The Return: Shadow Souls

swollen. And that was…unfair. Damon’s pout was a part of his most basic artillery. He had always had the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen on anyone, man or woman. The mouth, the hair, the half-drooping lids, the heavy lashes, the delicacy of his jawline…unfair, even to someone like Elena, who’d long ago gotten past interest in a person because of some accident of beauty.

But she’d never seen that mouth swollen, the perfect hair disordered, the eyelashes trembling because he was looking everywhere except at her and trying not to show it.

“Was that… what you’ve been thinking about while you’ve been refusing to talk to me?” she asked, and her voice was almost steady.

Damon’s sudden stillness was perfection like all his other perfections. No breathing, of course. He stared at a spot in the beige carpet that by rights ought to have broken into flames.

Then, finally, he lifted those huge dark eyes to hers. It was so hard to tell anything about Damon’s eyes because the iris was almost the same color as the pupil, but Elena had a feeling that at this moment they were dilated so far as to be all pupil. How could eyes as dark as midnight trap and hold light? She seemed to see in them a universe of stars.

Damon said, softly, “Run.”

Elena felt her legs tense. “Shinichi?”

“No. You should run now.”

Elena felt her thigh muscles relax slightly and was grateful not to have to try to prove that she could run — or even crawl — at this exact instant. But her fists clenched.

“You mean this is just you being a bastard?” she said. “Have you decided to hate me again? Did you enjoy —?”

Damon whirled again, stillness into motion faster than her eyes could track it. He hit the frame of the window, once, pulling the punch almost completely at the last instant. There was a crash and then a thousand little echoes as the glass showered like diamonds against the darkness outside.

“That might…bring some people to help you.” Damon wasn’t trying to make the words seem more than an afterthought. Now that he was turned away from her, he didn’t seem to care about keeping up appearances. Fine tremors ran through his body.

“This late, in this storm, this far away from the office — I doubt it.” Elena’s body was catching up with the adrenaline spurt that had allowed her to fight her way out of Damon’s grip. She was tingling all over and she had to work to keep it from turning into outright shaking.

And they were back to square one, with Damon staring into the night and her staring at his back. Or, at least, that was where he wanted them to be.

“You could have just asked,” she said. She didn’t know if this was possible for a vampire to understand. She still hadn’t taught Stefan. He went without things that he wanted because he didn’t understand about asking. In all innocence and with all good intentions, Stefan left things until she, Elena, was forced to ask him.

Damon, she thought, didn’t usually have that problem. He took whatever he wanted as casually as if picking items off of a grocery store shelf.

And right now he was laughing silently, which meant that he was truly stricken.

“I’ll take that as an apology,” Elena said softly.

Now Damon was laughing out loud, and Elena felt a chill. Here she was, trying to help him, and—

“Do you think,” he broke into her thoughts, “that that was all I wanted?”

Elena felt herself freeze again as she mulled this over. Damon could easily have taken her blood while he held her immobile. But — of course — that wasn’t all he wanted from her. Her aura…she knew what it did to vampires. Damon had been protecting her all along from other vampires who might see it.

The difference, Elena’s native honesty told her, was that she didn’t give a damn about any of the others. But Damon was different. When he kissed her she could feel the difference inside her. Something she had never felt before…until Stefan.

Oh, God — was this really her, Elena Gilbert, betraying Stefan by the simple act of not running away from this situation? Damon was being a better person than she was; he was telling her to take the temptation of her aura away from him.

So that she could start the torture anew tomorrow.

Elena had been in many circumstances where she’d judged that it was best for her to leave before things got too hot. The problem here was that there was nowhere that she could go to without turning up the heat — putting herself in greater danger. And, incidentally, losing her chance to find Stefan.

Should she have gone with Matt? But Damon had said they couldn’t get into this Dark Dimension place, not two humans by themselves. He’d said they needed him with them. And Elena still had some doubts as to whether Damon would take the trouble to even drive to Arizona, much less search for Stefan, if she wasn’t with him every step of the way.

Besides, how could Matt have protected her on the dangerous road she and Damon were following? Elena knew that Matt would die for her — and that’s just what he would do, too, if they came up against vampires or werewolves. Die. Leaving Elena facing her enemies alone.

Oh, yes, Elena knew what Damon did each night when she slept in the car. He put some kind of dark spells around her, signing them with his name, sealing them with his seal, and they kept random creatures of the night away from the car until morning.

But their greatest enemies, the kitsune twins, Shinichi and Misao, they had brought with them.

Elena thought about all this before raising her head to look Damon in the eyes. Eyes which, at that moment, reminded her of those of a ragged child chained to a rock.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” he whispered.

Elena shook her head.

“You’re really not afraid of me?”

“Oh, I’m afraid.” Again Elena felt that inward shiver. But she was flying somewhere now, she had set the course, and there was no way that she could stop. Especially not when he looked at her like that. It reminded her of the fierce joy, the almost reluctant pride he always showed when they took down an enemy together.

“I won’t become your Princess of Darkness,” she told him. “And you know that I could never give up Stefan.”

A ghost of his old mocking smile touched his lips. “There’s plenty of time to convince you to my way of thinking on those matters.”

No need, Elena thought. She knew that Stefan would understand.

But even now, when it seemed the whole world was whirling around her, something rose up in Elena to challenge Damon. “You say it’s not Shinichi. I believe you. But is all this because — of what Caroline said?” She could hear the sudden hardness in her own voice.

“Caroline?” Damon blinked as if thrown off his stride.

“She said that before I met Stefan I was just a—” Elena found it impossible to get the last word out. “That I was…promiscuous.”

Damon’s jaw hardened and his cheeks flushed quickly — as if he’d been struck from an unexpected direction. “That girl,” he muttered. “She’s already fixed her destiny and if it were anyone else I might be inclined to take some pity. But she goes…beyond…she’s…beyond…any propriety…” As he spoke his words slowed, and a look of bewilderment clouded his face. He was gazing at Elena and she knew he could see the tears standing in her eyes, because he reached up to brush them away with his fingers. As he did,

however, he stopped dead in midmotion, and, his face suddenly bemused, he brought one of his hands up to his lips, tasting her tears.

Whatever they tasted like to him, he didn’t seem to believe it. He brought the other hand up to his lips as well. Elena was openly staring at him now; he should have been put out of countenance — but he wasn’t. Instead a kaleidoscope of expressions passed over his face, too quickly for her human eyes to catch them all. But she did see astonishment, disbelief, bitterness, more astonishment, and then finally a kind of joyful shock and a look almost as if there were tears in his own eyes.

And then Damon laughed. It was a quick, self-mocking laugh, but it was genuine, euphoric, even.

“Damon,” Elena said, still blinking back tears — it had all happened that fast—“what is wrong