by Smith, L. J.
With a small shock, that thought repeated itself with the force of a shaft of sunlight shooting through an unprotected vampire’s body.
She cared about Damon.
She really did. It was usually difficult being with him because they were alike in so many ways. Headstrong, each wanting their own way, passionate, impatient…
She and Damon were alike.
Small shocks were going though Elena, and her entire body felt weak. She found herself glad to lean against the car behind her, even though it must be getting dust all over her clothes.
I love Stefan, she thought almost hysterically. He’s the only one I love. But I need Damon to get to him. And Damon may be falling to pieces in front of me.
She was looking at Matt all the while, her eyes full of tears that would not fall. She blinked, but they stubbornly stayed on her lashes.
“Matt…” she whispered.
He said nothing. He didn’t need to. It was all in his expression: astonishment turning to something Elena had never seen before, not when he was looking at her.
It was a sort of alienation that shut her out completely, that severed any bonds between them.
“Matt, no…” But it came out in a whisper.
And then, to her astonishment, Damon spoke.
“You do know it’s all me, don’t you? You can hardly blame a girl for trying to defend herself.” Elena looked at her hands, which were shaking now. Damon was going on, “You know it’s all my fault. Elena would never—”
That was when Elena realized. Damon was Influencing Matt.
“No!” She took Damon off guard, grabbing him again, shaking him. “Don’t do it! Not to Matt!”
The black eyes that were turned on hers were definitely not those of a suitor. Damon had been interrupted in the use of his Power. If it had been anyone else, they would have ended as a small spot of grease on the ground.
“I’m saving you,” Damon said coldly. “Are you refusing me?”
Elena found herself wavering. Maybe, if it was only once, and only for Matt’s benefit…
Something surged up inside her. It was all she could do not to let her aura escape completely.
“Never try that on me again,” Elena said. Her voice was quiet but icy. “Don’t you dare ever try to Influence me! And leave Matt alone!”
Something like approval flickered in the endless darkness of Damon’s gaze. It was gone before she could be sure she’d seen it. But when he spoke, he seemed less distant.
“All right,” he said to Matt. “What’s the game plan now? You name it.”
Matt answered slowly, not looking at either of them. He was flushed but deadly calm. “I was going to say, that Prius isn’t bad at all. And the dealer guy has another one. It’s in okay condition. We could have two cars just alike.”
“And then we could caravan and split up if someone was following us! They won’t know which to follow.” Normally Elena would have thrown her arms around Matt at this point. But Matt was looking at his shoes, which was probably just as well really, since Damon had his eyes shut and was shaking his head slightly as if he couldn’t believe something idiotic.
That’s right, Elena thought. It’s my aura—or Damon’s—that they’re homing in on. We can’t confuse them with identical cars unless we have identical auras, too.
Which really meant that she should drive with Matt the whole way. But Damon would never accept that. And she needed Damon to get to her beloved, her one and only, her true mate: Stefan.
“I’ll take the ratty one,” Matt was saying, arranging it with Damon and ignoring her. “I’m used to ratty cars. I already arranged a deal with the guy. We should get going.” Still speaking only to Damon, he said, “You’ll have to tell me where we’re really going. We might get separated.”
Damon was silent for a long moment. Then, brusquely, he said, “Sedona, Arizona, for a start.”
Matt looked disgusted. “That place full of New Age lunatics? You’re kidding.”
“I said we’ll start out from Sedona. It’s complete wilderness—nothing but rock—all around it. You could get lost…very easily.” Damon flashed the brilliant smile and instantly turned it off.
“We’ll be at the Juniper Resort, off North Highway 89A,” he added smoothly.
“I’ve got it,” Matt said. Elena could see no emotion in either his face or his expression, but his aura was seething red.
“Now, Matt,” Elena began, “we should really meet every night, so if you just follow us—” She broke off with a sharply inhaled breath.
Matt had already turned around. He didn’t turn back when she spoke. He just kept going, without another word.
Without a backward glance.
7
Elena woke to the sound of Damon impatiently rapping on the window of the Prius. She was fully clothed, clutching her diary to her. It was the day after Matt had left them.
“Did you sleep all night like that?” Damon asked, looking her up and down as Elena rubbed her eyes. As usual, he was immaculately dressed: all in black, of course. Heat and humidity had no effect on him.
“I’ve had my breakfast,” he said shortly, getting in the driver’s seat. “And I brought you this.”
This was a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee, which Elena clutched as gratefully as if it were Black Magic wine, and a brown paper bag that proved to contain donuts. Not exactly the most nutritious breakfast, but Elena craved the caffeine and sugar.
“I need a rest stop,” Elena warned as Damon coolly seated himself behind the wheel and started the car. “To change my clothes and wash my face and things.”
They headed directly west, which accorded with what Elena had found by looking at a map on the Internet last night. The small image on her mobile phone matched the Prius’s navigation system readout. They had both shown that Sedona, Arizona, lay on an almost perfectly straight horizontal line from the small rural road where Damon had parked overnight in Arkansas. But soon Damon was turning south, taking a roundabout route of his own that might or might not confuse any pursuers. By the time they found a rest stop, Elena’s bladder was about to burst. She spent an unashamed half hour in the women’s room, doing her best to wash with paper towels and cold water, brushing her hair, and changing into new jeans and a fresh white top that laced up the front like a corset. After all, one of these days she just might have another out of body experience while napping and see Stefan again.
What she didn’t want to think about was that with Matt’s departure, she was left alone with Damon, an untamed vampire, traveling through the middle of the United States toward a destination that was literally out of this world.
When Elena finally emerged from the restroom, Damon was cold and expressionless—although she noticed that he took the time to look her over just the same.
Oh, damn, Elena thought. I left my diary in the car.
She was as certain that he’d read it as if she’d seen him doing it, and she was glad that there was nothing in it about leaving her body and finding Stefan. Although she believed Damon wanted to free Stefan, too—she wouldn’t be in this car with him if she didn’t—she also felt that it was better that he didn’t know she had gotten there first. Damon enjoyed being in charge of things as much as she did. He also enjoyed Influencing each police officer who pulled him over for blasting the speed limit.
But today he was short-tempered even by his own standards. Elena knew from firsthand experience that Damon could make himself remarkably good company when he chose, telling outrageous stories and jokes until the most prejudiced and taciturn of passengers would laugh in spite of themselves.
But today he wouldn’t even reply to Elena’s questions, much less laugh at her own jokes. The one time she tried to make physical contact, touching his arm lightly, he jerked away as if her touch might ruin his black leather jacket.
Fine, terrific, Elena thought, depressed. She leaned her head against the window and stared at the scenery, which all looked alike. Her mind wandered.
Where was Matt now? Ahead of them or behind? Had he gotten any rest last night? Was he driving through Texas now? Was he eating properly? Elena blinked away tears, which welled up whenever she remembered the way he had walked away from her without a backward look.
Elena was a manager. She could make almost any situation turn out okay, as long as the people around her were normal, sane beings. And managing boys was her speciality. She’d been handling them—steering them—since junior high. But now, approximately two and a half weeks since she had come back from death, from some spirit world that she didn’t remember, she didn’t want to steer anyone.
That was what she loved about Stefan. Once she’d gotten past his reflexive instinct to keep away from anything he cherished, she didn’t need to manage him at all. He was maintenance-free, except for the gentlest of hints that she’d turned herself into an expert on vampires. Not at hunting them or slaying them, but at loving them safely. Elena knew when it was right to bite or be bitten, and when to stop, and how to keep herself human.
But apart from those gentle hints, she didn’t even want to manage Stefan. She wanted simply to be with him. After that, everything took care of itself.
Elena could live without Stefan—she thought. But just as being away from Meredith and Bonnie was like living without her two hands, living without Stefan would be like trying to live without her heart. He was her partner in the Great Dance; her equal and her opposite; her beloved and her lover in the purest sense imaginable. He was the other half of the Sacred Mysteries of Life to her.
And after seeing him last night, even if it had been a dream, which she wasn’t willing to accept, Elena missed him so much that it was a throbbing pain inside her. A pain so great that she couldn’t bear to just sit and dwell on it. If she did she might just go insane and start raving at Damon to drive faster—and Elena might hurt inside, but she wasn’t suicidal.
They stopped at some nameless town for lunch. Elena had no appetite, but Damon spent the entire break as a bird, which for some reason infuriated her.
By the time they were driving again, the tension in the car had built until the old cliché was impossible to avoid: you could cut it with a folded napkin, much less a knife, Elena thought.
That was when she realized exactly what kind of tension it was.
The one thing that was saving Damon was his pride.
He knew that Elena had things figured out. She’d stopped trying to touch him or even speak to him. And that was good.
He wasn’t supposed to be feeling like this. Vampires wanted girls for their pretty white throats, and Damon’s sense of esthetics demanded that the rest of the donor be at least up to his standards. But now even Elena’s human-sized aura was advertising the unique life-force in her blood. And Damon’s response was involuntary. He had not even thought about a girl in this way for approximately five hundred years. Vampires weren’t capable of it.
But Damon was—very capable—now. And the closer he got to Elena, the stronger her aura was around him, and the weaker was his control.
Thank all the little demons in hell, his pride was stronger than the desire he felt. Damon had never asked for anything from anyone in his life. He paid for the blood he took from humans in his own particular coin: of pleasure and fantasy and dreams. But Elena didn’t need fantasy; didn’t want dreams.
Didn’t want him.
She wanted Stefan. And Damon’s pride would never allow him to ask Elena for what he alone desired, and equally it would never allow him to take it without her consent…he hoped.
Just a few days ago he had been an empty shell, his body a puppet of the kitsune twins, who had made him hurt Elena in ways that now made him cringe inside. Damon hadn’t existed then as a personality, but his body had been Shinichi’s to play with. And although he scarcely could believe it, the takeover had been so complete that his shell had obeyed Shinichi’s every command: he had tormented Elena; he might well have killed her.
There was no point in disbelieving it; or saying that it couldn’t be true. It was true. It had happened. Shinichi was that much stronger when it came to mind control, and the kitsune had none of the vampires’ detachment about pretty girls—below the neck. Besides which, he happened to be a sadist. He liked pain—other people’s, that is.
Damon couldn’t deny the past, couldn’t wonder why he hadn’t “awakened” to stop Shinichi from hurting Elena. There had been nothing of him to awaken. And if a solitary part of his mind still wept because of the evil he had done—well, Damon was good at blocking it out. He wouldn’t waste time over regrets, but he was intent on controlling the future. It would never happen again—not and leave him still alive.
What Damon really couldn’t understand was why Elena was pushing him. Acting as if she trusted him. Of all the people in the world, she was the one with the most right to hate him, to point an accusing finger at him. But she had never once done that. She had never even looked at him with anger in her dark blue, gold-spattered eyes. She alone had seemed to understand that someone as completely possessed by the master of the malach, Shinichi, as Damon had been, simply had no choice—wasn’t there to make a choice—in what he or she did.
Maybe it was because she’d pulled the thing the malach had created out of him. The pulsating, albino, second body that had been inside him. Damon forced himself to repress a shudder. He only knew this because Shinichi had jovially mentioned it, while taking away all Damon’s memories of the time since the two of them, kitsune and vampire, had met in the Old Wood.
Damon was glad to have had the memories gone. From the moment he had locked gazes with the fox spirit’s laughing golden eyes, his life had been poisoned.
And now…right now he was alone with Elena, in the middle of the wilderness, with towns few and far between. They were utterly, uniquely alone, with Damon helplessly wanting from Elena what every human boy she’d ever encountered had wanted.
Worst of all was the fact that charming girls, deceiving girls, was practically Damon’s own raison d’être. It was certainly the only reason he’d been able to keep on living for the past half millennium. And yet he knew that he must not, must not even start the process with this one girl who, to him, was the jewel lying on the dungheap of humanity.
To all appearances, he was perfectly in control, icy and precise, distant and disinterested.
The truth was that he was going out of his mind.
That night, after making sure that Elena had food and water and was safely locked into the Prius, Damon called down a damp fog and began to weave his darkest wards. These were announcements to any sisters or brothers of the night who might come upon the car that the girl inside it was under Damon’s protection; and that Damon would hunt down and flay alive anyone who even disturbed the girl’s rest…and then he’d get around to really punishing the culprit. Damon then flew a few miles south as a crow, found a dive with a pack of werewolves drinking in it and a few charming barmaids serving them, and brawled and bled the night away.
But it wasn’t enough to distract him—not nearly enough. In the morning, returning early, he saw the wards around the car in tatters. Before he could panic, he realized that Elena had broken them from the inside. There had been no warning to him because of her peaceful intent and innocent heart.
And then Elena herself appeared, coming up the bank of a stream, looking clean and refreshed. Damon was stricken speechless by the very sight of her. By her grace, by her beauty, by the unbearable closeness of her. He could smell her freshly washed skin, and couldn’t help deliberately breathing in more and more of her unique fragrance.
He didn’t see how he could put up with another day of this.
And then Damon suddenly had an Idea.
“Would you like to learn something that would help you to control that aura of yours?” he asked as she passed him, heading for the car.
Elena threw him a sidelong glance. “So you’ve decided to talk to me again. Am I supposed to faint with joy?”
“Well—that would always be appreciated—”
“Would it?” she said sharply, and Damon realized that he had underestimated the storm he had brewed inside this formidable girl.
“No. Now, I’m being serious,” he said, fixing his dark gaze on her.
“I know. You’re going to tell me to become a vampire to help control my Power.”
“No, no, no. This has nothing to do with being a vampire.” Damon refused to be drawn into an argument and that must have impressed Elena, because finally she said, “What is it, then?”
“It’s learning how to circulate your Power. Blood circulates, yes? And Power can be circulated, too. Even humans have known that for centuries, whether they call it life-force or chi or ki. As it is, you’re simply dissipating your Power into the air. That’s an aura. But if you learn to circulate it, you can build it up for some really big release, and you can be more inconspicuous as well.”
Elena was clearly fascinated. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Because I’m stupid, Damon thought. Because to vampires it’s as instinctive as breathing is to you. He lied unblushingly. “It takes a certain level of competence to accomplish.”
“And I can do it now?”
“I think so.” Damon put slight uncertainty in his voice.
Naturally, this made Elena even more determined. “Show me!” she said.
“You mean right now?” He glanced around. “Someone might drive by—”
“We’re off the road. Oh, please, Damon? Please?” Elena looked at Damon with the huge blue eyes that altogether too many males had found irresistible. She touched his arm, trying once more to make some kind of contact, but when he automatically drew away, she continued, “I really do want to learn. You can teach me. Just show me once, and I’ll practice.”
Damon glanced down at his arm, felt his good sense and his will wavering. How does she do that?
