blast was entirely reflexive: What in Hell are you doing? Killing yourself because of what I said? This blade is like a razor!
Elena faltered. “I was just making a nick—”
“You almost made a nick that spurted six feet high!” At least he was able to speak again, despite the constriction of his throat.
Elena was back on stable ground too. “I told you I knew you knew you’d have to try blood before you’ll try to eat. It feels as if it’s flowing down my neck again. This time, let’s not waste it.”
She was only telling the truth. At least she hadn’t seriously hurt herself. He could see that fresh blood was flowing from the new cut she’d so recklessly made. To waste it would be idiotic.
Utterly dispassionate now, Damon took her again by the shoulders. He tilted up her chin to look at her soft, rounded throat. Several new ruby cuts were flowing freely.
Half a millennium of instinct told Damon that just there was nectar and ambrosia.
Just there was sustenance and rest and euphoria. Just here where his lips were as he bent to her a second time…and he had only to taste it — to drink…
Damon reared back, trying to force himself to swallow, determined not to spit. It wasn’t…it wasn’t utterly revolting. He could see how humans, with their degraded senses, could make use of the animal varieties. But this coagulating, mineraltasting stuff wasn’t blood… it had none of the perfumed bouquet, the heady richness, the sweet, velvety, provocative, life-giving, ineffable attributes of blood.
It was like some sort of bad joke. He was tempted to bite Elena, just to skim a canine over the common carotid, making a tiny scratch, so he could taste the little burst that would explode onto his palate, to compare, to make sure that the real stuff wasn’t in there somehow. In fact he was more than tempted; he was doing it.
But no blood was coming.
His mind paused in midthought. He’d made a scratch all right — a scratch like a scuff. It hadn’t even broken the outer layer of Elena’s skin.
Blunt teeth.
Damon found himself pressing on a canine with his tongue, willing it to extend, willing it with all his cramped and frustrated soul to sharpen.
And…nothing. Nothing. But then, he’d spent all day doing the same thing.
Miserably, he let Elena’s head turn back.
“That’s it?” she said shakily. She was trying so hard to be brave with him! Poor doomed white soul with her demon lover. “Damon, you can try again,” she told him.
“You can bite harder.”
“It’s no good,” he snapped. “You’re useless—” Elena almost slid to the floor. He kept her upright while snarling in her ear, “You know what I meant by that. Or would you prefer to be my dinner rather than my princess?”
Elena simply shook her head mutely. She rested in the circle of his arms, her head against his shoulder. Little wonder that she needed rest after all he’d put her through. But as for how she found his shoulder a comfort…well, that was beyond him.
Sage! Damon sent the furious thought out on all the frequencies he could access, just as he had been doing all day. If only he could find Sage, all his problems would be solved. Sage, he demanded, where are you?
No answer. For all Damon knew, Sage had managed to operate the Gateway to the Dark Dimension that was even now standing, powerless and useless, in Mrs.
Flowers’s garden. Stranding Damon here. Sage was always that blindingly fast when he took off.
And why had he taken off?
Imperial Summons? Sometimes Sage got them. From the Fallen One, who lived in the Infernal Court, at the lowest of the Dark Dimensions. And when Sage did get them, he was expected to be in that dimension instantly, in mid-word, in mid-caress, in mid — whatever. So far Sage had always made the deadline, Damon knew that.
He knew it because Sage was still alive.
On the afternoon of Damon’s catastrophic bouquet investigation Sage had left on the mantel a polite note thanking Mrs. Flowers for her hospitality, and even leaving his gigantic dog, Saber, and his falcon, Talon, for the protection of the household — a note doubtlessly pre-prepared. He had gone the way he always did, as unpredictably as the wind, and without saying good-bye. Undoubtedly he’d thought that Damon would find his way out of the problem easily. There were a number of vampires in Fell’s Church. There always were. The ley lines of sheer Power in the ground drew them even in normal times.
The problem was that just now all those vampires were infested with malachparasites controlled by the evil fox-spirits. They couldn’t be lower in the vampire hierarchy.
And of course Stefan was a complete nonstarter. Even if he hadn’t been so weak that trying to change Damon into a vampire would have killed him; even if his anger over Damon’s “stealing his humanity” could be assuaged, he would simply never have agreed, out of his feeling that vampirism was a curse.
Humans never knew about things like the vampire hierarchy because the subjects didn’t concern them — until suddenly, they did, usually because they had just been changed into a vampire themselves. The hierarchy of vampires was strict, from the useless and ignoble to the fanged aristocracy. Old Ones fit in that category, but so did others who were particularly illustrious or powerful.
What Damon wanted was to be made a vampire by the kind of women Sage knew, and he was determined to have Sage find him a vampire lady of quality, one who was really worthy of him.
Other things tormented Damon, who had spent two entire sleepless days pondering them. Was it possible that the white kitsune who had given Stefan the bouquet had engineered a rose that turned the first person to smell it permanently human? That would have been Stefan’s greatest dream.
The white fox had listened to days upon days of Stefan’s ramblings, hadn’t he?
He’d seen Elena weeping over Stefan. He’d seen the two lovebirds together, Elena hand-feeding a dying Stefan her blood through razor wire. Fortune only knew what ideas that fox had gotten into his furry white head when he’d prepared the rose that had “cured” Damon of his “curse.” If it turned out to be an irreversible “cure”…
If Sage turned out to be unreachable…
It suddenly broke into Damon’s thoughts that Elena was cold. It was strange, since the night was warm, but she was shivering violently. She needed his jacket or…
She’s not cold, the small voice somewhere deep inside him said. And she’s not shivering. She’s trembling because of all you’ve put her through.
Elena?
You forgot all about me. You were holding me, but you completely forgot my existence…
If only, he thought bitterly. You’re branded on my soul.
Damon was suddenly furious, but it was different from his anger at kitsune and Sage and the world. It was the kind of anger that made his throat close and his chest feel too tight.
It was an anger that made him pick up Elena’s scalded hand, which was rapidly turning scarlet in patches, and examine it. He knew what he would have done as a vampire: stroked over the burns with a silky cool tongue, generating chemicals to accelerate the healing. And now…there was nothing he could do about it.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Elena said. She was able to stand now.
“You’re lying, princess,” he said. “The insides of your eyebrows are up. That’s pain. And your pulse is jumping—”
“You can sense that without touching me?”
“I can see it, at your temples. Vampires,” with vicious emphasis on what he still was, in essence, “notice things like that. I made you hurt yourself. And I can’t do anything to help. Also”—he shrugged—“you’re a beautiful liar. About the star ball, I mean.”
“You can always sense when I’m lying?”
“Angel,” he said wearily, “it’s easy. You are either the lucky holder of the star ball today…or you know who is.”
Again, Elena’s head drooped in consternation.
