The Salvation: Unseen Page 0,60

before. Now she could go back where she belonged. She’d get to be with the friends she loved as much as sisters, and with Zander, wonderful, clear-eyed, warmhearted Zander. She’d missed him with a constant low ache the whole time she’d been in Chicago.

Impulsively, she reached out and wrapped her arms around Alysia, pulled her into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she said, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, “Thank you so much.”

If she concentrated all of her Guardian Powers, Elena could just see the faintest wisps of darkness, like tendrils of smoke hanging in midair. Eyes narrowed, she followed the traces of the dark aura, moving carefully from one to the next as she trekked through the woods. Matt and Darlene were following her, the undergrowth crunching beneath their feet, but she couldn’t risk looking back at them. If she took her attention off the trail of evil stretching out before her, it just might disappear.

“Are you sure she knows what she’s doing?” she heard Darlene whisper loudly to Matt.

“Yes,” Matt answered, defensive. “Remember what Andrés did? Elena’s special.”

To be completely honest, Elena wasn’t entirely sure she knew what she was doing. Stefan, Jack, Alex, and Meredith—four experienced hunters, one of them a vampire—had headed out to hunt Trinity today, weapons in hand, earpieces on, aiming for a kill. Zander had his werewolves patrolling the town and the campus, keeping people safe. Alaric was at the university, researching more folklore about body-swapping and possession.

And then there was the renegade force: Elena, Matt, and Darlene, hoping to somehow bring Trinity in alive. They wanted to hold her safe until they could figure out how to reverse what had happened and put Trinity back in control of her own body.

Darlene had appeared on Elena’s doorstep that morning and grabbed her by the arm, her fingers as strong and tight as if they were made of iron. Hunter’s grip, Elena had thought, trying to wriggle free. Meredith held tight like this.

“Jack told us you want to get Solomon out of Trinity,” Darlene had said, fixing Elena with fierce dark eyes, something desperate in her tone. “I want to try, if you will. Trinity’s like a little sister to me.”

Of course Elena wanted to try. She remembered Trinity’s laughing challenge to her on the roof at the apple orchard and felt a pang of sorrow—that sweet-natured girl was lost, and no one was going to help her. If there was even the slightest chance Trinity was still there, they had to try. No matter what Stefan thinks, I need to do what’s right, she thought, trying to make herself strong and inflexible. She wasn’t used to being on the opposite side of an argument from Stefan.

So now here they were, just Elena, Darlene, and Matt, the three musketeers, hoping that somehow they could save Trinity. Following this trace of wrongness, these tiny shreds of darkness hanging in the air, Elena led them forward. The trail was thin and faint, but it was there.

The darkness led them through the woods away from campus, mostly downhill. Their feet squished unpleasantly in the mud.

At last they came to the edge of a lake. Little ripples wet the toes of Elena’s boots as she followed the dark aura right to the shore. When she strained her eyes, she could see its trail leading out over the water, toward the vast middle of the lake.

“It goes straight over the water,” she told the others.

“We’re not going out there,” Matt objected. “We’ll walk around, pick it up on the other side.”

Elena shook her head, her eyes on the faint traces of darkness. “If we leave the trail, I probably won’t be able to find it again. It’s too faint.”

“Elena …” Matt said.

“I can’t.” She stared at him desperately. “We’ll lose it.”

Matt sighed. “I’ll find a boat,” he said, gesturing off to the right. “There’s a boathouse over there.”

Elena nodded, never taking her eyes from the dark trail, barely daring to blink. Behind her, she heard Darlene shift from foot to foot and sigh.

“I knew Trinity’s family,” the older hunter said. “Before her parents died, they were almost like my parents, too. They fed me, offered me a place to stay, gave me advice I usually didn’t follow. Trinity … she’s the only one left. I can’t just let go of her.”

“We’ll do our best,” Elena said, her eyes still fixed over the water. “I promise. I want to save her as much as you do.” She was trying not