“Do you mean that?”
“Do I habitually say things I don’t mean?”
She was waiting for some kind of apology, some words spoken as simply and sincerely as she had been speaking to him. Instead, with the utmost gentleness, and without glancing around to see if anyone was watching them, Damon cupped Elena’s scarf-bound cheeks with his bare hands, pulled the scarf just below her lips with his thumbs, and kissed her softly. Softly — but not briefly, and something in Elena kept whispering to her that of course she had heard his call from the moment she first saw him, first felt his aura call to her. She hadn’t known that it was an aura then; she hadn’t believed in auras. She hadn’t believed in vampires. She’d been an ignorant little idiot…
Stefan! A voice like crystal sounded off two notes in her brain, and suddenly she was able to step back from Damon’s embrace and look at the palanquin again. No sign of motion there.
“I have to go back,” she told Damon brusquely. “I have to know what’s going on with Bonnie.”
“You mean to see what’s going on with Stefan,” he said. “You needn’t worry. He’s fast asleep, and so is our little girl.”
Elena tensed. “You Influenced them? Without seeing them?” It was a wild guess, but one side of Damon’s mouth crooked up, as if congratulating her. “How dare you?” she said.
“To be honest, I don’t know how I dare.” Damon leaned in close again, but Elena turned her cheek, thinking, Stefan!
He can’t hear you. He’s dreaming about you.
Elena was surprised at her own reaction to that. Damon had caught and held her eyes again. Something inside her melted in the intensity of his steady black gaze.
“I’m not Influencing you; I give you my word”—in a whisper. “But you can’t deny what happened between us the last time we were in this dimension.” His breath was on her lips now — and Elena didn’t turn aside. She trembled.
“Please, Damon. Show some respect. I’m — oh, God! God!”
“Elena? Elena! Elena! What’s wrong?”
Hurts — that was all Elena could think. A terrible agony had lanced through her chest on the left side. As if she’d been stabbed through the heart. She stifled a scream.
Elena, talk to me! If you can’t send your thoughts, speak!
Through numb lips, Elena said, “Pain — heart attack—”
“You’re too young and healthy for that. Let me check.” Damon was unfastening her top. Elena let him. She could do nothing for herself, except gasp, “Oh God! It hurts!”
Damon’s warm hand was inside her leather and furs. His hand came to rest slightly to the left of center, with only her camisole between his probing fingers and her flesh. Elena, I’m going to take the pain away now. Trust me.
Even as he spoke, the stabbing anguish drained. Damon’s eyes narrowed, and Elena knew he’d taken the pain into himself, to analyze it.
“It’s not a heart attack,” he said a moment later. “I’m as sure as I can be. It’s more as if — well, as if you’d been staked. But that’s silly. Hmm…it’s gone now.”
For Elena it had been gone since he’d taken it, protecting her. “Thank you,” she breathed, suddenly realizing that she had been clinging to him, in utter terror that she was dying. Or that he was.
He gave her a rare, full, genuine smile. “We’re both fine. It must have been a cramp.” His gaze had dropped to her lips. “Do I deserve a kiss?”
“I…” He had comforted her; he had taken the terrible pain away. How could she sanely say no? “Just one,” she whispered.
A hand under her chin. Her eyelids wanted to melt closed, but she widened her eyes and wouldn’t let them.
As his lips touched hers, his arm around her…changed somehow. It was no longer trying to restrain her. It seemed to be wanting to comfort her. And when his other hand stroked her hair softly at the very ends, crushing the waves gently, and just as gently smoothing them out, Elena felt a rush of shivering warmth.
Damon wasn’t deliberately trying to batter her with the strength of his aura, which at the moment was filled with nothing but his feelings for her. The simple fact, though, was that although he was a new-made vampire, he was exceptionally strong and he knew all the tricks of an experienced one. Elena felt as if she had stepped into clear calm water, only to find herself caught in a fierce undertow that there was no resisting; no bargaining with; and certainly no possibility of reaching by reason. She had no choice but to surrender to it and hope that it was taking her, eventually, to a place she could breathe and live. Otherwise, she would drown…but even that possibility didn’t seem so dire, now that she could see the tide was made of a chain of little moments strung like pearls. In each one of them was a tiny sparkle of admiration that Damon had for her: pearls for her courage, for her intelligence, for her beauty. It seemed that there was no slightest motion she had made, no briefest word that she had said, that he had not noticed and locked in his heart as a treasure.
But we were fighting then, Elena thought to him, seeing in the undertow a sparkling moment when she had cursed him.
Yes — I said you were magnificent when you were angry. Like a goddess come to put the world to rights.
I do want to put the world to rights. No, two worlds: the Dark Dimension and my home. But I’m no goddess.
Suddenly she felt that keenly. She was a schoolgirl who hadn’t even finished high school — and it was in part because of the person who was kissing her wildly now.
Oh, think of what you’re learning on this trip! Things that no one else in the universe knows, Damon said in her mind. Now pay attention to what you’re doing!
Elena paid attention, not because Damon wanted her to, but because she couldn’t help it. Her eyes drifted shut. She realized that the way to calm this maelstrom was to become part of it, neither giving in nor forcing Damon to, but by meeting the passion in the undertow with what was inside her own heart.
As soon as she did, the undertow became wind, and she was flying and not drowning. No, it was better than flying, better than dancing, it was what her heart always yearned for. A high still place where nothing could ever harm them or disturb them.
And then, when she was most vulnerable, the pain came again, drilling through her chest, a little to the left. This time Damon was so mindlocked with her that he felt it from the beginning. And she could hear clearly a phrase in Damon’s mind: staking is just as effective on humans as it is on vampires, and his sudden fear that this was a precognition.
In the swaying little room, Stefan was asleep holding Bonnie by his side, with the sparkling of Power engulfing them both. Elena, who had a good grip on the palanquin’s ladder, vaulted the rest of the way inside. She put a hand on Stefan’s shoulder and he woke.
“What is this? Is something wrong with her?” she asked, with a third question:
“Do you know?” buzzing around in her head.
But when Stefan lifted his green eyes to her, they were simply worried. Clearly he was not invading her thoughts. He was focused entirely on Bonnie. Thank God, he’s such a gentleman, Elena thought for the thousandth time.
“I’m trying to get her warm,” Stefan said. “After she came out of trance, she was shivering. Then she stopped shivering, but when I took her hand, it was colder than ever. Now I’ve put an envelope of heat around her. I guess I dozed off for a little while after that.” He added, “Did you find anything?”
I found Damon’s lips, Elena thought wildly, but she forced herself to blank out the memory. “We’re looking for Lake Silver Death Mirror,” she said. “But all I could see was white. The snow and the fog seem to go on forever.”
Stefan nodded. Then he carefully went through the motions of plucking apart two layers of air and slid in a hand to touch Bonnie’s cheek. “She’s warming up,” he said, and smiled.
It took a long while before Stefan was satisfied that Bonnie was warm. When he did, he gently unwrapped her from the heated air that had formed the “envelope” and lay her on one bench, coming to sit with Elena on the other. Eventually Bonnie sighed, blinked, and opened her eyes.
“I had a nap,” she said, obviously aware that she had lost time.
“Not exactly,” Elena said, keeping her voice gentle and reassuring. Let’s see, how did Meredith do this? “You went into trance, Bonnie. Do you remember anything about it?”
Bonnie said, “About the treasure?”
“About what the treasure is for,” Stefan said quietly.
“No…No…”
“You said that this was the Last Midnight,” Elena said. As far as she could remember, Meredith was pretty direct. “But we think you were talking about back at home,” she added hastily, seeing terror leap in Bonnie’s eyes.
“The Last Midnight — and no morning afterward,” Bonnie said. “I think — I heard someone saying those words. But no more.”