She tried again to lift herself up, and this time she succeeded. Almost immediately a hand was extended to her and, automatically, she took it, letting it draw her to her feet.
She faced—whoever it was, Damon or whatever was using his features or his body. Despite the almost-darkness, he still wore those wraparound sunglasses. She could make nothing out of the rest of his face.
“Now,” the thing in the sunglasses said. “You’re going to come with me.”
It was nearing full dark, and they were in the clearing that was a beast.
This place—it was unwholesome. She was afraid of the clearing as she had never been afraid of a person or creature. It resounded with malevolence, and she couldn’t shut her ears to it.
She had to keep thinking, and keep thinking straight, she thought.
She was terribly frightened for Matt; frightened that Damon had taken too much blood or had played too hard with his toy; breaking it.
And she was afraid of this Damon thing. She was also worried about the influence this place might have had on the real Damon. The woods around them shouldn’t have any effect on vampires, except to hurt them. Was the possible-Damon inside the possessor hurt? If he could understand anything of what was happening, could he distinguish that hurt from his hurt and anger at Stefan?
She didn’t know. She did know that there had been a terrible look in his eyes when Stefan had told him to get out of the boardinghouse. And she did know that there were creatures in the forest, malach, that could influence a person’s mind. She was afraid, deeply afraid, that the malach were using Damon now, blackening his darkest desires and twisting him into something horrible, something he had never been even at his worst.
But how could she be sure? How could she know whether or not there was something else behind the malach, something that controlledthem? Her soul was telling her that this might be the case, that Damon might be completely unconscious of what his body was doing, but that might just be wishful thinking.
Certainly all she could sense around her were small, evil creatures. She could feel them encircling the clearing, strange insect-like beings like the one that had attacked Matt. They were in a furor of excitement, whipping their tentacles around to make a noise almost like a buzzing helicopter.
Were they influencing Damon now? Certainly, he had never before hurt any of the other humans she knew the way he had today. She had to get all three of them out of this place. It was diseased, contaminated. Once again she felt a wave of longing for Stefan, who might know what to do in this situation.
She turned, slowly, to look at Damon.
“May I call someone to come and help Matt? I’m afraid to leave him here; I’m afraidthey’ll get him.” Just as well to let him know that she knewthey were hiding in the liverwort and the rhododendron and mountain holly bushes all around.
Damon hesitated; he seemed to consider it. Then he shook his head.
“We wouldn’t want to give them too many clues to where you are,” he said cheerily. “It’ll be an interesting experiment to see if the malach do get him—and how they do it.”
“It wouldn’t be an interesting experiment forme.” Elena’s voice was flat. “Matt is my friend.”
“Nevertheless, we’ll leave him here for now. I don’t trust you—even to giveme a message to Meredith or Bonnie—to send on my phone.”
Elena didn’t say anything. As a matter of fact, he was right not to trust her, as she and Meredith and Bonnie had worked out an elaborate code of harmless-sounding phrases as soon as they knew that Damon was after Elena. A lifetime ago for her—literally—but she could still remember them.
Silently, she simply followed Damon to the Ferrari.
She was responsible for Matt.
“You’re not putting up much of an argument this time, and I wonder what you’re plotting.”
“I’m plotting that we might as well get on with it. If you’ll tell me what ‘it’ is,” she said, more bravely than she felt.
“Well, now what ‘it’ is, is up to you.” Damon gave Matt a kick in the ribs in passing. He was now pacing in a circle around the clearing, which seemed smaller than ever, a circle which didn’t include her. She took a few paces toward him—and slipped. She didn’t know how it happened. Maybe the giant animal breathed. Maybe it was just the slick pine needles under her boots.
But one moment she was heading for Matt and the next her feet had gone out from under her and she was heading for the ground with nothing to grab onto.
And then, smoothly and unhurriedly, she was in Damon’s arms. With centuries of Virginian etiquette behind her she automatically said, “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Yes, she thought. That’s all it means. It ishis pleasure, and that’s all that matters.
That was when she noticed that they were headed for her Jaguar.
“Oh, no, we don’t,” she said.
“Oh, yes, we will—if I please,” he said. “Unless you want to see your friend Matt suffer like that again. At some point his heartwill give out.”
“Damon.” She pushed her way out of his arms, standing on her own feet. “I don’t understand. This isn’t like you. Take what you want and go.”
He just kept looking at her. “I was doing just that.”
“You don’t have to”—for the life of her, she couldn’t keep a tremor out of her voice—“take me anywhere special to take my blood. And Matt won’t know. He’s out.”
For a long moment there was silence in the clearing. Utter silence. The night birds and the crickets stopped making their music. Suddenly Elena felt as if she were on some kind of thrill ride that plummeted down, leaving her stomach and organs still at the top. Then Damon put it in words.
“I wantyou. Exclusively.”
Elena braced herself, trying to keep a clear head despite the fog that seemed to be invading it.
“You know that that’s not possible.”
“I know that it was possible for Stefan. When you were with him, you didn’t think about anything but him. You couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel anything but him.”
Elena’s gooseflesh now covered her whole body. Speaking carefully around the obstruction in her throat, she said, “Damon, did you do something to Stefan?”
“Now, why would I want to do something like that?”
Very low, Elena said, “You and I both know why.”
“Do you mean,” Damon started out speaking casually, but his voice grew more intense as he gripped her shoulders, “so that you would see nothing butme, hear nothing butme, think of nothing butme?”
Still quietly, still controlling her terror, Elena said, “Take off the sunglasses, Damon.”
Damon glanced upwards and around as if to reassure himself that no last ray of sunset could pierce the green-gray world that surrounded them. Then with one hand, he stripped off the sunglasses.
Elena found herself looking into eyes that were so black there seemed to be no difference between iris and pupil. She…turned a switch in her brain, did something so that all her senses were tuned onto Damon’s face, his expression, the Power circulating through him.
His eyes were still as black as the depths of an unexplored cave. No red. But then, he’d had time, this time to get ready for her.
I believe what I saw before, Elena thought. With myown eyes.
“Damon, I’ll do anything, anything you want. But you have to tell me.Did you do something to Stefan?”
“Stefan was still high onyour blood when he left you,” he reminded her, and before she could speak to deny this—“and, to answer your question precisely, I don’t know where he is. On that, you have my word. But in any case, it’s true, what you were thinking earlier,” he added, as Elena tried to step away, to get out of the grip he had on her upper arms. “I’mthe only one, Elena. The only one you haven’t conquered. The only one you can’t manipulate. Intriguing, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, in spite of her fear, she was furious. “Then why hurt Matt? He’s just a friend. What’s he got to do with it?”
“Just a friend.” And Damon began to laugh the way he had before, eerily.
“Well, I knowhe didn’t have anything to do with Stefan leaving,” Elena snapped.
Damon turned on her, but by then the clearing was so dim that she couldn’t read his expression at all. “And who saidI did? But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make use of the opportunity.” He picked Matt up easily and held up something that shone silver from his other hand.
Her keys. From her jeans pocket. Taken, no doubt, when she was lying unconscious on the ground.
She could tell nothing from his voice, either, except that it was bitter and grim—all usual if he were talking about Stefan. “With your blood in him, I couldn’t have killed my brother if I had tried, the last time I saw him,” he added.
“Didyou try?”
“As a matter of fact, no. You have my word on that as well.”
“And you don’t know where he is?”
“No.” He hefted Matt.
“What do you think you’re doing?
“Taking him with us. He’s hostage for your good behavior.”
“Oh, no,” Elena said flatly, pacing. “This is between you and me. You’ve hurt Matt enough.” She blinked and once again almost screamed to find Damon much too close, much too fast. “I’ll do whatever you want.Whatever you want. But not here out in the open and not with Matt around.”
Come on, Elena, she was thinking. Where’s that vampy behavior when you want it? You used to be able to vamp any guy; now, just because he’s a vampire, you can’t do it?
“Take me somewhere,” she said softly, intertwining her arm with his free one, “but in the Ferrari. I don’t want to go in my car. Take me in the Ferrari.”
Damon paced back to the trunk of the Ferrari, unlocked it, and looked inside. Then he looked at Matt. It was clear that the tall, well-built boy wasn’t going to fit in to the trunk…at least, not with all his limbs attached.
“Don’t you eventhink about it,” Elena said. “Just put him in the Jaguar with the keys and he’ll be safe enough—lock him in.” Elena fervently prayed that what she was saying was true.
For a moment Damon said nothing, then he looked up with a smile so brilliant she could see it in the dusk. “All right,” he said. He dumped Matt on the ground again. “But if you try to run while I move the cars, I runhim over.”
Damon, Damon, will you never understand? Humans don’tdo that to their friends, Elena thought as he brought the Ferrari out so he could bring the Jaguar in, so he could dump Matt in it.
“All right,” she said in a small voice. She was afraid to look at Damon. “Now—what do you want?”
Damon inclined from the waist in a very graceful bow, indicating the Ferrari. She wondered what would happen once she got in. If he were any normal attacker—if there wasn’t Matt to think about—if she didn’t fear the forest even more than she feared him…
She hesitated and then got into Damon’s car.
Inside, she pulled her camisole out of her jeans to conceal the fact that she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. She doubted Damon ever wore a seat belt or locked his doors or anything like that. Precautions weren’t his thing. And now she prayed that he had other matters on his mind.
“Seriously, Damon, where are we going?” she said as he got into the Ferrari.
“First, how about one for the road?” Damon suggested, his voice fake-jocular.
Elena had expected something like this. She sat passively as Damon took her chin in fingers that trembled slightly, and tilted it up. She shut her eyes as she felt the double-snakebite pinch of razor-sharp fangs piercing her skin. She kept her eyes shut as her attacker fastened his mouth on the bleeding flesh and began to drink deeply. Damon’s idea of “one for the road” was just what she would have expected: enough to put both of them in danger. But it wasn’t until she actually began to feel as if she would pass out any minute that she shoved at his shoulder.
He held on for a few more very painful seconds just to show who was Boss here. Then he let go of her, licking his lips avidly, his eyes actually gleaming at herthrough the Ray-Bans.
“Exquisite,” he said. “Unbelievable. Why you’re—”
Yeah, tell me I’m a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That’s the way to my heart.
“Can we go now?” she asked pointedly. And then, as she suddenly remembered Damon’s driving habits, she added deliberately, “Be careful; this road twists and turns a lot.”
It had the effect she had hoped for. Damon hit the accelerator and they shot out of the clearing at high speed. Then they were taking the sharp turns of the Old Wood faster than Elena had ever driven through here; faster than anyone had dared go with her as a passenger before.
But still, they wereher roads. From childhood on she had played here. There was only one family who lived right on the perimeter of the Old Wood, but their driveway was on the right side of the road—her side—and she got herself ready for it. He would take the sudden curve to the left just before the second curve that was the Dunstans’ driveway—and on the second curve she would jump.
There was no sidewalk edging Old Wood Road, of course, but at that point there was a heavy growth of rhododendron and other bushes. All she could do was pray. Pray that she didn’t snap her neck on impact. Pray that she didn’t break an arm or leg before she limped through the few yards of woods to the driveway. Pray that the Dunstans were home when she pounded on their door and pray that they listened when she told them not to let the vampire in behind her.
She saw the curve. She didn’t know why the Damon-thing couldn’t read her mind, but apparently he couldn’t. He wasn’t speaking and his only precaution against her trying to get out seemed to be speed.
She was going to get hurt, she knew that. But the worst part of any hurt was fear, and she wasn’t afraid.
As he rounded the curve, she pulled the handle and pushed open the door as hard as she could with her hands while she kicked it as hard as she could with her feet. The door swung open, quickly being caught by centrifugal force, as were Elena’s legs. As was Elena.
Her kick alone took her halfway out of the car. Damon grabbed for her and got only a handful of hair. For a moment she thought he would keep her in, even without keeping hold of her. She tumbled over and over in the air, floating, remaining about two feet off the ground, reaching out to grab fronds, branches of bushes, anything she could use to slow her velocity. And in this place where magic and physics met; she was able to do it, to slow while still floating on Damon’s power, although it took her much farther from the Dunstans’ house than she wanted.
Then she did hit the ground, bounced, and did her best to twist in the air, to take the impact on her buttock or the back of a shoulder, but something went wrong and her left heel hit first—God!—and tangled, swinging her around completely, slamming her knee into concrete—God, God!—flipping her in the air and bringing her down on her right arm so hard it seemed to be trying to drive it into her shoulder.
She had the wind knocked out of her by the first blow and was forced to hiss air in by the second and third.
Despite the flipping, flying universe, there was one sign she couldn’t miss—an unusual spruce growing into the road that she had noticed ten feet behind her when she’d exploded out of the car. Tears were pouring uncontrollably down her cheeks as she pulled at tendrils of bush that had entangled her ankle—and a good thing, too. A few tears might have blurred her vision, made her afraid—as she had been with the last two explosions of pain—that she might pass out. But she was out on the road, her eyes were washed clear, she could see the spruce and the sunset both directly ahead, and she was thoroughly conscious. And that meant that if she headed for the sunset but at a forty-five-degree angle to her right, she couldn’t miss the Dunstans’; driveway, house, barn, cornfield were all there to guide her after perhaps twenty-five steps in the woods.
She had barely stopped rolling when she was pulling at the bush that had thwarted her and getting to her feet just as she pulled the last entangling stems from her hair. The calculation about the Dunstans’ house happened instantaneously in her head, even as she turned and saw the crushed swath she’d cut through the greenery and the blood on the road.
At first she looked at her skinned hands in bewilderment; they couldn’t have left such a gory trail. And they hadn’t. One knee had been skinned—flayed, really—right through her jeans—and one seriously messed up leg, less bloody but causing her sheets of pain like white lighting even while she was not trying to move it. Two arms with quite a lot of skin removed.
No time to find out how much or to figure out what she’d done to her shoulder. Ascreeeeeeech of brakes ahead. Lord, he’s slow. No, I’m fast, hyped up by pain and terror. Use it!
She ordered her legs to sprint into the forest. Her right leg obeyed, but when she swiveled her left and it hit the ground fireworks went off behind her eyes. She was in a state of hyper-alertness; she saw the stick even as she was falling. She rolled over once or twice, which caused dull red flares of pain to go off in her head, and then she was able to grab it. It might have been specially designed for a crutch, around underarm height and blunt on one end but sharp on the other. She tucked it under her left arm and somehow willed herself up from her place in the mud: boosting off with her right leg and catching herself on the crutch so that she scarcely had to touch her left foot to the ground.
She’d got turned around in the fall and had to twist to right herself again—but there she saw it, the last remains of sunset and the road behind her. Head forty-five-degrees right from that glow, she thought. Thank God, it was her right arm that was messed up; this way she could support herself with her left shoulder on the crutch. Still without a moment’s hesitation, without giving Damon an extra millisecond to follow her, she plunged in her chosen direction into the forest.
Into the Old Wood.
When Damon woke up, he was wrestling with the wheel of the Ferrari. He was on a narrow road, heading almost straight into a glorious sunset—and the passenger door was waving open.
Once again, only the combination of almost instantaneous reflex and perfectly designed automobile allowed him to keep out of the wide, muddy ditches on either side of the one-lane road. But he managed it and ended up with the sunset at his back, gazing at the long shadows down the road and wondering what the hell had just happened to him.
Was he sleep-driving now? The passenger door—why was it open?
And then something happened. A long, thin thread, slightly waving, almost like a single strand of gossamer, lit up as the reddish sunlight hit it. It was dangling from the top of the passenger window, which was shut, with the roof down.
He didn’t bother to pull the car to one side, but stopped in the middle of the road and went around to look at that hair.
In his fingers, held toward the light, it turned white. But turned toward the dark of the forest, it showed its true color: gold.
A long, slightly waving, golden hair.
Elena.
As soon as he had identified it, he got back into the car and began to backtrack. Something had ripped Elena right out of his car without putting so much as a scratch on the paint. What could have done that?
How had he managed to get Elena to go for a spin anyway? And why couldn’t he remember? Had they both been attacked…?
When he backtracked, however, the marks by the passenger’s side of the road told the entire grisly story. For some reason, Elena had been frightened into jumping out of the car—or some power had pulled her. And Damon, who now felt as if there were steam rising from his skin, knew that in all the woods there were only two creatures that could have been responsible.
He sent out a scouting probe, a simple circle that was meant to be undetectable, and almost lost control of the car again.
Merda!That blast had come out as a sphere-shaped killing strafe—birds were dropping out of the sky. It tore through the Old Wood, through Fell’s Church, which surrounded it, and into the areas beyond, before finally dying out hundreds of miles away.
Power? He wasn’t a vampire, he was Death Incarnate. Damon had a vague thought of pulling over and waiting until the turmoil inside himself had stopped. Where had such Power come from?
Stefan would have stopped, would have dithered around, wondering. Damon just grinned savagely, gunned the engine, and sent thousands of probes raining from the sky, all attuned to catch a fox-shaped creature running or hiding in the Old Wood.
He got a hit in a tenth of a second.
There. Under a black cohosh bush, if he wasn’t mistaken—under some unspeakable bush, anyway. And Shinichi knew he was coming.
Good. Damon sent a wave of Power directly at the fox, catching it in akekkai, a sort of invisible rope-barrier that he tightened deliberately, slowly, around the struggling animal. Shinichi fought back, with killing force. Damon used the kekkai to pick him up bodily and slam the little fox body into the ground. After a few of these slams Shinichi decided to stop fighting and played dead instead. That was fine with Damon. It was the way he thought Shinichi looked best, except for the bit about playing.
At last he had to stash the Ferrari between two trees and ran swiftly to the bush where Shinichi was now fighting the barrier around him to get into human form.
Standing back, eyes narrowed, arms crossed on his chest, Damon watched the struggle for a while. Then he let up enough on the kekkai’s field to allow the change.
And the instant Shinichi became human, Damon’s hands were around his throat.
“Where is Elena, kono bakayarou?” In a lifetime as a vampire you learned a lot of curse words. Damon preferred to use those of a victim’s native language. He called Shinichi everything he could think of, because Shinichi was fighting, and was Calling telepathically for his sister. Damon had some choice things to say aboutthat in Italian, where hiding behind your younger twin sister was…well, good for alot of creative cursing.
He felt another fox-shape racing at him—and he realized that Misao intended to kill. She was in her true shape as a kitsune: just like the russet thing he’d tried to run over while driving with Damaris. A fox, yes, but a fox with two, three…six tails altogether. The extra ones usually were invisible, he gathered, as he neatly caught her in a kekkai as well. But she was ready to show them, ready to use all her powers to rescue her brother.
Damon contented himself with holding her as she struggled vainly within the barrier, and saying to Shinichi, “Your baby sister fights better than you do,bakayarou. Now,give me Elena. ”
Shinichi changed forms abruptly and leaped for Damon’s throat, sharp white teeth in evidence, top and bottom. They were both too keyed up, too high on testosterone—and Damon, on his new Power—to let it go.
Damon actually felt the teeth scrape his throat before he got his hands again around the fox’s neck. But this time Shinichi was showing his tails, a fan that Damon didn’t bother to count.
Instead he stomped one neat boot on the fan andpulled with his other two hands. Misao, watching, shrieked in anger and anguish. Shinichi thrashed and arched, golden eyes fixed on Damon’s. In another minute his spine would crack.
“I’ll enjoy that,” Damon told him sweetly. “Because I’ll bet that Misao knows whatever you know. Too bad you won’t be here to seeher die.”
Shinichi, rabid with fury, seemed willing to die and condemn Misao to Damon’s mercies just to avoid losing the fight. But then his eyes darkened abruptly, his body went limp, and words appeared faintly in Damon’s mind.
…hurts…can’t…think…
Damon regarded him gravely. Now, Stefan, at this point, would release a good deal of the pressure on the kitsune so the poor little fox could think, Damon, on the other hand, increased the pressure briefly, then released it back to the previous level.
“Is that better?” he asked solicitously. “Can the cute little foxie think now?”
You…bastard…
Angry as he was, Damon suddenly remembered the point of all this.
“What happened to Elena?Her trail runs out up against a tree. Is sheinside it? You have seconds left to live, now. Talk.”
“Talk,” seconded another voice, and Damon barely glanced up at Misao. He’d left her relatively unguarded and she’d found power and room to change into her human shape. He took it in instantaneously, dispassionately.
She was small-boned and petite, looking like any Japanese schoolgirl, except that her hair was just like her brother’s—black tipped with red. The only difference was that the red in her hair was lighter and brighter—a truly brilliant scarlet. The bangs that fell into her eyes had blazing fiery tips, and so did the silky dark hair falling over her shoulders. It was striking but the only neurons that lit in Damon’s mind in response were connected to fire and danger and deception.
She might have fallen into a trap,Shinichi managed.
A trap?Damon frowned.What kind of trap?
I’ll take you to where you can look into them,Shinichi said evasively.
“And the fox can suddenly think again. But you know what? I don’t think you’re cute at all,” Damon whispered, then dropped the kitsune on the ground. Shinichi-as-a-human fountained up, and Damon dropped the barrier just long enough to let the fox in human form try to take his head off with one punch. He leaned away from it easily, and returned it with a blow that knocked Shinichi back into the tree hard enough to bounce. Then, while the kitsune was still dazed and glassy-eyed, he picked him up, slung him over one shoulder, and started back to the car.
What about me?Misao was trying to curb furious and sound pathetic, but she really wasn’t very good at it.
“You’re not cute, either,” Damon said, recklessly. He could get to like this super-Power thing. “But if you mean, when do you get out, it’s when I get Elena back. Safe and healthy, with all her bits attached.”
He left her cursing. He wanted to get Shinichi to wherever they had to go while the fox was still dazed and in pain.
Elena was counting. Go straight one, go straight two—untangle crutch from creeper, three, four, go straight five—it was definitely getting darker now, go straight six, caught by something in hair,yank, seven, eight, go straight—damn! A fallen tree. Too high to scramble over. She’d have to go around it. All right, to the right, one, two, three—a long tree—seven steps. Seven steps back—now,sharp right turn and keep walking. Much as you’d like to, you can’t count any of those steps. So you’re at nine. Straighten yourself because the tree was perpendicular—dear heaven, it’s pitch dark now. Call that eleven and—
—she was flying. What had caused her crutch to slip, she didn’t know, couldn’t tell. It was too dark to go frisking around, maybe finding herself a case of poison oak. What she had to do was to think about things, to think so that this all-pervading hellish pain in her left leg would quiet down. It hadn’t helped her right arm either—that instinctive windmilling, trying to catch something and save herself. God, that fall had hurt. The whole side of her body hurt so much—
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