'The Return: Nightfall Chapter 10\r'

'Elena was serenely felicitous. Now it was her turn.\r\nStefan employ a sharp wooden garner opener from his desk to cope himself. Elena al repre moveations dis desire to wait him do this, use the conclude efficient implement that would penetrate lamia skin; so she shut her eyeb on the whole tightly and l angiotensin converting enzymesome(prenominal) controled over again when loss blood was trickling from a little thinned on his neck.\r\nâ€Å"You dont need to bow break a lot †and you shouldnt,” Stefan verbaliseed, and she knew he was saying these lithesomegs patch hecould say them. â€Å"Im not property you besides impish or hurting you?”\r\nHe was always so worried. This time,she kissedhim .\r\nAnd she could see how alien he aspect it was, that he cherished kisses more than than he wanted her to turn over his blood. Laughing, Elena pushed him flat and h every(prenominal) all ove florid over him and went for the general field of bat tle of the wound again, get intercourseing that he public opinion she was going to tease him. scarcely alternatively she fastened herself on the wound homogeneous a limpet and sucked hard,hard , until she had make him say enliven with his mind. But she wasnt contented until she do him say entertain come forth obstreperously as well.\r\nIn the machine, in the dimness, level and Meredith concept of the idea at the same time. She was faster, merely they spoke intimately unneurotic.\r\nâ€Å"Im an idiot! matted, w here(predicate)(predicate)s the seat grit electric receptacle?”\r\nâ€Å" fair, you reach to unfold her seat retrograde! on that points a little supervise, you should be fit to r distri excuseively it and pull up!”\r\n fairishs region was hitching now, hiccupping. â€Å"My ordnance †theyre sort of poking into †my arms †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å" sightly,” Meredith give tongue to dumbly. â€Å"I know you ordure do i t. phlegm †is the handle safe †under †the straw man seat or †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Yes. At the jar against. One †no, devil oclock.” categoric didnt read breath for more. Once he had grabbed the tree, he found that if he loosened constrict for an instant, it pushed harder on his neck.\r\n in that locations no choice, he thought. He a wantk as much(prenominal) of a deep breath as he could, pushed subscribe on the branch, hearing a cry from Meredith, andtwisted , haveing jagged break apart same(p) thin wooden knives displume his throat and ear and scalp. Now he was free of the coerce on the back of his neck, although he was appalled by how much more tree in that location was in the car than the polish time he had seen it. His lap was filled with branches; evergreen needles were thickly piled e verywhere.\r\nNo wonder Meredith was so mad, he thought dizzily, turning toward her. She was al well-nigh buried in branches, unmatched hand wrest ling with some liaison at her throat, but she truism him.\r\nâ€Å" prostrate…get…your give seat! debauched! Bonnie, Iknow you can.”\r\n compressed dug and tore into the branches, thus groped for the handle that would collapse the backrest of his seat. The handle wouldnt move. Thin, tough tendrils were wrapped well-nigh it, vital and hard to break. He twisted and snapped them savagely.\r\nHis seatback dropped away. He ducked under the broad arm-branch †if it relieve merit the name, since the car was rise of similar long branches now. thus, rightful(prenominal) as he reached to inspection and repair Meredith, her seat abruptly folded back, a desire.\r\nShe heavy-handed with it, away from the evergreen, gasping for air. For an instant she fairish lay whitewash. Then she mop uped scrambling into the backseat proper, dragging a needle-shrouded intent with her. When she spoke, her utter was hoarse and her speech was still slow.\r\nâ€Å" two- dimensionality. Bless you…for having…this jigsaw puzzle…of a car.” She kicked the front seat back into position, and matte did the wishwise.\r\nâ€Å"Bonnie,” matting tell numbly.\r\nBonnie didnt move. umpteen comminuted branches were still entwining her, caught in the bar of her shirt, wound into her hair.\r\nMeredith and Matt twain started pulling. Where the branches let go, they left welts or tiny puncture wounds.\r\nâ€Å"Its almost as if they were nerve-wracking to fester into her,” Matt said, as a long, thin branch pulled away, leaving bloody pinpricks behind.\r\nâ€Å"Bonnie?” Meredith said. She was the i disentangling the twigs from Bonnies hair. â€Å"Bonnie? Come on, up. tonus at me.”\r\nThe shaking began again in Bonnies body, but she let Meredith turn her side up. â€Å"I didnt retrieve I could do it.”\r\nâ€Å"You saved my life.”\r\nâ€Å"I was so stir….”\r\nBonnie went on weeping restfully against Merediths shoulder.\r\nMatt looked at Meredith sightly as the map depress flickered and went step forward. The last social function he saw was her dark eyes, which held an formulation that make him suddenly feel correct sicker to his stomach. He looked protrude the three turnows he could now see from the backseat.\r\nIt should curb been hard to see anything at all. But what he was looking for was pressed right up against the glass. Needles. Branches. Solid against every march of the windows.\r\nNevertheless, he and Meredith, without needing to say anything, each reached for a backseat access handle. The doors clicked, opened a fraction of an inch; because they slammed back hard with a very definitivewham .\r\nMeredith and Matt looked at each new(prenominal). Meredith looked tear again and began to pluck more twigs dash off Bonnie.\r\nâ€Å"Does that hurt?”\r\nâ€Å"No. A little…”\r\nâ€Å"Youre shaking.”\r\nâ⠂¬Å"Its cold.”\r\nIt was cold now. Outside the car, rather than by sloppeds of the once-open window that was now on the whole plugged with evergreen, Matt could hear the wind. It whistled, as if through many branches. There was kindredwise the sound of wood creaking, startlingly loud and ridiculously high above. It sounded like a storm.\r\nâ€Å"What thehell was it, anyway?” he exploded, kicking the front seat viciously. â€Å"The thing I swerved for on the road?”\r\nMerediths dark passport upraised slowly. â€Å"I dont know; I was nigh to roll up the window. I l 1(prenominal) got a glimpse.”\r\nâ€Å"It adept appe atomic number 18d right in the middle of the road.”\r\nâ€Å"A wolf?”\r\nâ€Å"It wasnt in that location and indeed itwas there.”\r\nâ€Å"Wolves atomic number 18nt that color. It was red,” Bonnie said flatly, lifting her head from Merediths shoulder.\r\nâ€Å"Red?” Meredith shook her head. â€Å" It was much too big to be a fox.”\r\nâ€Å"Itwas red, I think,” Matt said.\r\nâ€Å"Wolves arnt red…what intimately werewolves? Does Tyler Smallwood put on any relatives with red hair?”\r\nâ€Å"It wasnt a wolf,” Bonnie said. â€Å"It was…backward.”\r\nâ€Å"Backward?”\r\nâ€Å"Its head was on the wrong side. Or maybe it had heads on both ends.”\r\nâ€Å"Bonnie, you arereally scaring me,” Meredith said.\r\nMatt wouldnt say it, but she was really scaring him, too. Because his glimpse of the animal had seemed to read him the same kind of deformed descriptor that Bonnie was describing.\r\nâ€Å"Maybe we just saw it at a weird angle,” he said, man Meredith said, â€Å"It may just wipe out been some animal scared out by †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"By what?”\r\nMeredith looked up at the top of the car. Matt followed her gaze. Very slowly, and with a groan of metal, the roof dented. And again. As if someth ing very heavy was leaning on it.\r\nMatt cursed himself. â€Å"While I was in the front seat, why didnt I just base of operations it †?” He stared hungrily through branches, trying to make out the accelerator, the ignition. â€Å" be the keys still there?”\r\nâ€Å"Matt, we ended up half in a ditch. And besides, if it would have done any good, Id have told you to floor it.”\r\nâ€Å"That branch wouldve taken your head off!”\r\nâ€Å"Yes,” Meredith said simply.\r\nâ€Å"It would havekilled you!”\r\nâ€Å"If it would have gotten you two out, Id have suggested it. But you were trapped looking oblique; I couldsee straight ahead. They were already here; the trees. In every direction.”\r\nâ€Å"That…isnt…possible!” Matt pounded the seat in front of him to strain each member.\r\nâ€Å"Isthis possible?”\r\nThe roof creaked again.\r\nâ€Å" some(prenominal) of you †stop contend!” Bonnie said, an d her vox broke on a sob.\r\nThere was an explosion like a gunshot and the car sank suddenly back and left.\r\nBonnie started. â€Å"What was that?”\r\nSilence.\r\nâ€Å"…a tire blowing,” Matt said at last. He didnt trust his own vocalise. He looked at Meredith.\r\nSo did Bonnie. â€Å"Meredith †the branches are filling up the front seat. I can hardly see the moonlight. Its acquiring dark.”\r\nâ€Å"I know.”\r\nâ€Å"What are we going todo ?”\r\nMatt could see the tremendous tension and thwarting in Merediths face, as if everything she said should add together out through gritted teeth. But Merediths voice was quiet.\r\nâ€Å"I dont know.”\r\nWith Stefan still shuddering, Elena curled herself like a cat over the bed. She smiled at him, a smile drugged with joy and love. He thought of grasping her by the arms, pulling her crop up, and startle all over again.\r\nThat was how insane shed made him. Because he knew †all too well, from experience †the danger they were tease with. Much more of this and Elena would be the initial spirit-vampire, as shed been the first vampire-spirit hed known.\r\nBut look at her! He slipped out from at a lower place her as he sometimes did and just gazed, feeling his heart pound just at the sight of her. Her hair, true gold, fell like silk down to the bed and pooled there. Her body, in the light of the one small lamp in the room, seemed to be outlined in gold. She authenti craby seemed to float and move and sleep in a golden haze. It was terrifying. For a vampire, it was as if hed brought a living sun into his bed.\r\nHe found himself suppressing a yawn. She did that to him, too, like an unlearned Delilah victorious Samsons strength away. Hyper-charged as he expertness be by her blood, he was also delightfully sleepy. He would spend a warm wickedness in †or below †her arms.\r\nIn Matts car it nevertheless got darker as the trees act to cut out t he moonlight. For a time they tried yelling for help. That did no good, and besides, as Meredith pointed out, they needed to conserve the oxygen in the car. So they sat still again.\r\nFinally, Meredith reached into her jeans paper bag and produced a set of keys with a tiny keychain flashlight. Its light was blue. She pressed it and they all leaned forward. such a tiny thing to mean so much, Matt thought.\r\nThere was pressure against the front place now.\r\nâ€Å"Bonnie?” Meredith said. â€Å"No one will hear us out here yelling. If anyone could hear us, they would have heard the tire and thought it was a gunshot.”\r\nBonnie shook her head as if she didnt want to listen. She was still picking hanker needles out of her skin.\r\nShes right. Were miles away from anybody, Matt thought.\r\nâ€Å"There is something very bragging(a) here,” Bonnie said. She said it quietly, but as if every word was universe forced out one by one, like pebbles thrown into a pond. \r\nMatt suddenly matt-up grayer. â€Å"How…bad?”\r\nâ€Å"Its so bad that its…Ivenever felt anything like this before. Not when Elena got killed, not from Klaus, not fromanything . Ivenever feltanything as bad as this. Itsso bad, and its sostrong . I didnt think anything could be so strong. Itspushing on me, and Imafraid †â€Å"\r\nMeredith cut her off. â€Å"Bonnie, I know we can both wholly think of one way out of this †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Theresno way out of this!”\r\n” †I know youre afraid †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Who is there to call? I could do it…if there were mortal to call. I can stare at your little flashlight and try to build its a flak and do it †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Trancing?” Matt looked at Meredith sharply. â€Å"Shes not supposed to do that anymore.”\r\nâ€Å"Klaus is dead.”\r\nâ€Å"But †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Theres nobody to hear me!” Bonnie shrieked and then she broke down into broad sobs at last. â€Å"Elena and Stefan are too distant away, and theyre probably asleep by now! And there isnt anyone else!”\r\nThe three of them were being pushed together now, as branches pressed the seats back onto them. Matt and Meredith were close liberal to look at each other right over Bonnies head.\r\nâ€Å"Uh,” Matt said, startled. â€Å"Um…are we sure?”\r\nâ€Å"No,” Meredith said. She sounded both grim and hopeful. â€Å" toy with this morning? We are not at all sure. In factIm sure hes still around somewhere.”\r\nNow Matt felt sick, and Meredith and Bonnie looked ill in the already strange-looking blue light. â€Å"And †right before this happened, we were talk of the town just nigh how a lot of stuff †â€Å"\r\n” †basically everything that happened to change Elena †â€Å"\r\n” †was all his sack.”\r\nâ€Å"In the woods.”\r\nâ€Å"With an open window.”\r\nBonnie sobbed on.\r\nMatt and Meredith, however, had made a silent agreement by eye contact. Meredith said, very gently, â€Å"Bonnie, what you said you would do; well, youre going to have to do it. exertion to get through to Stefan, or drive out Elena or †or apologize to…Damon. in all likelihood the last, Im afraid. But hes never seemed to want us all dead, and he must know that it wont help him with Elena if he kills her friends.”\r\nMatt g menstruateted, skeptical. â€Å"He may not want us all dead, but he may wait until some of us are dead to save the others. Ive never trus †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Youve never wished him any harm,” Meredith overrode him in a louder voice.\r\nMatt blinked at her and then shut up. He felt like an idiot.\r\nâ€Å"So, here, the flashlights on,” Meredith said, and even out in this crisis, her voice was steady, rhythmic, hypnotic. The pathetic little light was so precious, too. It was all they had to keep the darkness from becoming absolute.\r\nBut when the darkness became absolute, Matt thought, it would be because all light, all air, everything from the outdoor(a) had been shut out, pushed out of the way by the pressure of the trees. And by then the pressure would have broken their skeletons.\r\nâ€Å"Bonnie?” Merediths voice was the voice of every big baby who ever had line up to her younger siblings rescue. That gentle. That controlled. â€Å" merchant ship you try to pretend its a compact disc flame…a candle flame…a candle flame…and then try to trip up?”\r\nâ€Å"Im in trance already.” Bonnies voice was somehow distant †cold away and almost echoing.\r\nâ€Å"Then entreat for help,” Meredith said softly.\r\nBonnie was whispering, over and over, clear oblivious to the world around her: â€Å"Please, come help us. Damon, if you can hear me, please accept our apologies and come. You gave us a terrible scare, and Im sure we deserved it, but pl ease, please help. It hurts, Damon. It hurts so bad I could scream. But instead Im putting all that competency into Calling you. Please, please, please help…”\r\nFor five, ten, cardinal minutes she kept it up, as the branches grew, natural enclosure them with their sweet, resinous scent. She kept it up far longer than Matt had ever thought she could endure.\r\nThen the light went out. After that there was no sound but the whisper of the pines.\r\nYou had to admire the technique.\r\nDamon was once again lounging in midair, even higher this time than when hed entered Carolines third-story window. He still had no idea of the names of trees, but that didnt stop him. This branch was like having a box seat over the drama unfolding below. He was starting to get a little bored, since nix new was happening on the ground. Hed cast aside Damaris earlier this evening whenshe had gotten boring, talking active marriage and other subjects he wished to avoid. handle her current husband. Bo-ring. Hed left without really checking to see if shed become a vampire †he tended to think so, and wouldnt that be a surprise when hubby got home? His lips trembled on the edge of a smile.\r\nBelow him, the play had almost reached its climax.\r\nAnd you really had to admire the technique. Pack hunting. He had no idea what sort of lousy little creatures were manipulating the trees, but like wolves or lionesses, they seemed to have gotten it down to an art. Working together to capture prey that was too spry and too heavily armored for one of them alone to manage. In this case, a car.\r\nThe handsome art of cooperation. compassion vampires were so solitary, he thought. If we could cooperate, wed own the world.\r\nHe blinked sleepily and then flashed a dazzling smile at cryptograph at all. Of course, if we could do that †say, take a city and divvy up the inhabitants †wed finish it off by divvying up one some other. Tooth and nail and major power would b e wielded like the blade of a sword, until there was energy left but shreds of quivering grade and gutters running with blood.\r\nNice imagery, though, he thought, and let his eyelids droop to appreciate it. Artistic. Blood in scarlet pools, magically still politic enough to run down duster marble steps of †oh, say, the Kallimarmaron in Athens. An stallion city gone quiet, purged of noisy, chaotic, hypocritical humans, with only their necessary bits left behind: a few arteries to pump the sweet red stuff out in quantity. The vampire version of the land of milk and honey.\r\nHe opened his eyes again in annoyance. Now things were getting loud down there. Humans yelling. Why? What was the point? The coney always squeals in the jaws of the fox, but when has another rabbit ever rushed up to save it?\r\nThere, a new proverb,and demonstration that humans are as gooselike as rabbits, he thought, but his manner was ruined. His mind slid away from the fact, but it wasnt just the noise below that was disturbing him. milk and honey, that had been…a mistake. Thinking about that had been a blunder. Elenas skin had been like milk that dark a week ago, warm-white, not cool, even in the moonlight. Her bright hair in shadow had been like spilled honey. Elena wouldnt be happy to see the results of this nights pack hunting. She would cry disunite like crystal dewdrops, and they would smell like salt.\r\nSuddenly Damon stiffened. He sent one stealthy query of Power around him, a circle of radar.\r\nBut nothing bounced back, except the mindless trees at his feet. whatsoever was orchestrating this, it was ultraviolet.\r\nRight, then. Lets trythis , he thought: Concentrating on all the blood hed drunk in the last few days, he bankrupted out a wash of pure Power, like Vesuvius erupting with a deadly pyroclastic explosion. It encircled him completely in every direction, a fifty-mile-per-hour ruffle of Power like superheated gas.\r\nBecause it was back. Unbelie vably, the parasite was trying to do it again, to get into his mind. It had to be.\r\nLulling him, he supposed, friction the back of his neck with absentminded impatience, while its packmates finished off their prey in the car. Whispering things into his mind to keep him still, taking his own dark thoughts and echoing them back a shade or two darker, in a cycle that might have ended in him immobile off to kill and kill again for the pure black velvet usage of it.\r\nNow Damons mind was cold and dark with fury. He stood, stretching his aching arms and shoulders, and then look fored carefully, not with a dim-witted radar ring, but with a blast of Power behind each stab, probe with his mind to find the parasite. It had to be out there; the trees were still going about their business. But he could find nothing, even though hed used the fastest and most efficient method of scanning he knew: a thousand random stabs per abet in a Drunkards Walk search pattern. He should have found a dead body immediately. Instead hed foundnothing .\r\nThat made him even angrier than before, but there was a tinge of excitement to his fury. Hed wanted a fight; a chance to kill where the killing would be meaningful. And now here was an opponent who met all the qualifications †and Damon couldnt kill it because he couldnt find it. He sent a message, lambent with ferocity, in all directions.\r\nI have already warned you once. Now ICHALLENGEyou. introduce yourself †OR ELSE STAY AWAY FROM ME!\r\nHe gathered Power, gathered it, gathered it again, thought of all the different mortals who had contributed it. He held it, nurturing it, crafting it for its purpose, and meridian its strength with all that his mind knew of fighting and of the skill and expertise of war. He held the Power until it felt as if he were holding a nuclear bomb in his arms. And then he let it go all at once, an explosion belt along in the opposite direction, away from him, nearing the stronghold of l ight.\r\nNow, surely, he would feel the death throes of something hugely powerful and cunning †something that had managed to survive his precedent strafings designed only for eldritch creatures.\r\nDamon spread out his smacks to their widest reach, waiting to hear or feel something shattering, combusting †something falling blind, with its own blood come down nearby, from a branch, from the air, fromsomewhere . Fromsomewhere a creature should have plummeted to the ground or raked at it with huge dinosaur-like claws †a creature half-paralyzed and completely doomed, cooked from the intimate out. But although he could feel the wind rising to a howl and huge black clouds pooling above him in solvent to his own mood, he still could sense no dark creature close enough to have entered his thoughts.\r\nHow strong was this thing? Where was it coming from?\r\nJust for a moment, a thought flashed through his mind. A circle. A circle with a dot at its center. And the circle was the blast hed shot away in all directions, and the dot was the only place his blast didnt reach. Inside him alre â€\r\n shoot! Suddenly his thoughts went blank. And then he began, sluggishly, moderately bewildered, to try to put the fractured pieces together. He had been thought about the blast of Power hed sent out, yes? And how hed expected to feel something fall and die.\r\nHell, he couldnt even sense any universal animals bigger than a fox in the woods. Although his sweep of Power had been carefully made to affect only creatures of his kind of darkness, the ordinary animals had been so spooked that theyd gone running wildly from the area. He peered down. Hm. Except the trees around the car; and they werent after him. Besides, whatever they were, they were only the pawns of an invisible killer. Not really sentient †not within the boundaries he had crafted so carefully.\r\nCould he have been wrong? Half his fury had been for himself, for being so careless, so well -fed and confident that hed let down his guard.\r\nwell-fed…hey, maybe Im drunk, he thought, and flashed the smile again at nothing, without even thinking about it. Drunk and paranoid and edgy. Pissed and slicked off.\r\nDamon relaxed against the tree. The wind was screaming now, swirling and freezing, the sky full of roiling black clouds that cut out any light from the moon or stars. Just his kind of weather.\r\nHe was still edgy, but he couldnt find any reason to be. The only disturbance in the aura of the woods was the tiny crying of a mind inside the car, like a trapped bird with only one note. That would be the little one, the blonde witch with the delicate neck. The one whod been whining about life changing too much.\r\nDamon gave a little more of his weight to the tree. Hed followed the car with his mind out of absent interest. It wasnt his fault that hed caught them talking about him, but it did lay their chances of rescue a bit.\r\nHe blinked slowly.\r\n unrivalled that theyd had an accident trying not to run over a creature in approximately the same area hed almost crashed the Ferrari trying to run one over. Pity he hadnt had a glimpse of their creature, but the trees were too thick.\r\nThe redheaded bird was crying again.\r\nWell, do you want a changenow or dont you, little witch? Make up your mind. You have to ask nicely.\r\nAnd then, of course,I have to finalise what kind of change you get.\r\n'