Blood Will Tell

by L. J. Smith

  “It’s the biggest cliché in the human world, Stefan, but please be gentle with her.

  And it’s not such a big cliché, but if you aren’t, and we survive tonight—well, then it’s going to be me coming after you. The meat bites back!

  Stefan didn’t smile. Silently, he nodded.

  He could never have guessed what he was promising with that one small gesture.

  Bonnie

  Bonnie was excited. She was devoured by curiosity, prickling with fear, too impatient to stay in the car, and . . . well, just excited.

  She and Elena had taken up boys before Meredith or even Caroline had. Bonnie had been a flirt since kindergarten. And by the time they had hit puberty—well, it was Elena—not Bonnie—that got nicknamed “Ice Princess” for throwing away her boyfriends just before they proposed marriage. (Or, if not marriage, eternal devotion.) Bonnie wasn’t an ice princess, she was a firebrand.

  And she’d had been hearing Elena boast about Stefan for what seemed like years.

  And now Bonnie was going to get to experience what Elena had said was the ultimate, and she was going to do it safely, for of course Stefan was safe. Stefan was safe as . . . as a deer. Sometimes he was like a deer caught in the headlights, sometimes he was like the rare wild fawns that would let you feed them because they didn’t know what you were.

  She couldn’t wait.

  She was tramping around the car for the sixtysixth time (oh, surely they’d be done soon! Elena said it was just a matter of teaspoonsfull, and Meredith wasn’t the romantic kind to stretch things out—!) when she ran into something.

  She’d been staring at her feet, so she had to look up to see what it was. And then she had to look up some more. And then she had to decide whether to scream or not.

  “Tracking a woozle?” Damon asked her. He seemed perfectly serious. “The next time we go around, there will be seventy of them.’”

  Bonnie was not about to be distracted—especially by WinniethePooh. “You—you—”

  “Yes, it is I.”

  “You left us.”

  “I think it was more the other way round. Call it a mutual dissolution of our partnership, anyway.”

  “Don’t try to confuse me with big words. You’re a traitor; that’s what you are. And because of you a girl is dead. And that makes me feel like—like—”

  “Yes?” He looked curious and amused.

  “Like doing this!” Bonnie stepped hard on his insole, wishing she was wearing her party shoes; then backed up and took a running kick at his shin and added an elbow to the ribs.

  It was true that this was her method, or her opening method anyway, when she was on dates and boys misbehaved. From here on it went to broken noses, blackened eyes, and . . . well, serious dislocations of the groinal regions. When Bonnie didn’t want to play Bonnie didn’t play.

  Unlike most of her combatants, however, Damon did not scream. He didn’t even blink. And he certainly wasn’t hopping around cursing, or doubled up moaning in pain. He simply stood exactly as he had been standing and looked at her as he had been looking, curious and hopeful of amusement.

  Then he flashed one of his inimitable smiles, onethirtysecondth of a second on, and then instantly off again, and said, “And what are you planning to do now?” She looked up at him. Matt was in the car, his back to them, probably listening to music if he wasn’t under some spell of Damon’s. Stefan and Meredith were even farther away, and—preoccupied.

  Vampires. You just couldn’t trust them to feel pain like real people. Even her patented kneetothefamilyjewels—patented because of its speed, force, and a secret second bounce she wasn’t demonstrating for anyone—probably would have no effect.

  She started to look at Damon again, but suddenly her pointofview was whirling. He had picked her up as if she weighed no more than a kitten and put her down again, facing away from Matt and the house. She felt the whiplash of a bramble. When she looked back at Damon her bravado had undergone a serious change for the worse. She found herself thinking how fortunate but unlikely it would be for Stefan and Meredith to come out on the porch right this very minute. She blinked and found that she was blinking back tears.

  “I’ll—I’ll put a spell on you,” she said in a small voice.

  “A spell to do what?” He reached out and touched her jaw where a jutting tree branch had caught her. “You’re bleeding.”

  Bonnie felt her heart begin to gallop. “It’s nothing.”

  “It ought to be taken care of.”

  “Not your way,” Bonnie said, and she heard the oddest thing—a sort of faint echo to her voice, saying, Not your way.

  In any case, Damon looked around. “So the hero has admitted he’s just like the rest of us raptors at last,” he said, eyeing the window to Stefan’s attic room from which surely, any minute now, Stefan and Meredith would be starting downstairs.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Neither do I really. Except that Stefan couldn’t keep his vow, could he? He knows he needs to have human blood.”

  “We made him do it,” Bonnie said fiercely. “Matt and Meredith, and, yes, even Elena told him that he had to. And me.”

  Something sparked in Damon’s eyes. “So the lovebirds are having conversations at will now?”

  “Elena talked to him, to order him to do it,” Bonnie said, stretching a point.

  Again, the feeling of rushing through the air, being lifted like a doll, and this time, ending up pinned against a tree. Her arms and legs were much too heavy to try any of the usual selfdefense in her repertoire. And of course there was no chance of screaming.

  Damon’s face was close to her. There floated back to her a memory of a much more immature Bonnie saying that it would be so romantic to be killed by someone this handsome. She’d been a little idiot, that’s what she had been. God, if she could get her hands on that younger self of hers now . . .

  “So you made Stefan take your blood,” he said, “but I’m still just a poor outsider, forced to stalk you for your own good.”

  “I haven’t done it yet,” Bonnie said, knowing that she sounded like a kitten spitting rage with all its fur fluffed up. But then she thought of something else.

  “Elena is watching you,” she said, combining what she was sure was the truth with the guess of the next question. “Elena wants to know what you’re going to do tonight. You said you were watching us for our own good. Are you going to help us? Help him? Or just watch?”

  “I really haven’t decided,” Damon said, and Bonnie, looking into those blackasobsidian eyes, felt that this was the simple truth and all bets were truly off with him.

  And, although tears flooded her eyes and down her cheeks, she wouldn’t look away from him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break down entirely and whisper, “But we’re goners without you . . .”

  “You’d be goners with me, too.’’ He plucked her thought out of the air. “You must know that. What you’re challenging isn’t beatable. That’s the truth, maybe not in words of one syllable but as simply as I can put it without resorting to sockpuppets. Do we understand?”

  Bonnie was beyond being distressed over personal things.

  “It’s the town I’m worried about. Fell’s Church—”

  “Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. When you’ve seen enough of them as I have you develop an indifference. And this miserable place is hardly a dot on the map, anyway.” Bonnie looked up angrily but he had already turned on his bland face and his purring, persuasive voice.

  “If you have blood to give to little brother, then you have blood to give to me,” he said, looking at her with lastpuppyintheshopeyes. “It doesn’t take much, you know.

  And maybe it will persuade me . . .”

  There was a word for this kind of exchange, or at least for the closest human equivalent, but Bonnie didn’t care. Despite the sharp thought, No!, that flashed across her mind, she looked up at Damon with eyes that were just as round and innocent as he ’
d made his, and cornflower blue to boot. “Really? It might persuade you to stay and fight on our side?”

  “It certainly would provide incentive, even if I don’t think we’d have a chance.”

  “And you’d truly stay? You wouldn’t break your word a—”

  “Little human, I have never broken my word.”

  Bonnie didn’t take time to puzzle over this. She looked into Damon’s eyes—endless darkness there, unpierced by any ray of light—and she told herself firmly that she wasn’t going to faint. Damon was very different from Stefan, but what did it matter?

  “Then do it,” she said hastily. “But do it quick, and somewhere Stefan won’t see it.

  The back of my neck, maybe?”

  She caught Damon staring at her. “You’d—”

  “I’d do anything to help Fell’s Church. The people here are like my family. I’ve grown up with them. And this seems to be the only way I can try to help them.” Damon lifted her in his arms and turned her so that she faced away from him. But he did it slowly, as if fighting his way through molasses.

  “You’re sure?” He seemed unable to believe, that after years of wooing Elena and her friends; after courting them and terrorizing them in turn, he had actually won the game.

  “Yes,” Bonnie said. “Just be quick. Please.” What Bonnie was afraid of now was that Stefan and Meredith would finish too soon. Damon had hauled them into a little private clearing, so maybe there might be come excuse to make—but the whole thing would look bad. Boys made things so complicated.

  “All right. I’ll make it quick,” Damon said in a dazed way. Then: “This will sting at first.”

  “I know, I know.” Bonnie felt Damon’s breath on the back of her neck. He was holding up her hair, exposing her neck to the darkness. She shuddered, not because it was cold. Then she felt the touch of his lips there on her spinal cord, cooler than she would have imagined. He kissed her lightly and a wave of feeling went through her.

  Damon, you let that girl go right now!

  It was a voice from above like all the cliché’s for heavenly voices. It was otherworldly, like faraway bells, like silver. But its command was unnecessary. Damon had already dropped Bonnie and caught her, still falling, this time facing him.

  Elena didn’t want them to.

  Bonnie . . . over to . . . house . . . Damon . . . be ashamed!

  Elena was fading but her meaning was clear. Damon however, did not look in the slightest ashamed.

  “You’re still a baby, baby,” he told Bonnie lightly, and flicked her nose with his finger in a most insulting way. “Actually,” he went on, “I had already decided not to before she even spoke.. You’re not ripe yet. Blood always tells, and I can tell you’re not ready from here. Still—” He leaned over and graceful as a cat, licked the tiny wound on Bonnie’s chin.

  She felt his tongue as a strong silkiness, not at all raspy like a cat’s tongue, leaving a coolness behind it that turned to warmth.

  Bonnie groped for some response. It had to be a good one, since she’d just been rejected. But while she was still fumbling for swear words bad enough, Damon winked and said, “Don’t burst a blood vessel trying to make me too mad. After all, some day you will be ripe. And I’ve got a good memory.” And then, while Bonnie was still groping for some response, he took a step back and was gone, blending in with the darkness.

  Stefan

  “Bonnie? Bonnie!”

  She appeared almost immediately, on her own two feet, and looking entirely unharmed. Well, maybe not entirely. She’d been crying.

  “Where is he?” Stefan caught her shoulders and almost shook them. “Damon!”

  “He appeared, made some scary noises and then he left. Elena’s voice shooed him away.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ve been crying.”

  “Oh, well—you know Damon. He always manages to say the exact thing that hurts most.”

  Stefan gritted his teeth. “Why did I let him come over here? I could have stopped him on the other side of the Atlantic—”

  “That’s all past,” came Meredith’s voice from behind Stefan, and when Bonnie heard it she got a shock. Meredith’s voice was . . . different. Meredith’s aura, when she stepped into Bonnie’s view, was different, too.

  He didn’t—he couldn’t have made her a vampire in that short a time, Bonnie thought—could he? But that wasn’t it. Meredith’s aura wasn’t at all like Stefan’s, or Damon’s, either, it was still human. But it had changed in some fundamental way. Meredith was even cooler, more rational—more distant than she had ever been before.

  She’d received a shock, Bonnie could tell that. And she was thinking about it.

  Bonnie wanted to run to her and hug her and hug her until her warmth made its way through the thin layer of ice that seemed to coat Meredith’s body. Had Stefan done this to her? Stefan’s aura was certainly sorrowful, but Meredith wasn’t angry with Stefan. What had happened between them?

  “Next shift,” she said, in the high light voice of someone trying to distract them all.

  She took Stefan’s arm in hers and started toward the light of the door, almost dragging him along. She couldn’t help being playful and ditzy, but she allowed her personality full rein.

  And her anatomy only helped: diminutive stature, that mop of strawberryblond hair; not to mention her heartshaped face with its delicate features and those huge cornflower colored eyes.

  And she seemed younger than the rest—or she could seem young. If she wore lose sweaters to cover her blossoming young femininity, and chattered in a quick, high voice without ever censoring a thing that came into her head, people forgot how old she really was and were tempted to muss up her curls while saying that she really was charming or adorable—and entirely forgetting that she was over eighteen.

  But there was another Bonnie beneath that one, and even another still beneath the Bonnie that liked fast cars and fast boys, and that was the one her friends would recognize the most easily. It was this deepest Bonnie who had envied Elena and Stefan, not for their fairytale relationship, but for the stability that she could sense in it. A Bonnie who was, at heart, a woman, and who had been one for a long time.

  And Damon had just thrown a challenge to the womanly Bonnie. She could feel the hurt, hot rage burning inside her as she walked with Stefan up the staircase, his arm in hers. Elena? she called. She was furiously calculating if the plan that had just occurred to her might possibly hurt anyone.

  Elena?

  Silence.

  Can you hear me?

  Silence.

  Elena there’s a Plan B I want to try with Stefan, but I don’t know if you’ll be mad.

  I’ll forget about it right now if you’ll be mad.

  Nothing. Bonnie tried to think other colors and forms in her mind, to “change channels.” Sometimes it worked.

  Elena, if I don’t hear from you I’m going to try it. I can’t think of anyone else that it might hurt, and it might do Stefan some good.

  Still no “presence” from Elena.

  Bonnie’s heart sank suddenly. Are you leaving this entirely up to me? That would be just like you and Meredith. You would say it would help me grow up to know what I want.

  Silence all around her. No one present except herself and Stefan—alone together, as they said.

  All right, then. I’m taking you all on. This is my responsibility, and only mine.

  Which was all part of being a woman.

  Stefan was watching her. He had seemed startled by her eagerness from the beginning, but probably putting it down to wanting to get it over with.

  But now, with the door shut and locked behind him, he was watching her, with distinctly worried eyes. As she walked around the room and ended up on the worn, creaky old couch, his aura was burning a puzzled yellow. She wondered whether to feign nervousness, and then decided she didn’t have to feign it. She looked up at him, with her stillwet, stillcornflowerblue eyes at their widest.

  Plan B was what t
he girls called a blitzkrieg plan.

  “I tangled the tie of my windbreaker before, and now I can’t see to untie it,” she said.

  And that’s the absolute truth! she thought. Yes, if you don’t ask exactly when ‘before’ was.

  He untangled it, necessarily standing close to her. All boys were tall compared to Bonnie, but Stefan was just the right height for leaning her head against his shoulder, and so straight and slim and somehow pliant—like a ninja or a panther or something that had to be ready to move in any direction at once. And he smelled wonderfully good. That was one of the most important things to the deepest Bonnie: smell. And another, which he also had, was voice. Stefan was a virtuous knight, faithful to the memory of his Elena—but he also had a voice that could melt butter right out of the refrigerator.

  Yes, we have no problems here. I’m attracted to him. But—could he ever be attracted to me?

  Bonnie slid off her windbreaker, and then, watching Stefan under her eyelashes, undid the one big button of her jade green sweater, and began to pull it over her head.

  Stefan—as expected—made an incoherent noise of protest. That was one advantage she had. She was a gabbler. She could talk the hind leg off an elephant given the chance, and Stefan was a polite listener who didn’t like to interrupt.

  “It’s okay, silly, I’ve got another top on underneath it,” she said and finished shrugging the sweater off.

  This was technically true. She had a camisole on underneath it; a very pretty cream colored one, with knots of ribbon and lace decorating the bodice. She usually wore it with a sweater when the weather could change suddenly and she could whip on a lighter top over it.

  She just hoped that Stefan didn’t know enough about modern women’s underwear to recognize it as notexactlyoutdoorwear.

  Especially when the only thing under the camisole was Bonnie.

  It seemed that Elena had neglected this area of his education. Bonnie mentally wiped sweat off her forehead.

  “It’s a pretty top,” Stefan said. “But the evenings are chilly up here—”

  “It shouldn’t take long. And we’ll keep each other warm,” Bonnie said. Oh, Lord, had she just said that? From Stefan’s expression she had.