Phantom Page 0,93

the candles flickered wildly and then blew out. Two candles fel over. Meredith's long hair whipped around her face.

"This isn't supposed to happen," Alaric shouted. But Stefan just squinted his eyes against the gale and read on.

The pitch-blackness and the unpleasant sensation of fal ing lasted for only a moment, and then Elena landed jarringly on both feet and staggered forward, clutching Matt's and Bonnie's hands.

They were in a dim octagonal room lined with doors. A single piece of furniture sat in the center. Behind the lone desk lounged a tanned, beautiful, amazingly muscular, bare-chested vampire with a long, spiraling mane of bronze hair fal ing past his shoulders.

Instantly Elena knew where she was.

"We're here." She gasped. "The Gatehouse!"

Sage leaped to his feet on the other side of the desk, his face almost comical y surprised. "Elena?" he exclaimed.

"Bonnie? Matt? What's going on? Qu'est-ce qui arrive?"

Usual y, Elena would have been relieved to see Sage, who had always been kind and helpful to her, but she had to get to Damon. She knew where he must be. She could almost hear him cal ing to her.

She strode across the empty room with barely a glance at the startled gatekeeper, pul ing Matt and Bonnie along with her.

"Sorry, Sage," she said as she reached the door she wanted. "We've got to find Damon."

"Damon?" he said. "He's back again?" and then they passed through, ignoring Sage's shouts of "Stop! Arretezvous!"

The door closed behind them, and they found themselves in a landscape of ash. Nothing grew here, and there were no landmarks. Harsh winds had blown the fine black ash into shifting hil s and val eys. As they watched, a strong gust caught at the light top layer of ash and sent it flying in a cloud that soon settled into new shapes. Below the lighter ash, they could see swamps of wet, muddy ash. Nearby was an ash-choked pool of stil water. Nothing but ash and mud, except for an occasional scorched and blackened bit of wood.

Above them was a twilit sky in which hung a huge planet and two great moons, one a swirling bluish white, the other silvery.

"Where are we?" said Matt, gaping up at the sky.

"Once this was a world - a moon, technical y - that was shaded by a huge tree," Elena told him, walking steadily forward. "Until I destroyed it. This is where Damon died."

She felt rather than saw Matt and Bonnie exchange a glance. "But, uh, then he came back, right? You saw him in Fel 's Church the other night, didn't you?" Matt said hesitantly. "Why are we here now?"

"I know that Damon's close," Elena said impatiently. "I can feel him. He's come back here. Maybe this is where he began his search for the phantom." They kept walking. Soon they were not so much walking as wading through black ash that stuck to their legs in nasty thick clumps. The mud underneath the ash clung to their shoes, releasing them at each step with a wet sucking sound.

They were almost there. She could feel it. Elena picked up the pace, and the others, stil linked to her, hurried to keep up. The ash was thicker and deeper here because they were approaching where the trunk had been, the very center of this world. Elena remembered it exploding, shooting up into the sky like a rocket, disintegrating as it went. Damon's body had lain underneath and had been completely buried in the fal ing ash.

Elena stopped. There was a thick, drifting pile of ash that looked like it would be at least as high as her waist in places. She thought she could see where Damon had awoken - the ash was disturbed and caved in, as if someone had tunneled out of one of the deeper drifts. But there was no one around except themselves. A cold wind blew up a spray of ash, and Bonnie coughed. Elena, kneedeep in cold, sticky ash, dropped Bonnie's hand and wrapped her arms around herself.

"He's not here," she said blankly. "I was so sure he would be here."

"He must be somewhere else, then," said Matt logical y.

"I'm sure he's fighting the phantom, like you said he was going to. The Dark Dimension's a big place."

Bonnie shivered and huddled closer to Matt, her brown eyes huge and ful of pathos, like a hungry puppy's. "Can we go home now? Please? Sage can send us back again, can't he?"

"I just don't understand," Elena said, staring at the