The Vampire Diaries: Evensong: Paradise Lost

by L. J. Smith

  But he couldn’t give her answers now.

  “It’s up to you, love. If you want out; we’ll get you out of here. I can find bodyguards who won’t bother you but who’ll monitor you twenty-four hours a day. Or you can stay and let the doctors try to diagnose you.” He watched her closely.

  Elena shifted, clearly disquieted. “I suppose that I’ll stay another day. Maybe they will figure out what happened to me.”

  “What you’ve got,” Meredith corrected. “Which is probably Southern Belle disease. You know how it used to be thought ever so romantic if you passed out or were pale?”

  “It seems more like a ‘what happened’ to me,” Bonnie said.

  Elena shot her a glance that stilled any fears Damon might have had for her intellect. “Is that was your sister told you?” she asked casually.

  Bonnie, who seemed lost in thought, nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Yeah, well, she thought you might have been attacked and gone into a fugue state afterward—a psychogenic trance—and wandered to Damon’s room, while the blood was all left somewhere else. But that didn’t explain how there could not be a scratch on you, so she said that it sounded like a miscarriage and hemorrhage.”

  “I wasn’t pregnant!” Elena exclaimed, at the same moment that Damon snapped, “She wasn’t pregnant!”

  The sharp noises brought Bonnie out of her daze. “You tricked me,” she said to Elena, in grief rather than in anger. “But Mary said you might not even have known you were pregnant until you lost it—and then you could have gone into a fugue state and not remembered anything of what happened after.”

  “Look east,” Elena demanded, sitting upright in bed with her lapis lazuli eyes narrowed. Confused, everyone but Damon looked in various wrong directions; Damon turned toward true east and concentrated on the readout of the machine he discovered there.

  “Does anybody see three Wise Men coming this way on camels?” Elena challenged fiercely.

  “Huh? Oh.” “Uh—got it.” “Yeah, okay. Okay.” The humans all seemed to understand what Elena was talking about. Damon frowned and examined a trashcan below the machine with a Dunkin’ Donuts box on it.

  “She means, you know, from the Bible,” Matt explained.

  “Ah. Ah,” Damon replied. “La Sacra Bibbia. The Gospel of Saint Matthew, regarding the Magi bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the child of Mary, who conceived although she was a virgin.”

  “What is myrrh, anyway?” Bonnie asked, frowning, while Matt said, “Isn’t this getting sort of sacrilegious?”

  “It’s a fragrant resin,” Damon said to Bonnie, and added to Matt, in an offended tone, “I’m a good Catholic, and all Elena was trying to say was that she was a donut—I mean a virgin.”

  “I am not a donut, and I’m going to get one of those purity rings and maybe have a purity party,” Elena said, and Damon was glad to hear the old note of command back in her voice.

  “Any reason to party,” Meredith said cheerfully, obviously trying to bring the temperature down.

  “Right-o,” said Damon. “Purity parties for the girls; all of them; why not?”

  “Because the entire freshman class of guys would have to commit suicide?” Matt offered.

  “Because it’s nobody’s business other than our own?” Meredith suggested.

  “Because Elena is going to die first,” Bonnie said softly from the corner.

  She’d moved. While Damon’s attention had been on Elena, she’d moved until she was tucked almost into the machines, with her hands over her face.

  Hearing these words once again, seeing the way bright Bonnie seemed to dissolve into shadows, Damon fully realized why the others had been so frightened the first time when she’d prophesied from her darkling place.

  Good, he thought with a savagery that surprised even himself. Something to fight tonight. At last.

  Who are you? he sent coldly, silently, to Bonnie’s shadowed form. And don’t give me any nonsense about being Bonnie McCullough. Your aura’s cold as ice.

  I am . . . no body.

  What the hell is that supposed to mean? And why are you using this child to communicate?

  She is susceptible. Easily controlled. Harmless.

  Uh-huh. You don’t know the first thing about her, do you?

  At this moment, she thinks you are holding her. She wishes you to kiss her.

  Yes, hello, earth to Disembodied Intelligence: there are hundreds—thousands of other girls all wishing for the same thing. This particular one, however, is special. She is protected, by me. Do you know anything about me, you infestation?

  “Damon,” Elena said softly. “Would you let me talk to her? Maybe she’ll respond to questions—”

  “Not yet, please, princess,” Damon said. “Just give me a minute here.” He was running diagnostics on Bonnie’s mind, trying to find the intruder. It was well hidden, some kind of cowardly parasite. Bonnie, who normally would have helped flush it out by using her own witch abilities, wasn’t even aware that she had abilities and was thoroughly terrified, seeing only darkness and wondering what had happened to the lights.

  Intuition, Damon thought to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. Use your intuition, redbird! There’s a bad thing inside of you, poisoning your words and frightening your friends. Help me find it. Lead me; I’ll follow. Fly!

  To give her some incentive, he took her hands away from her face and kissed her. It was a soft, chaste kiss, but it wasn’t short and it wasn’t brotherly. Damon would have liked to have checked Elena’s feelings about the kiss first, but he was concentrating too ferociously on Bonnie. He needed her assistance.

  Ohhhhhh, Bonnie thought, too innocent and too overcome (as Damon had guessed) to change the kiss from chaste to passionate. He was right about inspiring her, too. As soon as he lifted his head, Bonnie’s entire mind came alive around his probe, waking up from the trance she had been in, shining in brilliant colors, illuminating everything but . . . over there! A cancerous gray structure that should not have been inside her brain at all was lurking in her left frontal lobe, just ahead of her motor cortex.

  Broca’s area, of course, the one that controls speech, Damon thought, and knew that his thought was communicated to Bonnie. He and she were too intimately entwined now for barriers between them to hold. He was also consummately furious at the being that had used this device to hijack Bonnie’s voice.

  Let’s get it! Bonnie thought, exhilarated by the chase. She activated her motor cortex, throwing her arms around Damon’s neck. The dark gray cancer scuttled, crablike, away from the neurons firing behind it—only to run directly into Damon’s probe racing to meet it. Threatened, it reared and menaced the vulnerable tissue all around. Damon’s anger peaked. He slammed a miniscule bit of Power directly into the cancer’s middle. The crablike gray mass flickered once and disappeared completely.

  Yes! Bonnie cried, jubilant. You killed it!

  I killed it. And you helped me kill it.

  He bent and kissed her once more, this time on the forehead. Another kiss on the lips might just build in Bonnie the incentive to get possessed again.

  Did it say anything to you this time? Last time you said someone told you to ‘turn around and cover your eyes.’

  No . . . tonight I just . . . well, the lights went out and I guess I fell asleep.

  And I guess you were put to sleep, Damon said. He then quickly Influenced Bonnie to forget all the telepathy and the scuttling crab-thing inside her brain. When he was done, he said, “All right, open your eyes. Feeling better?”

  Bonnie nodded, her fair skin still a little flushed. Damon turned to get out of the corner—and found himself face-to-face with Meredith and Matt. They were both staring.

  “Damon—” Matt began.

  “What were you doing to her?” Meredith finished.

  Damon looked past them to where Elena was lying on her hospital bed, tethered by the IV tubing. She returned his glance with the faintest of smiles, her message clear. She trusted
him.

  “Ah . . . shock treatment,” Damon said, thinking rapidly. “She’s a—a very sensitive girl, and I had to give her a jolt to bring her around.”

  “Shock treatment?” Matt shook his head. “That’s, like, electric, and they take you and put you in a room—”

  “There’s another kind.” Damon’s mind was racing over the annals of human history. “It’s—I could have slapped her, all right? Like General Patton with that private in World War II. But I thought—”

  “That those are the only two alternatives?” Meredith, in contrast to Matt, was perfectly composed, and also perfectly infuriated. “Girls are in sad shape when they have to be ‘shocked’ with sex or violence. Shame on you, and with Malala Yousafzai’s memoir out and all!”

  “She deserved the Nobel Peace Prize,” Elena put in.

  “Wait a minute!” Damon tried to gather his wits. He was as angry as Meredith, and he actually had a better reason. He had saved Bonnie from a rogue malach, if not worse. But he couldn’t tell anyone the truth. They would simply think he was insane, or was trying to drive Bonnie insane. He was absolutely chock-full of virtue, and . . .

  . . . and about to be slapped. Oh, no; oh, yes—and he couldn’t even duck. Meredith might have forgotten she was a black belt four ways, but she would have a motor memory of how fast she was. If he were faster, he would have to be very strange indeed, and his strangeness factor was already building up dangerously.

  Instead of evading he just went a bit with the slap.

  “Ow.”

  “Hey!” Elena sat up fast. Now she looked furious. “Why did you do that?”

  “I . . . don’t know!” The words tumbled out of Meredith’s mouth, as she stared at her own palm in disbelief. “I . . . actually, I was going to kiss him and then say, ‘how do you like it when someone suddenly shocks you?’ I wasn’t going to hit him!”

  “I—I didn’t actually mind what he did,” Bonnie put in with soft reproach. “I mean, it didn’t feel that bad.”

  “You hit pretty hard by accident, Meredith,” Matt added, examining Damon’s face curiously. “Were you trying to draw blood?”

  “I just told you that I didn’t—”

  “Hang on, everybody. I almost have this stupid thing out,” Elena announced, still sounding absent-minded.

  Bonnie shrieked. Meredith drew in her breath sharply. Damon looked up in horror from the blood that he’d wiped from his lip with his fingers. He saw that Elena, with her usual consummate courage, and with an unbelievably unusual lack of judgment, was on the verge of pulling her IV needle out of the crook of her elbow.

  “I think one more yank—” she announced.

  “More blood! Oh! No!” Bonnie gasped, and sank backwards so suddenly that Meredith and Matt were just barely able to steady her.

  Damon, on the other hand, had reached Elena in time to capture both her wrists and hold her immobile. “Princess, stop! Why are you doing that?”

  “I can’t have people smacking you!”

  “She didn’t mean it! It was a cross-wired kiss!” Damon was tasting his own blood and wishing he could enjoy the irony of the situation. He had no doubt that somewhere, deep in Meredith’s subconscious, there were a few neurons Stefan had missed, and that they must be smirking right now.

  “Please leave your IV line alone,” he finished earnestly, still holding Elena’s wrists. Even so, blood was already darkening the tape that held the large bore needle in place.

  “I don’t think I feel well,” Bonnie was whispering. “I feel all tingly, like when I had those trances.” She was clearly enjoying the idea of being a sensitive girl who had to be shocked with kisses.

  Damon saw Matt and Meredith exchange a look, obviously able to read Bonnie’s thoughts as easily as he could.

  “Bonnie,” Meredith said gently, “do you know what you say in these trances of yours?”

  Bonnie looked defensive. “No. I guess it must be scary, since Damon had to wake me up.”

  “You told Elena that she was going to die. In fact, you said that we all were going to die.”

  Damon found the changes in Bonnie’s expression heart-wrenching. At first she was angry and defensive. “I did not! I would—I would never say something like that!” Then, eyes wide, with tears glittering on her lashes, she was frightened. “Why would I say something so awful?” Finally, head down, she flung off Meredith and Matt to stand by Elena. “I’m sorry! I don’t remember saying anything at all, but I’m sorry!”

  Elena, as usual, couldn’t help taking the side of the underdog, even if the underdog was predicting her untimely death. “Meredith,” she said, “maybe we should just forget all about this shock treatment thing. I mean, Damon usually knows what he’s talking about. She’s stressed and she’s sensitive and it’s all my fault in the first place.”

  “It’s not your fault,” everyone else said, almost in synchrony. The tension broke as they laughed a little.

  Meredith looked back and forth from Elena to Bonnie and at last nodded slowly, reaching out to put a firm hand on Damon’s shoulder. “Okay, so we forget it,” she said.

  “Until the next time,” Matt said under his breath.

  “I heard that, Matt!” Elena flared up again. “And do you really think I’m the jealous type? Or is it you who’re jealous—of Bonnie?”

  “Now, now, kiddies,” Damon said, almost dizzy with relief. He felt he’d just dodged a wooden bullet. “We don’t want to keep arguing, right? And I think Elena needs a nurse to get this thing back in place.” Blood was seeping out of the sides of the bandage tape by now, and Elena’s three human friends winced.

  “You’re right; we need to think of her first,” Matt said. “Sorry, Elena.”

  Damon was feeling quite cheerful now, despite an uncontrollable urge to swallow. Everyone trusted him; they had no reason not to believe him. They’d known him for a year, and he was older than they were by . . . well, a couple of years, anyway.

  “It’s okay, Matt,” Elena was saying. “I don’t even care if I’m a medical mystery anymore, you know? Whatever happened is over with and it’s damn well not going to happen again. It’s time to put it all behind us.”

  By my fangs and God’s blood! Damon thought fervently. Little brother put a lot of work into you, didn’t he? And in any case you’re not one to follow the pack. If everyone else is enthralled by the utter weirdness going on here, you’re going to lock your mind and abjure it even if it means standing all alone. Especially if that’s what it means.

  But you’re not alone, my sweetheart, my princess of the night. You’ve got your velociraptor sisters and the dormouse—door mat, Matt, sorry, sorry. And best of all, you’ve got wonderful, elegant, dangerous, fantastically clever me!

  “I’ll call a nurse,” he said solemnly to the group. “You three go home. I know you’ve got—things to do.” With his back to Elena he winked at them.

  “You’re right; we do,” Bonnie said hastily.

  As they were saying goodbye to Elena, Damon put an invisible ward against evil on Bonnie and Meredith, and Elena, too, while he was at it. The ward consisted of an eldritch sign set around each girl’s neck that said in flashing red letters: “Private property of Damon Salvatore. Everyone else stay away or I’ll rip your head off. Don’t let this be you!” It was illustrated by a very detailed picture of a headless figure spouting crimson. There was also a sort of subtext that would reveal itself to all male intruders, in which the head was the second or third bit to be ripped off.

  As they left, both Meredith and Matt said something on the order of “Thanks,” to him, and Bonnie went up on her little tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

  Twenty minutes later, when a nurse had reseated Elena’s IV line and scolded her for touching it, Elena looked rebelliously after her retreating figure.

  “I said I’d stay here for one more day and I will,” she said. “But I can’t help hating it. I hate this thing most of all.”

  “It hurts, doesn’t it?” Da
mon said. He could feel the hurt; he was hooked into her mind at a constant low level. Wards and signs were all very well, but if anything alien even touched Elena he wanted to know it immediately. He was full of the blood of Mercy Havenwick’s finest and he was in the mood for ripping bits off something.

  Even as he thought this, he took Elena’s free hand in his and kissed her palm. He began to slowly reduce the icy pain of the IV needle by absorbing it himself. In a few minutes, Elena’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

  “That’s right,” he said quietly, “you get some rest, princess.”

  “Well—maybe just a catnap. But I want something first.”

  “Of course.” He bent down and kissed her lips as he had kissed Bonnie earlier. But Elena was expecting it and experienced enough to take the kiss to a more advanced level. In a few moments Damon was holding her close as best he could and the temperature in the room seemed to have skyrocketed.

  Oh, gods, and I don’t even know which parts of her I’m allowed to touch and which I’m not, Damon mourned, staggered by what one kiss could do to him. His canines were dying to be allowed to sharpen, and being thwarted only fixated his attention on them.

  Why didn’t I ask Stefan to tell me the really important stuff—

  like how far they’d gone? he wondered, half frantic. I can’t get it out of her mind, either, since he’s wiped it all out along with who he was to her.

  Finally, he settled for what he and Elena had done in the Dark Dimension and softly stroked the ends of her hair, crushing its silken fineness in his fist, winding its fragrant length with his fingers. He made sure she could feel it, too, although she ought not to be able to.

  And then she scared him half out of undeath.

  She broke off an impassioned kiss—to breathe, Damon thought—and shifted in his arms.

  She arched her head back and bared her throat.

  Damon was glad that his beacon was perfectly visible to him. Elena had nearly triggered her own accidental introduction to vampires and their autonomic reflexes. He found himself trembling like a thoroughbred ready for the signal to leap out of the gates, hovering over the slim column of neck and seeing the blue lines beneath the taut, translucent skin. Sizzling sparks were running down his spine and his fangs had sprung free without consulting his brain. All he wanted was one delicate bite at the external jugular vein, just the tiniest of punctures, through which he could draw just the smallest of sips of Elena’s young and vital blood, which his senses told him was redolent of musk, sweet vanilla and exotic resins mixed with rich Oriental spices . . .