Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

For Elena it had been gone since he’d taken it, protecting her. “Thank you,” she breathed, suddenly realizing that she had been clinging to him, in utter terror that she was dying. Or that he was.

He gave her a rare, full, genuine smile. “We’re both fine. It must have been a cramp.” His gaze had dropped to her lips. “Do I deserve a kiss?”

“I…” He had comforted her; he had taken the terrible pain away. How could she sanely say no? “Just one,” she whispered.

A hand under her chin. Her eyelids wanted to melt closed, but she widened her eyes and wouldn’t let them.

As his lips touched hers, his arm around her…changed somehow. It was no longer trying to restrain her. It seemed to be wanting to comfort her. And when his other hand stroked her hair softly at the very ends, crushing the waves gently, and just as gently smoothing them out, Elena felt a rush of shivering warmth.

Damon wasn’t deliberately trying to batter her with the strength of his aura, which at the moment was filled with nothing but his feelings for her. The simple fact, though, was that although he was a new-made vampire, he was exceptionally strong and he knew all the tricks of an experienced one. Elena felt as if she had stepped into clear calm water, only to find herself caught in a fierce undertow that there was no resisting; no bargaining with; and certainly no possibility of reaching by reason. She had no choice but to surrender to it and hope that it was taking her, eventually, to a place she could breathe and live. Otherwise, she would drown…but even that possibility didn’t seem so dire, now that she could see the tide was made of a chain of little moments strung like pearls. In each one of them was a tiny sparkle of admiration that Damon had for her: pearls for her courage, for her intelligence, for her beauty. It seemed that there was no slightest motion she had made, no briefest word that she had said, that he had not noticed and locked in his heart as a treasure.

But we were fighting then, Elena thought to him, seeing in the undertow a sparkling moment when she had cursed him.

Yes — I said you were magnificent when you were angry. Like a goddess come to put the world to rights.

I do want to put the world to rights. No, two worlds: the Dark Dimension and my home. But I’m no goddess.

Suddenly she felt that keenly. She was a schoolgirl who hadn’t even finished high school — and it was in part because of the person who was kissing her wildly now.

Oh, think of what you’re learning on this trip! Things that no one else in the universe knows, Damon said in her mind. Now pay attention to what you’re doing!

Elena paid attention, not because Damon wanted her to, but because she couldn’t help it. Her eyes drifted shut. She realized that the way to calm this maelstrom was to become part of it, neither giving in nor forcing Damon to, but by meeting the passion in the undertow with what was inside her own heart.

As soon as she did, the undertow became wind, and she was flying and not drowning. No, it was better than flying, better than dancing, it was what her heart always yearned for. A high still place where nothing could ever harm them or disturb them.

And then, when she was most vulnerable, the pain came again, drilling through her chest, a little to the left. This time Damon was so mindlocked with her that he felt it from the beginning. And she could hear clearly a phrase in Damon’s mind: staking is just as effective on humans as it is on vampires, and his sudden fear that this was a precognition.

In the swaying little room, Stefan was asleep holding Bonnie by his side, with the sparkling of Power engulfing them both. Elena, who had a good grip on the palanquin’s ladder, vaulted the rest of the way inside. She put a hand on Stefan’s shoulder and he woke.

“What is this? Is something wrong with her?” she asked, with a third question:

“Do you know?” buzzing around in her head.

But when Stefan lifted his green eyes to her, they were simply worried. Clearly he was not invading her thoughts. He was focused entirely on Bonnie. Thank God, he’s such a gentleman, Elena thought for the thousandth time.

“I’m trying to get her warm,” Stefan said. “After she came out of trance, she was shivering. Then she stopped shivering, but when I took her hand, it was colder than ever. Now I’ve put an envelope of heat around her. I guess I dozed off for a little while after that.” He added, “Did you find anything?”

I found Damon’s lips, Elena thought wildly, but she forced herself to blank out the memory. “We’re looking for Lake Silver Death Mirror,” she said. “But all I could see was white. The snow and the fog seem to go on forever.”

Stefan nodded. Then he carefully went through the motions of plucking apart two layers of air and slid in a hand to touch Bonnie’s cheek. “She’s warming up,” he said, and smiled.

It took a long while before Stefan was satisfied that Bonnie was warm. When he did, he gently unwrapped her from the heated air that had formed the “envelope” and lay her on one bench, coming to sit with Elena on the other. Eventually Bonnie sighed, blinked, and opened her eyes.

“I had a nap,” she said, obviously aware that she had lost time.

“Not exactly,” Elena said, keeping her voice gentle and reassuring. Let’s see, how did Meredith do this? “You went into trance, Bonnie. Do you remember anything about it?”

Bonnie said, “About the treasure?”

“About what the treasure is for,” Stefan said quietly.

“No…No…”

“You said that this was the Last Midnight,” Elena said. As far as she could remember, Meredith was pretty direct. “But we think you were talking about back at home,” she added hastily, seeing terror leap in Bonnie’s eyes.

“The Last Midnight — and no morning afterward,” Bonnie said. “I think — I heard someone saying those words. But no more.”

She was as skittish as a wild colt. Elena reminded her about time running differently between the two worlds but it didn’t seem to comfort her. Finally, Elena just sat by her and held her.

Her head was spinning with thoughts of Damon. He’d forgiven her. That was good, even though he’d taken his own time about it. But the real message was that he was willing to share her. Or at least willing to say he would to get in her good graces. If she knew him at all, if she ever agreed — oh, God, he might murder Stefan. Again. After all, that was what he had done when Katherine had had the same sentiment.

Elena could never think of him without longing. She could never think of him without thinking of Stefan. She had no idea what to do.

She was in trouble.

“Oi!” Damon shouted from outside the palanquin. “Is anybody else looking at this?”

Elena was. Both Stefan and Bonnie had their eyes shut; Bonnie was wrapped in blankets and cuddled against Elena. They had rolled down all the curtains of the palanquin except one.

But Elena had watched through the single window, and had seen how tendrils of fog had begun drifting by, first just filmy tatters of mist, but then longer, fuller veils, and finally blankets, engulfing them whole. It seemed to her that they were being deliberately cut off from even the perilous Dark Dimension, that they were passing a border into a place they weren’t meant to know about, much less enter.

“How do we know we’re going in the right direction?” Elena shouted to Damon after Stefan and Bonnie woke. She was glad to be able to talk again.

“The thurgs know,” Damon called back. “You set them on a line and they walk that line until somebody stops them, or—”

“Or what?” Elena yelled out of the opening.

“Until we get to a place like this.”