Part 31 (2/2)
For instance, there was something she was supposed to be doing-or not doing-right now. But she couldn't make the thought come to the surface of her mind. It was too heavy. Everything was too heavy. She couldn't even open her eyes.
A sc.r.a.ping sound. Someone was near, on a chair. Then there was liquid coolness on her lips, just a few drops, but it stimulated her to try to hold the cup herself and drink. Oh, delicious water. It tasted better than anything she'd ever had before. Her shoulder hurt terribly, but it was worth the pain to drink and drink-no! The gla.s.s was being pulled away. She tried, feebly, to hang onto it, but it was pulled out of her grasp.
Then she tried to touch her shoulder, but those gentle, invisible hands wouldn't let her, not until they had washed her own hands with warm water. After that they packed the ice packs around her and wrapped her like a mummy in a sheet. The cold numbed her immediate feelings of pain, although there were other pains, deep inside....
It was all too difficult to think about. As the hands removed the ice packs again-she was s.h.i.+vering with cold now-she let herself lapse back into sleep.
Damon treated Elena and dozed, treated and dozed. In the perfectly appointed bathroom, he found a tortoisesh.e.l.l hairbrush and a comb. They looked serviceable. And one thing he knew for certain: Elena's hair had never looked like this in her life-or unlife. He tried to stroke the brush gently through her hair and found that the tangles were much harder to get out than he'd imagined. When he pulled harder on the brush, she moved and murmured in that strange sleep-language of hers.
And, finally, it was the hair brus.h.i.+ng that did it. Elena, without opening her eyes, reached up and took the brush from his hand and then, when it hit a major tangle, frowned, reached up to grasp a fistful and try to get the brush through it. Damon sympathized. He'd had long hair at times during his centuries of existence-when it couldn't be helped, and though his hair was as naturally fine as Elena's, he knew the frustrated feeling that you were ripping your hair out by the roots. Damon was about to take the brush from her again, when she opened her eyes.
”What-?” she said, and then she blinked.
Damon had tensed, ready to push her into mental blackout if it were necessary. But she didn't even try to hit him with the brush.
”What...happened?” What Elena was feeling was clear: she didn't like this. She was unhappy about another awakening with only a vague idea of what had been going on when she slept.
As Damon, poised for fight or flight, watched her face, she slowly began to put together what had happened to her.
”Damon?” She gave him that no-holds-barred lapis gaze.
It said,Am I being tortured, or treated, or are you just an interested bystander, enjoying somebody's pain while drinking a gla.s.s of cognac?
”Theycook with cognac, princess. Theydrink Armagnac. And I don't drink...either,” Damon said. He spoiled the entire effect by adding hastily, ”That's not a threat. I swear to you, Stefan left me as your bodyguard.”
This was technically true if you considered the facts: Stefan had yelled, ”You'd better make sure nothing happens to Elena, you double-dealing b.a.s.t.a.r.d, or I'm going to find a way to come back and rip off your-” The rest had been m.u.f.fled in the fight, but Damon had gotten the gist. And now he took the a.s.signment seriously.”Nothing else will hurt you, if you'll allow me to watch over you,” he added, now getting into the area of the fict.i.tious, since whoever had frightened or pulled her out of the car had obviously been around when he had. But nothing would get her in the future, he swore to himself. However he had blundered this last time, from now on there would be no further attacks on Elena Gilbert-or someone would die.
He wasn't trying to spy on her thoughts, but as she stared into his eyes for a long moment, they projected with total clarity-and utter mystery-the words: I knew I was right. It was someone else all along. And he knew that under her pain, Elena felt a huge sense of satisfaction.
”I hurt my shoulder.” She reached up with her right hand to grip it, but Damon stopped her.
”You dislocated it,” Damon said. ”It's going to hurt for a while.”
”And my ankle...but someone...I remember being in the woods and looking up and it wasyou . I couldn't breathe but you tore the creepers off me and you picked me up in your arms....” She looked at Damon in bewilderment. ”Yousaved me?”
The statement had the sound of a question, but it wasn't. She was wondering over something that seemed impossible. Then she began to cry.
A baby's first conscious tear of loneliness. The emotions of an unfaithful wife when her husband catches her with her lover...
And maybe a young girl's weeping when she believes that her enemy has saved her from death.
Damon ground his teeth in frustration. The thought that s.h.i.+nichi might be watching this, feeling Elena's emotions, savoring them...it was impossible to bear. s.h.i.+nichi would give Elena her memory back again, he was certain of that. But at a time and place most amusing to him.
”It was my job,” he said tightly. ”I'd sworn to do it.”
”Thank you,” Elena gasped between her sobs. ”No, please-don't turn away. I really mean it. Ohhh-is there a box of tissues-or anythingdry ?” Her body was heaving with sobs again.
The perfect bathroom had a box of tissues. Damon brought it back to Elena.
He looked away as she used them, blowing her nose again and again as she sobbed. Here there was no enchanted and enchanting spirit, no grim and sophisticated fighter of evil, no dangerous coquette. There was only a girl broken by pain, gasping like a wounded doe, sobbing like a child.
And undoubtedly his brother would know what to say to her. He, Damon, had no idea of what to do-except that he knew he was going to kill for this. s.h.i.+nichi would learn what it meant to tangle with Damon when Elena was involved.
”How do you feel?” he asked brusquely. No one would be able to say he'd taken advantage of this-no one would be able to say he'd hurt her only to...to make use of her.
”You gave me your blood,” Elena said wonderingly, and as he looked quickly down at his rolled-up sleeve, she added, ”No-it's just a feeling I know. When I first-came back to Earth, after the spirit life. Stefan would give me his blood, and eventually I would feel...this way. Very warm. A little uncomfortable.”
He swung around and looked at her. ”Uncomfortable?”
”Too full-here.” She touched her neck. ”We think it's a symbiotic thing...for vampires and humans who live together.”
”For a vampire Changing a human into a vampire, you mean,” he said sharply.
”Except I didn't Change when I was part spirit still. But then-I turned back human.” She hiccupped, tried a pathetic smile, and used the brush again. ”I'd ask you to look at me and see that I haven't Changed, but...” She made a helpless little motion.
Damon sat and imagined what it would have been like, taking care of the spirit-child Elena. It was a tantalizing idea.
He said bluntly, ”When you said you were a little uncomfortable before, did you mean thatI should take some of your blood?”
She half glanced away, then looked back. ”I told you I was grateful. I told you that I felt...too full. I don't know howelse to thank you.”
Damon had had centuries of training in discipline or he would have thrown something across the room. It was a situation to make you laugh...or weep. She was offering herself to him as thanks for rescue from suffering that he should have saved her from, and had failed.
But he was no hero. He wasn't like St. Stefan, to refuse this ultimate of prizes; whatever condition she was in.
He wanted her.
30.
Matt had given up on clues. As far as he could tell, something had caused Elena to bypa.s.s the Dunstan house and barn completely, hopping on and on until she got to a squashed and torn bed of thin creeping vines. They hung limp from Matt's fingers, but they reminded him, disquietingly, of the feeling of the bug's tentacles around his neck.
And from there on there was no sign of human movement. It was as if a UFO had beamed her up.
Now, from making forays to all sides until he had lost the patch of creepers, he was lost in the deep Wood. If he wanted to, he could fantasize that all sorts of noises were all around him. If he wanted to, he could imagine that the light of the flashlight was no longer as bright as it had been, that it had a sickly yellowish tinge....
All this time, while searching, he had kept as quiet as possible, realizing that he might be trying to sneak up on something that didn't want to be snuck up on. But now, somewhere inside him, something was swelling up and his ability to stop it was weakening by the second.
When it burst out of him, it startled him as much as it might have any possible listeners.
”Ellleeeeeeeeeeeeeeenaaaa!”
From the time when he'd been a child, Matt had been taught to say his nighttime prayers. He didn't know much else about church, but he did have a deep and sincere feeling that there was Someone or Something out there that looked after people. That somewhere and somehow it all made sense, and that there were reasons for everything.
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