Destiny Rising (Page 58)

"Exactly," Matt said. "So, what if Damon changes again? If we could get him to act differently – well, if you guys could, anyway; he won’t ever listen to me – then we could show the Guardians he’s not a threat."

"There’s a reason the Guardians aren’t worried about Stefan," Bonnie added.

"Maybe," Elena said. She felt her shoulders drooping and automatically stiffened her spine. She wasn’t going to give up, no matter how hopeless the idea of getting Damon to change his behavior seemed. "Maybe I can get him back on track. It didn’t work the first time, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try another approach," she said, willing a little more positivity into her voice. She would just have to keep going, think of a way to get Damon on the side of good again.

"Or we could try locking him up until he changes," Matt suggested half jokingly. "Maybe Bonnie and Alaric can come up with some kind of calming spell. We’ll figure something out."

"That’s the ticket," Meredith said. Elena looked up at her and Meredith gave her a small, rueful smile. "Maybe Damon will change in time to save himself," Meredith said. "And maybe Cristian is telling the truth. If we’re lucky enough, neither of them will have to die." She reached across the table and squeezed Elena’s hand. "We’ll try," she said, and Elena nodded, squeezing back.

"At least we have each other," Elena said, looking around to meet Bonnie’s and Matt’s sympathetic gazes. "No matter what happens, it’ll never be the worst thing, not as long as you guys are by my side."

Chapter 30

Unlike his brother, who had gone so far as to join the Robert E. Lee High School football team in Fell’s Church, Damon did not enjoy playing football. He had never liked team sports, even when he was young and alive. The feeling of being an anonymous part of an a group, just one cog in a great machine designed to get a ball from one end of a field to another, felt like an affront to his dignity. It didn’t help that Matt – Mutt, Damon now had to remind himself to say – loved the sport. He was the star here on the Dalcrest field; Damon had to give him some credit for that.

But now, some five hundred years after he had stopped breathing, he certainly didn’t bother to waste his time watching humans try to get a ball from one side of a field to another.

The crowd, on the other hand . . . he’d found that he liked the crowd at a football game.

Full of energy, they all focused on the same thing and their blood pounded under their skin, flushing their cheeks. He liked the smells of the stadium: sweat and beer and hot dogs and enthusiasm. He liked the cheerleaders’ colorful uniforms and the possibility of a fight breaking out in the stands as passions ran high. He liked the brightness of the lights on the fields during a night game, and the darkness in the corners of the stands. He liked . . .

Damon lost his train of thought as his eyes caught on a girl with pale gold hair, her back to him, sitting alone in the bleachers. Every line of that figure was etched in his memory forever: he’d watched her with passion and devotion, and finally with hatred. Unlike everyone else, he’d never confused her for Elena.

"Katherine," he breathed, cutting through the crowd toward her.

No human would have heard him in the crowd, but Katherine turned her head and smiled, such a sweet smile that Damon’s first instinct to attack her was swept away by a rush of memory. The shy little German girl who had come to his father’s palazzo, so many years ago, back when Damon was a human and Katherine was almost as innocent as one, had smiled at him like that.

So instead of fighting, he slipped onto the seat beside Katherine and just looked at her, keeping his face neutral.

"Damon!" Katherine said, the smile taking on a tinge of malice. "I’ve missed you!"

"Considering that the last time we saw each other you tore my throat out, I can’t say the same," Damon told her dryly.

Katherine made a little face of wry regret. "Oh, you never could let bygones be bygones," she said, pouting. "Come, I’ll apologize. It’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? We live, we die, we suffer, we heal. And here we are." She laid a hand on his arm, watching him with sharp, bright eyes.

Damon pointedly moved her hand away. "What are you doing here, Katherine?" he asked.

"I can’t visit my favorite pair of brothers?" Katherine said, mock-hurt. "You never forget your first love, you know."

Damon met her eyes, keeping his own face carefully blank. "I know," he said, and Katherine froze, seeming uncertain for the first time.

"I . . ." she said, and then her hesitation was gone and she smiled again. "Of course, I owe Klaus something as well," she said carelessly. "After all, he brought me back to life, and thank goodness for that. Death was terrible." She quirked an eyebrow at Damon. "I hear you’d know all about that."

Damon did, and yes, death had been terrible, and for him at least, those first moments coming back had been worse. But he pushed that aside. "How do you intend to repay Klaus?" he asked, keeping his tone light and almost idle. "Tell me what’s going on in that scheming little head of yours, Fraulein."

Katherine’s laugh was still as silvery and bubbly as the mountain stream Damon had compared it to in a sonnet, back when he was young. Back when he was an idiot, he thought fiercely. "A lady has to have her secrets," she said. "But I’ll tell you what I told Stefan, my darling Damon. I’m not angry with your Elena anymore. She’s safe from me."

"I don’t really care, to be honest," Damon said coolly, but he felt a tight knot of worry loosen inside his chest.

"Of course you don’t, dear heart," Katherine said comfortingly, and when she put her hand on Damon’s arm this time, he let it stay. "Now," she said, patting him. "Shall we have a little fun?" She tilted her head toward the football field, toward the cheerleaders shaking their pompoms on the sidelines. Damon felt a soft pulse of Power go out of her, and as he watched, the girl on the far end of the line dropped her pompoms and her smile. With a dreamy, distant expression on her face, she began to move, her body tracing out what Damon recognized as the slow and stately steps of a bassadanza, a dance he hadn’t seen for hundreds of years.