than by awe or fear. Matt was clinging toher now, like a child; he obviously couldn't answer.
The wings moved with Elena's breathing. She was sitting on thin air, steady now, one hand held out with her fingers all spread in a gesture of denial.
Elena spoke. It wasn't any language that Bonnie had heard before; she doubted it was any language people on Earth used. The words were sharp, thin-edged, like the splintering of myriad shards of crystal that had fallen from somewhere very high and very far away.
The shape of the wordsalmost made sense in Bonnie's head as her own psychic abilities were sparked by Elena's tremendous Power. It was a Power that stood tall against the darkness and now was sweeping it aside...making the things in the dark scamper away before it, their claws scritching in all directions. Ice-sharp words followed them all the way, dismissive now....
And Elena...Elena was as heartbreakingly beautiful as when she'd been a vampire, and seemed almost as pale as one.
But Caroline was shouting, too. She was using powerful words of Black Magic, and to Bonnie it was as if the shadows of all sorts of dark and horrible things were coming from her mouth: lizards and snakes and many-legged spiders.
It was a duel, a face-off of magic. Only how had Caroline learned so much dark magic? She wasn't even a witch by lineage, like Bonnie.
Outside Stefan's room, surrounding it, was a strange sound, almost like a helicopter. Whipwhipwhipwhipwhip... It terrified Bonnie.
But she had to do something. She was Celtic by heritage and psychic because she couldn't avoid it, and she had to help Elena. Slowly, as if making her way against gale-force winds, Bonnie stumbled to put her hand on Elena's hand, to offer Elena her power.
When Elena clasped hands with her, Bonnie realized that Meredith was on her other side. The light grew. The scrabbling lizard things ran from it, screaming and tearing at each other to get away.
The next thing Bonnie knew, Elena had slumped over. The wings were gone. The dark scrabbling things were gone, too. Elena had sent them away, using tremendous amounts of energy to overwhelm them with White Power.
"She'll fall," Bonnie whispered, looking at Stefan. "She's been using magic so strong - "
Just then, as Stefan started to turn to Elena, several things happened very fast, as if the room was caught in the flashes of a strobe light.
Flash. The window shade rolled back up, rattling furiously.
Flash. The lamp went back on, revealing it was in Stefan's hands. He must have been trying to fix it.
Flash. The door to Stefan's room opened slowly, creaking, as if to make up for slamming shut before.
Flash. Caroline was now on the floor, on all fours, groveling, breathing hard. Elena had won....
Elena fell.
Only inhumanly fast reflexes could have caught her, especially from across the room. But Stefan had tossed the lamp to Meredith and was across the distance faster than Bonnie's eyes could follow. Then he was holding Elena, encircling her protectively.
"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