The Salvation: Unseen Page 0,10
that your hunting partner couldn’t.”
“Trust me, you’ve got lots to offer,” Meredith said with a smile. Alaric brushed her hair aside and focused on the massage while she looked happily around the room. Her law books sat on the shelf, her slim silver computer on the desk next to a stack of Alaric’s old manuscripts. Her hunting stave, in its case, was tucked in the corner. On the side table were various pictures of their friends, their wedding.
And a picture of Meredith, ten years younger, her arms around her twin brother, Cristian, both of them grinning. She didn’t really remember Cristian—this reality where they’d grown up together was one the Guardians had created—and she didn’t like to think about his death. Becoming a vampire was one of the worst fates she could imagine for a hunter.
Half-consciously, she leaned back against Alaric’s hands, and he kneaded her muscles harder, comforting. Lately, she’d been coming to terms with the idea of Cristian. He’d grown up part of her family, in this life, and he mattered, whether Meredith remembered the young boy in the picture or not.
All the elements that made up her life—hunting, school, becoming a lawyer, her friends, her family, Alaric—they all mattered. She’d been so used to thinking of hunting as what defined her—that everything else was a gloss over her secret life, part of her disguise. That all she truly was, was a hunter.
But Meredith was going to be a lawyer now. She was somebody’s wife. She was a friend and a daughter, and once she’d been a sister. These things were real to her, and they all mattered. Just like Bonnie’s vervain tea, the bitter and sweet and spicy all mixing together, making up a whole.
“I want to taste it all,” she murmured a third time, sleepily, and Alaric snorted with laughter.
“You’re just about talking in your sleep,” he said. “Time for bed. Everything will still be there in the morning.” He swung her up into his arms, and she buried her face in the crook of his neck, giggling sleepily, as he carried her to bed.
It was a beautiful night. Stefan opened his senses to everything around him, unusually eager to drink it all in. He could smell magnolia flowers in the yard of a house a few blocks away, the spices and grease of three different restaurants on the street he and Elena were walking up, the sour scent of beer coming from a bar halfway down the street, the warring perfumes of three girls getting out of a car near the curb. He could hear a hundred conversations, from the drunken argument of four frat boys in the bar to the loving whispers of a newly engaged couple in the Indian restaurant. In the apartment over a storefront farther down the block, a sad song played on a cheap radio.
The world had so much in it. He could feel the slow beat of his own heart, slower than a human’s, and for once, its pace didn’t feel like a reproach. For once, despite everything, despite what he was, Stefan felt alive.
So much to hear, to smell, to see, to feel. And most of all, Elena. Her hand was soft and strong in his, and she smiled at him, radiating love like a vibrant, glowing sun. His mind brushed against hers, and he could feel her welcoming him home, the familiarity and warmth of her.
He stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and kissed her. All the sensations and impressions that had been flooding through him narrowed down into one thing: Elena’s lips, soft against his. Elena’s warm breath. He sent her thoughts of love, and of forever, and she sent them back to him.
When they broke apart, they clung to each other for a moment breathlessly. Then Elena smiled and pushed her hair back behind her ears. “You’re happy to be home,” she said.
Stefan took her hands in his. “Now that Celine is dead, there can’t be too many Old Ones left,” he said. “When we find them, we can kill them, and then we’ll be able to do anything we want, go anywhere we want.”
Elena frowned, her eyes puzzled. “We can do anything we want now, Stefan,” she said. “We don’t have to wait and be sure all the Old Ones are dead. We can’t wait for that.”
Twining his fingers with Elena’s, Stefan smiled down into her eyes. “Remember how, when you drank the water from the Fountain of Eternal Youth and Life,