The Vampire Diaries #5: Nightfall (The Return Trilogy #1) (2009)

Chapter 10

Elena was serenely happy. Now it was her turn.

Stefan used a sharp wooden letter opener from his desk to cut himself. Elena always hated to see him do this, use the most efficient implement that would penetrate vampire skin; so she shut her eyes tightly and only looked again when red blood was trickling from a little cut on his neck.

"You don't need to take a lot - and you shouldn't," Stefan whispered, and she knew he was saying these things while he could say them. "I'm not holding you too hard or hurting you?"

He was always so worried. This time, she kissed him .

And she could see how strange he thought it was, that he wanted kisses more than he wanted her to take his blood. Laughing, Elena pushed him flat and hovered over him and went for the general area of the wound again, knowing that he thought she was going to tease him. But instead she fastened herself on the wound like a limpet and sucked hard, hard , until she had made him say please with his mind. But she wasn't satisfied until she made him say please out loud as well.

In the car, in the dimness, Matt and Meredith thought of the idea at the same time. She was faster, but they spoke almost together.

"I'm an idiot! Matt, where's the seatback release?"

"Bonnie, you have to unfold her seat backward! There's a little handle, you should be able to reach it and pull up!"

Bonnie's voice was hitching now, hiccupping. "My arms - they're sort of poking into - my arms - "

"Bonnie," Meredith said thickly. "I know you can do it. Matt - is the handle right - under - the front seat or - "

"Yes. At the edge. One - no, two o'clock." Matt didn't have breath for more. Once he had grabbed the tree, he found that if he loosened pressure for an instant, it pushed harder on his neck.

There's no choice, he thought. He took as much of a deep breath as he could, pushed back on the branch, hearing a cry from Meredith, and twisted , feeling jagged splinters like thin wooden knives tear his throat and ear and scalp. Now he was free of the pressure on the back of his neck, although he was appalled by how much more tree there was in the car than the last time he had seen it. His lap was filled with branches; evergreen needles were thickly piled everywhere.

No wonder Meredith was so mad, he thought dizzily, turning toward her. She was almost buried in branches, one hand wrestling with something at her throat, but she saw him.

"Matt...get...your own seat! Quick! Bonnie, I know you can."

Matt dug and tore into the branches, then groped for the handle that would collapse the backrest of his seat. The handle wouldn't move. Thin, tough tendrils were wrapped around it, springy and hard to break. He twisted and snapped them savagely.

His seatback dropped away. He ducked under the huge arm-branch - if it still deserved the name, since the car was full of similar huge branches now. Then, just as he reached to help Meredith, her seat abruptly folded back, too.

She fell with it, away from the evergreen, gasping for air. For an instant she just lay still. Then she finished scrambling into the backseat proper, dragging a needle-shrouded figure with her. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse and her speech was still slow.

"Matt. Bless you...for having...this jigsaw puzzle...of a car." She kicked the front seat back into position, and Matt did likewise.

"Bonnie," Matt said numbly.

Bonnie didn't move. Many tiny branches were still entwining her, caught in the fabric of her shirt, wound into her hair.

Meredith and Matt both started pulling. Where the branches let go, they left welts or tiny puncture wounds.

"It's almost as if they were trying to grow into her," Matt said, as a long, thin branch pulled away, leaving bloody pinpricks behind.

"Bonnie?" Meredith said. She was the one disentangling the twigs from Bonnie's hair. "Bonnie? Come on, up. Look at me."

The shaking began again in Bonnie's body, but she let Meredith turn her face up. "I didn't think I could do it."

"You saved my life."

"I was so scared...."

Bonnie went on crying quietly against Meredith's shoulder.

Matt looked at Meredith just as the map light flickered and went out. The last thing he saw was her dark eyes, which held an expression that made him suddenly feel even sicker to his stomach. He looked out the three windows he could now see from the backseat.

It should have been hard to see anything at all. But what he was looking for was pressed right up against the glass. Needles. Branches. Solid against every inch of the windows.

Nevertheless, he and Meredith, without needing to say anything, each reached for a backseat door handle. The doors clicked, opened a fraction of an inch; then they slammed back hard with a very definitive wham .

Meredith and Matt looked at each other. Meredith looked down again and began to pluck more twigs off Bonnie.

"Does that hurt?"

"No. A little..."

"You're shaking."

"It's cold."

It was cold now. Outside the car, rather than through the once-open window that was now completely plugged with evergreen, Matt could hear the wind. It whistled, as if through many branches. There was also the sound of wood creaking, startlingly loud and ridiculously high above. It sounded like a storm.

"What the hell was it, anyway?" he exploded, kicking the front seat viciously. "The thing I swerved for on the road?"

Meredith's dark head lifted slowly. "I don't know; I was about to roll up the window. I only got a glimpse."

"It just appeared right in the middle of the road."

"A wolf?"

"It wasn't there and then it was there."

"Wolves aren't that color. It was red," Bonnie said flatly, lifting her head from Meredith's shoulder.

"Red?" Meredith shook her head. "It was much too big to be a fox."

"It was red, I think," Matt said.

"Wolves aren't red...what about werewolves? Does Tyler Smallwood have any relatives with red hair?"

"It wasn't a wolf," Bonnie said. "It was...backward."

"Backward?"

"Its head was on the wrong side. Or maybe it had heads on both ends."

"Bonnie, you are really scaring me," Meredith said.

Matt wouldn't say it, but she was really scaring him, too. Because his glimpse of the animal had seemed to show him the same kind of deformed shape that Bonnie was describing.

"Maybe we just saw it at a weird angle," he said, while Meredith said, "It may just have been some animal scared out by - "

"By what?"

Meredith looked up at the top of the car. Matt followed her gaze. Very slowly, and with a groan of metal, the roof dented. And again. As if something very heavy was leaning on it.

Matt cursed himself. "While I was in the front seat, why didn't I just floor it - ?" He stared hungrily through branches, trying to make out the accelerator, the ignition. "Are the keys still there?"

"Matt, we ended up half in a ditch. And besides, if it would have done any good, I'd have told you to floor it."

"That branch would've taken your head off!"

"Yes," Meredith said simply.

"It would have killed you!"

"If it would have gotten you two out, I'd have suggested it. But you were trapped looking sideways; I could see straight ahead. They were already here; the trees. In every direction."

"That...isn't...possible!" Matt pounded the seat in front of him to emphasize each word.

"Isthis possible?"

The roof creaked again.

"Both of you - stop fighting!" Bonnie said, and her voice broke on a sob.

There was an explosion like a gunshot and the car sank suddenly back and left.

Bonnie started. "What was that?"

Silence.

"...a tire blowing," Matt said at last. He didn't trust his own voice. He looked at Meredith.

So did Bonnie. "Meredith - the branches are filling up the front seat. I can hardly see the moonlight. It's getting dark."

"I know."

"What are we going to do ?"

Matt could see the tremendous tension and frustration in Meredith's face, as if everything she said should come out through gritted teeth. But Meredith's voice was quiet.

"I don't know."

With Stefan still shuddering, Elena curled herself like a cat over the bed. She smiled at him, a smile drugged with pleasure and love. He thought of grasping her by the arms, pulling her down, and starting all over again.

That was how insane she'd made him. Because he knew - all too well, from experience - the danger they were flirting with. Much more of this and Elena would be the first spirit-vampire, as she'd been the first vampire-spirit he'd known.

But look at her! He slipped out from beneath her as he sometimes did and just gazed, feeling his heart pound just at the sight of her. Her hair, true gold, fell like silk down to the bed and pooled there. Her body, in the light of the one small lamp in the room, seemed to be outlined in gold. She truly seemed to float and move and sleep in a golden haze. It was terrifying. For a vampire, it was as if he'd brought a living sun into his bed.

He found himself suppressing a yawn. She did that to him, too, like an unwitting Delilah taking Samson's strength away. Hyper-charged as he might be by her blood, he was also delightfully sleepy. He would spend a warm night in - or below - her arms.

In Matt's car it only got darker as the trees continued to cut out the moonlight. For a while they tried yelling for help. That did no good, and besides, as Meredith pointed out, they needed to conserve the oxygen in the car. So they sat still again.

Finally, Meredith reached into her jeans pocket and produced a set of keys with a tiny keychain flashlight. Its light was blue. She pressed it and they all leaned forward. Such a tiny thing to mean so much, Matt thought.

There was pressure against the front seats now.

"Bonnie?" Meredith said. "No one will hear us out here yelling. If anyone could hear us, they would have heard the tire and thought it was a gunshot."

Bonnie shook her head as if she didn't want to listen. She was still picking pine needles out of her skin.

She's right. We're miles away from anybody, Matt thought.

"There is something very bad here," Bonnie said. She said it quietly, but as if every word was being forced out one by one, like pebbles thrown into a pond.

Matt suddenly felt grayer. "How...bad?"

"It's so bad that it's...I've never felt anything like this before. Not when Elena got killed, not from Klaus, not from anything . I've never felt anything as bad as this. It's so bad, and it's so strong . I didn't think anything could be so strong. It's pushing on me, and I'm afraid - "

Meredith cut her off. "Bonnie, I know we can both only think of one way out of this - "

"There's no way out of this!"

" - I know you're afraid - "

"Who is there to call? I could do it...if there were someone to call. I can stare at your little flashlight and try to pretend it's a flame and do it - "

"Trancing?" Matt looked at Meredith sharply. "She's not supposed to do that anymore."

"Klaus is dead."

"But - "

"There's nobody to hear me!" Bonnie shrieked and then she broke down into huge sobs at last. "Elena and Stefan are too far away, and they're probably asleep by now! And there isn't anyone else!"

The three of them were being pushed together now, as branches pressed the seats back onto them. Matt and Meredith were close enough to look at each other right over Bonnie's head.

"Uh," Matt said, startled. "Um...are we sure?"

"No," Meredith said. She sounded both grim and hopeful. "Remember this morning? We are not at all sure. In fact I'm sure he's still around somewhere."

Now Matt felt sick, and Meredith and Bonnie looked ill in the already strange-looking blue light. "And - right before this happened, we were talking about how a lot of stuff - "

" - basically everything that happened to change Elena - "

" - was all his fault."

"In the woods."

"With an open window."

Bonnie sobbed on.

Matt and Meredith, however, had made a silent agreement by eye contact. Meredith said, very gently, "Bonnie, what you said you would do; well, you're going to have to do it. Try to get through to Stefan, or waken Elena or - or apologize to...Damon. Probably the last, I'm afraid. But he's never seemed to want us all dead, and he must know that it won't help him with Elena if he kills her friends."

Matt grunted, skeptical. "He may not want us all dead, but he may wait until some of us are dead to save the others. I've never trus - "

"You've never wished him any harm," Meredith overrode him in a louder voice.

Matt blinked at her and then shut up. He felt like an idiot.

"So, here, the flashlight's on," Meredith said, and even in this crisis, her voice was steady, rhythmic, hypnotic. The pathetic little light was so precious, too. It was all they had to keep the darkness from becoming absolute.

But when the darkness became absolute, Matt thought, it would be because all light, all air, everything from the outside had been shut out, pushed out of the way by the pressure of the trees. And by then the pressure would have broken their skeletons.

"Bonnie?" Meredith's voice was the voice of every big sister who ever had come to her younger sibling's rescue. That gentle. That controlled. "Can you try to pretend it's a candle flame...a candle flame...a candle flame...and then try to trance?"

"I'm in trance already." Bonnie's voice was somehow distant - far away and almost echoing.

"Then ask for help," Meredith said softly.

Bonnie was whispering, over and over, clearly oblivious to the world around her: "Please, come help us. Damon, if you can hear me, please accept our apologies and come. You gave us a terrible scare, and I'm sure we deserved it, but please, please help. It hurts, Damon. It hurts so bad I could scream. But instead I'm putting all that energy into Calling you. Please, please, please help..."

For five, ten, fifteen minutes she kept it up, as the branches grew, enclosing them with their sweet, resinous scent. She kept it up far longer than Matt had ever thought she could endure.

Then the light went out. After that there was no sound but the whisper of the pines.

You had to admire the technique.

Damon was once again lounging in midair, even higher this time than when he'd entered Caroline's third-story window. He still had no idea of the names of trees, but that didn't stop him. This branch was like having a box seat over the drama unfolding below. He was starting to get a little bored, since nothing new was happening on the ground. He'd abandoned Damaris earlier this evening whenshe had gotten boring, talking about marriage and other subjects he wished to avoid. Like her current husband. Bo-ring. He'd left without really checking to see if she'd become a vampire - he tended to think so, and wouldn't that be a surprise when hubby got home? His lips trembled on the edge of a smile.

Below him, the play had almost reached its climax.

And you really had to admire the technique. Pack hunting. He had no idea what sort of nasty little creatures were manipulating the trees, but like wolves or lionesses, they seemed to have gotten it down to an art. Working together to capture prey that was too quick and too heavily armored for one of them alone to manage. In this case, a car.

The fine art of cooperation. Pity vampires were so solitary, he thought. If we could cooperate, we'd own the world.

He blinked sleepily and then flashed a dazzling smile at nothing at all. Of course, if we could do that - say, take a city and divvy up the inhabitants - we'd finish it off by divvying up one another. Tooth and nail and Power would be wielded like the blade of a sword, until there was nothing left but shreds of quivering flesh and gutters running with blood.

Nice imagery, though, he thought, and let his eyelids droop to appreciate it. Artistic. Blood in scarlet pools, magically still liquid enough to run down white marble steps of - oh, say, the Kallimarmaron in Athens. An entire city gone quiet, purged of noisy, chaotic, hypocritical humans, with only their necessary bits left behind: a few arteries to pump the sweet red stuff out in quantity. The vampire version of the land of milk and honey.

He opened his eyes again in annoyance. Now things were getting loud down there. Humans yelling. Why? What was the point? The rabbit always squeals in the jaws of the fox, but when has another rabbit ever rushed up to save it?

There, a new proverb, and proof that humans are as stupid as rabbits, he thought, but his mood was ruined. His mind slid away from the fact, but it wasn't just the noise below that was disturbing him. Milk and honey, that had been...a mistake. Thinking about that had been a blunder. Elena's skin had been like milk that night a week ago, warm-white, not cool, even in the moonlight. Her bright hair in shadow had been like spilled honey. Elena wouldn't be happy to see the results of this night's pack hunting. She would cry tears like crystal dewdrops, and they would smell like salt.

Suddenly Damon stiffened. He sent one stealthy query of Power around him, a circle of radar.

But nothing bounced back, except the mindless trees at his feet. Whatever was orchestrating this, it was invisible.

Right, then. Let's try this , he thought: Concentrating on all the blood he'd drunk in the last few days, he blasted out a wash of pure Power, like Vesuvius erupting with a deadly pyroclastic explosion. It encircled him completely in every direction, a fifty-mile-per-hour bubble of Power like superheated gas.

Because it was back. Unbelievably, the parasite was trying to do it again, to get into his mind. It had to be.

Lulling him, he supposed, rubbing the back of his neck with absentminded fury, while its pack mates finished off their prey in the car. Whispering things into his mind to keep him still, taking his own dark thoughts and echoing them back a shade or two darker, in a cycle that might have ended in him flying off to kill and kill again for the pure black velvet enjoyment of it.

Now Damon's mind was cold and dark with fury. He stood, stretching his aching arms and shoulders, and then searched carefully, not with a simple radar ring, but with a blast of Power behind each stab, probing with his mind to find the parasite. It had to be out there; the trees were still going about their business. But he could find nothing, even though he'd used the fastest and most efficient method of scanning he knew: a thousand random stabs per second in a Drunkard's Walk search pattern. He should have found a dead body immediately. Instead he'd found nothing .

That made him even angrier than before, but there was a tinge of excitement to his fury. He'd wanted a fight; a chance to kill where the killing would be meaningful. And now here was an opponent who met all the qualifications - and Damon couldn't kill it because he couldn't find it. He sent a message, lambent with ferocity, in all directions.

I have already warned you once. Now I CHALLENGE you. Show yourself - OR ELSE STAY AWAY FROM ME!

He gathered Power, gathered it, gathered it again, thinking of all the different mortals who had contributed it. He held it, nurturing it, crafting it for its purpose, and raising its strength with all that his mind knew of fighting and of the skill and expertise of war. He held the Power until it felt as if he were holding a nuclear bomb in his arms. And then he let it go all at once, an explosion speeding in the opposite direction, away from him, nearing the speed of light.

Now, surely, he would feel the death throes of something enormously powerful and cunning - something that had managed to survive his previous strafings designed only for eldritch creatures.

Damon expanded his senses to their widest reach, waiting to hear or feel something shattering, combusting - something falling blind, with its own blood tumbling nearby, from a branch, from the air, from some where . From somewhere a creature should have plummeted to the ground or raked at it with huge dinosaur-like claws - a creature half-paralyzed and completely doomed, cooked from the inside out. But although he could feel the wind rising to a howl and huge black clouds pooling above him in response to his own mood, he still could sense no dark creature close enough to have entered his thoughts.

How strong was this thing? Where was it coming from?

Just for a moment, a thought flashed through his mind. A circle. A circle with a dot at its center. And the circle was the blast he'd shot away in all directions, and the dot was the only place his blast didn't reach. Inside him alre -

Snap! Suddenly his thoughts went blank. And then he began, sluggishly, slightly bewildered, to try to put the fractured pieces together. He had been thinking about the blast of Power he'd sent out, yes? And how he'd expected to feel something fall and die.

Hell, he couldn't even sense any ordinary animals bigger than a fox in the woods. Although his sweep of Power had been carefully made to affect only creatures of his kind of darkness, the ordinary animals had been so spooked that they'd gone running wildly from the area. He peered down. Hm. Except the trees around the car; and they weren't after him. Besides, whatever they were, they were only the pawns of an invisible killer. Not really sentient - not within the boundaries he had crafted so carefully.

Could he have been wrong? Half his fury had been for himself, for being so careless, so well-fed and confident that he'd let down his guard.

Well-fed...hey, maybe I'm drunk, he thought, and flashed the smile again at nothing, without even thinking about it. Drunk and paranoid and edgy. Pissed and pissed off.

Damon relaxed against the tree. The wind was screaming now, swirling and freezing, the sky full of roiling black clouds that cut out any light from the moon or stars. Just his kind of weather.

He was still edgy, but he couldn't find any reason to be. The only disturbance in the aura of the woods was the tiny crying of a mind inside the car, like a trapped bird with only one note. That would be the little one, the redheaded witch with the delicate neck. The one who'd been whining about life changing too much.

Damon gave a little more of his weight to the tree. He'd followed the car with his mind out of absent interest. It wasn't his fault that he'd caught them talking about him, but it did degrade their chances of rescue a bit.

He blinked slowly.

Odd that they'd had an accident trying not to run over a creature in approximately the same area he'd almost crashed the Ferrari trying to run one over. Pity he hadn't had a glimpse of their creature, but the trees were too thick.

The redheaded bird was crying again.

Well, do you want a changenow or don't you, little witch? Make up your mind. You have to ask nicely.

And then, of course, I have to decide what kind of change you get.

Chapter 11
  
Bonnie couldn't remember any more sophisticated prayer and so, like a tired child, she was saying an old one: "...I pray the Lord my soul to take...." She had used up all her energy calling for help and had gotten no response at all, just some feedback noise. She was so sleepy now. The pain had gone away and she was simply numb. The only thing bothering her was the cold. But then, that could be taken care

of, too. She could just pull a blanket over herself, a thick, downy blanket, and she would warm up. She knew it without knowing how she knew.

The only thing that held her back from the blanket was the thought of her mother. Her mother would be sad if she stopped fighting. That was another thing she knew without knowing how she knew. If she could just get a message to her mother, explaining that she had fought as hard as she could, but that with the numbness and the cold, she couldn't keep it up. And that she had known she was dying, but that it hadn't hurt in the end, so there was no reason for Mom to cry. And next time she would learn from her mistakes, she promised...next time...

Damon's entry was meant to be dramatic, coordinated with a flash of lightning just as his boots hit the car. Simultaneously, he sent out another vicious lash of Power, this time directed at the trees, the puppets who were being controlled by an unseen master. It was so strong that he felt a shocked response from Stefan all the way back at the boardinghouse. And the trees...melted backward into the darkness. They'd ripped the top off as if the car had been a giant sardine can, he mused, standing on the hood. Handy for him.

Then he turned his attention to the human Bonnie, the one with the curls, who ought by rights to have been embracing his feet by now, and gasping out "Thank you!"

She wasn't. She was lying just as she had been in the embrace of the trees. Annoyed, Damon reached down to grab her hand, when he got a shock of his own. He sensed it before he touched it, smelled it before he felt it smear on his fingers. A hundred little pinpricks, each leaking blood. The evergreen's needles must have done that, taking blood from her or - no, pumping some resinous substance in. Some anesthetic to keep her still as it took whatever was the next step in its consumption of prey - something quite unpleasant, to judge by the manners of the creature so far. An injection of digestive juices seemed most likely.

Or perhaps simply something to keep her alive, like antifreeze for a car, he thought, realizing with another nasty shock just how cold she was. Her wrist was like ice. He glanced at the two other humans, the dark-haired girl with the disturbing, logical eyes, and the fair-haired boy who was always trying to pick a fight. He might just have cut this one too fine. It certainly looked bad for the other two. But he was going to save this one. Because it was his whim. Because she had called for his help so piteously. Because those creatures, those malach, had tried to make him watch her death, eyes half-focused on it as they took his mind off the present with a glorious daydream. Malach - it was a general word indicating a creature of darkness: a sister or brother of the night. But Damon thought it now as if the word itself were something evil, a sound to be spat or hissed.

He had no intention of letting them win. He picked Bonnie up as if she were a bit of dandelion fluff and slung her over one shoulder. Then he took off from the car. Flying without changing shape first was a challenge. Damon liked challenges.

He decided to take her to the nearest source of warm water, and that was the boardinghouse. He needn't disturb Stefan. There were half a dozen rooms in that warren that was making its genteel decline into the good Virginia mud. Unless Stefan was snoopy, he wouldn't go walking in on other folks' bathrooms.

As it turned out, Stefan was not only snoopy but fast . There was almost a collision: Damon and his burden came around a corner to find Stefan driving down the dark road with Elena, floating like Damon, bobbing behind the car as if she were a child's balloon.

Their first exchange of words was neither brilliant nor witty.

"What the hell are you doing?" exclaimed Stefan.

"What the hell are you doing?" Damon said, or began to say, when he noticed the tremendous difference in Stefan - and the tremendous Power that was Elena. While most of his mind simply reeled in shock, a small part of it immediately began to analyze the situation, to figure out how Stefan had gone from a nothing to a - a -

Good grief. Oh, well, might as well put a brave face on it.

"I felt a fight," Stefan said. "When did you become Peter Pan?"

"You should be glad you weren't in the fight. And I can fly because I have the Power, boy."

This was sheer bravado. In any case, it was perfectly correct, back when they were born, to address a younger relative asragazzo , or "boy."

It wasn't now. And meanwhile the part of his brain that hadn't simply shut down was still analyzing. He could see, feel, do everything but touch Stefan's aura. And it was...unimaginable. If Damon hadn't been this close, hadn't been experiencing it firsthand, he wouldn't have believed it was possible for one person to have so much Power.

But he was looking at the situation with the same ability of cold and logical assessment that told him that his own Power - even after making himself drunk with the variety of women's blood he had taken in the last few days - his Power was nothing to Stefan's right now. And his cold and logical ability was also telling him that Stefan had been pulled out of bed for this, and that he hadn't had time - or hadn't been rational enough - to hide his aura.

"Well, now, look at you," Damon said with all the sarcasm that he could call up - and that turned out to be quite a lot. "Is it a halo? Did you get canonized while I wasn't looking? Am I addressing St. Stefan now?"

Stefan's telepathic response was unprintable. "Where are Meredith and Matt?" he added fiercely.

"Or," continued Damon, exactly as if Stefan hadn't spoken, "could it be that you merit congratulation for having learned the art of deception at last?"

"And what are you doing with Bonnie?" Stefan demanded, ignoring Damon's comments in turn.

"But you still don't seem to have a grasp of polysyllabic English, so I'll put this as simply as I can. You threw the fight."

"I threw the fight," Stefan said flatly, apparently seeing that Damon wasn't going to answer any of his questions until he'd told the truth. "I just thanked God that you seemed to be too mad or drunk to be very observant. I wanted to keep you and the rest of the world from figuring out just exactly what Elena's blood does. So you drove away without even trying to get a good look at her. And without suspecting that I could have shaken you off like a flea from the very beginning."

"I never thought you had it in you." Damon was reliving their little combat in all-too-vivid detail. It was true: he had never suspected that Stefan's performance had been entirely that - a performance - and that he could have thrown Damon down at any time and done whatever he'd wanted.

"And there's your benefactress." Damon nodded up to where Elena was floating, secured by - yes, it was true - secured by clothesline to the clutch. "Just a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor," he remarked, unable to help himself as he gazed up at her. Elena was, in fact, so bright that to look at her with Power channeled to the eyes was like trying to stare straight into the sun.

"She seems to have forgotten how to hide as well; she's shining like a G0 star."

"She doesn't know how to lie, Damon." It was clear that Stefan's anger was steadily mounting. "Now tell me what's going on and what you've done to Bonnie."

The impulse to answer, Nothing. Why, do you think I should? was almost irresistible - almost. But Damon was facing a different Stefan than he'd ever seen before. This is not the little brother you know and love to trample into the ground, the voice of logic told him, and he heeded it.

"The other two huuu-mans," Damon said, drawing the word out to its full obscene length, "are in their automobile. And" - suddenly virtuous - "I was taking Bonnie to your place."

Stefan was standing by the car, at a perfect distance for examining Bonnie's out flung arm. The pinpricks turned into a smear of blood when he touched them, and Stefan examined his own fingers with horror. He kept repeating the experiment. Soon Damon would be drooling, a highly undignified behavior that he wished to avoid.

Instead, he concentrated on a nearby astronomical phenomenon.

The full moon, medium high, and white and pure as snow. And Elena floating in front of it, wearing an old-fashioned high-necked nightgown - and little if anything else. As long as he looked at her without the Power needed to discern her aura, he could examine her as a girl rather than as an angel in the midst of blinding incandescence.

Damon cocked his head to get a better view of the silhouette. Yes, that was definitely the right apparel for her, and she should always stand in front of brilliant lights. If he -

Slam.

He was flying backward and to the left. He hit a tree, trying to make sure that Bonnie didn't hit it, too - she might break. Momentarily stunned, he floated - wafted really - down to the ground.

Stefan was on top of him.

"You," said Damon somewhat indistinctly through the blood in his mouth, "have been a naughty boy, boy."

"She made me. Literally. I thought she might die if I didn't take some of her blood - her aura was that swollen. Now you tell me what's wrong with Bonnie - "

"So you bled her despite your heroic unflagging resistance - "

Slam.

This new tree smelled of resin. I never particularly wanted to get acquainted with the insides of trees, Damon thought as he spat out a mouthful of blood. Even as a crow I only use them when necessary.

Stefan had somehow snatched Bonnie out of the air while Damon was flying toward the tree. He was that fast now. He was very, very fast. Elena was aphenomenon .

"So now you have a secondhand idea what Elena's blood is like." And Stefan could hear Damon's private thoughts. Normally, Damon was always up for a fight, but right now he could almost hear Elena's weeping over her human friends, and something inside him felt tired. Very old - centuries old - and very tired.

But as for the question, well, yes . Elena was still bobbing aimlessly, sometimes spread-eagled and sometimes balled up like a kitten. Her blood was rocket fuel compared to the unleaded gasoline in most girls.

And Stefan wanted to fight. Wasn't even trying to hide it. I was right, Damon thought. For vampires, the urge to squabble is stronger than any other urge, even the need to feed or, in Stefan's case, the concern for his - what was the word? Oh, yes. Friends.

Now Damon was trying to elude a thrashing, trying to enumerate his assets, which weren't many, because Stefan was still holding him down. Thought. Speech. A penchant for fighting dirty that Stefan just couldn't seem to understand. Logic. An instinctive ability to find the chinks in his foe's armor...

Hmmm...

"Meredith and" - damn! What was that boy's name ? - "her escort are dead by now, I think," he said innocently. "We can stay here and brawl, if that's what you want to call it, considering that I never laid a finger on you - or we can try to resuscitate them. Which will it be, I wonder?" He really did wonder about how much control Stefan had over himself right now.

As if Damon had zoomed out abruptly with a camera, Stefan seemed to become smaller. He had been floating a few feet above the ground; now he landed and looked about himself in astonishment, obviously unaware that he had been airborne.

Damon spoke in the pause while Stefan was most vulnerable. "I wasn't the one who hurt them," he added. "If you'll look at Bonnie" - thank badness, he knew her name - "you'll see that no vampire could do it. I think" - he added ingenuously, for shock value - "that the attackers were trees, controlled by malach."

"Trees?" Stefan barely took time to glance at Bonnie's pin-pricked arm. Then he said, "We need to get them indoors and into warm water. You take Elena - "

Oh, gladly. In fact I'd give anything, anything -

" - and this car with Bonnie right back to the boardinghouse. Wake Mrs. Flowers. Do all you can for Bonnie. I'll go on ahead and get Meredith and Matt - "

That was it! Matt. Now if only he had a mnemonic -

"They're just up the road, right? That was where your first strafe of Power seemed to come from."

A strafe, was it? Why not be honest and just call it a feeble wash?

And while it was fresh in his mind...M for Mortal, A for Annoying, T for Thing. And there you had it. The pity was that it applied to all of them and yet not all of them were called MAT. Oh, damn - was there supposed to be another T at the end? Mortal, Annoying, Troublesome Thing? Annoying Terrible Thing?

"I said, is that all right?"

Damon returned to the present. "No, it's not all right. The other car's wrecked. It won't drive."

"I'll float it behind me." Stefan wasn't bragging, just making a statement of fact.

"It's not even in one piece."

"I'll bind the pieces. Come on, Damon. I'm sorry I strafed you; I had a completely wrong idea about what was going on. But Matt and Meredith may really be dying, and even with all my new Power, and all of Elena's, we may not be able to save them. I've raised Bonnie's core temperature a few degrees but I don't dare to stay and bring it up slowly enough. Please , Damon." He was putting Bonnie in the passenger seat.

Well, that sounded like the old Stefan, but coming from this powerhouse, the new Stefan, it had rather different undertones. Still, as long as Stefan thought he was a mouse, he was a mouse. End of discussion.

Earlier Damon had felt like Mount Vesuvius exploding. Now he suddenly felt as if he were standing near Vesuvius, and the mountain was rumbling. Ye gods! He actually felt seared just being this close to Stefan.

He called on all his considerable resources, mentally packing himself in ice, and hoped that at least a breath of coolness underlay his answer. "I'll go. See you later - hope the humans aren't dead yet."

As they parted, Stefan sent him a powerful message of disapproval - not strafing him with sheer elemental pain, as he had before when throwing Damon against the tree, but making sure that his opinion of his brother was stamped across every word.

Damon sent Stefan a last message as he went. I don't understand, he thought innocently toward the disappearing Stefan. What's wrong with saying that I hope the humans are still alive? I've been in greeting card shops, you know - he didn't mention that it wasn't for the cards but for the young cashiers - and they had sections like "Hope you get well" and "Sympathy," which I suppose means that the previous card's spell wasn't strong enough. So what's wrong with saying "I hope they're not dead"?

Stefan didn't even bother to answer. But Damon flashed a quick and brilliant smile anyway, as he turned the Porsche around and set off for the boardinghouse.

He tugged on the clothesline that kept Elena bobbing above him. She floated - nightgown billowing - above Bonnie's head - or rather where Bonnie's head should have been. Bonnie had always been small, and this freezing illness had her crumpled into the fetal position. Elena could practically sit on her.

"Hello, princess. Looking gorgeous, as always. And you're not too bad yourself."

It was one of the worst opening lines of his life, he thought dejectedly. But he wasn't feeling quite himself. Stefan's transformation had startled him - that must be what's wrong, he decided.

"Da...mon."

Damon started. Elena's voice was slow and hesitant...and absolutely beautiful: molasses dripping sweetness, honey falling straight from the comb. It was lower in pitch, he was sure, than it had been before her transformation, and it had become a true Southern drawl. To a vampire it resembled the sweet drip-drip of a newly opened human vein.

"Yes, angel. Have I called you ‘angel' before? If not, it was purely an oversight."

And as he said this, he realized that that was another component to her voice, one he'd missed before: purity. The lancing purity of a seraph of seraphim. That should have put him off, but instead it just reminded him that Elena was someone to take seriously, never lightly.

I'd take you seriously or lightly or any way you prefer, Damon thought, if you weren't so stuck on my idiot younger brother.

Twin violet suns turned on him: Elena's eyes. She'd heard him.

For the first time in his life, Damon was surrounded by people more powerful than he was. And to a vampire, Power was everything: material goods, community position, trophy mate, comfort, sex, cash, candy.

It was an odd feeling. Not entirely unpleasant in regards to Elena. He liked strong women. He'd been looking for one strong enough for centuries.

But Elena's glance very effectively brought his thoughts back to their situation. He parked askew outside the boardinghouse, snatched up the stiffening Bonnie, and floated up the twisting, narrowing staircase towards Stefan's room. It was the only place heknew there was a bathtub.

There was barely room for three inside the tiny bathroom, and Damon was the one carrying Bonnie. He ran water into the ancient, four-footed tub based on what his exquisitely tuned senses said was five degrees above her current icy temperature. He tried to explain to Elena what he was doing, but she seemed to have lost interest and was floating round and round Stefan's bedroom, like a close-up of Tinkerbell caged. She kept bumping the closed window and then zooming over to the open door, looking out.

What a dilemma. Ask Elena to undress and bathe Bonnie, and risk her putting Bonnie in the tub wrong side up? Or ask Elena to do the job and watch over them both, but not touch - unless disaster struck? Plus, someone had to find Mrs. Flowers and get hot drinks going. Write a note and send Elena with it? There might be more casualties in here any moment now.

Then Damon caught Elena's eye, and all petty and conventional concerns seemed to drop away. Words appeared in his brain without bothering to come through his ears.

Help her. Please!

He turned back to the bathroom, lay Bonnie on the thick rug there and shelled her like a shrimp. Off with the sweatshirt, off with the summer top that went under it. Off with the small bra - A cup, he noticed sadly, discarding it, trying not to look at Bonnie directly. But he couldn't help but see that the prickling marks the tree had left were everywhere.

Off with the jeans, and then a small hitch because he had to sit and take each foot in his lap to get the tightly tied high-top sneakers off before the jeans would come past her ankles. Off with socks.

And that was all. Bonnie was left naked except for her own blood and her pink silky underwear. He picked her up and put her in the tub, soaking himself in the process. Vampires associated baths with virgin's blood, but only the really crazy ones tried it.

The water in Bonnie's bathtub turned pink when he put her in. He kept the tap running because the tub was so large, and then sat back to consider the situation. The tree had been pumping something into her with its needles. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. So it ought to come out. Most sensible solution was to suck it as if it were a snakebite, but he was hesitant to try that until he was sure Elena wouldn't crush his skull if she found him methodically sucking Bonnie's upper body.

He would have to settle for next best. The bloody water didn't quite conceal Bonnie's diminutive form, but it helped to blur the details. Damon supported Bonnie's head against the edge of the tub with one hand, and with the other he began to squeeze and massage the poison out of one arm.

He knew he was doing the right thing when he smelled the resinous scent of pine. It was so thick and viscid itself that it hadn't yet disappeared into Bonnie's body. He was getting a small amount of it out this way, but was it enough?

Cautiously, watching the door and cranking his senses up to cover their broadest spectrum, Damon lifted Bonnie's hand to his lips as if he were going to kiss it. Instead, he took her wrist in his mouth and, suppressing every urge he had to bite, instead simply sucked.

He spat almost immediately. His mouth was full of resin. The massage wasn't enough by far. Even suction, if he could get a couple of dozen vampires and attach them all over Bonnie's little body like leeches, wouldn't be enough.

He sat back on his heels and looked at her, this fatally poisoned woman-child he'd as good as given his word to save. For the first time, he became aware that he was soaked to the waist. He gave an irritated glance toward the heavens and then shrugged out of his black bomber jacket.

What could he do? Bonnie needed medicine, but he had no idea what specific medicine she needed, and there was no witch he knew of to appeal to. Was Mrs. Flowers acquainted with arcane knowledge? Would she give it to him if she were? Or was she just a batty old lady? What was a generic medicine - for a human? He could give her over to her own people and let them try their bungling sciences - take her to a hospital - but they would be working with a girl who'd been poisoned by the Other Side, by the dark places they would never be allowed to see or understand.

Absently, he had been rubbing a towel over his arms and hands and black shirt. Now, he looked at the towel and decided that Bonnie deserved at least a sop to modesty, especially since he could think of no more work to be done on her. He soaked the towel and then spread it out and pushed it underwater to cover Bonnie from throat to feet. It floated in some places, sank in others, but generally did the job.

He turned the water temperature up again, but it made no difference. Bonnie was stiffening into the true death, young as she was. His peers in old Italy had had it right, he thought, a female like this was amaiden , no longer girl, not yet woman. It was especially apposite since any vampire could tell that she was a maiden in both senses.

And it had all been done under his nose. The lure, the pack-attack, the marvelous technique and synchronization - they had killed this maiden while he sat and watched. He'd applauded it.

Slowly, inside, Damon could feel something growing. It had sparked when he thought of the audacity of the malach, hunting his humans right under his nose. It didn't ask the question of when the group in the car had becomehis humans - he supposed it was because they had been so close lately that it seemed they were his to dispose of, to say whether they lived or died, or whether they became what he was. The growing thing surged when he'd thought of the way the malach had manipulated his thoughts, drawing him into a blissful contemplation of death in general terms, while death in very specific terms was going on right at his feet. And now it was reaching incendiary levels because he had been shown up too many times today. It really was unbearable....

...and it was Bonnie....

Bonnie, who had never hurt a - a harmless thing for malice. Bonnie, who was like a kitten, making airy pounces at no prey at all. Bonnie, with her hair that was called something strawberry, but that looked simply as if it was on fire. Bonnie of the translucent skin, with the delicate violet fjords and estuaries of veins all over her throat and inner arms. Bonnie, who had lately taken to looking at him sideways with her large childlike eyes, big and brown, under lashes like stars....

His jaws and canines were aching, and his mouth felt as if it were on fire from the poisonous resin. But all that could be ignored, because he was consumed with one other thought.

Bonnie had called for his help for nearly half an hour before succumbing to the darkness.

That was what needed to be said. Needed to be examined. Bonnie had called for Stefan - who had been too far away and too busy with his angel - but she had called for Damon, too, and she had pleaded for his help.

And he had ignored it. With three of Elena's friends at his feet, he had ignored their agonies, had ignored Bonnie's frenzied pleas not to let them die.

Usually, this sort of thing would only make him take off for some other town. But somehow he was still here and still tasting the bitter consequences of his act.

Damon leaned back with his eyes closed, trying to shut out the overwhelming smell of blood and the musty scent of...something.

He frowned and looked around. The little room was clean even to its corners. Nothing musty here. But the odor wouldn't go away.

And then he remembered.

Chapter 12

It came back to him, all of it: the cramped aisles and the tiny windows and the musty smell of old books. He had been in Belgium some fifty years ago, and had been surprised to find an English-language book on such a subject still in existence. But there it was, its cover worn to a solid burnished rust, with nothing of the writing remaining, if there ever had been any. Pages were missing inside, so no one would ever know the author or the title, if either had ever been printed there. Every "receipt" - recipe, or charm, or spell - inside involved forbidden knowledge.

Damon could easily remember the simplest spell of all: "Ye Bloode of ye Samphire or Vampyre i?fair goode a?a general physic for all Maladie?or mischief Done by those who Dance in the Woode?at Moonspire."

These malach had certainly been doing mischief in the woods, and it was the month of Moonspire, the month of the "summer solstice" in the Old Tongue. Damon didn't want to leave Bonnie, and he certainly didn't want Elena to see what he was going to do next. Still supporting Bonnie's head above the warm pinkish water, he opened his shirt. There was a knife of ironwood in a sheath at his hip. He removed it and, in one quick motion, cut himself at the base of his throat.

Plenty of blood now. The problem was how to get her to drink. Sheathing the dagger, he lifted her out of the water and tried to put her lips to the cut.

No, that was stupid , he thought, with unaccustomed self-deprecation. She's going to get cold again, and you don't have any way to make her swallow. He let Bonnie lapse back into the water and thought. Then he pulled out the knife again and made another cut: this one on his arm, at the wrist. He followed the vein there until blood was not just dripping but streaming steadily out. Then he put that wrist to Bonnie's upturned mouth, adjusting the angle of her head with his other hand. Her lips were partly open and the dark red blood flowed beautifully. Periodically she swallowed. There was life in her yet.

It was just like feeding a baby bird, he thought, tremendously pleased with his memory, his ingenuity, and - well, just himself.

He smiled brilliantly at nothing in particular.

Now if it would only work.

Damon changed position slightly to be more comfortable and turned the hot water up again, all while holding Bonnie, feeding her, all - he knew - gracefully and without a wasted movement. This was fun. It appealed to his sense of the ridiculous. Here, right now, a vampire was not supping from a human, but was trying to save it from certain death by feeding it vampire blood.

More than that. He had followed all sorts of human traditions and customs by trying to strip Bonnie without compromising her maidenly modesty. That was exciting. Of course, he'd seen her body anyway; there had been no way to avoid that. But it was really more thrilling when he was trying to follow the rules. He'd never done that before.

Maybe that was how Stefan got his kicks. No, Stefan had Elena, who had been human, vampire, and invisible spirit, and now appeared to be living angel, if such a thing existed. Elena was kicky enough on her own. Yet he hadn't thought of her in minutes . It might even be a record of Elena-overlooking.

He'd better call her, maybe get her in here and explain how this was working so there was no reason to crush his skull. It would probably look better.

Damon suddenly realized he couldn't feel Elena's aura in Stefan's bedroom. But before he could investigate there was a crash, then pounding footsteps, and then another crash, much closer. And then the bathroom door was kicked open by Mortal Annoying Troublesome....

Matt advanced menacingly, got his feet tangled, and looked down to untangle them. His tanned cheeks were swept with a sudden sunset. He was holding up Bonnie's small pink brassiere. He dropped it as if it had bitten him, picked it up again, and whirled around, only to cannon into Stefan, who was entering. Damon watched, entertained.

"How do you kill them, Stefan? Do you just need a stake? Can you hold him while - blood! He's feeding her blood!" Matt interrupted himself, looking as if he might attack Damon on his own. Bad idea, thought Damon.

Matt locked eyes with him. Confronting the monster, Damon thought, even more entertained. "Let...her...go." Matt spoke slowly, probably meaning to convey menace, but sounding, Damon thought, as if he thought that Damon was mentally impaired.

Mortally Unable To Talk, Damon mused. But that made..."Mutt," he said aloud, shaking his head slightly. Maybe, though, it would remind him in the future.

"Mutt? You're calling - ? God, Stefan, please help me kill him! He's killed Bonnie." The words spilled out of Matt in a single gushing flow, a single breath. Woefully, Damon saw his latest acronym go down in flames.

Stefan was surprisingly calm. He put Matt behind him and said, "Go and sit down with Elena and Meredith," in a way that was not a suggestion, and turned back to his brother. "You didn't feed from her," he said, and this was not a question.

"Swill poison? Not my kind of fun, little brother."

One corner of Stefan's mouth quirked up. He made no response to this, but simply looked at Damon with eyes that were...knowing. Damon bridled.

"I told the truth!"

"Going to take it up as a hobby?"

Damon started to release Bonnie, figuring that dropping her into bloodstained water would be the proper precursor to walking out of this dump, but...

But. She was his baby bird. She'd swallowed enough of his blood now that any more would begin to Change her seriously. And if the amount of blood he had already given her wasn't enough, it simply wasn't a remedy in the first place. Besides, the miracle worker was here.

He closed the cut on his arm enough to stop the bleeding and started to speak....

And the door crashed open again.

This time it was Meredith, and she had Bonnie's bra. Both Stefan and Damon quailed. Meredith was, Damon thought, a very scary person. At least she took the time, which Mutt had not, to look over the trampled clothes on the bathroom floor. She said to Stefan, "How is she?" which Mutt had not, either.

"She's going to be fine," Stefan said and Damon was surprised at his feeling of...not relief, of course, but of a job well done. Plus, now he might avoid being thrashed to within an inch of his life by Stefan.

Meredith took a deep breath and closed her frightening eyes briefly. When she did that, her whole face glowed. Maybe she was praying. It had been centuries since Damon had prayed; and he had never had any prayer answered.

Then Meredith opened her eyes, shook herself, and started looking scary again. She nudged the pile of clothes on the floor and said, slowly and forcefully, "If the item that matches this is not still on Bonnie's body, there is going to be trouble."

She waved the now infamous bra like a flag.

Stefan looked confused. How could he not understand the mighty missing lingerie question? Damon wondered. How could anyone be such a...such an unobservant fool? Didn't Elena wear any - ever? Damon sat frozen, too arrested by the images in his own inner world to move for a moment. Then he spoke up. He had the answer to Meredith's riddle.

"Do you want to come and check?" he asked, turning his head virtuously away.

"Yes, I do."

He remained with his back to her as she approached the tub, plunged her hand into the warm pink water, and swished the towel a little. He heard her let out her breath in relief.

When he turned around she said, "There's blood on your mouth." Her dark eyes looked darker than ever.

Damon was surprised. He hadn't gone and pierced the redhead out of habit and then forgotten it, had he? But then he realized the reason.

"You tried to suck the poison out, didn't you?" Stefan said, throwing him a white face towel. Damon wiped the side Meredith had been looking at and came up with a bloody smear. No wonder his mouth had been stinging like fire. That poison was pretty nasty stuff, although it clearly didn't affect vampires the way it did humans.

"And there's blood on your throat," Meredith went on.

"Unsuccessful experiment," Damon said, and shrugged.

"So you cut your wrist. Pretty seriously."

"For a human, maybe. Is the press conference over?"

Meredith settled back. He could read her expression and he smiled inwardly. Extra! Extra! SCARYM EREDITH THWARTED. He knew the look of those who had to give up on cracking the Damon nut.

Meredith stood up. "Is there anything I can get him to stop his mouth bleeding? Something to drink, maybe?"

Stefan just looked stricken. Stefan's problem - well, a part of one of Stefan's many problems - was that

he thought feeding was sinful. Even to talk about.

Maybe it was actually kickier that way. People relished anything they thought was sinful. Even vampires did. Damon was put out. How did you go back in time to when anything was sinful? Because he was sadly out of kicks.

With her back turned, Meredith was less scary. Damon risked an answer to the question of what he could drink.

"You, darling...you darling."

"One too many darlings," Meredith said mysteriously, and before Damon could figure out that she was simply making a point about linguistics, and not commenting on his personal life, she was gone. With the traveling bra.

Now Stefan and Damon were alone. Stefan came a step closer, keeping his eyes off the tub. You miss so much, you chump, Damon thought. That was the word he'd been searching for earlier. Chump.

"You did a lot for her," Stefan said, seeming to find it as hard to look at Damon as at the tub. This left him very little to stare at. He chose a wall.

"You told me you'd beat me up if I didn't. I've never cared for beatings." He flashed his dazzling smile at Stefan and kept it up until Stefan started to turn to look at him, and then turned it off immediately.

"You went beyond the call of duty."

"With you, little brother, one never knows where duty ends. Tell me, what does infinity look like?"

Stefan heaved a sigh. "At least you're not the kind of bully who only terrorizes when he has the upper hand."

"Are you inviting me to ‘step outside,' as they say?"

"No, I'm complimenting you on saving Bonnie's life."

"I didn't realize I had a choice. How, by the way, did you manage to cure Meredith and - and...how did you manage?"

"Elena kissed them. Didn't you even realize she was gone? I brought them back here, and she came downstairs and breathed into their mouths and it cured them. From what I've seen, she seems to be slowly turning from spirit to full human. I'm guessing it will take another few days, just from looking at her progress since she woke up until now."

"At least she's talking. Not much, but you can't ask for everything." Damon was remembering the view from the Porsche, with the top down and Elena bobbing like a balloon. "This little redhead hasn't said a word," Damon added querulously, and then shrugged. "Same difference."

"Why, Damon? Why not just admit that you care about her, at least enough to keep her living - and without even molesting her? You knew she couldn't afford to lose blood...."

"It was an experiment," Damon explained painstakingly. And it was over now. Bonnie would wake or sleep, live or die, in Stefan's hands - not his. He was wet, he was uncomfortable, he was far enough from this night's meal to be hungry and cross. His mouth hurt. "You take her head now," he said brusquely. "I'm leaving. You and Elena and...Mutt can finish - "

"His name is Matt, Damon. It's not hard to remember."

"It is if you have absolutely no interest in him. There are too many lovely ladies in this vicinity to make him anything but last choice for a snack."

Stefan hit the wall hard. His fist broke through the ancient plastering. "Damn it, Damon, that's not all there is to humans."

"It's all I ask of them."

"You don't ask. That's the problem."

"It was a euphemism. It's all I plan to take from them, then. It's certainly all I'm interested in. Don't try to make-believe that it's anything more. There's no point in trying to find evidence for a pretty lie."

Stefan's fist flew out. It was his left fist, and Damon was supporting Bonnie's head on that side, so he couldn't lean away gracefully as he normally would. She was unconscious; she might take in a lungful of water and die immediately. Who knew about these humans, especially when they were poisoned?

Instead, he concentrated on sending all his shielding to the right side of his chin. He figured he could take a punch, even from the New Improved Stefan without losing his hold on the girl - even if Stefan broke his jaw.

Stefan's fist stopped a few millimeters away from Damon's face.

There was a pause; the brothers looked at each other across a distance of two feet.

Stefan took a deep breath and sat back. "Now will you admit it?"

Damon was genuinely puzzled. "Admit what?"

"That you care something for them. Enough to take a punch rather than letting Bonnie go underwater."

Damon stared, then began to laugh and found he couldn't stop.

Stefan stared back. Then he shut his eyes and half-turned away in pain.

Damon still had a case of the giggles. "And you th-thought that I cuh-cared about one little hu-hu-hu..."

"Why did you do it, then?" Stefan said tiredly.

"Whu-whu-whim. I t-told y-yuh-you. Just wuh-huhhuhuha..." Damon collapsed, punch-drunk from lack of food and from too many varying emotions.

Bonnie's head went underwater.

Both vampires dived for her, head butting each other as they collided over the center of the tub. Both fell back briefly, dazed.

Damon wasn't laughing anymore. If anything, he was fighting like a tiger to get the girl out of the water. Stefan was, too, and with his newly sharpened reflexes, he looked close to winning. But it was as Damon had thought just an hour or so earlier - neither one of them even considered cooperating to get the girl. Each was trying to do it alone, and each was impeding the other.

"Get out of my way, brat," Damon snarled, almost hissing in menace.

"You don't give a damn about her. You get out of the way - "

There was something like a geyser and Bonnie exploded upward from the water on her own. She spat out a mouthful and cried, "What's going on?" in tones to melt a heart of stone.

Which they did. Contemplating his bedraggled little bird, who was clutching the towel to her instinctively, with her fiery hair plastered to her head and her big brown eyes blinking between strands, something swelled in Damon. Stefan had run to the door to tell the others the good news. For a moment it was just the two of them: Damon and Bonnie.

"It tastes awful," Bonnie said woefully, spitting out more water.

"I know," Damon said, staring at her. The new thing he was feeling had swollen inside his soul until the pressure was almost too much to stand. When Bonnie said, "But I'm alive!" with an abrupt 180-degree turn in mood, her heart-shaped face flushing suddenly with joy, the fierce pride Damon felt in response was intoxicating. He and he alone had brought her back from the edge of icy death. Her poison-filled body had been cured by him; it was his blood that had dissolved and dispersed the toxin,his blood -

And then the swelling thing burst.

There was, to Damon, a palpable if not audible crack as the stone encasing his soul burst open and a great piece fell away.

With something inside him singing, he clutched Bonnie to him, feeling the wet towel through his raw silk shirt, and feeling Bonnie's slight body under the towel. Definitely a maiden, and not a child, he thought dizzily, whatever the writing on that infamous scrap of pink nylon had claimed. He clutched at her as if he needed her for blood - as if they were in hurricane-tossed seas and to let go of her would be to lose her.

His neck hurt fiercely, but more cracks were spreading all over the stone; it was going to explode completely, letting theDamon it held inside out - and he was too drunk on pride and joy, yes, joy, to care. Cracks were spreading in every direction, pieces of stone flying off...

Bonnie pushed him away.

She had surprising strength for someone with such a slight build. She pushed herself out of his arms completely. Her expression had changed radically again: now her face showed only fear and desperation - and, yes, revulsion.

"Help! Somebody, please,help !" Her brown eyes were huge and now her face was white again.

Stefan had whirled around. All he saw was what Meredith saw, darting under his arm from the other room, or what Matt saw, trying to peer into the tiny, over-full bathroom: Bonnie fiercely clutching her towel, trying to make it cover her, and Damon kneeling by the bath, his face without expression.

"Pleasehelp. He heard me calling - I couldfeel him on the other end - but he just watched. He stood and watched us all dying. He wants all humans dead, with our blood running down white steps somewhere. Please, get himaway from me!"

So. The little witch was more proficient than he had imagined. It wasn't unusual to recognize that someone was getting your transmissions - you got feedback - but to identify the individual took talent. Plus, she'd obviously heard the echoes of some of his thoughts. She was gifted, his bird...no, not his bird, not with her looking at him with a look as close to hatred as Bonnie could manage.

There was a silence. Damon had a chance to deny the charge, but why bother? Stefan would be able to gauge the truth of it. Maybe Bonnie, too.

Revulsion was flying from face to face, as if it were a swiftly-catching disease.

Now Meredith was hurrying forward, grabbing another towel. She had some kind of hot drink in her other hand - cocoa, by the smell. It was hot enough to be an effective weapon - no way to dodge all of that, not for a tired vampire.

"Here," she said to Bonnie. "You're safe. Stefan's here. I'm here. Matt's here. Take this towel; let's just put it around your shoulders."

Stefan had stood silently, watching all this - no, watching his brother. Now, his face hardening in finality, he said one word.

"Out."

Dismissed like a dog. Damon groped for his jacket behind him, found it, and wished that his groping for his sense of humor could be as successful. The faces around him were all the same. They could have been carved in stone.

But not stone as hard as that that was coming together again around his soul. That rock was remarkably quick to mend - and an extra layer was added, like the layering of a pearl, but not covering anything nearly so pretty.

Their faces were still all the same as Damon tried to get out of the small room that had too many people in it. Some of them were speaking; Meredith to Bonnie, Mutt - no, Matt - pouring out a stream of pure acidic hatred...but Damon didn't really hear the words. He could smell too much blood here. Everyone had little wounds. Their individual scents - different beasts inthe herd - closed in on him. His head was spinning. He had to get out of here or he'd be snatching the nearest warm vessel and draining it dry. Now he was more than dizzy; he was too hot, too...thirsty.

Very, very thirsty. He had worked a long time without feeding and now he was surrounded by prey. They were circlinghim . How could he stop himself from grabbing just one of them? Would one really be missed?

Then there was the one he hadn't seen yet, and didn't want to see. To witness Elena's lovely features twisted into the same mask of revulsion he saw on every other face here would be...distasteful, he thought, his old sense of dispassion finally returning to him.

But it couldn't be avoided. As Damon came out of the bathroom, Elena was right in front of him, floating like an oversized butterfly. His eyes were drawn to exactly what he didn't want to see: her expression.

Elena's features didn't mirror the others. She looked worried, upset. But there wasn't a trace of the disgust or hatred that showed on all the other faces.

She even spoke, in that strange mind-speech that wasn't, somehow, like telepathy, but which allowed her to get in two levels of communication at once.

"Da - mon."

Tell about the malach. Please.

Damon just raised an eyebrow at her. Tell a bunch of humans abouthimself ? Was she being deliberately ridiculous?

Besides, the malach hadn't really done anything. They had distracted him for a few minutes, that was all. No point in blaming malach when all they had done was enhance his own views briefly. He wondered if Elena had any notion of the content of his little nighttime daydream.

"Da - mon."

I can see it. Everything. But, still, please...

Oh, well, maybe spirits got used to seeingeverybody's dirty laundry. Elena made no response to that thought, so he was left in the dark.

In the dark. Which was what he was used to, where he had come from. They would all go their separate ways, the humans to their warm dry houses and he to a tree in the woods. Elena would stay with Stefan, of course.

Of course.

"Under the circumstances, I won't sayau revoir ," Damon said, flashing his dazzling smile at Elena, who looked gravely back at him. "We'll just say ¡®good-bye' and leave it at that."

There was no answer from the humans.

"Da - mon." Elena was crying now.

Please.Please.

Damon started out into the dark.

Please...

Rubbing at his neck, he kept going.

Chapter 13

Much later that night, Elena couldn't sleep. She didn't want to be hemmed in inside the Tall Room, she said. Secretly, Stefan worried that she wanted to go outside and track the malach that had attacked the car. But he didn't think she was able to lie, now, and she kept bumping against the shut window, chiming to him that she just wanted air. Outside air.

"We should put some clothes on you."

But Elena was bewildered - and stubborn. It's Night.... This is my Night Gown, she said. You didn't like my Day Gown. Then she bumped the window again. Her "Day Gown" had been his blue shirt, which, belted, made a sort of very short chemise on her, coming to the middle of her thighs.

Right now what she wanted fit in with his own desires so completely that he felt...a bit guilty over the prospect. But he allowed himself to be persuaded.

They drifted, hand in hand, Elena like a ghost or angel in her white nightgown, Stefan all in black, feeling himself almost disappear where the trees obscured the moonlight. Somehow they ended up in the Old Wood, where skeletons of trees mixed with the living branches. Stefan stretched his newly improved senses to the widest but could only find the normal inhabitants of the forest, slowly and hesitantly returning after being frightened off by Damon's lash of Power. Hedgehogs. Deer. Dog-foxes, and one poor vixen with twin kits, who hadn't been able to run because of her children. Birds. All the animals that helped to make the forest the wondrous place it was.

Nothing that felt like malach or seemed as if it could do any harm.

He began to wonder if Damon had simply invented the creature that influenced him. Damon was a tremendously convincing liar.

He was telling the truth, Elena chimed. But either it's invisible or it's gone now. Because of you. Your Power.

He looked at her and found her looking at him with a mixture of pride and another emotion that was easily identified - but startling to see out of doors.

She tilted her face up, its classic lines pure and pale in the moonlight.

Her cheeks were rose pink with blushing, and her lips were slightly pursed.

Oh...hell, Stefan thought wildly.

"After all you've been through," he began, and made his first mistake. He took hold of her arms. There, some sort of synergy between his Power and hers started to bring them, in a very slow spiral, upward.

And he could feel the warmth of her. The sweet softness of her body. She still was waiting, eyes closed, for her kiss.

We can start all over again, she suggested hopefully.

And that was true enough. He wanted to give back to her the feelings she had given to him in his room. He wanted to hold her hard; he wanted to kiss her until she trembled. He wanted to make her melt and swoon with it.

He could do it, too. Not just because you learned a thing or two about women when you were a vampire, but because he knew Elena. They were really one at heart, one soul.

Please? Elena chimed.

But she was so young now, so vulnerable in her pure white nightgown, with her creamy skin flushing pink in anticipation. It couldn't be right to take advantage of someone like that.

Elena opened her violet-blue eyes, silvered by the moonlight, and looked right at him.

Do you want...She said it with sobriety in the mouth but mischief in her eyes....to see how many times you can make me say please?

God, no. But that sounded so grown-up that Stefan helplessly took her into his arms. He kissed the top of her silky head. He kissed downward from there, only avoiding the little rosebud mouth that was still puckered in lonely supplication. I love you. I love you. He found that he was almost crushing her ribs and tried to let go, but Elena held on as tightly as she could, holding his arms to her.

Do you want - the chime was the same, innocent and ingenuous - to see how many times I can make you say please?

Stefan stared at her for a moment. Then, with a sort of wildness in his heart, he fell on the little rosebud mouth and kissed it breathless, kissed it until he himself was so dizzy that he had to let her go, just an inch or two.

Then he looked into her eyes again. A person could lose themselves in eyes like that, could fall forever into their starry violet depths. He wanted to. But more than that, he wanted something else.

"I want to kiss you," he whispered, right at the portal of her right ear, nipping it.

Yes. She was definite about that.

"Until you faint in my arms."

He felt the shiver go through her body. He saw the violet eyes go misty, half closing. But to his surprise he got back an immediate, if slightly breathless, "Yes," from Elena out loud.

And so he did.

Just short of swooning, with little shivers going through her, and little cries that he tried to stop with his own mouth, he kissed her. And then, because it was Time, and because the shivers were starting to have a painful edge to them, and Elena's breath was coming so quick and hard when he let her breathe that he really was afraid that she might pass out, he solemnly used his own fingernail to open a vein in his neck for her.

And Elena, who once had been only human, and would have been horrified by the idea of drinking another person's blood, clasped herself to him with a small choked sound of joy. And then he could feel her mouth warm, warm against the flesh of his neck, and he felt her shudder hard, and he felt the heady sensation of having his blood drawn out by the one he loved. He wanted to pour his entire being out in front of Elena, to give her everything that he was, or ever would be. And he knew that this was the way she had felt, letting him drink her blood. That was the sacred bond they shared.

It made him feel that they had been lovers since the beginning of the universe, since the very first dawning of the very first star out of the darkness. It was something very primitive, and very deeply ingrained in him. When he first felt the flow of blood into her mouth, he had to stifle a cry against her hair. And then he was whispering to her, fierce, involuntary things about how he loved her and how they could never be parted, and endearments and absurdities wrenched from him in a dozen different languages. And then there were no more words, only feelings.

And so they slowly spiraled up in the moonlight, the white nightgown sometimes wrapping itself around his black-clad legs, until they reached the top of the trees, living and standing but dead.

It was a very solemn, very private ceremony of their own, and they were far too lost in joy to look out for any danger. But Stefan had already checked for that, and he knew that Elena had, too. There was no danger; there was only the two of them, drifting and bobbing with the moon shining down like a benediction.

One of the most useful things Damon had learned lately - more useful than flying, although that had been something of a kick - was to shield his presence absolutely.

He had to drop all his barriers, of course. They would show up even in a casual scan. But that didn't matter, because if no one could see him, no one could find him. And therefore he was safe. Q.E.D.

But tonight, after walking out of the boardinghouse, he had gone out to the Old Wood to find himself a tree to sulk in.

It wasn't that he minded what human trash thought of him, he thought venomously. It would be like worrying what a chicken thought of him just before he wrung its neck. And, of all things he cared least about, his brother's opinion was number one.

But Elena had been there. And even if she had understood - had made efforts to get the others to understand - it was just too humiliating, being thrown out in front of her.

And so he had retired, he thought bitterly, into the only retreat he could call home. Although that was a little ridiculous, since he could have spent the night in Fell's Church's best hotel (its only hotel) or with any number of sweet young girls who might invite a weary traveler in for a drink...of water. A wave of Power to put the parents to sleep, and he could have had shelter, as well as a warm and willing snack, until morning.

But he was in a vicious mood, and he just wanted to be alone. He was a little afraid to hunt. He wouldn't be able to control himself with a panicked animal in his present state of mind. All he could think of was ripping and tearing and making somebody very, very unhappy.

The animals were coming back, though, he noticed, careful to use only ordinary senses and nothing that would betray his presence. The night of horror was over for them, and they tended to have very short memories.

Then, just as he had been reclining on a branch, wishing that Mutt, at least, had sustained some sort of painful and lasting injury, they had appeared. Out of nowhere, seemingly. Stefan and Elena, hand in hand, floating like a pair of happy winged Shakespearean lovers, as if the forest was their home.

He hadn't been able to believe it at first.

And then, just as he was about to call down thunder and sarcasm on them, they had started their love scene.

Right in front of his eyes.

Even floating up to his level, as if to rub it in. They'd begun kissing and caressing and...more.

They'd made an unwilling voyeur out of him, although he'd become more angry and less unwilling as time passed and their caresses had become more passionate. He'd had to grind his teeth, when Stefan had offered Elena his blood. Had wanted to scream that there had been a time when this girl had been his for the taking, when he could have drained her dry and she would have died happily in his arms, when she had obeyed the sound of his voice instinctively and the taste of his blood would make her reach heaven in his arms.

As she obviously was in Stefan's.

That had been the worst. He'd had to dig his nails into his palms when Elena had wrapped herself around Stefan like a long, graceful snake and had fastened her mouth against his neck, as Stefan's face had tipped toward the sky, with his eyes shut.

For the love of all the demons in hell, why couldn't they just get done with it?

Thatwas when he noticed that he wasn't alone in his well-chosen, commodious tree.

There was someone else there, sitting calmly right beside him on the big branch. They must have appeared while he was engrossed in the love scene and his own fury, but still, that made them very, very good. No one had snuck up on him like that in over two centuries. Three, perhaps.

The shock of it had sent him tumbling off the branch - without turning on his vampire ability to float.

A long lean arm reached out to catch him, to haul him to safety, and Damon found himself gazing into a pair of laughing golden eyes.

Who thehellare you? he sent. He didn't worry about it being picked up by the lovers in the moonlight. Nothing short of a dragon or an atomic bomb would catch their attention now.

I'm the hell Shinichi,the other boy replied. His hair was the strangest Damon had seen in a while. It was smooth and shiny and black everywhere except for a fringe of uneven dark red at the tips. The bangs he tossed carelessly out of his eyes ended in crimson and so did the little wisps all round his collar - for he wore it slightly long. It looked as if tongues of dancing, flaring flame were licking at the ends of it, and gave singular emphasis to his answer:I'm the hell Shinichi. If anyone could pass as a devil come up straight from Hell, this boy could.

On the other hand, his eyes were the pure golden eyes of an angel. Most people just call me Shinichi alone , he added soberly to Damon, letting those eyes crinkle a little to show that it was a joke. Now you know my name. Who are you?

Damon simply looked at him in silence.

Chapter 14

Elena woke up the next morning in Stefan's narrow bed. She recognized this before she was fully awake and hoped to heaven that she had given Aunt Judith some reasonable excuse last night. Last night - the very concept was extremely fuzzy. What had she been dreaming to make this wakening seem so extraordinary? She couldn't remember - jeez, she couldn't remember anything!

And then she remembered everything.

Sitting up with a jolt that would have sent her flying off the bed had she attempted it yesterday, she searched her recollections.

Daylight. She remembered daylight, full light on her - and she didn't have her ring. She took a frantic look at both hands. No ring. And she was sitting up in a shaft of sunlight and it wasn't hurting her. It wasn't possible. She knew, she remembered with a raw memory that pervaded every cell of her body, that daylight would kill her. She had learned that lesson with a single touch of a sunbeam to her hand. She would never forget the searing, scalding pain: the touch had imprinted a behavior on her forever. Go nowhere without the lapis lazuli ring that was beautiful in itself, but more beautiful in the knowledge that it was her savior. Without it, she might, she would...

Oh. Oh.

But she already had , hadn't she?

She'd died.

Not simply Changed as she had when she'd become a vampire, but died the true death that no one came back from. In her own personal philosophy, she ought to have disintegrated into nameless atoms, or gone straight to hell.

Instead she hadn't really gone anywhere. She'd had some dreams about fatherly or motherly people giving her advice - and of wanting very much to help people, who were suddenly much easier to understand. School bully? She had watched sadly as his drunken father took his own outrages out on him night after night. That girl who never got her homework done? She was expected to raise three younger sisters and brothers while her mother lay in bed all day. Just getting the baby fed and cleaned took all the time she had. There was always a reason behind any behavior, and now she could see it.

She had even communicated with people through their dreams. And then one of the Old Ones had arrived in Fell's Church, and it was all she could do to stand his interference in the dreams and not run away. He caused the humans to call for Stefan's help - and Damon had accidentally been summoned, too. And Elena had helped them all she could even when it had been almost unbearable, because Old Ones knew about love and which buttons to push and how to make your enemies run in all the right directions. But they had fought him - and they had won. And Elena, in trying to heal Stefan's mortal wounds, had somehow ended up mortal again herself: naked, lying on the ground of the Old Wood, with Damon's jacket over her, while Damon himself had disappeared without waiting for thanks.

And that awakening had been of basic things: things of the senses: touch, taste, hearing, sight - and of the heart, but not of the head. Stefan had been so good to her.

"And now, what am I?" Elena said aloud, staring as she turned her hands over and over, marveling at the solid, mortal flesh that obeyed the laws of gravity. She had said that she'd give up flying for him. Someone had taken her at her word.

"You're beautiful," Stefan answered absently, not moving. Then suddenly he rocketed up."You're talking!"

"I know I am."

"And making sense!"

"Thank you kindly."

"And in sentences!"

"I've noticed."

"Go on, then, and say something long - please," Stefan said as if he didn't believe it.

"You've been hanging out too much with my friends," Elena said. "That sentence has Bonnie's impudence, Matt's courtesy, and Meredith's insistence on the facts."

"Elena, it's you!"

Instead of keeping up the silly dialogue with "Stefan, itis me!" Elena stopped to think. Then, carefully she got out of bed and took a step. Stefan hastily looked away, handing her a robe. Stefan? Stefan?

Silence.

When Stefan turned around after a decent interval, he saw Elena kneeling in the sunlight holding the robe.

"Elena?" She knew that to him, she looked like a very young angel in meditation.

"Stefan."

"But you're crying."

"I'm human again, Stefan." She lifted a hand, let it fall into the clutches of gravity. "I'm human again. No more, no less. I guess it just took me a few days to get fully back on track."

She looked into his eyes. They were always such green green eyes. Like green crystal with some offside light behind them. Like a summer leaf held up before the sun.

I can read your mind.

"But I can't read yours, Stefan. I can only get a general sense, and even that may be going...we can't count on anything."

Elena, I have all I want in this room. He patted the bed. Sit by me and I can say "all I want is on this bed."

Instead she got up and threw herself at him, arms around his neck, legs tangled with his. "I'm still very young," she whispered, holding him tightly. "And if you count it in days, we haven't had many days together like this, but - "

"I'm still far too old for you. But to be able to look at you and seeyou looking back at me - "

"Tell me you'll love me forever."

"I'll love you forever."

"No matter what happens."

"Elena, Elena - I've loved you as mortal, as vampire, as pure spirit, as spiritual child - and now as human again."

"Promise we'll be together."

"We'll be together."

"No. Stefan, this is me ." She pointed to her head as if to emphasize that behind her gold-flecked blue eyes there was a bright active mind spinning in overdrive. "I know you. Even if I can't read your mind I can read your face. All the old fears - they're back, aren't they?"

He looked away. "I will never leave you."

"Not for a day? Not for an hour?"

He hesitated and then looked up at her. If that's what you really want. I won't leave you, even for an hour. Now he was projecting, she knew, for she could hear him.

"I release you from all your promises."

"But, Elena, I mean them."

"I know. But when you do go, I don't want you to have the guilt of breaking them looming over you as well."

Even without telepathy, she could tell what he was thinking to the tiniest shade of a nuance: Humor her. After all, she'd just woken up. She was probably a little confused. And she wasn't interested in becoming less confused, or in making him less confused. That must be why she was nipping his chin gently. And kissing him. Certainly, Elena thought, one of the two of them was confused....

Time seemed to stretch and then stop around them. And then nothing was confusing at all. Elena knew that Stefan knew what she wanted, and he wanted whatever she wanted him to do.

Bonnie stared at the numbers on her phone, concerned. Stefan was calling. Then she ran a hasty hand through her hair, fluffing the curls out, and took the video call.

But instead of Stefan it was Elena. Bonnie started to giggle, started to tell her not to play with Stefan's grown-up toys - and then she stared.

"Elena?"

"Am I going to get this every time? Or only from my sister-witch?"

"Elena?"

"Awake and good as new," Stefan said, getting in the picture. "We called as soon as we woke up - "

"Ele - but it's noon!" Bonnie blurted out.

"We've been occupied with this and that," Elena cut in smoothly, and oh, wasn't it good to hear Elena talk that way! Half innocent and wholly smug about it, making you want to shake her and beg her for every wicked detail.

"Elena," Bonnie gasped, using the nearest wall for support, and then sliding down it, and allowing an armload of socks, shirts, pajamas, and underwear to shower down onto the carpet, while tears began to leak out of her eyes. "Elena, they said you'd have to leave Fell's Church - will you?"

Elena bridled. "They said what ?"

"That you and Stefan would have to leave for your own good."

"Never in this world!"

"Little lovely lo - " began Stefan, and then abruptly he stopped, opening and shutting his mouth.

Bonnie stared. It had happened at the bottom of the screen, out of sight, but she could almost swear that Stefan's little lovely love had just elbowed him in the stomach. "Ground zero, two o'clock?" Elena was asking.

Bonnie snapped back to reality. Elena never gave you time for reflection. "I'll be there!" she cried.

"Elena," Meredith breathed. And then "Elena!" like a half-chocked sob. "Elena!"

"Meredith. Oh, don't make me cry, this blouse is pure silk!"

"It's pure silk because it's my pure silk sari blouse, that's why!"

Elena suddenly looked as innocent as an angel. "You know, Meredith, I seem to have grown much taller lately - "

"If the end of that sentence is ‘so it really fits me better'" - Meredith's voice was threatening - "then I'm warning you, Elena Gilbert..." She broke off, and both girls began to laugh and then to cry. "You can have it! Oh, you can have it!"

"Stefan?" Matt waved his phone - first cautiously, then banging it into the wall of the garage. "I can't see - " He stopped, swallowed. "E-le-na?" The word came out slowly, with a pause between each syllable.

"Yes, Matt. I'm back. Even up here." She pointed to her forehead. "Will you meet with us?"

Matt, leaning on his newly purchased, almost-running car, was muttering, "Thank God, thank God," over and over.

"Matt? I can't see you. Are you okay?" Shuffling sounds. "I think he fainted."

Stefan's voice: "Matt? She really wants to see you."

"Yeah, yeah." Matt lifted his head up, blinking at the phone. "Elena, Elena..."

"I'm so sorry, Matt. You don't have to come - "

Matt laughed shortly. "Are you sure you're Elena?"

Elena smiled the smile that had broken a thousand hearts. "In that case - Matt Honeycutt, I insist that you come and meet with us at Ground Zero at two o'clock. Is that more like it?"

"I think you've almost got it down. The old Elena Imperial Manner." He coughed theatrically, sniffed, and said, "Sorry - I've got a little cold; or allergies, maybe."

"Don't be silly, Matt. You're bawling like a baby and so am I," Elena said. "And so were Bonnie and Meredith, when I called them. So I've been crying nearly all day - and at this rate I'll have to scramble to get a picnic ready and be on time. Meredith's planning to pick you up. Bring something to drink or eat. Love ya!"

Elena put down the phone, breathing hard.

"Now that was tough."

"He still loves you."

"He'd rather that I stayed a baby all my life?"

"Maybe he liked the way you used to say ‘hello' and ‘good-bye.'"

"Now you're teasing me." Elena quivered her chin.

"Never in this world," Stefan said softly. Then, suddenly, he grabbed her hand. "Come on - we're going shopping for a picnic and a car, too," he said, pulling her up.

Elena startled both of them by flying up so quickly that Stefan had to grab her by the waist to keep her from shooting toward the ceiling.

"I thought you had gravity!"

"So did I! What do I do?"

"Think heavy thoughts!"

"What if it doesn't work?"

"We'll buy you an anchor!"

At two o'clock Stefan and Elena arrived at the Fell's Church graveyard in a brand-new red Jaguar; Elena was wearing dark glasses under a scarf with all her hair pinned up under it, a muffler around her lower face, and black lace mitts borrowed from Mrs. Flowers' younger days, which she admitted she didn't know why she was wearing. She made quite a picture, Meredith said, with the violet sari top and jeans. Bonnie and Meredith had already spread a cloth for a picnic, and the ants were sampling sandwiches and grapes and low-fat pasta salad.

Elena told the story of how she had woken up this morning, and then there was more hugging and kissing and crying than the males could stand.

"You want to see the woods around here? Check if those malach things are around?" Matt said to Stefan.

"They'd better not be," Stefan said. "If the trees this far from where you had your accident are infested - "

"Not good?"

"Serious trouble."

They were about to go when Elena called them back.

"You can stop looking all male and superior," she added. "Suppressing your emotions is bad for you. Expressing them keeps you well balanced."

"Listen, you're tougher than I thought," Stefan said. "Having picnics at a cemetery?"

"We used to find Elena here all the time," Bonnie said, pointing to a nearby headstone with a celery stick.

"It's my parents' gravesite," Elena explained simply. "After the accident - I always felt closer to them here than anywhere. I would come here when things got bad, or when I needed to have a question answered."

"Did you ever get any answers?" Matt asked, taking a home-preserved cucumber pickle from a glass jar and passing the jar on.

"I'm not sure, even now," Elena said. She had taken off the dark glasses, muffler, headscarf, and mitts. "But it always made me feel better. Why? Do you have a question?"

"Well - yeah," Matt said unexpectedly. Then he flushed as he suddenly found himself the center of attention. Bonnie rolled over to stare at him, the stalk of celery at her lips, Meredith scooted in, Elena sat up. Stefan, who had been leaning against an elaborate headstone with unconscious vampire grace, sat down.

"What is it, Matt?"

"I was going to say, you don't look right today," Bonnie said anxiously.

"Thank you ," Matt snapped.

Tears pooled in Bonnie's brown eyes. "I didn't mean - "

But she didn't get to finish. Meredith and Elena drew in protectively around her in the solid phalanx of what they called "velociraptor sisterhood." It meant that anybody messing with one of them was messing with them all.

"Sarcasm instead of chivalry? That's hardly the Matt I know." Meredith spoke with one eyebrow raised.

"She was only trying to be sympathetic," Elena pointed out quietly. "And that was a cheap comeback."

"Okay, okay! I'm sorry – really sorry, Bonnie" - he turned toward her, looking ashamed - "It was a nasty thing to say and I know you were only trying to be nice. I just - I don't really know what I'm doing or saying. Anyway, do you want to hear the thing," he finished, looking defensive, "or not?"

Everyone did.

"Okay, here it is. I went to visit Jim Bryce this morning - you remember him?"

"Sure. I went out with him. Captain of the basketball team. Nice guy. A little bit young, but..." Meredith shrugged.

"Jim's okay." Matt swallowed. "Well, it's just - I don't want to gossip or anything, but - "

"Gossip!" the three girls commanded him in unison, like a Greek chorus.

Matt quailed. "Okay, okay! Well - I was supposed to be over there at ten o'clock, but I got there a little early, and - well, Caroline was there. She was leaving."

There were three little shocked gasps and a sharp look from Stefan.

"You mean you think she spent the night with him?"

"Stefan!" Bonnie began. "This isn't how proper gossip goes. You never just outright say what you think - "

"No," Elena said evenly. "Let Matt answer. I can remember enough from before I could talk to be worried about Caroline."

"More than worried," Stefan said.

Meredith nodded. "It's not gossip; it's necessary information," she said.

"Okay, then." Matt gulped. "Well, yeah, that was what I thought. He said she'd come early to see his little sister, but Tamra is only about fifteen. And he turned bright red when he said it."

There were sober glances between the others.

"Caroline's always been...well, sleazy..." began Bonnie.

"But I've never heard that she even gave Jim a second glance," finished Meredith.

They looked to Elena for an answer. Elena slowly shook her head. "I certainly can't see any earthly reason for her visiting Tamra. And besides" - she looked up quickly at Matt - "you're holding out on us somehow. What else happened?"

"Something more happened? Did Caroline flash her lingerie?" Bonnie was laughing until she saw Matt's red face. "Hey - c'mon, Matt. This is us . You can tell us anything."

Matt drew in a deep breath and shut his eyes.

"Okay, well - as she was going out, I think - I think Caroline...propositioned me."

"She did what ?"

"She would never - "

"How, Matt?" Elena asked.

"Well - Jim thought she'd left, and he went to the garage to get his basketball, and I turned around and suddenly Caroline was back again, and she said - well, it doesn't matter what she said. But it was about her liking football better than basketball and did I want to be a sport."

"And what did you say?" Bonnie breathed, fascinated.

"I didn't say anything. I just stared at her."

"And then Jim came back?" Meredith suggested.

"No! And then Caroline left - she gave me this look, you know, that made things pretty clear as to what she meant - and then Tami came in." Matt's honest face was flaming by now. "And then - I don't know how to say it. Maybe Caroline said something about me to make her do it to me, because she - she..."

"Matt." Stefan had scarcely spoken until this point; now he leaned forward and spoke quietly. "We're not asking just because we want to gossip. We're trying to find out if there's something seriously wrong happening in Fell's Church. So - please - just tell us what happened."

Chapter 15

Matt nodded, but he was blushing to the fair roots of his hair. "Tami...pressed herself against me."

There was a long pause.

Meredith said levelly, "Matt, do you mean she hugged you? Like a biiiiiig hug? Or that she..." She stopped, because Matt was already shaking his head vehemently.

"It was no innocent biiiiiig hug. We were alone, in the doorway there, and she just...well, I couldn't believe it. She's only fifteen, but she acted like an adult woman. I mean...not that I've ever had an adult woman do that to me."

Looking embarrassed but relieved at having got this off his chest, Matt's gaze went from face to face. "So what do you think? Was it just a coincidence that Caroline was there? Or did she...say something to Tamra?"

"No coincidence," Elena said simply. "It'd be too much of a coincidence: Caroline coming on to you and then Tamra acting like that. I know - I used to know Tami Bryce. She's a nice little girl - or she used to be."

"She still is," Meredith said. "I told you, I went out with Jim a few times. She's a very nice girl, and not at all mature for her age. I don't think she would normally do anything inappropriate, unless..." She stopped, looking into the middle distance, and then shrugged without finishing her sentence.

Bonnie looked serious now. "But we have to stop this," she said. "What if she does that to some guy who's not nice and shy like Matt? She's going to get herself assaulted!"

"That's the whole problem," Matt said, turning red again. "I mean, it's pretty difficult.... If she had been some other girl, that I was going on a date with - not that I go out with other girls on dates..." he added hastily, glancing at Elena.

"But you should be going out on dates," Elena said firmly. "Matt, I don't want eternal fidelity from you - there's nothing I'd like better than to see you dating a nice girl." As if by accident, her gaze wandered over to Bonnie, who was now trying to crunch celery very quietly and neatly.

"Stefan, you're the only one who can tell us what to do," Elena said, turning to him.

Stefan was frowning. "I don't know. With only two girls, it's pretty hard to draw any conclusions."

"So we're going to wait and see what Caroline - or Tami - does next?" Meredith asked.

"Not just wait," Stefan said. "We've got to find out more about it. You guys can keep an eye on Caroline and Tamra Bryce, and I can do some research on it."

"Damn!" Elena said, hitting the ground with one fist. "I can almost - " She stopped suddenly and looked at her friends. Bonnie had dropped her celery, gasping, and Matt had choked on his Coke, going into a coughing fit. Even Meredith and Stefan were staring at her. "What?" she said blankly.

Meredith recovered first. "It's just that yesterday you were - well, very young angels don't swear."

"Just because I died a couple of times, it means I have to say ‘darn' for the rest of my life?" Elena shook her head. "Not. I'm me and I'm going to stay me - whoever I am."

"Good," said Stefan, leaning over to kiss the top of her head. Matt looked away and Elena gave Stefan an almost dismissive pat, but thinking, I love you forever , and knowing that he would pick it up even if she couldn't hear his thought in return. In fact she found she could pick up his general response to it, a warm rose color seemed to hang around him.

Was this what Bonnie saw and called an aura? She realized that most of the day she'd seen him with a light, cool, emerald sort of shadowing around him - if shadows could be light. And the green was returning now as the pink faded away.

Immediately she glanced over the rest of the picnickers. Bonnie was surrounded by a rose like color, shading to the palest of pinks. Meredith was a deep and profound violet. Matt was a strong clear blue.

It reminded her that up until yesterday - only yesterday? - she'd seen so many things that no one else could see. Including something that had scared her silly.

What had it been ? She was getting flashes of images - little details that were scary enough by themselves. It could be as small as a fingernail or as large as an arm. Bark-like texture, at least on the body. Insect-like antennae, but far too many of them, and moving like whips, faster than any insect ever moved them. She had the general crawly feeling she got whenever she thought about insects. It was a bug, then. But a bug built on a different body plan than any insect she knew of. It was more like a leech in that respect, or a squid. It had a completely circular mouth, with sharp teeth all around, and far too many tentacles that looked like thick vines whipping around in back.

It could attach itself to a person, she thought. But she had a terrible feeling that it could do more.

It could turn transparent and pull itself inside you and you would feel no more than a pinprick.

And then what would happen?

Elena turned to Bonnie. "Do you think that if I show you what something looks like, you could recognize it again? Not with your eyes, but with your psychic senses?"

"I guess it depends on what the ‘something' is," Bonnie answered cautiously.

Elena glanced over at Stefan, who gave her briefest of nods.

"Then shut your eyes," she said.

Bonnie did so, and Elena put her fingertips on Bonnie's temples, with her thumbs gently brushing Bonnie's eyelashes. Trying to activate her White Powers - something that had been so easy before today - was like striking two rocks together to make a fire and hoping one was flint. Finally she felt a small spark, and Bonnie jerked backward.

Bonnie's eyes snapped open. "What was that?" she gasped. She was breathing hard.

"That's what I saw - yesterday."

"Where?"

Elena said slowly, "Inside Damon."

"But what does it mean? Was he controlling it? Or...or..." Bonnie stopped and her eyes widened.

Elena finished the sentence for her. "Was it controlling him? I don't know. But here's one thing I do know, almost for certain. When he ignored your Calling, Bonnie, he was being influenced by the malach."

"The question is, if not Damon , who was controlling it?" Stefan said, standing up again restlessly. "I picked that up, and the kind of creature Elena showed you - it's not something with a mind of its own. It needs an outside brain to control it."

"Like another vampire?" Meredith asked quietly.

Stefan shrugged. "Vampires usually just ignore them, because vampires can get what they want without them. It would have to be a very strong mind to get a malach like that to possess a vampire. Strong - and evil."

"Those," Damon said with biting grammatical precision, from where he was sitting on a high limb of an oak, "are they. My younger brother and his...associates."

"Marvelous," murmured Shinichi. He had draped himself even more gracefully and languidly against the oak than Damon had. It had become an unspoken contest. Shinichi's golden eyes had flared once or twice - Damon had seen it - upon seeing Elena and at the mention of Tami.

"Don't even try to tell me you're not involved with those rowdy girls," Damon added dryly. "From Caroline to Tamra and onward, that's the idea, isn't it?"

Shinichi shook his head. His eyes were on Elena and he began to sing a folksong softly.

"With cheeks like blooming roses

And hair like golden wheat..."

"I wouldn't try it on those girls." Damon smiled without humor. His eyes were narrow. "Granted, they look about as strong as wet tissue paper - but they're tougher than you'd think, and they're toughest of all when one of them is in danger."

"I told you, it's not me doing it," Shinichi said. He looked uneasy for the first time since Damon had seen him. Then he said, "Although I might know the originator."

"Do tell," Damon suggested, still narrow-eyed.

"Well - did I mention my younger twin? Her name is Misao." He smiled winningly. "It means maiden."

Damon felt an automatic stirring of appetite. He ignored it. He was too relaxed to think of hunting, and he wasn't at all sure that kitsune - fox-spirits, which Shinichi claimed to be - could be hunted. "No, you didn't mention her," Damon said, absently scratching at the back of his neck. That mosquito bite was gone, but it had left behind a furious itching. "It must have somehow slipped your mind."

"Well, she's here somewhere. She came when I did, when we saw the flare of Power that brought back...Elena."

Damon felt sure that the hesitation before the mention of Elena's name was a fake. He tilted his head at the don't think you're fooling me angle and waited.

"Misao likes to play games," Shinichi said simply.

"Oh, yes? Like backgammon, chess, Go Fish, that sort of thing?"

Shinichi coughed theatrically, but Damon caught the glint of red in his eye. My, he really was overprotective of her, wasn't he? Damon gave Shinichi one of his most incandescent smiles.

"I love her," the young man with the black hair licked by fire said, and this time there was an open warning in his voice.

"Of course you do," Damon said in soothing tones. "I can see that."

"But, well, her games usually have the effect of destroying a town. Eventually. Not all at once."

Damon shrugged. "This flyspeck of a village isn't going to be missed. Of course, I get my girls out alive first." Now it was his voice that held an open warning.

"Just as you like." Shinichi was back to his normal, submissive self. "We're allies, and we'll keep to our deal. Anyway, it would be a shame to waste...all that." His gaze drifted to Elena again.

"By the way, we won't even discuss the little fiasco with your malach and me - or hers, if you insist. I'm pretty sure I've vaporized at least three of them, but if I see another one, our business relationship is over. I make a bad enemy, Shinichi. You don't want to find out how bad."

Shinichi looked suitably impressed as he nodded. But the next moment he was gazing at Elena again, and singing.

"...hair like golden wheat

all a-down her milk-white shoulders;

My pretty pink, my sweet..."

"And I'll want to meet this Misao of yours. For her protection."

"And I know she wants to meet you. She's caught up in her game at the moment, but I'll try to tear her away from it." Shinichi stretched luxuriously.

Damon looked at him for a moment. Then, absent-mindedly, he too stretched.

Shinichi was watching him. He smiled.

Damon wondered about that smile. He had noticed that when Shinichi smiled, two little flames of crimson could be seen in his eyes.

But he was really too tired to think about it right now. Simply too relaxed. In fact he suddenly felt very sleepy....

"So we're going to be looking for these malach things in girls like Tami?" Bonnie asked.

"Exactly like Tami," said Elena.

"And you think," Meredith said, watching Elena closely, "that Tami got it somehow from Caroline."

"Yes. I know, I know - the question is: where did Caroline get it from? And that I don't know. But, again, we don't know what happened to her when she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler Smallwood. We don't know anything about what she's been doing for the last week - except that it's clear she never really stopped hating us."

Matt held his head in his hands. "And then what are we going to do? I feel as if I'm responsible somehow."

"No - Jimmy's responsible, if anyone is. If he - you know, let Caroline spend the night - and then let her talk about it with his fifteen-year-old sister.... Well, it doesn't make him guilty , but he sure could have been a little more subtle," Stefan said.

"And that's where you're wrong," Meredith told him. "Matt and Bonnie and Elena and I have known Caroline forages and we know what she's capable of . If anyone qualifies as their sister's keeper - it's us. And I think we're in serious delinquency of duty. I vote we stop by her house."

"So do I," Bonnie said sadly, "but I'm not looking forward to it. Besides, what if she doesn't have one of those malach things in her?"

"That's where the research comes in," Elena said. "We need to find out who's behind it all. Someone strong enough to influence Damon."

"Wonderful," Meredith said, looking grim. "And given the power of the ley lines, we only have every single person in Fell's Church to choose from."

Fifty yards west and thirty feet straight up, Damon was struggling to keep awake.

Shinichi reached up to brush fine hair the color of night and flames licking upward off his forehead. Under his lowered lids he was watching Damon intently.

Damon meant to be watching him as intently, but he was simply too drowsy. Slowly, he imitated Shinichi's motion, brushing a very few strands of silky black hair off his own forehead. His lids drooped inadvertently, just a little more than before. Shinichi was still smiling at him.

"So we have our deal," he murmured. "We get the town, Misao and I, and you don't stand in our way. We get the rights to the power of the ley lines. You get your girls safely out...and you get your revenge."

"Against my sanctimonious brother and that...that Mutt!"

"Matt." Shinichi had sharp ears.

"Whatever. I just won't have Elena hurt, is all. Or the little red-headed witch."

"Ah, yes, sweet Bonnie. I wouldn't mind one or two like her. One for Samhain and one for the Solstice."

Damon snorted drowsily. "There aren't two like her; I don't care where you look. I won't have her hurt either."

"And what about the tall, dark-haired beauty...Meredith?"

Damon woke up. "Where?"

"Don't worry; she's not coming to get you," Shinichi said soothingly. "What do you want done with her?"

"Oh." Damon lounged back again in relief, easing his shoulders. "Let her go her own way - as long as it's far away from mine."

Shinichi seemed to deliberately relax back against his branch. "Your brother will be no problem. So it's really just that other boy down there," he murmured. He had a very insinuating murmur.

"Yes. But my brother - " Damon was almost asleep now, in the exact position that Shinichi had taken.

"I told you, he'll be taken care of."

"Mm. I mean, good."

"So we have a deal?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"We have a deal."

This time, Damon didn't respond. He was dreaming. He dreamed that Shinichi's angelic golden eyes snapped open suddenly to look at him.

"Damon." He heard his name, but in his dream it was too much trouble to open his eyes. He could see without opening them, anyway.

In his dream, Shinichi leaned over him, hovering directly over his face, so that their auras mixed and they would have shared breath if Damon had been breathing. Shinichi stayed that way a long time, as if he were testing Damon's aura, but Damon knew that to an outsider he would appear to be out on all channels and frequencies. Still, in his dream Shinichi hung over him, as if he were trying to memorize the crescent of dark lashes on Damon's pale cheek or the subtle curve of Damon's mouth.

Finally, the dream-Shinichi put his hand under Damon's head and stroked the spot where the mosquito bite had itched.

"Oh, growing up to be a fine big lad, aren't you?" he said to something Damon couldn't see - to something inside him. "You could almost take full control against his own strong will, couldn't you?"

Shinichi sat for a moment, as if watching a cherry blossom fall, then shut his eyes.

"I think," he whispered, "that that's what we'll try, not too long from now. Soon. Very soon. But first, we have to gain his trust; get rid of his rival. Keep him blurred, angry, vain, off balance. Keep him thinking of Stefan, of his hatred for Stefan, who took his angel, while I take care of what needs to be done here."

Then he spoke directly to Damon. "Allies, indeed!" He laughed. "Not while I can put my finger on your very soul. Here. Do you feel it? What I could make you do..."

And then again he seemed to address whatever creature was already inside Damon: "But right now...a little feast to help you grow up much faster and get much stronger."

In the dream, Shinichi made a gesture, and lay back, encouraging previously invisible malach to come up the trees. They slunk up and slid up the back of Damon's neck. And then, hideously, they slipped inside him, one by one, through some cut he hadn't known he had. The feeling of their soft, flabby, jellyfish-like bodies was almost unbearable...slipping inside of him....

Shinichi sang softly.

"Oh, come a' tae me, ye fair pretty maidens

Haste ye lassies tae my bosom

Come tae me by sunlight or moonlight

While the roses still are in blossom..."

In his dream, Damon was angry. Not because of the nonsense about malach inside him. That was ludicrous. He was angry because he knew that the dream-Shinichi was watching Elena as she began to pack up the remains of the picnic. He was watching every motion she made with an obsessive closeness.

"They blossom ever where you tread

...Wild roses bloody red."

"Extraordinary girl, your Elena," the dream-Shinichi added. "If she lives, I think she'll be mine for a night or so." He stroked the remaining strands of hair off Damon's forehead gently. "Extraordinary aura, don't you think? I'll make sure her death is beautiful."

But Damon was in one of those dreams where you can neither move nor speak. He didn't answer.

Meanwhile, dream-Shinichi's dream-pets continued to climb the trees and pour themselves, like Jell-O, inside him. One, two, three, a dozen, two dozen of them. More .

And Damon could not wake, even though he sensed more malach coming from the Old Wood. They were neither dead, nor living, neither man nor maiden, mere capsules of Power that would allow Shinichi to control Damon's mind from far away. Endlessly, they came.

Shinichi kept watching the flow, the bright sparkle of internal organs sparkling into Damon. After a while he sang again,

"Days are precious, dinna lose them

Flo'ers will fade and so will ye...

Come to me, ye fair young maidens

While young and fair ye still may be."

Damon dreamed that he heard the word "forget" as if whispered by a hundred voices. And even as he tried to remember what to forget, it dissolved and disappeared.

He woke up alone in the tree, with an ache that filled his entire body.

Chapter 16

Stefan was surprised to find Mrs. Flowers waiting for them when they returned from their picnic. And, also unusually, she had something to say that didn't involve her gardens.

"There is a message for you upstairs," she said, jerking her head toward the narrow staircase. "It came from a dark young fellow - he looked somewhat like you. He wouldn't leave a word with me. Just asked where to leave a message."

"Dark fellow? Damon?" Elena asked.

Stefan shook his head. "What would he want to be leaving me messages for?"

He left Elena with Mrs. Flowers and hastened up the crazy, zigzagging stairs. At the top he found a piece of paper stuffed under the door.

It was a Thinking of You card, sans envelope. Stefan, who knew his brother, doubted that it had been paid for - with money, at least. Inside, in heavy black felt-tipped pen, were the words:

DON'T NEED THIS.

THOUGHT ST. STEFAN MIGHT.

MEET ME TONIGHT AT THE TREE

WHERE THE HUMANS CRASHED.

NO LATER THAN 4:30A.M .

I'LL GIVE YOU THE SCOOP.

D.

That was all...except for a Web address.

Stefan was about to throw the note in the wastebasket when curiosity assailed him. He turned on the

computer, directed it to the proper website, and watched. For a while, nothing happened. Then very dark gray letters on a black screen appeared. To a human, it would have appeared to be a completely blank screen. To vampires, with their higher visual acuity, the gray on black was faint but clear.

Tired of that lapis lazuli?

Want to take a vacation in Hawaii?

Sick of that same old liquid cuisine?

Come and visit Shi no Shi.

Stefan started to close the page, but something stopped him. He sat and stared at the inconspicuous little ad beneath the poem until he heard Elena at the door. He quickly closed the computer and went to take the picnic basket from her. He said nothing about the note or what he'd seen on the computer screen. But as the night went on, he thought more and more.

"Oh! Stefan, you'll break my ribs! You squeezed all my breath out!"

"I'm sorry. I just need to hold you."

"Well, I need to hold you, too."

"Thank you, angel."

Everything was quiet in the room with the high ceiling. One window was open, letting the moonlight through. In the sky, even the moon seemed to creep stealthily along, and the shaft of moonlight followed it on the hardwood floor.

Damon smiled. He had had a long, restful day and now he meant to have an interesting night.

Getting through the window wasn't quite as easy as he'd expected. When he arrived as a huge, glossy black crow, he was expecting to balance on the windowsill and change to human form to open the window. But the window had a trap on it - it was linked by Power to one of the sleepers inside. Damon puzzled over it, preening himself viciously, afraid to put any tension on that thin link, when something arrived beside him in a flutter of wings.

It looked like no respectable crow ever registered in the sighting book of any ornithologist. It was sleek enough, but its wings were tipped with scarlet, and it had golden, shining eyes.

Shinichi? Damon asked.

Who else? came the reply as a golden eye fixed on him. I see you have a problem. But it can be fixed. I'll deepen their sleep so that you can cut the link.

Don't! Damon said reflexively. If you so much as touch either of them, Stefan will -

The answer came in soothing tones. Stefan's just a boy, remember? Trust me. You do trust me, don't you?

And it worked out exactly as the demonically colored bird said it would. The sleepers inside slept more deeply, and then more deeply still.

A moment later the window opened, and Damon changed form and was inside. His brother and...and she...the one he always had to watch...she was lying asleep, her golden hair lying across the pillow and lying across his brother's body.

Damon tore his eyes away. There was a medium-sized, slightly outdated computer on the desk in the corner. He went over to it and without the slightest hesitation turned it on. The two on the bed never stirred.

Files...aha. Diary. How original a name. Damon opened it and examined the contents.

Dear Diary,

I woke up this morning and - marvel of marvels - I'm me again. I walk, talk, drink, wet the bed (well, I haven't yet, but I'm sure I could if I tried).

I'm back.

It's been one hell of a journey.

I died, dearest Diary, I really died. And then I died as a vampire. And don't expect me to describe what happened either time - believe me; you had to be there.

The important thing is that I was gone, but now I'm back again - and, oh, dear patient friend who has been keeping my secrets since kindergarten...I am so glad to be back.

On the debit side, I can never live with Aunt Judith or Margaret again. They think I'm "resting in peace" with the angels. On the credit side, I can live with Stefan.

This is the compensation for all I've been through - I don't know how to compensate those who went to the very gates of Hell for me. Oh, I'm tired and - might as well say it - eager for a night with my darling.

I'm very happy. We had a fine day, laughing and loving, and watching each of my friends' faces as they saw me alive! (And not insane, which I gather is how I have been acting the past few days. Honestly, you'd think Great Spirits Inna Sky could have dropped me off with my marbles all in order. Oh, well.)

Love ya,

Elena

Damon's eyes skimmed over these lines impatiently. He was looking for something quite different. Ah. Yes. This was more like it:

My dearest Elena,

I knew you would look here sooner or later. I hope you never have to see it at all. If you're reading this, then Damon is a traitor, or something else has gone terribly wrong.

A traitor? That seemed a little strong, Damon thought, hurt, but also burning with an intense desire to get on with his task.

I'm going out to the woods to talk to him tonight - if I don't come back, you'll know where to start asking questions.

The truth is that I don't exactly understand the situation. Earlier today, Damon sent me a card with a Web address on it. I've put the card under your pillow, love.

Oh damn, thought Damon. It was going to be hard to get that card without waking her. But he had to do it.

Elena, follow this Web link. You'll have to dither with the brightness controls because it's been created for vampire eyes only. What the link seems to be saying is that there is a place called Shi no Shi - literally translated, it says, as the Death of Death, where they can remove this curse which has haunted me for almost half a millennium. They use magic and science in combination to restore former vampires to simple men and women, boys and girls.

If they truly can do this, Elena, we can be together for as long as ordinary people live. That's all I ask of life.

I want it. I want to have the chance to stand before you as an ordinary breathing, eating human.

But don't worry. I'm just going to talk with Damon about this. You don't need to command me to stay. I would never leave you with all the goings-on in Fell's Church right now. It's too dangerous for you, especially with your new blood and your new aura.

I realize that I'm trusting Damon more than I probably should. But of one thing I am certain: he would never harm you. He loves you. How can he help it?

Still, I have to meet with him at least, on his terms, alone at a particular location in the wood. Then we'll see what we see.

As I said before, if you're reading this letter, it means that something has gone drastically wrong. Defend yourself, love. Don't be afraid. Trust yourself. And trust your friends. They can all help you.

I trust Matt's instinctive protectiveness for you, Meredith's judgment, and Bonnie's intuition. Tell them to remember that.

I'm hoping that you never have to read this,

with all my love, my heart, my soul,

Stefan

P.S. Just in case, there is $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills under the second floorboard from the wall, across from the bed. Right now the rocking chair is over it. You'll see the crack easily if you move the chair.

Carefully, Damon deleted the words in this file. Then, with one corner of his mouth quirked up, he carefully, silently typed in new words with a rather different meaning. He read them over. He smiled brilliantly. He'd always fancied himself a writer; no formal training of course, but he felt he had an instinctive flair for it.

And that was Step One accomplished, Damon thought, saving the file with his words instead of Stefan's.

Then, noiselessly, he walked to where Elena was sleeping, spooned behind Stefan on the narrow bed.

Now for Step Two.

Slowly, very slowly, Damon slipped his fingers under the pillow on which Elena's head rested. He could feel Elena's hair where it spilled on her pillow in the moonlight, and the ache that it awoke was more in his chest than in his canines. Inching his fingers under the pillow, he searched for something smooth.

Elena murmured in her sleep and suddenly turned over. Damon almost jumped back into the shadows, but Elena's eyes were shut, her lashes a thick inky crescent on her cheeks.

She was facing him now, but strangely Damon didn't find himself tracing the blue veins in her fair, smooth skin. He found himself staring hungrily at her slightly parted lips. They were...almost impossible to resist. Even in sleep they were the color of rose petals, slightly moist, and parted that way....

I could do it very lightly. She would never know. I could, I know I could. I feel invincible tonight.

As he bent toward her his fingers touched cardboard.

It seemed to jerk him out of a dream world. What had he been thinking? Risking everything, all his plans, for a kiss ? There would be plenty of time for kisses - and other, much more important things - later.

He slipped the little card out from under the pillow and put it in his pocket.

Then he became a crow and vanished from the windowsill.

Stefan had long ago perfected the art of sleeping only until a certain moment, then awakening. He did this now, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece to confirm that it was four A.M . exactly.

He didn't want to awaken Elena.

He dressed soundlessly and exited the window by the same route his brother had - only as a hawk. Somewhere, he was sure Damon was being made a fool by someone using malachs to make him their puppet. And Stefan, still pumped up with Elena's blood, felt that he had a duty to stop them.

The note Damon had delivered had directed him to the tree where the humans had crashed. Damon would also want to continually revisit that tree until he'd traced the malach puppets to their puppeteer.

He swooped, drifted, and once almost gave a mouse a heart attack by stooping down on it suddenly before rocketing skyward again.

And then, in midair, as he saw evidence of a car hitting a tree, he changed from a glorious hawk to a young man with dark hair, a pale face, and intensely green eyes.

He drifted, light as a snowflake, down to the ground and gazed in each direction, using all his vampire senses to test the area. He could feel nothing of a trap; no animosity, just the unmistakable signs of the trees' violent fight. He stayed human to climb the tree that bore the psychic imprint of his brother.

He wasn't chilly as he climbed the oak his brother had been lounging in when the accident had taken place at his feet. He had too much of Elena's blood running through him to feel the cold. But he was aware that this area of the forest was particularly cold; that something was keeping it that way. Why? He'd already claimed the rivers and forests that ran through Fell's Church, so why take up lodging here without telling him? Whatever it was, it would have to present itself before him eventually, if it wanted to stay in Fell's Church. Why wait? he wondered, as he squatted on the branch.

He felt Damon's presence coming at him long before his senses would have noticed it in the days before Elena's transformation, and he kept himself from flinching. Instead he turned with his back to the trunk of the tree and looked outward. He could feel Damon speeding toward him, faster and faster, stronger and stronger - and then Damon should have been there, standing before him, but he wasn't.

Stefan frowned.

"It always pays to look up, little brother," advised a charming voice above him, and then Damon, who had been clinging to the tree like a lizard, did a forward flip and landed on Stefan's branch.

Stefan said nothing, merely examining his older brother. At last he said, "You're in good spirits."

"I've had a sumptuous day," Damon said. "Shall I name them off to you? There was the greeting-card shop girl...Elizabeth, and my dear friend Damaris, whose husband works in Bronston, and little young Teresa who volunteers at the library, and..."

Stefan sighed. "Sometimes I think you could remember the name of every girl you've bled in your life, but you forget my name on a regular basis," he said.

"Nonsense...little brother. Now, since Elena has undoubtedly explained to you just what happened when I tried to rescue your miniature witch - Bonnie - I feel I'm due an apology."

"And since you sent me a note that I can only construe as provocative, I really feelI'm due an explanation."

"Apology first," Damon rapped out. And then, in long-suffering tones, "I'm sure you think it's bad enough, having promised Elena when she was dying that you would look after me - forever. But you never seem to realize that I had to promise the same thing, and I'm not exactly the caretaking type. Now that she's not dead anymore, maybe we should just forget it."

Stefan sighed again. "All right, all right. I apologize. I was wrong. I shouldn't have thrown you out. Is that enough?"

"I'm not sure you really mean it. Try it once more, with feel - "

"Damon, what in God's name was the website about?"

"Oh. I thought it was rather clever: they got the colors so close that only vampires or witches or such could read it, whereas humans would just see a blank screen."

"But how did you find out about it?"

"I'll tell you in a moment. But just think of it, little brother. You and Elena, on the perfect little honeymoon, just two more humans in a world of humans. The sooner you go, the sooner you can sing ‘Ding Dong, the Corpse Is Dead'!"

"I still want to know how you just happened to come across this website."

"All right. I admit it: I've been suckered into the age of technology at last. I have my own website. And a very helpful young man contacted me just to see whether I really meant the things I said on it or if I was just a frustrated idealist. I figured that description fit you."

"You - a website? I don't believe - "

Damon ignored him. "I passed the message along because I'd already heard of the place, the Shi no Shi ."

"The Death of Death , it said."

"That's how it was translated to me." Damon turned a thousand-kilowatt smile on Stefan, boring into him, until finally Stefan turned away, feeling as if he'd been exposed to the sun without his lapis ring.

"As a matter of fact," Damon went on chattily, "I've invited the fellow himself to come and to explain it to you."

"You did which ?"

"He should be here at 4:44 exactly. Don't blame me for the timing; it's something special to him."

And then with very little fuss, and certainly no Power at all that Stefan could discern, something landed in the tree above them and dropped down to their branch, changing as it did.

It was, indeed, a young man, with fire-tipped black hair and serene golden eyes. As Stefan swung toward him, he held up both hands in a gesture of helplessness and surrender.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm the hell Shinichi," the young man said easily. "But, as I told your brother, most people call me just Shinichi. Of course, it's up to you."

"And you know all about the Shi no Shi."

"Nobody knows all about it. It's a place - and an organization. I'm a little partial to it because" - Shinichi looked shy - "well, I guess I just like to help people."

"And now you want to help me."

"If you truly want to become human...I know a way."

"I'll just leave the two of you to talk about it, shall I?" said Damon. "Three's a crowd, especially on this branch."

Stefan looked at him sharply. "If you have any slightest thought of stopping by the boardinghouse..."

"With Damaris already waiting for me? Honestly, little brother." And Damon changed to crow form before Stefan could ask him to give his sworn word.

Elena turned over in bed, reaching automatically for a warm body next to her. What her fingers found, however, was a cool, Stefan-shaped hollow. Her eyes opened. "Stefan?"

The darling. They were so in tune that it was like being one person - he always knew when she was about to wake up. He'd probably gone down to get her breakfast - Mrs. Flowers always had it steaming hot for him when he went down (further proof that she was a witch of the white variety) - and Stefan brought up the tray.

"Elena," she said, testing her old-new voice just to hear herself talk. "Elena Gilbert, girl, you have had too many breakfasts in bed." She patted her stomach. Yes, definitely in need of exercise.

"All right, then," she said, still aloud. "Start with limbering up and breathing. Then some mild stretching." All of which, she thought, could be put aside when Stefan showed up.

But Stefan didn't show up, even when she lay exhausted from a full hour's routine.

And he wasn't coming up the stairs, bringing up a cup of tea, either.

Where was he?

Elena looked out their one-view window and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Flowers below.

Elena's heart had begun beating hard during her aerobic exercise and had never really slowed down properly. Though it was likely impossible to start a conversation with Mrs. Flowers this way she shouted down, "Mrs. Flowers?"

And, wonder of wonders, the lady stopped pinning a sheet on the clothesline and looked up. "Yes, Elena dear?"

"Where's Stefan?"

The sheet billowed around Mrs. Flowers and made her disappear. When the billow straightened out, she was gone.

But Elena had her eyes on the laundry basket. It was still there. She shouted, "Don't go away!" and hastened to put on jeans and her new blue top. Then, hopping down the stairs as she buttoned, she burst out into the back garden.

"Mrs. Flowers!"

"Yes, Elena dear?"

Elena could just see her between billowing yards of white fabric. "Have you seen Stefan?"

"Not this morning, dear."

"Not at all ?"

"I get up with the dawn, regular. His car was gone then, and it hasn't come back."

Now Elena's heart was pounding in good earnest. She'd always been afraid of something like this. She took one deep breath and ran back up the staircase without pausing.

Note, note...

He'd never leave her without a note. And there was no note on his pillow. Then she thought ofher pillow.

Her hands scrabbled frantically under it, and then under his pillow. At first she didn't turn the pillows over, because she wanted so badly for the note to be there - and because she was so afraid of what it might say.

At last, when it was clear that there was nothing under those pillows but the bed sheet, she flipped them and stared at the empty white blankness for a long time. Then she pulled the bed away from the wall, in case the note had fallen down behind it.

Somehow she felt that if she just kept looking, she must find it. In the end she'd shaken out all the bedding and ended up staring at the white sheets again, accusingly, ever so often running her hands over them.

And that ought to be good, because it meant Stefan hadn't gone somewhere - except that she'd left the closet door open and she could see, without even meaning to, a bunch of empty hangers.

He'd taken all his clothes.

And emptiness on the bottom of the closet.

He'd taken every pair of shoes.

Not that he had ever owned much. But everything that he needed to make a trip away was gone - and he was gone.

Why? Where? How could he?

Even if it turned out that he'd left in order to scout them out a new place to live, how could he? He'd get the fight of his life when he came back -

- if he came back.

Chilled to the bone, aware that tears were running unmeant and almost unnoticed down her cheeks, she was about to call up Meredith and Bonnie when she thought of something.

Her diary.

Chapter 17

In the first days after she'd come back from the afterlife, Stefan had always put her to bed early, made sure she was warm, and then allowed her to work on his computer with her, writing a diary of sorts, with her thoughts on what had happened that day, always adding his impressions.

Now she called up the file desperately, and desperately scrolled to the end.

And there it was.

My dearest Elena,

I knew you would look here sooner or later. I hope it was sooner.

Darling, I believe that you're able to take care of yourself now, and I've never seen a stronger or more independent girl.

And that means it's time. Time for me to go. I can't stay any longer without turning you into a vampire again - something we both know can't happen.

Please forgive me. Please forget me. Oh, love, I don't want to go, but I have to.

If you need help, I've gotten Damon to give his word to protect you. He would never hurt you, and whatever mischief is going on in Fell's Church won't dare touch you with him around.

My darling, my angel, I'll always love you....

Stefan

P.S. To help you go on with your real life, I've left money to pay Mrs. Flowers for the room for the next year. Also, I've left you $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills under the second floorboard from the wall, across from the bed. Use it to build a new future, with whomever you choose.

Again, if you need anything, Damon will help you. Trust his judgement if you're in need of advice. Oh, lovely little love, how can I go? Even for your own sake?

Elena finished the letter.

And then she just sat there.

After all her hunting, she'd found the answer.

And she didn't know what to do now but scream.

If you need help go to Damon.... Trust Damon's judgment....It couldn't be a more blatant ad for Damon if Damon had written it himself.

And Stefan was gone. And his clothes were gone. And his boots were gone.

He'd left her.

Make a new life....

And that was how Bonnie and Meredith found her, alarmed by an hour-long bounce-back of their telephone calls. It was the first time they hadn't been able to get through to Stefan since he'd arrived, at their request, to slay a monster. But that monster was now dead, and Elena...

Elena was sitting in front of Stefan's closet.

"He even took his shoes," she said emotionlessly, softly. "He took everything. But he paid for the room for a year. And yesterday morning he bought me a Jaguar."

"Elena - "

"Don't you see?" Elena cried. "This is my Awakening. Bonnie predicted that it would be sharp and sudden and that I would need both of you. And Matt?"

"He wasn't mentioned by name," Bonnie said gloomily.

"But I think we'll need his help," Meredith said grimly.

"When Stefan and I were first together – before I became a vampire - I always knew," Elena whispered, "that there would come a time when he would try to leave me for my own good." Suddenly she hit the floor with her fist, hard enough to hurt herself. "I knew, but I thought I would be there to talk him out of it! He's so noble - so self-sacrificing! And now - he's gone ."

"You really don't care," Meredith said quietly, watching her, "whether you stay human or become a vampire."

"You're right - Idon't care! I don't care about anything, as long as I can be with him. When I was still half a spirit, I knew that nothing could Change me. Now I'm human and as susceptible as any other human to the Change - but it doesn't matter."

"Maybe that's the Awakening," Meredith said, still quietly.

"Oh, maybe him not bringing her breakfast is an awakening!" Bonnie, said, exasperated. She'd been staring into a flame for more than thirty minutes, trying to get psychically in touch with Stefan. "Either he won't - or he can't," she said, not seeing Meredith's violently shaking head until after the words were out.

"What do you mean ‘can't'?" Elena demanded, popping back off the floor from where she was slumped.

"I don't know! Elena, you're hurting me!"

"Is he in danger? Think, Bonnie! Is he going to be hurt because of me?"

Bonnie looked at Meredith, who was telegraphing "no" with every inch of her elegant body. Then she looked at Elena, who was demanding the truth. She shut her eyes. "I'm not sure," she said.

She opened her eyes slowly, waiting for Elena to explode. But Elena did nothing of the kind. She merely shut her own eyes slowly, her lips hardening.

"A long time ago, I swore I'd have him, even if it killed us both," she said quietly. "If he thinks he can just walk away from me, for my own good or for any other reason...he's wrong. I'll go to Damon first, since Stefan seems to want it so much. And then I'm going after him. Someone will give me a direction to start in. He left me twenty thousand dollars. I'll use that to follow him. And if the car breaks down, I'll walk; and when I can't walk anymore, I'll crawl. But I will find him."

"Not alone, you won't," Meredith said, in her soft, reassuring way. "We're with you, Elena."

"And then, if he's done this of his own free will, he's going to get the bitch-slapping of his life ."

"Whatever you want, Elena," Meredith said, still soothingly. "Let's just find him first."

"All for one and one for all!" Bonnie exclaimed. "We'll get him back and we'll make him sorry - or we won't," she added hastily as Meredith again began shaking her head. "Elena, don't! Don't cry," she added, the instant before Elena burst into tears.

"So Damon was the one to say he'd take care of Elena, and Damon should have been the one last to see Stefan this morning," Matt said, when he had been fetched from his house and the situation was explained to him.

"Yes," Elena said with quiet certainty. "But Matt, you're wrong if you think Damon would do anything to keep Stefan away from me. Damon's not what you all think. He really was trying to save Bonnie that night. And he truly felt hurt when you all hated him."

"This is what is called ‘evidence of motive,' I think," Meredith remarked.

"No. It's character evidence - evidence that Damon does have feelings, that he can care for human beings," Elena countered. "And he would never hurt Stefan, because - well, because of me. He knows how I would feel."

"Well, why won't he answer me, then?" Bonnie said querulously.

"Maybe because the last time he saw us all together, we were glaring at him as if we hated him," said Meredith, who was always fair.

"Tell him I beg his pardon," Elena said. "Tell him that I want to talk with him."

"I feel like a communications satellite," Bonnie complained, but she clearly put all her heart and strength into each call. At last, she looked completely wrung out and exhausted.

And, at last, even Elena had to admit it was no good.

"Maybe he'll come to his senses and start calling you ," Bonnie said. "Maybe tomorrow."

"We're going to stay with you tonight," Meredith said. "Bonnie, I called your sister and told her you'd be with me. Now I'm going to call my dad and tell him I'll be with you. Matt, you're not invited - "

"Thanks," Matt said dryly. "Do I get to walk home, too?"

"No, you can take my car home," Elena said. "But please bring it back here early tomorrow. I don't want people to start asking about it."

That night, the three girls prepared to make themselves comfortable, schoolgirl fashion, in Mrs. Flowers' spare sheets and blankets (no wonder she washed so many sheets today - she must have known somehow, Elena thought), with the furniture pushed to the walls and the three makeshift sleeping bags on the floor. Their heads were together and their bodies radiated out like the spokes of a wheel.

Elena thought, So this is the Awakening.

It's the realization that, after all, I can be left alone again. And, oh, I'm grateful to have Meredith and Bonnie sticking with me. It means more than I can tell them.

She had gone automatically to the computer, to write a little in her diary. But after the first few words she'd found herself crying again, and had been secretly glad when Meredith took her by the shoulders and more or less forced her to drink hot milk with vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and when Bonnie had helped her into her pile of sleeping blankets and then held her hand until she went to sleep.

Matt had stayed late, and the sun was setting as he drove home. It was a race against darkness, he thought suddenly, refusing to be distracted by the Jaguar's expensive new-car smell. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was pondering. He hadn't wanted to say anything to the girls, but there was something about Stefan's farewell note that bothered him. The only thing was, he had to make sure it wasn't just his injured pride speaking.

Why hadn't Stefan ever mentioned them ? Elena's friends from the past, her friends in the here and now. You'd think he'd at least give the girls a mention, even if he'd forgotten Matt in the pain of leaving Elena permanently.

What else? There definitely was something else, but Matt couldn't bring it to mind. All he got was a vague, wavering image about high school last year and - yeah, Ms. Hilden, the English teacher.

Even as Matt was daydreaming about this, he was taking care with his driving. There was no way to avoid the Old Wood entirely on the long, single-lane road that led from the boardinghouse to Fell's Church proper. But he was looking ahead, keeping alert.

He saw the fallen tree even as he came around the corner and hit the brakes in time to come to a screeching stop, with the car at an almost ninety-degree angle to the road.

And then he had to think.

His first instinctive reaction was: call Stefan. He can just lift the tree right off the ground. But he remembered fast enough that that thought was knocked away by a question. Call the girls?

He couldn't make himself do it. It wasn't just a question of masculine dignity - it was the solid reality of the mature tree in front of him. Even if they all worked together, they couldn't move that thing. It was too big, too heavy.

And it had fallen from the Old Wood so that it lay directly across the road, as if it wanted to separate the boardinghouse from the rest of the town.

Cautiously, Matt rolled down the driver's side window. He peered into the Old Wood to try to see the tree's roots, or, he admitted to himself, any kind of movement. There was none.

He couldn't see the roots, but this tree looked far too healthy to have just fallen over on a sunny summer afternoon. No wind, no rain, no lightning, no beavers. No lumberjacks, he thought grimly.

Well, the ditch on the right side was shallow, at least, and the tree's crown didn't quite reach it. It might be possible -

Movement.

Not in the forest, but on the tree right in front of him. Something was stirring the tree's upper branches, something more than wind.

When he saw it, he still couldn't believe it. That was part of the problem. The other part was that he was driving Elena's car, not his old jalopy. So while he was frantically groping for a way to shut the window, with his eyes glued to the thing detaching itself from the tree, he was groping in all the wrong places.

And the final thing was simply that the beast was fast. Much too fast to be real.

The next thing Matt knew, he was fighting it off at the window.

Matt didn't know what Elena had shown Bonnie at the picnic. But if this wasn't a malach, then what the hell was it? Matt had lived around woods his entire life, and he'd never seen any insect remotely like this one before.

Because it was an insect. Its skin looked bark-like, but that was just camouflage. As it banged against the half-raised car window - as he beat it off with both hands - he could hear and feel its chitinous exterior. It was as long as his arm, and it seemed to fly by whipping its tentacles in a circle - which should be impossible, but here it was stuck halfway inside the window.

It was built more like a leech or a squid than like any insect. Its long, snakelike tentacles looked almost like vines, but they were thicker than a finger and had large suckers on them - and inside the suckers was something sharp. Teeth. One of the vines got around his neck, and he could feel the suction and the pain all at once.

The vine had whipped around his throat three or four times, and it was tightening. He had to use one hand to reach up and rip it away. That meant only one hand available to flail at the headless thing - which suddenly showed it had a mouth, if no eyes. Like everything else about the beast, the mouth was radially symmetrical: it was round, with its teeth arranged in a circle. But deep inside that circle, Matt saw to his horror as the bug drew his arm in, was a pair of pincers big enough to cut off a finger.

God - no. He clenched his hand into a fist, desperately trying to batter it from the inside.

The burst of adrenaline he had after seeing that allowed him to pull the whipping vine from around his throat, the suckers coming free last. But now his arm had been swallowed up past the elbow. Matt made himself strike at the insect's body, hitting it as if it were a shark, which was the other thing it reminded him of.

He had to get his arm out. He found himself blindly prying the bottom of the round mouth open and merely snapping off a chunk of exoskeleton that landed in his lap. Meanwhile the tentacles were still whirling around, thumping against the car, looking for a way in. At some point it was going to realize that all it had to do was fold those thrashing vine-like things and it could squeeze its body through.

Something sharp grazed his knuckles. The pincers! His arm was almost completely engulfed. Even as Matt was focused entirely on how to get out, some part of him wondered: where's its stomach? This beast isn't possible .

He had to get his arm free now . He was going to lose his hand, as sure as if he'd put it in the garbage disposal and turned it on.

He'd already undone his seat belt. Now with one violent heave, he threw his body to the right, toward the passenger seat. He could feel the teeth raking his arm as he dragged it past them. He could see the long, bloody furrows it left in his arm. But that didn't matter. All that mattered was getting his arm out .

At that moment his other hand found the button that controlled the window. He mashed it upward, dragging his wrist and hand out of the bug's mouth just as the window closed on it.

What he expected was a crackling of chiton and black blood gushing out, maybe eating through the floor of Elena's new car, like that scuttling thing in Alien .

Instead the bug vaporized. It simply...turned transparent and then turned into tiny particles of light that disappeared even as he stared at them.

He was left with one arm with long bloody scratches on it, swelling sores on his throat, and scraped knuckles on the other hand. But he didn't waste time counting his injuries. He had to make it out of there; the branches were stirring again and he didn't want to wait to see whether it was wind.

There was only one way. The ditch.

He put the car in drive and floored it. He headed for the ditch, hoping that it wasn't too deep, hoping that the tree wouldn't somehow foul the tires.

There was a sharp plunge that made his teeth clash together, catching his lip between them. And then there was the crunch of leaves and branches under the car, and for a moment all movement stopped, but Matt kept his foot pressed as hard as he could on the accelerator, and suddenly he was free, and being thrown around as the car careened in the ditch. He managed to get control of it and swerved back onto the road just in time to make a sharp left turn where it curved abruptly and the ditch ran out.

He was hyperventilating. He took curves at nearly fifty miles an hour, with half his attention on the Old Wood - until suddenly, blessedly, a solitary red light stared at him like a beacon in the dusk.

The intersection with Mallory. He had to force himself to screech to another rubber-burning stop. A hard right turn and he was sailing away from the woods. He'd have to loop around a dozen neighborhoods to get home, but at least he'd stay clear of any large groves of trees.

It was a big loop, and now that the danger was over, Matt was starting to feel the pain of his furrowed arm. By the time he was pulling the Jaguar up to his house, he was also feeling dizzy. He sat under a streetlight and then let the car coast into the darkness beyond. He didn't want anyone to see him so rattled.

Should he call the girls now ? Warn them not to go out tonight, that the woods were dangerous? But they already knew that. Meredith would never let Elena go to the Old Wood, not now that Elena was human. And Bonnie would kick up a huge noisy fuss if anyone even mentioned going out in the dark - after all, Elena had shown her those things that were out there, hadn't she?

Malach. An ugly word for a genuinely hideous creature.

What they really needed was for some official people to go out and clear the tree away. But not at night. Nobody else was likely to be using that lonely road tonight, and sending people out there - well, it was like handing them over to the malach on a platter. He would call the police about it first thing tomorrow. They'd get the right people out there to move that thing.

It was dark, and later than he'd imagined. He probably should call the girls, after all. He just wished his head would clear. His scratches itched and burned. He was finding it hard to think. Maybe if he just took a moment to breathe...

He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. And then the dark closed in.

Chapter 18
  
Matt woke, fuzzily, to find himself still behind the steering wheel of Elena's car. He stumbled into his house, almost forgetting to lock the car, and then fumbling with keys to unlock the back door. The house was dark; his parents were asleep. He made it up to his bedroom and collapsed on the bed without even taking off his shoes.

When he woke again, he was startled to find it was nine A.M . and his mobile phone was ringing in his jeans pocket.

"Mer'dith?"

"We thought you were coming over early this morning."

"I am, but I've got to figure out how first," Matt said - or rather, croaked. His head felt twice its usual size and his arm at least four times too big. Even so, something in the back of his mind was calculating how to get to the boardinghouse without taking the Old Wood Road at all. Finally a few neurons lit up and showed him.

"Matt? Are you still there?"

"I'm not sure. Last night...God, I don't even remember most of last night. But on the way home - look, I'll tell you when I get there. First I have to call the police."

"The police ?"

"Yeah...look...just give me an hour, okay? I'll be there in an hour."

When he finally arrived at the boardinghouse, it was closer to eleven than to ten. But a shower had cleared his head, even if it hadn't done much for his throbbing arm. When he did appear, he was engulfed in worried femininity.

"Matt, what happened ?"

He told them everything he could remember. When Elena, with set lips, undid the Ace bandage he had wrapped around his arm, they all winced. The long scratches were clearly badly infected.

"They're poisonous, then, these malach."

"Yes," Elena said tersely. "Poisonous to body and mind."

"And you think one of these can get inside people?" Meredith asked. She was doodling on a notebook page, trying to draw something that looked like what Matt had described.

"Yes."

For just a moment Elena's and Meredith's eyes met - then both looked down. At last Meredith said, "And how do we know whether one is inside...someone...or not?"

"Bonnie should be able to tell, in trance," Elena said evenly. "Even I might be able to tell, but I'm not going to use White Power for that. We're going down to see Mrs. Flowers."

She said it in that special way that Matt had learned to recognize long ago, and it meant that no argument would do any good. She was putting her foot down, and that was that.

And the truth was that Matt didn't feel very much like arguing. He hated to complain - he'd played through football games with a broken collarbone, a sprained knee, a turned ankle - but this was different. His arm felt in danger of exploding.

Mrs. Flowers was downstairs in the kitchen, but on the family room table were four glasses of iced tea.

"I'll be right with you," she called through the swinging half-door that divided the kitchen from where they were standing. "Drink the tea, especially the young man who's injured. It'll help him relax."

"Herbal tea," Bonnie whispered to the others, as if this were some trade secret.

The tea wasn't all that bad, although Matt would've preferred a Coke. But when he thought of it as medicine, and with the girls all watching him like hawks, he managed to get over half of it down before the landlady came out.

She was wearing her gardening hat - or at least a hat with artificial flowers on it that looked as if it had been used for gardening. But on a cookie tray, she had a number of instruments, all gleaming as if they'd just been boiled.

"Yes, dear, I am," she said to Bonnie, who had stood up in front of Matt protectively. "I used to be a nurse, just like your sister. Women weren't encouraged to be doctors then. But all my life I've been a witch. Gets kind of lonely, doesn't it?"

"It wouldn't be so lonely," Meredith said, looking puzzled, "if you lived closer to town."

"Ah, but then I'd have people staring at my house all the time, and children daring each other to run and touch it, or to throw a stone through my window, or adults peering at me every time I went shopping.

And how could I ever keep my garden in peace?"

It was the longest speech any of them had ever heard her make. It took them so by surprise that it was a moment before Elena said, "I don't see how you can keep your garden in peace out here . What with all the deer and rabbits and other animals."

"Well, most of it is for the animals, you see." Mrs.

Flowers smiled beatifically and her face seemed to light up from within. "They surely enjoy it. But they don't enjoy the herbs I grow for putting on scrapes and cuts and sprains and such. And perhaps they know I'm a witch, too, since they always leave me a bit of the garden for myself and maybe a guest or two."

"Why are you telling me all of this now?" Elena demanded. "Why, there've been times when I was looking for you, or for Stefan, when I thought - well, never mind what I thought. But I wasn't always sure you were our friend."

"The truth is that I've gotten solitary and unsociable in my old age. But now you've lost your young man, haven't you? I wish I had gotten up a little earlier this morning. Then I might have been able to speak to him. He left the money for a year's rental of the room on the kitchen table. I've always had a soft spot for him, and that's the truth."

Elena's lips were trembling. Matt hastily and heroically lifted his wounded arm. "Can you help at all with this?" he asked, peeling the Ace bandage away again.

"Oh, my, my. And what sort of critter gave you these?" Mrs. Flowers said, examining the scratches while the three girls winced.

"We think it was a malach," Elena said quietly. "Do you know anything about those?"

"I've heard the word, yes, but I don't know anything specific. How long ago did you get them?" she asked Matt. "They look more like tooth marks than claw marks."

"They are," Matt said grimly, and he described the malach to her as best he could. It was partly to keep himself distracted, because Mrs. Flowers had picked up one of the gleaming instruments from the cookie tray and was starting to do things to his red and swollen arm.

"Hold as still as you can on this towel," she said. "These have already scabbed over, but they need to be opened and drained and cleaned out properly. It's going to hurt. Why don't one of you young women hold his hand to help keep his arm steady?"

Elena started to stand but Bonnie beat her to it, almost leaping over Meredith to take Matt's hand in both of her own.

The draining and cleaning were painful, but Matt managed to bear it without making a sound, even giving Bonnie a sort of sickly grin as blood and pus trickled out of his arm. The lancing hurt at first, but the release of pressure felt good, and when the wounds were drained and clean and then packed with a cold herbal compress, they felt blessedly cool and ready to heal properly.

It was while he was trying to thank the old woman that he noticed Bonnie staring at him. In particular, at his neck. Suddenly she giggled.

"What? What's funny?"

"The bug," she said. "It gave you a hickey. Unless you did something else last night that you didn't tell us about."

Matt could feel himself flush as he pulled his collar up higher. "I did tell you about it, and it was the malach. It had a sort of tentacle with suckers around my neck. It was trying to strangle me!"

"I remember now," Bonnie said meekly. "I'm sorry."

Mrs. Flowers even had an herbal ointment for the mark the sucker tentacle had left - and one for Matt's scraped knuckles. After she'd applied them, Matt felt so good that he was able to look sheepishly at Bonnie, who was watching him with big brown eyes.

"I know, it does look like a hickey," he said. "I saw it this morning in the mirror. And I've got another one lower down, but at least my collar covers that one." He snorted and reached into his shirt to apply more ointment. The girls laughed - a release of the tension that they'd all been feeling.

Meredith had started back up the narrow stairway to what everyone still thought of as Stefan's room, and Matt automatically followed her. He didn't realize that Elena and Bonnie were hanging back until he was halfway up the stairs, and then Meredith motioned him onward.

"They're just conferring," Meredith said, in her quiet, no-nonsense voice.

"About me ?" Matt swallowed. "It's about that thing Elena saw inside Damon, right? The invisible malach. And whether or not I've got one - inside me - right now."

Meredith, never one to soft-pedal anything, simply nodded. But she put a hand briefly on his shoulder as they entered the dim, high-ceilinged bedroom.

Shortly after, Elena and Bonnie came up, and Matt could tell at once by their faces that the worst-case scenario wasn't true. Elena saw his expression and immediately went to him and hugged him. Bonnie followed, more shyly.

"Feel okay?" Elena said, and Matt nodded.

"I feel fine," he said. Like wrestling alligators, he thought. Nothing was nicer than hugging soft, soft girls.

"Well, the consensus is that you don't have anything inside you that doesn't belong there. Your aura seems clear and strong now that you're not in pain."

"Thank God," Matt said, and he meant it.

It was at that moment that his mobile phone rang. He frowned, puzzled at the number displayed, but he answered it.

"Matthew Honeycutt?"

"Yes."

"Hold, please."

A new voice came on: "Mr. Honeycutt?"

"Uh, yeah, but - "

"This is Rich Mossberg of the Fell's Church Sheriff's Department. You called this morning to report a fallen tree midway down Old Wood Road?"

"Yes, I - "

"Mr. Honeycutt, we don't like prank calls of this sort. We frown upon them, in fact. It takes up the valuable time of our officers, and besides, it happens to be a crime to make a false report to the police. If I wanted to, Mr. Honeycutt, I could charge you with this crime and make you answer to a judge. I don't see just what you find so amusing about it."

"I wasn't - I don't find anything amusing about it! Look, last night - " Matt's voice trailed off. What was he going to say? Last night I was waylaid by a tree and a monster bug? A small voice inside him added that the Fell's Church Sheriff's officers seemed to spend most of their valuable time hanging around the Dunkin' Donuts in the city square, but the next words he heard shut it up.

"In fact, Mr. Honeycutt, under the authority of Virginia State Code, Section 18.2-461, making a false police report is punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor. You could be looking at a year in jail or a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine. Do you find that amusing, Mr. Honeycutt?"

"Look, I - "

"Do you, in fact, have twenty-five thousand dollars, Mr. Honeycutt?"

"No, I - I - " Matt waited to be cut off and then he realized that he wasn't going to be. He was sailing off the edge of the map into some unknown region. What to say? The malach took the tree away - or maybe it moved by itself ? Ludicrous. Finally, in a creaky voice he managed, "I'm sorry they didn't find the tree. Maybe...somehow it got moved."

"Maybe somehow it got moved," the sheriff repeated expressionlessly. "In fact maybe somehow it moved itself the way that all those stop signs and yield signs keep moving themselves away from intersections. Does that ring a bell, Mr. Honeycutt?"

"No!" Matt felt himself flush deeply. "I would never move any kind of street sign." By now the girls were clustered around him, as if they could somehow help by appearing as a group. Bonnie was gesturing vigorously, and her indignant expression made it clear that she wanted to tell the sheriff off personally.

"In fact, Mr. Honeycutt," Sheriff Mossberg cut in, "we called your home number first, since that's the phone you used to place the report. And your mother said that she hadn't seen you at all last night."

Matt ignored the little voice that wanted to snap, Is that a crime? "That was because I got held up - "

"By a self-propelled tree, Mr. Honeycutt? In fact we had already had another call about your house last night. A member of Neighborhood Watch reported a suspicious car roughly in front of your house.

According to your mother, you recently totaled your own car, isn't that right, Mr. Honeycutt?"

Matt could see where this was going and he didn't like it. "Yes," he heard himself say, while his mind worked desperately for a plausible explanation. "I was trying to avoid running over a fox. And - "

"Yet there was a report of a brand new Jaguar lingering in front of your house, just far enough away from the streetlight to be - inconspicuous. A car so new that it had no license plates. Was that, in fact, your car, Mr. Honeycutt?"

"Mr. Honeycutt's my father!" Matt said desperately. "I'm Matt. And it was my friend's car - "

"And your friend's name is...?"

Matt stared at Elena. She was making wait gestures, obviously trying to think. To say Elena Gilbert would be suicidal. The police, of all people, knew that Elena Gilbert was dead. Now Elena was pointing around the room and mouthing words at him.

Matt shut his eyes and said the words, "Stefan Salvatore. But he gave the car to his girlfriend?" He knew he was ending his sentence so that it sounded like a question, but he could hardly believe Elena's coaching.

Now the sheriff was beginning to sound tired and exasperated. "Are you asking me , Matt? So you were driving the brand-new car of your friend's girlfriend. And her name is...?"

There was a brief moment when the girls seemed to disagree and Matt hung in limbo. But then Bonnie threw her arms up and Meredith moved forward, pointing to herself.

"Meredith Sulez," Matt said weakly. He heard the hesitation in his own voice and he repeated, huskily but with more conviction, "Meredith Sulez."

Now Elena was whispering rapidly in Meredith's ear.

"And the car was purchased where? Mr. Honeycutt?"

"Yes," Matt said. "Just a second - " He put the phone into Meredith's outstretched hand.

"This is Meredith Sulez," Meredith said smoothly, in the polished, relaxed tones of a classical music disk jockey.

"Miss Sulez, you've heard the conversation so far?"

"Ms. Sulez, please, Sergeant. I have."

"Did you, in fact, lend your car to Mr. Honeycutt?"

"I did."

"And where is Mr." - there was a shuffling of paper - "Stefan Salvatore, the original owner of the car?"

He's not asking her where they bought it, Matt thought. He must know.

"My boyfriend is away from town right now," Meredith said, still in the same refined, unflappable voice. "I don't know when he'll be back. When he is, shall I have him call you?"

"That might be wise," Sheriff Mossberg said dryly. "These days very few cars are bought with cash on the line, especially brand-new Jaguars. I'd like your driver's license number, also. And, in fact, I'd very much like to speak to Mr. Salvatore when he returns."

"That may be very soon," Meredith said, a bit slowly, but following Elena's coaching. Then she recited her driver's license number from memory.

"Thank you," Sheriff Mossberg said briefly. "That will be all for - "

"May I just say one thing? Matt Honeycutt would never, ever remove stop signs or yield signs. He's a very conscientious driver and was a leader in his high school class. You can speak to any of Robert E. Lee High School's teachers or even the principal if she's not on vacation. Any one of them will tell you the same thing."

The sheriff didn't seem to be impressed. "You can tell him from me that I'll be keeping an eye on him in the future. In fact it might be a good idea if he stopped in the Sheriff's Department today or tomorrow," he said, and then the phone went dead.

Matt burst out, "Stefan's girlfriend? You, Meredith? What if the car dealer says the girl was a blond? How are we going to work that out?"

"We aren't," Elena said simply from behind Meredith. "Damon is. All we have to do is to find him. I'm sure he can take care of Sheriff Mossberg with a little mind control - if the price is right. And don't worry about me," she added gently. "You're frowning, but everything is going to be fine."

"You believe that?"

"I'm sure of it." Elena gave him another hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm supposed to stop by the Sheriff's Department today or tomorrow, though."

"But not alone!" Bonnie said, and her eyes were sparkling with indignation. "And when Damon goes with you, Sheriff Mooseburger will end up being your best friend."

"All right," Meredith said. "So what are we doing today?"

"The problem," Elena returned, tapping an index finger against her upper lip, "is that we've got too many problems at once and I don't want anybody - and I mean anybody - going out alone. It's clear that there are malach in the Old Wood, and that they're trying to do unfriendly-type things to us. Kill us, for one."

Matt basked in the warm relief of being believed. The conversation with Sheriff Mossberg had shaken him more than he wanted to show.

"So we make up task forces," Meredith said, "and we split the jobs between them. What problems do we need to plan for?"

Elena ticked off the problems with her fingers. "One problem is Caroline. I really think someone should try to see her, at the very least to try and find out if she has one of those things inside her. Another problem is Tami - and who knows who else? If Caroline is...contagious somehow, she might have spread it to some other girl - or guy."

"Okay," Meredith said, "and what else?"

"Someone needs to contact Damon. Try to find out from him anything he knows about Stefan leaving, and also try to get him to go in to headquarters with us to influence Sheriff Mossberg."

"Well, you'd better be on that last team, since you're the only one Damon's likely to talk to," said Meredith. "And Bonnie should be on it, so she can keep - "

"No. No Calling today," Bonnie pleaded. "I'm so sorry, Elena, but I just can't, not without a day of rest between. And besides, if Damon wants to talk to you, all you need to do is to walk – not into the forest, but near it - and call to him yourself. He knows everything that's going on. He'll know you're there."

"Then I should go with Elena," Matt reasoned. "Since that sheriff is my problem. I'd like to go by the place where I saw the tree - "

At once there was a protest from all three girls.

"I said I'd like to," Matt said. "Not that we should plan for it. That's one spot we know is too dangerous."

"All right," Elena said. "So Bonnie and Meredith will visit Caroline, and you and I will go Damon hunting, all right? I'd rather go Stefan hunting, but we just don't have enough information yet."

"Right, but before you go, maybe stop by Jim Bryce's house. Matt has an excuse to stop by anytime - he knows Jim. And you can check on Tami's progress as well," Meredith suggested.

"Sounds like plans A, B, and C," Elena said, and then, spontaneously, they all laughed.

It was a clear day, with a hot sun shining overhead.

In the sunlight, despite the minor annoyance of Sheriff Mossberg's call, they all felt strong and capable.

None of them had any idea that they were about to walk into the worst nightmare of their lives.

Bonnie stood back as Meredith knocked at the front door of the Forbes home.

After a while of no answer and silence inside, Meredith knocked again.

This time Bonnie could hear whisperings and Mrs. Forbes hissing something, and Caroline's distant laughter.

Finally, just as Meredith was about to ring the bell - the height of discourtesy between neighbor and neighbor in Fell's Church - the door opened. Bonnie neatly slipped a foot in, keeping it from being shut again.

"Hi, Mrs. Forbes. We just..." Meredith faltered. "We just wanted to see if Caroline was any better," she finished in a tinny-sounding voice. Mrs. Forbes looked as if she'd seen a ghost - and she'd spent all night running from it.

"No, she's not. Not better. She's still - sick." The woman's voice was hollow and distant and her eyes scanned the ground just over Bonnie's right shoulder. Bonnie felt fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up.

"Okay, Mrs. Forbes." Even Meredith sounded false and hollow.

Then someone said suddenly, "Are you all right?" and Bonnie realized it was her own voice.

"Caroline...isn't well. She's...not seeing anyone," whispered the woman.

An iceberg seemed to glide down Bonnie's spine. She wanted to turn and run from this house and its aura of malevolence. But at that moment Mrs. Forbes suddenly slumped. Meredith was barely able to break her fall.

"She's fainted," Meredith said tersely.

Bonnie wanted to say, Well, put her on the rug inside and run! But they could hardly do that.

"We've got to take her inside," Meredith said flatly. "Bonnie, are you okay to go?"

"No," Bonnie said just as flatly, "but what choice do we have?"

Mrs. Forbes, small as she was, was heavy. Bonnie held her feet and followed Meredith, step by reluctant step, into the house.

"We'll just put her on her bed," Meredith said. Her voice was shaky. There was something about the house that was terribly unsettling - as if waves of pressure kept bearing down on them.

And then Bonnie saw it. Just a glimpse as they stepped into the living room. It was down the hallway, and it could have been the play of light and shadow there, but it looked for all the world like a person. A person scuttling like a lizard - but not on the floor. On the ceiling.

Chapter 19

Matt was knocking at the Bryces' door, with Elena at his side. Elena had disguised herself by stuffing all her hair into a Virginia Cavaliers baseball cap and wearing wraparound sunglasses from one of Stefan's drawers. She was also wearing an over-large maroon and navy Pendleton shirt donated by Matt, and a pair of Meredith's outgrown jeans. She felt sure that no one who had known the old Elena Gilbert would ever recognize her, dressed like this.

The door opened very slowly to reveal not Mr. or Mrs. Bryce, nor Jim, but Tamra. She was wearing - well, close to nothing. She had on a thong bikini bottom, but it looked handmade, as if she'd cut a regular bikini bottom with scissors - and it was beginning to come apart. On top she had two round decorations made of cardboard with sequins pasted on and a few strands of colored tinsel. On her head she wore a paper crown, which was clearly where she'd gotten the tinsel. She'd made an attempt to glue strands onto the bikini bottoms as well. The result looked like what it was: a child's attempt to make an outfit for a Las Vegas showgirl or stripper.

Matt immediately turned around and stood facing away, but Tami threw herself at him and plastered herself to his back.

"Matt Honey-butt," she cooed. "You came back. I knew you would. But why'd you bring this ugly old whore with you? How can we - "

Elena stepped forward, then, because Matt had whirled with his hand up. She was sure that Matt had never struck a female in his life, especially a child, but he was also over-sensitive about one or two subjects. Like her.

Elena managed to get between Matt and the surprisingly strong Tamra. She had to hide a smile when contemplating Tami's costume. After all, only a few days ago, she hadn't understood the human nakedness taboo at all. Now she got it, but it didn't seem nearly as important as it once had. People were born with their own perfectly good skins on. There was no real reason, in her mind, to wear false skins over those, unless it was cold or somehow uncomfortable without them. But society said that to be naked was to be wicked. Tami was trying to be wicked, in her own childish way.

"Get your hands off me, you old whore," Tamra snarled as Elena held her away from Matt, and then she added several rather lengthy expletives.

"Tami, where are your parents? Where's your brother?" Elena said. She ignored the obscene words - they were just sounds - but saw that Matt had gone white around the lips.

"You apologize to Elena right now! Apologize for talking that way!" he demanded.

"Elena's a stinking corpse with worms in her eye sockets," Tamra sang glibly. "But my friend says she was a whore when she was alive. A real" - a string of four-letter words that made Matt gasp - "cheap whore. You know. Nothing's cheaper than something that comes free."

"Matt, just don't pay any attention," Elena said under her breath, and she repeated, "Where are your parents and Jim?"

The answer was littered with more expletives, but it amounted to the story - truthful or not - that Mr. and Mrs. Bryce had gone away on vacation for a few days, and that Jim was with his girlfriend, Isobel.

"Okay, then, I guess I'll just have to help you get into some more decent clothes," Elena said. "First, I think you need a shower to get these Christmas doodads off - "

"Just try-hy-hy! Just try-hy-hy!" The answer was somewhere between the whinny of a horse and human speech. "I glued them on with Perma Stick!" Tami added and then began giggling on a high and hysterical note.

"Oh, my God - Tamra, do you realize that if there isn't some solvent for this, you may need surgery?"

Tami's answer was foul. There was also a sudden foul smell. No, not a smell, Elena thought: a choking, gut curdling stench.

"Oops!" Tami gave that high, glassy giggle again. "Pardonmoi . At least it's natural gas."

Matt cleared his throat. "Elena - I don't think we should be here. With her folks gone and all..."

"They're afraid of me," Tamra giggled. "Aren't you ?" - very suddenly in a voice that had dropped several octaves.

Elena looked Tamra in the eye. "No, I'm not. I just feel sorry for a little girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Matt's right, I guess. We have to go."

Tami's whole manner seemed to change. "I'm so sorry.... I didn't realize I had guests of that caliber. Don't go, please, Matt." Then she added in a confidential whisper to Elena, "Is he any good?"

"What?"

Tami nodded at Matt, who immediately turned his back to her. He looked as if he felt a terrible, repulsive fascination for Tami's ridiculous appearance.

"Him. Is he any good in the sack?"

"Matt, look at this." Elena held up a small tube of glue. "I think she actually did Perma Stick that stuff to her skin. We have to call Child Protective Services or whatever, because nobody took her to the hospital right away. Whether her parents knew about this behavior or not, they shouldn't have just left her."

"I just hope they're all right. Her family," Matt said grimly as they walked out the door, with Tami coolly following them to the car, and shouting lurid details about "what a good time" they had had, "the three of them."

Elena glanced at him uneasily from her place in the passenger seat - with no ID or driver's license, of course, she knew she shouldn't drive. "Maybe we'd better take her to the police first. My God, that poor family!"

Matt said nothing for a long time. His chin was set, his mouth grim. "I feel somehow as if I'm responsible. I mean, I knew there was something wrong with her - I should have told her parents then."

"Now you're sounding like Stefan. You're not responsible for everyone you meet."

Matt gave her a grateful glance, and Elena continued, "In fact I'm going to ask Bonnie and Meredith to do one other thing, which proves you're not. I'm going to ask them to check on Isobel Saitou, Jim's girlfriend. You've never had any contact with her, but Tami might have."

"You mean you think she's got it, too?"

"That's what I hope Bonnie and Meredith will find out."

Bonnie stopped dead, almost losing her hold on Mrs. Forbes's feet. "I am not going into that bedroom."

"You have to. I can't manage her alone," Meredith said. Then she added cajolingly, "Look, Bonnie, if you go in with me, I'll tell you a secret."

Bonnie bit her lip. Then she shut her eyes and let Meredith guide her, step by step, farther into this house

of horror. She knew where the master bedroom was - after all, she had played here since childhood. All the way down the hall, then turn left.

She was surprised when Meredith came to a sudden stop after only a few steps. "Bonnie."

"Well? What?"

"I don't want to frighten you, but - "

This had the immediate effect of terrifying Bonnie. Her eyes snapped open. "What? What? " Before Meredith could answer she glanced over her shoulder in fear and saw what.

Caroline was behind her. But not standing. She was crawling - no, she was scuttling, the way she had on Stefan's floor. Like a lizard. Her bronze hair, unkempt, hung down over her face. Her elbows and knees stuck out at impossible angles.

Bonnie screamed, but the pressure of the house seemed to choke the scream back down her throat. The only effect it had was to make Caroline look up at her with a quick reptilian movement of her head.

"Oh, my God - Caroline, what happened to your face?"

Caroline had a black eye. Or rather, a purplish-red eye that was so swollen that Bonnie knew it would have to turn black in time. On her jaw was another purple swelling bruise.

Caroline didn't answer, unless you counted the sibilant hiss she gave while scuttling forward.

"Meredith, run! She's right behind me!"

Meredith quickened her pace, looking frightened - all the more frightening to Bonnie because almost nothing could shake her friend. But as they lurched forward, with Mrs. Forbes bouncing between them, Caroline scuttled right under her mother and into the door of her parents' room, the master bedroom.

"Meredith, I won't go in th - " But they were already stumbling through the door. Bonnie shot quick darting glances into every corner. Caroline was nowhere to be seen.

"Maybe she's in the closet," Meredith said. "Now, let me go first and put her head on the far side of the bed. We can adjust her later." She backed around the bed, almost dragging Bonnie with her, and dumped Mrs. Forbes's upper torso so that her head rested on pillows. "Now just pull her and put her legs down on the other side."

"I can't do it. I can't! Caroline's under the bed, you know."

"She can't be under the bed. There's only about a five-inch clearance," Meredith said firmly.

"She's there! I know it. And" - rather fiercely - "you promised you'd tell me a secret."

"All right!" Meredith gave a complicit glance through her disheveled dark hair. "I telegraphed Alaric yesterday. He's so far out in the boonies that telegraph is the only way to reach him, and it may be days before my message gets to him. I had an idea that we were going to need his advice. I feel bad, asking him to do projects that aren't for his doctorate, but - "

"Who cares about his doctorate? God bless you!" cried Bonnie thankfully. "You did just right!"

"Then come on and swing Mrs. Forbes' feet around the bottom of the bed. You can do it if you lean in."

The bed was a California king-size. Mrs. Forbes was lying at an angle across it, like a doll thrown on the floor. But Bonnie halted near the foot of the bed. "Caroline's going to grab me."

"No, she won't. Come on, Bonnie. Just get Mrs. Forbes' legs and give one big heave...."

"If I get that close to the bed, she'll grab me!"

"Why should she?"

"Because she knows what scares me! And now that I've said it, she definitely will."

"If she grabs you, I'll come and kick her in the face."

"Your leg's not that long. It would bang on the metal bed-frame thingummy - "

"Oh, for God's sake, Bonnie! Just help meheeeeeeere !" The last word was a full-fledged scream.

"Meredith - " began Bonnie, and then she screamed, too.

"What is it?"

"She's grabbing me!"

"She can't be! She's grabbing me ! Nobody has arms that long!"

"Or that strong! Bonnie! I can't make her let go!"

"Neither can I!"

And then any words were drowned in screaming.

After dropping Tami off with the police, driving Elena around the woods known as the Fell's State Park was...well, a walk in the park. Every so often they would stop. Elena would go a few steps into the trees and stand, Calling - however you did that. Then she came back to the Jaguar, looking discouraged.

"I'm not sure that Bonnie wouldn't be better at this," she said to Matt. "If we can brace ourselves to go out at night."

Matt shuddered involuntarily. "Two nights were enough."

"Do you know, you never told me your story from that first night. Or at least, not when I could understand words, spoken words."

"Well, I was driving around like this, except almost on the other side of the Old Wood - near the Lightning-Split Oak area...?"

"Right."

"When right in the middle of the road something appears."

"A fox?"

"Well, it was red in the headlights, but it wasn't like any fox I've ever seen. And I've been driving this road since I could drive."

"A wolf?"

"Like a werewolf, you mean? But, no - I've seen wolves by moonlight and they're bigger. This was right in between."

"In other words," Elena said, narrowing her lapis lazuli eyes, "a custom-made creature."

"Maybe. It sure was different from the malach that chewed my arm up."

Elena nodded. Malach could take all sorts of different forms, from what she understood. But they were siblings in one way: they all used Power and they all needed a diet of Power to live. And they could be manipulated by a stronger Power than they had.

And they were venomous enemies of humans.

"So all we really know is that we don't know anything."

"Right. That was the place back there, where we saw it. It just suddenly appeared in the middle of the - hey!"

"Go right! Right here !"

"Just like that! It was just like that!"

The Jaguar screeched almost to a stop, turning right, not into a ditch but into a small lane that no one would notice unless they were looking directly at it.

When the car stopped, they both stared up the lane, breathing hard. Neither had to ask whether the other had seen a reddish creature zip across the road, bigger than a fox but smaller than a wolf.

They looked up at the narrow lane.

"The million-dollar question: should we go in?" Matt asked.

"No KEEP OUT signs - and hardly any houses on this side of the wood. Across the street and down a way there's the Dunstans'."

"So we go in?"

"We go in. Just go slowly. It's later than I thought."

Meredith, of course, was the one to calm down first. "All right , Bonnie," she said. "Stop it! Now! It's not going to do any good here!"

Bonnie didn't think she could stop it. But Meredith had that special look in her dark eyes; the one that meant she was serious. The look she'd had before laying Caroline out on Stefan's floor.

Bonnie made a supreme effort and found that somehow she was able to hold in the next shriek. She looked dumbly at Meredith, feeling her own body shake.

"Good. Good, Bonnie. Now." Meredith swallowed. "Pulling doesn't do any good, either. So I'm going to try...peeling her fingers off. If anything happens to me; if I get - pulled under the bed or anything, then you run , Bonnie. And if you can't run, then you call Elena and Matt. You call until you get an answer."

Bonnie managed something almost heroic then. She refused to picture Meredith being pulled under the bed. She wouldn't let herself imagine how that would look as Meredith, struggling, disappeared, or how she would feel, all alone, after that. They'd both left their purses with their mobile phones in the entryway to carry Mrs. Forbes, so Meredith wasn't saying to call them in any normal sense. She meant Call them.

A sudden radical burst of indignation swept through Bonnie. Why did girls carry purses anyway? Even the efficient, reliable Meredith often did it. Of course Meredith's purses were usually designer handbags that enhanced her outfits and were full of useful things like small notebooks and keychain flashlights, but still...a boy would have his mobile phone in his pocket.

From now on, I'm wearing a waist pouch, Bonnie thought, feeling as if she were raising a rebel flag for girls everywhere, and for just a moment also feeling her panic recede.

Then she saw Meredith stooping, a hunched figure in the dim light, and at the same moment she felt the grip on her own ankle tighten. Despite herself she glanced down, and saw the outline of Caroline's tanned fingers and long bronze nails against the creamy white of the rug.

Panic burst out in her again, full force. She made a choked sound that was a strangled scream, and to her own astonishment she spontaneously hit trance and began to Call.

It wasn't the fact that she was Calling that surprised her. It was what she was saying.

Damon! Damon! We're trapped at Caroline's house and she's gone crazy! Help!

It flowed out of her like an underwater well that had been suddenly tapped, releasing a geyser.

Damon, she's got me by the ankle - and she won't let go! If she pulls Meredith under, I don't know what I'll do! Help me!

Vaguely, because the trance was good and deep, she heard Meredith say, "Ah-hah! It feels like fingers, but actually it's a vine. It must be one of those tentacles that Matt told us about. I'm - trying - to break one of the loops - off..."

All at once there was a rustling from under the bed. And not just from one place, either, but a massive whipping and shaking that actually bounced the mattress up and down, even with poor little Mrs. Forbes on it.

There must be dozens of those insects under there.

Damon, it's those things! Lots of them. Oh, God, I think I'm going to faint. And if I faint - and if Caroline pulls me under...Oh, please come and help!

"Damn!" Meredith was saying. "I don't know how Matt managed to do this. It's too tight, and - and I think there's more than one tentacle here."

It's all over, Bonnie sent in quiet conclusion, feeling herself start to go at the knees. We're going to die.

"Undoubtedly - that's the problem with humans. But not just yet ," a voice said from behind her, and a strong arm went around her, taking up her weight easily. "Caroline, the fun's over. I mean it. Let go!"

"Damon?" Bonnie gasped. "Damon? You came!"

"All that wailing gets on my nerves. It doesn't mean - "

But Bonnie wasn't listening. She wasn't even thinking. She was still half in trance and not responsible (she decided later) for her own actions. She wasn't herself . It was someone else who went into rapture when the grip on her ankle loosened, and someone else who whirled around in Damon's grip and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

It was someone else, too, who felt Damon startle, with his arms still around her, and who noticed that he made no attempt to pull away from the kiss. That person also noticed, when at last she leaned back, that Damon's skin, pale in the dim light, looked almost as if he had flushed.

And that was when Meredith straightened up slowly, painfully, from the other side of the bed, which was still jouncing up and down. She hadn't seen anything of the kiss, and looked at Damon as if she couldn't believe he was really here.

She was at a great disadvantage, and Bonnie knew she knew it. This was one of those situations where anyone else would have been too flustered to speak, or even stammer.

But Meredith just took a deep breath and then said quietly, "Damon. Thank you. Do you think - would it be too much trouble to make the malach let go of me, as well?"

Now Damon looked like his old self. He gave a brilliant smile aimed at something no one else could see and said sharply, "And as for the rest of you down there - heel!" He snapped his fingers.

The bed stopped moving instantly.

Meredith stepped away, and closed her eyes for a moment in relief.

"Thank you again," she said, with the dignity of a princess, but fervently. "And now, do you think you could do anything about Caro - "

"Right now," Damon cut in even more roughly than usual, "I have to run." He glanced at the Rolex on his wrist. "It's past 4:44, and I had an appointment I'm already late for. Come around here and prop up this dizzy bundle. She's not quite ready to stand by herself."

Meredith hastened to switch places with him. At that point, Bonnie discovered that her legs were no longer wobbling.

"Wait a minute, though," Meredith said rapidly. "Elena needs to talk to you - desperately - "

But Damon was gone, as if he'd mastered the art of simply disappearing, not even waiting for Bonnie's thanks. Meredith looked astonished, as if she'd been certain that the mention of Elena's name would stop him, but Bonnie had something else on her mind.

"Meredith," Bonnie whispered, putting two fingers to her lips in amazement. "I kissed him!"

"What? When? "

"Before you stood up. I - don't even know how it happened but I did it!"

She expected some kind of explosion from Meredith. Instead, Meredith looked at her thoughtfully and murmured, "Well, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to do, after all. What I don't understand is why he turned up in the first place."

"Uh. That was me, too. I Called him. I don't know how that happened either - "

"Well, there's no point in trying to figure it out in here." Meredith turned toward the bed. "Caroline, are you coming out of there? Are you going to stand up and have a normal conversation?"

There was a menacing and reptilian hiss from under the bed, along with the whipping of tentacles and another noise that Bonnie had never heard before but which terrified her instinctively, like the snapping of giant pincers.

"That's answer enough for me," she said, and grabbed Meredith to drag her out of the room.

Meredith didn't need dragging. But for the first time today they heard Caroline's taunting voice, lifted childishly high.

"Bonnie and Damon sitting in a tree

K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

First comes love, then comes marriage;

Then there comes a vampire in a baby carriage."

Meredith paused in the hallway. "Caroline, you know that that isn't going to help matters. Come out - "

The bed went into a frenzy, bucking and heaving. Bonnie turned and ran, and she knew Meredith was right behind her. They still didn't manage to outpace the singsong words:

"You're not my friends; you're the whore's friends. Just you wait! Just you wait !"

Bonnie and Meredith grabbed their purses and left the house.

"What time is it?" Bonnie asked, when they were safely in Meredith's car.

"Almost five."

"It seemed like so much longer!"

"I know, but we've got hours of daylight left. And, come to that, I have a text message from Elena."

"About Tami?"

"I'll tell you about it. But first - " It was one of the few times Bonnie had seen Meredith look awkward. Finally she blurted, "How was it?"

"How was what?"

"Kissing Damon, you nitwit!"