The Power Field

Chapter 25

The first thing Hope hears when the bright light penetrates through her closed eyelids is Caroline Forbes' desperate scream, which echoes through the Salvatore school hidden in the twilight. Even standing there in the clearing with her eyes closed, she immediately realizes that something is wrong with everything that is happening. The invisible thread connecting her and Josie's souls stretches to the limit in an instant, and then just as abruptly weakens. At this moment, Hope's heart stops, and she remains standing with her mouth open, unable to take a single gram of air into her lungs.

Relief comes quickly, but it is accompanied by a painful emptiness, as if something significant, something important, has simply disappeared into thin air.

Hope opens her eyes when her family, Bonnie Bennett and Caroline Forbes are already fussing in front of her, hysterically pushing each other in different directions. They all walk from side to side, opening their mouths, while Hope, frozen in place, tries in vain to find familiar curly hair, soft silhouette outlines and warm dark brown eyes in the general mess.

"Hope! Can you hear me?!" Her mother's screams suddenly bring her out of her daze.

She reluctantly looks away from the very spot where Josie and her sister stood a few minutes ago and turns to her mother.

Her eyes are so wide open that Hope can see swollen maroon veins in them. Her thick dark eyebrows betray deep concern. For a split second, Hope remembers how her mother looked at her with exactly the same expression on her face that day when, due to dizziness and mild nausea, all the Mikaelsons suddenly considered her a victim of family enemies, not even suspecting that it was all about Josie Saltzman's strange and dangerous spells.

How did they get to this point?

"Yes." Hope replies, exhaling the last of her oxygen.

Suddenly she realizes that she can breathe, and that her ears are no longer blocked, and everyone else is not just opening their mouths, but shouting at each other.

"Where did Josie go?" Hope's throat is very sore, so her question sounds more like a set of wheezes, but for some reason it attracts the most attention.

Caroline's screams subside, and the one who answers her silently stares at Hope's frozen figure. They all turn in her direction, as if expecting something.

Hope's eyes slowly move from one figure to another. She mentally goes over their names in her head: Dad, Uncle Elijah, Aunts Rebekah and Freya, Miss Forbes and Bonnie Bennett. Everyone is here except the twins and their father. All except the Salzmans.

Whether from tension, or from an overabundance of information, Hope suddenly feels dizzy. She turns to her mother, but instead of her face, blurred spots of color appear in front of Hope's eyes. She blinks several times, but this only aggravates her already rapidly failing eyesight. Her legs give way, and her hands, like spears, cling to the mother standing in front of her. For a moment, Hope feels like she's coming to her senses again. However, just as quickly, her vision is swallowed up by darkness. She feels her body landing on the cold frozen ground, and her consciousness is carried far into oblivion.

Hope feels like she's been flying through the darkness for ages. Her head is empty, and no worries bother her mind anymore. Only the warm wind blowing over her body from all sides, and someone's barely audible conversation, which grows louder the further she flows in the void, remain her faithful companions.

At some point, she even begins to get bored, but the sharp thud of something on the wooden surface almost scares her, forcing her to come out of her shell. Hope twitches weakly and looks down warily.

Through the thick dark smoke of the endless funnel, as it seems to her at the time, she can barely make out someone's silhouettes. One is scurrying back and forth quickly, while the others are moving their arms and watching each other intently.