The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall (11 page)

“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 he
knew
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 a
maiden
, 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 become
his
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.

I
t 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
ƒ
fair goode a
ƒ
a general physic for all Maladie
ƒ
or mischief Done by those who Dance in the Woode
ƒ
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! S
CARY
M
EREDITH

T
HWARTED
. 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.