Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

Elena opened her mouth again, but he put two fingers to her lips and said, “Wait. Just let me go on while I still can. I seriously thought that he might never stop with the conditions, which he had picked up out of fairy tale literature. He’s obsessed with that, and with old English poetry. I don’t know why, because he’s from the other side of the world, from Japan. That’s who Shinichi is. And he has a twin sister…Misao.”

Damon stopped breathing hard after that, and Elena figured that there must have been some internal conditions against him telling her.

“He likes it if you translate his name asdeath-first, or number one in the matters of death. They’re both like teenagers, really, with their codes and their games, and yet they’re thousands of years old.”

“Thousands?” Elena prodded gently as Damon coasted to a stop, looking exhausted but determined.

“I hate to think of how many thousands of years the two of them have been doing mischief. Misao’s the one who’s been doing all the things to the girls in town. She possesses them with her malach and then she makes the malach make them do things. You remember your American history? The Salem witches? That was Misao, or someone like her. And it’s happened hundreds of times before that. You might look up the Ursuline nuns when you’re out of this. They were a quiet convent who became exhibitionists and worse — some went mad, and some who tried to help them became possessed.”

“Exhibitionists? Like Tamra? But she’s only a child—”

“Misao’s only a child, in her head.”

“And where does Caroline come in?”

“In any case like this, there’s got to be an instigator — someone who’s willing to bargain with the devil — or a demon, really — for their own ends. That’s where Caroline comes in. But for an entire town, they must be giving her something really big.”

“An entire town? They’re going to take over Fell’s Church…?”

Damon looked away. The truth was that they were going to destroy Fell’s Church, but there was no point in saying that. His hands were loosely fastened around his knees as he sat on a rickety old wooden chair on the widow’s walk.

“Before we can do anything to help anyone, we have to get out of here. Out of Shinichi’s world. This is important. I can — block him for short periods of time from watching us — but then I get tired and need blood. I need more than you can regenerate, Elena.” He looked up at her. “He’s put Beauty in with the Beast here and he’ll leave us to see which one will triumph.”

“If you mean kill the other, he’s in for a long wait on my end.”

“That’s what you think now. But this is a specially made trap. There’s nothing in here except the Old Wood as it was when we started driving around it. It’s also minus any other human habitations. The only house is this house, the only real living creatures are the two of us. You’ll want me dead soon enough.”

“Damon, I don’t understand. What do they want here? Even with what Stefan said about all the ley lines crossing under Fell’s Church and making a beacon…”

“It was your beacon that drew them, Elena. They’re curious, like kids, and I have a feeling that they may already have been in trouble wherever it is they really live. It’s possible they were here watching the end of the battle, watching you be reborn.”

“And so they want…to destroy us? To have fun? To take over the town and make us puppets?”

“All three, for a while. They could be having fun while someone else pleads their case in a high court in another dimension. And yes, fun, to them, means taking apart a town. Although I believe that Shinichi means to go back on his bargain with me for something he wants more than the town, so they may end up fighting each other.”

“What bargain with you, Damon?”

“For you. Stefan had you. I wanted you. He wants you.”

Despite herself, Elena felt cold pooling in her midriff, felt the distant shaking that began there and worked its way outward. “And the original bargain was?”

He looked away from her. “This is the bad part.”

“Damon, what have you done?”she cried, almost screaming it.“What was the bargain?” Her whole body was shaking.

“I made a bargain with a demon and, yes, I knew what he was when I did it. It was the night after your friends were attacked by the trees — after Stefan banished me from his room. That and — well, I was angry, but he took my anger and boosted it. He was using me, controlling me; I see that now. That’s when he started with the deals and conditions.”

“Damon—” Elena began shakily, but he went on, speaking rapidly as if he had to get through this, to see it to its conclusion, before he lost his nerve. “The final deal was that he would help me get Stefan out of the way so I could have you, while he got Caroline and the rest of the town to share with his sister. Thus trumping Caroline’s bargain for whatever she was getting from Misao.”

Elena slapped him. She wasn’t sure how she managed, wrapped up as she was, to get a hand free and to make the lightning-fast movement, but she did. And then she waited, watching a bead of blood hanging on his lip, for him to retaliate or for the strength to try to kill him.

Damon just sat there. Then he licked his mouth and said nothing, did nothing.

“You bastard!”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying that Stefan didn’t really walk out on me?”

“Yes. I mean — correct.”

“Who wrote the letter in my diary, then?”

Damon said nothing, but looked away.

“Oh, Damon!” She didn’t know whether to kiss him or shake him. “How could you — do you know,” she said in a choked and threatening voice, “what I’ve gone through since he disappeared? Thinking every minute that he just suddenly decided to up and leave me? Even if he intended to come back—”

“I—”

“Don’t try to tell me you’re sorry! Don’t try to tell me you know what it feels like feeling that, because you don’t.How could you? You don’t have feelings like that!”

“I think — I’ve had some similar experience. But I wasn’t going to try to defend myself. Only to say that we have a limited time while I can block Shinichi from seeing us.”

Elena heart was shattering into a thousand pieces; she could feel each one pierce her. Nothing mattered anymore. “You lied, you broke your promise about never harming each other—”

“I know — and that should have been impossible. But it started that night when the trees closed in on Bonnie and Meredith and…Mark….”

“Matt!”

“That night, when Stefan knocked me around and showed me his true Power — it was because of you. He did it so I would stay away from you. Before that he’d just hoped to keep you hidden. And that night I felt…betrayed somehow. Don’t ask me why that should make sense, when for years before I’ve knocked him down and made him eat dirt any time I wanted.”

Elena tried to make sense of what he was saying in her shattered condition. And she couldn’t. But neither could she ignore a feeling that had just dropped down like an angel in chains grabbing hold of her.

Try to look with your other eyes. Look inside, not outside for the answer. You know Damon. You’ve already seen what is inside him. How long has it been there?

“Oh, Damon, I’m sorry! I know the answer. Damon — Damon. Oh, God! I can see what’s wrong with you. You’re more possessed than any of those girls.”

“I — have one of those things in me?”

Elena kept her eyes shut while she nodded. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she felt sick even as she made herself do it: gather enough human power to see with her other eyes, see as she had somehow learned to see inside people.