Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

“Fox and turtle Had a race.

Who’s that far behind you?

Whoever came in Second place Who’s that near behind you?

Would make a nice meal For the winner.

Who’s that close behind you?

Lovely turtle soup For dinner!

Who’s that right behind you?”

Bonnie felt hot breath on her neck. Gasping, she whirled around — and screamed. And screamed.

Isobel was there, dripping blood onto the mats that covered the floor. She had somehow managed to get past Jim and to sneak into the dim upstairs room without anyone seeing or hearing her. Now she stood there like some distorted goddess of piercing, or the hideous embodiment of every piercer’s nightmare. She was wearing only a pair of very brief bikini bottoms. Otherwise she was naked except for the blood and the different kinds of hoops and studs and needles she had put through the holes. She had pierced every area Bonnie had ever heard that you could pierce, and a few that Bonnie hadn’t dreamed of. And every hole was crooked and bleeding.

Her breath was warm and fetid and nauseating — like rotten eggs.

Isobel flicked her pink tongue. It wasn’t pierced. It was worse. With some kind of instrument she had cut the long muscle in two so that it was forked like a snake’s.

The forked, pink thing licked Bonnie’s forehead.

Bonnie fainted.

Matt drove slowly down the almost invisible lane. There was no street sign to identify it, he noticed. They went up a little hill and then down sharply into a small clearing.

“‘Keep away from faerie circles,’” Elena said softly, as if she were quoting. “‘And old oaks…’”

“What are you talking about?”

“Stop the car.” When he did, Elena stood in the center of the clearing. “Don’t you think it has a faerie sort of feeling?”

“I don’t know. Where’d the red thing go?”

“In here somewhere. I saw it!”

“Me, too — and did you see how it was bigger than a fox?”

“Yes, but not as big as a wolf.”

Matt let out a sigh of relief. “Bonnie just won’t believe me. And you saw how quickly it moved—”

“Too quickly to be something natural.”

“You’re saying we didn’t really see anything?” Matt said almost fiercely.

“I’m saying we saw something supernatural. Like the bug that attacked you. Like the trees, for that matter. Something that doesn’t follow the laws of this world.”

But search as they would, they couldn’t find the animal. The bushes and shrubs between the trees reached from the ground up in a dense circle. But there was no evidence of a hole or a hide or a break in the dense thicket.

And the sun was sliding down in the sky. The clearing was beautiful, but there was nothing of interest to them.

Matt had just turned to say so to Elena when he saw her stand up quickly, in alarm.

“What’s—?” He followed her gaze and stopped.

A yellow Ferrari blocked the way back to the road.

They hadn’t passed a yellow Ferrari on their way in. There was only room for one car on the one-lane road.

Yet there the Ferrari stood.

Branches broke behind Matt. He whirled.

“Damon!”

“Whom were you expecting?” The wraparound Ray-Bans concealed Damon’s eyes completely.

“We weren’t expecting anyone,” Matt said aggressively. “We just turned in here.” The last time he’d seen Damon, when Damon had been banished like a whipped dog from Stefan’s room, he’d wanted to punch Damon in the mouth very much, Elena knew. She could feel that he wanted it again now.

But Damon wasn’t the same as he’d been when he’d left that room. Elena could see danger rising off him like heat waves.

“Oh, I see. This is — your private area for — private explorations,” Damon translated, and there was a note of complicity in his voice that Elena disliked.

“No!” Matt snarled. Elena realized she was going to have to keep him under control. It was dangerous to antagonize Damon in this mood. “How can you even say that?” Matt went on. “Elena belongs to Stefan.”

“Well — we belong to each other,” Elena temporized.

“Of course you do,” said Damon. “One body, one heart, one soul.” For a moment there was something there — an expression inside the Ray-Bans, she thought, that was murderous.

Instantly, though, Damon’s tone changed to an expressionless murmur. “But then, why are you two here?” His head, turning to follow Matt’s movement, moved like a predator tracking prey. There was something more disquieting than usual about his attitude.

“We saw something red,” Matt said before Elena could stop him. “Something like what I saw when I had that accident.”

Prickles were now running up and down Elena’s arms. Somehow she wished Matt hadn’t said that. In this dim, quiet clearing in the evergreen grove, she was suddenly very much afraid.

Stretching her new senses to their utmost — until she could feel them distending like a gossamer garment pushed thin all around her, she felt the wrongness there, too, and felt it pass out of the reach of her mind. At the same time she felt birds go quiet all that long distance away.

What was most disturbing was to turn just then, just as the birdsong stopped, and find Damon turning at the same instant to look at her. The sunglasses kept her from knowing what he was thinking. The rest of his face was a mask.

Stefan, she thought helplessly, longingly.

How could he have left her — with this? With no warning, no idea of his destination, no way of ever contacting him again…It might have made sense to him, with his desperate desire not to make her into something he loathed in himself. But to leave her with Damon in this mood, and all of her previous powers goneYour own fault, she thought, cutting short the flood of self-pity. You were the one who harped on brotherhood. You were the one who convinced him Damon was to be trusted. Now you deal with the consequences.

“Damon,” she said, “I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to ask you — about Stefan. You do know that he’s left me.”

“Of course. I believe the saying goes, for your own good. He left me to be your bodyguard.”

“Then you saw him two nights ago?”

“Of course.”

And — of course — you didn’t try to stop him. Things couldn’t have turned out better for you, Elena thought. She had never wished more for the abilities she’d had as a spirit, not even when she’d realized Stefan was really gone and beyond her all-too-human reach.

“Well, I’m not just letting him leave me,” she said flatly, “for my own good or for any other reason. I’m going to follow him — but first I need to know where he might have gone.”

“You’re asking me?”

“Yes. Please. Damon, I have to find him. I need him. I—” She was starting to choke up, and she had to be stern with herself.

But just then she realized that Matt was whispering very softly to her. “Elena, stop. I think we’re just making him mad. Look at the sky.”

Elena felt it herself. The circle of trees seemed to be leaning in all around them, darker than before, menacing. Elena tilted her chin slowly, looking up. Directly above them, gray clouds were pooling, piling in on themselves, cirrus overwhelmed by cumulus, turning to thunderheads — centered exactly over the spot where they stood.

On the ground, small whirlwinds began to form, lifting handfuls of pine needles and fresh green summer leaves off saplings. She had never seen anything like it before, and it filled the clearing with a sweet but sensuous smell, redolent of exotic oils and long, dark winter nights.

Looking at Damon, then, as the whirlwinds lifted higher and the sweet scent encircled her, resinous and aromatic, closing in until she knew it was soaking into her clothes and being impressed into her very flesh, she knew she had overstepped herself.