water and tried to put her lips to the cut.
No, that was stupid, he thought, with unaccustomed self-deprecation. She’s going to get cold again, and you don’t have any way to make her swallow. He let Bonnie lapse back into the water and thought. Then he pulled out the knife again and made another cut: this one on his arm, at the wrist. He followed the vein there until blood was not just dripping but streaming steadily out. Then he put that wrist to Bonnie’s upturned mouth, adjusting the angle of her head with his other hand. Her lips were partly open and the dark red blood flowed beautifully. Periodically she swallowed. There was life in her yet.
It was just like feeding a baby bird, he thought, tremendously pleased with his memory, his ingenuity, and — well, just himself.
He smiled brilliantly at nothing in particular.
Now if it would only work.
Damon changed position slightly to be more comfortable and turned the hot water up again, all while holding Bonnie, feeding her, all — he knew — gracefully and without a wasted movement. This was fun. It appealed to his sense of the ridiculous. Here, right now, a vampire was not supping from a human, but was trying to save it from certain death by feeding it vampire blood.
More than that. He had followed all sorts of human traditions and customs by trying to strip Bonnie without compromising her maidenly modesty. That was exciting. Of course, he’d seen her body anyway; there had been no way to avoid that. But it was really more thrilling when he was trying to follow the rules. He’d never done that before.
Maybe that was how Stefan got his kicks. No, Stefan had Elena, who had been human, vampire, and invisible spirit, and now appeared to be living angel, if such a thing existed. Elena was kicky enough on her own. Yet he hadn’t thought of her in minutes. It might even be a record of Elena-overlooking.
He’d better call her, maybe get her in here and explain how this was working so there was no reason to crush his skull. It would probably look better.
Damon suddenly realized he couldn’t feel Elena’s aura in Stefan’s bedroom. But before he could investigate there was a crash, then pounding footsteps, and then another crash, much closer. And then the bathroom door was kicked open by Mortal Annoying Troublesome….
Matt advanced menacingly, got his feet tangled, and looked down to untangle them. His tanned cheeks were swept with a sudden sunset. He was holding up Bonnie’s small pink brassiere. He dropped it as if it had bitten him, picked it up again, and whirled around, only to cannon into Stefan, who was entering. Damon watched, entertained.
“How do you kill them, Stefan? Do you just need a stake? Can you hold him while — blood! He’s feeding her blood!” Matt interrupted himself, looking as if he might attack Damon on his own. Bad idea, thought Damon.
Matt locked eyes with him. Confronting the monster, Damon thought, even more entertained. “Let…her…go.” Matt spoke slowly, probably meaning to convey menace, but sounding, Damon thought, as if he thought that Damon was mentally impaired.
Mortally Unable To Talk, Damon mused. But that made…“Mutt,” he said aloud, shaking his head slightly. Maybe, though, it would remind him in the future.
“Mutt? You’re calling—? God, Stefan, please help me kill him! He’s killed Bonnie.” The words spilled out of Matt in a single gushing flow, a single breath. Woefully, Damon saw his latest acronym go down in flames.
Stefan was surprisingly calm. He put Matt behind him and said, “Go and sit down with Elena and Meredith,” in a way that was not a suggestion, and turned back to his brother. “You didn’t feed from her,” he said, and this was not a question.
“Swill poison? Not my kind of fun, little brother.”
One corner of Stefan’s mouth quirked up. He made no response to this, but simply looked at Damon with eyes that were…knowing. Damon bridled.
“I told the truth!”
“Going to take it up as a hobby?”
Damon started to release Bonnie, figuring that dropping her into bloodstained water would be the proper precursor to walking out of this dump, but…
But. She was his baby bird. She’d swallowed enough of his blood now that any more would begin to Change her seriously. And if the amount of blood he had already given her wasn’t enough, it simply wasn’t a remedy in the first place. Besides, the miracle worker was here.
He closed the cut on his arm enough to stop the bleeding and started to speak….
And the door crashed open again.
This time it was Meredith, and she had Bonnie’s bra. Both Stefan and Damon quailed. Meredith was, Damon thought, a very scary person. At least she took the time, which Mutt had not, to look over the trampled clothes on the bathroom floor. She said to Stefan, “How is she?” which Mutt had not, either.
“She’s going to be fine,” Stefan said and Damon was surprised at his feeling of…not relief, of course, but of a job well done. Plus, now he might avoid being thrashed to within an inch of his life by Stefan.
Meredith took a deep breath and closed her frightening eyes briefly. When she did that, her whole face glowed. Maybe she was praying. It had been centuries since Damon had prayed; and he had never had any prayer answered.
Then Meredith opened her eyes, shook herself, and started looking scary again. She nudged the pile of clothes on the floor and said, slowly and forcefully, “If the item that matches this is not still on Bonnie’s body, there is going to be trouble.”
She waved the now infamous bra like a flag.
Stefan looked confused. How could he not understand the mighty missing lingerie question? Damon wondered. How could anyone be such a…such an unobservant fool? Didn’t Elena wear any — ever? Damon sat frozen, too arrested by the images in his own inner world to move for a moment. Then he spoke up. He had the answer to Meredith’s riddle.
“Do you want to come and check?” he asked, turning his head virtuously away.
“Yes, I do.”
He remained with his back to her as she approached the tub, plunged her hand into the warm pink water, and swished the towel a little. He heard her let out her breath in relief.
When he turned around she said, “There’s blood on your mouth.” Her dark eyes looked darker than ever.
Damon was surprised. He hadn’t gone and pierced the redhead out of habit and then forgotten it, had he? But then he realized the reason.
“You tried to suck the poison out, didn’t you?” Stefan said, throwing him a white face towel. Damon wiped the side Meredith had been looking at and came up with a bloody smear. No wonder his mouth had been stinging like fire. That poison was pretty nasty stuff, although it clearly didn’t affect vampires the way it did humans.
“And there’s blood on your throat,” Meredith went on.
“Unsuccessful experiment,” Damon said, and shrugged.
“So you cut your wrist. Pretty seriously.”
“For a human, maybe. Is the press conference over?”
Meredith settled back. He could read her expression and he smiled inwardly. Extra! Extra! SCARY MEREDITH THWARTED. He knew the look of those who had to give up on cracking the Damon nut.
Meredith stood up. “Is there anything I can get him to stop his mouth bleeding? Something to drink, maybe?”
Stefan just looked stricken. Stefan’s problem — well, a part of one of Stefan’s many problems — was that he thought feeding was sinful. Even to talk about.
Maybe it was actually kickier that way. People relished anything they thought was sinful. Even vampires did. Damon was put out. How did you go back in time to when anything was sinful? Because he was sadly out of kicks.
With her back turned, Meredith was less scary. Damon risked an answer to the question of what he could drink.
“You, darling…you darling.”
“One too many darlings,” Meredith said mysteriously, and before Damon could figure out that she was simply making a point about linguistics, and not commenting on his personal life, she was gone. With the traveling
