The Fury

she knew differently. Looking down on the memorial service, she had begun to think perhaps she did care.

And then, when the dogs had attacked outside, she'd known it. She felt somehow responsible for the town, in a way she had never felt before.

Her earlier sense of desolation and loneliness had been pushed aside for the moment. There was something more important than her own problems now. And she clung to that something, because the truth was that she really couldn't deal with her own situation, no, she really, really couldn't…

She heard the gasping half sob she gave then and looked up to see both Stefan and Damon in the choir loft, looking at her. She shook her head slightly, putting a hand to it, feeling as if she were coming out of a dream.

'Elena… ?'

It was Stefan who spoke, but Elena addressed herself to the other one.

'Damon,' she said shakily, 'if I ask you something, will you tell me the truth? I know you didn't chase me off Wickery Bridge. I could feel whatever it was, and it was different. But I want to ask you this: was it you who dumped Stefan in the old Francher well a month ago?'

'In a well?' Damon leaned back against the opposite wall, arms crossed over his chest. He looked politely incredulous.

'On Halloween night, the night Mr. Tanner was killed. After you showed yourself for the first time to Stefan in the woods. He told me he left you in the clearing and started to walk to his car but that someone attacked him before he reached it. When he woke up, he was trapped in the well, and he would have died there if Bonnie hadn't led us to him. I always assumed you were the one who attacked him. He always assumed you were the one. But were you?'

Damon's lip curled, as if he didn't like the demanding intensity of her question. He looked from her to Stefan with hooded, deriding eyes. The moment stretched out until Elena had to dig her fingernails into her palms with tension. Then Damon gave a small shrug and looked off at a middle distance.

'As a matter of fact, no,' he said.

Elena let out her breath.

'You can't believe that!' Stefan exploded. 'You can't believe anything he says.'

'Why should I lie?' Damon returned, clearly enjoying Stefan's loss of control. 'I admit freely to killing Tanner. I drank his blood until he shriveled like a prune. And I wouldn't mind doing the same thing to you, brother. But a well? It's hardly my style.'

'I believe you,' Elena said. Her mind was rushing ahead. She turned to Stefan. 'Don't you feel it? There's something else here in Fell's Church, something that may not even be human—may never have been human, I mean. Something that chased me, forced my car off the bridge. Something that made those dogs attack people. Some terrible force that's here, something evil…' Her voice trailed off, and she looked over toward the interior of the church where she had seen Bonnie lying. 'Something evil…' she repeated softly. A cold wind seemed to blow inside her, and she huddled into herself, feeling vulnerable and alone.

'If you're looking for evil,' Stefan said harshly, 'you don't have to look far.'

'Don't be any more stupid than you can help,' said Damon. 'I told you four days ago that someone else had killed Elena. And I said that I was going to find that someone and deal with him. And I am.' He uncrossed his arms and straightened up. 'You two can continue that private conversation you were having when I interrupted.'

'Damon, wait.' Elena hadn't been able to help the shudder that tore through her when he said killed. I can't have been killed; I'm still here, she thought wildly, feeling panic swell up in her again. But now she pushed the panic aside to speak to Damon.

'Whatever this thing is, it's strong,' she said. 'I felt it when it was after me, and it seemed to fill the whole sky. I don't think any of us would stand a chance against it alone.'

'So?'

'So…' Elena hadn't had time to gather her thoughts this far. She was running purely on instinct, on intuition. And intuition told her not to let Damon go. 'So… I think we three ought to stick together. I think we have a much better chance of finding it and dealing with it together than separately. And maybe we can stop it before it hurts or—or kills—anyone else.'

'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about anyone else,' Damon said charmingly. Then he gave one of his ice-cold lightning smiles. 'But are you suggesting that this is your choice? Remember, we agreed that when you were more rational you would make one.

Elena stared at him. Of course it wasn't her choice, if he meant romantically. She was wearing the ring Stefan had given her; she and Stefan belonged together.

But then she remembered something else, just a flash: looking up at Damon's face in the woods and feeling such—such excitement, such affinity with him. As if he understood the flame that burned inside her as nobody else ever could. As if together they could do anything they liked, conquer the world or destroy it; as if they were better than anyone else who had ever lived.

I was out of my mind, irrational, she told herself, but that little flash of memory wouldn't go away.

And then she remembered something else: how Damon had acted later that night, how he'd kept her safe, even been gentle with her.

Stefan was looking at her, and his expression had changed from belligerence to bitter anger and fear. Part of her wanted to reassure him completely, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was his and always would be and that nothing else mattered. Not the town, not Damon, not anything.

But she wasn't doing it. Because another part of her was saying that the town did matter. And because still another part was just terribly, terribly confused. So confused…

She felt a trembling begin deep inside her, and then she found she couldn't make it stop. Emotional overload, she thought, and put her head in her hands.

SIX

'She's already made her choice. You saw it yourself when you 'interrupted' us. You've already chosen, haven't you, Elena?' Stefan said it not smugly, or as a demand, but with a kind of desperate bravado.

'I…' Elena looked up. 'Stefan, I love you. But don't you understand, if I have a choice right now I have to choose for all of us to stay together. Just for now. Do you understand?' Seeing only stoniness in Stefan's face, she turned to Damon. 'Do you?'

'I think so.' He gave her a secret, possessive smile. 'I told Stefan from the beginning that he was selfish not to share you. Brothers should share things, you know.'

'That's not what I meant.'

'Isn't it?' Damon smiled again.

'No,' Stefan said. 'I don't understand, and I don't see how you can ask me to work with him. He's evil, Elena. He kills for pleasure; he has no conscience at all. He doesn't care about Fell's Church; he said that himself. He's a monster—'

'Right now he's being more cooperative than you are,' Elena said. She reached for Stefan's hand, searching for some way to get through to him. 'Stefan, I need you. And we both need him. Can't you try to accept that?' When he didn't answer she added, 'Stefan, do you really want to be mortal enemies with your brother forever?'

'Do you really think he wants anything else?'

Elena stared down at their joined hands, looking at the planes and curves and shadows. She didn't answer for a minute, and when she did it was very quietly.

'He stopped me from killing you,' she said.

She felt the flare of Stefan's defensive anger, then felt it slowly fade. Something like defeat crept through him, and he bowed his head.

'That's true,' he said. 'And, anyway, who am I to call him evil? What's he done that I haven't done myself?'

We need to talk, Elena thought, hating this self-hatred of his. But this wasn't the time or place.

'Then you do agree?' she said hesitantly. 'Stefan, tell me what you're thinking.'

'Right now I'm thinking that you always get your way. Because you always do, don't you, Elena?'

Elena looked into his eyes, noticing how the pupils were dilated, so that only a ring of green iris showed