“Yes, and I’m under a sheet,” Elena said wearily. “If she were Dowager Queen, I expect you were glad,” she added in a half-bewildered voice. “Aren’t they the old mothers?”
“No, Anne of Austria, Queen of France, kept her remarkable beauty to the end. She was the only redhead that—” Damon stopped, groping wildly for words as he faced the bed. Elena had done as he had asked. He just hadn’t realized how much she would look like Aphrodite arising from the ocean. The ruffled white of the sheet came up to the warmer milk-white of her skin. She needed cleaning, certainly, but just knowing that under that thin sheet she was magnificently naked was enough to make him lose his breath.
She had rolled her clothes into a ball and thrown them into the farthest corner of the room. He didn’t blame her.
He didn’t think. He didn’t give himself time. He simply held out his hands and said, “Lemon-thyme chicken consommé, hot, in a Mikasa cup — and plum flower oil, very warm, in a vial.”
Once the broth was duly consumed and Elena was lying on her back again, he began to gently massage her with the oil. Plum flower always made for a good start. It numbed the skin and the senses to pain, and it provided a basis for the other, more exotic, oils he planned to use on her.
In a way, it was much better than dumping her in a modern bath or Jacuzzi. He knew where her injuries were; he could heat the oils to the appropriate temperature for any of them. And instead of a barely mobile Jacuzzi head spouting water against a bruise, he could avoid anything too sensitive — in the painful sense.
He started with her hair, adding a very, very light coating of oil that would make the worst tangles easy to brush out. After the oiling, her hair shone like gold against her skin — honey on cream. Then he began with the muscles in her face: tiny strokes with his thumbs over her forehead to smooth it and relax it, forcing her to relax along with his movements. Slow, circular swirls at her temples, with only the lightest of pressure. He could see the thin blue veins traced here, and he knew that deep pressure could put her to sleep.
He then proceeded to upper arms, her forearms, her hands, taking her apart with ancient strokes and the correct ancient essences to go with them, until she was nothing but a loose, boneless thing under the sheet: sleek and soft and yielding. He flashed his incandescent smile for a moment while pulling a toe until it popped — and then the smile turned ironic. He could have what he wanted of her, now. Yes, she was in no mood to refuse anything. But he hadn’t counted on what the damned sheet would do to him. Everyone knew that a scrap of covering, no matter how simple, always drew attention to the taboo area as pure nakedness did not. And massaging Elena by inches this way only focused him on what lay beneath the snowy fabric.
After a while Elena said drowsily, “Aren’t you going to tell the end of the story? About Anne of Austria, who was the only redhead to…”
“…to, ah, remain a natural redhead to the end of her life,” Damon murmured. “Yes. It was said that Cardinal Richelieu was her lover.”
“Isn’t that the wicked Cardinal from the The Three Musketeers?”
“Yes, but perhaps not so wicked as he was portrayed there, and certainly an able politician. And, some say, the real father of Louis…now turn over.”
“It’s a strange name for a king.”
“Hm?”
“Louis Now Turn Over,” Elena said, turning over and showing a flash of creamy thigh while Damon tried to eye various other parts of the room.
“Depends on the naming traditions of the individual’s native country,” Damon said wildly. All he could see were replays of that glimpse of thigh.
“What?”
“What?”
“I was asking you—”
“Are you warm now? All done,” Damon said and, unwisely, patted the highest curve of terrain under the towel.
“Hey!” Elena reared up, and Damon — faced by an entire body of pale rose-gold and perfumed and sleek — and with muscles like steel under the silken skin — precipitately fled.
He came back after an appropriate interval with a calming offering of more soup. Elena, dignified under her sheet, which she had made into a toga, accepted. She didn’t even try to swat him on the bottom when his back was turned.
“What is this place?” she wondered instead. “It can’t be the Dunstans’—they’re an old family, with an old house. They used to be farmers.”
“Oh, let’s just call it a little pied-à-terre of my own in the woods.”
“Ha,” Elena said. “I knew you weren’t sleeping in trees.”
Damon found himself trying not to smile. He’d never been with Elena when the situation hadn’t been life-or-death. Now, if he said he’d found he loved her mind after having massaged her naked under a sheet — no…No one would ever believe him.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“As warm as chicken-apple soup.”
“I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I?”
He made her stay on the bed while he thought up nightgowns, all sizes and styles, and robes, too — and slippers, all in the instant of walking to what had been a bathroom, and was pleased to find that it was now a walk-in closet with everything anyone could want in terms of night attire. From silky lingerie to good old-fashioned sleeping gowns to night-caps, this wardrobe had it all. Damon emerged with a double armful and gave Elena her choice.
She picked a high-necked white nightgown made out of some modest fabric. Damon found himself stroking a regal sky-blue gown trimmed with what looked like genuine Valenciennes lace.
“Not my style,” Elena said, quickly tucking it under some other robes.
Not your style around me, Damon thought, amused. And a wise little lass you are, too. You don’t want to tempt me into doing anything you might be sorry for tomorrow.
“All right — and then you can get a good night’s sleep—” He broke off, for she was suddenly looking at him with astonishment and distress.
“Matt! Damon, we were looking for Matt! I just remembered. We were looking for him and I–I don’t know. I got hurt. I remember falling and then I was here.”
Because I carried you here, Damon thought. Because this house is just a thought in Shinichi’s mind. Because the only permanent things inside it are we two.
Damon took in a deep breath of air.
31
Let us at least have the dignity of walking out of your trap on our own feet — or should I say, using your own key?Damon thought to Shinichi. To Elena, he said, “Yes, we’re looking for what’s-his-face. But you took a bad fall. I wish — I would like to ask you — that you stay here and recuperate while I go look for him.”
“You think you know where Matt is?” That was the entire sentence distilled for her. That was all she heard.
“Yes.”
“Can we go now?”
“Won’t you let me go alone?”
“No,” Elena said simply. “I have to find him. I wouldn’t sleep at all if you went out alone. Please, can’t we go now?”
Damon sighed. “All right. There were some”—(there will be now)—“clothes that will fit you in the closet. Jeans and things. I’ll get them,” he said. “As long as I really, really can’t convince you to lie down and rest while I look for him.”
“I can make it,” Elena promised. “And if you go without me, I’ll just jump out a window and follow you.”
She was serious. He went and got the promised pile of clothes and then turned his back while Elena put on an identical version of the jeans and Pendleton shirt she had been wearing, whole and un-bloodstained. Then they left the house, Elena brushing her hair vigorously, but glancing back every step or so.
“What are you doing?” Damon asked, just when he had decided to carry her.
“Waiting for the house to disappear.” And when he gave her his best what’re you talking about? look, she said, “Armani jeans, just my size? La Perla camisoles, same? Pendleton shirts, two sizes too big, just like the one I was wearing? That place is eit
her a warehouse or it’s magic. My bet’s on magic.”
Damon picked her up as a way to shut her up, and walked to the passenger’s door of the Ferrari. He wondered if they were in the real world now or in another of Shinichi’s globes.
“Did it disappear?” he asked.
“Yup.”
What a pity, he thought. He’d have liked to keep it.
He could try to renegotiate the bargain with Shinichi, but there were other, more important things to think of. He gave Elena a slight squeeze, thinking, other,much, much more important things.
In the car he made sure of three small facts. First, that click which his brain automatically registered as passenger buckled up really did mean that Elena had her seat buckle properly fastened. Second, that the doors were locked — from his master control. And third, that he drove quite slowly. He didn’t think that anyone in Elena’s shape would be throwing themselves out of cars again in the near future, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
He had no idea how long this spell was going to work. Elena must eventually come out of her amnesia. It was only logical, since he seemed to be, and he’d been awake much longer than she had. Pretty soon she would remember…what? That he’d taken her in the Ferrari against her will (bad but forgivable — he couldn’t know she’d launch herself out)? That he’d been teasing Mike or Mitch or whoever and her in the clearing? He himself had a vague picture of this — or was it another dream.
He wished he knew what the truth was. When would he remember everything? He’d be in a much stronger bargaining position once he did.
And it was hardly possible that Mac was getting hypothermia in a midsummer snowstorm even if he were still in that clearing right now. It was a chilly night, but the worst the boy could expect was a twinge of rheumatism when he was around eighty.
The vital thing was that they didn’t find him. He might have some unpleasant truths to tell.
Damon noticed Elena making the same gesture again. A touch to her throat, a grimace, a deep breath.
“Are you carsick?”
“No, I’m…” In the moonlight he could see her blush come and go; could sense her heat with detectors in his face. She flushed deeply. “I explained,” she said, “about feeling…too full. That’s what it is now.”
What was a vampire to do?
Say,I’m sorry — I’ve given it up for Moonspire?
Say, I’m sorry — you’ll hate me in the morning?
Say,To hell with the morning; this seat reclines two inches?
But what if they got to the clearing and found that something really had happened to Mutt — Gnat — the boy? Damon would regret it for the rest of the remaining twenty seconds of his life. Elena would call battalions of sky spirits down on his head. Even if no one else believed in her, Damon did.
He found himself saying, as smoothly as ever he’d spoken to a Page or a Damaris, “Will you trust me?”
“What?”
“Will you trust me for another fifteen or twenty minutes, to go to a certain place I think what’s his name might be?”If he is — my bet is that you remember everything and you never want to see me again in your life — then you’ll be spared a long search. If he isn’t — and the car isn’t either; it’s my lucky day and Mutt wins the prize of a lifetime — and then we go on looking.
Elena was watching him intently. “Damon, do you know where Matt is?”
“No.” Well, that was true enough. But she was a bright little trinket, a pretty little pink, and more than all that, she was clever…. Damon broke off his polyrhythmic contemplations on Elena’s intelligence. Why was he thinking in poetry? Was he really going crazy? He’d wondered that before — hadn’t he? Didn’t it prove you weren’t crazy if you wondered if you were? The truly insane never doubted their sanity, right? Right. Or did they? And surely all this talking to himself couldn’t be good for anyone.
Merda.
“All right, then. I’ll trust you.”
Damon let out a breath he didn’t need and headed the car toward the clearing.
It was one of the more exciting gambles of his life. On one hand, there was his life — Elena would find some way or other of killing him if he’d killed Mark, he was certain. And on the other hand…a taste of paradise. With a willing Elena, an eager Elena, an open Elena…he swallowed. He found himself doing the thing closest to praying that he’d done in half a millennium.
As they rounded the corner on the road to the little lane, he kept himself in hyper-alertness, the engine a bare hum, the night air bringing all kinds of information to vampire senses. He was thoroughly aware that an ambush could have been set up for him. But the lane was deserted. And as he suddenly hit the accelerator to reveal the little clearing, he found it blessedly, bleakly, blankly empty of either cars or of college-aged young men whose names started with “M.”
He relaxed against the seat back.
Elena had been watching him.
“You thought he might be here.”
“Yes.” And now was the time for the real question. Without asking her this, the whole thing was a sham, a fraud. “Do you remember this place?”
She glanced around. “No. Should I?”
Damon smiled.
But he took the precaution of driving on up another three hundred yards, into a different clearing, just in case she should have a sudden attack of memory.
“There were malach in the other clearing,” he explained easily. “This one is guaranteed monster-free.” Oh, what a liar, I am, I am, he rejoiced. Have I still got it or what?
He’d been…disturbed ever since Elena had come back from the Other Side. But if that first night it had discomfited him into literally giving her the shirt off his back — well, there were still no words for how he’d felt when she’d stood before him newly returned from the afterlife, her skin glowing in the dark clearing, naked without shame or the concept of shame. And during her massage, where veins traced out lines of blue comet fire against an inverse sky. Damon was feeling something he hadn’t felt for five hundred years.
He was feeling desire.
Human desire. Vampires didn’t feel that. It was all sublimated into the need for the blood, always the blood….
But he was feeling it.
He knew why, too. Elena’s aura. Elena’s blood. She’d brought back with her something more substantial than wings. And while the wings had faded, this new talent seemed to be permanent.
He realized that it was a very long time since he’d felt this, and that therefore he might be quite wrong. But he didn’t think so. He thought that Elena’s aura would make the most fossilized of vampires stand up and blossom into virile young men once again.
He leaned away as far as the crowded confines of the Ferrari would allow. “Elena, there’s something I should tell you.”
“About Matt?” She gave him a straightforward, intelligent glance.
“Nat? No, no. It’s about you. I know you were surprised that Stefan would leave you in the care of somebody like me.”
There was no room for privacy in the Ferrari and he was sharing her body warmth already.
“Yes, I was,” she said simply.
“Well, it may have something to do with—”
“It may have had something to do with how we decided that my aura would give even old vampires the jigsies. From now on, I’ll need strong protection because of that, Stefan said.”
Damon didn’t know what the jigsies were, but he was prepared to bless them for getting a delicate point across to a lady. “I think,” he said carefully, “that of all things, Stefan would want you to have protection from the evil folk drawn here from all over the globe, and above all other things that you not be forced to — to, um, jigsy — if it was not your wish.”
“And now he’s left me — like a selfish, stupid, idealistic idiot, considering all the people in the world who might want to jigsy me.”
“I agree,” Damon said, careful of keeping the lie of Stefan’s willing departure intact. �
��And I’ve already promised what protection I can offer. I really will do my best, Elena, to see that no one gets near you.”
“Yes,” said Elena, “but then something like this”—she made a little gesture probably to indicate Shinichi and all the problems brought about by his arrival—“comes up and nobody knows how to deal with it.”
“True,” said Damon. He had to keep shaking himself and reminding himself of his real purpose here. He was here to…well, he wasn’t on St. Stefan’s side. And the thing was, it was easy enough….
There she was, brushing her hair out…a fair pretty maiden sat brushing her hair out…the sun in the sky was nonesuch so gold…. Damon shook himself hard. Since when had he gotten into ye Olde English folksongs? What was wrong with him?
To have something to say, he asked, “How are you feeling?”—just, as it happened, as she lifted her hand to her throat.
She grimaced. “Not bad.”
And that made them look at each other. And then Elena smiled and he had to smile back, at first just a quirk of the lip, and then a full smile.
She was…damn it, she was everything. Witty, enchanting, brave, smart…and beautiful. And he knew that his eyes were saying all that and that she wasn’t turning away.
“We might — take a little walk,” he said, and bells rang and trumpets played fanfares, and confetti came raining down and there was a release of doves….
In other words, she said, “All right.”
They picked a little path off the clearing that looked easy to Damon’s night-acquainted vampire eyes. Damon didn’t want her on her feet too much. He knew that she still hurt and that she didn’t want him to know it or to pamper her. Something inside him said, “Well, then, wait until she says she’s tired and help her to sit down.”
And something else beyond his control, sprang out at the first little hesitation of her foot, and he picked her up, apologizing in a dozen different languages, and generally acting the fool until he had her seated on a comfortably carved wooden bench with a back to it and a very light traveling blanket over her knees. He kept adding, “You’ll tell me if there’s something — anything — else you want?” He accidentally sent to her a snippet of his thoughts of possible contenders, which were, a glass of water, him sitting beside her, and a baby elephant, which he had earlier seen in her mind that she admired very much.
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