Bonnie did so, and Elena put her fingertips on Bonnie’s temples, with her thumbs gently brushing Bonnie’s eyelashes. Trying to activate her White Powers — something that had been so easy before today — was like striking two rocks together to make a fire and hoping one was flint. Finally she felt a small spark, and Bonnie jerked backward.
Bonnie’s eyes snapped open.“What was that?” she gasped. She was breathing hard.
“That’s what I saw — yesterday.”
“Where?”
Elena said slowly, “Inside Damon.”
“But what does it mean? Was he controlling it? Or…or…” Bonnie stopped and her eyes widened.
Elena finished the sentence for her. “Was it controlling him? I don’t know. But here’s one thing I do know, almost for certain. When he ignored your Calling, Bonnie, he was being influenced by the malach.”
“The question is,if not Damon, who was controlling it?” Stefan said, standing up again restlessly. “I picked that up, and the kind of creature Elena showed you — it’s not something with a mind of its own. It needs an outside brain to control it.”
“Like another vampire?” Meredith asked quietly.
Stefan shrugged. “Vampires usually just ignore them, because vampires can get what they want without them. It would have to be a very strong mind to get a malach like that to possess a vampire. Strong — and evil.”
“Those,” Damon said with biting grammatical precision, from where he was sitting on a high limb of an oak, “are they. My younger brother and his…associates.”
“Marvelous,” murmured Shinichi. He had draped himself even more gracefully and languidly against the oak than Damon had. It had become an unspoken contest. Shinichi’s golden eyes had flared once or twice — Damon had seen it — upon seeing Elena and at the mention of Tami.
“Don’t even try to tell me you’re not involved with those rowdy girls,” Damon added dryly. “From Caroline to Tamra and onward, that’s the idea, isn’t it?”
Shinichi shook his head. His eyes were on Elena and he began to sing a folksong softly.
“With cheeks like blooming roses And hair like golden wheat…”
“I wouldn’t try it on those girls.” Damon smiled without humor. His eyes were narrow. “Granted, they look about as strong as wet tissue paper — but they’re tougher than you’d think, and they’re toughest of all when one of them is in danger.”
“I told you, it’s not me doing it,” Shinichi said. He looked uneasy for the first time since Damon had seen him. Then he said, “Although I might know the originator.”
“Do tell,” Damon suggested, still narrow-eyed.
“Well — did I mention my younger twin? Her name is Misao.” He smiled winningly. “It means maiden.”
Damon felt an automatic stirring of appetite. He ignored it. He was too relaxed to think of hunting, and he wasn’t at all sure that kitsune — fox-spirits, which Shinichi claimed to be — could be hunted. “No, you didn’t mention her,” Damon said, absently scratching at the back of his neck. That mosquito bite was gone, but it had left behind a furious itching. “It must have somehow slipped your mind.”
“Well, she’s here somewhere. She came when I did, when we saw the flare of Power that brought back…Elena.”
Damon felt sure that the hesitation before the mention of Elena’s name was a fake. He tilted his head at the don’t think you’re fooling me angle and waited.
“Misao likes to play games,” Shinichi said simply.
“Oh, yes? Like backgammon, chess, Go Fish, that sort of thing?”
Shinichi coughed theatrically, but Damon caught the glint of red in his eye. My, he really was overprotective of her, wasn’t he? Damon gave Shinichi one of his most incandescent smiles.
“I love her,” the young man with the black hair licked by fire said, and this time there was an open warning in his voice.
“Of course you do,” Damon said in soothing tones. “I can see that.”
“But, well, her games usually have the effect of destroying a town. Eventually. Not all at once.”
Damon shrugged. “This flyspeck of a village isn’t going to be missed. Of course, I get my girls out alive first.” Now it was his voice that held an open warning.
“Just as you like.” Shinichi was back to his normal, submissive self. “We’re allies, and we’ll keep to our deal. Anyway, it would be a shame to waste…all that.” His gaze drifted to Elena again.
“By the way, we won’t even discuss the little fiasco with your malach and me — or hers, if you insist. I’m pretty sure I’ve vaporized at least three of them, but if I see another one, our business relationship is over. I make a bad enemy, Shinichi. You don’t want to find out how bad.”
Shinichi looked suitably impressed as he nodded. But the next moment he was gazing at Elena again, and singing.
“…hair like golden wheat all a-down her milk-white shoulders; My pretty pink, my sweet…”
“And I’ll want to meet this Misao of yours. For her protection.”
“And I know she wants to meet you. She’s caught up in her game at the moment, but I’ll try to tear her away from it.” Shinichi stretched luxuriously.
Damon looked at him for a moment. Then, absent-mindedly, he too stretched.
Shinichi was watching him. He smiled.
Damon wondered about that smile. He had noticed that when Shinichi smiled, two little flames of crimson could be seen in his eyes.
But he was really too tired to think about it right now. Simply too relaxed. In fact he suddenly felt very sleepy….
“So we’re going to be looking for these malach things in girls like Tami?” Bonnie asked.
“Exactly like Tami,” said Elena.
“And you think,” Meredith said, watching Elena closely, “that Tami got it somehow from Caroline.”
“Yes. I know, I know — the question is: where did Caroline get it from? And that I don’t know. But, again, we don’t know what happened to her when she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler Smallwood. We don’t know anything about what she’s been doing for the last week — except that it’s clear she never really stopped hating us.”
Matt held his head in his hands. “And then what are we going to do? I feel as if I’m responsible somehow.”
“No — Jimmy’s responsible, if anyone is. If he — you know, let Caroline spend the night — and then let her talk about it with his fifteen-year-old sister…. Well, it doesn’t make him guilty, but he sure could have been a little more subtle,” Stefan said.
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Meredith told him. “Matt and Bonnie and Elena and I have known Caroline forages and we know what she’s capable of. If anyone qualifies as their sister’s keeper — it’s us. And I think we’re in serious delinquency of duty. I vote we stop by her house.”
“So do I,” Bonnie said sadly, “but I’m not looking forward to it. Besides, what if she doesn’t have one of those malach things in her?”
“That’s where the research comes in,” Elena said. “We need to find out who’s behind it all. Someone strong enough to influence Damon.”
“Wonderful,” Meredith said, looking grim. “And given the power of the ley lines, we only have every single person in Fell’s Church to choose from.”
Fifty yards west and thirty feet straight up, Damon was struggling to keep awake.
Shinichi reached up to brush fine hair the color of night and flames licking upward off his forehead. Under his lowered lids he was watching Damon intently.
Damon meant to be watching him as intently, but he was simply too drowsy. Slowly, he imitated Shinichi’s motion, brushing a very few strands of silky black hair off his own forehead. His lids drooped inadvertently, just a little more than before. Shinichi was still smiling at him.
“So we have our deal,” he murmured. “We get the town, Misao and I, and you don’t stand in our way. We get the rights to the power of the ley lines. You get your girls safely out…and you get your reven
ge.”
“Against my sanctimonious brother and that…that Mutt!”
“Matt.” Shinichi had sharp ears.
“Whatever. I just won’t have Elena hurt, is all. Or the little red-headed witch.”
“Ah, yes, sweet Bonnie. I wouldn’t mind one or two like her. One for Samhain and one for the Solstice.”
Damon snorted drowsily. “There aren’t two like her; I don’t care where you look. I won’t have her hurt either.”
“And what about the tall, dark-haired beauty…Meredith?”
Damon woke up.“Where?”
“Don’t worry; she’s not coming to get you,” Shinichi said soothingly. “What do you want done with her?”
“Oh.” Damon lounged back again in relief, easing his shoulders. “Let her go her own way — as long as it’s far away from mine.”
Shinichi seemed to deliberately relax back against his branch. “Your brother will be no problem. So it’s really just that other boy down there,” he murmured. He had a very insinuating murmur.
“Yes. But my brother—” Damon was almost asleep now, in the exact position that Shinichi had taken.
“I told you, he’ll be taken care of.”
“Mm. I mean, good.”
“So we have a deal?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“We have a deal.”
This time, Damon didn’t respond. He was dreaming. He dreamed that Shinichi’s angelic golden eyes snapped open suddenly to look at him.
“Damon.” He heard his name, but in his dream it was too much trouble to open his eyes. He could see without opening them, anyway.
In his dream, Shinichi leaned over him, hovering directly over his face, so that their auras mixed and they would have shared breath if Damon had been breathing. Shinichi stayed that way a long time, as if he were testing Damon’s aura, but Damon knew that to an outsider he would appear to be out on all channels and frequencies. Still, in his dream Shinichi hung over him, as if he were trying to memorize the crescent of dark lashes on Damon’s pale cheek or the subtle curve of Damon’s mouth.
Finally, the dream-Shinichi put his hand under Damon’s head and stroked the spot where the mosquito bite had itched.
“Oh, growing up to be a fine big lad, aren’t you?” he said to something Damon couldn’t see — to something inside him. “You could almost take full control against his own strong will, couldn’t you?”
Shinichi sat for a moment, as if watching a cherry blossom fall, then shut his eyes.
“I think,” he whispered, “that that’s what we’ll try, not too long from now. Soon. Very soon. But first, we have to gain his trust; get rid of his rival. Keep him blurred, angry, vain, off balance. Keep him thinking of Stefan, of his hatred for Stefan, who took his angel, while I take care of what needs to be done here.”
Then he spoke directly to Damon. “Allies, indeed!” He laughed. “Not while I can put my finger on your very soul. Here. Do you feel it? What I could make you do…”
And then again he seemed to address whatever creature was already inside Damon: “But right now…a little feast to help you grow up much faster and get much stronger.”
In the dream, Shinichi made a gesture, and lay back, encouraging previously invisible malach to come up the trees. They slunk up and slid up the back of Damon’s neck. And then, hideously, they slipped inside him, one by one, through some cut he hadn’t known he had. The feeling of their soft, flabby, jellyfish-like bodies was almost unbearable…slipping inside of him….
Shinichi sang softly.
“Oh, come a’ tae me, ye fair pretty maidens Haste ye lassies tae my bosom Come tae me by sunlight or moonlight While the roses still are in blossom…”
In his dream, Damon was angry. Not because of the nonsense about malach inside him. That was ludicrous. He was angry because he knew that the dream-Shinichi was watching Elena as she began to pack up the remains of the picnic. He was watching every motion she made with an obsessive closeness.
“They blossom ever where you tread
…Wild roses bloody red.”
“Extraordinary girl, your Elena,” the dream-Shinichi added. “If she lives, I think she’ll be mine for a night or so.” He stroked the remaining strands of hair off Damon’s forehead gently. “Extraordinary aura, don’t you think? I’ll make sure her death is beautiful.”
But Damon was in one of those dreams where you can neither move nor speak. He didn’t answer.
Meanwhile, dream-Shinichi’s dream-pets continued to climb the trees and pour themselves, like Jell-O, inside him. One, two, three, a dozen, two dozen of them.More.
And Damon could not wake, even though he sensed more malach coming from the Old Wood. They were neither dead, nor living, neither man nor maiden, mere capsules of Power that would allow Shinichi to control Damon’s mind from far away. Endlessly, they came.
Shinichi kept watching the flow, the bright sparkle of internal organs sparkling into Damon. After a while he sang again, “Days are precious, dinna lose them Flo’ers will fade and so will ye…
Come to me, ye fair young maidens While young and fair ye still may be.”
Damon dreamed that he heard the word “forget” as if whispered by a hundred voices. And even as he tried to remember what to forget, it dissolved and disappeared.
He woke up alone in the tree, with an ache that filled his entire body.
16
Stefan was surprised to find Mrs. Flowers waiting for them when they returned from their picnic. And, also unusually, she had something to say that didn’t involve her gardens.
“There is a message for you upstairs,” she said, jerking her head toward the narrow staircase. “It came from a dark young fellow — he looked somewhat like you. He wouldn’t leave a word with me. Just asked where to leave a message.”
“Dark fellow? Damon?” Elena asked.
Stefan shook his head. “What would he want to be leaving me messages for?”
He left Elena with Mrs. Flowers and hastened up the crazy, zigzagging stairs. At the top he found a piece of paper stuffed under the door.
It was a Thinking of You card, sans envelope. Stefan, who knew his brother, doubted that it had been paid for — with money, at least. Inside, in heavy black felt-tipped pen, were the words:
DON’T NEED THIS.
THOUGHT ST. STEFAN MIGHT.
MEET ME TONIGHT AT THE TREE WHERE THE HUMANS CRASHED.
NO LATER THAN 4:30 A.M.
I’LL GIVE YOU THE SCOOP.
D.
That was all…except for a Web address.
Stefan was about to throw the note in the wastebasket when curiosity assailed him. He turned on the computer, directed it to the proper website, and watched. For a while, nothing happened. Then very dark gray letters on a black screen appeared. To a human, it would have appeared to be a completely blank screen. To vampires, with their higher visual acuity, the gray on black was faint but clear.
Tired of that lapis lazuli?
Want to take a vacation in Hawaii?
Sick of that same old liquid cuisine?
Come and visit Shi no Shi.
Stefan started to close the page, but something stopped him. He sat and stared at the inconspicuous little ad beneath the poem until he heard Elena at the door. He quickly closed the computer and went to take the picnic basket from her. He said nothing about the note or what he’d seen on the computer screen. But as the night went on, he thought more and more.
“Oh! Stefan, you’ll break my ribs! You squeezed all my breath out!”
“I’m sorry. I just need to hold you.”
“Well, I need to hold you, too.”
“Thank you, angel.”
Everything was quiet in the room with the high ceiling. One window was open, letting the moonlight through. In the sky, even the moon seemed to creep stealthily along, and the shaft of moonlight followed it on the hardwood floor.
Damon smiled. He had had a long,
restful day and now he meant to have an interesting night.
Getting through the window wasn’t quite as easy as he’d expected. When he arrived as a huge, glossy black crow, he was expecting to balance on the windowsill and change to human form to open the window. But the window had a trap on it — it was linked by Power to one of the sleepers inside. Damon puzzled over it, preening himself viciously, afraid to put any tension on that thin link, when something arrived beside him in a flutter of wings.
It looked like no respectable crow ever registered in the sighting book of any ornithologist. It was sleek enough, but its wings were tipped with scarlet, and it had golden, shining eyes.
Shinichi? Damon asked.
Who else? Came the reply as a golden eye fixed on him.I see you have a problem. But it can be fixed. I’ll deepen their sleep so that you can cut the link.
Don’t! Damon said reflexively.If you so much as touch either of them, Stefan will The answer came in soothing tones.Stefan’s just a boy, remember? Trust me. You do trust me, don’t you?
And it worked out exactly as the demonically colored bird said it would. The sleepers inside slept more deeply, and then more deeply still.
A moment later the window opened, and Damon changed form and was inside. His brother and… and she …the one he always had to watch…she was lying asleep, her golden hair lying across the pillow and lying across his brother’s body.
Damon tore his eyes away. There was a medium-sized, slightly outdated computer on the desk in the corner. He went over to it and without the slightest hesitation turned it on. The two on the bed never stirred.
Files…aha.Diary. How original a name. Damon opened it and examined the contents.
Dear Diary,
I woke up this morning and — marvel of marvels — I’m me again. I walk, talk, drink, wet the bed (well, I haven’t yet, but I’m sure I could if I tried).
I’m back.
It’s been one hell of a journey.
I died, dearest Diary, I really died. And then I died as a vampire. And don’t expect me to describe what happened either time — believe me; you had to be there.
The important thing is that I was gone, but now I’m back again — and, oh, dear patient friend who has been keeping my secrets since kindergarten…I am so glad to be back.
The Return: Nightfall tvd-5 Page 14
