“Sleep,” Damon said then in a whisper and before Elena could think of a sensible rejoinder, she was thinking nonsense, and then she was dreaming.
* * *
Damon felt Elena’s body go pliant, heard her breathing become softly regular, and then relaxed himself.
Thank badness he hadn’t been obliged to ingest any of that coffee or cocoa—he had a strong stomach, and he could eat if necessary, but Black Magic was the only drink that vampires were really able to enjoy besides sweet, dynamic, crimson blood. Damon turned his head slightly to view the packed red cells that were going into Elena’s IV along with the other products. He was glad he’d brought the Black Magic, but he was going to need to feed sometime today and it was best to get it over with while none of Elena’s friends and family were around. Nurses came in regularly to monitor Elena’s vital signs. Damon decided that the next one with an interesting aura would suddenly become a donor.
Now, then: what else needed thinking about? Bonnie. Something fairly desperate was wrong with Bonnie. Damn it! Who was interfering with Damon’s sweet-singing little redbird? An enemy, obviously, and one who knew how to take advantage of a power vacuum fast, so a spy or someone who employed spies.
Damon had to find the culprit, the person who had slipped into the area of the hospital and Influenced or otherwise affected Bonnie. And when he found them . . . ! A faint smile flickered across Damon’s face, or at least something which involved baring his teeth.
He would make such an example of the bastard responsible that news of it would filter down to the gutters of the Dark Dimension. When he envisioned how young and slight and vulnerable Bonnie was just now and then mused on the pure evil of whoever had invaded her mind, he went hot and cold by turns, and phrases like “boiling in crude oil” skittered through his thoughts.
But Bonnie wasn’t the only thing keeping him awake. Elena was, too. Elena! He was preternaturally aware of every inch of Elena’s being. He was suffused in Elena’s aura; his skin was tingling with exultation at her touch. He could feel the delicious warmth of the hand he held, sustaining him. Childishness? Bliss.
Elena loved him, and with none of the guilt or fear that she had felt when she had kissed him before this. None of the guilt, because Stefan was not constantly prowling at the back of her mind. None of the fear, because Stefan hadn’t already set the stage by telling her how much of a villain Damon was.
Still, Damon would give a good deal to have a few choice words with Stefan right this minute. His little brother had set him up, plain and simple. He had said nothing about taking all memory of the supernatural away from Elena et al. He hadn’t even mentioned that he was convincing them, every one, that vampires, witches, and werewolves were creatures of fantasy.
Bonnie was now no longer a witch in her own mind, and therefore couldn’t raise her psychic defenses. Of course that might change, since Stefan couldn’t take Bonnie’s powers away from her. Meredith no longer realized that she had been secretly raised to be a hunter-slayer—and Damon would bet anything that Stefan had stolen her ironwood fighting stave from her room, along with anything else that might spark a memory.
He wondered about Caroline. He strongly doubted that Stefan would be so cruel as to take the knowledge that the girl was a werewolf away from her. If he had, the next time she began to sprout a pelt and tail, she would have screaming hysterics. More likely, he had convinced her that none of her acquaintances were supernatural—but had he crippled her ability to sense auras? Maybe. He’d been in a desperate mood.
Oh, what did it matter? Damon was going to be with Elena, and that was what was important. A whole host of “firsts” were ahead of him and Elena. They hadn’t even had their first proper kiss. She would wear his promise ring, and some evening in the near future, when she was particularly brave and ready for the knowledge, he would explain to her just what he truly was.
Then he wouldn’t need to keep pretending to be human. Once Elena knew, he could tell the others. They could make new memories of him as a vampire . . . not just as Stefan’s wicked brother, but as whatever he chose to be.
Damon smiled faintly. Maybe I’ll tell them that I have a wicked brother. That will mess things up nicely for St. Stefan.
Damon let his head rest on the hospital bed, which gave h
im a charming view of Elena’s right ear and her streaming sunlight-colored hair. Ears, he decided, could be quite deliciously kicky.
Absentmindedly, Damon set wards around the room in all directions—above and below, as well as around—and then he added a tripwire for the arrival of the next nurse. Then he shut his eyes and gave himself over to appreciation of the beauty of Elena’s complex and mysterious aura.
In minutes he was asleep.
* * *
Damon dreamed. He dreamed of being dead.
And he dreamed of all the little mistakes, the blunders he’d made, that had added up to the colossal error of getting him killed.
He dreamed that he and his little brother were taking Elena and Bonnie to the Nether World: the uncharted realm as far beneath the Dark Dimension as the Dark Dimension lay beneath the earth.
That had probably been the first mistake. Taking two humans—even humans with high psychic potential—to the Nether World was a bad idea; it demanded too much of fragile human minds and bodies.
After a nerve-shredding journey, they had reached their goal: the moon that was home to the largest magical star ball in the world.
Star balls were spherical containers. One the size of an orange could hold the Power of an Original vampire or demi-goddess/witch inside it. But, because they held such power, they also tended to be protected. Viciously, vigilantly protected.
And yet Damon had erred again: not communicating with his troops. He hadn’t explained this clearly enough to the human girls. Stefan took the forces that would be ranged against them as a matter of course, but Damon ought to have drawn a map of the danger for Elena and Bonnie.
They had found the star ball. It was enormous, too big for Damon’s arms to encircle, and shining with dazzling Power. It was lodged in the first fork of the Great Tree . . . the Tree whose canopy-like branches covered almost the entire surface of this small moon. Encircling the Tree’s great trunk was a space where the ground was different from what they had been walking on.
And here came the really serious blunder. Damon should have, in no uncertain terms, told Elena and Bonnie to keep back from this strange soil. At this most crucial time, he’d failed to function as a leader: he hadn’t given the single order necessary to protect his troops.
Instead, he and Stefan—half-blinded by the coruscating brilliance of the star ball—had begun automatically analyzing the desolate circle of sand: sending psychic probes against it, trying to evaluate what it was meant to do, and how the Tree intended to defend itself from any intruder that set foot on it.