by L. J. Smith
“We look at things…differently,” Shinichi had said, fixing Damon with those strange golden eyes. “Money doesn’t mean much to us. What does? The deathbed agonies of an old rogue who fears he’s going to hell. Watching him sweat, trying to remember encounters he’s long forgotten. A baby’s first conscious tear of loneliness. The emotions of an unfaithful wife when her husband catches her with her lover. A maiden’s…well, her first kiss and her first night of discovery. A brother willing to die for his brother. Things like that.”
And many other things that couldn’t be mentioned in polite company, Damon thought. A lot were about pain. They were emotional leeches, sucking up the feelings of mortals to make up for the emptiness of their own souls.
He could feel the sickness inside him again as he tried to imagine—to calculate—the pain Elena must have felt, leaping out of his car. She must have expected an agonizing death—but it was still better than staying with him.
This time, before entering the door that had been a white-tiled bathroom, he thought, Kitchen, modern, with plenty of ice packs in the freezer.
Nor was he disappointed. He found himself in a strongly masculine kitchen, with chrome appliances and black-and-white tiling. In the freezer: six ice packs. He took three back to Elena and put one around her shoulder, one at her elbow, and one around her ankle. Then he went back into the kitchen’s spotless beauty for a glass of ice-cold water.
Tired. So tired.
Elena felt as if her body were weighted with lead.
Every limb…every thought…lapped in lead.
For instance, there was something she was supposed to be doing—or not doing—right now. But she couldn’t make the thought come to the surface of her mind. It was too heavy. Everything was too heavy. She couldn’t even open her eyes.
A scraping sound. Someone was near, on a chair. Then there was liquid coolness on her lips, just a few drops, but it stimulated her to try to hold the cup herself and drink. Oh, delicious water. It tasted better than anything she’d ever had before. Her shoulder hurt terribly, but it was worth the pain to drink and drink—no! The glass was being pulled away. She tried, feebly, to hang onto it, but it was pulled out of her grasp.
Then she tried to touch her shoulder, but those gentle, invisible hands wouldn’t let her, not until they had washed her own hands with warm water. After that they packed the ice packs around her and wrapped her like a mummy in a sheet. The cold numbed her immediate feelings of pain, although there were other pains, deep inside….
It was all too difficult to think about. As the hands removed the ice packs again—she was shivering with cold now—she let herself lapse back into sleep.
Damon treated Elena and dozed, treated and dozed. In the perfectly appointed bathroom, he found a tortoiseshell hairbrush and a comb. They looked serviceable. And one thing he knew for certain: Elena’s hair had never looked like this in her life—or unlife. He tried to stroke the brush gently through her hair and found that the tangles were much harder to get out than he’d imagined. When he pulled harder on the brush, she moved and murmured in that strange sleep-language of hers.
And, finally, it was the hair brushing that did it. Elena, without opening her eyes, reached up and took the brush from his hand and then, when it hit a major tangle, frowned, reached up to grasp a fistful and try to get the brush through it. Damon sympathized. He’d had long hair at times during his centuries of existence—when it couldn’t be helped, and though his hair was as naturally fine as Elena’s, he knew the frustrated feeling that you were ripping your hair out by the roots. Damon was about to take the brush from her again, when she opened her eyes.
“What—?” she said, and then she blinked.
Damon had tensed, ready to push her into mental blackout if it were necessary. But she didn’t even try to hit him with the brush.
“What…happened?” What Elena was feeling was clear: she didn’t like this. She was unhappy about another awakening with only a vague idea of what had been going on when she slept.
As Damon, poised for fight or flight, watched her face, she slowly began to put together what had happened to her.
“Damon?” She gave him that no-holds-barred lapis gaze.
It said, Am I being tortured, or treated, or are you just an interested bystander, enjoying somebody’s pain while drinking a glass of cognac?
“They cook with cognac, princess. They drink Armagnac. And I don’t drink…either,” Damon said. He spoiled the entire effect by adding hastily, “That’s not a threat. I swear to you, Stefan left me as your bodyguard.”
This was technically true if you considered the facts: Stefan had yelled, “You’d better make sure nothing happens to Elena, you double-dealing bastard, or I’m going to find a way to come back and rip off your—” The rest had been muffled in the fight, but Damon had gotten the gist. And now he took the assignment seriously.
“Nothing else will hurt you, if you’ll allow me to watch over you,” he added, now getting into the area of the fictitious, since whoever had frightened or pulled her out of the car had obviously been around when he had. But nothing would get her in the future, he swore to himself. However he had blundered this last time, from now on there would be no further attacks on Elena Gilbert—or someone would die.
He wasn’t trying to spy on her thoughts, but as she stared into his eyes for a long moment, they projected with total clarity—and utter mystery—the words: I knew I was right. It was someone else all along. And he knew that under her pain, Elena felt a huge sense of satisfaction.
“I hurt my shoulder.” She reached up with her right hand to grip it, but Damon stopped her.
“You dislocated it,” Damon said. “It’s going to hurt for a while.”
“And my ankle…but someone…I remember being in the woods and looking up and it was you. I couldn’t breathe but you tore the creepers off me and you picked me up in your arms….” She looked at Damon in bewilderment. “You saved me?”
The statement had the sound of a question, but it wasn’t. She was wondering over something that seemed impossible. Then she began to cry.
A baby’s first conscious tear of loneliness. The emotions of an unfaithful wife when her husband catches her with her lover…
And maybe a young girl’s weeping when she believes that her enemy has saved her from death.
Damon ground his teeth in frustration. The thought that Shinichi might be watching this, feeling Elena’s emotions, savoring them…it was impossible to bear. Shinichi would give Elena her memory back again, he was certain of that. But at a time and place most amusing to him.
“It was my job,” he said tightly. “I’d sworn to do it.”
“Thank you,” Elena gasped between her sobs. “No, please—don’t turn away. I really mean it. Ohhh—is there a box of tissues—or anything dry?” Her body was heaving with sobs again.
The perfect bathroom had a box of tissues. Damon brought it back to Elena.
He looked away as she used them, blowing her nose again and again as she sobbed. Here there was no enchanted and enchanting spirit, no grim and sophisticated fighter of evil, no dangerous coquette. There was only a girl broken by pain, gasping like a wounded doe, sobbing like a child.
And undoubtedly his brother would know what to say to her. He, Damon, had no idea of what to do—except that he knew he was going to kill for this. Shinichi would learn what it meant to tangle with Damon when Elena was involved.
“How do you feel?” he asked brusquely. No one would be able to say he’d taken advantage of this—no one would be able to say he’d hurt her only to…to make use of her.
“You gave me your blood,” Elena said wonderingly, and as he looked quickly down at his rolled-up sleeve, she added, “No—it’s just a feeling I know. When I first—came back to Earth, after the spirit life. Stefan would give me his blood, and eventually I would feel…this way. Very warm. A little uncomfortable.”
He swung around and looked at her. “Uncomfortable?”
“Too full—here.” She touched her neck. “We think it’s a symbiotic thing…for vampires and humans who live together.”
“For a vampire Changing a human into a vampire, you mean,” he said sharply.
“Except I didn’t Change when I was part spirit still. But then—I turned back human.” She hiccupped, tried a pathetic smile, and used the brush again. “I’d ask you to look at me and see that I haven’t Changed, but…” She made a helpless little motion.
Damon sat and imagined what it would have been like, taking care of the spirit-child Elena. It was a tantalizing idea.
He said bluntly, “When you said you were a little uncomfortable before, did you mean that I should take some of your blood?”
She half glanced away, then looked back. “I told you I was grateful. I told you that I felt…too full. I don’t know how else to thank you.”
Damon had had centuries of training in discipline or he would have thrown something across the room. It was a situation to make you laugh…or weep. She was offering herself to him as thanks for rescue from suffering that he should have saved her from, and had failed.
But he was no hero. He wasn’t like St. Stefan, to refuse this ultimate of prizes; whatever condition she was in.
He wanted her.
30
Matt had given up on clues. As far as he could tell, something had caused Elena to bypass the Dunstan house and barn completely, hopping on and on until she got to a squashed and torn bed of thin creeping vines. They hung limp from Matt’s fingers, but they reminded him, disquietingly, of the feeling of the bug’s tentacles around his neck.
And from there on there was no sign of human movement. It was as if a UFO had beamed her up.
Now, from making forays to all sides until he had lost the patch of creepers, he was lost in the deep Wood. If he wanted to, he could fantasize that all sorts of noises were all around him. If he wanted to, he could imagine that the light of the flashlight was no longer as bright as it had been, that it had a sickly yellowish tinge….
All this time, while searching, he had kept as quiet as possible, realizing that he might be trying to sneak up on something that didn’t want to be snuck up on. But now, somewhere inside him, something was swelling up and his ability to stop it was weakening by the second.
When it burst out of him, it startled him as much as it might have any possible listeners.
“Ellleeeeeeeeeeeeeeenaaaa!”
From the time when he’d been a child, Matt had been taught to say his nighttime prayers. He didn’t know much else about church, but he did have a deep and sincere feeling that there was Someone or Something out there that looked after people. That somewhere and somehow it all made sense, and that there were reasons for everything.
That belief had been severely tested during the past year.
But Elena’s return from the dead had swept away all his doubts. It had seemed to prove everything that he’d always wanted to believe in.
You wouldn’t give her back to us for just a few days, and then take her away again? he wondered, and the wondering was really a form of praying. You wouldn’t—would You?
Because the thought of a world without Elena, without her sparkle; her strong will; her way of getting into crazy adventures—and then getting out of them, even more crazily—well, it was too much to lose. The world would be painted in drab grays and dark browns again without her. There would be no fire-engine reds, no flashes of parakeet green, no cerulean, no daffodil, no mercury silver—and no gold. No sprinkles of gold in endless blue lapis lazuli eyes.
“Elllleeeeeeenaaaa! Damn you, you answer me! It’s Matt, Elena! Elleeeeee—”
He broke off quite suddenly and listened. For a moment his heart leaped and his whole body started. But then he made out the words he could hear.
“Eleeeeeenaaa? Maaaatt? Where are you?”
“Bonnie? Bonnie! I’m here!” He turned his flashlight straight up, slowly twisting it in a circle. “Can you see me?”
“Can you see us?”
Matt pivoted slowly. And—yes—there were the beams of one flashlight, two flashlights, three!
His heart leaped to see three beams. “I’m coming toward you,” he shouted, and suited the action to the word. Secrecy had been long ago left behind. He was running into things, yanking at tendrils that tried to grab his ankles, but bellowing all the while, “Stay where you are! I’m coming to you!”
And then the flashlight beams were right in front of him, blinding him, and somehow he had Bonnie in his arms, and Bonnie was crying. That at least lent the situation some normality. Bonnie was crying against his chest and he was looking at Meredith, who was smiling anxiously, and at…Mrs. Flowers? It had to be, she was wearing that gardening hat with the artificial flowers on it, as well as what looked like about seven or eight woolly sweaters.
“Mrs. Flowers?” he said, his mouth finally catching up with his brain. “But—where’s Elena?”
There was a sudden droop in the three people watching him, as if they had been on tiptoes for news, and now they had slumped in disappointment.
“We haven’t seen her,” Meredith said quietly. “You were with her.”
“I was with her, yeah. But then Damon came. He hurt her, Meredith”—Matt felt Bonnie’s arms clench on him. “He had her rolling on the ground having seizures. I think he’s going to kill her. And—he hurt me. I guess I blacked out. When I woke up she was gone.”
“He took her away?” Bonnie asked fiercely.
“Yeah, but…I don’t understand what happened next.” Painfully, he explained about Elena seemingly jumping out of the car and the tracks that led nowhere.
Bonnie shivered in his arms.
“And then some other weird stuff happened,” Matt said. Slowly, faltering sometimes, he did his best to explain about Kristin, and the similarities to Tami.
“That is…just plain weird,” Bonnie said. “I thought I had an answer, but if Kristin hasn’t had any contact with any of the other girls…”
“You were probably thinking something about the Salem witches, dear,” said Mrs. Flowers. Matt still couldn’t get used to Mrs. Flowers talking to them. She went on, “But you don’t really know with whom Kristin has been in the last few days. Or with whom Jim has been, for that matter. Children have quite a lot of freedom in this day and age, and he might be—what do they call it?—a carrier.”
“Besides, even if this is possession, it may be an entirely different kind of possession,” Meredith said. “Kristin lives out in the Old Wood. The Old Wood is full of these insects—these malach. Who knows whether it happened when she simply stepped outside her door? Who knows what was waiting for her?”
Now Bonnie was shaking in Matt’s arms. They’d turned out all the flashlights but one, to conserve energy, but it sure made for spooky surroundings.
“But what about the telepathy?” Matt said to Mrs. Flowers. “I mean, I don’t believe for a minute that real witches were attacking those Salem girls. I think they were repressed girls who had mass hysteria when they all got together, and somehow everything got out of hand. But how could Kristin know to call me—to call me—the same name that Tamra did?”
“Maybe we’ve all got it all wrong,” Bonnie said, her voice buried somewhere in Matt’s solar plexus. “Maybe it’s not like Salem at all, where the—the hysteria spread out horizontally, if you see what I mean. Maybe there’s somebody on top here, who’s spreading it wherever they want to.”
There was a brief silence, and then Mrs. Flowers murmured, “‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…’”
“You mean you think that’s right? But then who is it that’s on top? Who’s doing all of this?” Meredith demanded. “It can’t be Damon because Damon saved Bonnie twice—and me once.” Before anyone could muster words to ask about that, she was going on. “Elena was pretty sure that something was possessing Damon. So who else is it?”
“Somebody we haven’t met yet,” Bonnie muttered ominously. “
Somebody we aren’t going to like.”
With perfect timing there was the crackle of a branch behind them. As one person, as one body, they turned to look.
“What I really want,” Damon said to Elena, “is to get you warm. And that either means cooking you something hot so you’ll warm up from the inside or putting you in the tub so you’ll warm up from the outside. And considering what happened last time—”
“I…don’t feel I can eat anything….”
“Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?”
She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. “It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a start.”
“Well? I promise not to mix the apples and the chicken together.”
“I could try some soup,” Elena said slowly. “And, oh, Damon I’m so thirsty just for plain water. Please.”
“I know, but you’ll drink too much, get pains. I’ll make soup.”
“It comes in little cans with red paper on them. You pull the tab on top to make it come off….” Elena stopped as he turned to the door.
Damon knew she had serious doubts about the entire project, but he also knew that if he brought her anything passably drinkable she would drink it. Thirst did that to you.
He was unliving proof of the example.
As he went through the door there was a sudden horrendous noise, like a pair of kitchen choppers coming together. It nearly took off his—his rear from top to bottom, by the sound of it.
“Damon!” A voice crying weakly through the door. “Damon, are you all right? Damon! Answer me!”
Instead, he turned around, studied the door, which looked perfectly normal, and opened it. Anyone watching him open it would have wondered because he put a key in the unlocked door, said “Elena’s room” and then unlocked and opened the door.