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.
The malach that she had seen before inside Damon, and the one Matt had described had been huge for insects — as long as an arm, maybe. But now in Damon she sensed something…huge. Monstrous. Something that inhabited him completely, its transparent head inside his beautiful features, its chitinous body as long as his torso; its backward-twisted legs inside his legs. For a moment she thought she would faint; but then she controlled herself. Staring at the ghostly image, she thought, What Would Meredith Do?
Meredith would stay calm. She wouldn’t lie, but she would find some way to help.
“Damon, it’s bad. But there has to be some way to get it out of you — soon. I’m going to find that way. Because as long as it’s in you, Shinichi can make you do anything.”
“Will you listen to why I think it’s grown so large? That night, when Stefan dismissed me from his room, everyone else went home like good little girls and boys, but you and Stefan took a walk. A fly. A glide.”
For a long time it meant nothing to her, even though it had been the last time she’d seen Stefan. In fact, that was its only significance to her: it was the last time she and Stefan had…
She felt herself freeze over inside.
“You went into the Old Wood. You were still the little spirit child who didn’t really know what was right and what was wrong. But Stefan should have known better than to do that — on my own territory. Vampires take territory seriously. And in my own resting place — right in front of my eyes.”
“Oh, Damon! No!”
“Oh, Damon, yes! There you were, sharing blood, too absorbed to have noticed me even if I had leaped out and tried to pry you apart. You were wearing a high-necked white nightgown and you looked like an angel. I wanted to kill Stefan right then.”
“Damon—”
“And it was right then that Shinichi appeared. He didn’t need to be told what I was feeling. And he had a plan, an offer…a proposition.”
Elena shut her eyes again and shook her head. “He’d prepared you beforehand. You were already possessed and ready to be full of anger.”
“I don’t know why,” Damon went on as if he hadn’t heard her, “but I scarcely thought about what it would mean to Bonnie and Meredith and the rest of the town. All I could think of was you. All I wanted was you, and revenge on Stefan.”
“Damon, will you listen? By then, you had already been deliberately possessed. I could see the malach in you. You admit”—as she felt him swelling up to speak out—“that something was influencing you before that, forcing you to watch Bonnie and the others die at your feet that night. Damon, I think these things are even harder to get rid of than we imagine. For one thing, you wouldn’t normally stay and watch people do — private things, would you? Doesn’t the fact that you did in itself prove that something was wrong?”
“It’s…a theory,” Damon granted, not sounding happy.
“But don’t you see? That was what made you tell Stefan you only saved Bonnie out of whim, and that was what made you refuse to tell everyone that the malach weremaking you watch the trees’ attack, hypnotizing you. That and your stupid, stubborn pride.”
“Watch it on the compliments. I may dry up and blow away.”
