Free The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall by L. J. Smith

voice…that wasn’t Bonnie’s voice in any way. It wasn’t any normal person’s voice. It almost sounded worse going forward than backward—which maybe meant that whatever being had spoken the words normally spoke the other way.
    Meredith could make out human voices over the groaning and distorted laughter and the animal noises straight from the veldt. Though they made the hairs on her body stand up and tingle, she tried to put together the words inbetween the nonsense. Putting them together she got:
    “Aaahhh…waggge…n…ing wuh illllilll… be …sud-ud-ud…den… AND shhhh…ohhh…ging. YOOOOU …hand-and-nd…Iiii…mmmust… BE therefore…herrr…aaahhh waggge…ning…Wewone… BE therefor-or-or-or-r”—(was there a “herrr” next, or was it just part of the growling?)—“ LADE… errrrrrrrrrrr…ahhn. Thaaass … FORRRRR …oththth… ERRR …handandnd…ssssssssss…t-t-todo….”
    Meredith, working with pad and pen, eventually got these words on paper:
    Awakening will be sudden and shocking.
    You and I must be there for her Awakening. We won’t be there for (her?) later on. That’s for other hands to do.
    Meredith put the pen very precisely beside the deciphered message on the pad.
    And after that Meredith went and lay hunched in her sleeping bag watching the unmoving Bonnie like a cat at a mouse hole, until, finally, blessed tiredness took her into the dark.
     
    “I said what ?” Bonnie was honestly bewildered the next morning, squeezing grapefruit juice and pouring cereal,like a model host, even if it was Meredith who was scrambling eggs at the stove.
    “I’ve told you three times now. The words are not going to change, I promise.”
    “Well,” Bonnie said, suddenly switching sides, “it’s clear that the Awakening is going to happen to Elena. Because, for one thing, you and I have to be there for it, and for another thing, she’s the one who needs to wake up .”
    “Exactly,” said Meredith.
    “She needs to remember who she really was.”
    “Precisely,” said Meredith.
    “And we’ve got to help her remember!”
    “No!” said Meredith, taking out her anger on the eggs with a plastic spatula. “No, Bonnie, that’s not what you said, and I don’t think we could do it anyway. We can teach her little things, maybe, the way Stefan has. How to tie her shoes. How to brush her hair. But from what you said, the Awakening is going to be shocking and sudden—and you didn’t say anything about us doing it. You only said that we have to be there for her, because after that, somehow we won’t be there.”
    Bonnie contemplated that in gloomy silence. “Won’t be there?” she said finally. “Like, won’t be with Elena? Or won’t be there, like…won’t be anywhere?”
    Meredith eyed a breakfast that she suddenly didn’t want to eat. “I don’t know.”
    “Stefan said we could come over again today,” Bonnie urged.
    “Stefan would be polite while he was being staked to death.”
    “I know,” Bonnie said suddenly. “Let’s call Matt. We can go see Caroline…if she will see us, I mean. We can see if she’s any different today. Then we can wait until it’s afternoon, and then we can call Stefan and ask if we can come over again to see Elena.”
    At Caroline’s house, her mother said she was sick today and was going to stay in bed. The three of them—Matt, Meredith, and Bonnie—went back to Meredith’s house without her, but Bonnie kept chewing her lip, looking back occasionally toward Caroline’s street. Caroline’s mother had looked sick herself, with shadows under her eyes. And the thunderstorm feeling, the feeling of pressure, had been squashing Caroline’s house almost flat.
    At Meredith’s, Matt tinkered with his car, which perpetually needed work, while Bonnie and Meredith went through Meredith’s wardrobe for clothes that Elena could wear. They would be big, but that was better than Bonnie’s, which would be much too small.
    At four P.M . they called