as the lunge of a cobra, to sink his teeth to the hilt in an artery. He was hungry — no, starving — and his whole body was burning with the urge to drink as deeply as he liked. After all, there were others to choose from if he drained this vessel dry.
Carefully, never taking his eyes from hers, he lifted Caroline’s head to expose her throat, with the sweet pulse throbbing in its hollow. It filled all his senses: the beating of her heart, the smell of the exotic blood just under the surface, dense and ripe and sweet. His head was spinning. He’d never been so excited, so eagerSo eager that it gave him pause. After all, one girl was as good as another, right? What was different about this time? What was wrong with him?
And then he knew.
I’ll have my own mind back, thank you.
Suddenly Damon’s intellect was icy cold; the sensual aura in which he’d been trapped frozen over instantly. He dropped Caroline’s chin and stood very still.
He had almost fallen under the influence of the thing that was using Caroline. It had been trying to snare him into breaking his word to Elena.
And again, he could just barely sense a whisk of red in the mirror.
It was one of those creatures drawn to the nova of Power that Fell’s Church had become — he knew that. It had been using him, spurring him on, trying to get him to drain Caroline dry. To take all her blood, to kill a human, something he hadn’t done since meeting Elena.
Why?
Coldly furious, he centered himself, and then probed in all directions with his mind to find the parasite. It should still be here; the mirror was only a portal for it to travel small distances. And it had been controlling him — him, Damon Salvatore — so it had to be very close indeed.
Still, he could find nothing. That made him even angrier than before. Absently fingering the back of his neck, he sent a dark message: I will warn you once, and once only. Stay away from ME!
He sent the thought out with a blast of Power that flashed like sheet lightning in his own senses. It ought to have knocked something dead nearby — from the roof, from the air, from a branch…maybe even from next door. From somewhere, a creature should have plummeted to the ground, and he should have been able to sense it.
But although Damon could feel clouds darkening above him in response to his mood, and the wind rubbing branches together outside, there was no falling body, no attempt at dying retaliation.
He could find nothing close enough to have entered his thoughts, and nothing at a distance could be that strong. Damon might amuse himself sometimes by pretending to be vain, but underneath he had a cool and logical ability to analyze himself. He was strong. He knew that. As long as he kept himself well nourished and free of weakening sentiment, there were few creatures that could stand against him — at least in this plane.
Two were right here in Fell’s Church,a little mocking counterpoint in his mind said, but Damon shrugged that off disdainfully. Surely there could be no other vampire Elders nearby, or he would sense them. Ordinary vampires, yes, they were already flocking. But they were all too weak to enter his mind.
He was equally certain there was no creature within range that could challenge him. He would have sensed it as he sensed the blazing ley lines of uncanny magical power that formed a nexus under Fell’s Church.
He looked at Caroline again, still held motionless by the trance he’d put on her. She would come out of it gradually, none the worse for the experience — for what he’d done to her, at least.
He turned and, as gracefully as a panther, swung out of the window, onto the tree — and then dropped easily thirty feet to the ground.
Damon had to wait some hours for another opportunity to feed — there were too many girls in deep sleep — and he was furious. The hunger that the manipulative creature had roused in him was real, even if it hadn’t succeeded in making him its puppet. He needed blood; and he needed it soon.
Only then would he think over the implications of Caroline’s strange mirror-guest: that truly demonic demon lover who had handed her over to Damon to be killed, even while pretending to make a deal with her.
Nine A.M. saw him driving down the main street of the town, past an antique store, eateries, a shop for greeting cards.
Wait. There it was. A new store that sold sunglasses. He parked and got out of the car with an elegance of motion born of centuries of careless movement that wasted not an erg of energy. Once again, Damon flashed the instantaneous smile, and then he turned it off, admiring himself in the dark glass of the window. Yes, no matter how you look at it, I am gorgeous, he thought absently.
The door had a bell that made a tinkling sound as he entered. Inside was a plump and very pretty girl with brown hair tied back and large blue eyes.
She had seen Damon and she was smiling shyly.
“Hi.” And though he hadn’t asked, she added, in a voice that quavered, “I’m Page.”
Damon gave her a long, unhurried look that ended in a smile, slow and brilliant and complicit. “Hello, Page,” he said, drawing it out.
Page swallowed. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, yes,” Damon said, holding her with his eyes, “I think so.”
He turned serious. “Did you know,” he said, “that you really belong as a chatelaine in a castle in the Middle Ages?”
Page went white, then blushed furiously — and looked all the better for it. “I–I always wished that I’d been born back then. But how could you know that?”
Damon just smiled.
Elena looked at Stefan with wide eyes that were the dark blue of lapis lazuli with a scattering of gold. He’d just told her that she was going to have Visitors! In all the seven days of her life, since she had returned from the afterlife, she had never — ever — had a Visitor.
First thing, right away, was to find out what a Visitor was.
Fifteen minutes after entering the sunglasses shop, Damon was walking down the sidewalk, wearing a brand-new pair of Ray-Bans and whistling.
Page was taking a little nap on the floor. Later, her boss would threaten to make her pay for the Ray-Bans herself. But right now she felt warm and deliriously happy — and she had a memory of ecstasy that she would never entirely forget.
Damon window-shopped, although not exactly the way a human would. A sweet old woman behind the counter of the greeting cards shop…no. A guy at the electronics shop…no.
But…something drew him back to the electronics shop. Such clever devices they were inventing these days. He had a strong urge to acquire a palm-sized video camera. Damon was used to following his urges and was not picky about donors in an emergency. Blood was blood, whatever vessel it came in. A few minutes after he’d been shown how to work the little toy, he was walking down the sidewalk with it in his pocket.
He was enjoying just walking, although his fangs were aching again. Strange, he should be sated — but then, he’d had almost nothing yesterday. That must be why he still felt hungry; that and the Power he’d used on the damnable parasite in Caroline’s room. But meanwhile he took pleasure in the way his muscles were working together smoothly and without effort, like a well-oiled machine, making every movement a delight.
He stretched once, for the pure animal enjoyment of it, and then stopped again to examine himself in the window of the antiques store. Slightly more disheveled, but otherwise as beautiful as ever. And he’d been right; the Ray-Bans looked wicked on him. The antiques store was owned, he knew, by a widow with a very pretty, very young niece.
It was dim and air-conditioned inside.
“Do you know,” he asked the niece when she came to wait on him, “that you strike me as someone who would like to see a lot of foreign countries?”
Some time after Stefan explained to Elena that Visitors were her friends, her good friends, he wanted her to get dressed. Elena didn’t understand why. It was hot. She had given in to wearing a Night Gown (for at least most of the night), but the daytime was even warmer, and she didn’t have a Day Gown.
Besides, the clothes he was offering her — a pair of his jeans rolled up at the hems and a polo shirt that
