Destiny Rising (Page 52)

Still, that glimpse of color gave her a bit of hope. Damon wasn’t lost yet. He couldn’t be.

Impulsively, she followed Damon to the other side of the table and laid a hand on his arm. His muscles twitched once, as if about to pull away, then grew still. "Please, Damon," she said. "I know this isn’t you. You’re not a killer, not anymore. I love you. Please."

Damon placed his cue carefully on the table and glared at her, his body tense and strained. "You love me?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice. "You don’t even know me, princess. I’m not your lapdog – I’m a vampire. Do you know what that means?" Elena involuntarily stepped back, alarmed by the anger in Damon’s eyes, and his lips tipped up in a tiny smirk. "Jimmy," he called over his shoulder, and the guy he’d been playing pool with came over to them, still holding his cue.

"Yeah?" he said hesitantly, and Elena heard it in his tone: he was afraid of Damon. Glancing around, she could see the bartender hurriedly averting his eyes from them, as if he, too, was afraid. The two men from the table in the corner had slipped out while she was talking to Damon.

"Give me your cue," Damon said, and Jimmy handed it to him. Damon snapped it in two as easily as Elena herself would have torn a piece of paper and looked speculatively at the pieces in his hands. From one half extended long, jagged splinters of wood, and Damon handed that half back to Jimmy.

"Now take this and stab yourself with it," he said calmly. "Keep going until I tell you to stop."

"Damon, no! Don’t do it," she told Jimmy. "Fight it."

Jimmy, staring at the cue, hesitated, and Elena felt the sudden snap of Power as Jimmy’s face went distant and dreamy, and he raised the pool cue and jabbed it hard at his own stomach. As the cue made contact, he gave a harsh exhalation of breath, but his face remained unconcerned, his mind disconnected from what his body was doing. Jimmy pulled the cue back again, and Elena could see a long bloody streak where one of the splinters had gone into his side.

"Stop it!" Elena shouted.

"Harder," Damon ordered, "and faster." Jimmy obeyed, the cue snapping back and forth roughly. Blood was running down his shirt now. Damon watched with a small smile, his eyes bright. "Being a vampire," he said to Elena, "means that I like being in control. I like blood, too. And I don’t have to care about human pain, any more than you do about the pain of the insect you tread on as you walk down the street."

"Please stop it," Elena said, horrified. "Don’t hurt him any more."

Damon’s smile widened, and he looked away from Jimmy, turning his whole attention to Elena. Jimmy’s arms kept jerking back and forth, though, thrusting the pool cue into himself even without Damon’s focus on him. "I’ll only stop if you leave right now, princess," Damon said.

Elena blinked away tears. She was stronger than he thought. She would prove it. "Fine," she said. "I’ll go. But Damon" – and here she dared to touch his arm again, a quick soft touch – "what you said when I came in is true. I never give up." Something seemed to shift in Damon when Elena touched him, the slightest softening of the grim lines of his face, and Elena almost felt like she’d gotten through to him. But a second later he was as cold and distant as ever.

Elena wheeled quickly and walked away, head high. Behind her, she heard Damon speak sharply and Jimmy’s grunts of pain cease.

Had she imagined the momentary change in Damon’s expression? Please, please let that have been real, Elena pleaded silently. Surely there was something left in that angry stranger behind her, something of the Damon she loved. She couldn’t lose him. But as she felt a wrenching in her chest, she wondered if she already had.

Chapter 27

The late afternoon sky was deep blue and golden with sunlight, and Stefan was grateful for the shade of the trees. What kind of vampire provokes a confrontation in the daylight? he could imagine Damon asking wryly before answering the question himself: a very stupid one, Stefan.

The sun was making him slightly weary like it always did, his consciousness of its light a constant low, dull throbbing like a headache, despite the ring that protected him. Klaus was older than Stefan, and stronger. The sun wouldn’t bother him as much.

But Stefan didn’t want to face Klaus in the darkness. The hair on the back of his neck prickled uneasily at the very idea: after so long as a vampire, now Stefan himself was afraid of a monster in the dark.

He stopped when he reached the clearing in the woods where they’d fought Klaus’s family. Blood was the best way to attract any vampire’s attention. Stefan let his canines lengthen, then, wincing, bit sharply into his own wrist.

"Klaus!" he shouted, turning in a semicircle, his arm extended so that the blood spattered the ground around him. "Klaus!"

Stefan stopped and listened to the noises of the woods: the light crackle of an animal moving through the undergrowth, the creak of tree branches in the wind. A long way away, nearer to campus, he could hear a couple hiking through the woods, laughing. No sign of Klaus. Taking a deep breath, Stefan slumped back against a tree trunk, cradling his bleeding arm protectively to his chest. He thought of Elena’s warmth, of her gentle kiss. He had to save her.

From behind him came a deep, amused voice: "Hello, Salvatore."

Stefan spun around, stumbling in alarm. How had he not heard the older vampire arrive?

Klaus’s threadbare raincoat was dirty, but he wore it as if it were a royal robe. Every time he saw Klaus, Stefan was struck by how tall he was, how clear and sharp his eyes were. Klaus smiled and closed the distance between them again, standing too close. He smelled nauseatingly of blood and smoke and something subtly rotting.