by L. J. Smith
“We had fun,” Meredith said simply, and Bonnie smiled, flushed with pleasure.
Elena, still smiling, regarded her new and improved bed.
“I’m going to sleep right in the middle,” she said. “Just like at home.”
“No you’re not,” Damon said, hoping to get this issue over with as little fuss as possible. “Because you only get one side. I’m moving in and I’ll be on the other.”
“You what?” Elena said, staring. Then she added vehemently, “You can’t. You can’t do that.”
“Watch me.”
“You can’t just move in with me! I made a solemn promise to my Aunt Judith!”
“Elena, we all talked about this,” Meredith put in quietly. “You can’t be alone. One of us has to be with you in case—well, you know why. I’d do it, but I hate to leave Bonnie on her own while she’s having these weird trance-things.”
“They scare me,” Bonnie added sadly, in a very small voice.
“They scare me, too, and I don’t want you to leave her, Meredith,” Elena said. “But the rest of it is just impossible. You can’t vote me into having guy sleeping on my bed. I told Aunt Judith—”
“The hell with Aunt Judith.” Damon said it with no particular emphasis, but it stopped Matt and Caroline, who were ready to jump into the conversation. “Elena, I really don’t want to upset her, but you’re over eighteen. And I’m moving in for one reason: to protect you. To make sure that what happened to you before never happens again. All right?”
“No, damn it! It’s not all right at all. Nobody says to me: ‘Oh, we’ve already discussed things and we’re putting a guy in bed with you.’ That’s not anybody else’s decision to make.” Elena was incandescent in fury.
Damon took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. He didn’t want to have to Influence Elena—in fact, he preferred not to Influence anyone in front of Bonnie, who seemed to be picking up on channels of telepathy. But if plain sense didn’t work he was going to have to use Power.
“Look, the point is that you can’t be by yourself, and I’m not going to let Meredith abandon Bonnie, either. Don’t you realize”—he tightened his grip just slightly—“you still don’t know how you lost that blood! You were attacked somehow. I am not leaving you alone.”
Damon himself wasn’t sure why he was so adamant about this subject, since he knew exactly how Elena had lost her blood. Still, from the very beginning, when he’d asked Meredith to find a new bed to put in Elena’s room, he’d felt in his bones that he needed to watch over her at night. The voice from Bonnie’s trances had specifically threatened Elena’s life. That might mean much or little. Bonnie could have succumbed to all sorts of psychic influences that her mind would interpret as anathema. But somehow, Damon couldn’t just ignore those warnings.
Elena was winding up for a scathing reply when she stopped midway through and thought. Damon could see it in her face. She looked long and hard at Bonnie and then slowly, slowly, began to relax. Finally she seemed to rein in her temper.
“We’ll talk about this later. Caroline, do you want Matt sleeping in your room?”
“Me?” The auburn-haired girl looked awkward, while Matt just blinked rapidly. “No. I think that I can—um, take care of myself.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Elena said with half of a wry smile. “I guess, though, that I’m the one in the crosshairs.”
Damon allowed himself to feel relief and satisfaction, although he knew that at least half of Elena’s sudden about-face was due to her not wanting to discuss their personal business in front of even her closest friends.
You think you’re stubborn, he mused, as Elena turned to talk about the wonders of her room to Bonnie. But you haven’t even begun to guess at how stubborn I am. I’ve had centuries to perfect what was a pretty damn stubborn attitude from the beginning.
If I have to, I’ll Influence you to agree with me. I probably should have done that in the beginning. I seem to remember promising I wouldn’t, but I believe that promise also had a time limit that ran out.
* * *
Stefan woke up feeling overheated and dizzy. He was in the Old Woods, the restored and cleansed Old Woods.
He was hungry.
Tiger-hungry, he thought. Wolf-hungry. Hungry enough to bite a blind beggar in a churchyard.
Hungry enough to take down the first prey that crossed his path.
Automatically, as his hand groped in his jeans pocket, he looked around the small clearing where he had collapsed last night. He had hunted a deer then, and almost drained it before the dizziness and darkness had overtaken him and he had fallen, exhausted, into fever-dreams.
At least his task was done, he thought. Wasn’t it done? His hand closed on the hipflask, which was disappointingly light when he opened it and lifted it to his lips.
Three tantalizing drops fell onto his parched tongue. That was all. He stuffed the flask back in his pocket.
Where was the deer? Although he had wished it no harm, he would have sworn that he had taken enough blood that it should have become a carcass by now.
Maybe something—and his mind brought up an unpleasant picture of a couple of wolves turning into people—had taken it out of the clearing. Or maybe he had wandered away from the clearing where he had fallen in his sleep, which had been restless and fitful.
Or perhaps he had drunk less than he thought and the deer had been able to rise and stumble back into the sheltering trees while he was unconscious. That might make the most sense, and would explain his broken sleep and ravenous awakening.
It was strange, but even in prison he had never felt quite this desperate for blood. Even when he had been dying, it had never been this bad. The closer he’d gotten to dying, the more peaceful he’d been then.
This hunger was like wearing a white-hot suit underneath his skin. It burned and itched and stung over every inch of his body, while claws tore at his internal organs.
It urged him into walking unsteadily, trying to be noiseless and stealthy, trying to listen for the tiny sounds of prey and look for the tiny signs that would shape his path.
But how to be stealthy when every step threatens to lead to a searing, raging darkness? How to hear when your ears are already thrumming with your own heartbeat? How to see when vision is distorted and wavers between too close and too distant?
There! A fern was bent. It had been trodden upon and the lacy green triangle that lay flat on the ground acted as an arrow to show the direction of the animal that had disturbed it. Stefan followed, sweat collecting on his forehead as he concentrated all the Power he could summon into his eyes.
Steady vision. Steady vision. A few leaves were dislocated and a print showed clearly in the moist ground between them. It was the double teardrop and crescent shape of a white-tailed deer’s hoof. The print was easily five and a half inches long and very deep. A buck, then, and no slender yearling. A big fellow, from three to six years old. Exactly what Stefan needed.
Now that he was on the trail his body seemed to switch to automatic mode. He followed each of the buck’s strides as if he were being pulled along on a string. He had done this so many times; it was so blessedly easy to see his way. Stefan began to run and felt his legs stable underneath him. He was gaining on the buck, for its strides remained of a uniform length; it was ambling along, heedless of any danger.
Stefan burst into a clearing and saw a magnificent red-brown animal in front of him, its antlers a miracle, a miniature forest towering on its head. The velvet hung in taters from some of the tines.
Stefan’s canine teeth were sharpening even as he leaped forward, seizing the buck by its rack even as he knocked it off balance. His fangs cut through the wiry summer coat to the carotid artery in the buck’s neck. Immediately rich blood fountained into Stefan’s mouth. He didn’t remember deer blood being as energizing and delicious as this, but then he couldn’t remember ever being so desperate to feed before.
I’m sorry, cousin, he
thought, Influencing the animal to rest quietly and feel nothing. Your life is my sacrifice to my own internal beast today. But you won’t feel it ebbing away, I promise. Sleep now and dream of being a fawn with your mother. I’m sure you’ve sired some beautiful fawns yourself in your time.
The buck lay quiet. Great gushes of blood, pumped by its strong heart, fountained into Stefan’s mouth and scarcely a drop was lost. The hot red liquid tasted of exotic spices, of port wine, of black currants, cherry, and cassis. No animal’s blood had ever been so smooth, so soothing to Stefan’s fever, so delectable.
It was strange, though, that although Stefan’s hunger was gradually appeased, he did not become less lightheaded. In fact, he felt darkness settling around him like a heavy, thick fog of warm air. His appetite was blunted, but so were his senses. The last thing he remembered before the darkness pulled him into the folds of a velvety black cloak was a vague curiosity about whether he might be dying.
* * *
With her friends gone, Elena vaguely planned to confront Damon. But she had to figure out exactly what to say to make sure she could convince him she was able to protect herself.
She sat down at the desk, where she found a pretty journal in the cubby, with a cover of lavender crushed velvet. She was supposed to start keeping a journal for her English class. Once she’d picked up this one, she felt she couldn’t put it down without writing in it, and there was a fresh black ballpoint pen waiting for her. She untwisted the pale lavender ribbon that held the journal closed from its carved silver button and opened it.
She began to write about how frustrated she was with Damon, but to explain why she was frustrated she had to go back and recount the details of why he thought she needed protection.
Soon, engrossed in her task, she was writing fluently, her hand in direct contact with her brain, the pen streaking over the journal’s pages.
She was so involved that she scarcely noticed when Damon settled on the bed and turned on her new TV. He kept the volume low, but if it had been blasting into her ears, she wouldn’t have heard a word. She was in her own world now, unconscious of anything but the strange story she told.
* * *
Stefan slowly came to consciousness inside his black Porsche. The proximity key was in his jeans’ pocket, as was the empty hipflask.
At first he felt all the normal uneasiness of the sleepwalker, but then a desperate searching of his mind yielded up a fragmented picture of what had happened after he had finished feeding on the red-brown buck. He saw himself sink into sleep and then, long hours later, half-awaken slowly and rise, feeling renewed. Sorrow for the dead buck had gripped him briefly, but there was no point in sentimentalizing over what was already done. Evening was coming on, and if there were no ordinary wolves in the Old Wood, Stefan strongly suspected that there were werewolves. He had left the buck’s carcass for them to deal with and had stumbled in the direction of his car. His hunger was satisfied, but he was literally sleepwalking as he tracked down the Porsche. He had fumbled the door open and gotten inside, oversensitive to the smell of leather. And then he had simply locked the doors and reclined his seat as far as it would go, which wasn’t very far. He fallen into a very heavy sleep then, surrounded by the feeling of luxury and safety, his Power fully restored.
But now . . . it was night and his head was clear at last. Elena’s diaries and a few photos that he had taken from her bedroom on Maple Street were safely piled in the passenger seat.
Time to get on the move. He pushed the starter button and the Porsche purred to life. He drove out of the Old Wood and toward the forest that lay beyond Dalcrest College. There he could pick up Meredith’s fighting stave and—
—check on Elena—
—consider what his next move should be, he told himself sternly. He was glad to have the whole business of Influencing humans behind him. Once he had—
—checked on Elena—
—destroyed the diaries and the stave, he could begin to lead a normal life again, somewhere far away from here.
Far from Elena, who would forever be the best part of him. He lightly touched the small lapis ring that hung on the apricot ribbon around his neck. Both had belonged to her; both he had kept as mementoes when she need them no longer. He couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to wake up and not immediately think of Elena.
Ten minutes to the Dyer Woods, Stefan turned on the radio to distract himself. He was finding it difficult to control his speed as he got closer and closer to—
—Elena—
—the place where he could finish his business.
News for commuters blared out of the car’s speakers. Stefan flinched and hurriedly dialed down the volume. He tried to work up an interest as he heard of more trouble in the Middle East and the effects of rampant global warming. But the words slid by, unheard for the most part, until one phrase seemed to leap out and echo in his ear.
“. . . local news, the nearly-exsanguinated girl from Fell’s Church is in serious condition at Beckley Memorial Hospital in Heron. Police say that there are no suspects as of yet in this mysterious crime, but that her eighteen-year-old boyfriend is a person of interest. Traffic and weather together in three minutes.”
Stefan found himself gripping the steering wheel so hard that it creaked.
What the hell?
They had it all wrong. Everything about Elena except that she was from Fell’s Church. The wrong hospital, the wrong town that the hospital was in, the wrong age for Damon, who had been just-turned-twenty-one for five hundred years. Even the condition of the patient had to be wrong, since Elena had been essentially cured when Stefan left.
Why all the misinformation?
A thought struck him. The police often kept details of serious crimes secret or changed them, knowing that only the true perpetrator could correct the details, thus saving them time from kooks with false confessions. Maybe that was what was happening here . . .
And maybe not. Why should the criminal know which hospital the girl was in, or what her current condition was?
Stefan found his muscles tense with agitation. What if it was merely incredibly bad reporting? What if Elena had had a relapse or had been transferred to a different hospital? What if someone had fingered Stefan, who was eighteen, instead of Damon, as Elena’s boyfriend?
Now Stefan could give into his temptation. He had to give into it before he could even consider leaving this area behind him. He needed to see Elena and talk to Damon as soon as possible.
* * *
At dinnertime, people began to show up at Elena’s door once again. Isobel Saitou and Jim Bryce stopped in to congratulate Elena on her recovery, and Elena looked happy, as always, to see the quiet Japanese girl and her tall, basketball-playing boyfriend. Damon gave the couple a tiny push to gracefully say goodbye after twenty minutes had passed. He preferred not to have anyone around who might remind Elena of kitsune grandmothers or Stefan’s kidnapping by the fox-spirits.
Bonnie and Meredith, Matt and Caroline came as one group, and, after much chattering and argument about toppings, ordered four large pizzas from a local restaurant. Everyone settled in to watch Elena’s TV and began to argue all over again, this time as to which movie to order. No one said a word about whether Damon was moving in with Elena or not—but, Damon reflected, they hardly had to, given that Damon had divested himself of his leather jacket and was now lying at ease on the double bed, with pillows propping up his shoulders.
Meredith ended holding the TV’s remote and she put on a local news channel. And that, Damon reflected later, was when everything started to go to hell in a hand-basket.
Damon had been covertly watching Caroline, who once again was occupying the lounge chair in the corner as per Elena’s orders. He was wondering if the girl had been changing into her wolf-form recently. It must certainly be more comfortable than her present awkward gourd-shaped body.
He had just begun to tally up the numbers of other werewolves that he had been considering s
talking before Bonnie’s psychic scream had split his world in the seedy Pine Grove bar, when Meredith cried out, “Everybody—listen! Be quiet! Shut up!”
She was staring as if entranced at the television. Talk ceased immediately and everyone followed her gaze.
A news anchor was saying “. . . that senior from Robert E. Lee High School is still in serious condition tonight at Beckley Memorial Hospital. Doctors there say that the girl was found lying outside the Emergency Room, and required massive transfusions throughout the day to replace the large volume of blood she had lost.
“The Heron police are not releasing many details about the cryptic case, but a source close to the Fell’s Church sheriffs’ department says that the authorities are interested in speaking to the girl’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend, also a student at Robert E. Lee High.
“The Heron County Blood Bank is sponsoring a blood drive, saying that donations have dropped over twenty percent this last summer. They noted that low levels of donated blood could prove lethal for some patients if a hospital were faced with ‘another mysterious exsanguination, or a major accident that will really drive up usage.’ In other news . . .”
Meredith muted the TV. There was silence in the room. Damon was on his feet, as were Matt, Meredith, and Elena. Matt had automatically reached for his mobile and spoke as his fingers rapidly found the same news on the Internet.
Then, slowly, he said, “Another one.”
“Another . . . attack like Elena’s . . .” Meredith began, but didn’t finish the sentence.
“But they said someone from Robert E. Lee,” Bonnie whispered. “That means we probably know whoever it is—someone who was a junior last year . . .” Her words, too, trailed off.
“It’s not possible,” Damon said mechanically, stiff in the jaw, his mind whirling with a hundred thoughts at once.
“It has to be possible. It happened,” Caroline pointed out.
“Or maybe it’s different,” Bonnie said, looking desperate for comfort. “They didn’t say that this girl’s blood just disappeared. If they’re looking for her boyfriend then they must have some reason to suspect him.”
