by L. J. Smith
“Piercing herself?” Dr. Alpert said, sounding startled and horrified at the thought.
“No. She’s just acting pretty strangely. But it’s not a good place.” Squeeze.
I got it a long time ago, Bonnie thought in annoyance. I’m supposed to shut up now.
“Lead the way, please,” murmured Mrs. Flowers, seeming more fluttery than ever. “Back to the boardinghouse.”
And they let the doctor and Jim lead the way. Bonnie kept up a mumbling complaint in case anyone was listening. And she, and Matt, and Meredith all kept an eye on the doctor and Jim.
“Okay,” Elena said to Damon, “I’m dolled up like somebody on the deck of an ocean liner, I’m keyed up like an overstrung guitar, and I’m fed up with all this delay. Soooo…what is the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” She shook her head. Time had skipped and stretched for her.
Damon said, “In a way, we’re in a tiny snow globe I made for myself. It just means they won’t see or hear us for a few minutes. Now is the time to get the real talking done.”
“So we’d better talk fast.” She smiled at him, encouragingly.
She was trying to help him. She knew he needed help. He wanted to tell her the truth, but it was so far against his nature that it was like asking one hell of a wild horse to let you ride it, master it.
“There are more problems,” Damon got out huskily, and she knew he’d read her thoughts. “They—they tried to make it impossible for me to speak to you about this. They did it in grand old fairy tale style: by making up lots of conditions. I couldn’t tell you inside a house, nor could I tell you outside. Well, a widow’s walk isn’t inside, but you can’t say it’s outside, either. I couldn’t tell you by sunlight or by moonlight. Well, the sun’s gone down, and it’s another thirty minutes before the moon rises, and I say that that condition is met. And I couldn’t tell you while you were clothed or naked.” Elena automatically glanced down at herself in alarm, but nothing had changed as far as she could tell.
“And I figure that that condition is met, too, because even though he swore to me he was letting me out of one of his little snow globes, he didn’t do it. We’re in a house that’s not a house—it’s a thought in somebody’s mind. You’re wearing clothes that aren’t real clothes—they’re figments of imagination.”
Elena opened her mouth again, but he put two fingers to her lips and said, “Wait. Just let me go on while I still can. I seriously thought that he might never stop with the conditions, which he had picked up out of fairy tale literature. He’s obsessed with that, and with old English poetry. I don’t know why, because he’s from the other side of the world, from Japan. That’s who Shinichi is. And he has a twin sister…Misao.”
Damon stopped breathing hard after that, and Elena figured that there must have been some internal conditions against him telling her.
“He likes it if you translate his name as death-first, or number one in the matters of death. They’re both like teenagers, really, with their codes and their games, and yet they’re thousands of years old.”
“Thousands?” Elena prodded gently as Damon coasted to a stop, looking exhausted but determined.
“I hate to think of how many thousands of years the two of them have been doing mischief. Misao’s the one who’s been doing all the things to the girls in town. She possesses them with her malach and then she makes the malach make them do things. You remember your American history? The Salem witches? That was Misao, or someone like her. And it’s happened hundreds of times before that. You might look up the Ursuline nuns when you’re out of this. They were a quiet convent who became exhibitionists and worse—some went mad, and some who tried to help them became possessed.”
“Exhibitionists? Like Tamra? But she’s only a child—”
“Misao’s only a child, in her head.”
“And where does Caroline come in?”
“In any case like this, there’s got to be an instigator—someone who’s willing to bargain with the devil—or a demon, really—for their own ends. That’s where Caroline comes in. But for an entire town, they must be giving her something really big.”
“An entire town? They’re going to take over Fell’s Church…?”
Damon looked away. The truth was that they were going to destroy Fell’s Church, but there was no point in saying that. His hands were loosely fastened around his knees as he sat on a rickety old wooden chair on the widow’s walk.
“Before we can do anything to help anyone, we have to get out of here. Out of Shinichi’s world. This is important. I can—block him for short periods of time from watching us—but then I get tired and need blood. I need more than you can regenerate, Elena.” He looked up at her. “He’s put Beauty in with the Beast here and he’ll leave us to see which one will triumph.”
“If you mean kill the other, he’s in for a long wait on my end.”
“That’s what you think now. But this is a specially made trap. There’s nothing in here except the Old Wood as it was when we started driving around it. It’s also minus any other human habitations. The only house is this house, the only real living creatures are the two of us. You’ll want me dead soon enough.”
“Damon, I don’t understand. What do they want here? Even with what Stefan said about all the ley lines crossing under Fell’s Church and making a beacon…”
“It was your beacon that drew them, Elena. They’re curious, like kids, and I have a feeling that they may already have been in trouble wherever it is they really live. It’s possible they were here watching the end of the battle, watching you be reborn.”
“And so they want…to destroy us? To have fun? To take over the town and make us puppets?”
“All three, for a while. They could be having fun while someone else pleads their case in a high court in another dimension. And yes, fun, to them, means taking apart a town. Although I believe that Shinichi means to go back on his bargain with me for something he wants more than the town, so they may end up fighting each other.”
“What bargain with you, Damon?”
“For you. Stefan had you. I wanted you. He wants you.”
Despite herself, Elena felt cold pooling in her midriff, felt the distant shaking that began there and worked its way outward. “And the original bargain was?”
He looked away from her. “This is the bad part.”
“Damon, what have you done?” she cried, almost screaming it. “What was the bargain?” Her whole body was shaking.
“I made a bargain with a demon and, yes, I knew what he was when I did it. It was the night after your friends were attacked by the trees—after Stefan banished me from his room. That and—well, I was angry, but he took my anger and boosted it. He was using me, controlling me; I see that now. That’s when he started with the deals and conditions.”
“Damon—” Elena began shakily, but he went on, speaking rapidly as if he had to get through this, to see it to its conclusion, before he lost his nerve. “The final deal was that he would help me get Stefan out of the way so I could have you, while he got Caroline and the rest of the town to share with his sister. Thus trumping Caroline’s bargain for whatever she was getting from Misao.”
Elena slapped him. She wasn’t sure how she managed, wrapped up as she was, to get a hand free and to make the lightning-fast movement, but she did. And then she waited, watching a bead of blood hanging on his lip, for him to retaliate or for the strength to try to kill him.
33
Damon just sat there. Then he licked his mouth and said nothing, did nothing.
“You bastard!”
“Yes.”
“You’re saying that Stefan didn’t really walk out on me?”
“Yes. I mean—correct.”
“Who wrote the letter in my diary, then?”
Damon said nothing, but looked away.
“Oh, Damon!” She didn’t know whether to kiss him or shake him. “How could you—do you know,” she said in a choked and threatening vo
ice, “what I’ve gone through since he disappeared? Thinking every minute that he just suddenly decided to up and leave me? Even if he intended to come back—”
“I—”
“Don’t try to tell me you’re sorry! Don’t try to tell me you know what it feels like feeling that, because you don’t. How could you? You don’t have feelings like that!”
“I think—I’ve had some similar experience. But I wasn’t going to try to defend myself. Only to say that we have a limited time while I can block Shinichi from seeing us.”
Elena heart was shattering into a thousand pieces; she could feel each one pierce her. Nothing mattered anymore. “You lied, you broke your promise about never harming each other—”
“I know—and that should have been impossible. But it started that night when the trees closed in on Bonnie and Meredith and…Mark….”
“Matt!”
“That night, when Stefan knocked me around and showed me his true Power—it was because of you. He did it so I would stay away from you. Before that he’d just hoped to keep you hidden. And that night I felt…betrayed somehow. Don’t ask me why that should make sense, when for years before I’ve knocked him down and made him eat dirt any time I wanted.”
Elena tried to make sense of what he was saying in her shattered condition. And she couldn’t. But neither could she ignore a feeling that had just dropped down like an angel in chains grabbing hold of her.
Try to look with your other eyes. Look inside, not outside for the answer. You know Damon. You’ve already seen what is inside him. How long has it been there?
“Oh, Damon, I’m sorry! I know the answer. Damon—Damon. Oh, God! I can see what’s wrong with you. You’re more possessed than any of those girls.”
“I—have one of those things in me?”
Elena kept her eyes shut while she nodded. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she felt sick even as she made herself do it: gather enough human power to see with her other eyes, see as she had somehow learned to see inside people.
The malach that she had seen before inside Damon, and the one Matt had described had been huge for insects—as long as an arm, maybe. But now in Damon she sensed something…huge. Monstrous. Something that inhabited him completely, its transparent head inside his beautiful features, its chitinous body as long as his torso; its backward-twisted legs inside his legs. For a moment she thought she would faint; but then she controlled herself. Staring at the ghostly image, she thought, What Would Meredith Do?
Meredith would stay calm. She wouldn’t lie, but she would find some way to help.
“Damon, it’s bad. But there has to be some way to get it out of you—soon. I’m going to find that way. Because as long as it’s in you, Shinichi can make you do anything.”
“Will you listen to why I think it’s grown so large? That night, when Stefan dismissed me from his room, everyone else went home like good little girls and boys, but you and Stefan took a walk. A fly. A glide.”
For a long time it meant nothing to her, even though it had been the last time she’d seen Stefan. In fact, that was its only significance to her: it was the last time she and Stefan had…
She felt herself freeze over inside.
“You went into the Old Wood. You were still the little spirit child who didn’t really know what was right and what was wrong. But Stefan should have known better than to do that—on my own territory. Vampires take territory seriously. And in my own resting place—right in front of my eyes.”
“Oh, Damon! No!”
“Oh, Damon, yes! There you were, sharing blood, too absorbed to have noticed me even if I had leaped out and tried to pry you apart. You were wearing a high-necked white nightgown and you looked like an angel. I wanted to kill Stefan right then.”
“Damon—”
“And it was right then that Shinichi appeared. He didn’t need to be told what I was feeling. And he had a plan, an offer…a proposition.”
Elena shut her eyes again and shook her head. “He’d prepared you beforehand. You were already possessed and ready to be full of anger.”
“I don’t know why,” Damon went on as if he hadn’t heard her, “but I scarcely thought about what it would mean to Bonnie and Meredith and the rest of the town. All I could think of was you. All I wanted was you, and revenge on Stefan.”
“Damon, will you listen? By then, you had already been deliberately possessed. I could see the malach in you. You admit”—as she felt him swelling up to speak out—“that something was influencing you before that, forcing you to watch Bonnie and the others die at your feet that night. Damon, I think these things are even harder to get rid of than we imagine. For one thing, you wouldn’t normally stay and watch people do—private things, would you? Doesn’t the fact that you did in itself prove that something was wrong?”
“It’s…a theory,” Damon granted, not sounding happy.
“But don’t you see? That was what made you tell Stefan you only saved Bonnie out of whim, and that was what made you refuse to tell everyone that the malach were making you watch the trees’ attack, hypnotizing you. That and your stupid, stubborn pride.”
“Watch it on the compliments. I may dry up and blow away.”
“Don’t worry,” Elena said flatly, “whatever happens to the rest of us, I have a feeling your ego will survive. What happened next?”
“I made my deal with Shinichi. He would lure Stefan somewhere out of the way where I could see him alone, then smuggle him out of this place to somewhere Stefan couldn’t find you—”
Something bubbled up explosively again inside Elena. It was a tight hard ball of compressed elation. “Not kill him?” she managed to get out.
“What?”
“Stefan’s alive? He’s alive? He…he’s really alive?”
“Steady,” Damon replied coldly. “Steady on, Elena. We can’t have you fainting.” He held her by the shoulders. “You thought I meant to kill him?”
Elena was trembling almost too hard to answer. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I apologize for the omission.”
“He’s alive—for sure, Damon? You’re absolutely sure?”
“Positive.”
Without a thought of herself, without a thought of any kind, Elena did what she did best—gave in to impulse. She threw her arms around Damon’s neck and kissed him.
For a moment Damon just stood rigid with shock. He had contracted with killers to hijack her lover and decimate her town. But Elena’s mind would never see it that way.
“If he were dead—” He stopped and had to try again. “Shinichi’s whole bargain depends on keeping him alive—alive and away from you. I couldn’t risk you killing yourself or really hating me”—again the note of distant coldness. “With Stefan dead, what hold would I have over you, princess?”
Elena ignored all this. “If he’s alive, I can find him.”
“If he remembers you. But what if every memory he had of you were taken away?”
“What?” Elena wanted to explode. “If every memory of Stefan were taken away from me,” she said icily, “I would still fall in love with him the very moment I saw him. And if every memory of me were taken away from Stefan, he would wander all over the world looking for something without knowing what he was looking for.”
“Very poetic.”
“But, oh, Damon, thank you for not letting Shinichi kill him!”
He shook his head at her, looking bewildered at himself. “I couldn’t—seem to—do that. Something about giving my word. I figured that if he were free and happy and didn’t remember, that would satisfy enough…”
“Of your promise to me? You figured wrong. But it doesn’t matter now.”
“It does matter. You’ve suffered for it.”
“No, Damon. All that really matters is that he’s not dead—and he didn’t leave me. There’s still hope.”
“But Elena,” Damon’s voice had life now; it was both excited and inflexible: “Can’t you see? Past
history aside, you have to admit that we’re the ones that belong together. You and I are simply better suited to each other by nature. Deep down you know that, because we understand each other. We’re on the same intellectual level—”
“So is Stefan!”
“Well, all I can say is that he does a remarkable job of hiding it, then. But can’t you feel it? Don’t you feel”—his grip was becoming uncomfortable now—“that you could be my princess of darkness—that something deep inside you wants to? I can see it, if you can’t.”
“I can’t be anything to you, Damon. Except a decent sister-in-law.”
He shook his head, laughing harshly. “No, you’re only suited for the main role. Well, all I can say is that if we live through the fight with the twins, you’ll see things in yourself that you’ve never seen before. And you’ll know that we’re more suited together.”
“And all I can say is that if we live through this fight with the Bobbsey twins from Hell, it sounds as if we’re going to need all the spiritual power that we can get afterward. And that means getting Stefan back.”
“We may not be able to get him back. Oh, I agree—even if we drive Shinichi and Misao away from Fell’s Church, the likelihood that we’re going to be able to do away with them completely is about zero. You’re no fighter. We’re probably not even going to be able to hurt them very much. But even I don’t know exactly where Stefan is.”
“Then the twins are the only ones who can help us.”
“If they still can help us—oh, all right, I’ll admit it. The Shi no Shi are probably complete frauds. They probably take a few memories from vampire chumps—memories are the coin of choice in the realm of the Other Side—and then send them away while the cash register is still jingling. They’re frauds. The whole place is a giant slum and freakshow—sort of like a rundown Vegas.”
“But they’re not afraid that the vampires they cheat will want revenge?”
Damon laughed, this time musically. “A vampire who doesn’t want to be a vampire is about the lowest object on the totem pole on the Other Side. Oh, except for humans. Along with lovers who’ve fulfilled suicide pacts, kids who jump off the roof because they think their Superman cape can make them fly—”