The Return: Shadow Souls

didn’t remember, she didn’t want to steer anyone.

That was what she loved about Stefan. Once she’d gotten past his reflexive instinct to keep away from anything he cherished, she didn’t need to manage him at all. He was maintenance-free, except for the gentlest of hints that she’d turned herself into an expert on vampires. Not at hunting them or slaying them, but at loving them safely. Elena knew when it was right to bite or be bitten, and when to stop, and how to keep herself human.

But apart from those gentle hints, she didn’t even want to manage Stefan. She wanted simply to be with him. After that, everything took care of itself.

Elena could live without Stefan — she thought. But just as being away from Meredith and Bonnie was like living without her two hands, living without Stefan would be like trying to live without her heart. He was her partner in the Great Dance; her equal and her opposite; her beloved and her lover in the purest sense imaginable. He was the other half of the Sacred Mysteries of Life to her.

And after seeing him last night, even if it had been a dream, which she wasn’t willing to accept, Elena missed him so much that it was a throbbing pain inside her. A pain so great that she couldn’t bear to just sit and dwell on it. If she did she might just go insane and start raving at Damon to drive faster — and Elena might hurt inside, but she wasn’t suicidal.

They stopped at some nameless town for lunch. Elena had no appetite, but Damon spent the entire break as a bird, which for some reason infuriated her.

By the time they were driving again, the tension in the car had built until the old cliche was impossible to avoid: you could cut it with a folded napkin, much less a knife, Elena thought.

That was when she realized exactly what kind of tension it was.

The one thing that was saving Damon was his pride.

He knew that Elena had things figured out. She’d stopped trying to touch him or even speak to him. And that was good.

He wasn’t supposed to be feeling like this. Vampires wanted girls for their pretty white throats, and Damon’s sense of esthetics demanded that the rest of the donor be at least up to his standards. But now even Elena’s human-sized aura was advertising the unique life-force in her blood. And Damon’s response was involuntary. He had not even thought about a girl in this way for approximately five hundred years. Vampires weren’t capable of it.

But Damon was — very capable — now. And the closer he got to Elena, the stronger her aura was around him, and the weaker was his control.

Thank all the little demons in hell, his pride was stronger than the desire he felt. Damon had never asked for anything from anyone in his life. He paid for the blood he took from humans in his own particular coin: of pleasure and fantasy and dreams. But Elena didn’t need fantasy; didn’t want dreams.

Didn’t want him.

She wanted Stefan. And Damon’s pride would never allow him to ask Elena for what he alone desired, and equally it would never allow him to take it without her consent…he hoped.

Just a few days ago he had been an empty shell, his body a puppet of the kitsune twins, who had made him hurt Elena in ways that now made him cringe inside. Damon hadn’t existed then as a personality, but his body had been Shinichi’s to play with. And although he scarcely could believe it, the takeover had been so complete that his shell had obeyed Shinichi’s every command: he had tormented Elena; he might well have killed her.

There was no point in disbelieving it; or saying that it couldn’t be true. It was true. It had happened. Shinichi was that much stronger when it came to mind control, and the kitsune had none of the vampires’ detachment about pretty girls — below the neck. Besides which, he happened to be a sadist. He liked pain — other people’s, that is.

Damon couldn’t deny the past, couldn’t wonder why he hadn’t “awakened” to stop Shinichi from hurting Elena. There had been nothing of him to awaken. And if a solitary part of his mind still wept because of the evil he had done — well, Damon was good at blocking it out. He wouldn’t waste time over regrets, but he was intent on controlling the future. It would never happen again — not and leave him still alive.

What Damon really couldn’t understand was why Elena was pushing him. Acting as if she trusted him. Of all the people in the world, she was the one with the most right to hate him, to point an accusing finger at him. But she had never once done that. She had never even looked at him with anger in her dark blue, gold-spattered eyes. She alone had seemed to understand that someone as completely possessed by the master of the malach, Shinichi, as Damon had been, simply had no choice — wasn’t there to make a choice — in what he or she did.

Maybe it was because she’d pulled the thing the malach had created out of him. The pulsating, albino, second body that had been inside him. Damon forced himself to repress a shudder. He only knew this because Shinichi had jovially mentioned it, while taking away all Damon’s memories of the time since the two of them, kitsune and vampire, had met in the Old Wood.

Damon was glad to have had the memories gone. From the moment he had locked gazes with the fox spirit’s laughing golden eyes, his life had been poisoned.

And now…right now he was alone with Elena, in the middle of the wilderness, with towns few and far between. They were utterly, uniquely alone, with Damon helplessly wanting from Elena what every human boy she’d ever encountered had wanted.

Worst of all was the fact that charming girls, deceiving girls, was practically Damon’s own raison d’etre. It was certainly the only reason he’d been able to keep on living for the past half millennium. And yet he knew that he must not, must not even start the process with this one girl who, to him, was the jewel lying on the dungheap of humanity.

To all appearances, he was perfectly in control, icy and precise, distant and disinterested.

The truth was that he was going out of his mind.

That night, after making sure that Elena had food and water and was safely locked into the Prius, Damon called down a damp fog and began to weave his darkest wards. These were announcements to any sisters or brothers of the night who might come upon the car that the girl inside it was under Damon’s protection; and that Damon would hunt down and flay alive anyone who even disturbed the girl’s rest…and then he’d get around to really punishing the culprit. Damon then flew a few miles south as a crow, found a dive with a pack of werewolves drinking in it and a few charming barmaids serving them, and brawled and bled the night away.

But it wasn’t enough to distract him — not nearly enough. In the morning, returning early, he saw the wards around the car in tatters. Before he could panic, he realized that Elena had broken them from the inside. There had been no warning to him because of her peaceful intent and innocent heart.

And then Elena herself appeared, coming up the bank of a stream, looking clean and refreshed. Damon was stricken speechless by the very sight of her. By her grace, by her beauty, by the unbearable closeness of her. He could smell her freshly washed skin, and couldn’t help deliberately breathing in more and more of her unique fragrance.

He didn’t see how he could put up with another day of this.

And then Damon suddenly had an Idea.

“Would you like to learn something that would help you to control that aura of yours?” he asked as she passed him, heading for the car.

Elena threw him a sidelong glance. “So you’ve decided to talk to me again. Am I supposed to faint with joy?”

“Well — that would always be appreciated—”

“Would it?” she said sharply, and Damon realized that he had underestimated the storm he had brewed inside this formidable girl.

“No. Now, I’m being serious,” he said, fixing his dark gaze on her.

“I know. You’re going to tell me to become a vampire to help control my Power.”

“No, no, no. This has nothing to do with being a vampire.” Damon refused to be drawn into an argument and that must have impressed Elena, because finally she said, “What is it, then?”