The Return: Shadow Souls

On the other hand, Elena seemed to have lost stature with Damon — or at least, he’d cut his mind off from hers quite deliberately, leaving her with a blank wall to stare at. In the doctor’s waiting room, he waved an imperious hand at Bonnie and Meredith.

“Wait here in this room,” he said — no, he ordered. “Don’t leave it until the doctor comes out. Don’t let anyone in the front door — lock it now, and keep it locked. Good. Elena is coming with me into the kitchen — that’s the back door. I do not want to be disturbed by anyone unless an angry mob is threatening the house with arson, do you understand? Both of you?”

Elena could see Bonnie about to blurt out, “But Elena’s still bleeding!” and Meredith was with her eyes and brows calling council on whether or not they needed to hold an immediate velociraptor sisterhood rebellion. They all knew Plan A for this: Bonnie would throw herself into Damon’s arms, passionately weeping or passionately kissing him, whichever best fit the situation, while Elena and Meredith came at him from the sides and did — well, whatever had to be done.

Elena, with one flash of her own eyes, had categorically nixed this. Damon was angry, yes, but she could sense that it was more with Drohzne than with her. The blood had agitated him, yes, but he was used to controlling himself in bloody situations. And she needed help with her wounds, which had begun to hurt seriously, ever since she’d heard that the woman she had rescued would live, and might even have her baby. But if Damon had something on his mind, she wanted to know what it was — now.

With one last comforting glance at Bonnie, Elena followed Damon through the kitchen door. It had a lock on it. Damon looked at it and opened his mouth; Elena locked it. Then she looked up at her “master.”

He was standing by the kitchen sink, methodically pumping water, with one hand clenched against his forehead. His hair hung over his eyes, getting splashed, getting wet. He didn’t seem to care.

“Damon?” Elena said uncertainly. “Are you…all right?”

He didn’t answer.

Damon? she tried telepathically.

I let you get hurt. I’m fast enough. I could have killed that bastard Drohzne with one blast of Power. But I never imagined you’d get hurt. His telepathic voice was at once filled with the darkest kind of menace imaginable and a strange, almost gentle, calm. As if he were trying to keep all the ferocity and anger locked away from her.

I couldn’t even tell him — I couldn’t even send words to him to tell him what he was. I couldn’t think. He was a telepath; he would have heard me. But I didn’t have any words. I could only scream — in my mind.

Elena felt a bit light-headed — a little more light-headed than she’d already been feeling. Damon was feeling this anguish — for her? He wasn’t angry about her flagrantly breaking rules in front of crowds, maybe breaking their cover? He didn’t mind looking bedraggled?

“Damon,” she said. He’d surprised her into speaking out loud. “It — it — doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault. You would never even have let me do it—”

“But I should have known you wouldn’t ask! I thought you were going to attack him, to jump on his shoulders and throttle him, and I was ready to help you do that, to take him down like two wolves taking down a big buck. But you’re not a sword, Elena. Whatever you think, you’re a shield. I should have known that you would take the next blow yourself. And because of me, you got—” His eye drifted to her cheekbone and he winced.

Then he seemed to get a grip on himself. “The water is cold, but it’s pure. We need to clean those slashes and stop that bleeding now.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any Black Magic around,” Elena said, half jokingly. This was going to hurt.

Damon, however, immediately began opening cupboards. “Here,” he said after checking only three, triumphantly coming up with a half-full bottle of Black Magic. “Lots of doctors keep this as a medicine and anesthetic. Don’t worry; I’ll pay him well.”

“Then I think you should have some, too,” Elena said boldly. “Come on, it’ll do us both good. And it won’t be the first time.”

She knew that the last sentence would clinch it with Damon. It would be a way of getting back something that Shinichi had taken from him.

I’ll get the whole of his memories back from Shinichi somehow, Elena decided, doing her best to screen her thoughts from Damon with white noise. I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t know when I’ll get the chance, but I swear I will. I swear.

Damon had filled two goblets with the rich, heady-smelling wine and was handing one to Elena. “Just sip at first,” he said, helpless but to fall into the role of instructor. “This is a good year.”

Elena sipped, then simply gulped. She was thirsty and Clarion

Loess Black Magic wine didn’t have any alcohol — as such — in it. It certainly didn’t taste like regular wine. It tasted like remarkably refreshing effervescent spring water that was flavored with sweet, deep, velvety grapes.

Damon, she noticed, had forgotten to sip as well, and when he offered her a second glass to match his, she accepted willingly.

His aura sure had calmed down a lot, she thought, as he picked up a wet cloth and began, gently, to clean the cut that almost exactly followed the line of her cheekbone. It had been the one to stop bleeding first, but now he needed to get the blood flowing again, to cleanse it. With two glasses of Black Magic on top of no food since breakfast, Elena found herself relaxing against the back of the chair, letting her head drop back a little, and shutting her eyes. She lost track of time, as he stroked the cut smoothly. And she lost strict control of her aura.

When she opened her eyes it was in response to no sound, no visual stimulus. It was a blaze in Damon’s aura, one of sudden determination.

“Damon?”

He was standing over her. His darkness had flared out behind him like a shadow, tall and wide and almost mesmerizing. Definitely almost frightening.

“Damon?” she said again, uncertainly.

“We’re not doing this right,” he said, and her thoughts flashed at once to her disobedience as a slave, and Bonnie and Meredith’s less serious infractions. But his voice was like dark velvet, and her body responded to it more accurately than her mind. It shivered.

“How…do we do it right?” she asked, and then she made the mistake of opening her eyes. She found that he was stooping over her as she sat on the chair, stroking — no, just touching — her hair so softly that she hadn’t even felt it.

“Vampires know how to take care of wounds,” he said confidently, and his great eyes that seemed to hold their own universe of stars caught and held her. “We can clean them. We can start them bleeding again — or stop them.”

I’ve felt like this before, Elena thought. He’s talked to me like this before, too, even if he doesn’t remember. And I–I was too frightened. But that was before…

Before the motel. The night when he’d told her to run, and she hadn’t. The night that Shinichi had taken, just as he’d taken the first time they’d shared Black Magic together.

“Show me,” whispered Elena. And she knew that something else in her mind was whispering too, whispering different words. Words that she would never have said if she had for a moment thought of herself as a slave.

Whispering, I’m yours…

That was when she felt his mouth lightly brush her mouth.

And then she just thought, Oh! and Oh, Damon…until he moved to gently touch her cheek with his silky soft tongue, manipulating chemicals first to make cleansing blood flow, and finally when the impurities had all been so softly swept away, to stop the blood and to heal the wound. She could feel his Power now, the dark Power that he had used in a thousand fights, to inflict hundreds of mortal wounds, being held tightly in check to concentrate on this simple, homely task, to heal the mark of a whiplash on a girl’s cheek. Elena thought it was like being stroked with the petals of that Black Magic rose, its cool smooth petals gently sweeping away the pain, until she shivered in delight.

And then it stopped. Elena knew that she’d once again had too much wine. But this time she didn’t feel sick.