by Smith, L. J.
“Caroline?” Damon blinked as if thrown off his stride.
“She said that before I met Stefan I was just a—” Elena found it impossible to get the last word out. “That I was…promiscuous.”
Damon’s jaw hardened and his cheeks flushed quickly—as if he’d been struck from an unexpected direction. “That girl,” he muttered. “She’s already fixed her destiny and if it were anyone else I might be inclined to take some pity. But she goes…beyond…she’s…beyond…any propriety…” As he spoke his words slowed, and a look of bewilderment clouded his face. He was gazing at Elena and she knew he could see the tears standing in her eyes, because he reached up to brush them away with his fingers. As he did, however, he stopped dead in midmotion, and, his face suddenly bemused, he brought one of his hands up to his lips, tasting her tears.
Whatever they tasted like to him, he didn’t seem to believe it. He brought the other hand up to his lips as well. Elena was openly staring at him now; he should have been put out of countenance—but he wasn’t. Instead a kaleidoscope of expressions passed over his face, too quickly for her human eyes to catch them all. But she did see astonishment, disbelief, bitterness, more astonishment, and then finally a kind of joyful shock and a look almost as if there were tears in his own eyes.
And then Damon laughed. It was a quick, self-mocking laugh, but it was genuine, euphoric, even.
“Damon,” Elena said, still blinking back tears—it had all happened that fast—“what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong, everything’s right,” he said, while raising a scholarly finger. “You should never try to fool a vampire, Elena. Vampires have many senses humans don’t—and some we don’t even know we have until we need them. It’s taken me long enough to realize what I know about you. Because, of course, everyone was telling me one thing, and my own mind was telling me something else. But I’ve figured it out, at last. I know what you really are, Elena.”
For half a minute Elena sat in shocked silence. “If you do, then I might as well tell you right now that no one will believe you.”
“Maybe not,” Damon said, “especially if they’re human. But vampires are programmed to recognize the aura of a maiden. And you are unicorn-bait, Elena. I don’t know or care how you got your reputation. I was fooled by it myself for a long time, but I’ve finally found the truth.” Suddenly he was bending over her so that she could see nothing but him, his fine hair brushing her forehead, his lips close to hers, his dark eyes, fathomless, capturing her gaze.
“Elena,” he whispered. “This is your secret. I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but…you’re a virgin.”
He leaned in toward her, his lips just brushing hers, sharing his deliberate breaths with hers. They stayed like that for a long, long time, Damon seeming enthralled to be able to give Elena something from his own body: the oxygen that both she and he needed, but acquired in different ways. For many humans, the stillness of their bodies, the silence, and the sustained eye contact, for neither of them had shut their eyes, might have been too much. It might have felt as if they had plunged themselves into their partner’s personalities too far, that they were losing definition and becoming an ethereal part of each other before one kiss had even been completed.
But Elena was floating on air: on the breath that Damon gave her—and in the literal sense. If Damon’s strong, long, slender hands had not held her shoulders, she would have escaped his grip entirely.
Elena knew that there was another way that he could keep her down. He could Influence her to let gravity have its way with her. But so far, she had felt not the slightest touch of attempted Influence. It was as if he still wanted to give her the honor of choice. He would not seduce her by any of his many accustomed methods, the tricks of domination learned over half a millennium of nights.
Only the breathing, which was coming more and more quickly, as Elena felt her senses begin to swim and her heart began to pound. Was she truly sure that Stefan wouldn’t mind this? But Stefan had given her the greatest honor possible by trusting in her love and her judgment. And she was beginning to feel Damon’s true self, his overwhelming need for her; his vulnerability because that need was becoming like an obsession to him.
Without attempting to Influence her, he was still spreading great soft dark wings all around her so that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to escape. Elena felt herself begin to swoon with the intensity of the passion they had wrought between them. As a final gesture, not of repudiation, but of invitation, she arched her head back, exposing to him her bare throat, and let him feel her longing.
And as if great, crystal bells were ringing in the distance, she felt his jubilation at her voluntary surrender to the velvet darkness that was overtaking her.
She never felt the teeth that broke her skin and claimed her blood. Before that happened she was seeing stars. And then the universe was swallowed up in Damon’s dark eyes.
10
The next morning Elena got up and dressed quietly in the motel room, grateful for the extra space. Damon was gone, but she had expected that. He usually got his breakfast early while they were on the road, preying on waitresses at all-night truck stops or early-morning diners.
She was going to discuss that with him someday, she thought as she put the packet of ground coffee in the little two-cup percolator the motel provided. It smelled good.
But more urgently, she needed to talk to someone about what had happened last night. Stefan was her first choice, of course, but she’d found that out of body experiences weren’t just to be had for the asking. What she needed to do was call Bonnie and Meredith. She had to talk to them—it was her right—but now, of all times, she couldn’t. Intuitively, she felt that any contact between her and Fell’s Church might be bad.
And Matt had never checked in. Not once. She had no idea where he was on the road, but he had better be in Sedona on time, that was all. He had deliberately cut off all communication between them. Fine. As long as he showed up when he had promised.
But…Elena still needed to talk. To express herself.
Of course! She was an idiot! She still had her faithful companion that never said a word, and never kept her waiting. Pouring herself a cup of scalding black coffee on the way, Elena dug her diary out of the bottom of her duffel bag and opened it to a fresh, clean page. There was nothing like a fresh page and an ink pen that ran smoothly to start her writing.
Fifteen minutes later there was a rattle at one window and a minute later Damon was stepping through. He had several paper bags with him and Elena felt unaccountably pleased and homey. She had provided coffee, which was rather good even if it came with dried cream substitute, and Damon had supplied…
“Gasoline,” he said triumphantly, raising his eyebrows significantly at her as he set the bags on the table. “Just in case they try to use plants against us. No, thanks,” he added, seeing she was standing with a full cup of coffee held in his direction. “I had a garage mechanic while I was buying this. I’ll just go wash my hands.”
And he disappeared, walking right past Elena.
Walking right past her, without a glance, even though she was wearing her only clean pair of clothes left: jeans and a subtly colored top that looked white at first glance and only in the brightest light revealed that it was ethereally rainbow-shaded.
Without a single look, Elena thought, feeling a strange sensation that somehow her life had just lapped itself.
She started to throw the coffee away but then decided she needed it herself and drank it in a few scalding gulps.
Then she went and stood by her diary, reading over the last two or three pages.
“Are you ready to go?” Damon was shouting over the sound of running water in the bathroom.
“Yes—in just a minute.” Elena read the diary pages from the previous entry, and began skimming the one before that.
“We might as well go straight west from here,” Damon shouted. “We can make it in one day. They’ll think it’s a fein
t for one particular gate and search all the small ones. Meanwhile we’ll go on heading for the Kimon Gate and be days ahead of anyone tracking us. It’s perfect.”
“Uh-huh,” Elena said, reading.
“We ought to be able to meet Mutt tomorrow—maybe even this evening, depending on what kind of trouble they cause.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But first I wanted to ask you: do you think it’s a coincidence that our window is broken? Because I always put wards on them at night and I’m sure—” He passed a hand over his forehead. “I’m sure that I must have done that last night, as well. But something got through and broke the window and got away without a trace. That was why I bought all the the gasoline. If they try something with trees, I’ll blast them all back to Stonehenge.”
And half the innocent residents of the state, Elena thought grimly. But she was in a state of such shock that not much could make an impression on top of it.
“What are you doing now?” Damon was clearly ready to get up and going.
“Getting rid of something I don’t need,” Elena said, and flushed the toilet, watching the torn-up bits of her diary swirl round and round before disappearing.
“I wouldn’t worry about the window, though,” she said, coming back into the bedroom and slipping her shoes on. “And don’t get up for a minute, Damon. I’ve got to talk to you about something.”
“Oh, come on. It can wait until we’re on the road, can’t it?”
“No, it can’t, because we’ve got to pay for that window. You broke it last night, Damon. But you don’t remember doing it, do you?”
Damon stared at her. She could tell that his first temptation was to laugh. His second temptation, to which he gave in, was to think that she was nuts.
“I’m serious,” she said, once he had gotten up and started to pace toward the window with a distinct look of wanting to be a crow flying out of it. “Don’t you dare go anywhere, Damon, because there’s more.”
“More stuff I did that I don’t remember?” Damon lounged against the wall in one of his old, arrogant poses. “Maybe I smashed a few guitars, kept the radio on until four A.M.?”
“No. Not necessarily things from—last night,” Elena said, looking away. She couldn’t look at him. “Other things, from other days—”
“Like maybe I’ve been trying to sabotage this trip all along,” he said, his voice laconic. He eyed the ceiling and sighed heavily. “Maybe I’ve done it just to be alone with you—”
“Shut up, Damon!”
Where had that come from? Well, she knew that, of course. From her feelings about last night. The problem was that she also had to get some other things settled—seriously, if he would take them. Come to think of it, that might be a better way to go about this.
“Do you think that your feelings about Stefan—well, have changed at all recently?” Elena asked.
“What?”
“Do you think”—oh, this was so difficult looking into black eyes the color of endless space. Especially when last night they had been full of myriads of stars—“do you think that you’ve come to think of him differently? To honor his wishes more than you used to do?”
Now Damon was openly examining her, just as she was examining him.
“Are you serious?” he said.
“Completely,” she said, and, with a supreme effort, she sent her tears back where they were supposed to go.
“Something did happen last night,” he said. He was looking intently at her face. “Didn’t it?”
“Something happened, yes,” Elena said. “It was—it was more of a—” She had to let out her breath, and with that almost everything went.
“Shinichi! Shinichi, che bastardo! Imbroglione! That thief! I’m going to kill him slowly!” Suddenly Damon was everywhere. He was beside her, his hands on her shoulders; the next minute he was shouting imprecations out the window, then he was back, holding both her hands.
But only one word mattered to Elena. Shinichi. The kitsune with his black, scarlet-tipped hair, who had made them give up so much just for the location of Stefan’s cell.
“Mascalzone! Maleducato—” Elena lost track of Damon’s cursing again. So it was true. Last night had been completely stolen from Damon, taken from his mind as simply and completely as the interval when she had used Wings of Redemption and Wings of Purification on him. The latter he had agreed to. But last night—and what other things had the fox been taking?
To cut out an entire evening and night—and this evening and night in particular, implied that…
“He never shut down the connection between my mind and his. He still can reach inside me any time he chooses.” Damon had finally stopped swearing, and stopped moving. He was sitting on the couch opposite the bed with his hands drooping between his knees. He looked singularly forlorn.
“Elena, you have to tell me. What did he take from me last night? Please!” Damon looked as if he might fall on his knees in front of her, without melodrama. “If—if—it was what I think—”
Elena smiled, although tears were still running down her face. “It wasn’t—what anyone would think, exactly, I suppose,” she said.
“But—!”
“Let’s just say that this time—was mine,” Elena said. “If he’s stolen anything else from you, or if he tries to do it in the future, then he’s fair game. But this…will be my secret.” Until maybe someday you break into your huge boulder of secrets, she thought.
“Until I tear it out of him, along with his tongue and his tail!” snarled Damon, and it was truly the snarl of an animal. Elena was glad it wasn’t directed at her. “Don’t worry,” Damon added in a voice so chilling that it was almost more frightening than the animal fury. “I will find him, no matter where he tries to hide. And I will take it from him. I might just take his entire little furry hide off with it. I’ll make you a pair of mittens out of it, how’s that?”
Elena tried to smile and did a pretty good job. She was just coming to terms with what had happened herself, although she didn’t believe for a minute that Damon would really leave her alone on the subject until he forced the memory back out of Shinichi. She realized that on some level she was punishing Damon for what Shinichi had done, and that was wrong. I promise no one will know about last night, she told herself. Not until Damon does. I won’t even tell Bonnie and Meredith.
This made things a lot harder on her, and therefore probably more equitable.
As they were cleaning up the debris from Damon’s most recent fit of fury, he suddenly reached up to brush a stray tear from Elena’s cheek.
“Thank you—” Elena began. Then she stopped. Damon was touching his fingers to his lips.
He looked at her, startled and a little disappointed. Then he shrugged. “Still unicorn bait,” he said. “Did I say that last night?”
Elena hesitated, then decided that his words didn’t fall within the crucial time limits of secrecy.
“Yes, you did. But—you won’t give me away, will you?” she added, suddenly anxious. “I’ve promised my friends not to say anything.”
Damon was staring at her. “Why should I say anything about anybody? Unless you’re talking about the little redheaded one?”
“I told you; I’m not saying anything. Except that obviously Caroline isn’t a virgin. Well, with all the ruckus about her being pregnant—”
“But you remember,” Damon interjected, “I came to Fell’s Church before Stefan did; I just lurked in the shadows longer. The way you talked—”
“Oh, I know. We liked boys and boys liked us, and we already had reputations. So we just talked any way we felt like talking. Some of it may have been true, but a lot of it you could take two ways—and then of course you know how boys talk—”
Damon knew. He nodded.
“Well and so pretty soon everyone was talking about us as if we’d done everything with everyone. They even wrote stuff about it in the paper and the yearbook and on the bathroom walls. But we had a little poem, too, and
sometimes we even wrote it with our signatures on it. How did it go?” Elena cast her mind back a year, two years, more. Then she recited:
“Just because you heard it, doesn’t make it true.
Just because you read it, doesn’t make it so.
The next time that you hear it, it may be about you.
Don’t think that you can change their minds, just ’cause you know—you know!”
As Elena finished, she looked at Damon, suddenly feeling the urgent need to get to Stefan. “We’re almost there,” she said. “Let’s hurry.”
11
Arizona was as hot and barren a state as Elena had imagined. She and Damon drove directly to the Juniper Resort, and Elena was depressed, if not surprised, to see that Matt was not checked in.
“It can’t have taken him longer than us to get here,” she said, as soon as they’d been shown up to their rooms. “Unless—oh, God, Damon! Unless Shinichi caught him somehow.”
Damon sat down on a bed and regarded Elena grimly. “I guess I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you this—that the jerk would at least have the courtesy to tell you himself. But I’ve been tracking his aura ever since he left us. It’s been getting steadily farther away—in the direction of Fell’s Church.”
Sometimes, really bad news takes a while to sink in.
“You mean,” Elena said, “that he’s not going to show up here at all?”
“I mean that, as the crow flies, it wasn’t all that far from where we got the cars to Fell’s Church. He went in that direction. And he didn’t come back.”
“But why?” Elena demanded, as if logic could somehow conquer fact. “Why would he go off and leave me? Especially, why would he go to Fell’s Church, where they’re looking for him?”