by L. J. Smith
“Damon,” she began softly—and broke off. Without looking at her, he held out a hand with the palm toward her.
Wait.
“There’s something I have to do,” he murmured. He bent down, every movement as unconsciously and economically graceful as a panther’s, and picked up a small broken branch of what looked like ordinary Virginia pine. He waved it slightly, appraisingly, hefting it in his hand as if to feel weight and balance. It looked more like a fan than a branch.
Elena was now looking at Matt, trying with her eyes to tell him all the things she was feeling, foremost of which was that she was sorry: sorry that she had gotten him into this; sorry that she’d ever cared for him; sorry that she’d kept him bound into a group of friends who were so intimately intertwined with the supernatural.
Now I know a little bit of what Bonnie must have felt this last year, she thought, being able to see and predict things without having the slightest power to stop them.
Matt, jerking his head, was already moving stealthily toward the trees.
No, Matt. No. No!
He didn’t understand. Neither did she, except to feel that the trees were only keeping their distance because of Damon’s presence here. If she and Matt were to venture into the forest; if they left the clearing or even stayed in it too long…Matt could see the fear on her face, and his own face reflected grim understanding. They were trapped.
Unless—
“Too late,” Damon said sharply. “I told you, there’s something I have to do.”
He had apparently found the stick he was looking for. Now he raised it, shook it slightly, and brought it down in a single motion; slashing sideways as he did.
And Matt convulsed in agony.
It was a kind of pain he had never dreamed of before: pain that seemed to come from inside himself, but from everywhere, every organ in his body, every muscle, every nerve, every bone, releasing a different type of pain. His muscles ached and cramped as if they were strained to their ultimate flexion, but were being forced to flex farther still. Inside, his organs were on fire. Knives were at work in his belly. His bones felt the way his arm had when he had shattered it once, when he was nine years old and a car had broadsided his dad’s. And his nerves—if there was a switch on nerves that could be set from “pleasure” to “pain”—his had been set to “anguish.” The touch of clothes on his skin was unbearable. The currents of air passing were agony. He endured fifteen seconds of it and passed out.
“Matt!” For her part, Elena had been frozen, her muscles locked, unable to move for what seemed like forever. Suddenly released, she ran to Matt, pulled him up into her lap, stared into his face.
Then she looked up.
“Damon, why? Why?” Suddenly she realized that although Matt wasn’t conscious, he was still writhing in pain. She had to keep herself from screaming the words, to only speak forcefully. “Why are you doing this? Damon! Stop it.”
She stared up at the young man dressed all in black: black jeans with a black belt, black boots, black leather jacket, black hair, and those damned Ray-Bans.
“I told you,” Damon said casually. “It’s something I need to do. To watch. Painful death.”
“Death!” Elena stared at Damon in disbelief. And then she began gathering all her Power, in a way that had been so easy and instinctual just days ago while she had been mute and not subject to gravity, and that was so difficult and so foreign right now. With determination, she said, “If you don’t let him go—now—I’ll hit you with everything I’ve got.”
He laughed. She’d never seen Damon really laugh before, not like this. “And you expect that I’ll even notice your tiny Power?”
“Not that tiny.” Elena weighed it grimly. It was no more than the intrinsic Power of any human being—the Power that vampires took from humans along with the blood they drank—but since becoming a spirit, she knew how to use it. How to attack with it. “I think you’ll feel it, Damon. Let him go—NOW!”
“Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won’t?” Damon murmured.
Elena let him have it.
Or at least she prepared to. She took the deep breath necessary, held her inner self still, and imagined herself holding a ball of white fire, and then—
Matt was on his feet. He looked as if he’d been dragged to his feet and was being held there like a puppet, and his eyes were involuntarily watering, but it was better than Matt writhing on the ground.
“You owe me,” Damon said to Elena casually. “I’ll collect later.”
To Matt he said, in the tones of a fond uncle, with one of those instantaneous smiles that you could never be quite sure you saw, “Lucky for me that you’re a hardy specimen, isn’t it?”
“Damon.” Elena had seen Damon in his let’s-play-with-weaker-creatures mood, and it was the one she liked least. But there was something off today; something she couldn’t understand. “Let’s get down to it,” she said, while the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose again. “What do you really want?”
But he didn’t give the answer she expected.
“I was officially appointed as your caretaker. I’m officially taking care of you. And for one thing, I don’t think you should be without my protection and companionship while my little brother is gone.”
“I can handle myself,” Elena said flatly, waving a hand so they could get down to the real issue.
“You’re a very pretty girl. Dangerous and”—flash smile—“unsavory elements could be after you. I insist you have a bodyguard.”
“Damon, right now the thing I need most is to be protected from you. You know that. What is this really about?”
The clearing was…pulsing. Almost as if it were something organic, breathing. Elena had the feeling that beneath her feet—beneath Meredith’s old, rugged hiking boots—the ground was moving slightly, like a great sleeping animal, and the trees were like a beating heart.
For what? The forest? There was more dead wood than live here. And she could swear that she knew Damon well enough to know that he didn’t like trees or woods.
It was at times like this that Elena wished she still had wings. Wings and the knowledge—the hand motions, the Words of White Power, the white fire inside her that would allow her to know the truth without trying to figure it out, or to simply blast annoyances back to Stonehenge.
It seemed that all she’d been left with was being a greater temptation to vampires than ever, and her wits.
Wits had worked up until now. Maybe if she didn’t let Damon know how afraid she was, she could win a stay of execution for them.
“Damon, I thank you for being concerned about me. Now would you mind leaving Matt and me for a moment so that I can tell if he’s still breathing?”
From inside the Ray-Bans, she thought she could discern a single flash of red.
“Somehow I thought you might say that,” Damon said. “And, of course, it’s your right to have consolation after being so treacherously abandoned. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, for example.”
Elena wanted to swear. Carefully, she answered, “Damon, if Stefan appointed you as my bodyguard, then he hardly ‘treacherously abandoned’ me, did he? You can’t have it both—”
“Just indulge me in one thing, all right?” Damon said in the voice of one whose next words are going to be Be careful or Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
There was silence. The dust devils had stopped whirling. The smell of sun-warmed pine needles and pine resin in this dim place was making her languid, dizzy. The ground was warm, too, and the pine needles were all aligned, as if the slumbering animal had pine needles for fur. Elena watched dust motes turn and sparkle like opals in the golden sunlight. She knew she wasn’t at her best right now; not her sharpest. Finally, when she was sure her voice would be steady, she asked, “What do you want?”
“A kiss.”
22
Bonnie was disturbed and confused. It was dark.
“All right,” a v
oice that was brusque and calming at once was saying. “That’s two possible concussions, one puncture wound in need of a tetanus shot—and—well, I’m afraid I’ve got to sedate your girl, Jim. And I’m going to need help, but you’re not allowed to move at all. You just lie back and keep your eyes shut.”
Bonnie opened her own eyes. She had a vague memory of falling forward onto her bed. But she wasn’t at home; she was still at the Saitou house, lying on a couch.
As always, when in confusion or fear, she looked for Meredith. Meredith was just returning from the kitchen with a makeshift ice pack. She put it on Bonnie’s already wet forehead.
“I just fainted,” Bonnie explained, as she herself figured it out. “That’s all.”
“I know you fainted. You cracked your head pretty hard on the floor,” Meredith replied, and for once her face was perfectly readable: worry and sympathy and relief were all visible. She actually had tears pooling in her eyes. “Oh, Bonnie, I couldn’t get to you in time. Isobel was in the way, and those tatami mats don’t cushion the floor much—and you’ve been out for almost half an hour! You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.” Bonnie fumbled a hand out a blanket she seemed to be wrapped in and gave Meredith’s hand a squeeze. It meant velociraptor sisterhood is still in action. It also meant thank you for caring.
Jim was sprawled on another couch holding an ice pack to the back of his head. His face was greenish-white. He tried to stand up but Dr. Alpert—it was her voice that was both crusty and kind—pushed him back onto the couch.
“You don’t need any more exertion,” she said. “But I do need an assistant. Meredith, can you help me with Isobel? It sounds as if she’s going to be quite a handful.”
“She hit me in the back of the head with a lamp,” Jim warned them. “Don’t ever turn your back on her.”
“We’ll be careful,” Dr. Alpert said.
“You two stay here,” Meredith added firmly.
Bonnie was watching Meredith’s eyes. She wanted to get up to help them with Isobel. But Meredith had that special look of determination that meant it was better not to argue.
As soon as they left, Bonnie tried to stand up. But immediately she began to see the pulsating gray nothingness that meant she was going to pass out again.
She lay back down, teeth gritted.
For a long time there were crashes and shouts from Isobel’s room. Bonnie would hear Dr. Alpert’s voice raised, and then Isobel’s, and then a third voice—not Meredith, who never shouted if she could help it, but what sounded like Isobel’s voice, only slowed down and distorted.
Then, finally, there was silence, and Meredith and Dr. Alpert came back carrying a limp Isobel between them. Meredith had a bloody nose and Dr. Alpert’s short pepper-and-salt hair was standing on end, but they had somehow gotten a T-shirt onto Isobel’s abused body and Dr. Alpert had managed to hang on to her black bag as well.
“Walking wounded, stay where you are. We’ll be back to lend you a hand,” the doctor said in her terse way.
Next Dr. Albert and Meredith made another trip to take Isobel’s grandmother with them.
“I don’t like her color,” Dr. Albert said briefly. “Or the tick of her tocker. We might as well all go get checked up.”
A minute later they returned to help Jim and Bonnie to Dr. Albert’s SUV. The sky had clouded over, and the sun was a red ball not far from the horizon.
“Do you want me to give you something for the pain?” the doctor asked, seeing Bonnie eyeing the black bag. Isobel was in the very back of the SUV, where the seats had been folded down.
Meredith and Jim were in the two seats in front of her, with Grandma Saitou between them, and Bonnie—at Meredith’s insistence—was in the front with the doctor.
“Um, no, it’s okay,” Bonnie said. Actually, she had been wondering whether the hospital actually could cure Isobel of infection any better than Mrs. Flowers’ herbal compresses could.
But although her head throbbed and ached and she was developing a lump the size of a hard-boiled egg on her forehead, she didn’t want to cloud her thinking. There was something nagging at her, some dream or something she’d had while Meredith said she’d been unconscious.
What was it?
“All right then. Seat belts on? Here we go.” The SUV pulled away from the Saitou house. “Jim, you said Isobel has a three-year-old sister asleep upstairs, so I called my granddaughter Jayneela to come over here. At least it will be somebody in the house.”
Bonnie twisted around to look at Meredith. They both spoke at once.
“Oh, no! She can’t go in! Especially not into Isobel’s room! Look, please, you have to—” Bonnie babbled.
“I’m really not sure if that’s a good idea, Dr. Alpert,” Meredith said, no less urgently but much more coherently. “Unless she does stay away from that room and maybe has someone with her—a boy would be good.”
“A boy?” Dr. Alpert seemed bewildered, but the combination of Bonnie’s distress and Meredith’s sincerity seemed to convince her. “Well, Tyrone, my grandson, was watching TV when I left. I’ll try to get him.”
“Wow!” Bonnie said involuntarily. “That’s the Tyrone who’s offensive tackle on the football team next year, huh? I heard that they call him the Tyre-minator.”
“Well, let’s say I think he’ll be able to protect Jayneela,” Dr. Alpert said after making the call. “But we’re the ones with the, ah, overexcited girl in the vehicle with us. From the way she fought the sedative, I’d say she’s quite a ‘terminator’ herself.”
Meredith’s mobile phone beeped out the tune it used for numbers not in its memory, and then announced, “Mrs. T. Flowers is calling you. Will you take the—” In a moment Meredith had hit the talk button.
“Mrs. Flowers?” she said. The hum of the SUV kept anything Mrs. Flowers might be saying from Bonnie and the others, so Bonnie went back to concentrating on two things: what she knew about the “victims” of the Salem “witches,” and what that elusive thought while she was unconscious had been.
All of which promptly flew away when Meredith put down her mobile phone.
“What was it? What? What?” Bonnie couldn’t get a clear view of Meredith’s face in the dusk, but it looked pale, and when she spoke she sounded pale, too.
“Mrs. Flowers was doing some gardening and she was about to go inside when she noticed that there was something in her begonia bushes. She said it looked as if someone had tried to stuff something down between the bush and a wall, but a bit of fabric stuck up.”
Bonnie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “What was it?”
“It was a duffel bag, full of shoes and clothes. Boots. Shirts. Pants. All Stefan’s.”
Bonnie gave a shriek that caused Dr. Alpert to swerve and then recover, the SUV fishtailing.
“Oh, my God; oh, my God—he didn’t go!”
“Oh, I think he went all right. Just not of his own free will,” Meredith said grimly.
“Damon,” Bonnie gasped, and slumped back into her own seat, tears welling up in her eyes and overflowing. “I couldn’t help wanting to believe…”
“Head getting worse?” Dr. Alpert asked, tactfully ignoring the conversation that had not included her.
“No—well, yes, it is,” Bonnie admitted.
“Here, open the bag and give me a look inside. I’ve got samples of this and that…all right, here you go. Anybody see a water bottle back there?”
Jim listlessly handed one over. “Thanks,” Bonnie said, taking the small pill and a deep gulp. She had to get her head right. If Damon had kidnapped Stefan, then she should be Calling for him, shouldn’t she? God only knew where he would end up this time. Why hadn’t any of them even thought of it as a possibility?
Well, first, because the new Stefan was supposed to be so strong, and second, because of the note in Elena’s diary.
“That’s it!” she said, startling even herself. It had all come flooding back, everything that she and Matt had shared….
“Meredith!” she said, oblivious to the side look which Dr. Alpert gave her, “while I was unconscious I talked with Matt. He was unconscious, too—”
“Was he hurt?”
“God, yes. Damon must have been doing something awful. But he said to ignore it, that something had been bothering him about the note Stefan left for Elena ever since he saw it. Something about Stefan talking to the English teacher about how to spell judgment last year. And he just kept saying, Look for the backup file. Look for the backup…before Damon does.”
She stared at Meredith’s dim face, aware as they cruised slowly to stop at an intersection that Dr. Alpert and Jim were both staring at her. Tact had its limits.
Meredith’s voice broke the silence. “Doctor,” she said, “I’m going to have to ask you something. If you take a left here and another one at Laurel Street and then just drive for about five minutes to Old Wood, it won’t be too far out of your way. But it’ll let me get to the boardinghouse where the computer Bonnie’s talking about is. You may think I’m crazy, but I need to get to that computer.”
“I know you’re not crazy; I’d have noticed it by now.” The doctor laughed mirthlessly. “And I have heard some things about young Bonnie here…nothing bad, I promise, but a little difficult to believe. After seeing what I saw today, I think I’m beginning to change my opinion about them.” The doctor abruptly took a left turn, muttering, “Somebody’s taken the stop sign from this road, too.” Then she continued, to Meredith, “I can do what you ask. I’d drive you all the way to the old boardinghouse—”
“No! That would be much too dangerous!”
“—but I’ve got to get Isobel to a hospital as soon as possible. Not to mention Jim. I think he really does have a concussion. And Bonnie—”
“Bonnie,” Bonnie said, enunciating distinctly, “is going to the boardinghouse, too.”
“No, Bonnie! I’m going to run, Bonnie, do you understand that? I’m going to run as fast as I can—and I can’t let you hold me up.” Meredith’s voice was grim.
