A news anchor was saying “. . . that senior from Robert E. Lee High School is still in serious condition tonight at Beckley Memorial Hospital. Doctors there say that the girl was found lying outside the Emergency Room, and required massive transfusions throughout the day to replace the large volume of blood she had lost.
“The Heron police are not releasing many details about the cryptic case, but a source close to the Fell’s Church sheriffs’ department says that the authorities are interested in speaking to the girl’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend, also a student at Robert E. Lee High.
“The Heron County Blood Bank is sponsoring a blood drive, saying that donations have dropped over twenty percent this last summer. They noted that low levels of donated blood could prove lethal for some patients if a hospital were faced with ‘another mysterious exsanguination, or a major accident that will really drive up usage.’ In other news . . .”
Meredith muted the TV. There was silence in the room. Damon was on his feet, as were Matt, Meredith, and Elena. Matt had automatically reached for his mobile and spoke as his fingers rapidly found the same news on the Internet.
Then, slowly, he said, “Another one.”
“Another . . . attack like Elena’s . . .” Meredith began, but didn’t finish the sentence.
“But they said someone from Robert E. Lee,” Bonnie whispered. “That means we probably know whoever it is—someone who was a junior last year . . .” Her words, too, trailed off.
“It’s not possible,” Damon said mechanically, stiff in the jaw, his mind whirling with a hundred thoughts at once.
“It has to be possible. It happened,” Caroline pointed out.
“Or maybe it’s different,” Bonnie said, looking desperate for comfort. “They didn’t say that this girl’s blood just disappeared. If they’re looking for her boyfriend then they must have some reason to suspect him.”
“They think she was pregnant and miscarried,” Elena said, in a brittle, precise voice. Her face was pale. “That’s what they kept insisting on with me. They kept asking if I’d lost a baby. And there must be something strange going on with her because that newswoman said it was a cryptic case and a mysterious exsanguination. So . . . it’s another case exactly like mine.”
But it couldn’t be, Damon thought giddily. There had to be some kind of mistake. Unless it was some kind of copycat criminal who had admired Stefan’s work and wanted to challenge him.
He liked the sound of that. Copycat criminal. He had no idea why imitators were called copycats instead of copy-monkeys or something more rational, but copycat crimes were well-known throughout the world these days. Someone—some vampire—had heard about Elena’s case, and hadn’t been able to resist trying out their own version.
But . . . upon a student from the same school that Stefan and Elena had attended? a little voice in his head seemed to say. And, further, why hadn’t Damon already sensed a foreign vampire on his own territory? He had wards all over this area that should have warned him. Being dead—or mostly—for as long as he had under the ash in the Nether World had given him new ideas of how safe he was in an area like Fell’s Church where crossing ley lines attracted all sorts of rabble.
Now, standing still and silent in Elena’s dorm room, he sent out a probe of Power in all directions to see what he could see. After five separate probes, he was even more bewildered than he had been when he started. There was no sign of a new vampire, so if one was around it had to be clever enough to fool him. The werewolves showed up in every city within an hour’s distance as the crow flew, but he couldn’t sense any particular agitation among them—smug bastards that they were. He could feel the glow of Mrs. Flowers’ kitchen witchcraft on the edge of Fell’s Church, and he could strongly sense Bonnie’s powers in the dorm room beside him.
But none of that mattered. There was something heading toward Dalcrest College that put everything else out of his mind. A psychic signature that was familiar but distorted, thrumming with raw Power as he had only seen it two or three times before.
It was Stefan. Still in the area and with an aura that no vampire got from drinking the blood of animals. Stefan, blazing with Power, was headed this way in his Porsche.
How the devil had Stefan come by so much eldritch energy? And why was he advertising an aura like that?
To keep away small-fry, brother, a voice in Damon’s head replied. It wasn’t his own inner voice; it was Stefan’s. Stefan had deftly caught and tracked his probe and was now sending on a tight channel just to Damon.
Twenty minutes, Stefan’s telepathic message ran. My dorm room. Be there, Damon.
Half an hour, Damon bargained automatically. But—
Just one word more, Stefan sent, and tension was crackling in his mental voice. Is Elena all right? Is she in another hospital?
She’s fine. She’s standing right here. We all are. We just saw on the news—
Half an hour, in my dorm room, Stefan cut in brusquely. Then we can talk.
As suddenly as it had come, the voice was gone from Damon’s mind. He refocused on what was happening in the physical world around him.
“What on earth is going on?” Caroline was saying, when a soft, hollow, and terrifying whisper suddenly answered her.
“It is a sacrifice. A sacrifice of humans.”
“Bonnie—no!” Meredith exclaimed, and Matt groaned, “Not again.”
While Damon had been talking to Stefan, Bonnie had found her way into the corner opposite him and had her hands over her face.
“Listen to her,” he said sharply. “But don’t touch her, anyone. I promise not to use shock treatment.” He was probing once again, trying to classify what Bonnie looked like in this state and what she might be connected to. His probes were coming back fuzzy, blurred with feedback interference. “Look, we need to find out where she’s getting these ideas. Keep her talking!”