Destiny Rising Page 11

  Damon’s face was still turned away from her, his eyes fixed on something out in the darkness that Elena couldn’t see. Sliding to her knees next to the log, Elena put her hands on his cheeks and turned his face toward her. The ground was freezing and there was a stone digging into her leg, but it didn’t matter. “Please, Damon,” she said. “You’re the one doing this. It doesn’t have to be this way.” He glared back at her mutely. “Damon,” she said, her eyes stinging. “Please.”

  Damon stood up abruptly, pushing her away, and Elena lost her balance, falling backward onto the hard ground. Scrambling up, she brushed herself off and grabbed the flashlight. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go, if that’s what you want. But listen to me.” She made an effort to soften her voice again. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, no matter how angry you are at me. When you’re ready, we’ll be waiting for you. We love you. Stefan and I both love you. And it may not be the way you want me to care about you, but it’s worth something.”

  Damon’s eyes glistened again in the flashlight’s glow. She thought for a moment that he was going to speak, but he only stared at her, his face hard and defiant.

  There wasn’t anything left to say, really. “Good-bye, Damon,” Elena said, and backed away a few paces before turning to find her way out of the forest.

  There was a huge, hard mass of sobs building in her chest and she needed to get home before it overwhelmed her. If she started to cry now, she might never stop.

  Chapter 15

  Dear Diary,

  I can’t stop worrying about Damon.

  Meredith and Bonnie have gone to the mountains in pursuit of the blessed white ash tree, and our room is too quiet. When I’m alone in here, the empty space fills up with thoughts of how angry and distant Damon seemed when I found him in the woods last night. His aura was so dark that it frightened me.

  I haven’t told Stefan yet about my Power leading me to Damon. I’m going to tell him, though, as soon as we’re alone—I’ve learned my lesson at last about letting secrets come between us.

  But Stefan’s been so busy. He’s pulling us all together: sparring with Meredith, researching with Alaric, and now that Zander’s gone to the mountains with them and Bonnie, Stefan’s been working with the Pack, too. He’s determined to protect me from Klaus, to protect us all.

  Wherever Klaus is, his plan is working—I’m always on edge now. I know he wants me to be afraid; he even told me so—but I can’t stop myself from jumping at every shadow. Every day I get more frightened, and angrier at myself: I don’t want to feel the way Klaus intends me to. But when I’m with Stefan, we can slide into our private world. Despite the danger that hovers near us, it’s safe there. In Stefan’s arms, I feel like maybe we can defeat Klaus. Sometimes I believe we can do anything, together. We can save ourselves, and save Damon, too, even if he doesn’t want to be saved.

  A knock came at the door of Elena’s room, and she slipped her journal back under her mattress and ran to let Stefan in. He’d been with the Pack most of the day, since Zander and the others had left, and how much she’d missed him sank in as soon as she finally saw him.

  His curly dark hair was hanging over his forehead and he had a streak of dried mud over one eye. “What’s this?” Elena asked, brushing a finger across it.

  Stefan grimaced. “Apparently being accepted by a werewolf Pack means they try to knock you down a lot,” he told her. “Shay pushed me into a bush.”

  Elena tried to keep a straight face, but she couldn’t help giggling at the mental image, and Stefan’s face lightened, too, the weary lines around his mouth disappearing.

  “I think she’s mad about Zander leaving town with Bonnie,” Elena told him, and reached past him to close the door.

  As soon as the door was shut, Stefan pulled her against him. He drew back Elena’s hair and kissed her softly on the throat, just above her pulse point. She arched back, leaning into him as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Did you work the patrol routes out with the Pack in between wrestling matches?” she asked him. “Can we manage without the others until they get back?”

  “Mmhm, I think so,” Stefan answered, gently tracing her cheek with one finger, his eyes intent on her face. “I just wish that we had some idea where Klaus was,” he went on, his voice growing somber. “He could be anywhere, ready to strike.”

  “I know.” Elena shivered. “I feel like there’s this black cloud hanging over us all the time. I just wish I could figure out all my Guardian Powers. If I’m going to have real Power, why won’t they let me have it now? We’re all in danger, and it’s so frustrating knowing that I ought to be able to protect everyone, but I can’t.”

  “What about the evil you sensed in the woods yesterday?” Stefan asked. “Have you felt it since?”

  Elena hesitated. Now was her chance. She’d promised herself she would tell Stefan what had happened as soon as they had a moment alone. But she didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to tell him how angry and distant his brother seemed. “I felt it again last night,” she said finally, “but I don’t feel it now.”

  “You did?” Stefan asked. “Did you get more of an idea where it might be coming from?” When Elena still hesitated, he gently tipped her face up to look at him. “Elena, this is important. These feelings could be our first real clue as to where Klaus is. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Elena felt herself flinch, but Stefan just waited patiently, his mouth soft and serious. “What is it, love?” he asked.

  “I followed it into the woods late last night,” she told him, nervously fiddling with the bracelet on her arm. “I, um, I found the source.” With the feeling of jumping off a cliff, she told him, “It wasn’t Klaus, or the Vitale vampires. It was Damon.”

  “But you were sensing evil,” Stefan said, sounding confused.

  “Yeah.” Elena sighed. “Maybe not entirely evil. Damon’s not, I know that. But he’s not doing well. I don’t think that girl we found is the only one he’s attacked. His aura was . . . violent. Angry.”

  Stefan’s shoulders slumped, and he leaned against her desk. “I know,” he said. “I told you what he was like when I tried to talk to him. I think we need to give him some space. You can’t push Damon. He’s just going to do exactly what he wants, especially if you try to control him.”

  “There must be something we can do,” Elena said. Her voice sounded scratchy to her own ears, rough with misery.

  Crossing the space between them in one step, Stefan took her hand and looked down at her, his eyes dark and troubled. “It’s never going to be just us, is it?” he said sadly. “Damon will always be standing between us, even when he’s not here.”

  “Stefan, no!” she said fiercely. Stefan cast his gaze down sadly at their entwined fingers. “Look at me!” she urged. He slowly raised his eyes to meet hers again. “I love you, Stefan. I care for Damon, he’s part of me now, but that’s nothing compared to what I feel for you. It’s just us, you and me, and that’s how it’s going to be. Always.”

  Elena pulled him closer, desperate to show him this truth. Their lips met in a long kiss.

  Stefan, she thought, oh, Stefan. Elena let herself open fully to him. Exposed and vulnerable, she showed Stefan the love she had for him, her joy at having come back to him at last. Wonderingly, Stefan gradually took in her emotions. She could feel him pushing gently at the walls she’d always kept in her mind, the little shameful secrets, the part of herself she’d always wanted to hide from him. But Elena pulled the barriers down, showing him that there was nothing there but love for him, only him.

  Stefan sighed against her lips, a tiny exhalation of breath, and she felt peace flood through him as he understood that, at last, he was the only one for her.

  As the couple inside clung to each other, a large crow clenched its claws tightly around a tree branch in the darkness outside the dorm room’s window. It wasn’t as if he had been holding out hope, though. He had tried his best with Elena, ha
d given her what he thought she wanted, had shown her what he had to offer. He had changed himself for her.

  And she had turned away from him and chosen Stefan. She still felt nothing for him, not compared to her feelings for Stefan.

  Fine. Damon should have known better than to care. What he had told Stefan, what he had told Elena, was right: he was done with them, done with all of them. Why should he follow around one human girl when there was a wide world out there waiting for him?

  Damon spread his wings and pitched himself off the tree branch and into the night. Riding the soft breezes over campus, he tried to think about where he should go next. Thailand, maybe. Singapore. Japan. He had never spent much time in Asia; perhaps it was time to conquer new places, to be the mysterious, cold-eyed stranger again, to feel the rushing sea of humanity surging all around him while he held himself separate and alone.

  It will be good to be alone again, he told himself. Vampires weren’t pack animals, after all.

  As he pondered his future, he watched the paths of the campus and then the streets of the town beneath him in an absentminded, habitual way. A lone female jogger, young and blond, was running along below him, hair pulled into a ponytail, earbuds in place. Idiot, he thought scathingly. Doesn’t she know how dangerous this place is right now?

  Without letting himself consider what he intended, Damon glided down and resumed his human form, landing silently on the sidewalk a few yards behind the jogger. He stopped for a moment and fastidiously adjusted his clothing, long-ago words of his father’s echoing in his mind: a gentleman can be told by the care he takes of his appearance and by the precision of his dress.

  Then he moved quickly and gracefully after the girl, letting loose a little Power so that he was faster than any human could be.

  He jerked her off her feet as easily as plucking a flower from its stem, and pulled her into his arms. She gave one sudden, aborted squeak and struggled briefly as he sank his sharp canines into her throat, then grew still. He had no reason to stop himself, not now.

  It was so good. He’d been soothing his girls, making it painless for them for so long, and the pure adrenaline of her fear rocketed through his system. It was even better than the girl in the woods, who had already been dizzy and pliant with blood loss when he let the calming compulsion drop.

  Damon drank down deep gulps of blood, feeding his Power. Her heart slowed, staggered, and he felt that dizzyingly sweet moment when her slackened pulse matched the unnatural pace of his own. Her life flowed into him steadily, warming his cold bones.

  And then everything—her heartbeat, the blood flow—stopped.

  Damon let her body drop to the sidewalk and wiped his mouth with one hand. He felt drunk on her, buzzing with the energy he’d taken into himself. Here I am, he thought with sour triumph, the real Damon, back again.

  On the back of his hand was a smear of the girl’s blood. He licked it off, but it tasted wrong, not as sweet as it should have. As the sheer physical pleasure of taking the blood, of taking it all the way to death, wore off, Damon could feel a sharp ache just below his breastbone. He pressed one hand to his chest.

  There was an empty place inside him: a hole in his chest that all the blood, all the blood of the prettiest girls in the world, could never fill.

  Unwillingly, he looked down at the body at his feet. He would have to hide it, he supposed. He couldn’t leave her here, exposed on the sidewalk.

  The girl’s eyes were open in a flat, unseeing stare, and she seemed to be gazing back at him. She was so young, Damon thought.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice small. He reached down and carefully pressed her eyes closed. She seemed more peaceful that way. “I am sorry,” he said again. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say or do. With an effortless swoop, he picked up the girl’s body and walked on, into the night.

  Chapter 16

  “Okay,” Alaric said, panting a little. “According to these directions, the white ash tree should be on the bank of a stream, only about half a mile farther from here.”

  “Is it all still uphill?” Bonnie moaned, pushing sweaty red ringlets out of her eyes. They’d spent the previous night in a dingy motel and started out on their trek early that morning. By now, it felt like they’d been on this narrow mountain trail forever. It had been fun at first; it was a beautiful sunny day and a bright blue jay had flown from tree to tree before them for a while, which seemed like a good omen. But after several hours she was hot and thirsty and they still had to keep going.

  “Come on, Bonnie,” Meredith said. “Not far now.” Meredith was striding cheerfully along at the front of the group, looking as cool and comfortable as if she was taking a little stroll down one of the paths on campus. Bonnie scowled at her back: sometimes Meredith being in such good shape was utterly infuriating.

  Defiantly, Bonnie stopped for a minute and drank some water from her canteen as the others waited for her.

  “So, once we find this magic white ash tree, what’s the plan?” Zander asked, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other as he waited.

  Shay wouldn’t have had to stop to rest, Bonnie thought sourly. Then Zander nudged her companionably with his elbow as he took out his own canteen, and she felt a little better.

  “Well, we can’t chop down the tree,” Alaric said seriously. “It’s got a lot of spiritual significance and gives protection to this area as well as being the only weapon that might be effective against Klaus. But it’s a pretty big tree, reportedly, so we should be able to take several branches without doing too much damage.”

  “I brought an axe,” Meredith said enthusiastically as they started walking again. “We’ll make as many stakes as we can, and distribute them to everyone.” She glanced at Zander. “Everyone who’s not going to be a wolf when we fight Klaus, anyway.”

  “Hard to hold a stake with paws,” Zander agreed.

  “We should gather leaves, too,” Bonnie said. “I’ve been looking through spell books, and I think we could use the ash leaves to make potions and tinctures that might help us get some protection from Klaus. Like the effect vervain has on a regular vampire’s Powers.”

  “Good thinking,” Zander said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. Bonnie leaned against him, letting him take some of her weight. Her feet hurt.

  “We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Meredith said, and she and Bonnie exchanged a glance. Of the four of them on this mountainside, they were the only ones who had fought Klaus the first time, and the only ones who knew how much trouble they were really in.

  “I wish Damon were working with us,” Bonnie said fretfully. “He’d give us much better odds in a fight.” She had always felt a special bond with Damon, ever since the days when she’d had a crazy, embarrassing crush on him. When they had traveled through the Dark Dimension together, they had looked out for each other. And Damon had sacrificed himself for her, pushing her out of the way and taking the fatal blow from the tree on that Nether World moon. The locks of hair Bonnie and Elena had left with his body had helped to remind Damon who he was when he was resurrected. It ached that he had turned his back on her now.

  Meredith frowned. “I’ve tried to talk to Elena about Damon, but she won’t tell me what’s going on with him. And Stefan just says Damon needs time and that he’ll come around.”

  “Damon would do anything for Elena, wouldn’t he? If she just asked him,” Bonnie said, biting her lip. Damon had been obsessed with Elena for so long; it was weird and disturbing to have Elena in danger and Damon nowhere to be found.

  Meredith just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never understood him.”

  “Almost there,” Alaric said encouragingly. “It should be right up ahead.” Bonnie could hear the rushing of a stream.

  Zander stopped. “Do you smell that?” he said, sniffing the air. “Something’s burning.”

  Just around the next bend in the path, a long fing
er of black smoke spread across the sky. Bonnie and Meredith exchanged alarmed glances and broke into a jog, Bonnie forgetting all about her aching feet. Alaric and Zander sped up, too, and as they rounded the corner, they were all running.

  Alaric stopped first, his face devastated. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the white ash tree.”

  It was engulfed in roaring flames and already charred black. As they watched, a branch fell heavily to the ground, shooting up sparks as it landed, and crumbled into soot. Alaric stripped off his shirt, soaking it with his water bottle as he ran forward, toward the flames.

  Bonnie rushed after him. She had the impression of two figures ducking away down the path and Zander and Meredith running after them, but she couldn’t focus on that now: she had to try to save the tree. As she got nearer, the heat was incredible, almost like a wall forcing her away. Gritting her teeth, she stamped at the small flames springing up in the grass around the burning tree. Smoke stung her eyes and seeped into her mouth, so that she coughed and wheezed.

  Her arm burned painfully and she brushed away the hot ash that had fallen on her. Closer to the trunk, Alaric beat at the flames with his wet shirt and then stumbled backward, choking, his face streaked black. They weren’t having any effect on the fire at all.

  Bonnie grabbed his arm and pulled him farther back, her heart dropping. “It’s too late,” she said.

  When she turned around, she saw Zander and Meredith shepherding two people back up the path toward them. Zander had a firm grip on a beefy dark-haired guy as Meredith held her stave across the throat of a girl. She looked familiar, Bonnie thought dazedly. After a moment, the sense of familiarity sharpened into certainty, and then Bonnie was flooded with outrage.