The Vampire Diaries: Evensong: Paradise Lost

by L. J. Smith

  Damon followed his gaze to see that all his beautiful thunderheads had dissipated somehow and that the stars were scintillating in the moonless black-satin sky.

  When he quickly looked back at Stefan he found that Stefan was doing the stare-out again.

  “You’re right,” Stefan said when eye-contact had been achieved once more. It took Damon several long seconds to realize that he wasn’t commenting on the clouds or something in Damon’s head but on Damon’s story. “You did bite Elena and take so much blood that she needed a transfusion, and she did forgive you. But it was completely different from what I did tonight.”

  “Different how?”

  “In two ways. First of all, you’d lost so much blood yourself that you were like a starving animal. You weren’t yourself; you were in the bloodlust. That’s something that happened by a freak accident and will never happen again. But Elena and I were just kissing, that’s all. We can’t be around each other and not kiss. And I wasn’t a starving animal; I was myself. Elena makes you want to be the very best person you can be all the time—and I was. I loved her so much . . . it was love that did it. And that makes me far too dangerous for her to remember.”

  Damon opened his mouth; shut it again and tried to kick his brain into gear. Reply hazy; reply hazy; reply hazy.

  Stefan didn’t wait for him to comment. “Secondly, you didn’t kill the one and only girl you love in all the worlds.”

  “Neither did you,” Damon said automatically. “Or else we both did—a little. I put her into a sort of coma, and it sounds as if you did, too.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I said the one and only girl in all the worlds.”

  Damon opened his mouth to snarl, “And now you’re going to judge how much I love Elena?” when suddenly he stopped, frozen. He saw quite clearly the picture that Stefan was projecting of wide brown eyes in a heart-shaped face and tumbled strawberry curls, and he felt all the defensive fury of being trapped in the wrong.

  Wait a minute—he was always in the wrong, as far as Stefan was concerned. All he needed to do was what he normally did. It took an effort but after a moment he flashed Stefan a blinding 500 kilowatt smile and then turned it off instantly.

  “Granted,” he said, “I may be guilty of loving too much. It’s the way my delicate nature is constituted, I’m afraid.” And he lightning-flashed the smile again, this time with eyes as hard as steel.

  Stefan maintained his eerie calm. “Then you may be able to hold her gently enough,” he said. He cocked his head the other way. “Not so tightly that she shatters into fragments, all sapphire and pomegranate and jonquil yellow.”

  Damon was about to respond ominously that any girl he held shattered into rainbow fragments whenever he wanted her to, when suddenly his brain caught up with his testosterone.

  Wait a minute, wait a minute, waitaminute, it told him. Listen to what he’s saying. He’s saying that basically he’s never met Elena now. That she’s not had time to see him, to fall in love with him, to set her heart on him.

  He’s saying that right now Elena is up for grabs. And you’ve been trying to talk him out of it. Who’s the craziest madman on this roof tonight?

  A shiver raised the hairs at the back of his neck again, but this was a delicious shiver. He, Damon, could go to Elena as soon as modern medicine had healed her. His face could be the first thing she saw when she woke. He could court her in any way he chose; he could ask her on bended knee if she would be his princess of darkness. And there would be no memory of Stefan to come between them when the air began to crackle with electricity. There would be no shadow to darken Elena’s lapis lazuli eyes when she found she was responding to the wild call of his blood to hers.

  Elena, heart-ravishing, star-scintillating Elena, would at last be entirely his.

  Damon felt something like Stefan’s preternatural calm settle over him. He knew he was smiling a faint and very dangerous smile.

  “But what are you planning to do next, little brother?” he asked, his voice light and almost mocking.

  “I’m going to finish what I started. I’m going to Influence Elena’s family and the other two who came here with them.” Stefan’s eyes were touched with silver in the starlight.

  Damon scanned the building below, seeing the life-signs of the five Stefan was talking about. “Ah. You’re going to bite them, too, then. You know, despite what you say, you’re getting the hang of things quite nicely—and only five centuries overdue.”

  Stefan’s lip quirked, the only sign of emotion he’d shown so far. “I don’t bite children, Damon—but of course you wouldn’t know that.”

  Damon, who had never bitten a child in his life, narrowed his eyes and murmured, “You don’t know what you’ve missed. You know how humans have those candy wax bottles with just a sweet sip of juice inside? You bite off the wax tops and drink: one, two, three!”

  Stefan said expressionlessly, “Do remember to tell Elena about biting off children’s lids: one, two, three! I’m sure there’s something in it for you.”

  Yes, like a knee in the groin, Damon thought and flashed a genuine smile. Elena was as fierce at heart as he was—which made her perfect in his eyes.

  Stefan was ignoring him while still looking at him; a rather handy trick that Damon couldn’t help but admire. “The adults she brought are either so easy that I can Influence them from this roof or so difficult that . . . well, how would you feel about setting fang to Mrs. Flowers’ throat?”

  “The old biddy? Too tough for my taste.”

  “Mrs. Theophilia Flowers, who just weeks ago shed fifty years and saved Matt and Meredith and the entirety of Fell’s Church. The real town witch, with hair the color of starlight falling down to her hips.”

  “Well, she’s put fifty years on again,” Damon pointed out pragmatically. “And every day of it shows. I’d leave her alone.”

  “I can’t do that. I have to talk with her. And then I have to wake Matt and Bonnie and Meredith up.”

  “Whatever floats your boat.” Actually, Damon thought that the latter was a good idea. The three waxwork figures standing, sitting, and lying down in the ICU room with the lights turned off were starting to weigh on his mind. More specifically, the one delicate figure lying utterly motionless on the bed was weighing on him. The other two could doubtless fend for themselves.

  “And after you wake her—them?” he murmured.

  “Then I’ve got to go back to Dalcrest College and clean up the physical evidence. Tangible things that Elena can’t ever see again. Photos in her dorm room and on her computers. I’ve already reprogramed her phone. She doesn’t have many photos of me anyway, and Bonnie and Meredith shouldn’t have any.”

  “Yes, we shadow souls don’t much like to have our images captured, do we?” Damon brooded. Then suddenly he was exclaiming and hearing Stefan exclaiming in chorus with him.

  “Her diaries!”

  “It’s all right,” Stefan added after a tense moment, eldritch tranquility settling over him again. “I know all the very secret places she very secretly hides them. I’ll take out of her mind everything about them from the summer before her senior year in high school on. Then I’ll plant a memory in her that she stopped keeping a diary after that. I can do it right now from right here.”

  “You’d better plant it deep,” Damon advised, serious for once. “She scribbles absolutely everything in those silly books. If anything could trigger her memory—”

  “Damon.”—tightly. Stefan looked up, eyes dark beneath the fall of his hair. “There are no memories left to trigger. I told you that; you just never listen. I am saying that I physically blasted away each neuron in Elena’s brain that connected to me. I eliminated a finite amount of her gray matter to do it.”

  Damon felt slightly queasy, but he made himself smile urbanely. “Then the diaries would only drive her insane—words in her own writing about loving someone she’s never met. You say I’m mad often enough—but I’d prefer a princess of darkness who isn�
�t one bat short of a belfry.”

  There was a pause. At last Stefan said, distantly, “Damon?”

  “Yes?”

  “You have absolutely no idea what that’s supposed to mean, do you?”

  “No,” Damon admitted, unabashed. “Studying their little quirks of language really isn’t Me,” he added. “I’m more about puncturing them like orange juice cartons, except that fortunately they don’t ever come with pulp.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to learn—”

  “What? Well, what?”

  “You’re going to have to learn the way they talk if you want to spend serious time with Elena.”

  It wasn’t what Stefan had intended to say and they both knew it. But at the mention of Elena, Damon felt at a flush of pure greed that started in his jaws and spread outward. He decided to let whatever was bothering St. Stefan go, so that he himself could start getting along with Elena as soon as possible.

  “All right—and what will you do after you clean out the dorm rooms?” he asked, at his most polite, gently urging Stefan on his way.

  “After I take care of everything and everyone at Dalcrest—including taking my name out of the college mainframe—I’ll move on to Fell’s Church. You’ll want to use my dorm room for at least a few days, so people see someone who looks vaguely like me moving out. I had a key made for Elena; here it is.”

  “Why should I use your squalid little dorm room for even one day’s sleep?”

  “Because the ED staff and police think I came from there to Elena’s room in Soto Hall. You’ll have to say the same, or else Influence them to believe some different story—and make sure that there is no suspicion of a crime. You should know the story I told, anyway. I said that I went to Elena’s room—where there won’t be any evidence for themto find. I said that I was a little late, and that I found the door ajar and Elena lying on the floor unconscious. I knew that she needed a good hospital, so I drove her here as fast as I could, collecting some patrol cars on the way.”

  “All right, all right,” said Damon, who had already decided that this basic story was too boring, and was now wondering what he could use to spice it up. Some werewolves, he thought, or maybe some pirates. He added absently, “While you’re doing the dorm rooms, don’t forget Caroline.”

  The truth was that Damon was secretly placing bets every day on how long it would take for Caroline to betray Elena and Elena’s friends. Right now, after the Celestial Court had cleaned up Fell’s Church and its inhabitants, they were on friendly terms, but Caroline had shown her true nature over and over before. Damon was just watching for the egg of animosity to be hatched by the setting hen of resentment—ha! And Stefan thought he couldn’t do metaphors!—to reveal the baby chicken of doom.

  “I was saying,” Stefan said in patient tones, “that then I go and take care of everyone and everything in Fell’s Church and the towns around it. A few teachers, a few students, a few parents who knew me.”

  “Don’t forget Elena’s desktop in her room back on Maple Street—or the secret opening in the floorboards in her closet.”

  “I will not forget anything or anyone.”—flatly.

  “And when everything is taken care of? Just what are you going to do when you’ve finished everything, everywhere?”

  “I don’t know,” Stefan said, disturbingly enigmatic, his eyes utterly opaque. “Maybe I’ll go back home—back to Florence, I mean. Or somewhere else in Europe. After all, it’s been said that ‘the world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.’ ”

  “Yes, and it’s also been said that ‘all the world is a stage and . . . if you forget your lines . . . well, basically you’re screwed.’” A pause, then: “No?”

  “No, Damon.”

  “Oh, well. I don’t suppose that the great journey ahead of you has made you see reason about drinking human blood instead of animal, has it? It does reflect on the family honor, you know.”

  “Don’t goad me, brother. I couldn’t help what happened tonight. But from now on I go back to animal blood. And to hell with the family honor—if it ever had any since you came of age.”

  Damon shrugged most eloquently. “Whatever. But, little brother . . .”

  “What?”

  “What do you intend to do about the promise you made to Elena to take care of me always?”

  Thunderous silence.

  Damon watched Stefan narrow-eyed. He himself had a sort of share in the promise as well, although he preferred not to acknowledge it. But there was no way to pretend that his given word meant nothing to him.

  He wanted to see how Stefan was going to wriggle out of this quandary.

  For just an instant he thought his brother was going to break the connection of their locked eyes. But the moment passed. Stefan’s pupils, which had dilated, went back to normal size again.

  “I’ll be keeping that promise every moment of every day. Because I’m giving you into her care, brother, and you know that I am. And that will be better for you than my care at my very best.”

  Damon opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. No words, however came out. He was suddenly seriously afraid that his younger brother was insane. If Stefan didn’t really mean all he’d said tonight—if it was some kind of elaborate practical joke . . .

  But Bonnie’s terror hadn’t been a joke. Stefan had done something to her, and her instincts had warned her of how drastic that something was going to be.

  Stefan was still watching him expressionlessly. “You don’t believe me now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No?”

  “No. Because I want to give me your solemn word about one thing. Only one. Will you hear me out?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really.” Stefan spoke two more quiet sentences and then stood silent, waiting.

  Damon watched him closely for a moment. Then he gave a fluid shrug. “Fine with me. You may not believe this, but—”

  “Then I have your word on it?”

  Damon sighed. “You have my word,” he said shortly.

  Stefan nodded. “You’ll understand my choice one day. And you’ll see what I mean about Elena’s care.”

  I will, won’t I? Damon thought a bit giddily. Soon it’s going to be me letting Elena convince me to drink her blood, the way she always seduces Stefan into it. His canines throbbed at the very notion, sharpening. Since speaking now would only reveal this, he used telepathy.

  All right, then. You’ve got a solution for everything. You’ve answered all my questions, so I suppose I have to let you go.

  “As if you had any other choice—or inclination,” Stefan said. “But I’m going to go, anyway. I’m going to Influence Elena’s aunt and the others she’s brought, and then release Matt and Meredith and Bonnie. And you’re going to stay up here until your teeth are blunt again. It’s best if you don’t let anyone see you until I leave the hospital. I’ve already edited myself out of the staff’s minds, but a second dark-haired predator made in Italy might blow all their circuits.”

  Right, right, Damon sent, already planning just where to go and what to do inside the hospital. Goodbye, he added, noting absently that he’d lost the stare-out by looking away while thinking of Elena.

  “Goodbye, Damon.”

  Good luck—no! Stefan! Wait!

  Stefan, who had started for the door to the stairs leading down, paused and turned like a grownup looking back at a toddler who didn’t want to go to bed.

  “Wait, wait!” Damon said. He had no trouble keeping blunt teeth now. He had just gotten a glimpse of future insanity.

  “Well? What?”

  “I think—no, I’m sure—that Bonnie kept a diary for a while after Elena died in the crypt. It was a blank book with little flowers on it. Blue and yellow flowers on a navy background. She kept it until the night of the summer solstice and she wrote all sorts of things in it. But I have no idea where it is now.”

  Stefan stared impassively into a middle distance. “I’m
going to have to go into Bonnie’s mind again.”

  “No, damn it!”

  “Yes, damn it! You know I have to. You knew I would have to when you told me to wait.”

  “You’ve already meddled with Bonnie enough. She’s delicate. She’s emotionally fragile.”

  “I need to find out where that book is and steal it. The only alternative is for you to do it, and I don’t trust you to finish the job.”

  “Oh, yes? First, you blame me for—for caring too much about Bonnie, and now you don’t trust me to make sure she doesn’t find a book that would send her stark raving mad.”

  “Neatly put. Also true.”

  “And now you’re going to bite her again, to terrify her in her sleep—”

  “No,” Stefan said. “I can give you my word on that.”

  “But still, you’ll be—you’ll . . .” Damon’s voice trailed off. He stared at Stefan, who held his gaze steadily. “Oh, you bastard,” Damon said at last. He wasn’t sure whether there was more condemnation or admiration in his voice. “You’ve already done it, haven’t you? Just now, while we’ve been arguing the point.”

  Stefan reproduced Damon’s fluid shrug. “I told you I could Influence the humans from up here. I didn’t see any reason to wait.”

  “You bastard.” Well, now, we are a handsome family, aren’t we? Damon thought, watching Stefan closely. Especially when we’re being deceptive and ruthless.

  “She didn’t even notice it. And now I know where that flowered diary should be—and, no, I’m not going to tell you. I’m going away forever now, Damon. You could at least acknowledge that.”

  “I’m acknowledging it. I’ll see you around.”

  “No,” Stefan said in his strangely uninflected way. “I don’t think you will.”

  And that was how Stefan walked out of Damon’s life. He was through the door that led to the stairway down from the roof before Damon could turn around to see him go.

  Oh, well, Damon thought. I will see him around again, whatever he thinks. I suppose he gets earned some points for an original interpretation of all the mad scenes in Hamlet put together. Plus a bit of the Hatter’s tea party.