"Oh,hell ," said Caroline. Black trails of mascara ran down her face, making her look like something not quite human. She looked at Stefan with unconcealed hatred. He looked back soberly - no,sternly .
"Don't call on Hell," he said in a very low voice. "Not here. Not now. Because Hell might hear and call back."
"As if it already hadn't," Caroline said, and in that moment, she was pitiful - broken and pathetic. As if she had started something she didn't know how to stop.
"Caroline, what are you saying?" Stefan knelt. "Are you saying that you've already - made some bargain - ?"
"Ouch," Bonnie said, suddenly and involuntarily, shattering the ominous mood in Stefan's room. One of Caroline's broken nails had left a trail of blood on the floor. Caroline had knelt in it, too, making things pretty messy. Bonnie felt a sympathetic throb of pain in her own fingers until Caroline waved her bloody hand at Stefan. Then Bonnie's sympathy turned to nausea.
"Want a lick?" she said. Her voice and face had changed entirely, and she wasn't even trying to hide it. "Oh, come on, Stefan," she went on mockingly, "youdo drink human blood these days, don't you? Human or - whatever she is, whatever she's become. You two fly like bats together now, do you?"
"Caroline," Bonnie whispered, "didn't yousee them? Her wings - "
"Just like a bat - or another vampire already. Stefan's made her - "
"I saw them too," Matt said flatly, behind Bonnie. "They weren't bat wings."
"Doesn't anybody have eyes?" Meredith said from where she stood by the lamp. "Look here." She bent. When she stood again she was holding a long white feather. It shone in the light.
"Maybe she's a white crow, then," Caroline said. "That would be appropriate. And I can't believe how you're all - all - fawning on her as if she were some sort of princess. Always everybody's little darling, aren't you, Elena?"
"Stop it," Stefan said.
"Everybody's, that's the key word," Caroline spat.
"Stop it."
"The way you were kissing people one after another." She gave a theatrical shudder. "Everyone seems to have forgotten, but that was more like - "
"Stop, Caroline."
"Thereal Elena." Caroline's voice had become pretend-prissy, but she couldn't keep the venom out, Bonnie thought. "Because anyone who knows you knows what youreally were before Stefanblessed us with hisirresistible presence. You were - "
"Caroline, stop right there - "
"A slut! That's all! Just a cheap, anybody'sslut !"
Chapter 7
There was a sort of universal gasp. Stefan went white, his compressed lips showing in a tight line. Bonnie felt as if she were choking on words, on explanations, on recriminations about Caroline's own behavior. Elena may have had as many boyfriends as the stars in the sky, but in the end she had given all that up - because she fell in love - not that Caroline would know anything aboutthat .
"Don't have anything to say now?" Caroline was taunting. "Can't find any cute answer? Bat got your tongue?" She began to laugh, but it was forced, glassy laughter, and then words were spilling out of her almost as if uncontrollably, all words that weren't supposed to be spoken in public. Bonnie had said most of them at one time or another, buthere , andnow , they formed a stream of venomous power. Caroline's words were building up to some kind of crescendo - something was going to happen - this kind of force couldn't be contained -
Reverberations, Bonnie thought as the sound waves began building up....
Glass,her intuition told her.Get away from glass.
Stefan just had time to whirl to Meredith and shout,"Get rid of the lamp."
And Meredith, who was not only quick on the uptake but also a baseball pitcher with a 1.75 ERA, snatched it up and threw it at - no, through -
- an explosion as the porcelain lamp shattered -
- the open window.
There was a similar shattering in the bathroom. The mirror had exploded behind the closed door.
Then Caroline slapped Elena across the face.