The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls (10 page)

And as if great, crystal bells were ringing in the distance, she felt his jubilation at her voluntary surrender to the velvet darkness that was overtaking her.

She never felt the teeth that broke her skin and claimed her blood. Before that happened she was seeing stars. And then the universe was swallowed up in Damon’s dark eyes.

T
he next morning Elena got up and dressed quietly in the motel room, grateful for the extra space. Damon was gone, but she had expected that. He usually got his breakfast early while they were on the road, preying on waitresses at all-night truck stops or early-morning diners.

She was going to discuss that with him someday, she thought as she put the packet of ground coffee in the little two-cup percolator the motel provided. It smelled good.

But more urgently, she needed to talk to
someone
about what had happened last night. Stefan was her first choice, of course, but she’d found that out of body experiences weren’t just to be had for the asking. What she needed to do was call Bonnie and Meredith. She
had
to talk to them—it was her right—but now, of all times, she
couldn’t
. Intuitively, she felt that any contact between her and Fell’s Church might be bad.

And Matt had never checked in. Not once. She had no idea where he was on the road, but he had better be in Sedona on time, that was all. He had deliberately cut off all communication between them. Fine. As long as he showed up when he had promised.

But…Elena
still
needed to talk. To express herself.

Of course! She was an idiot! She still had her faithful companion that never said a word, and never kept her waiting. Pouring herself a cup of scalding black coffee on the way, Elena dug her diary out of the bottom of her duffel bag and opened it to a fresh, clean page. There was nothing like a fresh page and an ink pen that ran smoothly to start her writing.

Fifteen minutes later there was a rattle at one window and a minute later Damon was stepping through. He had several paper bags with him and Elena felt unaccountably pleased and homey. She had provided coffee, which was rather good even if it came with dried cream substitute, and Damon had supplied…

“Gasoline,” he said triumphantly, raising his eyebrows significantly at her as he set the bags on the table. “Just in case they try to use plants against us. No, thanks,” he added, seeing she was standing with a full cup of coffee held in his direction. “I had a garage mechanic while I was buying this. I’ll just go wash my hands.”

And he disappeared, walking right past Elena.

Walking right past her, without a glance, even though she was wearing her only clean pair of clothes left: jeans and a subtly colored top that looked white at first glance and only in the brightest light revealed that it was ethereally rainbow-shaded.

Without a single look
, Elena thought, feeling a strange sensation that somehow her life had just lapped itself.

She started to throw the coffee away but then decided she needed it herself and drank it in a few scalding gulps.

Then she went and stood by her diary, reading over the last two or three pages.

“Are you ready to go?” Damon was shouting over the sound of running water in the bathroom.

“Yes—in just a minute.” Elena read the diary pages from the previous entry, and began skimming the one before that.

“We might as well go straight west from here,” Damon shouted. “We can make it in one day. They’ll think it’s a feint for one particular gate and search all the small ones. Meanwhile we’ll go on heading for the Kimon Gate and be days ahead of anyone tracking us. It’s perfect.”

“Uh-huh,” Elena said, reading.

“We ought to be able to meet Mutt tomorrow—maybe even this evening, depending on what kind of trouble they cause.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But first I wanted to ask you: do you think it’s a coincidence that our window is broken? Because I always put wards on them at night and I’m sure—” He passed a hand over his forehead. “I’m sure that I must have done that last night, as well. But something got through and broke the window and got away without a trace. That was why I bought all the the gasoline. If they try something with trees, I’ll blast them all back to Stonehenge.”

And half the innocent residents of the state, Elena thought grimly. But she was in a state of such shock that not much could make an impression on top of it.

“What are you doing now?” Damon was clearly ready to get up and going.

“Getting rid of something I don’t need,” Elena said, and flushed the toilet, watching the torn-up bits of her diary swirl round and round before disappearing.

“I wouldn’t worry about the window, though,” she said, coming back into the bedroom and slipping her shoes on. “And don’t get up for a minute, Damon. I’ve got to talk to you about something.”

“Oh, come on. It can wait until we’re on the road, can’t it?”

“No, it can’t, because we’ve got to pay for that window. You broke it last night, Damon. But you don’t remember doing it, do you?”

Damon stared at her. She could tell that his first temptation was to laugh. His second temptation, to which he gave in, was to think that she was nuts.

“I’m serious,” she said, once he had gotten up and started to pace toward the window with a distinct look of wanting to be a crow flying out of it. “Don’t you dare go anywhere, Damon, because there’s more.”

“More stuff I did that I don’t remember?” Damon lounged against the wall in one of his old, arrogant poses. “Maybe I smashed a few guitars, kept the radio on until four
A.M
.?”

“No. Not necessarily things from—last night,” Elena said, looking away. She couldn’t look at him. “Other things, from other days—”

“Like maybe I’ve been trying to sabotage this trip all along,” he said, his voice laconic. He eyed the ceiling and sighed heavily. “Maybe I’ve done it just to be alone with you—”

“Shut up, Damon!”

Where had that come from? Well, she knew that, of course. From her feelings about last night. The problem was that she also had to get some other things settled—seriously, if he would take them. Come to think of it, that might be a better way to go about this.

“Do you think that your feelings about Stefan—well, have changed at all recently?” Elena asked.

“What?”

“Do you think”—oh, this was so difficult looking into black eyes the color of endless space. Especially when last night they had been full of myriads of stars—“do you think that you’ve come to think of him differently? To honor his wishes more than you used to do?”

Now Damon was openly examining her, just as she was examining him.

“Are you serious?” he said.

“Completely,” she said, and, with a supreme effort, she sent her tears back where they were supposed to go.

“Something did happen last night,” he said. He was looking intently at her face. “Didn’t it?”

“
Something
happened, yes,” Elena said. “It was—it was more of a—” She had to let out her breath, and with that almost everything went.

“Shinichi!
Shinichi, che bastardo! Imbroglione!
That thief! I’m going to kill him
slowly
!” Suddenly Damon was everywhere. He was beside her, his hands on her shoulders; the next minute he was shouting imprecations out the window, then he was back, holding both her hands.

But only one word mattered to Elena. Shinichi. The kitsune with his black, scarlet-tipped hair, who had made them give up so much just for the location of Stefan’s cell.

“
Mascalzone! Maleducato—
” Elena lost track of Damon’s cursing again. So it was true. Last night had been completely stolen from Damon, taken from his mind as simply and completely as the interval when she had used Wings of Redemption and Wings of Purification on him. The latter he had agreed to. But last night—and what other things had the fox been taking?

To cut out an entire evening and night—and this evening and night in particular, implied that…

“He never shut down the connection between my mind and his. He still can reach inside me any time he chooses.” Damon had finally stopped swearing, and stopped moving. He was sitting on the couch opposite the bed with his hands drooping between his knees. He looked singularly forlorn.

“Elena, you have to tell me. What did he take from me last night? Please!” Damon looked as if he might fall on his knees in front of her, without melodrama. “If—if—it was what I think—”

Elena smiled, although tears were still running down her face. “It wasn’t—what
anyone
would think, exactly, I suppose,” she said.

“But—!”

“Let’s just say that this time—was mine,” Elena said. “If he’s stolen anything else from you, or if he tries to do it in the future, then he’s fair game. But this…will be my secret.” Until maybe someday you break into your huge boulder of secrets, she thought.

“Until I tear it out of him, along with his tongue and his tail!” snarled Damon, and it was truly the snarl of an animal. Elena was glad it wasn’t directed at her. “Don’t worry,” Damon added in a voice so chilling that it was almost more frightening than the animal fury. “I
will
find him, no matter where he tries to hide. And I
will
take it from him. I might just take his entire little furry hide off with it. I’ll make you a pair of mittens out of it, how’s that?”

Elena tried to smile and did a pretty good job. She was just coming to terms with what had happened herself, although she didn’t believe for a minute that Damon would really leave her alone on the subject until he forced the memory back out of Shinichi. She realized that on some level she was punishing Damon for what Shinichi had done, and that was wrong. I promise
no one
will know about last night, she told herself. Not until Damon does. I won’t even tell Bonnie and Meredith.

This made things a lot harder on her, and therefore probably more equitable.

As they were cleaning up the debris from Damon’s most recent fit of fury, he suddenly reached up to brush a stray tear from Elena’s cheek.

“Thank you—” Elena began. Then she stopped. Damon was touching his fingers to his lips.

He looked at her, startled and a little disappointed. Then he shrugged. “Still unicorn bait,” he said. “Did I say that last night?”

Elena hesitated, then decided that his words didn’t fall within the crucial time limits of secrecy.

“Yes, you did. But—you won’t give me away, will you?” she added, suddenly anxious. “I’ve promised my friends not to say anything.”

Damon was staring at her. “Why should I say anything about anybody? Unless you’re talking about the little redheaded one?”

“I told you; I’m not saying
anything
. Except that obviously Caroline isn’t a virgin. Well, with all the ruckus about her being pregnant—”

“But you remember,” Damon interjected, “I came to Fell’s Church before Stefan did; I just lurked in the shadows longer. The way you talked—”

“Oh, I know. We liked boys and boys liked us, and we already had reputations. So we just talked any way we felt like talking. Some of it may have been true, but a lot of it you could take two ways—and then of course you know how
boys
talk—”

Damon knew. He nodded.

“Well and so pretty soon everyone was talking about us as if we’d done
everything
with
everyone
. They even wrote stuff about it in the paper and the yearbook and on the bathroom walls. But we had a little poem, too, and sometimes we even wrote it with our signatures on it. How did it go?” Elena cast her mind back a year, two years, more. Then she recited:

As Elena finished, she looked at Damon, suddenly feeling the urgent need to get to Stefan. “We’re almost there,” she said. “Let’s hurry.”

A
rizona was as hot and barren a state as Elena had imagined. She and Damon drove directly to the Juniper Resort, and Elena was depressed, if not surprised, to see that Matt was not checked in.

“It can’t have taken him longer than us to get here,” she said, as soon as they’d been shown up to their rooms. “Unless—oh, God, Damon! Unless Shinichi caught him somehow.”

Damon sat down on a bed and regarded Elena grimly. “I guess I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you this—that the jerk would at least have the courtesy to tell you himself. But I’ve been tracking his aura ever since he left us. It’s been getting steadily farther away—in the direction of Fell’s Church.”

Sometimes, really bad news takes a while to sink in.

“You mean,” Elena said, “that he’s not going to show up here at all?”

“I mean that, as the crow flies, it wasn’t all that far from where we got the cars to Fell’s Church. He went in that direction. And he didn’t come back.”

“But why?” Elena demanded, as if logic could somehow conquer fact. “Why would he go off and leave me? Especially, why would he go to Fell’s Church, where they’re looking for him?”

“As for why he’d leave: I think he got the wrong idea about you and me—or maybe the right idea a little early”—Damon raised his eyebrows at Elena and she threw a pillow at him—“and decided to let us have some privacy. As for why Fell’s Church…” Damon shrugged. “Look, you’ve known the guy longer than I have. But even I can tell he’s the Galahad type. The
parfait gentil
knight,
sans peur et sans reproche
. If I had to say I’d say he went to meet Caroline’s charges.”

“Oh,
no
,” Elena said, going to the door as a knock sounded. “Not after I told him and told him—”

“Oh,
yes
,” Damon said, assuming a slight crouching position. “Even with your sage advice ringing in his ears—”

The door opened. It was Bonnie. Bonnie, with her petite frame, her curly strawberry hair, her wide, soulful brown eyes. Elena, in a state to disbelieve the evidence of her
own
eyes, and still not through with the argument with Damon, shut the door on her.

“Matt’s going to get
lynched
,” Elena almost screamed, vaguely annoyed that some knocking was going on somewhere.

Damon uncrouched. He passed Elena on the way to the door, said, “I think you’d better sit down,” and then sat her down by putting her in a chair and holding her there until she stopped trying to get up again.

Then he opened the door.

This time it was Meredith knocking. Tall and willowy, with her hair falling in dark clouds around her shoulders, Meredith radiated the intention to go on knocking until the door stayed open. Something happened inside Elena, and she found that she could get her mind around more than one subject at once.

It was Meredith. And Bonnie. In Sedona, Arizona!

Elena leaped up from the chair where Damon had put her and flung her arms around Meredith, saying incoherently, “You came! You came! You knew I couldn’t call you, so you came!”

Bonnie edged around the embrace and said to Damon in an undertone, “Is she back to kissing everyone she meets?”

“Unfortunately,” Damon said, “no. But be prepared to be squeezed to death.”

Elena turned on him. “I heard that! Oh, Bonnie! I just can’t believe you two are really
here.
I wanted to talk to you so much!”

Meanwhile, she was hugging Bonnie, and Bonnie was hugging her, and Meredith was hugging both of them. Subtle velociraptor sisterhood signals were being passed from one to another at the same time—an arched eyebrow
here
, a slight nod
there,
a frown and shrug ending with a sigh. Damon didn’t know it, but he had just been accused, tried, acquitted, and restored to duty—with the conclusion that extra surveillance was necessary in the future.

Elena snapped out of it first. “You must have met with Matt—he had to tell you about this place.”

“He did, and then he sold the Prius and we sort of packed on the run and got plane tickets here and we’ve been waiting—we didn’t want to miss you!” Bonnie said breathlessly.

“I don’t suppose that would have been just about two days ago that you bought your tickets here,” Damon asked the ceiling wearily as he lounged with an elbow on Elena’s chair.

“Let me see—” Bonnie began, but Meredith said flatly, “Yes it was. What? It made something happen to you?”

“We were trying to keep things slightly ambiguous for the enemy,” Damon said. “But as it turns out, it probably didn’t matter.”

No, Elena thought, because Shinichi can reach inside your brain whenever he wants and try to take away your memories and all you can do is try to fight him off.

“But it does mean that Elena and I should start off right away.” Damon continued. “I have to do an errand first. Elena should pack. Take as little as you can, just the absolute essentials—but include food for two or three days.”

“You said…starting
now
?” Bonnie breathed, and then she sat down abruptly on the floor.

“It makes sense, if we’ve already lost the element of surprise,” Damon replied.

“I can’t believe you two came to say good-bye to me while Matt watches over the town,” Elena said. “That is so
sweet
!” She smiled radiantly before adding, in her own mind,
And so dumb!

“Well—”

“Well, I still have an errand,” Damon said, waving without turning around. “Let’s say we’ll leave here in half an hour.”

“Stingy,” Bonnie complained, when the door was safely shut behind him. “That might have only given us a few minutes to talk before we start.”

“I can pack in less than five minutes,” Elena said sadly, and then got tangled up in Bonnie’s previous sentence. “‘
Before
we
start
’?”

“I can’t pack just essentials at all,” Meredith was fretting quietly. “I couldn’t store everything on my mobile, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to recharge the batteries. I’ve got a suitcase of stuff on
paper
!”

Elena was looking back and forth at them nervously. “Um, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s supposed to be packing,” she said. “Because I’m the only one going…right?” Another look back and forth.

“As if we would let you set off into some other universe without us!” Bonnie said. “You
need
us!”

“Not another universe; only another dimension,” Meredith said. “But the same principle applies.”

“But—I can’t let you come with me!”

“Of course you can’t. I’m older than you,” Meredith said. “You don’t ‘let’ me do anything. But the truth is that we have a mission. We want to find Shinichi’s or Misao’s star ball if we can. If we could do that we think we could stop most of the stuff going on in Fell’s Church immediately.”

“Star ball?” Elena said blankly, while somewhere in the depths of her mind, an uneasy image stirred.

“I’ll explain later.”

Elena was shaking her head. “But—you left Matt to deal with whatever supernatural stuff is going on? When he’s a fugitive and has to hide from the police?”

“Elena, even the police are scared of Fell’s Church now—and frankly, if they put him in custody in Ridgemont it might be the safest place for him. But they’re not going to do that. He’s working with Mrs. Flowers and they’re
good
together; they’re a solid team.” Meredith stopped to take a breath, and seemed to be considering how to say something.

Bonnie said it for her in a very small voice. “And I was
no
good, Elena. I’d started—well, I started to get hysterical and see and hear things that weren’t there—or at least to imagine them and maybe even make them come true. I was scaring myself out of my mind, and I think I actually was putting people in danger. Matt’s too practical to do that.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I know the Dark Dimension is pretty bad, but at least I won’t be able to put houses full of innocent people in danger.”

Meredith nodded. “It was all…going bad with Bonnie there. Even if we hadn’t wanted to come with you I would have had to get her out. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I believe that the demons there were after her. And that since Stefan’s gone, Damon may be the only one who can keep them away. Or maybe you can help her, Elena?”

Meredith…overly dramatic? But Elena could see the fine tremors running under Meredith’s skin, and the light sheen of perspiration on Bonnie’s forehead that was dampening her curls.

Meredith touched Elena’s wrist. “We haven’t just gone AWOL or anything. Fell’s Church is a war zone now; it’s true, but we didn’t leave Matt without allies. Like Dr. Alpert—she’s logical—she’s the best country doctor there is—and she might even convince somebody that Shinichi and the malach are real. But besides all that, the parents have taken over. Parents and psychiatrists and newshounds. And they make it almost impossible to work openly anyway. Matt’s not at any disadvantage.”

“But—in just a week—”

“Take a look at this week’s Sunday paper.”

Elena took the
Ridgemont Times
from Meredith. It was the biggest paper in the area of Fell’s Church. A banner headline read:

POSSESSION IN THE 21ST CENTURY?

Under the headline were many lines of gray print, but what really caught the eye was a photo of a three-way fight between girls, all of whom seemed to be undergoing seizures or contortions impossible to the human body. The expressions of two of the girls were simply those of pain and terror, but it was the third girl who froze the blood in Elena’s veins. Her body was humped so that her face was upside down, and she was looking directly at the camera with her lips skinned back from her teeth. Her eyes—there was just no other way to put it—were demonic. They weren’t rolled back in her head or malformed or anything. They weren’t glowing eerily red. It was all in the expression. Elena had never seen eyes that made her sick to her stomach before.

Bonnie said quietly, “Do you ever sort of slip and get that feeling like, ‘Oh, whoops, there goes the whole universe’?”

“Constantly, since meeting Stefan,” Meredith said. “No offense meant, Elena. But the point is that all this has happened in just a couple of days; from the minute the adults who knew that there was something
really
going on got together.”

Meredith sighed and ran fingers with perfectly manicured nails through her hair before continuing. “Those girls are what Bonnie calls possessed in the modern sense. Or maybe they’re possessed by Misao—female kitsune are supposed to do that. But if we could just find these things called star balls—or even one—we could force
them
to clean all this up.”

Elena put the newspaper down so she wouldn’t have to see those upside-down eyes staring into hers. “And while all this is happening, what is your boyfriend doing during the crisis?”

For the first time, Meredith looked genuinely relieved. “He may be on his way as we speak. I’ve written to him about everything that’s happening, and he was actually the one who said to get Bonnie out.” She flashed a glance of apology at Bonnie, who simply lifted her hands and face to the heavens. “And as soon as he’s finished with his work on some island called Shinmei no Uma, he’s coming to Fell’s Church. This kind of thing is Alaric’s specialty, and he doesn’t get spooked easily. So even if we’re gone for
weeks
, Matt will have a backup.”

Elena threw her own hands up in a gesture similar to Bonnie’s. “There’s just one thing you’d better know before we start.
I
can’t help Bonnie. If you’re counting on me to do any of the things I did when we fought Shinichi and Misao last time—well, I can’t. I’ve tried over and over, as hard as I could, to do all my wings attacks. But nothing has ever come of it.”

Meredith said slowly, “Well, then, maybe Damon knows something—”

“Maybe he does, but, Meredith, don’t push him right now. Not right this minute. What he knows for certain is that Shinichi can reach in and take his memories—and who knows, maybe even possess him again—”

“That lying kitsune!” Bonnie spat out, sounding almost proprietory. As if, Elena thought, Damon was her boyfriend. “Shinichi
swore
he wouldn’t—”

“And he swore he’d leave Fell’s Church alone, too. The only reason I have any faith at all in the clues that Misao gave me about the fox key, is that she was taunting me. She never thought we’d do a deal, and so she wasn’t trying to lie or be too clever—I
think
.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here with you, to get Stefan out,” Bonnie said. “And if we’re lucky, to find the star balls that will let us control Shinichi. Right?”

“Right!” Elena said fervently.

“Right,” Meredith said solemnly.

Bonnie nodded. “Velociraptor sisterhood forever!”

They laid their right hands over one another’s quickly, forming a three-spoked wheel. It reminded Elena of the days when there were four spokes.

“And what about Caroline?” she asked.

Bonnie and Meredith consulted each other with their eyes. Then Meredith shook her head. “You don’t want to know.
Really
,” she said.

“I can take it.
Really
,” Elena said in almost a whisper. “Meredith, I’ve been dead, remember? Twice.”

Meredith was still shaking her head. “If you can’t look at that picture, you shouldn’t hear about Caroline. We went to see her twice—”

“
You
went to see her twice,” Bonnie interrupted. “The second time I fainted and you left me by the door.”

“And I realized I could have lost you for good, and I’ve apologized—” Meredith broke off when Bonnie put a hand on her arm and gave her a little push.

“Anyway, it wasn’t exactly a visit,” Meredith said. “I went running into Caroline’s room ahead of her mom and found her inside her nest—never mind what that is—eating something. When she saw me, she just giggled and went on eating.”