The thick, coppery smell of blood came out to meet them. The room stank of death.
Matt held his flashlight steady while Meredith searched for a light switch. Finally, the scene before them was illuminated: the altar from the front of the room lay on its side, the bowl of blood smashed a few feet away. Extinguished torches had left long lines of greasy black smoke smeared on the walls. Vampire bodies lay limply in pools of sticky, half-dried blood, their throats torn by Damon's or Stefan's fangs, or their torsos punctured by Meredith's stave. Elena glanced anxiously at Matt's pale face. He hadn't been down here for the fight; he hadn't seen the massacre. And he had known these people, known this room when it was decorated for a celebration.
Eyes scanning the room, Matt swallowed visibly. After a moment, he frowned and spoke, his voice thin. "Where's Ethan?" he asked.
Elena's eyes flew to the spot before the altar where Ethan, leader of the Vitale vampires, had held a knife to her throat. The place where Meredith had killed him with her stave. Meredith made a soft sound of denial.
The floor was dark with Ethan's blood, but his body was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 2
Warm blood, sweet with desire, filled Damon's mouth and inflamed his senses. He stroked the girl's soft, golden hair with one hand as he pressed his mouth more firmly to her creamy neck. Beneath her skin, he could feel her blood throbbing with the steady beat of her heart. He drew her essence into himself with great, thirst-quenching gulps.
Why had he ever stopped doing this?
He knew why, of course: Elena. Always, for the last year, Elena.
Of course he had still occasionally used his Power to coax victims into willingness. But he'd done it with the uncomfortable awareness that Elena would disapprove, chastened by the image of her blue eyes, serious and knowing, sizing him up and finding him wanting. Not good enough, not in comparison to his squirrel-chewing baby brother.
And when it seemed like Stefan and Elena might be done for good, that he might be the one to end up with his golden princess after all, he had stopped drinking fresh blood. Instead he'd drunk cold, insipid-tasting old blood from hospital donors. He'd even tried the revolting animal blood his brother lived on. Damon's stomach turned at the memory, and he took a deep, refreshing swallow of the girl's glorious blood.
This was what it meant to be a vampire: you had to take in life, human life, to keep your own supernatural life going. Anything else - the dead blood in stored bags or the blood of animals - kept you only a shadow of yourself, your Powers ebbing.
Damon wouldn't forget that again. He had lost himself, but now he was found.
The girl stirred in his arms, making a small questioning noise, and he sent a soothing dose of Power to her, making her pliable and quiescent once more. What was her name? Tonya? Tabby? Tally? He wasn't going to hurt her, anyway. Not permanently. He hadn't hurt anyone he'd fed from - not much, not when he was in his right mind - for a long while. No, the girl would leave the woods and go back to her sorority house with nothing worse than a slight spell of dizziness and a vague memory of spending the evening talking with a fascinating man whose face she couldn't quite recall.
She would be fine.
And if he'd chosen her because her long golden hair, blue eyes, and creamy skin reminded him of Elena? Well, that was no one's business but Damon's own.
At last he released her, gently steadying her on her feet when she tottered. She was delicious - nothing like Elena's blood, though, nowhere near as rich and heady - but taking any more blood tonight would be unwise.
She was a pretty girl, certainly. He arranged her hair carefully over her shoulders, hiding the marks on her neck, and she blinked at him with dazed, wide eyes.
Those eyes were wrong, damn it. They should be darker, a clear lapis lazuli, and fringed with heavy lashes. And the hair was, now that he looked at it closely, obviously dyed.
The girl smiled at him hesitantly, unsure.
"You'd better go back to your room," Damon said. He sent a current of commanding Power into her, and continued. "You won't remember later that you met me. You won't know what happened."
"I'd better get back," she echoed, her voice wrong, the wrong timbre, the wrong tone, not right at all. Her face brightened. "My boyfriend's waiting for me," she added.
Damon felt something inside him snap. In a fraction of a second, he had pulled the girl roughly back to him. With no care or finesse, he ripped back into her throat, gulping her rich, hot blood furiously. He was punishing her, he realized, and taking pleasure in it.
Now that she was no longer under his thrall, she screamed and struggled, beating against his back with her fists. Damon pinned her with one arm and expertly worked his fangs in and out of her neck to widen the bite, drinking more blood, faster. Her blows grew weaker and she swayed in his arms.
When she went limp, he dropped her, and she landed on the forest floor with a heavy thud.
For a moment, he stared into the dark woods around him, listening to the steady chirp of the crickets. The girl lay unmoving at his feet. Although he had not needed to breathe for more than five hundred years, he was gasping, almost dizzy.
He touched his own lips and brought his hand back red and dripping. It had been a long time since he'd lost control of himself like that. Hundreds of years, probably. He stared down at the crumpled body at his feet. The girl looked so small now, her face serene and empty, lashes dark against her pale cheeks.
Damon wasn't sure if she was dead or alive. He realized he didn't want to find out.
He backed away a few steps from the girl, feeling oddly uncertain, and then turned and ran, swift and silent through the darkness of the woods, listening only to the pounding of his own heart.