Instead, he concentrated on sending all his shielding to the right side of his chin. He figured he could take a punch, even from the New Improved Stefan without losing his hold on the girl-even if Stefan broke his jaw.

Stefan's fist stopped a few millimeters away from Damon's face.

There was a pause; the brothers looked at each other across a distance of two feet.

Stefan took a deep breath and sat back. "Now will you admit it?"

Damon was genuinely puzzled. "Admit what?"

"That you care something for them. Enough to take a punch rather than letting Bonnie go underwater."

Damon stared, then began to laugh and found he couldn't stop.

Stefan stared back. Then he shut his eyes and half-turned away in pain.

Damon still had a case of the giggles. "And you th-thought that I cuh-cared about one little hu-hu-hu..."

"Why did you do it, then?" Stefan said tiredly.

"Whu-whu-whim. I t-told y-yuh-you. Just wuh-huhhuhuha..." Damon collapsed, punch-drunk from lack of food and from too many varying emotions.

Bonnie's head went underwater.

Both vampires dived for her, head b.u.t.ting each other as they collided over the center of the tub. Both fell back briefly, dazed.

Damon wasn't laughing anymore. If anything, he was fighting like a tiger to get the girl out of the water. Stefan was, too, and with his newly sharpened reflexes, he looked close to winning. But it was as Damon had thought just an hour or so earlier-neither one of them even considered cooperating to get the girl. Each was trying to do it alone, and each was impeding the other.

"Get out of my way, brat," Damon snarled, almost hissing in menace.

"You don't give a d.a.m.n about her.You get out of the way-"

There was something like a geyser and Bonnie exploded upward from the water on her own. She spat out a mouthful and cried, "What's going on?" in tones to melt a heart of stone.

Which they did. Contemplating his bedraggled little bird, who was clutching the towel to her instinctively, with her fiery hair plastered to her head and her big brown eyes blinking between strands, something swelled in Damon. Stefan had run to the door to tell the others the good news. For a moment it was just the two of them: Damon and Bonnie.

"It tastes awful," Bonnie said woefully, spitting out more water. "I know," Damon said, staring at her. The new thing he was feeling had swollen inside his soul until the pressure was almost too much to stand. When Bonnie said, "But I'm alive!" with an abrupt 180-degree turn in mood, her heart-shaped face flushing suddenly with joy, the fierce pride Damon felt in response was intoxicating. He and he alone had brought her back from the edge of icy death. Her poison-filled body had been cured by him; it was his blood that had dissolved and dispersed the toxin,his blood- And then the swelling thing burst.

There was, to Damon, a palpable if not audible crack as the stone encasing his soul burst open and a great piece fell away.

With something inside him singing, he clutched Bonnie to him, feeling the wet towel through his raw silk shirt, and feeling Bonnie's slight body under the towel. Definitely a maiden, and not a child, he thought dizzily, whatever the writing on that infamous sc.r.a.p of pink nylon had claimed. He clutched at her as if he needed her for blood-as if they were in hurricane-tossed seas and to let go of her would be to lose her.

His neck hurt fiercely, but more cracks were spreading all over the stone; it was going to explode completely, letting theDamon it held inside out-and he was too drunk on pride and joy, yes, joy, to care. Cracks were spreading in every direction, pieces of stone flying off...

Bonnie pushed him away.

She had surprising strength for someone with such a slight build. She pushed herself out of his arms completely. Her expression had changed radically again: now her face showed only fear and desperation-and, yes, revulsion.

"Help! Somebody, please,help !" Her brown eyes were huge and now her face was white again.

Stefan had whirled around. All he saw was what Meredith saw, darting under his arm from the other room, or what Matt saw, trying to peer into the tiny, over-full bathroom: Bonnie fiercely clutching her towel, trying to make it cover her, and Damon kneeling by the bath, his face without expression.

"Pleasehelp. He heard me calling-I couldfeel him on the other end-but he just watched. He stood andwatched us all dying. He wants all humans dead, with our blood running down white steps somewhere. Please, get himaway from me!"

So. The little witch was more proficient than he had imagined. It wasn't unusual to recognize that someone was getting your transmissions-you got feedback-but to identify the individual took talent. Plus, she'd obviously heard the echoes of some of his thoughts. She was gifted, his bird...no, not his bird, not with her looking at him with a look as close to hatred as Bonnie could manage.

There was a silence. Damon had a chance to deny the charge, but why bother? Stefan would be able to gauge the truth of it.

Maybe Bonnie, too.

Revulsion was flying from face to face, as if it were a swiftly-catching disease.

Now Meredith was hurrying forward, grabbing another towel. She had some kind of hot drink in her other hand-cocoa, by the smell. It was hot enough to be an effective weapon-no way to dodge all of that, not for a tired vampire.

"Here," she said to Bonnie. "You're safe. Stefan's here. I'm here. Matt's here. Take this towel; let's just put it around your shoulders."

Stefan had stood silently, watching all this-no, watching his brother. Now, his face hardening in finality, he said one word.

"Out."

Dismissed like a dog. Damon groped for his jacket behind him, found it, and wished that his groping for his sense of humor could be as successful. The faces around him were all the same. They could have been carved in stone.But not stone as hard as that that was coming together again around his soul. That rock was remarkably quick to mend-and an extra layer was added, like the layering of a pearl, but not covering anything nearly so pretty.

Their faces were still all the same as Damon tried to get out of the small room that had too many people in it. Some of them were speaking; Meredith to Bonnie, Mutt-no, Matt-pouring out a stream of pure acidic hatred...but Damon didn't really hear the words. He could smell too much blood here. Everyone had little wounds. Their individual scents-different beasts inthe herd - closed in on him. His head was spinning. He had to get out of here or he'd be s.n.a.t.c.hing the nearest warm vessel and draining it dry.

Now he was more than dizzy; he was too hot, too...thirsty.

Very, very thirsty. He had worked a long time without feeding and now he was surrounded by prey.They were circlinghim . How could he stop himself from grabbing just one of them? Would one really be missed?

Then there was the one he hadn't seen yet, and didn't want to see. To witness Elena's lovely features twisted into the same mask of revulsion he saw on every other face here would be...distasteful, he thought, his old sense of dispa.s.sion finally returning to him.

But it couldn't be avoided. As Damon came out of the bathroom, Elena was right in front of him, floating like an oversized b.u.t.terfly.

His eyes were drawn to exactly what he didn't want to see: her expression.

Elena's features didn't mirror the others. She looked worried, upset. But there wasn't a trace of the disgust or hatred that showed on all the other faces.

She even spoke, in that strange mind-speech that wasn't, somehow, like telepathy, but which allowed her to get in two levels of communication at once.

"Da-mon."

Tell about the malach. Please.

Damon just raised an eyebrow at her. Tell a bunch of humans abouthimself ? Was she being deliberately ridiculous?

Besides, the malach hadn't really done anything. They had distracted him for a few minutes, that was all. No point in blaming malach when all they had done was enhance his own views briefly. He wondered if Elena had any notion of the content of his little nighttime daydream.

"Da-mon."

I can see it. Everything. But, still, please...

Oh, well, maybe spirits got used to seeingeverybody's dirty laundry. Elena made no response to that thought, so he was left in the dark.

In the dark. Which was what he was used to, where he had come from. They would all go their separate ways, the humans to their warm dry houses and he to a tree in the woods. Elena would stay with Stefan, of course.

Of course.

"Under the circ.u.mstances, I won't sayau revoir ," Damon said, flashing his dazzling smile at Elena, who looked gravely back at him.

"We'll just say 'good-bye' and leave it at that."

There was no answer from the humans.

"Da-mon." Elena was crying now.

Please.Please.Damon started out into the dark.

Please...

Rubbing at his neck, he kept going.

13.

Much later that night, Elena couldn't sleep. She didn't want to be hemmed in inside the Tall Room, she said. Secretly, Stefan worried that she wanted to go outside and track the malach that had attacked the car. But he didn't think she was able to lie, now, and she kept b.u.mping against the shut window, chiming to him that she just wanted air. Outside air.

"We should put some clothes on you."

But Elena was bewildered-and stubborn.It's Night.... This is my Night Gown, she said.You didn't like my Day Gown. Then she b.u.mped the window again. Her "Day Gown" had been his blue shirt, which, belted, made a sort of very short chemise on her, coming to the middle of her thighs.

Right now what she wanted fit in with his own desires so completely that he felt...a bit guilty over the prospect. But he allowed himself to be persuaded.

They drifted, hand in hand, Elena like a ghost or angel in her white nightgown, Stefan all in black, feeling himself almost disappear where the trees obscured the moonlight. Somehow they ended up in the Old Wood, where skeletons of trees mixed with the living branches. Stefan stretched his newly improved senses to the widest but could only find the normal inhabitants of the forest, slowly and hesitantly returning after being frightened off by Damon's lash of Power. Hedgehogs. Deer. Dog-foxes, and one poor vixen with twin kits, who hadn't been able to run because of her children. Birds. All the animals that helped to make the forest the wondrous place it was.

Nothing that felt like malach or seemed as if it could do any harm.

He began to wonder if Damon had simply invented the creature that influenced him. Damon was a tremendously convincing liar.

He was telling the truth, Elena chimed.But either it's invisible or it's gone now. Because of you. Your Power.

He looked at her and found her looking at him with a mixture of pride and another emotion that was easily identified-but startling to see out of doors.

She tilted her face up, its cla.s.sic lines pure and pale in the moonlight.

Her cheeks were rose pink with blushing, and her lips were slightly pursed.

Oh...h.e.l.l, Stefan thought wildly.

"After all you've been through," he began, and made his first mistake. He took hold of her arms. There, some sort of synergy between his Power and hers started to bring them, in a very slow spiral, upward.

And he could feel the warmth of her. The sweet softness of her body. She still was waiting, eyes closed, for her kiss.

We can start all over again,she suggested hopefully.

And that was true enough. He wanted to give back to her the feelings she had given to him in his room. He wanted to hold her hard; he wanted to kiss her until she trembled. He wanted to make her melt and swoon with it.

He could do it, too. Not just because you learned a thing or two about women when you were a vampire, but because he knew Elena. They were really one at heart, one soul.Please?Elena chimed.

But she was so young now, so vulnerable in her pure white nightgown, with her creamy skin flushing pink in antic.i.p.ation. It couldn't be right to take advantage of someone like that.

Elena opened her violet-blue eyes, silvered by the moonlight, and looked right at him.

Do you want...She said it with sobriety in the mouth but mischief in her eyes....to see how many times you can make me say please?

G.o.d, no. But that sounded so grown-up that Stefan helplessly took her into his arms. He kissed the top of her silky head. He kissed downward from there, only avoiding the little rosebud mouth that was still puckered in lonely supplication.I love you. I love you. He found that he was almost crushing her ribs and tried to let go, but Elena held on as tightly as she could, holding his arms to her.

Do you want-the chime was the same, innocent and ingenuous-to see how many times I can makeyousay please?

Stefan stared at her for a moment. Then, with a sort of wildness in his heart, he fell on the little rosebud mouth and kissed it breathless, kissed it until he himself was so dizzy that he had to let her go, just an inch or two.

Then he looked into her eyes again. A person could lose themselves in eyes like that, could fall forever into their starry violet depths.

He wanted to. But more than that, he wanted something else.

"I want to kiss you," he whispered, right at the portal of her right ear, nipping it.

Yes.She was definite about that.

"Until you faint in my arms."

He felt the shiver go through her body. He saw the violet eyes go misty, half closing. But to his surprise he got back an immediate, if slightly breathless, "Yes," from Elena out loud.

And so he did.

Just short of swooning, with little shivers going through her, and little cries that he tried to stop with his own mouth, he kissed her.

And then, because it was Time, and because the shivers were starting to have a painful edge to them, and Elena's breath was coming so quick and hard when he let her breathe that he really was afraid that she might pa.s.s out, he solemnly used his own fingernail to open a vein in his neck for her.

And Elena, who once had been only human, and would have been horrified by the idea of drinking another person's blood, clasped herself to him with a small choked sound of joy. And then he could feel her mouth warm, warm against the flesh of his neck, and he felt her shudder hard, and he felt the heady sensation of having his blood drawn out by the one he loved. He wanted to pour his entire being out in front of Elena, to give her everything that he was, or ever would be. And he knew that this was the way she had felt, letting him drink her blood. That was the sacred bond they shared.

It made him feel that they had been lovers since the beginning of the universe, since the very first dawning of the very first star out of the darkness. It was something very primitive, and very deeply ingrained in him. When he first felt the flow of blood into her mouth, he had to stifle a cry against her hair. And then he was whispering to her, fierce, involuntary things about how he loved her and how they could never be parted, and endearments and absurdities wrenched from him in a dozen different languages. And then there were no more words, only feelings.

And so they slowly spiraled up in the moonlight, the white nightgown sometimes wrapping itself around his black-clad legs, until they reached the top of the trees, living and standing but dead.

It was a very solemn, very private ceremony of their own, and they were far too lost in joy to look out for any danger. But Stefan had already checked for that, and he knew that Elena had, too. There was no danger; there was only the two of them, drifting and bobbing with the moon shining down like a benediction.