Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

Please, Damon. Please fight it…

He ought to recognize that voice. He’d heard it enough times.

I know they’re controlling you. But they can’t control all of you. You’re stronger than they are. You’re the strongest….

Well, that was certainly true. But he was getting more and more confused. The donor seemed to be unhappy and he was a past-master at making donors happy. And he didn’t quite remember…he really should remember how this had started.

Damon, it’s me. It’s Elena. And you’re hurting me.

So much pain and bewilderment. From the beginning, Elena had known better than to outright fight the tapping of her veins. That would only cause agony, and it wouldn’t do her the slightest bit of good except to stop her brain from working.

So she was trying to make him fight off the horrible beast inside him. Well, yes, but the change had to come from inside. If she forced him, Shinichi would notice and just possess him again. Besides, the simple Damon, be strong gig wasn’t working.

Was there nothing to do but die, then? She could at least fight that, although she knew that Damon’s strength would make it pointless. With every swallow he took of her new blood, he got stronger; he changed more and more into…

Into what? It washer blood. Maybe he would answer its call, which was also her call. Maybe, somehow inside, he could beat the monster without Shinichi noticing.

But she needed some new power, some new trick…

And even as she thought it, Elena felt the new Power moving in her, and she knew that it had always been there, just waiting for the right occasion to use it. It was a very specific power, not to be used for fighting or even for saving herself. Still, it was hers to tap. Vampires who preyed on her got only a few mouthfuls, but she had an entire blood supply filled with its enormous vigor. And calling upon it was as easy as reaching toward it with an open mind and open hands.

As soon as she did, she found new words coming to her lips, and most strangely of all, new wings springing from her body, which Damon was holding bent sharply back from the hips. These ethereal wings were not for flying, but for something else, and when they fully unfurled they made a huge, rainbow-colored arch whose very tip circled back again, surrounding and enfolding Damon and Elena both.

And then she said it telepathically.Wings of Redemption.

And inside, soundlessly, Damon screamed.

Then the wings opened slightly. Only one who had learned a great deal about magic would have seen what was happening inside them. Damon’s anguish was becoming Elena’s anguish as she took from him every painful incident, every tragedy, every cruelty that had ever gone into making up the stony layers of indifference and unkindness that encased his heart.

Layers — as hard as the stone at the heart of a black dwarf star — were breaking up and flying away. There was no stopping it. Great chunks and boulders fractured, fine pieces shattered. Some dissolved into nothing more than a puff of acrid smelling smoke.

There was something at the center, though — some nucleus that was blacker than hell and harder than the horns of the devil. She couldn’t quite see what happened to it. She thought — she hoped — that at the very end even it blasted open.

Now, and only now, could she call for the next set of wings. She hadn’t been sure that she would live through the first attack; she certainly didn’t feel as if she could live through this one. But Damon had to know.

Damon was kneeling on one knee on the floor, with his arms clasped tightly around him. That should be all right. He was still Damon, and he’d be a lot happier without the weight of all that hatred and prejudice and cruelty. He wouldn’t keep remembering his youth and the other young blades who’d mocked his father for being an old fool, with his disastrous investments and his mistresses younger than his own sons. Neither would he endlessly dwell on his own childhood, when that same father had beaten him in drunken rages when he neglected his studies or took up with objectionable companions.

And, finally, he would not go on savoring and contemplating the many terrible things he’d done himself. He had been redeemed, in heaven’s name and in heaven’s time, by words put into Elena’s mouth.

But now…there was something that he needed to remember. If Elena was right.

If only she were right.

“Where is this place? Are you hurt, girl?”

In his confusion, he couldn’t recognize her. He had knelt; now she knelt beside him.

He gave her a keen glance. “Are we at prayer or were we making love? Was it the Watch or the Gonzalgos?”

“Damon,” she said, “it’s me, Elena. It’s the twenty-first century, now, and you are a vampire.” Then, gently embracing him, with her cheek against his, she whispered,“Wings of Remembrance.”

And a pair of translucent butterfly wings, violet, cerulean, and midnight blue in color, sprouted from her backbone, just above her hips. The wings were decorated with tiny sapphires and translucent amethysts in intricate patterns. Using muscles she had never used before, she easily drew them up and forward until they curled inside out, and Damon was shielded within them. It was like being enclosed in a dim, jewel-studded cave.

She could see in Damon’s fine-bred features that he didn’t want to remember anything more than he did right now. But new memories, memories connected with her, were already welling up inside him. He looked at his lapis lazuli ring and Elena could see tears come to his eyes. Then, slowly, his gaze turned on her.

“Elena?”

“Yes.”

“Someone possessed me, and took the memories of the times I was possessed,” he whispered.

“Yes — at least, I think so.”

“And someone hurt you.”

“Yes.”

“I swore to kill him or make him your slave a hundred times over. He struck you. He took your blood by force. He made up ludicrous stories about hurting you in other ways.”

“Damon. Yes, that’s true. But, please—”

“I was on his track. If I’d met him I might have run him through; might have ripped his beating heart out of his chest. Or I might have taught him the most painful lessons I’ve heard tales of — and I’ve heard a lot of tales — and at the end, through the blood in his mouth, he would have kissed your heel, your slave until he died.”

This wasn’t good for him. She could see it. His eyes were white all around, like a terrified colt’s.

“Damon, I beg you…”

“And the one who hurt you…was me.”

“Not you by yourself. You said it yourself. You were possessed.”

“You feared me so much you stripped yourself for me.”

Elena remembered the original Pendleton shirt.

“I didn’t want you and Matt fighting.”

“You let me bleed you when it was against your true will.”

This time she could find nothing to say but, “Yes.”

“I — dear God! — I used my powers to afflict you with terrible grief!”

“If you mean an attack that causes hideous pain and seizures, then yes. And you were worse to Matt.”

Matt wasn’t on Damon’s radarscope. “And then I kidnapped you.”

“You tried.”

“And you jumped out of a speeding car rather than take your chances with me.”

“You were playing rough, Damon. They had told you to go out and play rough, maybe even to break your toys.”

“I’ve been looking for the one who made you jump from the car — I couldn’t remember anything before that. And I swore to take out his eyes and his tongue before he died in agony. You couldn’t walk. You had to use a crutch to get through the forest, and just when help should have come, Shinichi drew you into a trap. Oh, yes, I know him. You wandered into his snow globe…and would be wandering still if I hadn’t broken it.”