Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

And then a dose of his blood went down. Again, Elena was unconscious and had no choice in the matter.

And then she’d gone to sleep by herself.

Damon paced restlessly. He had a memory that was more like a dream floating around in his head. It was of Elena trying to throw herself out of a Ferrari going about 100 kilometers an hour, to get away from — what?

Him?

Why?

Not, in any case, the best of beginnings.

But that was all he could remember! Damn it! Whatever came right before it was a total blank. Had he hurt Stefan? No, Stefan was gone. It had been the other boy with her, Mutt.What had happened?

Damn it to hell! He had to figure out what had happened so he could explain it all to Elena when she woke up. He wanted her to believe him, to trust him. He didn’t want Elena as a one-night bleeder. He wanted her to choose him. He wanted her to see how much better suited she was to him than to his mousy, milksop brother.

His princess of darkness. That was what she was meant to be. With him as king, consort, whatever she wished. When she saw things more clearly, she would understand that it didn’t matter. That nothing mattered except them being together.

He viewed her body, veiled under the sheet, with dispassion — no, with positive guilt. Dio mio — what if he hadn’t found her? He couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of how she’d looked, stumbling forward like that…lying there breathless…kissing his hand…

Damon sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose. Why had she been in the Ferrari with him? She’d been angry — no, not angry. Furious was closer but so frightened…of him. He could picture that clearly now, the moment of her throwing herself out of the speeding car, but he couldn’t remember anything before it.

Was he going out of his mind?

What had been done to her? No…Damon forced his thoughts away from the easy question and made himself ask the real question. What had he done to her? Elena’s eyes, blue with golden flecks, like lapis lazuli, were easy to read even without telepathy. What had…he…done to her that was so frightening that she would jump out of a speeding car to get away from him?

He’d been taunting the fair-haired boy. Mutt…Gnat…whatever. The three of them had been together, and he and Elena had been…damn! From there to his awakening at the steering wheel of the Ferrari, all was a shimmering blank. He could remember saving Bonnie at Caroline’s house; he could remember being late for his 4:44 A.M. meeting with Stefan; but after that, things began to fragment.Shinichi, maledicalo! That fox! He knew more about this than he was telling Damon.

I have always…been stronger…than my enemies, he thought. I have always…remained…in…control.

He heard a slight sound and was by Elena in an instant. Her blue eyes were shut, but the lashes were fluttering. Was she waking up?

He made himself turn down the sheet by her shoulder. Shinichi had been right. There was a lot of dried blood, but he could sense that the blood flow itself was more normal. But there was something horribly wrong…no, he wouldn’t believe it.

Damon barely kept himself from screaming in frustration. The damn fox had left her with a dislocated shoulder.

Things were definitely not going well for him today.

Now what? Call for Shinichi?

Never. He felt he couldn’t look at the fox again tonight without wanting to murder him.

He was going to have to put her shoulder back in the socket alone. It was a procedure usually only attempted by two people, but what could he do?

Still keeping Elena in an iron mind-grip, making sure she couldn’t awaken, he grasped her by the arm and began the painful business of dislocating the humerus even farther, pulling the bone away so that he could finally release pressure and hear the sweet pop that meant that the long arm bone had slipped back into the socket. Then he let go. Elena’s head was tossing from side to side, her lips parched. He poured some more of Shinichi’s magical bone-knitting tea into the battered cup, then lifted her head gently from the left side to put the cup to her lips. He let her mind have some freedom, then, and she started to lift her right hand and then dropped it.

He sighed and tilted her head, tipping the silver flagon so that the tea trickled into her mouth. She swallowed obediently. It all reminded him of Bonnie…but Bonnie hadn’t been so terribly hurt. Damon knew he couldn’t return Elena to her friends in this condition; not with her camisole and jeans shredded, and dried blood everywhere.

Maybe he could do something about that. He went to the second door off the bedroom, thought,bathroom — modern bathroom, and unlocked and opened the door. It was exactly what he’d imagined: a pristine, white, sanitary place with a large heap of towels piled, ready for guests, on the bathtub.

Damon ran warm water over one of the washcloths. He knew better by now than to strip Elena and dump her in warm water. It was what she needed, but if anyone ever found out, her friends would have his beating heart torn out of his chest and staked on a pike. He didn’t even have to think about that — he simply knew it.

He went back to Elena and began to gently stroke dried blood off her shoulder. She murmured, shaking her head, but he kept it up until the shoulder at least looked normal, exposed as it was by torn cloth.

Then he got another washcloth and went to work on her ankle. This was still swollen — she wasn’t going to be running away anytime soon. Her tibia, the first of the two bones in the lower leg, had grown properly together again. It was more evidence that Shinichi and the Shi no Shi had no need for money, or they could simply put this tea on the market and make a fortune.

“We look at things…differently,” Shinichi had said, fixing Damon with those strange golden eyes. “Money doesn’t mean much to us. What does? The deathbed agonies of an old rogue who fears he’s going to hell. Watching him sweat, trying to remember encounters he’s long forgotten. A baby’s first conscious tear of loneliness. The emotions of an unfaithful wife when her husband catches her with her lover. A maiden’s…well, her first kiss and her first night of discovery. A brother willing to die for his brother. Things like that.”

And many other things that couldn’t be mentioned in polite company, Damon thought. A lot were about pain. They were emotional leeches, sucking up the feelings of mortals to make up for the emptiness of their own souls.

He could feel the sickness inside him again as he tried to imagine — to calculate — the pain Elena must have felt, leaping out of his car. She must have expected an agonizing death — but it was still better than staying with him.

This time, before entering the door that had been a white-tiled bathroom, he thought,Kitchen, modern, with plenty of ice packs in the freezer.

Nor was he disappointed. He found himself in a strongly masculine kitchen, with chrome appliances and black-and-white tiling. In the freezer: six ice packs. He took three back to Elena and put one around her shoulder, one at her elbow, and one around her ankle. Then he went back into the kitchen’s spotless beauty for a glass of ice-cold water.

Tired. So tired.

Elena felt as if her body were weighted with lead.

Every limb…every thought…lapped in lead.

For instance, there was something she was supposed to be doing — or not doing — right now. But she couldn’t make the thought come to the surface of her mind. It was too heavy. Everything was too heavy. She couldn’t even open her eyes.

A scraping sound. Someone was near, on a chair. Then there was liquid coolness on her lips, just a few drops, but it stimulated her to try to hold the cup herself and drink. Oh, delicious water. It tasted better than anything she’d ever had before. Her shoulder hurt terribly, but it was worth the pain to drink and drink — no! The glass was being pulled away. She tried, feebly, to hang onto it, but it was pulled out of her grasp.