Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

Meredith barely quivered. Everything was softness as he easily skimmed over the surface of her mind, too, seeing only what he already knew about her: her life with Elena and Bonnie and Caroline. Parties and school, plans and ambitions. Picnics.

A swimming hole. Laughter. Tranquility that spread out like a great pool. The need for calm, for control. All this stretching back as far as she could remember…

The farthest depths that she could remember were here at the center…where there was a sudden plunging dip. Stefan had promised himself he would not go deeply into her mind, but he was being pulled, helpless, being dragged down by the whirlpool. The waters closed over his head and he was drawn at tremendous speed to the very depths of a second pool, this one not composed of tranquility, but of rage and fear.

And then he saw what had happened, what was happening, what would forever be happening — there at Meredith’s still center.

When M. le Princess Jessalyn D’Aubigne had drunk her fill of Damon’s blood — and she was thirsty for such a fragile thing — it was Damon’s turn. He forced himself to remain patient when Jessalyn flinched and frowned at the sight of his ironwood knife. But Damon teased her and joked with her and played chasing games up and down the enormous bed, and when he finally caught her, she scarcely felt the knife’s sting at her throat.

Damon, though, had his mouth on the dark red blood that welled out immediately.

Everything he’d done, from pouring Black Magic for Bonnie to pouring out the star ball’s liquid at the four corners of the Gate to making his way through the defenses of this tiny gem of a castle had been for this. For this moment, when his human palate could savor the nectar that was vampire blood.

And it was…heavenly!

This was only the second time in his life that he’d tasted it as a human. Katerina — Katherine, as he thought of her in English — had been the first, of course. And how she could have crept off after that and gone, wearing just her short muslin shift, to the wide-eyed, inexperienced little boy who was his brother, he would never understand.

His disquiet was spreading to Jessalyn. That mustn’t happen. She had to stay calm and tranquil as he took as much as he could of her blood. It wouldn’t hurt her at all, and it meant all the difference to him.

Forcing his consciousness away from the sheer elemental pleasure of what he was doing, he began, very carefully, very delicately, to infiltrate her mind.

It wasn’t difficult to get to the nub of it. Whoever had wrenched this delicate, fragile-boned girl from the human world and had endowed her with a vampire’s nature hadn’t done her any favors. It wasn’t that she had any moral objections to vampirism. She’d taken to the life easily, enjoying it. She would have made a good huntress in the wild. But in this castle? With these servants? It was like having a hundred snooty waiters and two hundred condescending sommeliers staring her down as soon as she opened her mouth to give an order.

This room, for instance. She had wanted some color in it — just a splash of violet here, a little mauve there — naturally, she realized, a vampire princess’s bedchamber had to be mostly black. But when she’d timidly mentioned the subject of colors to one of the parlor maids, the girl had sniffed and looked down her nostrils at Jessalyn as if she’d asked for an elephant to be installed just beside her bed. The princess had not had the courage to bring up the matter with the housekeeper, but within a week three baskets full of black-and-off-black throw pillows had arrived. There was her “color.” And in the future would her highness be so good as to consult her housekeeper before querying the staff as to her household whims?

She actually said that about my “whims,” Jessalyn thought as she arched her neck back and ran sharp fingernails through Damon’s thick soft hair. And — oh, it’s no good. I’m no good. I’m a vampire princess, and I can look the part, but I can’t play it.

You’re every bit a princess, your highness, Damon soothed. You just need someone to enforce your orders. Someone who has no doubts about your superiority. Are your servants slaves?

No, they’re all free.

Well, that makes it a little trickier, but you can always yell louder at them.

Damon felt swollen with vampire blood. Two more days of this and he would be, if not his old self, then at least almost his old self: a full vampire, free to walk about the city as he liked. And with the Power and status of a vampire prince. It was almost enough to balance out the horrors he’d gone through in the last couple of days. At least, he could tell himself that and try to believe it.

“Listen,” he said abruptly, letting go of Jessalyn’s slight body, the better to look her in the eye. “Your glorious highness, let me do one favor for you before I die of love or you have me killed for impudence. Let me bring you ‘color’—and then let me stand beside you if any of your menials grumble about it.”

Jessalyn wasn’t used to this kind of sudden decision, but couldn’t help but be carried along with Damon’s fiery excitement. She arched her head back again.

When he finally left the bijoux palace, Damon went out the front door. He had with him a little of the money left over from pawning the gems, but this was more than enough for the purpose he had in mind. He was quite certain that the next time he went out, it would be from the flying portico.

He stopped at a dozen shops and spent until his last coin was gone. He’d meant to sneak in a visit to Bonnie as well while doing his errands, but the market was in the opposite direction from the inn where he’d left her, and in the end there just wasn’t time.

He didn’t worry much as he walked back to the bijoux castle. Bonnie, soft and fragile as she seemed, had a wiry core that he was sure would keep her inside the room for three days. She could take it. Damon knew she could.

He banged on the little castle’s gate until a surly guard opened it.

“What do you want?” the guard spat.

Bonnie was bored out of her mind. It had only been a day since Damon had left her — a day she could only count by the number of meals brought to her, since the enormous red sun stood forever on the horizon and the blood-red light never varied unless it was raining.

Bonnie wished it was raining. She wished it was snowing, or that there would be a fire or a hurricane or a small tsunami. She had given one of the star balls a try, and found it a ridiculous soap opera that she couldn’t understand in the least.

She wished, now, that she had never tried to stop Damon from coming here. She wished that he had pried her off before they had both fallen into the hole. She wished that she had grabbed Meredith’s hand and just let go of Damon.

And this was only the first day.

Damon smiled at the surly guard. “What do I want? Only what I already have. An open gate.” He didn’t go inside, however. He asked what M. le Princess was doing and heard that she was at a luncheon. On a donor.

Perfect. Soon there came a deferential knock at the gate, which Damon demanded be opened wider. The guards clearly didn’t like him; they had properly put together the disappearance of what turned out to be their captain of guard and the intrusion of this strange human. But there was something menacing about him even in this menacing world. They obeyed him.

Soon after that there came another quiet knock and then another, and another and so on until twelve men and women with arms full of damp and fragrant brown paper had quietly followed Damon up the stairs and into M. le Princess’s black bedchamber.

Jessalyn, meanwhile, had had a long and stuffy post-luncheon meeting, entertaining some of her financial advisors, who both seemed very old to her, although they had been changed in their twenties. Their muscles were soft with lack of use, she found herself thinking. And, naturally, they were dressed in full-sleeved, wide-legged black except for a frill at their throats, white inside by gaslight, scarlet outside by the eternal blood-red sun.