Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

“I know,” Damon said, staring at her. The new thing he was feeling had swollen inside his soul until the pressure was almost too much to stand. When Bonnie said, “But I’m alive!” with an abrupt 180-degree turn in mood, her heart-shaped face flushing suddenly with joy, the fierce pride Damon felt in response was intoxicating. He and he alone had brought her back from the edge of icy death. Her poison-filled body had been cured by him; it was his blood that had dissolved and dispersed the toxin,his blood And then the swelling thing burst.

There was, to Damon, a palpable if not audible crack as the stone encasing his soul burst open and a great piece fell away.

With something inside him singing, he clutched Bonnie to him, feeling the wet towel through his raw silk shirt, and feeling Bonnie’s slight body under the towel. Definitely a maiden, and not a child, he thought dizzily, whatever the writing on that infamous scrap of pink nylon had claimed. He clutched at her as if he needed her for blood — as if they were in hurricane-tossed seas and to let go of her would be to lose her.

His neck hurt fiercely, but more cracks were spreading all over the stone; it was going to explode completely, letting the Damon it held inside out — and he was too drunk on pride and joy, yes, joy, to care. Cracks were spreading in every direction, pieces of stone flying off…

Bonnie pushed him away.

She had surprising strength for someone with such a slight build. She pushed herself out of his arms completely. Her expression had changed radically again: now her face showed only fear and desperation — and, yes, revulsion.

“Help! Somebody, please,help!” Her brown eyes were huge and now her face was white again.

Stefan had whirled around. All he saw was what Meredith saw, darting under his arm from the other room, or what Matt saw, trying to peer into the tiny, over-full bathroom: Bonnie fiercely clutching her towel, trying to make it cover her, and Damon kneeling by the bath, his face without expression.

“Please help. He heard me calling — I could feel him on the other end — but he just watched. He stood and watched us all dying. He wants all humans dead, with our blood running down white steps somewhere. Please, get him away from me!”

So. The little witch was more proficient than he had imagined. It wasn’t unusual to recognize that someone was getting your transmissions — you got feedback — but to identify the individual took talent. Plus, she’d obviously heard the echoes of some of his thoughts. She was gifted, his bird…no, not his bird, not with her looking at him with a look as close to hatred as Bonnie could manage.

There was a silence. Damon had a chance to deny the charge, but why bother? Stefan would be able to gauge the truth of it. Maybe Bonnie, too.

Revulsion was flying from face to face, as if it were a swiftly-catching disease.

Now Meredith was hurrying forward, grabbing another towel. She had some kind of hot drink in her other hand — cocoa, by the smell. It was hot enough to be an effective weapon — no way to dodge all of that, not for a tired vampire.

“Here,” she said to Bonnie. “You’re safe. Stefan’s here. I’m here. Matt’s here. Take this towel; let’s just put it around your shoulders.”

Stefan had stood silently, watching all this — no, watching his brother. Now, his face hardening in finality, he said one word.

“Out.”

Dismissed like a dog. Damon groped for his jacket behind him, found it, and wished that his groping for his sense of humor could be as successful. The faces around him were all the same. They could have been carved in stone.

But not stone as hard as that that was coming together again around his soul. That rock was remarkably quick to mend — and an extra layer was added, like the layering of a pearl, but not covering anything nearly so pretty.

Their faces were still all the same as Damon tried to get out of the small room that had too many people in it. Some of them were speaking; Meredith to Bonnie, Mutt — no, Matt — pouring out a stream of pure acidic hatred…but Damon didn’t really hear the words. He could smell too much blood here. Everyone had little wounds. Their individual scents — different beasts in the herd — closed in on him. His head was spinning. He had to get out of here or he’d be snatching the nearest warm vessel and draining it dry. Now he was more than dizzy; he was too hot, too…thirsty.

Very, very thirsty. He had worked a long time without feeding and now he was surrounded by prey.They were circling him. How could he stop himself from grabbing just one of them? Would one really be missed?

Then there was the one he hadn’t seen yet, and didn’t want to see. To witness Elena’s lovely features twisted into the same mask of revulsion he saw on every other face here would be…distasteful, he thought, his old sense of dispassion finally returning to him.

But it couldn’t be avoided. As Damon came out of the bathroom, Elena was right in front of him, floating like an oversized butterfly. His eyes were drawn to exactly what he didn’t want to see: her expression.

Elena’s features didn’t mirror the others. She looked worried, upset. But there wasn’t a trace of the disgust or hatred that showed on all the other faces.

She even spoke, in that strange mind-speech that wasn’t, somehow, like telepathy, but which allowed her to get in two levels of communication at once.

“Da — mon.”

Tell about the malach. Please.

Damon just raised an eyebrow at her. Tell a bunch of humans about himself? Was she being deliberately ridiculous?

Besides, the malach hadn’t really done anything. They had distracted him for a few minutes, that was all. No point in blaming malach when all they had done was enhance his own views briefly. He wondered if Elena had any notion of the content of his little nighttime daydream.

“Da — mon.”

I can see it. Everything. But, still, please…

Oh, well, maybe spirits got used to seeing everybody’s dirty laundry. Elena made no response to that thought, so he was left in the dark.

In the dark. Which was what he was used to, where he had come from. They would all go their separate ways, the humans to their warm dry houses and he to a tree in the woods. Elena would stay with Stefan, of course.

Of course.

“Under the circumstances, I won’t say au revoir,” Damon said, flashing his dazzling smile at Elena, who looked gravely back at him. “We’ll just say ‘good-bye’ and leave it at that.”

There was no answer from the humans.

“Da — mon.” Elena was crying now.

Please.Please.

Damon started out into the dark.

Please…

Rubbing at his neck, he kept going.

Much later that night, Elena couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to be hemmed in inside the Tall Room, she said. Secretly, Stefan worried that she wanted to go outside and track the malach that had attacked the car. But he didn’t think she was able to lie, now, and she kept bumping against the shut window, chiming to him that she just wanted air. Outside air.

“We should put some clothes on you.”

But Elena was bewildered — and stubborn.It’s Night…. This is my Night Gown, she said.You didn’t like my Day Gown. Then she bumped the window again. Her “Day Gown” had been his blue shirt, which, belted, made a sort of very short chemise on her, coming to the middle of her thighs.

Right now what she wanted fit in with his own desires so completely that he felt…a bit guilty over the prospect. But he allowed himself to be persuaded.

They drifted, hand in hand, Elena like a ghost or angel in her white nightgown, Stefan all in black, feeling himself almost disappear where the trees obscured the moonlight. Somehow they ended up in the Old Wood, where skeletons of trees mixed with the living branches. Stefan stretched his newly improved senses to the widest but could only find the normal inhabitants of the forest, slowly and hesitantly returning after being frightened off by Damon’s lash of Power. Hedgehogs. Deer. Dog-foxes, and one poor vixen with twin kits, who hadn’t been able to run because of her children. Birds. All the animals that helped to make the forest the wondrous place it was.