms were wrapped around Meredith, supporting and protecting. She sighed and cuddled against his body. He kissed the top of her head. Elena and Damon were still grinning at each other, delighted with their own cleverness.

Bonnie suddenly ached for Zander, an empty hollow ache in the middle of her chest. She remembered the cascading purple blossoms of the mimosa in Mrs. Flowers’s garden, the way their sweet scent had risen from her hands and clothes all the way home, filling her car with the smells of summer. Joy rising from sorrow. Second chances. It was as if she could hear Mrs. Flowers whispering in her ear. Finally, Bonnie thought she understood the point of the story Mrs. Flowers had told her.

No one needed Bonnie now. They were peaceful and safe, each wrapped up with the one they loved. Things were bad, there was no question about it, but they had a moment of calm now, before the storm. She slipped quietly into the hall, pulling out her phone.

Zander picked up on the first ring. “Bon?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

His voice sounded so good, deep and warm with that familiar rough note in it. Bonnie closed her eyes, her whole body relaxing even as tears of relief came into her eyes. She’d been trying so hard not to miss him.

She could picture him clearly, his moonlight-blond hair hanging rattily down the back of his neck—he always needed a haircut—his ocean-blue eyes quizzical and gently concerned. She could imagine that he was standing, his weight balanced evenly on the balls of his feet, ready to spring into action if she needed him. Even just if she wanted him.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m saying yes.”

“What?” Zander sounded wary, unsure.

“Yes, I’ll marry you. I’ll come to Colorado. I have to help the others with the Jack situation, but we’ll figure something out.” Bonnie sniffed. There was a silence on the other end of the phone. “Zander, are you there? I love you, Zander. I was an idiot to let you go.”

“And one thing we know is that Ms. Bonnie McCullough is not an idiot.” She could hear the smile in Zander’s voice now.

“Damn straight,” she said.

Life was short, for humans like her, and for werewolves, too. And even if she had to leave everything here behind, she was going to marry Zander. Warmth unfurled inside her, and her eyes filled with happy tears.

She’d figure out how to keep helping her friends. But she wasn’t giving up Zander. She was going to spend that life with him, no matter what. True love? True love was worth anything.

Chapter 30

The sign in front of the office building read LIFETIME SOLUTIONS. Elena frowned up at it uneasily. “That seems sort of ominous,” she said to Damon. “Lifetime Solutions? Isn’t death the only solution to a lifetime?”

It was early evening, and the flow of office workers leaving the building had slowed to a trickle. It was time to make their move.

“We all know what Jack’s solution is, don’t we?” Damon said. “I still have a keycard.” He was dressed in a sleek, beautifully cut, dark suit. His idea, she supposed, of what a Swiss businessman might wear. To Elena, he looked a little too sophisticated for the role, better suited to a magazine spread than a real office. In contrast, she was wearing a skirt and blouse, an outfit she might have worn to her actual job, before Stefan had died and she’d stopped going.

She smoothed her hands over the skirt, wiping her sweaty palms, and raised an eyebrow at Damon. “Shall we?”

They crossed the square and entered the lobby of the Lifetime Solutions building. The security guard glanced at them with interest. Elena’s breath quickened. This was it. The place was probably crawling with Jack’s vampires. Damon slapped the keycard against the automatic door and then, as it opened, he froze. He tried to take a step forward, then jerked to a halt again and frowned at the door.

“What’s up?” Elena said, keeping her voice casual. She looked quickly at the security guard, who was looking in the other direction now.

“I can’t get in,” Damon said softly. “Jack must have done something after I stole his journal. The way’s barred against me.”