"What difference does it make?" Bonniewas crying now. "So it was Damon's fault. I don't even care anymore. What I don't understand is why things have to change!"

"'You can never cross the same river twice.' Or even once if you're a strong enough vampire," Meredith said wryly. n.o.body laughed. And then, very gently: "Maybe you're asking the wrong person. Maybe Elena's the one who could tell you why things have to change, if she remembers what happened to her-in the Other Place."

"I didn'tmean that theydo have to change-" "But they do," Meredith said, even more gently and wistfully. "Don't you see? It's not supernatural; it's-life. Everybody has to grow up-"

"I know! Matt has a football scholarship and you're going away to college and then you're going to getmarried ! And probably have babies!" Bonnie managed to make this sound like some indecent activity. "I'm going to be stuck in junior collegeforever . And you'll both be all grown up and you'll forget about Elena and Stefan...and me," Bonnie finished in a very small voice.

"Hey." Matt had always been very protective of the injured and ignored. Right now, even with Elena so recently on his mind-he wondered if he wouldever get rid of the feeling of that kiss-he was drawn to Bonnie, who seemed so small and fragile. "What are you talking about? I'm coming back after college to live. I'll probably die right here in Fell's Church.I'll be thinking about you. I mean, if you want me to."

He patted Bonnie's arm, and she didn't shy away from his touch as she had from Meredith's. She leaned into him, her forehead against his shoulder. When she shivered once, slightly, he put his arm around her without even thinking.

"I'm not cold," Bonnie said, although she didn't try to shrug off his arm. "It's warm tonight. I just-I don't like it when you say things like 'I'll probably die right'-watch out!"

"Matt, look out!"

"Whoa-!" Matt pumped the brakes, cursing, both hands wrestling with the steering wheel as Bonnie ducked and Meredith braced herself. Matt's replacement for the first beat-up old car he'd lost was just about as old and didn't have airbags. It was a miscellany of junkyard cars pieced together.

"Hang on!"Matt yelled as the car skidded, tires screaming, and then they were all flung around as the back end swerved into a ditch and the front b.u.mper hit a tree.

When everything stopped moving, Matt let out his breath, easing his death-grip on the steering wheel. He started to turn toward the girls and then froze. He scrabbled to switch on the map light, and what he saw held him frozen again.

Bonnie had turned, as always in moments of deepest distress, to Meredith. She was lying with her head on Meredith's lap, hands locked onto her friend's arm and shirt. Meredith herself was sitting, braced, leaning as far as possible backward, her feet stretched to push against the floor beneath the dashboard; her body bowed back in the seat, head flung backward, arms holding Bonnie down tightly.

Thrusting straight through the open window-like a k.n.o.bby, s.h.a.ggy green spear or the grasping arm of some savage earthen giant-was the branch of a tree. It just cleared the base of Meredith's arched neck, and its lower branches pa.s.sed over Bonnie's small body. If Bonnie's seat belt hadn't let her turn; if Bonnie hadn't flung herself down like that; if Meredith hadn't held onto her...

Matt found himself staring directly into the splintered but very sharp end of the lance. If his own seat belt hadn't kept him from leaning that way...

Matt could hear his own hard breathing. The smell of evergreen was overpowering within the car. He could even smell the places where smaller branches had broken off and were oozing sap.

Very slowly, Meredith reached out to break off one of the twigs that was pointed at her throat like an arrow. It wouldn't break.

Numb, Matt reached over to try it himself. But although the wood wasn't much thicker than his finger, it was tough and wouldn't even bend.

As if it's been fire-hardened, he thought dazedly. But that's ridiculous. It's a living tree; I can feel the splinters.

"Ow."

"Can I please get up now?" Bonnie said quietly, her voice m.u.f.fled against Meredith's leg. "Please. Before it grabs me. It wants to." Matt glanced at her, startled, and scratched his cheek against the splintered end of the big branch.

"It's not going to grab you." But his stomach was churning as he fumbled blindly for his seat belt fastening. Why should Bonnie have the same thought as he had: that the thing was like a huge, crooked, s.h.a.ggy arm? She couldn't even see it.

"You know it wants to," Bonnie whispered, and now the slight shivering seemed to be taking over her whole body. She reached backward to undo her seat belt.

"Matt, we need to slide," Meredith said. She had carefully maintained her painful-looking bowed-backward position, but Matt could hear her breathing harder. "We need to slide toward you. It's trying to get around my throat."

"That's impossible...." But he could see it, too. The freshly splintered ends of the smaller branch had moved only infinitesimally, but there was a curve to them now, and the splinters were pressing into Meredith's throat.

"It's probably just that n.o.body can stay bent backward like that forever," he said, knowing that this was nonsense. "There's a flashlight in the glove compartment...."

"The glove compartment is completely blocked by branches. Bonnie, can you reach to unfasten my seat belt?"

"I'll try." Bonnie slid forward without raising her head, fumbling to find the release b.u.t.ton.

To Matt it looked as if the s.h.a.ggy, aromatic evergreen branches were engulfing her. Pulling her into their needles.

"We've got a whole freakin' Christmas tree in here." He looked away, out through the gla.s.s of the window on his side. Cupping his hands to see better into the darkness, he leaned his forehead against the surprisingly cool gla.s.s.

There was a touch on the back of his neck. He jumped, then froze. It was neither cool nor warm, like a girl's fingernail.

"d.a.m.n it, Meredith-"

"Matt-"

Matt was furious with himself for jumping. But the touch was...scratchy.

"Meredith?" He slowly moved his hands away until he could see in the dark window's reflection. Meredith wasn't touching him.

"Don't...move...left, Matt. There's a long sharp bit there." Meredith's voice, normally cool and a bit remote, usually made Matt think of those calendar pictures of blue lakes surrounded by snow. Now it just sounded choked and strained.

"Meredith!" Bonnie said before Matt could speak. Bonnie's voice sounded as if it were coming from underneath a featherbed.

"It's all right. I just have to...hold it away," Meredith said. "Don't worry. I won't let go of you, either."

Matt felt a sharper p.r.i.c.kle of splinters. Something touched his neck on the right side, delicately. "Bonnie, stop it! You're pulling the treein ! You're pulling it on Meredith and me!"

"Matt,shut up !"

Matt shut up. His heart was pounding. The last thing he felt like doing was reaching behind him. But that's stupid, he thought, because if Bonnie really is moving the tree, I can at least hold it still for her.

He reached behind him, flinching, trying to watch what he was doing in the window's reflection. His hand closed over a thick knot of bark and splinters.

He thought, I don't remember seeing a knot when it was pointed at my throat.... "Got it!" a m.u.f.fled voice said, and there was the click of a seat belt coming undone. Then, much more shakily, the voice said, "Meredith? There are needles shoved all into my back."

"Okay, Bonnie. Matt," Meredith was speaking with effort, but great patience, the way they'd all been talking to Elena. "Matt, you have to open your door now."

Bonnie said in a voice of terror, "It isn't just needles. It's little branches. Sort of like barbed wire. I'm...stuck...."

"Matt! You need to open your doornow -"

"I can't."

Silence.

"Matt?"

Matt was bracing himself, pushing with his feet, both hands locked around the scaly bark now. He thrust backward with all his strength.

"Matt!" Meredith almost screamed. "It's cutting into my throat!"

"I can't get my door open! There's a tree on that side, too!"

"How can there be a tree there?That's the road!"

"How can there be a treegrowing in here?"

Another silence. Matt could feel the splinters-the slivers of broken branch-biting deeper into the back of his neck. If he didn't move soon, he would never be able to.

10.

Elena was serenely happy. Now it was her turn.

Stefan used a sharp wooden letter opener from his desk to cut himself. Elena always hated to see him do this, use the most efficient implement that would penetrate vampire skin; so she shut her eyes tightly and only looked again when red blood was trickling from a little cut on his neck.

"You don't need to take a lot-and you shouldn't," Stefan whispered, and she knew he was saying these things while hecould say them. "I'm not holding you too hard or hurting you?"

He was always so worried. This time,she kissedhim .

And she could see how strange he thought it was, that he wanted kisses more than he wanted her to take his blood. Laughing, Elena pushed him flat and hovered over him and went for the general area of the wound again, knowing that he thought she was going to tease him. But instead she fastened herself on the wound like a limpet and sucked hard,hard , until she had made him sayplease with his mind. But she wasn't satisfied until she made him sayplease out loud as well.

In the car, in the dimness, Matt and Meredith thought of the idea at the same time. She was faster, but they spoke almost together.

"I'm an idiot! Matt, where's the seatback release?" "Bonnie, you have to unfold her seat backward! There's a little handle, you should be able to reach it and pull up!"

Bonnie's voice was. .h.i.tching now, hiccupping. "My arms-they're sort of poking into-my arms-"

"Bonnie," Meredith said thickly. "I know you can do it. Matt-is the handle right-under-the front seat or-"

"Yes. At the edge. One-no, two o'clock." Matt didn't have breath for more. Once he had grabbed the tree, he found that if he loosened pressure for an instant, it pushed harder on his neck.

There's no choice, he thought. He took as much of a deep breath as he could, pushed back on the branch, hearing a cry from Meredith, andtwisted , feeling jagged splinters like thin wooden knives tear his throat and ear and scalp. Now he was free of the pressure on the back of his neck, although he was appalled by how much more tree there was in the car than the last time he had seen it. His lap was filled with branches; evergreen needles were thickly piled everywhere.

No wonder Meredith was so mad, he thought dizzily, turning toward her. She was almost buried in branches, one hand wrestling with something at her throat, but she saw him.

"Matt...get...your own seat! Quick! Bonnie, Iknow you can."

Matt dug and tore into the branches, then groped for the handle that would collapse the backrest of his seat. The handle wouldn't move. Thin, tough tendrils were wrapped around it, springy and hard to break. He twisted and snapped them savagely.

His seatback dropped away. He ducked under the huge arm-branch-if it still deserved the name, since the car was full of similar huge branches now. Then, just as he reached to help Meredith, her seat abruptly folded back, too.

She fell with it, away from the evergreen, gasping for air. For an instant she just lay still. Then she finished scrambling into the backseat proper, dragging a needle-shrouded figure with her. When she spoke, her voice was hoa.r.s.e and her speech was still slow.

"Matt. Bless you...for having...this jigsaw puzzle...of a car." She kicked the front seat back into position, and Matt did likewise.

"Bonnie," Matt said numbly.

Bonnie didn't move. Many tiny branches were still entwining her, caught in the fabric of her shirt, wound into her hair.

Meredith and Matt both started pulling. Where the branches let go, they left welts or tiny puncture wounds.

"It's almost as if they were trying to grow into her," Matt said, as a long, thin branch pulled away, leaving b.l.o.o.d.y pinp.r.i.c.ks behind.

"Bonnie?" Meredith said. She was the one disentangling the twigs from Bonnie's hair. "Bonnie? Come on, up. Look at me."

The shaking began again in Bonnie's body, but she let Meredith turn her face up. "I didn't think I could do it."

"You saved my life."

"I was so scared...."

Bonnie went on crying quietly against Meredith's shoulder.

Matt looked at Meredith just as the map light flickered and went out. The last thing he saw was her dark eyes, which held an expression that made him suddenly feel even sicker to his stomach. He looked out the three windows he could now see from the backseat.

It should have been hard to see anything at all. But what he was looking for was pressed right up against the gla.s.s. Needles.

Branches. Solid against every inch of the windows.Nevertheless, he and Meredith, without needing to say anything, each reached for a backseat door handle. The doors clicked, opened a fraction of an inch; then they slammed back hard with a very definitivewham .

Meredith and Matt looked at each other. Meredith looked down again and began to pluck more twigs off Bonnie.

"Does that hurt?"

"No. A little..."

"You're shaking."

"It's cold."

It was cold now. Outside the car, rather than through the once-open window that was now completely plugged with evergreen, Matt could hear the wind. It whistled, as if through many branches. There was also the sound of wood creaking, startlingly loud and ridiculously high above. It sounded like a storm.

"What theh.e.l.l was it, anyway?" he exploded, kicking the front seat viciously. "The thing I swerved for on the road?"

Meredith's dark head lifted slowly. "I don't know; I was about to roll up the window. I only got a glimpse."

"It just appeared right in the middle of the road."

"A wolf?"

"It wasn't there and then itwas there."

"Wolves aren't that color. It was red," Bonnie said flatly, lifting her head from Meredith's shoulder.