"She toldyou not to go near the bridge."
Meredith corrected. "You in particular, Elena. She said Death was waiting."
"I don't care what's waiting," said Elena. "If that's where Stefan is, that's where I'm going."
"Then that's where we're all going," said Meredith.
Elena hesitated. "I can't ask you to do that," she said slowly. "There might be danger - of a kind you don't know about. It might be best for me to go alone."
"Don't," said Elena quickly. "You were the one who said it wasn't a game."
"And not for Stefan, either," Meredith reminded them. "We're not doing him much good standing around here."
Elena was already shrugging out of her kimono, moving toward the closet. "We'd better all bundle up. Borrow anything you want to keep warm," she said.
When they were more or less dressed for the weather, Elena turned to the door. Then she stopped.
"Robert," she said. "There's no way we can get past him to the front door, even if he's asleep."
Simultaneously, the three of them turned to look at the window.
"Oh, wonderful," said Bonnie.
As they climbed out into the quince tree, Elena realized that it had stopped snowing. But the bite of the air on her cheek made her remember Damon's words. Winter is an unforgiving season, she thought, and shivered.
All the lights in the house were out, including those in the living room. Robert must have gone to sleep already. Even so, Elena held her breath as they crept past the darkened windows. Meredith's car was a little way down the street. At the last minute, Elena decided to get some rope, and she soundlessly opened the back door to the garage. There was a swift current in Drowning Creek, and wading would be dangerous.
The drive to the end of town was tense. As they passed the outskirts of the woods, Elena remembered the way the leaves had blown at her in the cemetery. Particularly oak leaves.
"Bonnie, do oak trees have any special significance? Did your grandmother ever say anything about them?"
"Well, they were sacred to the Druids. All trees were, but oak trees were the most sacred. They thought the spirit of the trees brought them power."
Elena digested that in silence. When they reached the bridge and got out of the car, she gave the oak trees on the right side of the road an uneasy glance. But the night was clear and strangely calm, and no breeze stirred the dry brown leaves left on the branches.
"Keep your eyes out for a crow," she said to Bonnie and Meredith.
"A crow?" Meredith said sharply. "Like the crow outside Bonnie's house the night Yangtze died?"
"The night Yangtze was killed. Yes." Elena approached the dark waters of Drowning Creek with a rapidly beating heart. Despite its name, it was not a creek, but a swiftly flowing river with banks of red native clay. Above it stood Wickery Bridge, a wooden structure built nearly a century ago. Once, it had been strong enough to support wagons; now it was just a footbridge that nobody used because it was so lay on the ground.
Despite her brave words earlier, Bonnie was hanging back. "Remember the last time we went over this bridge?" she said.
Too well, Elena thought. The last time they had crossed it, they were being chased by... something... from the graveyard. Or someone, she thought.
"We're not going over it yet," she said. "First we've got to look under it on this side."
"Where the old man was found with his throat torn open," Meredith muttered, but she followed. The car headlights illuminated only a small portion of the bank under the bridge. As Elena stepped out of the narrow wedge of light, she felt a sick thrill of foreboding. Death was waiting, the voice had said. Was Death down here?
Her feet slipped on the damp, scummy stones. All she could hear was the rushing of the water, and its hollow echo from the bridge above her head. And, though she strained her eyes, all she could see in the darkness was the raw riverbank and the wooden trestles of the bridge.
"Stefan?" she whispered, and she was almost glad that the noise of the water drowned her out. She felt like a person calling "who's there?" to an empty house, yet afraid of what might answer. "This isn't right," said Bonnie from behind her.
"What do you mean?" Bonnie was looking around, shaking her head slightly, her body taut with concentration. "It just feels wrong. I don't - well, for one thing I didn't hear the river before. I couldn't hear anything at all, just dead silence."
Elena's heart dropped with dismay. Part of her knew that Bonnie was right, that Stefan wasn't in this wild
and lonely place. But part of her was too scared to listen. "We've got to make sure," she said through the constriction in her chest, and she moved farther into the darkness, feeling her way along because she couldn't see. But at last she had to admit that there was no sign that any person had recently been here. No sign of a dark head in the water, either. She wiped cold muddy hands on her jeans.