by L. J. Smith
Final y he addressed them al , biting off his words sharply. “I am trying to prepare you al , and to prepare this chamber, for the initiation ceremony. For you.” His voice was steadily rising as he glared around at them. “And this is when I learn that, despite al your promise, you’re a bunch of incompetents. You can’t even place a candle or mix some herbs without my help. We’re running out of time, and I might as wel just be doing everything myself.” Matt glanced around at the other pledges. Their faces were shocked and wary. Like him, al along they had been looking up to Ethan and were flattered and encouraged by his praise. Now their role model had turned on them, and no one seemed to know how to react. Chloe, setting out candles by the arch, was anxious, her lips pressed together tightly. She looked quickly at Matt and then away, back toward Ethan.
“Just tel us what you want us to do, Ethan,” Matt said, stepping forward. He tried to keep his voice level and soothing. “We’l do our best to make everything perfect.” Ethan glowered at him. “You couldn’t even get your friend Stefan to join us,” he said bitterly. “One simple task, and you failed.”
“Hey,” Matt said, offended. “That’s not fair. I got Stefan to come talk to you. If he’s not interested, that’s his decision. He doesn’t have to join us.”
“I question your commitment to the Vitale Society, Matt,” Ethan said flatly. “And the conversation with Stefan Salvatore is not over.” He walked straight past Matt, glancing briefly at the rest of the pledges gathered around him. “There’s not much time, everyone. Get back to work.” Matt could feel the beginnings of a headache starting at his temples. For the first time, he wondered if maybe he didn’t want to join the Vitale Society after al .
“I could have this door open in a single second,” Damon said irritably. “Instead we stand here, waiting.” Meredith sighed and careful y wiggled the bobby pin in the lock. “If you force the door open, Damon, they’l know right away that someone broke into the campus security office. By picking the lock instead, we can keep a low profile. Okay?” The bobby pin caught on something, and she careful y slid it upward, trying to turn it to catch the pins of the lock so she could move the tumbler. Then the bobby pin bent, and she lost the angle. She groaned and dug into her bag for another bobby pin. “Twenty-seven weapons,” she grumbled. “I brought twenty-seven separate weapons to col ege and not a single lock pick.”
“Wel , you couldn’t be prepared for everything,” Elena said. “What about using a credit card?”
“Being prepared for everything is sort of my job description,” Meredith muttered. She sat back on her heels and stared at the door. The lock was pretty flimsy: not only Damon but either she or Elena could have easily forced it open. And yes, a credit card or something similar probably would work just fine. Dropping the bobby pin into her open bag, she took out her wal et instead and found her student ID.
The ID slid right into the crack between the door and the doorjamb, she gave it a careful little wiggle, and, bingo, she was able to easily slide the lock back and pul the door open. Meredith smiled over her shoulder at Elena, arching one eyebrow. “That was strangely satisfying,” she said.
Once they were inside and the door was locked again behind them, Meredith checked to make sure the windows were covered, then flicked on the lights.
The security office was simply furnished: white wal s, two desks, each with a computer, one with a forgotten half cup of coffee on top, and a filing cabinet. There was a dying plant on the windowsil , its leaves dry and browning.
“We’re sure that none of the officers are going to show up and catch us?” Elena asked nervously.
“I told you, I checked their routine,” Meredith answered.
“After eight o’clock, al but one of the security guards on duty is patrol ing the campus. The one who isn’t is sitting in the downstairs lobby of the administration building, keeping in radio contact with the others and helping students who lock themselves out of their dorms and stuff.”
“Wel , let’s get it over with,” Damon said. “I don’t particularly relish the idea of spending the whole evening in this dismal little hole.”
His voice sounded both wel bred and bored, as usual, but there was something different about him. He was standing very close to Elena, so close that his arm was brushing against hers, and, as Meredith watched, his hand came up to touch Elena’s back very lightly, just with his fingertips. There was a slight secretive curve to his mouth, almost as if Damon was even more pleased with himself than usual.
“Wel ?” he asked, gazing back at Meredith. “What now, hunter?”
Elena stepped away from him and knelt in front of the filing cabinet before Meredith could answer, sliding the top drawer open. “What was Samantha’s last name? Her file’s probably under that.”
“Dixon,” Meredith told her, pushing away the little shock she kept getting whenever anyone referred to Samantha in the past tense. It was just … she’d been so ful of life. “And Christopher’s was Nowicki.”
Elena rifled through the files in both drawers, pul ing out first one thick folder and then a second. “Got them.” She opened Samantha’s folder and made a sick little sound in her throat. “They’re … worse than I thought,” she said, her voice shaking as she looked at pictures from the murder scene. She turned over a few pages. “And here’s the coroner’s report. It says she died from blood loss.”
“Let me see,” Meredith said. She took the file and made herself study the crime scene pictures to see if she had missed anything when she was there. Her eyes kept flinching away from Sam’s poor defenseless body, so she swal owed hard and focused on the areas away from the body, the floor, the wal s of Samantha’s room. “Blood loss because she was kil ed by a vampire? Or because there’s so much blood everywhere else?” She was proud of how steady her own voice was, steadier than Elena’s anyway.
She held out the folder toward Damon. “What do you think?” she asked.
Damon took the folder and studied the photos dispassionately, flipping a few pages to read the coroner’s report. Then he held out his hand to Elena for Christopher’s file and looked through that one as wel .
“I can’t tel anything for certain,” he said after a few minutes. “Just like with the bodies I found, they could have been kil ed by werewolves, who are primitive like this. Or it could have been sloppy vampires. Demons, easily. Even humans could do this, if they were sufficiently motivated.” Elena made a soft sound of denial, and Damon flashed his bril iant sudden grin at her. “Oh, don’t forget that humans can come up with far more creative means of violence than some simple hungry monsters do, sweetheart.” Serious again, he looked down at the photographs once more. “I can tel you, though, that more than one creature—or person—was responsible.”
His finger traced a line across one of the pictures, and Meredith forced herself to look. Bloodstains were spattered in wide arcs across the room, beyond Samantha’s outstretched arms. “See the way the blood sprayed here?” Damon asked. “Someone held her hands and someone else held her feet, and at least one other, maybe more, kil ed her.” He flipped open Christopher’s folder again.
“Same thing. This might be evidence that werewolves are the culprits, since they like to travel in packs, but it isn’t firm proof. You can get groups of almost anything. Even vampires: they’re not al as self-sufficient as I am.”
“Matt saw only one person—or whatever—near Chris’s body, though,” Elena pointed out. “And he got there real y soon after Christopher screamed.”
Damon waved a disparaging hand. “So they were fast,” he said. “A vampire could do it before a human had time to even react to the scream. Almost anything supernatural could. Speed comes with the package.”
Meredith shuddered. “A whole pack of something,” she said numbly. “One would have been bad enough.”
“A pack’s much worse,” Damon agreed. “Are you ready to go now?”
“We’d better check and see if there’s anything else and then clean up,�
� Elena said. “Do you want to stand guard outside? I feel like we’re real y tempting fate by staying here so long. You could give some kind of signal if you see someone coming or use your Power to get rid of them.
Please?”
Damon smiled at her flirtatiously. “I’l be your watchdog, princess, but only because it’s you.”
Meredith waited until he left to say dryly, “Speaking of dogs, remember when Damon kil ed Bonnie’s pet pug?” Elena opened the top file drawer again and started going through it methodical y. “I don’t want to talk about this, Meredith. It was Katherine who kil ed Yangtze, anyway.”
“I just don’t think you realize what you’re getting into here,” Meredith said. “Damon’s not terrific relationship material.”
Elena’s hands faltered in their efficient progress. “I don’t
… it’s not like that,” she said. “It’s not a relationship, I don’t want a relationship with anyone but Stefan.” Meredith frowned, confused. “Wel , then, what—”
“It’s complicated,” Elena said. “I care about Damon, you know that. I’m seeing where things might go with him.
There’s something between us, there always has been.
With Stefan gone”—her voice cracked—“I have to give it a chance. Just … just let it alone for now, okay?” She picked up Samantha’s folder to put it back in the drawer. Her lips were trembling, and Meredith was about to pursue the subject: she wasn’t going to let it alone. Not when Elena was upset and somehow involved—more involved than she had been before—with Damon the dangerous vampire. But Elena interrupted her. “Huh,” she said. “What do you think this means?”
Meredith craned to see what she was talking about, and Elena pointed. On the inside front of Samantha’s file was written a large black V. She picked up Christopher’s file.
“This one, too,” she said, showing Elena.
“Vampires?” Elena asked. “The Vitale Society? What else starts with V and might have to do with these murders?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith started to say, when they suddenly heard the rumble of a car engine pul ing up outside the building. A raucous caw came through the window.
“That’s Damon,” Elena said, shoving Christopher’s file back into the cabinet. “If we don’t want him to have to compel the whole security force, we’d better get out of here fast.”
34
“I like your place,” Elena told Damon, looking around.
She’d been mildly surprised when he invited her to dinner. A conventional date wasn’t something she ever associated with Damon, but on her way over she had been tingling with excitement and curiosity. Despite having lived in the same palace as Damon in the Dark Dimension, she had never seen a home he’d made for himself. For al his brashness, she realized, Damon was oddly private.
She would have expected his apartment to be gothical y decorated in blacks and reds, like the vampire manors she’d visited in the Dark Dimension. But it wasn’t like that at al . Instead, it was minimalist, sleek and elegant in its simplicity, with clean pale wal s, lots of windows, furniture in glass and metal, and soft cool colors.
It suited him somehow. If you didn’t look too deeply into his dark, ancient eyes, he could have been a handsome young model or architect, clad in fashionable black, firmly rooted in the modern world.
But not entirely modern. Elena paused in the living room to admire the view over the town: stars sparkled in the sky above the muted lights of houses and car headlights on the roads. On a glass-and-chrome table below the window, something else sparkled just as brightly.
“What’s this?” she asked, picking it up. It looked like a golden bal overlaid with a tracery of diamonds, just the right size to fit comfortably in her palm.
“A treasure,” Damon said, smiling. “See if you can find the catch on the side.”
Elena felt the sphere with careful fingers, final y finding a cleverly concealed catch and pressing it. The bal unfolded in her hands, revealing a smal golden figure. A hummingbird, Elena saw, holding it up to inspect it, the gold chased with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.
“Wind the key,” Damon said, coming to stand behind her, one cool hand on each of her sides. Elena found the smal key low on the back of the bird and turned it. The bird arched its neck and spread its wings, moving slowly and smoothly, as a delicate tune began to play.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Made for a princess,” Damon told her, his eyes fixed on the bird. “A dainty little toy, from Russia before the revolution. They had craftsmen there in those days. A fun place to be, too, if you weren’t a peasant. Palaces, feasts, and riding through the snow in sleighs piled with furs.”
“You were in Russia during the revolution?” Elena asked.
Damon laughed, a dry sharp little sound. “I was there before the revolution, darling. ‘Get out before things go bad,’ that’s always been my motto. I never cared enough to stay and see things through til the end. Before I met you, anyway.”
As the music stopped playing, Elena half turned, wanting to see Damon’s face. He smiled at her and reached to take her hand, closing the bird back into its sphere. “Keep it,” he said. Elena tried to protest—it was surely priceless—but Damon shrugged a little. “I want you to have it,” he said. “Besides, I have a lot of treasures. You tend to accumulate things when you live several lifetimes.” He ushered her into the dining room, where the table was set for one. “Are you hungry, princess?” he asked. “I had food brought in for you.”
He served her an amazing soup—something she didn’t recognize that was smooth and velvety on her tongue, with just a hint of spice—fol owed by a tiny roast bird, which Elena dissected careful y with her fork, its smal bones cracking. Damon didn’t eat, he never ate, but he sipped a glass of wine and watched Elena, smiling as she told him about her classes, nodding seriously as she told him about the tol that patrol ing every night was taking on Meredith.
“This was wonderful,” she said at last, stil picking at the rich flourless chocolate tart he’d brought out for dessert. “I think it’s the best meal I’ve ever had.” Damon smiled. “I want to give you the best of everything,” he said. “You should have the world at your feet, you know.”
Something in Elena stirred. She put her fork down and rose, walking over to the window to gaze out at the stars again. “You’ve been everywhere, haven’t you, Damon?” she asked. She pressed her palm against the glass.
Damon came up close behind her and pul ed her to face him, gently stroking her hair. “Oh, Elena,” he said. “I have been everywhere, but the thing about the world is that it keeps changing, so it’s always new and exciting. There are so many places I want to show you, to see them through your eyes. There’s so much out there, so much life to live.” He kissed her neck, his canines pushing gently against the vein on the side of her throat, then put his hands on her hips, turning her back toward the window, where a spread of stars glowed against the night. “Most people never even see a tenth of what the human world holds,” he murmured in her ear. “Be extraordinary with me, Elena.” His breath was warm on her throat. “Be my dark princess.” Elena leaned against him, trembling.
Dear Diary,
I don’t know who I am anymore.
Tonight, with Damon, I could almost picture my life if I took what he offered me, became his “dark princess.” The two of us, hand in hand, strong and beautiful and free. Everything I wanted without having to lift a finger, from jewels to clothes to wonderful food. A life above the concerns I used to have, somewhere far away. Experiencing and seeing wonders I can’t even imagine.
It would have to be a world without Stefan, though. He’s shut me out, utterly. But seeing me with Damon—not just kissing, but being who Damon wants me to be—would hurt him, I know.
And I can’t stand to do that anymore.
It’s like there are two paths in front of me. One goes into the daylight, and it’s the ordinary girl I thought I wanted to be: parties and
classes and eventually a job and a house and a normal life.
Stefan wants to give me that. The other is in the darkness, with Damon, and I’m just starting to realize how much that world has to offer, and how much I want to experience everything it holds.
I always thought Stefan would be with me on the daylit path. But now I’ve lost him, and that path seems so lonely. Maybe the dark path really is my future. Maybe Damon is right, and I belong with him, in the night.
“I can’t wait to see my surprise.” Bonnie giggled as she and Zander crossed the lawn of the science building hand in hand. “You’re so romantic. Wait til I tel the guys.” Zander brushed a feather-light kiss across her cheek, his lips warm. “They already know I’ve lost al my cool guy points for you. I sang karaoke with you last night.” Bonnie snickered. “Wel , after I introduced you to Dirty Dancing, we had to sing the big duet, right? I can’t believe you’d never seen that movie before.”
“It’s because I used to be manly,” Zander admitted. “But now I’ve seen the error of my ways.” He gave her one of his slow smiles, and Bonnie’s knees nearly buckled. “It was a cute movie.”
They reached the bottom of the fire escape, and Zander boosted her up and then climbed after her. When they got to the roof, Zander gestured expansively at the scene before them. “For our six-week anniversary, Bonnie, a re-creation of our first date.”
“Oh! That’s so sweet!” Bonnie looked around. There was the ragged army blanket, covered with the pizza box and sodas. The stars shone overhead, just as they had six weeks ago. It was sweet; it was a romantic idea even if their first date hadn’t been al that amazing. Then she corrected herself: it had actual y been a pretty amazing date, even though it had been simple.
She took a seat on the blanket, then peeked into the pizza box and involuntarily grinned. Olive, sausage, and mushroom. Her favorite. “At least one improvement in the re-creation, though, I see.”
Zander sat next to her and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Of course I know what you like on your pizza now,” he said. “Got to pay attention to my girl.” Bonnie snuggled up under his arm, and they shared the pizza, gazing at the stars and talking cozily about this and that. When the pizza was al gone, Zander wiped his greasy hands careful y with a napkin, then took both of Bonnie’s hands in his. “I need to talk to you,” he said seriously, his sky-blue eyes intent on hers.
