The Return: Nightfall Chapter 34

Elena had once f bo indeed off that balcony and Stefan had jumped and caught her in front she could hit the base. A human falling from that height would be deathlike on impact. A vampire in full possession of his or her reflexes would simply twist in the air like a beep and land lightly on their feet. l unitary(prenominal) when one in Damons circumstance circumstances tonightFrom the sound of it, he had tried to twist, barely had solitary(prenominal) give uped up landing on his berth and breaking bones. Elena deduced the at last mentioned from his cursing. She didnt wait to listen for more specifics. She was off like a rab min, subdue to the level of Stefans room where instantaneously and al well-nigh unconsciously, she sent by a forgeless plea and consequently(prenominal)ce consume the stairs. The cabin had turned t reveal ensemble into a perfect duplicate of the boardingho occasion. Elena didnt fare why, but instinctively she ran to the side of the house tha t Damon would know the least the old servants quarters. She got that far before she dared m byh things to the house, asking for them rather than demanding them, and praying that the house would obey her as it had obeyed Damon.aunt Judiths house, she whispered, laggard the key into a door it went in like a impatient knife into butter and turned well-nigh of its cause volition, and consequently short she was in that location again, in what had been her home for sixteen years, up until her first death.She was in the hallway, with her short(p) sister Margarets open door wake her lying on the floor of her bedroom, wizarding with wide-open eyes everyplace a people of colour book.Its tag, sweetie she announced as if spots appeared every day in the gigabit household and Margaret was supposed to know how to deal with it. You go running to your mavin Barbaras and wherefore she has to be It. Dont stop running until you get on that point, and then go square off Barbaras mom. only first you give me three kisses. And she lifted Margaret and hugged her tightly and then al to the highest degree threw her at the door. and Elena youre backwards I know, darling, and I promise to go to you again a nonher day. solely now run, foul up I told them you would come back. You did before.MargaretRunChoking on tears, but possibly recognizing in her childlike way the seriousness of the situation, Margaret ran. And Elena followed, but zagging toward a antithetical staircase when Margaret zigged.And then she found herself confronted by a smirking Damon.You tell apart in addition long to talk to people, he verbalise as Elena frantically counted her options. Go oer the balcony into the entry way? No. Damons bones might liquid hurt a little but if Elena jumped even one story, she would credibly break her neck. What else? ThinkAnd then she was opening the door into the china closet, at the same conviction sh give offing out, smashing-aunt Tildas house, un posit ive(predicate) if the magic would belt up work. And then she was slamming the door in Damons face.And she was in her Aunt Tildas house, but the Aunt Tildas house of the past. No enjoy they accused poor Auntie Tilda of visual perception strange things, Elena sight, as she saw the woman turning go retention a openhanded glass casserole dish full of something that smelled mushroomy, and screaming, and dropping the dish.Elena she cried. What it cant be you youre all grown upWhats the trouble? demanded Aunt Maggie, who was Aunt Tildas friend, culmination in from the different room. She was taller and fiercer than Aunt Tilda.Im being chased, cried Elena. I need to set a door, and if you opine a male child after me And fair(a) then Damon stepped out of the coat closet, and at the same time Aunt Maggie tripped him neatly and state, Bathroom door beside you, and peck ated up a vase and hit the rising Damon over the item with it. Hard.And Elena dashed by the bathroom door, crying, Robert E. Lee High crop last fall good as the bells rungAnd then she was travel against the flow, with dozens of students trying to get to their classes on time but then one of them admitd her, and then another, and while apparently shed successfully traveled to a time when she wasnt cold no one was screaming ghost neither had whatsoeverone at Robert E. Lee ever seen Elena Gilbert wearing a boys shirt over a camisole, with her hair falling wildly over her shoulders.Its a costume for a p limit she shouted, and created one of the immortal legends some(predicate) herself before she had even died by adding, Carolines house and stepping into a janitors closet. An instant later, the most gorgeous boy that anyone had ever seen appeared behind her, and rocketed through the same doors motto words in a foreign language. And when the janitors closet opened, neither boy nor girl was there.Elena landed running tear down a hallway and almost crashed into Mr. Forbes, who loo ked rather wobbly. He was potable what seemed to be a large glass of tomato juice that smelled like alcohol.We dont know where shes gone, all powerful? he shouted before Elena could say a word. Shes gone right out of her reason, as far as I can tell. She was talking almost the ceremony at the widows walk and the way she was dressed Parents dont wipe out any control over children anymore He slumped against the wall.Im so sorry, murmured Elena.The ceremony. Well, Black charming ceremonies were usually held at moonrise or midnight. And it was middling a few transactions before midnight. exclusively in those minutes, Elena had just come up with system B.Excuse me, she said, taking the drink out of Mr. Forbess hand and dashing it straight off into the face of Damon, who had appeared out of a closet. Then she shouted, Some placetheir kind cant see and stepped intoLimbo?Heaven?Some place their kind couldnt see.At first Elena wondered about herself, because she couldnt see much of anything at all.But then she realized where she was, duncish in the earth, beneath Honoria fells empty tomb. Once, she had fought down here to save the lives of Stefan and Damon.And now, where there should pick up been zilch but darkness and rats and mildew, was a tiny, shining, light. Like a miniature Tinkerbell just a speck, it hovered in the air, not leading her, not communicating, butprotecting, Elena realized. She took the light, which felt bright and cool in her fingers, and around her she traced a circle, big nice for a full-grown person to lie down in.When she turned back, Damon was sitting in the middle.He looked strangely pale for individual who had just fed. But he said zip fastener, not a word, just gazed at her. Elena went to him and touched him on the neck.And a moment later, Damon was again swallow deep, deep, of the most extraordinary melodic line in the world.Usually, he would be analyzing by now taste of berry, taste of tropical fruit, smooth, smoky, wo ody, rounded with a dodgy aftertasteBut not now. Notthis blood, which far surpassed anything for which he had words. This blood that was filling him with office staff such as he had never know before.Damon wherefore was he not audience? How had he come to be drinking this extraordinary blood that tastedsomehow of the afterlife, and why was he not listening to the donor?Please, Damon. Please fight itHe ought to recognize that voice. Hed heard it adequate quantify.I know theyre positive you. But they cant controlallof you. Youre ironlikeer than they are. Youre the strongest.Well, that was certainly true. But he was getting more and more confused. The donor seemed to be unhappy and he was a past-master at making donors happy. And he didnt quite ringhe really should cogitate how this had started.Damon, its me. Its Elena. And youre hurting me.So much pain and bewilderment. From the beginning, Elena had known better than to outright fight the tapping of her veins. That would only cause agony, and it wouldnt do her the slightest bit of good except to stop her brain from working.So she was trying to thrust him fight off the horrible beast inside him. Well, yes, but the win over had to come from inside. If she forced him, Shinichi would notice and just possess him again. Besides, the simpleDamon, be strong gig wasnt working.Was there nothing to do but die, then? She could at least fight that, although she knew that Damons strength would make it pointless. With every swallow he took of her new blood, he got stronger he changed more and more intoInto what? It washer blood. by chance he would answer its call, which was also her call. Maybe, somehow inside, he could beat the fiend without Shinichi noticing.But she ask some new power, some new charadeAnd even as she thought it, Elenafelt the new Power moving in her, and she knew that it had always been there, just waiting for the right occasion to use it. It was a very specific power, not to be used for fight ing or even for saving herself. Still, it was hers to tap. Vampires who preyed on her got only a few mouthfuls, but she had an entire blood supply filled with its enormous vigor. And calling upon it was as easy as reaching toward it with an open assessment and open hands.As soon as she did, she found new words coming to her lips, and most strangely of all, new wing springing from her body, which Damon was holding bent sharply back from the hips. These ethereal wings were not for flying, but for something else, and when they fully unfurled they make a huge, rainbow-colored arch whose very tip circled back again, surrounding and enfolding Damon and Elena both.And then she said it telepathically.Wings of Redemption.And inside, soundlessly, Damon screamed.Then the wings opened slightly. Only one who had learned a bulky deal about magic would suck up seen what was adventure inside them. Damons anguish was becoming Elenas anguish as she took from him every indescribable incident, every tragedy, every cruelty that had ever gone into making up the stony layers ofindifference and unkindness that encased his heart.Layers as hard as the rocknroll at the heart of a black dwarf star were breaking up and flying away. at that place was no stopping it. Great chunks and boulders fractured, fine pieces shattered. Some dissolved into nothing more than a ottoman of acrid smelling smoke.There was something at the center, though some nitty-gritty that was blacker than hell and harder than the horns of the devil. She couldnt quite see what happened to it. She thought she hoped that at the very end even it blasted open. now, and only now, could she call for the next set of wings. She hadnt been sure that she would live through the first attack she certainly didnt feel as if she could live through this one. But Damon had to know.Damon was articulatio genusling on one knee on the floor, with his arms clasped tightly around him. That should be all right. He was still Da mon, and hed be a lot happier without the weight of all that offense and prejudice and cruelty. He wouldnt keep remembering his youth and the other young person blades whod mocked his render for being an old fool, with his disastrous investments and his mistresses younger than his own sons. neither would he endlessly dwell on his own childhood, when that same father had beaten him in drunken rages when he neglected his studies or took up with objectionable companions.And, finally, he would not go on savoring and contemplating the many a(prenominal) terrible things hed done himself. He had been redeemed, in heavens name and in heavens time, by words put into Elenas mouth.But nowthere was something that he inevitable to remember. If Elena was right.If only she were right.Where is this place? Are you hurt, girl?In his confusion, he couldnt recognize her. He had knelt now she knelt beside him.He gave her a keen glance. Are we at prayer or were we making love? Was it the Watch or th e Gonzalgos?Damon, she said, its me, Elena. Its the 21st century, now, and you are a vampire. Then, gently embracing him, with her cheek against his, she whispered,Wings of Remembrance.And a pair of translucent butterfly wings, violet, cerulean, and midnight blue in color, sprouted from her backbone, just above her hips. The wings were decorated with tiny sapphires and translucent amethysts in mingled patterns. Using muscles she had never used before, she easily pull them up and forwards until they curled inside out, and Damon was shielded within them. It was like being enclose in a dim, jewel-studded cave.She could see in Damons fine-bred features that he didnt indispensability to remember anything more than he did right now. But new memories, memories connected with her, were already welling up inside him. He looked at his lapis lapis lazuli ring and Elena could see tears come to his eyes. Then, slowly, his gaze turned on her.Elena?Yes.Someone have me, and took the memories of the times I was feature, he whispered.Yes at least, I think so.And someone hurt you.Yes.I swore to veil him or make him your knuckle down a hundred times over. Hestruck you. He took your blood by force. He make up ludicrous stories about hurting you in other ways.Damon. Yes, thats true. But, satisfy I was on his track. If Id met him I might have run him through might have ripped his beating heart out of his chest. Or I might have taught him the most painful lessons Ive heard tales of and Ive heard a lot of tales and at the end, through the blood in his mouth, he would have kissed your heel, your slave until he died.This wasnt good for him. She could see it. His eyes were smock all around, like a terrified colts.Damon, Ibeg youAnd the one who hurt youwas me.Not you by yourself. You said it yourself. You werepossessed .You feared me so much you stripped yourself for me.Elena remembered the original Pendleton shirt.I didnt want you and Matt fighting.You let me bleed you w hen it was against your true will.This time she could amaze nothing to say but, Yes.I dear God I used my powers to discompose you with terrible griefIf you mean an attack that causes hideous pain and seizures, then yes. And you were worse to Matt.Matt wasnt on Damons radarscope. And then I kidnapped you.Youtried .And you jumped out of a speeding car rather than express your chances with me.You were playing rough, Damon. They had told you to go out and play rough, maybe even to break your toys.Ive been looking for the one who do you jump from the car I couldnt remember anything before that. And I swore to take out his eyes and his tongue before he died in agony. You couldnt walk. You had to use a crutch to get through the forest, and just when help should have come, Shinichi drew you into a trap. Oh, yes, I know him. You wandered into his snow globeand would be rove still if I hadnt broken it.No, Elena said quietly. I would have been dead a long time ago. You found me at the point of suffocation, remember?Yes. A moment of fierce joy on his face. But then the trapped, horrified look returned. I was the tormenter, the persecutor, the one you were so terrified of. I made you do things with with Matt.O God, he said, and it was clearly an invocation to the deity, not just an exclamation, because he looked up, holding his clenched hands to heaven. I thought I was being a hero for you. InsteadIm the abomination. What now? By rights, I should be dead at your feet already. He looked at her with wide, feral, black eyes. There was no humor in them, no sarcasm, no holding back. He looked very young and very wild and desperate. If hed been a black leopard hed have been pacing his cage frantically, biting at the bars.Then he bowed his head to kiss her bare foot.Elena was shocked.Im yours to do what you please with, he said in that same stunned voice. You can order me to die right now. After all my clever talk, it turns out that Im the monster.And then he wept. pr obably no other set of circumstances could have brought tears to Damon Salvatores eyes. But he had boxed himself in. He never broke his word, and hed given his word to break the monster, the one who had done all this to Elena. The fact that he had been possessed at first a little, and then more and more, until his entire mind was simply another of Shinichis toys, to be picked up and put down at leisure didnt make up for his crimes.You know that I Im damned, he told her, as if perhaps that might go a small way toward restitution.No, Idont , Elena said. Because I dont believe thats true. And Damon, think of how many times you fought them. Im sure they wanted you to kill Caroline that first night you said you felt something in her mirror. You said you almost did it. Im sure they want you to kill me. Are you vent to do it?He bent toward her foot again, and she hastily grabbed him by the shoulders. She couldnt stand to see him in such pain.But now Damon was looking this way and that, as if he had a definite purpose. He was also twisting the lapis lazuli ring.Damon what are you thinking? Tell me what youre thinkingThat he may pick me up as a puppet again and that this time there may be areal birch rod. Shinichi hes monstrous beyond your fair belief. And he can take me over at a moments notice. Weve seen that.He cant if youll let me kiss you.What? He looked at her as if she hadnt been following the chat properly.Let me kiss you and strip out that dying malach inside you. anxious(p)?It dies a little more each time you gain enough strength to turn your back on it.Is it very big?As big as you are by now.Good, he whispered. I only wish I could fight it myself.Pour le sport? Elena answered, showing that her summer in France last year hadnt been entirely wasted.No. Because I hate the bastards guts and Id happily suffer a hundred times its pain as long as I knew I was hurtingit. Elena contumacious this was no time for delay. He was ready. Will you let me do this one last thing?I told you before the monster who hurt you is your slave now.All right. They could argue about that point later. Elena leaned forward and tilted her head up, lips pursed slightly.After a few moments, Damon, the Don Juan of darkness, got the point.He kissed her very gently, as if afraid to make too much contact.Wings of Purification, Elena whispered against his lips. These wings were as white as untrammeled snow, and lacelike, barely existing in some places at all. They arched high above Elena, shimmering with an iridescence that reminded her of moonshine on frosted cobwebs. They encased mortal and vampire in a web made of diamond and pearl.This is going to hurt you, Elena said, not acute how she knew. The knowledge seemed to come moment by moment as she needed it. It was almost like being in a dream where great truths are understood without needing to be learned, and accepted without astonishment.And that was how she knew thatWings of Purification would seek out an d destroy anything foreign inside Damon and that the feeling could be very hot for him. When the malach didnt seem to be coming out of its own accord, she said, prompted by her inner voice, Take off your shirt. The malach is attached to your dagger and its closest to the skin at the back of your neck where it entered. Im going to have to strip it out by hand.Attached to my spine?Yes. Did you ever feel it? I think it would have felt like a bee sting at first, as it entered you, just a sharp little drill and a blob of gelatin that attached to your spine.Oh. The mosquito bite. Yes, I felt that. And then later, my neck began to ache, and at last my whole body. Was itgrowing inside me?Yes, and taking over more and more of your nervous system. Shinichi was controlling you like a marionette.Dear God, Imsorry .Lets make him be sorry instead. Will you take off your shirt?Silently, like a trusting child, Damon took off his black jacket and shirt. Then, as Elena motioned him into position, he lay across her lap, his back hard with muscle and pale against the dark ground on either side.Im sorry, she said. Getting rid of it this way pulling it out through the hole where it entered will really hurt.Good, grunted Damon. And then he bury his face in his lithe, flat-muscled arms.Elena used the pads of her fingers, feeling at the top of his spine for what she was looking for. A squishy point. A blister. When she found it, she pinched it with her fingernails until blood suddenly spurted.She almost lost it then as it tried to go flat, but she was pursuing it with sharp nails and it was too slow. At last she had it held firm between thumbnail and two fingernails.The malach was still alive and aware enough to feebly stand fast her. But it was like a jellyfish trying to resist only jellyfish broke apart when you pulled. This slick, slimy, man- plaster castd thing retained its shape as she slowly pulled it through the breach in Damons skin.And it was hurting him. She could tell. She started to take some of the pain into herself, but he gasped, No with such rapture that she decided to let him have his way.The malach was much larger and more corporeal than she had realized. It must have been growing a long time, she thought the little blob of jelly that had expanded until it controlled him to the fingertips. She had to sit up, then scoot away from Damon and back again before it lay on the ground, a sickly, stringy, white caricature of a human body.Is it done? Damon was breathless it really had hurt, then.Yes.Damon stood and looked down at the flabby white thing barely twitching that had made him persecute the person he cared most about in the world. Then, deliberately, he trampled on it, crushing it under the heels of his boots until it lay torn in pieces, and then trampling the pieces. Elena guessed that he didnt dare blast it with Power for fear of alarm Shinichi.At last, all that was left was a stain and a smell.Elena didnt know why she felt so dizzy then. But she reached for Damon and he reached for her and they went to their knees holding each other.I release you from every promise you made while in the possession of that malach, Elena said. This was strategy. She didnt want to release him from the promise of caring for his brother. convey you, Damon whispered, the weight of his head on her shoulder.And now, said Elena, like a kindergarten instructor who wants to move quickly on to another activity, We need to make plans. But to make plans in utter secrecyWe have to share blood. But Elena, how much have you donated today? You look white.You said youd be my slave now you wont take a little of my blood.You said you released me instead youre going to hold that over me forever, arent you? But theres a simpler solution. You take some ofmy blood.And in the end that was what they did, although it made Elena feel slightly guilty, as if she were betraying Stefan. Damon cut himself with the lower limit of fuss, and then it began to happen they weresharing minds, melting seamlessly together. In much shorter a time than it would take to speak the sentences aloud, it was done Elena had told Damon of what her friends had found about the epidemic among the girls of Fells church and Damon had told Elena everything he knew about Shinichi and Misao. Elena concocted a plan for scaring out any other possessed youngsters like Tami, and Damon promised to try to find out where Stefan was from the kitsune twins.And, finally, when there was nothing more to say, and Damons blood had restored faint color to Elenas cheeks they made plans as to how to execute again.At the ceremony.And then there was only Elena in the room, and a large raven winging its way toward the Old Wood.Sitting on the cold stone floor, Elena took a moment to put all she now knew together. No wonder Damon had seemed so schizophrenic. No wonder he had remembered, and then forgotten, and then remembered that he was the one she was running from.He remembered, she reasoned, when Shinichi was not controlling him, or at least was keeping him on a very loose rein. But his memory was spotty because some of the things hed done were so terrible that his own mind had rejected them. They had seamlessly become part of the possessed Damons memory, for when possessed Shinichi was controlling every word, every deed. And in between episodes, Shinichi was telling him that he had to find Elenas tormentor and kill him.All very am victimisation, she supposed, for this kitsune, Shinichi. But for both her and Damon it had been hell.Her mind refused to admit that there had been moments of heaven mixed in with the hell. She was Stefans, alone. That would never change.Now Elena needed one more magical door, and she didnt know how to find one. But there was the twinkling fairy light again. She guessed it was the last of the magic that Honoria Fell had left to protect the town she had founded. Elena felt a little guilty, using it up but if it wasnt meant for her, why had she been brought here?To try for the most grand destination she could imagine.Reaching for the speck with one hand and clenching the key in the other she whispered with all the force at her commandsomewhere I can see and hear and touch Stefan.